I've got voice-mail

I have only one voice message on my phone. I don't know why I've never deleted it. Probably because it's so gawar that I can't help but smile every time I listen to it. The person who left it is highly educated, very articulate, speaks extremely well (oh my God .. his head is going to explode reading this!!!) ... and yet, you couldn't find someone who can put on (or most likely, naturally have :D) a more LS tone.

It's quite difficult to truly get the essence of the message in writing (I'll probably tape it and put it up sometime in the future), but here it is, word for shady word :)

Namaskar gupta ji ... kya haal hai aapka? hum __ se __ jaa rahe thhey aur bore ho rahey thhey, toh humney socha ki apne manoranjan ke liye aapko phone ghumaya jaaye. Sir yeh kya ... aapne Shankar Mahadevan ki tarah ek hee breath mein apna saara voice message de daala hai ... aaraam se ... thoda saa saans lein ... pataa chala ki heart attack ke maare buddhey chal base ... par anyways mujhe call kar dena ... meri awaaz aur style se toh pehchaan hee gaye hoge ki yeh tumhara manpasand Chandni Chownk vaala dost hai. Chalo bhai ... namashkar ... tata.

Seriously, what sort of friends do I have??

Moo

Some chick called into this show I was listening to on the radio while driving to work today morning, and this is the conversation that ensued:

Chick: Umm .. I've been with this guy for some time now, and things are going great. But I want to ask him ... where is this going?

RJ: Whoaa .. back up .. tell us about it.

Chick: Weeellll, we'be been out on 7 dates in the last 9 weeks. And he's a great guy. In fact, he didn't even kiss me on the first date ... till I let him.

RJ: That's being a gentleman. And how long have you known him?

Chick: Errr .. 9 weeks.

So I'm thinking ... what the hell is wrong with this woman? Nine weeks is just over 2 months. That hardly qualifies as "some time now"!!!! Why does it have to "go somewhere" in such a short time? Do all women think in this crazy way?

Apparently the RJ and I were on the same page.

RJ: That's not too long, is it? Why not give it time to develop? Have you guys had sex?

Chick: *nervous laugh* Yess .. hehhhehhh.

RJ: Well that's cool that's cool. When was that?

Chick: *matter of factly* On the first date.

RJ: *silence*

Me: WTF??

RJ: Aaah .. see, now that's something you didn't mention when you told us about him being a gentleman. Does this guy want to take things ahead?

Chick: That's what I don't know. I mean I know he likes me.

RJ: Sure sure. But you know what they say about buying the cow, right?

I cracked up!!

The Rubaiyat

Why ponder thus the future to foresee,
and jade thy brain to vain perplexity?
Cast off thy care, leave Allah's plans to Him-
He formed them all without consulting thee.

- Omar Khayyam

I've got mail

Text exchange with a friend (??) last night:

Him: Why haven't you updated your blog in ages? You know that's the only way I keep track of your life.

Me: Well, you could just call, you know.

Him: Yes, but then I would have to speak to you.

Perhaps I just don't get it

It's quite funny. It reminds me of your blog, she said.

Now since Ka is someone with a rather refined sense of humour, I felt quite elated at the time. Right now - not so much.

But wait ... I seem to be getting ahead of myself.

In January of this year, I woke up in Gurgaon one morning, having spent the night at T's place. While T and S were still slumbering, I was sitting in aunty's room, chatting away with aunty, Ka and Ka's better half - Sands; when I happened to notice a white covered novel with random caricatures on it, and the catchy title of "Dilli Toh Pagal Hai".

What's this?, I asked, hoping to be able to steal another one of T's novels (I had "borrowed" "Are All Women Leg Spinners" once upon a time, but liked it enough to warrant never giving it back. Small sacrifice for him, considering the rubbish he has put me through, which includes but is not limited to stealing my money, hiding my shoes and convincing me to walk to the Principal's office in my socks and having it announced on the school's PA system, leaving me to walk through a highly foggy Delhi winter night in the middle of some Godforsaken colony, having me slapped by that idiot music teacher, made me lie to save his ass and etc.). Unfortunately, it belonged to the always sweet (to me) and ever-satark (as in cautious) Ka, who went on to explain that it was a collection of short stories, essays rather, about Delhi ... and that *insert first line here after converting to past tense*.

