Size Matters

Well, ‘Burger King’ has finally landed in New Delhi with its Whopper burgers.And this evening, the big sister in an overdose  of sisterly affection, took me there to indulge in my favorite burger, fries and Coke ( Sweet Jesus, I love ya). Normally, she waxes eloquent and lyrical about oats, boiled greens and carrot juice 😀 But, she told me that I look kinda peaky and need to get my mojo working. I never argue with my elders, I tells ya, guys 😀 The outlet has opened in one of the most popular malls in South Delhi. The Select City Walk. I quite like it too because its very open and tonight I could feel the Christmas cheer slowly and firmly trickling in.

Burger King was packed. We thought we wouldn’t get a place to sit. But lo behold, two very  similar looking pretty girls, waved at me ,conspiratorially winked  & said “Sisters ?”. Though taken aback , I said “Yeah, how did you guess?”. The younger one grinned and said ‘ You look so alike!Big sisters are the best! Mine is treating me”. Waves of warmth washed over me. We look alike ? My big sister and poor ole me? I touched my nose. My disgusting nose that I despair over.The nose which so cruelly has been labelled as a 747- about- to- take-off, an igloo, a too accentuated retrousse..well that’s because Jimmy Page is the only man for me i.e I turn my nose up at all others 🙂 And the gorgeous sister has this Cleopatra nose 🙂 Yippee! For a moment, I forgot my nose 🙂

Placed the order for a Whopper Paneer ( Cottage Cheese) Burger with cheese melt. To the guy -at- the- counter’s diffident (my eyes had by then begun to glint manically , I guess) “Would that be small fries, Ma’am?”, I hissed “King.Jumbo. Size matters”. A woman next to me in the parallel queue  winked and nodded in agreement at this age old wisdom 😀

The burger was divine with the right amount of mayo and melty melty cheese. The fries were golden and glorious. The coke was with lots of ice, just the way I love. We didn’t need conversation. Sometimes we never do.Just being with each other is enough 🙂

Think this fast food outlet is going to leave the others far, far behind.Maybe I am biased? I have always hated Mc D with its plastic and rubbery burgers & limp fries.Oh the only annoying thing was this sad, forlorn paid weighing machine next to the joint! Jeez! This must be a plant by Mc D!I flinched as I walked past it.Double Jeez!

They  played Abba. My sister loves Abba.

I shall play Abba too.But my kinda Abba. Here : http://youtu.be/zo3pfnldlD0

Ode to the Egg

How I wish I could have the  power, language and imagination of Neruda to write this blogpost which is totally inspired by his ‘Odes to Common Things’.

I have always felt that  knowing  or reading Neruda only for his love sonnets is  to completely limit  both him and ourselves. Neruda’s writing spanning  more than 50 years  was rooted  in the radical South American politics of liberation and struggle.  In his ‘Odes to Common things’, he celebrates and explores  life and all its nuances by celebrating everyday objects. Thus , he says, a whole tuna in the market is “a torpedo from the ocean depths” or when you cut a tomato, you “murder it” or ( my favorite, given the addiction to French Fries 🙂 ) raw potatoes for French fries look “like the morning swan’s snowy feathers”.  There were twenty five odes in the book and Neruda beautifully weaves tales of love, life, music, nature, friendship , war , dreams, beauty , travel , learning as he talks about table, chair, bed, guitar, dog, cat, flowers, soap, socks, dictionary, scissors, tea, spoon, plate, orange, apple, bread, onion, tomato etc.

Well, let me start  with celebrating the egg. To be more precise,  the ‘boiled egg’. Its mid-November here in New Delhi. The weather is delicious. The evenings are a little chilly, but the warmth of the afternoons doesn’t wear off.Rather, it makes that nip in the air ,friendly and comfortable. And it is the perfect to have a little pre-dinner snack of  a ‘boiled egg’ from the street vendor as one hurries back home from work or is returning home after a brisk evening walk. Delhi is very famous for its street food.One can wax lyrical about the chaats, samosa, chole bhatures, lassi,bhuttas etc etc.  But somehow, the humble boiled egg doesn’t find a worthy mention in all such ecstatic outpourings which is totally blasphemous!

