Category: me

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That’s the way I like it

Isn’t it strange how we get used to things? When I first started my post-dinner walks in this new city I used to miss the vibrancy of Mumbai nights. In Mumbai our society had plenty of ‘late-nighters’. When I would come down at ten there would be scores of families complete with kids, out for a walk or to get some ice cream or to catch a late night coffee. I loved the happy shouts of the kids, the dads playing with them, the moms looking on relaxed.

Here our society is full of ex-army men, mostly senior citizens. By 9 the gardens are almost empty.. by 9.30 everyone’s gone. I freaked out a bit when I started my walks with just the guards looking on.

Apparently I got used to it. I didn’t realise when I stopped worrying about being alone, when I started revelling in the peace and quiet, when I started tapping my fingers and nodding away to the tune in my headphones, when I started lip-syncing the songs silently (not discounting the probability of singing aloud too). With just the guards looking on morosely, I came to think of it as my personal walking area (presumptuous, I know).

Then the other night I saw a family walking towards me and I was taken aback. I stopped short mid song and wondered what they were doing down so late. Of course they were just taking a walk like me. Yet, I disliked the ‘intrusion’. I disliked the kid’s shout and wondered why he wasn’t in bed on a weeknight (I know that’s weird but that’s what I did think). I stopped my happy lip syncing and walked in a self conscious silence waiting to cross them at each round.

Since that day the family’s been down occasionally and I’m getting used to their presence. It’s funny .. this getting used to business. Funny how we get used to situations, people and places… at the gym I have a favourite treadmill, a favourite cross trainer, a favourite locker, a favourite place where I stand for my aerobics. And strangely enough I find I have the same people around me during the sessions… so apparently others too have these preferences.

Strange na how we get used to things for no apparent reason.. We have fixed places at the dining table, fixed sides of the bed, the kids have preferred places in their school bus too… Strange, isn’t it.. these inexplicable preferences?

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Love and understanding

Love and understanding really are different things. Consider for instance what most men feel for their women. Love her he sure does, but understand her.. now that’s a struggle. And that’s quite how I feel for technology. I love technology.. I love the things it can do, the value it adds to my life, the happiness it brings… yet it’s ways remain a mystery. Fascinating, delightful and completely mysterious… that’s what technology is to me.
Each time I take a tiny step and manage to unravel a bit of it, a miracle unfolds.
A few days back by a happy accident I managed to plug in my pen drive to my television. (Oh alright.. The Husband did it after I’d had my fill of struggle). However, much as I fought, I couldn’t open the music files I wanted to. Frustrated, I dumped the remote on the sofa where the kids were engaged in a lively scuffle. As one of them landed bang on the remote a menu flashed on the screen. I grabbed it, tuned in and then boom.. I had all my favourite tracks playing away happily.
When it comes to technology I have always found myself struggling. There was the time when my Walkman refused to play. I took it to the repair shop only to find the batteries were upside down. That would have been dismissed as an oversight if I hadn’t done it two times in a row. Hit and trial worked a long time for me till my smart sibling told me there was a plus and a minus that one was supposed to watch out for. I still sometimes wonder, though,  why the signs must be hidden deep down inside.
Then there are cellphones. Each time I get a new one (which is pretty frequent what with the kids around) I have a fight on hand. When my trusted Nokia gave way a few months back, The Husband decided to upgrade me to a BlackBerry. What a pain that was, still is. The kids must have made umpteen calls to my friend ‘Aditi’ (because she was the first on the contact list) till the same smart sibling got herself a BB and told me how to lock the keypad. Oh now don’t tell me to read the manual.. it’s full of complicated diagrams and arrows with heavy jargon thrown in for good measure.
Isn’t it a wonder then that I’ve been on Blogger for so long? I’ve laboured around plenty in the dark world of backlinks and permalinks, labels, gadgets, templates…. Once I happened to click on the ‘Edit HTML’ option and then wondered for days where my editing menu had gone. I idly posted the query on Google Help and lo and behold I got an almost immediate reply. Someone actually figured out my error. Unbelievable, isn’t it? I never thought there were people sitting there waiting to help you out. Then there was the time I deleted a post and reposted it. At least two of my blogger friends knew I did that through some tracking system. Pretty unnerving to say the least. It’s like there are people sitting in my computer watching every thing I do.

