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

City light

My comment to Kenny inspired me to list snappy one-liners that refer to a specific institution in a city, but have now taken on a life of their own, to define the city. After the first few, inspiration dried at the rate of the Aral sea.

1. London: Mind the Gap
2. Bangkok: Same same but different
3. Mumbai- Yeh hai Bambai meri jaan
4. Delhi- Chalo Dilli!
5. ...

Suggestions wanted.

Cringing girl growling dragon vampire

Yes, I'm reading Twilight. The book series, not the time of day.

What else is one supposed to do while waiting for Amitav Ghosh to finish writing the sequel to Sea of Poppies?

A toasty grammarian?

Panini.

Another toast- this one to the nation's baby. Congratulations on your 20th year as cricket god! May your wrists remain supple, your eyes keen, your cut square, your drive covered, your bowling dibbly, your joy infectious, your stance balanced, your voice squeaky, and your shorts permanently in need of adjustment.

Salut.

Suggestive?

Bumper Harvest..

.. of puns and bumpers.

Exhibit 1: New dented bumper

Exhibit 2: Old dented bumper

And a closer look at exhibit 2:


Age of car: 2 weeks, location: parked. This is getting to be worse than the ol un
Can nobody in this city drive?

It's been a while since I blogged, so bear with the hasty regurgitation of bad puns:

An Indian soup in Athens?
Shorba the greek


Wine-making in Nasik, by someone who lived in New England?
Maratha's Vineyard

A tedious Afrikaaner who can't drive?
A crashing Boer

Update:
The Bollywood queen of haute couture?
Jaya Prada of course!
(from a contributor)

And to make the bumper situation clear: The car was bought. Parked. Hit. Bumper fixed. Parked. Hit.
Has someone placed pan masala and supari on the poor dear?

Boats, planes and automobiles

Which is about moving on foot, by train, coracle and car

Foot movement

The Mumbai marathon came and went by in a flash. I wuz there! With near-zero prep I waddled through the half. Thanks are in order to the catch-up-with-her-if-you-can-Kenny and let-my-people-go- Ludwig for disgorging goodie pacquets, bibs and transportation to the venue.

Speaking of goodie pacquets, here's what was in mine:

1 nos. dented water bottle
Several nos Nivea visage purifying water cleansing gel
1 nos Nivea Shaving cream for men (mild and caring)
1 nos. sugar free gold
Several nos. Fiama di wills aqua balance shampoo (magnolia blossoms and watercress)
1 nos Nivea for men Whitening facial foam (cleanses and supports)
Several nos. Nivea visage Sparkling glow day care fairness creams (white crystalite)
1 nos coffee sachet
Energy drinks (Gatorade, not Red Bull!) band-aid, body-glide, energy bars .. were conspicously absent

I expected to see an army of whitened, caffeinated male runners, with lustrous hair and i wasn't disappointed.

The run itself was brilliant. After the obligatory meeting of bangalore runners, almost having a slumdog moment in the unlit porta-potty and bumping and grinding with the large turnout (velly impressive, pune half marathon gets about 20 non-elite women runners) i was off. great support on marine drive, beautiful route, super weather the whole way, lots of orange segments, elaichi bananas and glucose bikkies received at pedder road (clutched for a while in my grubby hands), plenty of water all the way, shadowing of blind japanese runner and finally ending it all under the august gaze of some plump celeb on the stage, just as the winners of the full marathon steamed in. And a relaxed local train ride back from VT, after picking up whadda pao! and kesar milk.

Next time, I'll try to do this in 2 hours.

In which our heroine identifies her favourite waterfall

In a coracle at a waterfall at Wildernest on the Goa- Maharashtra- Karnataka border.




In which our heroine's hero achieves enlightenment on a train

After plentiful offers of vada pao, biryani, soup, chai, coffee, aloo parathas by the Indian railways (the parathas were super) and a good night's sleep on the Mumbai- Goa train (we were riding the Konkan Kanya - snigger) here's a study of this blog's poster boy in the train doorway.




