'We Three Kings...'

I am an eager participant at various events for Christmas celebrations and an extremely talented choir member as well...( like anyone will believe that) ; :D This helps me fulfill the hidden motive, which is to cut classes at the expense of ‘choir practice’.

  So there is this Christmas celebration event scheduled at the auditorium, the stage supposed to be the manger where there would be baby Jesus, Mary , Joseph, shepherds , hay, dim lights, sheep and goat. The choir had to be at the side, in their respective uniforms, and some guys were to play guitar and  piano. The main song was ‘We three Kings’ where the story of the 3 kings would be enacted with the choir singing at the background.

This song told the Biblical story of the three Kings, who came to the manger in Bethlehem where Jesus was born, with gold, frankincense and Myrrh. They reached there by following a star.

The song had an initial stanza, and three stanzas, one for each King. When the stanza for the first King starts, that King would walk royally to the stage, place the gift gracefully, bow before Jesus and exit exactly when the stanza is over. This pattern would be followed by each King.

The star is initially at the entrance of the auditorium along with the 3 Kings. I do not have stage freight at all so I confidently chose to be backstage, pulling the strings of the star very proficiently and slowly so that the Kings can follow it. This star was put up and pulled from entrance to the stage a million times before the event and it was perfect, unless otherwise the Kings would never find Jesus and all existing beliefs would be shattered and rewritten by me.

The big day came. 

The auditorium was housefull, with teachers in the front row. Although my hands were a bit shaky seeing the crowd, I was happy I dint have to be onstage being one of those shepherds (someone actually recommended me for that), which would have resulted in comedy and controversy. I stood backstage and held the strings tight. The three Kings were ready at the entrance and so was the star. The choir started the song, and I slowly pulled the strings… The Kings, dressed in heavily sequenced shiny cloaks and ridiculously large jewellery, their respective gifts held tight (cos if it falls down there was no way to bend and pick it up, as the dance costumes which they were wearing underneath was very tight)  walked slowly, repeatedly glancing the star. In between a wave of laughter slowly took the front rows…I immediately turned to check what was wrong. No… it was all perfect, just Mary sneezed and one of shepherds jerked in shock.

So the first King was about to start.

Ta Tang !!!!  The worst had happened. The star was not moving anymore.Everyone froze. The choir started with the stanza, the King stuck in the middle of the hall, flabbergasted and helpless. A thousand eyes were focussed on that King, but he maintained the royal attitude.There was a knot on the string and the star was stuck. I felt faint. The choir girls looked at each other. Mary and Joseph rolled eyes. The shepherds were bewildered. The first stanza was over; the King was still only halfway into the auditorium. I instructed one of the volunteers to hold the string and called one tall girl there to help. Finally she eased the star out of the knot.

By now, the chorus for second King was almost over and Mary, Joseph and the shepherds looked tired and impatient waiting for gifts. I instructed the two Kings to come and place the gifts on stage and leave so that atleast the third King can follow the music and the ending would be right.
So the first two Kings rushed to the stage, hurriedly placed the gold and frankincense at the manger, and left the stage without bowing... like they were attending the wedding of some distant relative.

The third King did it just fine, and the song ended as planned.

At the end of the event, one of the staffs turned up backstage and said, ‘You just had to pull a string, Anita…’

$!$#^%&%&*()*)(*&^^&%$$#@$@!!!

Yet another birthday.

Gone are the days when I used to wait for my birthday to come. For all the kisses, gifts, cheek-pinching by aunties and cousins ( it is a customary exhibition of love, but used to hurt), new dress (was in the same school for 12 years, still on birthday I have to ring up someone just to hear from them that I am allowed to wear ‘color dress’ that day), greeting cards from friends, birthday songs, candy distribution at school, and the special chocolate cake made by Mummy.

 Today birthdays are painful, that there would be those number candles on the cake so everyone comes to know my age. This is also why I never publish the photos of the cake cutting event on orkut or facebook so that I can avoid at least 300 + people coming to know the "secret" number :-) (see how smart I am) . I also silently swear that I’ll use the same candles for at least three more years, but end up the next year with another pair of candles where 
age = age + 1. Sigh.

One has to consider birthday as the day to remember and celebrate the day one was born. Why add it to the age and spoil the fun? Putting up those number candles showing the age is such a pessimistic thought you know. 

I am sure that it was invented by some spoilsport guy.

Here are some things you can consider when someone is celebrating their birthday.

• 1.       Never buy those candles with numbers unless its your enemy or your ex.
• 2.       Avoid birthday cards which scream ‘yay! Its your n-th birthday!’
• 3.       Avoid saying stuff like ‘yaayy…Miss. X is n years “old”

J Thanks to everyone who kept all those lovely birthday wishes flowing in on orkut and facebook all day. Love you all J

P.S: If anyone is laughing by seeing the numbers on the cake in the image, then don’t laugh too much. 

Repercussions of a Dental Extraction..

