Living the Sun's wrath.

Sorry for the long gap. I was at God’s own country over the week and couldn't blog due to lack of time and electricity. The week was mostly spent on taking baths and wiping sweat off our foreheads. Here are a few excerpts from my week long trip.

Cochin was like an oven, and we were all like pieces of chicken marinated in sweat waiting to be grilled. And it doesn't grill and finish us off. The pessimistic summer believes in the concept of slow death, wherein one is bestowed with the luxury of waking up and going to bed completely sweating like a pig, no matter how many baths one takes in between. And this, I am talking about a place few kilometers away from the city or the main road, in a compound with ample trees and greenery.  And to add to it I was exceptionally blessed enough to attend a function in the city, made to wear saree, in a hall where the air conditioner did not work as expected. By the end of the function, the heat had almost deprived me of all the water I ever had in my body and reached a stage where I was unsure of my existence.

I am writing all this, from the Middle East. When I landed here few years ago, I thought I was condemned to death just by the heat. Honestly, as compared to Kerala, Middle East is a paradise.

Another incident worth mentioning was my visit to the Lulu Mall at Cochin. The much hyped mall is said to be one of the biggest in India, and shopping was considered very economic. And people turned up in such huge numbers, that if you believe in the theory that there are seven people like you in the world, you could easily find them there.The mall became nothing short of a gas chamber. The centralized air conditioners had resigned themselves to their fate.Adolf Hitler would have considered this as a cheap method of mass slaughter. We regretted driving into this mall and got out of there by walk, later in a bus and an auto rickshaw to visit other places in the city, because driving in the city is a distant dream. Or if we had to get the car out of the mall it is likely that we'd have grown old by the time we reached home.

And another fateful day, I entered the bathroom to take a shower, when a spider decided to climb up my arm. I shrieked and shook my hand aggressively only to land that aggression on the nearest tap and bruised my wrist. The pain did persist for a few days. Guess who had the last laugh? The spider. Mothers of toddlers, please check your bathrooms for any spiders or other deadly animals before you lock yourselves in. Carrying or controlling a toddler with a bruised wrist in the scorching heat is not fun.

In short the trip was nothing short of sheer awesomeness. ;-)

Just a random working day.

As I work at a five minute walk from home, my working hours starts at 7:00 am ( I chose this shift to be able to reach earlier in the evenings ). Till 9:00 am, hubby takes care of the toddler. The child would be sleeping, so you can guess the amount of work that goes into it ;-) . Jokes apart, he does wake him up on time, gives him a bath, dresses him up (in the most obnoxious tee shirt and shorts combination which I later have to replace) and gets him ready for his playschool. I visit home for breakfast soon after and one day I found the house incredibly peaceful. No TV, no screams of the toddler. Occasional cute giggles of the toddler were coming from my room, and hubby humming a random tune was emanating from another. Something was terribly wrong.

I proceeded to my room and realized that my worst fear was happening. My toddler had caught hold of my ipad, and was playing Angry Birds in it. He had wanted to touch my ipad ever since I owned it, but by words and actions I had made it clear that it was not a toy. 

Don’t judge me, I cannot afford to buy ipads and give them to my toddler to play.  But he was so happily playing that I stormed to the bedroom where hubby was ironing his shirt.

“Dint you see that he is playing with my ipad ? With music on?”

“Yes . I gave it to him. See how cheerful he is! Awww”

“WHAT ! It is not a toy! Why dont you give your ipad instead?”

“WHAT? My ipad? I paid for that through my nose!”

“Then what about my ipad? We dint steal it ! We paid for that too !”

“But that is YOUR ipad no? Its okay” he said.

I mean what is the logic of that. My ipad is a toy. His ipad contains high security political information of the country’s Armed Forces.

I left the room fuming and snatched the ipad away from the toddler and replaced it with something else. This cant be happening. Do I look or behave like a cartoon to be treated like this. How can all my stuff be considered as toys. Hmph.

So we started from home, and the kiddo was dropped at playschool, and after he waved goodbye, I waited some more time watching him play with his girlfriend (who comes to playschool in a Hummer and I am not complaining )during which he gave me a look which translates roughly to ‘Please leave!’ On our way back I casually told hubby how the summer was catching up. I missed my sunglasses which were resting comfortably in some dark corner of hubby’s home in Cochin – I left it there last Christmas. I sighed aloud.

“Yes for your forgetful behavior, you should feel some sun this time, so that next time you won’t forget” preached the hubby. “Before misplacing this, you lost another one, remember?” he added.

“Whoa! You lost one too ! This is your second!” I argued.

“ Mine was stolen” he defended himself. “But yours was not, it is there somewhere but you don’t know” he said.

“Mine was stolen too!!!”

“No your sunglass just went missing it wasn’t stolen” he insisted.

“Oh I see? Did you see somebody stealing yours? It also went missing right?”

Silence.

"Your sunglass went missing, and you believe it was stolen. Mine is missing too, and I believe it was stolen as well."

“FINE”.