In which our heroine tries to board a train

Background: two of us are at Goa's Thivim station, awaiting the Matsyagandha express.
The time: 7:30 pm.
Train arrival time: 8:10 pm
At this moment we have just discovered that the express in koschan doesn't stop at Thivim. Faces frozen in panic. Faces defrost to anoint blame. Faces refreeze (but grotesquely, the way ice-cream is wont to do) because of the fear of not returning to work the next day.

Arguments, recriminations and sundry advice later, we dramatically fling ourselves into a non-state player(taxi) to take us to the next station- Kudal, as it's too late to make it to the previous station- Madgaon. Kudal is in Maharashtra and we're told, an hour's drive away.

We detour to get cash and then the high-speed hi-jinks begins. We whizz out of the city and are soon on a highway, with very little traffic. After a while, we are driving through a forested area with no vehicles in sight. The road quality deteriorates (welcome to Maharashtra) and more than an hour has passed. Our driver is super, he knows shortcuts to bypass the villages. He has a co-pilot who checks on the train status in Goa. Another hour passes- more forest, pitch darkness, no vehicle in sight and the driver increases the speed. At this point, worries of returning to Mumbai have been replaced with dark fears of accidents, muggings by the driver and his subordinate, and the general pointlessness of modern life. The co-pilot receives word that the train is near, so the driver speeds up further. My vision of a train vs. car high speed chase usually involved either James Bond or Rajesh Khanna and singing. Be that as it may. We arrive at Kudal before the train. Hallelujah.

The train glides in a few minutes later, we look for our names on the roster and a helpful TC (or do I mean TT?) invites us aboard. The train leaves Kudal, just as the TC (or TT) discovers that we were meant to board at the previous station, over two hours ago. All hell breaks loose. Voices are raised, then quelled. He has re-assigned our seats as we have no right to them, according to the new rules. Sundry W/L and RAC people fawn over the TC, and fish around in their pockets for devices to perform his aarti.

Suddenly, the God-TC changes his Jovian frowns to a smile. With an admonitory wag of his clipboard we are awarded our berths which had never been taken away to begin with! Cries of "Dhanya ho!" rent the 3-tier A/C bogie. We stagger inside, while the acolytes bring out the ganga jal.

A good time is had by all.
Specially by us, at sunset by this pool..

Foreheadforest

Matheran. Go there now.

in happier times

this blog has lain silent thanks to repeated house-movings, work deadlines, deficiencies in internet service provision, global meltdowns and a severe shortage of spirulina. but, to reassure worried viewers, i am unharmed, superficially, anyway.

"Back to Bom!"..

..shouted Saleem Sinai's sister, "Back to Bom!"

"Govinda aala re", shouted the gopis of Mumbai, the day after I got there.
it's good to be back.

'teshuns I have known

My favourite rail station in Londinium is Charing Cross. Reason: The train (the 3:43 fast to Dartford) pulls out of the station straight onta a bridge. The views: On one side- Westminster, the London Eye and Not-so-much-Big-as-Tall Ben. On the other side- St. Paul's, the Gherkin, the Tate Modern power station, and the Embankment. All this through the latticework of rusty girders. Perfect.

In literary terms, Victoria carries the palm. This explains why:

Jack.  [Very seriously.]  Yes, Lady Bracknell.
I was in a hand-bag--a somewhat large, black leather hand-bag,
with handles to it --an ordinary hand-bag in fact.

Lady Bracknell.  In what locality did this Mr. James,
or Thomas, Cardew come across this ordinary hand-bag?

Jack.  In the cloak-room at Victoria Station.  It was given
to him in mistake for his own.

Lady Bracknell.  The cloak-room at Victoria Station?

Jack.  Yes.  The Brighton line.

Another special 'teshun is Paddington. Only because of the Bear with the battered hat and the marmalade habit who arrived there from Darkest Peru.

And Waterloo is beloved simply because the town by that name in Wallonia is pronounced in the Netherlands as Vaaderloo. Sounds very desi, somehow.