Two days back the local dentist here extracted my wisdom…err …a troublesome wisdom tooth. It was a noisy melodrama with an elaborate gush of fluids, blood and tears. Although blood was manageable by the dentist, it took two nurses to wipe my tears and giggle at my misery. I wished them both the same fate in the days to come. :D . Whats more…hubby was sitting in the same room carefully studying the E72, marking the dental hospital as a ‘favorite’ on his Google map, and conveniently ignoring the sobbing and wailing. And while going back, pointing to the Barber shop and saying ‘that belongs to Barbara Mori’ dint help.:-(

I am the only person in my family to have tooth problems. If anyone who is reading this wants to remind me to brush my teeth, God help you!

 I brush my teeth everyday.:-)

I have a green oral-B toothbrush and colgate toothpaste with which I brush every roads, lanes and sub lanes of my mouth religiously. And I saw the tooth which was extracted. Yuck! The “was-that-thing-in-my-mouth-all-these-days”  look on my face with tears still in my eyes set the dentist and nurses roll with laughter. Hubby too rushed in to take a final glimpse of the priceless piece of fossil which was just evacuated. Okay its yucky. But still it was my tooth and it was there when he married me! Finally he bought me all those medicines and also a nice dinner (to be eaten with one side of the jaw) and I finally decided to withdraw the furious signals I was radiating to him. (Well the furious signals were the ones which originated from jealousy…that he has an enviable row of pearly whites and also… in Muscat there are fewer people to whom I can show my true colors).

Now comes the ‘presentation to everyone at home’ part.

(Aside: Papa is currently reading the English edition of the Holy Book of Quran. )

I explain the whole episode in a nutshell.

Me: Papa, my tooth is still bleeding you know…

Papa: Are you taking medicines?

Me: Yes..but it is bleeding and its slightly swollen as well..

Papa: Don’t worry…one had to be brave and patient …these are all trivial issues..

Me: If you have one such tooth you will never say this..

Papa: Dental health is very important.

Me: I realized that while at the dentist…

Papa: Delayed realization of reality is the main reason for…

Me: Noooooo! Please spare me from philosophy...I have a bleeding mouth.

Papa: (laughs)okay Anu, we’ll talk later then. Take care.(laughs again)

Mummy is up next and she sounds worried at the catastrophic turn of events. The area of concern is surprisingly not my tooth. What?? Is he reading Quran? He should first try to read the Bible properly no?

Now that is one ISD call.

Way to Exit...

Hmm..Currently I'm in no mood to write, but I can’t seem to abandon my blog just because a drastic wind of change swept over my life. Well, I resigned my job in Bangalore and have landed in Muscat, in a product based company. (Time to play client now ;-) ). It is high time I shared some details about people in my previous firm who even managed to make exit process complicated for me.


In the beginning of the month of April, I dropped a small bombshell titled ‘resignation’, in the form of an email, which was expected to bombard my team of a few programmers. However it took the guise of a nuclear bomb and smoked out the entire project including the teams who were onsite and I started getting international calls with strange people (whose names I’ve seen only in the ‘Cc’ of emails) asking me soberly why I took this decision all of a sudden, in a fake mushy tone as if their life and living depended solely on the lines of code I was painfully and regretfully writing. Many a times I indirectly I asked them questions which in plain language means ‘Who in God’s name are you?’

The biggest reason behind all the fake concerns flowing in from all over the world is that, if people leave the project, it requires immediate explanation from the project managers to the senior management. So they come down from being the commanding morons that they are to be the forged ‘perfect’ boss and try their level best to pull you down from prospering any further. Well, my case was different. My supervisor was this guy who doesn’t know how to talk to people ( I have seriously come to believe there are a pack of dogs at his house to which he commands ‘Sit’, ‘Eat’ etc and he practices the same tone with people who reports to him). He called me on phone, very impolitely demanding explanation on why I am leaving, to which I was itching up to my toenails to say ‘You are why’.

On the day I was running around departments to get clearances for exit, I was not aware of some formalities and approached him. Well his response was ‘I don’t know, I never exited from here’ coupled with an evil grin. The guy who sat next to him then knew that I was exiting and said , ‘Ohh you decided to resign, is it? Then we can’t help you’. This happened with a bay of people watching as if they were watching a saas bahu serial with the bahu getting beaten up.

However I managed to vent out my frustration at the innocent HR who during her fateful duty called me for an exit interview and I talked 40 minutes nonstop. I am sure she must also be thinking of ways to quit or opt for a role change now. Well that was the least I could do. :D

And yeah, on my last working day, the last person I pinged from my desktop was my supervisor, to whom I wanted to say Bubye. I really don’t know why. Just a bubye, and no ‘thanks for support’,’or thanks for anything else which he wasn’t …and this is how the conversation went.

Me: Hi

Supervisor: What do you want now? For exit formalities contact Mr.JP.

Me: Okay.

And that was it. Well, we can’t change some people or expect even humanitarian traits from them.
 I have no regrets.