Ringing out the old!

Days are going by so fast that it is only realized by how soon the laundry bin overflows. My parents were here for a month and left just a week ago, and that is one reason time ticked away sooner than desired. Whenever Mom comes, the inevitable happens. Moms have this unique way of making us conveniently handicapped. She takes charge and goes about cleaning and rearranging parts of the house neither I (nor the maid) ever noticed before. She plans the meals, and makes the house spotless. When she leaves after a month I would have fallen down to the phase wherein I have to Google ‘signs that the water has started boiling’. I may have over the months trained my two hands to multitask like there were six, and by the time Mom leaves I would have just one functioning hand, and the function it does is eating.

ME, After Mom left.

So when she left, I got so bored that I went through my to-do list. There was one in there, which was always on the list but ignored, because the list of things-to-do are not cleared by a Last in First Out or First in Last Out or First in First out or a Last in Last out basis. When something on it is ignored long enough it actually becomes a chore that is bold, underlined with a red background . This point which was really close to becoming a project was decluttering our master bedroom. To be honest, we bought the bedroom furniture six years ago, aligning it with the size of the room we were living in that time. It was a spacious 1BHK. Later we were endowed with the honor of shifting to a 2BHK. Now the problem with 2BHK is that it is a 1BHK whose rooms have been split into two. Basically what you get with a higher grade is a wall that makes rooms smaller.

So the big cot and its side tables and dresser were shifted to a house which was originally meant to accommodate the Chipmunks. The King bed became a burden, dresser was a pain and side tables became the curry leaves in my curry. Every time my parents or some guests stayed, and they had to walk around this room like there was hot water on the floor, we pledged to put up an ad, and forgot about it later. So few days back as I was running through my Instagram feed, I had this brilliant idea. I walked to the bedroom, straightened the bed cover, and pushed back some stuff from the dresser to make it look neat.  I clicked some pictures and posted it on OLX.

The next morning I am at my desk at office, completely oblivious of the ad and my phone rang. It was the hubby.

He: ‘Hey, what ad did you upload yesterday?’

Me: *Thinking*

He: ‘Someone just called me and asked to see the bedroom!’

Me: ‘What a b***h !’

He: ‘Did you upload bed and dresser ad on OLX or not?’

Then it clicked. Oh Yeah. 

That.

A buyer arrived, made a deal and gave a token advance too. The next evening the King size cot with the gigantic headboard, colossal pain of a dresser and two side tables were gone, and we were spellbound to see our master bedroom actually looking like a well-lit dance studio. The room finally got a long pending makeover in a sunny theme and we could actually feel some positivity playing around.

As I basked in the success of my achievements (as this was all my idea) my little one ran into the mattress where I was just lying down soaking in self appreciation of the mastermind that I am, and said :

“ Amma, you know we should sell some more things from this house and get new ones”

“Like what?” I enquired.

“I will show you” he dragged me to his toy basket.  

The spies in our Whatsapp groups!

There are three types of people on our Whatsapp groups. One, people who are still in touch and are friends even outside the group, two, people whose names you still remember and are participants in the group, and lastly, people you don’t remember at all, making you question where you stand on the road to Amnesia.

The first category is the best. I have a whole group of them from school; we chat from different continents, are supportive, and have honest discussions without being judged. We discuss everything from stuff on our grocery list to men on our wish list to relatives on our hit list. We use everything from F word to B word to A word like it was our normal vocabulary. There is nothing more energizing than a girl group of like-minded super crazy individuals. The second category is people who are neither friends, nor enemies and are scattered across groups. They probably bothered to study during the time I was busy socializing, so they dint have anything to do with me then or now. The third category comes into picture when some conversation about that person happens in the group. This is the time I’d be reading messages without any clue about the existence of that person. 

How did I possibly forget the very existence of a person who sat in the same room with me for an extended period ? May be our brain chooses to forget irrelevant people, the ones who had nothing to do with us. May be it just moves people to the recycle bin when it is time to move on and then empty the recycle bin too. Oh I haven’t forgotten any of my enemies, mind you. I am still waiting for the right time to get back at them. ( Meanwhile, for them I am their third category of forgotten morons)

This irrelevant third category sent me a friend request on Facebook, and the profile picture is intelligently chosen. It is a picture of his/her child. Just the child. No parents anywhere in the album. I mean unless your kid is North West or Princess Charlotte, there is no way to know who you are. I make all kinds of efforts to visit their profile and try to place this person. I mean why on earth would you upload your baby’s picture on your profile? I mean it is not okay for you to upload your picture due to Sati Savitri reasons but your child’s picture can be posted everywhere?  Either you become a little bit social or don’t be on social media. At least, don’t remain anonymous and send friend requests.

Once I was pinged by this forgotten person I had mutual friends with. We exchanged a ‘hi’. She asked me where I am, what I do and the name of my child. I answered the above questions dutifully, and when I was about to ask something back, she said ‘Okay then bye’ and was offline in less than a second. This means that she pinged me to ask these three questions. She also left in a hurry and was never online again on messenger (or I was blocked immediately after). May be she dint like the name of my child.  My dear friend, if you are an introvert I completely understand. If you want to maintain your privacy I get that too.  Why would you want to know everything but not say anything about yourself? Why would you be in a group reading all messages but never say anything?

Most probably.
Image Courtesy: Here

My parents always tell me, that I should never suspect or blame anyone without proof or knowing them long enough.  

Going by that advice, my best guess is that she is a spy for the RAW, or works for the CBI. They can question you. Do you question them back?