And then of course there's St. Pancras. While it sounds like the kind of place you go to have your intestines rummaged, it's actually a shiny new international train station. Airline-like procedures are followed, but at 10 times the speed. And there's the statue that sends you off to Bruxelles Midi, Gare du Nord Paris and other points continental. From a distance, it looks like a regular farewell. Click on the picture to enlarge it, and suddenly it looks a little less romantic. The woman looks like a man, and the man looks like a Vulcan, minus pointy pinnae.

now that's what i call ageing

I remember when it was "Now 29".
I waddled around for a few years. Did a little bit of this, that and the other. And turned around to find that they're listening to "Now 70"
!!!!

A question of timing

So there I am, ranting a bit about how the TV licensing enforcement goons are after me.
Blog post finished, I dust the chalk off my fingers and wander around the world wide web. I find that Stephen Fry has posted a podgram. In the latest installment, he talks about protecting the BBC's licence fee.
Coincidence?
Yes.
Even though it came directly after my last post about Mr. Fry?
Yes.
And that post came about because, on a fine evening in Piccadilly, our eyes met?
Yes, it's still a coincidence. Now go away and don't leave those chalky marks all over the keyboard.
There's a keyboard???
(throws down crumbling chalk piece and flounces out of the room)

A question of trust

Episode 1:

The pardner and I walk into a violin shop in west london. He tries out a few instruments, likes the sound of an 18th century German violin that costs quite a bit. He is told he can take it home for a few weeks, with no obligation to buy, just to try it out, see if it suits him. he is thrilled, and gets ready to swipe his credit card, but it is waved away. he is only asked for his name, address and telephone number.
bemused, he and i walk out clutching the violin tightly. this violin was being played when mozart was alive! and now it's with us. how could it be lent out to us to trustingly?

Episode 2:

I don't have a TV. If you remember, and you should, I said so last year too. I didn't have a TV then, and I don't have one now. So why am I receiving threatening letters from the TV Licensing Company? These letters are sent to my address, but not to my name. Not even to "The Occupant" at my address. But to "The Legal Occupier". Makes me feel a bit dirty, like I've invaded and occupied a home, in what is technically a legal manner (UN resolution was passed after all), but we all know the truth, don't we?
The letters (yes, there have been many) say that while most people are law-abiding, and chup-chaap-se buy their TV licenses, some of us filthy occupier types don't, and we'd better, cos they're going to hunt us down. The assumption is that we're untrustworthy TV watching freeloading liars.
It was only when I read this (take a look, go on) did my hysteria subside.

This post is not about whether the licence is a better way than taxes to pay for the beeb's excellent ad-free programming. Or even about how this programming is now available free on the iPlayer. Or about an old violinist with a business to run, being more trusting than a behemoth TV corporation. Or even about how it's better to have an 18th century violin squealing in your house, rather than have the family hunched about a blue screen, while all hands fight to control a long black box.
It's mostly a wish that this beautiful violin would sound a lil better when I play it.

Out of the Fry pan...

.. and into the Fry-er!

Stop me if I sound gushy, but here's what happened yesterday. The pardner and I were in Piccadilly. We stepped out of a samwich bar and gulped a few lungfuls of fresh air.

And then, it happened. Time slowed down. Traffic stopped. A black taxicab drew up in front of us. My eyes were drawn to the door. It opened and a tall, portly man emerged, blinking. He had a large nose and was in a purple velvet jacket. Our eyes met. He smiled.

He then trotted across the road and entered a building cordoned off by policemen in fluorescent jackets.

My hand moved slowly, reaching for my phone, and I managed to take a picture of his back.
Here is that picture.




Hours later, in my pew in St. James, listening to Mendelssohns violin concerto in E minor (yes, I know he only had the one v. conc., but it does happen to be in E minor) I realised that

1) I had become a celebrity-obsessed paparazzita
2) I saw him, and he looked at me! I am Ralph Wiggum.