Fragen ohne Antwort

Why do I have a gardener, when I live in a highrise apartment with 12 potty plants?
The maali drops in once a week to look up the plants. Like all good gardeners, he is able to lean on a convenient tree/ balcony railing and punctuate his work with a slow discourse on sunlight, vegetable gardening and the pidgie poo menace, all the while sending a gentle shower of mud onto the carpet. In case this is beginning to sound all corduroy-covered-Lord Emsworthish, you should know that the maali works in a nursery from 6 am to 5 pm, and then makes home visits till 10 pm. Only in Mumbai moment?

Why am I composting in a nook outside the apartment?
Because... we all should? This is working out werry well. Go to Daily Dump to find your friendly neighbourhood composter. In 6 - 8 weeks, compost tea will be served. With almond macaroons.
[steps off soapbox]

Why do I try to turn all parties into board game nights?
I spend parties at home "accidentally" bringing out a box of Carcassonne, silly me, when I'd gone to get a bowl of roasted almonds. This has never worked.

Why do I picture elegant effendi waggling his wrists about whenever I hear the name Laxman?
It could be worse, I suppose. I could picture Sehwag- you beauty and his lusty blows.

Why hasn't match fixing wiped itself out?



Why doesn't anybody comment on the blob anymore?

Sanyogita better watch out..

.. now that Prithviraj Chavan is riding into Mantralaya.

-An 1192 AD pun.

House-work

I wonder why I abandoned the blob for so long.
It's not that I didn't have anything to say.
It's not that I didn't get 2 emails from a loyal reader asking for a daily breakfast bowl of freshly tossed harmless muesli.*
It's not that I've shifted my focus to twitter. I'm only there to check that every Indian cricket lover and his family is being wished the best in life.

Maybe blobbing was something I needed to get out of my system. I'm now a proper grown-up who works and runs a home and doesn't write about sitaphal milkshake and leechy treks. My mind is now taken up with bais, appraisals and wotnot.


Nice try.

It's actually because I'm always watching House and The Office

But I'm back, baby!
And no, it never was lupus.

*It is quite possible that he really just wanted a bowl of breakfast cereal.

Filled with the kind of self-loathing..

.. that you only get when
you haven't updated the ol blob in 7 months
you have eaten an entire plate of (and this is very important) cold kanda bhajji without sharing
and you have cancelled your plan to run the Kaveri Trail Marathon a week before the run because of sickness and busyness.

(returns to blobby hideout with a hideous plop)

Orcaella Brevirostris's Curls and Curves

The Winter Olympics are on, accompanied by the clatter of skates, swoosh of skis and..the silent sweeping of brooms?

Curling as an olympic sport is a little hard to understand. For that matter, curling as a sport is hard to understand.

Skiing though, is awesome, even when there isn't enough snow on Solang's slopes and you have to go up into the mountains for some off-piste action. Here's Sanjay, former India under-19 champion, skiing down a meadow above Beaskund.



*off-piste action ~= eating large quantities of salted dry fruit

Q. How many sick-sainiks would it take to break a lightbulb?

A. 0
..if the lightbulb in question was above the head of an Australian of Pakistani origin who was in Mumbai to celebrate Valentine's day with her boyfriend, a taxi driver originally from Bihar, by watching a Shah Rukh film.
because the goons' head would explode, from the sheer information overload.

Mumbai, halved

Busy taking photographs while crossing the sea link at daybreak. And then I wonder why I logged a personal worst PR this time round at the Mumbai half.

Had a timing chip on for the first time, so was absurdly conscious of stepping emphatically on the red carpets at the start and finish, to register the time. Over-ate on the run up the pedder road flyover per usual (1 ravalgaon boiled sweetie, 1 segment orange, 1.5 glucose biscuits, 1 yellaki banana), pasta partied and then ran with/hours behind the usual suspects, and one unusual one, wilted in the marine drive heat, cheered the winners-who-take-less-time-to-do-double-my-distance, vowed to never do this again except that i know perfectly well that i will, tried not to think too long about the street kids that asked for banana and water bottle, didn't recognise shobbha day even though she blocked my way, ate the hippo chips that were part of the goodie bag (chinese manchurian flavour) and darkly wondered who had pilfered all the food from my goodie bag last year. Aall, as they rightly point out, iz vell.

(limps into the sunrise. one is not the young orcaella one used to be. more like an old hippo. some sort of water creature)

Safe as the fuehrer?

Seen on a lock in Koyna