Silence ruled the car for some time, and I decided to break it. I thought of ways to change the topic and the mood and came up with a mind blowing one.

“You know, Ray Ban aviators are cool.”

I am really bad at changing topics.

Ten Commandments of the seemingly underprivileged!

As I opened this document to write, I was completely blank. Where did all the topics go? I mean I sacked a lot of them just because it may 'unknowingly' refer to some readers ;-) But thanks to Facebook and Whatsapp, I am well connected to everybody at the meager cost of broadband internet. If it were not for internet, would we reach out for our landlines to talk to our friends we interact with everyday on Facebook? No, not in a thousand years. 

Today, I am going to highlight some of the weirdest misers I have heard about and others, I have personally encountered. I am sure this will ring a bell somewhere as you read, because chances are more that you have come across one. 

To save money, and how!

1.Thou shalt not make phone calls. 
Local, STD, any calls. 

They do not even use the 100 free local calls facility available in the landline hoping that it will be en-cashed one day and it can be used to fund that square plot near Infopark. But when someone else calls them, the caller is not spared for a good hour with the most mind-numbing conversation, ever.

2.Thou shall miscalculate on purpose.

When a group of six friends buy similar dresses to wear on graduation day, the total amount Rs.6500 is divided by 5 and each one has to pay Rs1300, says this little devil. When you dig deep into the bill and ask her, the perpetually shrewd friend admits having made a 'small mistake'. But you know it wasn't, even though you have to pretend otherwise.

3.Thou shall not go on vacations. 

They do not plan nor do they participate in any group excursions simply because pitching in the total expense can be avoided by sitting idle in the comforts of one’s own home. There are others who actually come and have fun but play evil procrastinators when it comes to money.

4.Thou shall attend all parties but never host one. These weirdos can be found in corporate corridors and are as common as dirt. When there is a birthday or anniversary of any kind, they will be the first ones to initiate a treat or demand a party. However in all the years you know them, their birthday remains a mystery or there are enough reasons to embarrass the ones who ask for it.

5.Thou shall not buy anything new. 

These are people who were born to use second hand items. In all their lifetime they do not have a concept of a new car or a phone. It has to be second hand or Chinese make and they are fulfilled to their heart's content. 

6.Thou shall act innocent. 

These are our friends who consistently forget their purses or cards and reveal the same when the bill arrives. Someone covers for them at the moment, and it is forgotten. Dignified corporate friends find it cheap to remind their forgetful friend about the 200 rupees from 'last week's party'  and thus ignore it. Mission accomplished.

7.Thou shall car pool. 

Car pooling could have been introduced to save the environment but this was a blessing for many cheapos who keep their precious machines under covers in the garage. You always have that guy who tells you where he needs to be picked and dropped in a team outing.

8.Thou shall criticize.

These are the same people who own acres of land and runs highly successful family businesses but act very modest. When the comparatively poor you save for a million years and afford to buy a new phone they criticize you of being very rich and extravagant. In most cases these people use mobile phones which have black and white displays.

9.Thou shall eat free lunches. 

These are the ones, who suggest getting together for lunch when it is not on your schedule. They persuade and suggest a restaurant, eat lavishly, burp and pass on the bill to you as if you are his single parent.

10.Thou shall calculate. These are the ones, whose outing day summary looks like this on their phones: 

Public Toilet – Rs.1 

Bisleri Rs.15.75 (when that 16.75 has gone from his wallet). 

However when you pay Rs.1200 at KFC it is not counted but instantly overlooked.

 Tell me, have you met any one of these annoying creatures ?

Caption Contest Results !

When I started the caption contest on my blog I had no idea that so many contestants would actually participate in it ! And lot of others who wished me on my Blog Anniversary... seriously guys..it was overwhelming. Anyway, I passed on all the entries to Papa, who by the way has read over 200 books and always has some by the bedside and at his study table. Well the genre of books he reads is something like a facebook relationship status - 'It's complicated'. It cannot be understood by mediocre brains like mine, so I never really interfere or borrow books from him. I am not a fan of philosophy also ;-) However he was happy to go through all the entries and gave me his top three favorite captions, and logically the first one is the winner, who will win a Rs.200 gift voucher for her next purchase from Flipkart!

And the winner is...

is..

is..

Preeti Dhingra !!! Congratulations !!! Here is to you!

Her prize winning caption was.. " Let me fly before I sink."

Papa also liked the below captions, which he thinks are worth a mention. Unfortunately I have no gifts to give them. Sorrie :-( But thanks a ton !

Flight for existence and a search for sustenance !  - Antony Fernandez

A bird learns to fish not because of talent, but because of hunger  - Karthikeyan Ravikumar

You can see the contest details here. 

So how was Easter, folks? Mine was good....ate a lot of food until the button of my dress around the tummy burst and landed into one of the curries. We had Appam and Beef stew for breakfast - authentic recipe followed through ISD call from the MIL ! There are no free recipes, people, just like there is no free lunch. 

 I have taken a pic of the stew (just in case you are hungry right now :D )