Category: humour I hope

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Five Tips to Holi-Proof Yourself!

Tomorrow is Holi. 

Either that thought has you jumping out of your chairs, readying your colour and pichkari and deciding your strategy or it has you scrambling to look for a safe place till it’s the day after.

I am a bit of both. Half my friends know the truth – That I’m s*** scared of Holi. The other half think I’m this fearless Holi player just because they see me each year drenched in multicoloured hues. Should the two groups meet, they’d never agree they’re talking about the same person.

This post is for Type 2 people – the ones who desperately look for an invisibility cloak to get through the Holi madness. There’s something about the Holi spirit that imbues the riotous revellers with much too much courage. That very forbidding expression you have – the one that says “I’m way above this juvenile stuff”? Well put it away – it won’t work. Believe me. I’ve tried it.

So what do you do?

If you are the non-social variety you have hope. Find a safe place, preferably on some haunted, desolate, deserted island, horde those gujhiyas and hide away till the day is through. 

However, if your friends are anything like mine they’ll probably be planning to dig you out just as assiduously as you’re planning to hide away. To begin with, dip yourself in colour before you step onto the battle field. Yeah quash the spirit of Adrian Monk and do it yourself because if you don’t, someone else certainly will. Once on the field remember Never let your guard down. Read on now for five valuable tips:

1. Scared? Who? Me? Nah!!
Bluff your way through. Pretend to be all gung ho about the whole thing. Each time the topic comes up chime in enthusiastically, “Yay! It’s Holi” even while your heart gives a lurch at the H word. Put on a careless, daredevil look and throw out a challenge or two. “Hah! This time I’m not letting you get away”. Once you’ve established your credentials and are no longer on the ‘hit list’ slink away quietly through the proverbial ‘patli gali’.

Caution: Don’t overdo the bravado. Steer clear of the biggies (You’ll know them by the mad glean of excitement in their colour crazed eyes). Pick out the scared ones (Oh you’ll smell them out, after all they’re just like you).

2.Get Your Shields in place
If you’re a mum you have a readymade shield – the kids. Deflect the attention to them. Keep an eye out for the assailant AT ALL TIMES. Just as he/she closes in put on your most loving look, position yourself carefully behind your little one and pretend to be engrossed in helping him/her fill out the water gun. (Do not get REALLY engrossed, okay? This is war, you need your wits about you, woman.) A look at that moving montage might for one, gentle out the attackers and two, the kids are craving it all anyway. They loooove the mess – the water, the colour – the dirtier the better. 

Caution: Don’t overestimate your safety. You’re just as safe as an 80 kg person can be behind a 20 kg person. Twins, that way are handy – double protection, you see.

3. Lie and Bribe
Participate in the preliminary round and just when things are hotting up and the dread in your heart starts to rise, put on your most serious expression and say,”I wish I could stay but my kid, is asthamatic. You know na how it is?? I need to go dry him out”. Believe me, no one will stop you. What? That’s a lie. Soooooo? This is war remember? And all’s fair.

Caution: This is a tricky one since it depends on the cooperation of children who at such times never rise to the occasion and might suddenly refuse to go along with you. Keep a bribe handy.

4. The Photographer
Carry an expensive looking camera. “Looking” being the keyword. Or simply whip out your phone and declare yourself the official photographer. Each time an assailant approaches ward him off with, “Aww you look lovely… Give me a smile. Watch out for your pictures on facebook.”

Caution: Use a dummy camera/phone. Keep the really expensive ones away from the battle field. The fanatics are not to be trusted.

5. The Foodkeeper
Become the official food supplier. Make sure you go for the preliminary rounds which are often gentler and get yourself suitably coloured, then stand behind the food counter or actively start handing out the samosas, gujhiyas and thandais. Who wants to mess their own food? 

Caution: Make sure you disappear before the food does.

Distract, Deflect and Defend. If nothing works and you’re caught – well then, cross over to the enemy and Drench, Dunk and Douse.

Remember it’s Holi!!!

Bura Na Mano Holi Hai!

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7 reasons being a bad cook is cool

I’m no cook. It was only after I had the twins that I tried any kind of cooking. I mastered the art of making the perfect bottle of milk (Hey it’s not easy okay, the temperature has to be just so and the amount of powder all measured and the water just that much). I learnt to dish out a mean Cerelac too. 