I am addicted to the boiled egg sold by street vendors in perhaps all neighborhoods. The vendor strategically places his cart in the street corner, lights his kerosene stove and puts the eggs on boil. Once done, he immediately puts another vessel on the boil because  I am yet to see a person eating just one egg! The demand is tremendous! He takes an egg out from the warm water, briskly shells it and  slices it in half. The guy has in readiness chopped green chillies,raw onion and coriander which he sprinkles on the sliced egg along with salt, pepper and red chilly powder. He then serves it on a quartered piece of newspaper and Voila! As one bites into the  warm egg, bliss pervades every pore of one’s being 😀 To anyone who either is in//likely to stay in  Delhi  and reading this blog, the accidental sufi exhorts trying out this simple joy! To anyone who has stayed in Delhi, does it bring back memories ? 🙂

My neighborhood vendor is called Babloo Kumar. He would be around 35/40 years of age and hails from Chapra,Bihar. A cheerful fellow, he tells me that he came to Delhi to get a government job like his Uncle. But, ‘Memsahib, God had other plans for me. Now I earn just that much  money to look after my family. It is difficult but I am happy’. He and I have struck up a strange friendship. While he doesn’t bat an eyelid if I ask him to use my hand sanitizer before shelling the egg ( the accidental sufi has horrible OCD 😦 ) or wonder at this strange woman with a beautiful Great Dane gal ( both are  fans of his boiled egg), I invariably give him money to buy  something for his two sons. I tell him he should buy books for them. I am sure he doesn’t 🙂

I morph into Neruda mode. So what does the humble, boiled egg teach me ? Tell me? That happiness dosen’t have to be about the big, sweeping circumstances, about having everything in your life in place. Maybe it is just about stringing together a bunch of small pleasures. Of things and people. So Nora Ephron says”I love that you get cold when it’s 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you’re looking at me like I’m nuts. I love that after I spend the day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it’s not because I’m lonely, and it’s not because it’s New Year’s Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible” ( When Harry Met Sally)

That’s all from me today, guys 🙂

Delhi-ites, eat a boiled egg today and listen to this http://youtu.be/cLAyypuSX94 😀

Non-Delhites, do listen to the song  and ummm eat a boiled egg too 😀

All About A Handbag

Well, on Friday I had gone during the lunch break at work  to Khan market. I really had nothing planned. I mean, no meeting a friend there, no eating out ,no  serious shopping.  That’s what I normally do in Khan market 🙂 .It was just that Delhi weather has become awesome, with that lovely nip in the air flirting with the sunshine! And Khan market is just the place to hangout in this weather. It bustles with  beautiful and stylish people. The shops are very trendy and up-market. The bookshops are quaint. The cafes and bistros are elegant.The foreign tourists are happy…’Slumdog Millionaire’ is forgotten 🙂

I was walking past the ‘Da Milano’ shop. Handbags are a huge weakness. I wavered. Hamlet like. To go ( in) or not to go ( in)? Whether it’s nobler in the mind to suffer? Masochism is not really my thing. So Alice dropped into the rabbit hole:) The salesgirl looked pretty anthropomorphic too. A pretty, thin ( now you understand my rage 😀 ) ,cunning little vixen with the honeyed tones of a ‘koel’. She zeroed in on  my handbag lust ,  cooed soothingly as she  slyly nudged me towards the latest collection.

I was trapped. I longed to escape. I needed freedom.

Aah. Deliverance.  Yeah. “Deliverance is not for me in renunciation. I feel the embrace of freedom in a thousand bonds of delight.”  Tagore, I love you.

I bought this 🙂

     

Apologies for the photographs. They have been clicked with my mobile phone. Alright, confession time. I am an absolutely rotten photographer 😀

This is a tote bag. Its not  dead white as it seems in the pictures.But a very beautiful, smoky ivory shade. It very spacious and has a number of conveniently designed inner pockets, which are totally necessary for me.My handbag tends to  house  essentials which would possibly  comfortably sail me through a war zone 😀 There is one  un-zipped pocket on the rear, probably designed to hold the mobile phone. I shall use it to store my psychological anchor. Yeah, a lil packet of those orange, hard boiled candy. I pop one in and homicidal thoughts about my boss and colleagues,my rabidly lecherous neighbor,thin people,my ex,people who love to exercise and love oats etc etc disappear. These candies.Look at pic below.

Why did I choose this bag?  There were scores of fabulous bags! I mean  a discerning, modern woman -of-substance could have  had these multiple climaxes, I swear. That great a collection! But, alright. The price. Moderately expensive at Rs 11,000/-.  Well within my impulsive  shopping budget quota. Though, I  had briefly toyed with the idea of picking up a divine bag in aqua and silver, nastily priced at Rs 29,000/- on my Dad’s credit card of which I am lovingly an add on.

But the reason why I fell in love with the bag? It reminded me  strangely of a Chanel great. The Chanel GST ( Grand Shopping Tote). Perhaps, it was  the self design on leather ?As the  double golden chain slings for handles? As the uber style quotient ?