By the way, in case I’ve given the impression of being computer illiterate let me clarify I’m not. I’ve been working on computers for over two and a half decades. Along with my editorial tasks at the newspaper I designed pages too and managed a fairly decent job. In fact I was better than most others, baring the designers of course. But put me on MSWord 2007 and I’m lost. The problem is with the new stuff.. and where there’s technology there’s always new stuff around.
Cookies, plugins, HTML, Java Script.. It’s like Greek and Latin. Sometimes I think I should seriously learn computers but which is the course I should be looking at???
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I WATCHED A MOVIE…

.. in the theatre, last Sunday. That’s a huge reason to rejoice because the last time I was there was almost two years back  and before that it was in 2006. That’s a bad bad average for someone who loves films and worse for someone who loves the whole theatre experience…
To begin with there’s the
– The big screen
– The great sound system
– The caramel popcorn
Plus
– The maid doesn’t bother you
– The doorbell doesn’t ring
– You don’t have to yell at the kids to ‘Keep it down’
– Or dodge the ball as it lands on you while they play bat-ball
– Or handle The Husband who just wants ‘a cup of tea please’

 

It’s just you, the popcorn and the film.. bliss.

Of course occasionally you find yourself reaching out for the remote that’s not there but that’s about the only hitch.
The Husband gallantly volunteered to take care of the kids while I went off with the SIL. Needless to say I totally completely loved the film .. oh did I forget to mention the name?.. it was Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. The whole idea of the film is so not me but so what-I-would-love-to-be… I mean what fun it would be to go off with a bunch of friends to do things you would never actually do on your own.
That was fun. Hope we can do it again soon.
In other developments, last Sunday was also the day the kids got their Taekwando green belts. There was much excitement and they were pretty thrilled with themselves. Despite the tiny thing that N is, she did better at the exam according to the instructor’s feed back. So much for H’s macho act.
This weekend was given over to food. We went out for a great Chinese dinner and then I ‘helped’ the kids finish their chocolate mousse.. thus did I desert my diet. And now is the time I start dreading that weighing machine as I ready for the gym. Mondays, I tell you, are the worst days of all.
Edited to add: The verdict at the gym: 800 gms up. Too stiff a punishment for one night of revelry, isn’t it? It’s back to work now.
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Food for thought

I fear I’m turning into a hardcore vegetarian… it’s the ‘hardcore’ bit that worries me. Before I go on I need to give some history.

We come from a family where our dad’s side is thoroughly non-vegetarian. Our grandfather, it is said, could eat anything that walked. Once he got a duck-like bird that we kept at home. I remember it waddling around our courtyard. It wasn’t meant to be a pet, though. We all knew that. She was biding her time till she made it to our dinner plates. My sister and I grew quite fond of it and one fine day when we came home to find it gone we were terribly depressed. I think our grandfather was the only one who enjoyed his meal that day.