As the kids grew so did my cooking repertoire. Stewed apples, soups, khichdis, kheers – I learnt them all moving onto idlis and dosas. Then a few years back, unable to find a decent cook, the entire chore fell to me. I went about it in a pretty scientific manner balancing out the carbs, proteins, vitamins and minerals. The only casualty I presume, was ‘taste’. But I persisted, to The Husband’s dismay and continued dissatisfaction. 

That pretty much summed up our situation.

The kids of course knew no better since they’d been brought up on my cooking all along. They plied me with compliments as they crunched up cakes as hard as biscuits and happily ate up my lopsided chapatis. 

Sometimes I wondered if N grows up to be a famous actress (which is her current ambition) and some inane paper like apna ToI asks her for a favourite dish and she says (with that world-weary air typical of celebrities), ‘I love ghar ka khana. Specially my mum’s watery lauki with her special burnt-aroma rice.‘ Would that be a cringe-worthy moment for me or one of pride? 
Ummm… I’m not sure at all.

But I’m rambling. The thing is recently, fed up with the daily chore, I finally got a cook again and what bliss it has been. Check out the top seven reasons why being a bad cook works for me.

1. The most obvious one of course – you get to hire a cook and are free to do more reading or writing or just about anything else.

2. You are playing your part in boosting the economy by providing employment.

3. When you have a cook and the food is not so good, instead of going in defensive mode you can shake your head like the rest of the family and before anyone else can say it you pipe up, “Someone really needs to talk to the cook.” (without any intention whatsoever of doing it of course. You do not want to annoy her now, do you?) And when she does a good job you puff up your chest with pride and say, “It’s an art you know, finding the perfect cook.”
4. When you do make something decent it’s such happiness. Even after having made hundreds of dosas over the past years, when the batter spreads out perfectly and comes off without sticking It’s like a miracle unfolding. Watching that chapati puff up makes you feel like a total domestic goddess, each and every time.

5. Then there’s everyone else’s sense of awe and wonder when you land that perfect dish once in a long long while.

6. Your cool aprons always remain spotless because all you’ve done in them is mixed the salad.

7. You never take anyone else’s cooking for granted and hence are a favourite dinner guest at all your friends’ parties.

So are you the ‘cooking’ kind or the ‘get-a-cook’ kind?

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12 most intriguing mom-types


Once I was obsessivemom. I outgrew it.

I think I did. I sure hope I did. The thing is you never know.

I do however, remain, a ‘mom’ observer. They’re interesting, believe me. Being a mom changes you in a way you would never have imagined. It makes you a new, different person, sometimes unrecognisable by your old self. A lot of these moms below live inside me.

1. ‘My child best’ mom: She’s easy to spot. She wears her child like a medal. Nope, God didn’t make any other child as wonderful as hers. No one can dance like her, sing like her, write or speak or jump or run or even walk as gracefully, as athletically as hers.

2. Know it all mom: Yeah she knows it all. A stomach ache? She has the cure. A dance class? She knows the best one. Fancy dress, super recipes, parenting styles – she knows all. Have a suggestion? Well keep your mouth shut!

3. ‘Go get it’ mom: She’s the ultimate motivator. She’ll push and she’ll prod and she’ll push some more till she has her child on that victory stand. She won’t pause, she won’t stop. Not even to check if her child wants to be there at all.

4. The co-curricular mom: She’s the one you’re most likely to bump into in elevators. A Hi! and  Bye! and she’s gone, kids in tow – one class to the next. Her kids need to learn everything. From chess to ballet, piano to Spanish, basketball to the drum, she has it all covered.

5. Food fanatic mom: She’s the gajar ka halwa, the garam garam roti mom – the one who spends hours whipping up the perfect recipe. She revels in the fact that she makes her own ketchups and jams, that her pizza is better than Dominoes and her burger better than Mc Donalds.

6. The psychology professor mom: She’s Ms Analysis. Every action of hers and her child’s is examined and cross examined, analysed and cross analysed. “I yelled at him. Will it scar him for life?” “He scored badly in his tests, will he go into a depression?”

7. Academic mom: She’s the one who lives one unit test to the next. Exam times see her at her peak. She will obsesses about each quarter mark lost and will keep track of her child’s ranking like Shylock counted his gold.