I puffed up my chest and resembling a cockatoo more than ever (my hair does really strange things when I wake up), let out on articulate "Oh really" (no wonder I'm such an accomplished writer!). I would have gone on to read a bit of it (and saved myself the ... no no G, keep them guessing ... long post long post), but just at that moment came a harpy-ish wail of "Mummmaaaa breakfasssst". It's up, we all exclaimed together, and braced ourselves for T. But that's another tale for a different time.

The thought of DTPH remained with me for two reasons - I absolutely adore anything (specially anything funny) being written/directed/made about Delhi, and two - like a white cat under a villain's ring-ed palm, my ego had been stroked. Purrr indeed.

So as it happened, I found myself in South Ex one evening, and walked into Tekson's (does it have an apostrophe?) bookshop ... and sure enough, there it was - displayed front and center - Dilli Toh Pagal Hai. Rs. 195, said the flourescent sticker. Hmm ... must be worth it, I thought. Picking it up, I walked over to the cashier - some totally daft woman who was more interested in giggling over the telephone than serving paying customers. Polite boy that I am, I waited. She looked up all of a sudden, gave me an annoyed look for having disturbed her (I am sure) idiotic conversation (but please note - she was still very much on the bloody phone), and held out her hand. I gave her the book, 200 rupees, and a big fat zero in customer care. Needless to say, my smile had been replaced with scorn and disgust - two emotions which, I am told, I do not have difficulty displaying. As if!! ... anyhow, she put the book in a bag (chalo, at least some basic sense - or it could simply have been a Pavlovian reaction. Whatever.) along with my bill, and handed the bag to me. And looked away!!!! Dumb bitch. I did not budge a frikkin inch, and in my most contemptuous voice, asked - WHERE IS THE CHANGE? She looked up again, clearly confused at having been unable to complete her simplistic simian duties, looked at something on her screen (I presume it was the bill), and gave me a 5 rupee coin. I sincerely hope she was not talking to her future husband, for I feel I would have done another human a grave disservice indeed at not having informed him that he was about to marry someone with an IQ of minus 8 billion.

As I was saying ... I bought the book, and left.

I read the very first story (The ABC of D(elhi) - what a smart title) in the auto on my way back home. And remember chuckling away, since Shivjeet Kullar was indeed quite funny. Yes yes, I said to myself - what he writes is certainly true. What an astute observer. Ha ha. Or was it one of those laughs that you force out of yourself because you expect something to be funny? You know - kind of like how a dish HAS to be tasty just because some famous chef prepared it. Welcome to Gordon Ramsey's restaurant - Trotters, anyone? So I was amused, but forgot all about the book once I tucked myself into bed at night and picked up Asimov to finish the third of the Foundation novels. Which, by the way, are brilliant!!! And DTPH rested on the side table, and made its way back to San Diego with me at the end of my vacation. And then hung out with the other books in my highly messy bookcase. (How very LOTR this sounds!)

Until today.

Sidenote - will I ever get to the point? Yes ... now. End sidenote.

Today being the day that I caught the red eye to the east coast. And having a serious dearth of reading material, picked up City of Djinns (which I hope to finally finish reading) and the novel around which this tale is being spun.

You will go mad with laughter - proclaimed the publisher. Beware, you'll fall off your balcony laughing - said one reviewer. You cannot live in Delhi and not read this book - said another. Aah, a good time is going to be had - said I. The lady sitting next to me surreptitiously glanced at the novel, wondering (no doubt) whether I was about to start reading Letters to Penthouse or some such. How silly. If that had been the case, I obviously would have said - Aah, a jolly good time is going to be had.

