The Curious Case of a Very Normal Monday

I wish!

It promised to be yet another Monday. You know, the one with the blues and all. Where you have way too much work, because of all the work you put off on Friday because you were simply too lazy and looking forward to the weekend, and somehow assumed that Monday would make it all better. Except you wake up Monday hating life and work and everything about it that might be responsible for your alarm ringing at 6.30 AM, and snoozing till 7 AM.

And then the most normal Monday in the history of Monday begins.

You get out of bed, take a shower, step out in your towel, and find a man asleep on your living room couch.

Now, finally awake, you convince yourself work is important, run out of home and reach on time, and actually manage to get your ass down to working.

You realize just how creepy men in the current client office are. Specially the ones who smile at you and ask where your ‘friends’ are. And that is around the time you remember you’re at the far off corner of the world, surrounded by tyre shops and one road away from the main red light district of the city. Not that it’s related, but that was weirdly the sequence of thoughts in my head.

You realize on the way back home, that everyone, and I mean everyone is either already married, or planning on getting married a little too soon. And you suddenly feel old. And off the path. In a weird way.

You manage to get a bus and a seat in the bus within 5 seconds of leaving Andheri station. Like wow. Luck and me don’t usually see eye-to-eye, but that lady must have been in a very rare good mood!

You reach home, tired of sitting alone without any social interaction, hoping to at least open your mouth and talk to your flat-mate, only to find an empty flat.

The kitchen bulb is missing.

The gas is lit. The pan shows signs of salty water which must have evapourated hours ago.

Washed undergarments, not necessarily owned by you, are strewn across your bed.

You have dinner, and then realize that the maid is secretly trying to poison you, slowly and brutally, by adding an entire packet of red chillies in your sweet lil chicken.

You try to kill all the chillies with dessert. And for some weird reason, you choose to not choose the german chocolate, the strawberries, the other amazing fruits, and settle with a bowl of milk powder. Yes dear reader, you read right, milk powder.

Your bathroom smells funny. After checking your pits and breath you finally start to look around. Then start to feel dizzy because you spot the culprit. There is poop on your toiletries slab.

Okay, so I lied. This was definitely not my normal Monday.

Some of the above things have surprisingly logical explanations. A friend unwell in the middle of the night. A five year old with an upset tummy. Pigeons and lack of space. Some, on the other hand, shall remain an eternal mystery.

Or at least a mystery till I manage to actually meet my flatmate.

P.S. She’s from Canada, and I genuinely believe we still live in two completely different time zones.

P.P.S. Tuesday on the other hand, happens to be a completely different story altogether.

Of Pigeon-tales and Brain Freeze

This word document of mine is currently open, well, because my brain has stopped working. And any addition I might do to my work right now cannot possibly be a positive one. Hence, for the sake of my employers, and my employer’s clients, I am here, typing mindlessly, on this word doc.

It’s been some time since I wrote. Simply because for some weird reason I cannot find anything to write about. And that is mainly due to the fact that I have one huge-ass post pending on my super awesome trip to Goa, which is clearly over-shadowing any possibility of actually being able to think of anything else to write about. And I don’t want to write about Goa unless I’m giving it enough of my time and attention. And full brain power. So what you’re stuck with in the interim is mindless babbling like this.

Well, this week’s been nice, and kind of brain numbing at the same time. With mind numbing days ending in surprises so big that I didn’t recognize them when they were staring me right in the face. Literally. And enough to make me smile like a crazy woman for a looong loooooong time.

On a completely unrelated topic, but a highly important matter, I seriously believe that my life is in danger. Over and above the usual can-fall-from-the-train/have-an-accident/get-run-over-by-an-auto-rickshaw/get-trampled-to-death-at-Dadar-station/have-the-only-tree-in-Mumbai-fall-on-my-head type threats to my life. A slight background might be of use here. Remember cute little Earl who we had adopted in our little kitchen balcony? Ok, so we didn’t really have a choice but to adopt him since we found him sitting there staring up at us. But the thing is, while he was born all cute n fluttery, he just grew up to be a stinky mess. He shat everywhere, brought in weird worms to eat, and definitely did not follow a daily bathing regime. My roomie and I would look at him every day, sigh, and write him off as a bad decision resulting from some drunken night. What we hadn’t planned for however, was Earl selecting our kitchen balcony as his righteous location to raise generations to come. And before we could even figure out what was happening, we found ourselves staring at yet another egg.

I won’t lie to you, we did consider raising yet another impudent pigeonlet. But then memories of Earl’s days of teenage angst quickly made us change our minds. So one day, the nest was discreetly transferred from our balcony to the common terrace on our floor. More space for the young ones to play in, we told ourselves.

Now you’d think that all is well and good, except Earl and the Mrs. clearly did not adapt to this change too well. Now, when I wake up at 6.30 in the morning to pick up my towel from the balcony, they are there, sitting on my towel, staring at me. I come back home at night, and they are still there, staring right at me. Any time of the day, THEY ARE THERE….STARING DIRECTLY AT ME. I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced it, but a pigeon’s eyes can be rather creepy things when they’re pointing at you. Especially when they’re looking at you in a weird Bollywoody-Naagin-I-know-you-murdered-my-family kind of way. And they’re shitting over all your washed clothes with a vengeance.

I-kid-you-not.