No , the real reason. As something Coco Chanel would approve of me  buying? And smiling at me as she said ““A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous.”  Or perhaps “In order to be irreplaceacle, one must always be different.”  🙂

I  love Coco Chanel and her story and  stories about her. From a girl who lived in an orphanage and  taught to sew by nuns, she rose to become one of the most influential women of the twentieth century. A woman who famously refused the marriage proposal of  the wealthy Duke of Westminster with “There have been several Duchesses of Westminster—but there is only one Chanel!” and continued to have a decade long relationship with him. Read about this utterly fabulous woman here : http://www.biography.com/people/coco-chanel-9244165#synopsis

And somewhere, her words, resonates in/within the accidental sufi. She says ” It’s probably not just by chance that I’m alone. It would be very hard for a man to live with me, unless he’s terribly strong. And if he’s stronger than I, I’m the one who can’t live with him. … I’m neither smart nor stupid, but I don’t think I’m a run-of-the-mill person. I’ve been in business without being a businesswoman, I’ve loved without being a woman made only for love. The two men I’ve loved, I think, will remember me, on earth or in heaven, because men always remember a woman who caused them concern and uneasiness. I’ve done my best, in regard to people and to life, without precepts, but with a taste for justice”

Time to say au revoir, guys. And I shall play a song for you. Its haunting and lovely. By a talented group of musicians from Pakistan. Oh Jeez, I just remembered the delicious visit of the beautiful Pakistan Foreign Minister in 2011.And especially the national interest in her  Birkin hand bag 😀  http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/hina-rabbani-s-birkin-and-more-make-headlines-122514

The song :http://youtu.be/dPAqQI_kOng

Peace & love 🙂

Buying Lingerie in India

Everyone  rants and raves about the economic highs and uppers of liberalization, globalization and opening up of the economy in India. I’d pin my delight to the fact that it kinda started and ensured that lingerie became available in India 😀

For as far as I can recall, in my teens and till I became a young adult, lingerie was practically non-existent in India.Pretty shocking about a land which boasts about the ‘Kamasutra’, right? 😀 I remember going with my maternal aunt to buy my first big girl clothing. This was in a shop in Lajpat Nagar market, New Delhi known for its kitschy shops and bargaining . The shopkeeper was a  dour looking Sikh gentleman who brightened up at the sight of my well endowed aunt. ‘Behenji,size 40, nahi ? And you must take a look at these new underwear. Very lasting! Complete stretchable!” To my horror, Sardarji,excitedly stretched the ‘un-mentionable’  with his hands, defying  all laws of Physics, to a gigantic size.The man’s eyes then glazed over as perhaps he imagined it on  my voluptuous aunt? I giggled while my aunt looked thunderous. ‘It is for the child’, she said curtly.Sardarji lost all interest, checked me out disdainfully and proceeded to show us the most ugly and unimaginative stuff in white only. My Cyndi Lauper dreams were cruelly dashed 🙂

I would pester my cousins abroad to get me pretty, girly stuff. Those days,we really didn’t have conversations over the telephone which was reserved mainly for wishing on important festivals or emergency matters like someone falling sick, getting married, had a baby etc. So I would write these detailed  letters painstakingly 🙂 When the precious stuff arrived, usually in the summer holidays,my joy would know no bounds!

What is it about lingerie that I love ? I love the feel of satin and silk on my skin,yes.It is very feminine and makes me feel all woman.But I also love the juxtaposition of wearing three thousand-rupees- lace stuff under  rough blue jeans. Because to me , lingerie is an attitude. It is  a personal statement that I don’t have to declare to the world, unless I wish to. The clothes we wear outside are in so many ways curtailed by let’s say the occasion, the weather, the impression you want to create etc. But  your lingerie? It is a secret. It  is just you.

And perhaps, its special because you share it with the person you love. In a strange way, you share part of your inner self. You share a little bit of who you are.

I really won’t get into  the boring , cliched idea of the “women-wear-lingerie-to-attract-men” or are forced to clothe themselves from a male perspective .You know the  feminist angle to it?Women certainly wear beautiful lace and silk to appear more desirable to their partner.Absolutely nothing wrong with it! Doesn’t impinge on women’s rights,please. Here’s great wisdom from Marylin Monroe ” I don’t mind living in a man’s world, as long as I can be a woman in it” 🙂

So I go lingerie shopping in India, now.And it feels great to see many women doing so.Though  I do smile because 99% of them are shopping alone. Not with their partners. Perhaps, we need a second ‘liberalization” for this to happen 🙂

Umm..the only problem is like the one I faced the other day. Happy over my slightly berserk lingerie shopping, I waited at the counter to pay. And chose to ignore the  diametrically opposite stares of a middle aged couple. While the wife looked at me accusingly, the husband did so lasciviously.