And I moved on to story two - ABC of Punjabis. Umm .. ok. Kinda like the first one, but I'm sure it's going to get better. A to Z of Punjabis was followed by something called Arey Mainoo Bhi Karna Hai!, Kabhi Affair Mat Kehna, and Mine Is Bigger Than Yours. I read on, and kept waiting ... waiting for an end that wouldn't come ... ooh, see what I did there? ... I took that famous line (haan it is famous) from Titanic and used it in a totally different context. Literary genius I am. Well the end didn't come because I read some more and then decided to blog about it, there-by never getting to the last story, but what I was going to say did not come was the laughter. Or even a smile. Admittedly, there were a couple of lines that were funny - but I would still have been very much sane and alive even if I was sitting on the ledge of my balcony and reading this book.

I understood what he was trying to do here - take incidents that we all see on a daily basis in Delhi, and put a hilarious spin on them. Except for the hilarious part. Or the spin. He just ended up stating the obvious - as if he was someone remotely funny ranting to himself. Or on a blog.

Uh oh.

See why the afore-mentioned elation at Ka's comment evaporated?

But I'm not someone who writes for a newspaper, and my columns have not been converted into a supposedly highly funny book. (Jealous much?). But I paid almost 200 rupees for this, and I wanted my money's worth. Which, I am sorry to say, I most certainly did not get. Now I must agree that a few stories I read were indeed quite touching. But I did not want to read Chicken Soup for the Delhi-ites Soul. I paid for a book to make me laugh, and it did not keep its promise. Which obviously makes me feel cheated. To me, his humour was childish at best. Allow me to give you a couple of examples (I'll pick the "poems" since the stories will take a little bit to type):

Page 25: The Bootiful Mrs. Khanna-ji

This is Mrs. Khanna, she'll make you dance to her tune
She rarely ever smiles, maybe once in a blue moon
Many years ago, she looked quite hot
Now when he hubby sees what he's got
He wonders how on earth someone blew her up like a balloon

Page 48: The Happy Gay Designer

Meet Anshu the designer - so happy and gay
Always smelling so nice - be it night or day
His clothes are so very posh
As he says, 'Oh dear' or 'Oh gosh'
And he parties every night - be it December or May

What ... the fuck??

I have put the book away now, and do not plan to get to it again. Ever. If any of you are interested, let me know and I will be happy to let you borrow it. It certainly is not worth buying.

Wait ... am I Enya?

Once upon a time, a girl broke my heart.

Wow ... even as I write this, it seems so corny ... not because it didn't hurt at the time (it actually did - and I went out and got drunk and then bitched about her to with my friends, and then felt even worse!), but because it seems like such ancient history, specially since she and I are, and have been, once again friends for some time now.

But really, the point of this post is not to talk about her or about what happened (not entirely, at least). It's to talk about time. And how it really does ... I don't want to use the word "heal" ... allow you to move on.

To move on, and reach a point (of course, after going through a whole range of feelings - sadness, anger, confusion, indifference ... and a return to normalcy?) where you no longer have to be sad and/or bitter about things having gone sour, and can instead finally be at a place where you can once again be friends with the person, even though the friendship you once shared has inherently changed. I don't mean that things have become either better or worse, they're just ... different. And different does not always have to mean bad.

You have lost the awkwardness that inherently creeps in when you want to say so much, but cannot; and instead remember the reasons why you were fond of someone. And you feel that you have grown ... have become more sensible ... and are ready for a new beginning. One which may not have the same end as you once thought was destined to be, but which allows you to be yourself once more. Perhaps a more guarded self, but yourself nevertheless. And you can laugh once again. At yourself. At them. With them.

And all it took ... was time.

Current mood

Dream
Send me a sign
Turn back the clock
Give me some time
I need to break out
And make a new name
Let's open our eyes
To the brand new day
It's a brand new day

- Ryan Star