8. Cleanliness freak mom: That can of sanitiser will give her away. Open her bag and you’ll find dry tissues, wet tissues, tissue rolls, soap strips and napkins. She covers her mouth when she steps on the road. She sanitises her kids’ hands every five minutes and wipes glasses and plates in restaurants before food is served.

9. ‘I’m your friend’ mom: This ones not quite a mom at all. She’s a friend, a pal. She dresses like her daughter and shares her makeup. She uses slang like her kids and hangs out with their friends on FB. 

10. The ‘Awww’ mom: She’s the one who cannot get over how wonderful her kids are. She tears up at every smiley her child gets at school and cries over every ‘I love you note’ from her child. She can’t talk without a ‘sweety’ or a ‘honey’ and is always found hugging, petting and cuddling her ‘baby’.

11. ‘My kids are my life’ mom: Her life begins and ends with her kids. Her conversation never strays from them. Suggest a coffee date and she’ll fix you with an incredulous stare, “What? Without the kids?”.. and you’ll slink away feeling a mean and selfish mom. As for me time… what’s that? she asks.

12. The perfect mom: She’s the toughest to define. Um.. actually she’s the easiest to define for aren’t all moms just perfect?

Oh they can be annoying, intriguing and so so different, but they don’t deserve to be judged. They all, yes all, love their children and are trying really hard to do the best they can.

This post was done for Write Tribe. For more ’12 most…’ entries go here.

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Devil’s advocate

I refuse to be diplomatic on this one. When it’s about love marriage versus arranged marriage, the choice is clear — arranged marriage for sure.

Don’t believe me.. believe Shakespeare… will you? Wasn’t it his beautiful Jessica in Merchant of Venice who said “Love is blind and lovers cannot see…”?

He said it….. Love is blind.

 Would you make the most important decision of your life blindly?

Think Shakespeare is old fashioned? Believe the Discovery Channel? Here read this..
A study

by Rutgers University biological anthropologist Helen Fisher and colleagues examined the
brain scans of men and women reported truly, madly in love.
Each of the images showed the same activity in the brain’s reward system as that
which occurs in the brain of a cocaine addict.

Yup.. that’s what addicts think they are…

… that, my friends is the real deal

That’s right .. cocaine addict!!! Would you make the decision of your life under the influence of cocaine?

I rest my case.

I, of course had an arranged marriage… the whole deal. Sari perfectly draped, tray in hand, laden with mere haath ke bane samose and steaming chai, that’s how I made my entry. One bite of the samosa and The Husband nodded out an emphatic ‘Yes’. No one knows to date, whether it was for the marriage or the samosa. Both, I hope.

It’s been over two decades and he continues to love the samosas of my hometown, which he later discovered, were bought from the neighbourhood halwai. What? Cheating? Oh so now you’ll get all righteous and carp about one tiny samosa. What about those hundreds of lies people in love tell each other? The whole tare tor laoonga bit and the duniya se ladoonga promise, then there’s the tripe about sab kuchh chhor doongi, mujhe paisa nahin chahiye. Lies.. all of it.

In fact, I think one should go a step ahead and opt for child marriages. For one there’s the obvious advantage of the girl adapting to the ways of her new home. Also, she learns to love her new family like her old one. I mean no matter how horrible our siblings are or how eccentric our parents are we still love them, don’t we? Well that’s how she’ll be with her husband and in-laws. Perfect recipe for a happy life. Right?

Doesn’t happen in today’s times, you think. Don’t you watch television? Haven’t you seen our own Anandi raking in the TRPs? And here’s an instance from real life.

That’s 5 year old Khalid and 3 year old Hala, on their engagement
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162-20020554-503543.html?tag=contentMain;contentBody

Had my parents had the foresight to marry me off young I might not have needed that halwai at all. I’d have made perfect samosas, just the way mom-in-law makes them, just the way The Husband likes them and my life’s ambition would have been complete. Foresight — that’s what my parents lacked. I spent years and years slogging, studying, working but what’s the point? Can I get the samosa right? Nope.

Sigh!

While we’re on this.. suitable alliances are invited for a strapping 6 year old boy and a delicate 6 year old girl. Send in with photo.

Thank You

Disclaimer: This is completely a work of fiction. Any resemblance to people dead or alive is merely coincidental. Oh the bit about inviting matches is true.. just wait for another 20 years, though.

This post is part of the raging controversy between love and arranged marriages. For more points of view go here
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