So if tomorrow, you find me dead in some corner of this city, in what looks like a freak accident of a random pigeon attack, do NOT be fooled. It would be Murder of the first degree, pure and plotted. This blog post shall stand evidence in the court of law. 

I.SEE.YOU.

Of Lost Siblings and the Time-Speed Formula

Considering that one of my new year’s resolution was to pay even more attention to writing, it is only rather obvious and predictable that this is when my Writer’s Block will choose to hit, and my blog will end up with a more than a week’s worth of silence.

So as it turns out, at this moment, I do not have one single cohesive thread of thought to string together a blog post. So honey, strap on your seatbelt, you’re headed for a lot of random crap.

Time to go Bananas!! Apparently.

Well to begin with, I finally managed to meet my long-lost-cousin last week. Not that she was lost. She’s just been all over the place. Dehradun>Bangalore>Kuwait>Bangalore>Toronto. But I actually managed to meet her enough times then. Until she recently (and by recently, I mean like a year back) moved to Mumbai. And that’s when she became my long lost cousin. Like, seriously, who in their sane minds would ever even try to get off at the Dadar station?!

And speaking of stations in Mumbai….well..this para can literally be about any of the gazillion local train complaints I have actually, but I will settle in on one. Which surprisingly came out of my conversation with my now-found-previously-long-lost-cousin. Because she asked innocently, why do they say life in Mumbai is ‘fast’? I thought about it for a second. What was fast supposed to mean anyway? The speed with which we eat our food? The speed of my speech? Us little girls from Delhi? Hmm…and then it hit me. It’s the damned speed at which everyone walks here.

It’s bloody annoying. At the station, at any point of time during the day, everyone, and I mean everyone, is running. Where? And for what joy?! Is it possible that every person in a one mile radius is actually running late? Missing their train? Needs to pee? Need to reach home and cook food? Every day? All the time?

And like the infamous rat race, you don’t have a choice but to run or be left behind. Or in this case, get trampled to death. And while I run and compete as well, nobody seems to have an answer to my question, “Why you run man?”

Among other things, trains give me time to actually catch up on some reading, and that’s good. I finished one awesome book last week. And then for some light reading picked up Dork, by Sidin Vadukut. Given that I am absolutely in love with his blog, I can’t stop tearing my hair out at the highly predictable and trying-too-hard to be funny bits in the book. Oh well.

Hmm…so in one post, I’ve probably offended all Mumbai-lovers, Delhi girls, and a columnist who may have one day fallen in love with this blog and given me my very own Carrie Bradshaw-ish column. So I guess my work for the day is done.

On an absolutely awesome note, I might just be ticking Goa off my wish-list next week, so woohoooooo!!!!!!

P.S. Would you read my very own sex-and-the-city column?! Now that’s a thought!

So What’s the Craziest Thing You’ve Done Lately?

You might have asked yourself that question on a day you were bored out of your wits. Or after watching The Girl Next Door. Or simply reminiscing the past.

But whatever the case may be, nothing, believe me nothing, prepares you for the day your Mom asks you that question.

Now, you would imagine your Mom being troubled by how crazy and wild you’ve been, and hence asking it. In fact I do remember my Mom’s last ‘talk’ with me before I headed off for my MBA to a slightly, let’s say, notorious college. Her exact starting sentence was, “With your sister, I didn’t worry, but you, you’ve always had a slight wild side…”. And I guess I have over the years given her more reasons to worry than my sis, so it was all cool. So the question really shouldn’t have shocked me, right?

Except my mom wasn’t worried about my wild escapades, she was more worried about the sudden lack thereof.

If your face just contorted into a huge ‘O’ with a thought in your head that just sounded something like ‘Whhoooaaa????’…well…I know.

Background perhaps, would help.

I have spent most of my life in Delhi, in let’s say a pretty conservative modern family (as weird as that sounds, you would be surprised by how many of them exist). So that also means I have had, let’s say constructive discussions with my family which usually ended up with my parents giving me a stern ‘No’, and me being all grouchy and pouty in my room. I was also called a rebel by them a few times. Though with all due respect to my parents, I really was a good kid, given what rebels of our generation really are.

But I did have my share of fun. I did have a group of random crazy friends, throughout school and college. I did colour my hair red randomly on an impulse. I did make out with a 007 Pierce Brosnan poster in the middle of Barista on a dare. I did sit on the Metro floor and sing songs. I did walk through the most beautiful misty foggy roads of North Campus in the middle of the night. I did attend parties. I did dance till the DJ stopped. I did get a tattoo and only told my mom after. I did smell a ghost.

Though mind you, through all that, I also slogged and studied my ass off.

But it was kind of worth it.

And well, now, I crib about work, am literally always tired, I sleep on weekends and decided to sleep early on New Year’s Eve. My hair style has been constant for like a year, and the colour has remained its natural self. Tattoo #2 has not yet made its appearance, nor has a belly button ring. I seem to have disappeared from the world, become anti-social, reticent, and I seem to be liking it.

In my mom’s words, I’ve started behaving like an old maid.

Well, maybe I have grown up.

Or maybe it’s just the calm before the storm.

Or maybe, you just don’t know  ;)

P.S. Dear Mum, I’m guessing this post didn’t make you feel any better than you did before…but don’t worry… All is well :D

Err...a little warning never hurt anyone, now did it?