Stereotypes and Stereotyping. So banal,non?

I think it was Kierkegaard who said ” Once you label me you  negate me”.

Over & Out, fellas, with this http://youtu.be/4VnEEupvpUk 😀

Ola!

People, I am back to good ole saadi Dilli. And this morning have embarked upon  a change in my uh-uh ‘disgraceful’ lifestyle 🙂 Those words are my Dad’s. Jeez, Papa don’t preach! I had oats and fruit for breakfast 😦 Quelle horreur! Will blog long and true, soon. I am rushing to work.This is just an ..erm.. for want of better terminology, a quickie 😀 Which by the way are marvelous too 😀  And favorite lines from a woman I admire tremendously. That is exactly how I feel too 🙂

“I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger as reason. I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me. Anything I can not transform into something marvelous, I let go. Reality doesn’t impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls.”(Anaïs Nin)

And yeah, yeah charging myself up for an infernal meeting with this :http://http://youtu.be/4aqNFJs_OS0/4aqNFJs_OS0

Later, gators 🙂

Oh, you bloody humans!

Human nature  and its study deeply fascinates me. Seems to be a heavy kind of statement and heavy kind of a blog post for an absolutely fabulous Sunday morning out here in New Delhi, India. Even the Gods are singing ‘Wish they were Here’. The plants in my balcony are green and smiling. The sun is gold and mellow.The cook is  surprisingly in a good mood and has offered to make ‘pulao’ and ‘shahi paneer’ for lunch.The dogs are quiet and watching the  National Geographic channel. The maid is putting warm, coconut oil in my hair.Robert Plant is howling divinely that he wants to be my backdoor man.Ooh!

Majority of the homes would be having a near perfect scenario like mine albeit with differing parameters of happiness. Sundays, globally are treasured,right ? People are just being happy and content.

Except for a few people whose actions and attitude I find deeply malignant and sadistic. These are the ones who send you those  positive text/sms unfailingly every morning, sometimes during the day and just before you sleep at night. Most of the texts have painful words ” Wok is God”, ”Forgive your enemy’, ”Embrace the faults in others”, ”Time and tide wait for none” ,’Smile in adversity”etc etc. Nothing inspirational like ‘ Chocolate is salad coz cocoa is a plant’,’Screw the boss’ ( not literally,pl), ‘Kill thy neighbor” etc. Such senders of malicious texts I ave noticed get all excited on a Sunday. They are free and have lots of time to plot more scary texts. Like the one I received this morning @ 6 am which read  “ARISE, AWAKE, SLEEP NO MORE; within each of you there is the power to remove all wants and all miseries. Believe this, and that power will be manifested”. It is a quote by Swami Vivekanand, whom I do admire deeply.But somehow it  didn’t feel very motivational at 6am, coming from a person who is an absolute ignoramus ( euphemism for a***h***) but has immense powers of Googling and enormous amounts of  free time on a Sunday.

That also brings me to the creepier dimensions of such texting.While the ‘send to all’ is relatively comforting because you realize many have been harassed, its the customized ones with ‘Hi/Dear & your name’ plus the message by acquaintances/people you barely know  which totally freaks me out. I mean why is this guy remembering me ? What is he remembering about me ? The problem worsens because I have a habit of storing names on my mobile as ” Rohit Car Repair guy”, “Danish Theater ticket wala” etc. The ones I know may have their names stored as ”  Kapoor Office MCBC ( short for you know what)”, ”Mr Arora Neighbor Moron’, ‘ Arora’s Fat wife’ etc.

When  such people didn’t use their mobiles much,they traumatized you by the email forwards. Remember that?

( Photo from the Internet)

Today, they are the ones who also use social networking cruelly I feel. They send you mindless game requests. They add you to strange groups without your permission; some  friend added me to a group ”Naughty @ Forty”.Jeez! They sign you up for ”Causes” & ‘Petitions’ that are totally random. Research by me has also shown that these are the people who mostly use the annoying ”Poke” button on FB and that too @ weird times. This harmless looking chap , whom I have un-friended now, would ‘poke’ me at 11 pm unfailingly, which made me wonder if this was a fetish! Eeek!

Sometime back there was this brilliant post doing the rounds on FB . How to flummox annoyingly spiritual people/unwanted guests/perhaps your in-laws/most certainly your neighbor asking you to lower the music  etc  who show up at your door. By having a lethally potent door knocker.

