can't find a better man.....

Its turning out to be a ritual Friday night story. I stay back till 9 at work and then everybody else also in the same 9 PM boat, decide to go some place and get some drinks, and that place is turning out to be LOR. now LOR is the place where all your rock/psuedo rock/head-banging types come to, basically weirdos. The kind who'll argue passionately about pantera vs sepultura, (whats the difference???), who find mascara boy marilyn manson cool or are into some band called "Gravediggers" or "Death" or prolly "Blood Blood, Die Die", but last night that place redeemed itself with one simple act. they played Eddie Vedder's Even Flow. I can't describe in words how sexy I find him, or how much I love Pearl Jam. I lurrvee Eddie Vedder, I want to have his babies, but I guess He found someone to do that for him huh?.

Friday night ritual also includes goin to Cousin's place for the night, she lives the closest to my office and I obviously can't go home after downing cosmopolitans right?. I love cousin, she's the kind of person whom you can periodically tune out to while in a conversation and tune back in and still get the drift what she's saying. Thats a good thing. and she's always always on the phone. thats a good thing too when you're head is spinning. Those phone conversations are interesting too. Last night it was how a fellow colleague was dating a married woman, previous week was about how a fellow colleague's marriage was breaking up. last week she also gave me very passionate and embittered gyan on how, "all men are the same".

Friday night ritual is then followed by the saturday morning ritual where I trudge back to work from cousin's place. Saturday morning gyan from cousin are much more educative than the previous night. She's warned me about the perils of the hair growing curly after you've straightened it. what mouse to use, if it does get curly, what straightening Iron to buy, where the jeans can be bought for a steal etc etc. and then its all followed by mom's call in the evening, yelling at me for working so much and how I'll burn out and shrivel away. She YELLED at me one night , when I was in still at office at 12:30. so much so that I had to keep the phone a mile away from my ear. I wonder where it all stems from? maternal care or distrust?

No matter what anyone says, I'm enjoying all of it. Ritual or not.

Swish Miss or alternatively bring on the shampoo ads

a big reason for my relative good humour these days is my straight hair. Yes My hair has direction, it has focus, it has ambition infact its a better career woman than me. I just lurrrve the fact that my hair and I argue no more, and now if that wasn't something to cheer about, I can SWISH my hair!!!. yes swish, like those shampoo ads, where its all sunshine, and her is all straight and silky and she's bouncing around. ofcourse she's a prissy flooze, but she's a flooze whose hair obeys and that mind you is a lot to give up for.

I once was a strong believer in curls, infact in class 12 it was my raison d'etre and vowed never to sell out to straightening Irons and chink beauticians who do the straightening, sorta of a janis joplin ragged doll phase, not that I'm saying curly haired woman are ragged dolls mind you. Curls are beautiful. in fact the very word Curl is beautiful in itself, it reminds me of a purring stubborn cat, but thats the problem, curls are stubborn, they're unpredictable, and they're always at odds with you, while you're in tuscany they're in marakesh, and I used to like the discord, those hair days infuriated me, but there was something acutely alive about the whole thing, something turbulent and I remember how I tied my hair with a paint brush and attended class sincerely believing that I was making a fashion statement. Dear God what was i thinking?

If college was the janice joplin days, work life is more like Sade. smooth and straight and cool and a slightly slightly arrogant. yes I've even discovered the straight hair arrogant hair toss, and its fun, especially when dealing with guys, i can see why guys like straight hair women more. I mean no way you can toss your hair arrogantly when a guy asks you your number and not look endearing. and since only I can turn a straightening iron into an instrument of philosophy and also the fact that I'm very tired, understandably, i've been working for 14 hours and really want to hit Publish badly and go to sleep, all i can say is, living this shampoo ad is fun and all hail chink beauticians!

Acchoo, twenty two and wooo hooo

go shorty it was your birthday!!!! yeah yeah, yesterday was my b'day and it began with some rapid fire sneezing, signalling the onset of two runny nosed days. not too good. kay called at midnight and well girlfriends are the best ever, they love you so much, they'll stay awake till twelve and make you feel soo special. kay you're the best!!!. then later in the day darshini called. *hugs* thank you, nandu and charms for remembering. you googals rock!!!. ofcourse darling anna called twice,and then today a day later i gotta cut a cake in from ofthe entire office. yay me!!. I didn't get any presents though, but I guess I've passed the stage where material gifts really matter,these days I'm giving myself all the gifts, life long romance and the like. I went to these designer stores at atmosphere, gosh they make some crappy clothes, and you'd think with all the footage they'd pass muster atleast!, i ended up buying at top at Mango, which i decided not to wear in the final analysis cause of the plunging neckline, but i love it. ok I sound like a flooze, peh! anyway, got my hair straightened in the process and am enjoying no-hair hazzle days, but looks like it ain't gonna last long, its already freaking curling up!

anyhow thanks to everybody who wished me, really appreciate that. and if you'll excuse me, i need to find some tissues quick before i start sneezing again...