Enter our mother, a hardcore vegetarian. She came from a Jain-like family that shunned onion and garlic. How she must have survived in her new home speaks of an abundance of tolerance and more than a fair share of love for our dad. She agreed to include onion and garlic in her food but she balked at having anything to do with the non-veg part of the kitchen. She wouldn’t cook it, she wouldn’t let us talk about it. Leg piece-breast piece discussions at the dinner table were a complete no no. ‘Her’ food had to be completely insulated from ‘our’ food. More than once she left the dinner table unable to take in the sight of us enjoying our ‘tamsik bhojan’.
Despite her repugnance, the pragmatic mom that she was, she never forbade us from eating any of it. If anything, she encouraged us because she didn’t want us to have to endure what she did. While I was an enthusiastic eater, my sister remained choosy… as we were with food in general. (Which is why I was the plump one while she remained stick thin J)
As a result of the divergent attitudes:
  1. I never did develop our grandfather’s passion (even our dad didn’t get there)
  2. I grew queasy at butcher shops.
  3. But I savoured my biryanis, keemas, kebabs and Rogan joshs. (It seems a little hypocritical in hindsight but that’s the way it was).
  4. At parties paneer tikkas rubbed shoulders with chicken tikkas on my plate.
  5. I did learn to cook meat after I got married.
  6. But I could never bring myself to cut it up.
When Hrit Naisha were born the thought of turning vegetarian first came to me. I still have no explanation why that happened. It began as just a casual reluctance. (And at the back of my mind I was striking one thing off my ‘can eat’ list as an aid to losing some weight). I started off not knowing whether I’ll continue to be one. I was ready to go back to my tikkas and tandooris if I missed them terribly. I never did. Oh I won’t say they never beckoned at all but it wasn’t a huge drive. I’ve been a vegetarian now for over five years.
It has hardly changed anything in my life.. including my weight 🙁 . I still cook it and I hope the kids eat it till they are old enough to make up their minds. I do not want them to grow up with mental blocks. If they feel strongly about vegetarianism they can become one later on.

However the other day The Husband got some chicken. Like our usual practice it’s his job to wash and clean it after which I take over. For the first time, my stomach turned over at the sight of the raw chicken. The sink had red droplets and scraps of fat. That just made it worse. I have been a non vegetarian so it’s kind of weird to feel this way. In fact some times I’ve cleaned the chicken too, although reluctantly, so this comes as a surprise. I hope it’s a passing phase. I really have no tolerance for intolerance.. mine or anyone elses.

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Notes from a journalist turned blogger

Writers who are journalists turned bloggers have to take on some special issues… if you’re one you’ll know what I’m talking about. And if you’ve been on the desk for a while the situation is even weirder. The thing is while at the desk you carefully cultivate a writing etiquette and slowly it becomes a reflex deeply rooted in your brain.. while blogging it’s just a pain in all the wrong places.
Compulsive obsessive word count disorder
Yes this is the first one.. the urge to check word count every few words.(92) I still have the itch to do it (100)…. and I have to continuously remind myself.. this is not a newspaper.. this is MY blog and I can fill it up with thousands of words of whatever I like.
Cap it
THEN there’s the thing about ‘first word in all caps’. Don’t ask how many times I’ve had to go back to a post and remove that ‘all capitals’ from the first word. Oh and there are so many other style elements… go away all of you… I’m a free woman …I’m a blogger for godsake!
Break it up
That’s what the editor told us.. if your piece is too long break it up.. and so the fixation with subheads. I simply can’t get away from the image of a reader frowning in distaste at a long page of unbroken prose. Being an avid reader of novels I lurve unending pages of prose.. but then reading and writing seem to be locked in two different zones of my brain.
PICTURE CREDIT: PIXABAY

Picture this

No article, features article specially, is ever complete without a picture. Don’t ask how many long hours I’ve spent surfing in-house photo libraries, Google images and a host of other sites looking for the perfect picture. For the blog of course it doesn’t matter. Yet if I don’t have one in my camera, I still fall back on Google images. Without a picture the piece seems so… incomplete. (BTW if you Google ‘journalist’ you just get images of the electronic-media.. had to search under ‘writer’ to get this one.)
And last of all.. the dreaded Media Net
If you’ve worked for a paper, specially the leader of them all, you know immediately what this is.. the bane of our existence at the desk. God forbid you mention a brand.. any brand in your write up.. or you let it slip past your editing .. you get a congratulatory call all the way from Delhi. “Why did you ‘promote’ that brand?” You write about a restaurant you can’t mention the name.. you can write about a disc.. but no name… you write about shops, resorts, watches and jewellery but.. no mentioning names without permission. Oh it takes plenty of practice and hours and hours of dressing downs (putting it mildly) to get it right. And finally when I did get it right, I quit.
On my blog.. Gawd I so love the freedom of it all.. not only can you name the brands you can even provide links to them.. Yay. Yet each time I do it… I get a guilty twinge.. a pang of conscience, part of which is still behind my work desk at FC Road.
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