( Photo from the Internet)

Perhaps, such extreme measures are needed for  people who send you either unwanted or annoying texts. It seems many of us are victims of this New Age crime. I was surfing the Net and found  this http://imgur.com/L0E5w

Over & Out, fellas 🙂

Allah, Megh De, Pani De.

New Delhi today.June 7th, 2014.Tormented City. Parched.Heat and Dust.Wrath of Ra.

Oh to be:

“beautiful insane
in the rain”

—Jack Kerouac, The Subterraneans

 

Unexpected Intrusion Of Beauty

Mid week makes me feel damn restless.By Wednesday, I really need to re-fuel to be able to get to Friday, without causing damage to the many morons I come across daily. On my morning walks, at my workplace, at the zumba classes etc. Thus, Wednesday mornings normally begin with Sabbath and no breakfast. My bloody cook is on my sister’s (the gorgeous sister unfortunately has the  DNA of Mussolini+Hitler+ Stalin+Chengis Khan etc) payroll and he rushes to inform her about any deviations from the cruelly prescribed breakfast for me i.e. either oats or sprouts or papaya or dehydrated ( read: no ghee) parathas. I have told my cook that I go to the temple on Wednesdays to pray for my sister and she is not supposed to know about it…erm…the special puja demands this  and also me  being on empty stomach for the Gods to be  extra benevolent. The cook thankfully is convinced about it and this is possibly the only marker of my ‘goodness’ in his eyes. Otherwise,he believes my parents probably sinned heavily in their previous birth to have a daughter like me . Alright, that takes care of the snitch on Wednesdays 😀

Re-fueling and resultant  re-charging is invariably done with breakfast at Big Chill Cafe ( Khan Market) which is pretty close to my workplace. Their Colombian Mocha Shake is so divine that it fills me with peace.Their Pasta Carbonara again has excellent homicidal reducing tendencies.And the ambiance at around 10am is perfect.Un-smokey, clean with a pine-wood scent of the floor cleaner and normally my kinda music is played.The pace is  cool and unhurried.The hip waiters have become good pals of mine too.

Well, this Wednesday morning, I walked in to find an elderly couple ( almost 80 years old) sitting at my usual table.They were dressed in all finery and  wore  clothes which would have been fashionable in their days of youth,perhaps. Still the clothes were well maintained and I felt stood out proudly and gracefully.The lady wore a beautiful single sapphire pendant  that must be costing a fortune. I contemplated kidnapping my boss and holding him for ransom to be able to afford such a pendant. Then I gave up the idea because I am sure the boss’s family  would possibly be supremely excited to get rid of him and wouldn’t part with a single penny   😀

Alongwith the elderly couple sat a young boy of say  six  to seven years of age.By this time, I had seated myself close to them and shamelessly eavesdropped.The little boy’s name was Krishna and it was his birthday.It was he who had brought his grand parents for a treat. He was carrying his piggy bank ( a rather smart one shaped like a Formula I racing car). They  all ordered , with the little boy loudly giving his suggestions about ”the best” and the grand parents abiding by his wishes meekly and happily. Presents were opened  too.And along with Krishna , I almost whooped as the shimmering gift wrapping paper came impatiently off to reveal  customized, leather bound volumes of ”Amar Chitha Katha” comics. What a gift!

I was getting late for work, but I lingered on. Had a second Colombian Mocha Shake too.

The waiter gave the bill to Krishna. The little boy’s face fell.He emptied the piggy bank and seriously started counting the money. He was short by Rs 980/-. I watched to see how he would handle the situation. Krishna borrowed his grandfather’s mobile phone and called up his Mommy. Said ” I need to borrow Rs 980/- from you.Will you please send it with the driver? You can cut Rs 100/- off from my monthly allowance. I will not borrow it from Dada ji or Dadi ji ( grandfather & grandmother) because mera style puncture ho jayega (my panache/style will take a hit) “.

Was I impressed? Oh man, totally. With the kid’s style, manners and thoughtfulness. With the beauty of the bonding between grandparents and grandchild. With the feeling that the old people have not been ”forgotten”,however un-intentionally. With the fact that people still have time and wish to be together in a city which  deplorably contributes  to  feeding and increasing alienation.

So Saul Bellow said “Unexpected intrusions of beauty. This is what life is” ( Herzog).

I witnessed beauty this morning.

(For today ONLY, I have thus forgiven my boss’s annoying goose-on-a-bad acid trip-cackle of a laugh)