That I miss....

I love Susheela Raman. Yes me too, after reading about her in Vaish's blog, I followed the links and oh my god! i got goosebumps. Nagumomo was so stellar, that I sat under my desk near the comp tower to hear it better at work. Her voice is so seductive and sexy and yet well traditional and thats what blew me away, her music is like us South indian women always straddling the modern and the traditional. ofcourse when mom heard she was so over wrought with emotion, that Vaish and I have proposed to start a "our moms cried for susheela raman" fan club. Its verry much in the offing.

I don't know if the music connects better with south indians, but for a moment there, it threw me back to a time, when I was little where i spoke only kannada with my parents and fancied wearing jasmine flowers on my hair. a place which was rife with sandal wood and bharathnatyam dancing and the ocassional brush with the tanpura. when summers meant guarding over ajju's rice crispies drying in the sun from crows. I've definitely moved on from that realm, i'm no longer thrilled at wearing a mysore silk saree and the like. and then there are these sudden attacks that tradition throws at us renegades, like poojas for instance where I feel totally alien, instances where mum and her ilk are completely at ease knowing what to do, while i stand awkwardly in a corner looking on helplessly.

there's a rift in me, a rift that susheela so elegantly sweeps away for a few minutes. for the duration of that song my mom and I share the same heritage. oh i love her for that!

You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style

7th Oct (when the internet connection was well )

I like the quiet whirr of machines. its peaceful. its like my fridge is going about its business doing fridge type of things, and more importantly perfectly happy doing fridge type of things and now some evil genius, i swear i saw it on TV, want my fridge to talk to my microwave so my microwave, which was also busy doing its own thing mark, can decide how long to defrost my leftovers based on what my fridge says. pretty soon they'll be gossiping over me. my fridge will soon tell me to clean my room, and come home soon and then my microwave will whine and tell me how lazy I am, freak, who thinks of all this stuff?

umm, met priya this week. did i mention that she's the sweetest person ever ever. probably the last guiless girl left down south. we went to landmark and i bought her a copy of the english patient. god, the number of people I've suggested this book to! Ondaatje should prolly make me his agent. I still find the passage on the winds of Africa mesmerizing. not been reading a lot these days because of my job, I can't wait to sink with my books this weekend and finish a good dose. I wish i had the habit of rememering memorable lines from books, the only line i remember vividly, was a line in the death of vishnu, " and somewhere a movie started in his head". i love that line and ofcourse, Nabokov's "She was dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita". i wish i had his talent of making prose sound exhilerating, his words seem to bungee jump with glee. i hope i get the time to re-read lolita again sometime.

cut to 9th Oct (when the internet is all well again, thanks to some maniacal threats and some choice abuse directed at cable guy's err clan)

Priya called to say that my erst while cot in hyd got sold for 750 bucks, I bought it for 1400. sweet. and they (my two erstwhile roomates, and the fraidy cat accountant, who took my place and got my lovely sliding door cupboards) were going out to garbha that night, ras leela and what not, why didn't they do such fun stuff when i was there? the most fun we had was prolly going to farmaish and eating mhooli paranthas. tell me why i gave up all that again?. I wish maslow had just shushed for once in his life. self actualization! hrmph

ah yes, i sank with a book finally, it was jitterbug perfume and i love tom robbins for his sheer manipulation of sentences, he makes up sentences that nobody ever ever would conjure up. this one's my favourite : "Kudra gave him a look that you could spread on a bun . Her words, however, pricked him like the knife that does the spreading", oh i nearly forgot, i had a fancy bookmark while reading this book, a recall arrest warrant slip, of a one Mr. Fordyce, merry company you keep eh? SP, care to explain?? and while i was reading about perfume, i went and got myself one today, CD's j'adore, yea, i bench pressed my economic muscle and cleaned out half my account *sheepish grin* bought myself loads of b'day presents in advance, hell why not?. I really must get myself a boyfriend* soon, i need an alternative to shopping.

*preferrably within a 15km radius, across the atlantic really doesn't count