22.4.06

Let's take the good times as they go, and I'll meet you further on up the road...

Of late I have developed a strange fascination for flowers. Flowers from hotels. Be it from the loo or the lobby, I love collecting a bunch and bringing it back to office. If you think I am bad then there's colleague N from another newspaper who picks up an entire bouquet. But yesterday I felt like doing the invisible man act. I had gone for an interview with the Pak band Strings. Since it had gone well, I felt happy and relaxed. There was M (who is N's colleague) with me. After all the journos had gone trailing after Faisal and Bilal to the poolside, M and I had the room to ourselves.

So while sipping on coffee, we started gathering a few carnations. After leaving the room, we tried our hands at a few orchid blooms. To our consternation, this waiter came up and stopped us. I put on a blank expression but held on to the two blooms that I had already plucked. M was busy sticking them back. "There are flowers inside if you want," he offered without thinking for a second that I might just take him up on the offer. And I did ask him. Seeing the expression (quite a bewildered one, I must confess) on his face, I stopped short and decided to scoot. With the blooms.

It was embarrassing. But what the hell, think I will do it again.

Sometimes is it not better to do what you want and not give two hoots to what the world thinks? Why not just grab the good times...In my alley, there was this fresh litter of fat little puppies of which somehow only one was left for me to pet. The other day I found it lying on the road and I started scratching it on its neck. When I realised it was weirdly quiet. In fact deadly quiet. Suddenly, a man on a scooter appeared and said, "He's been dead for some time now". I snatched my hands away. The next morning I saw him lying in a heap of garbage. The body was slowly starting to look distorted. Though I had not been overwhelmingly attached to it, I felt sad. For a life that was there. For a life that could have been. Everything is so transitory. You don't even know when you are gonna get snuffed.

So come tell me how many times have you actually done what you felt like without giving a damn about others...

12.4.06

Each day just goes so fast, I turn around it's passed...

Have you ever got up at 5 o'clock in the morning for a wedding? I did and since it was S's wedding, so did she. Actually whoever attended the wedding did. You see, it was a Tamilian wedding. I had stayed over the night before at E's place, so we could go together to the venue. So bleary eyed we somehow managed to wrap on our saris on the morning of April 3 and rush for the wedding.

The wedding itself was alfresco with a shamiana for the guests and a pretty pink pandal decorated with flowers for the bride and groom. S was wearing a maroon sari with a broad gold belt. She shooed us out of the room where she was getting dressed. I wonder why. Why S?:-) Mr S's relatives crooned as the ceremony took place. And as the fresh morning breeze carressed us, it felt nice. It was not a very long affair. Soon we were cramming down samosas and jalebis.

Then there was a short Bengali ritual that S and Mr S observed. Where they dipped their hands in an earthern bowl and had to fish out a ring. In the meantime, there was Mr S's Irish friend who sang two Rabindrasangeet songs very softly. Apparently she had picked them up in Benares where she has been staying for some time now. Mr S himself sang a song. And could we resist asking S for the same? Of course not (now if you have known S, you would know that singing is just not her forte;) But it is amazing how family can come together. The minute we started off, S's aunt came in and said, "Ok now it's time for breakfast."

By then all us sari clad women were feeling pretty hot and bothered even though we were inside an air conditioned room. But S's mom and aunt insisted we stay back for lunch. So there we were -- E, B, A (that's Tatonnement) and I struggling to find some way to entertain ourselves. It was a struggle alright but it was fun. The evening reception was fun. S looked very good and relaxed. So we left S very much a married lady now. Now I hear she is having a great time in the South. She's heading next for Goa.

As soon as I landed here in Delhi, it was time for Fashion Week. Jacquards, silks, nets, velvets, balloon skirts, frills, ruffles...I think at the end of three days I was ready to throw up fashion. But it was good to see eye candy material in the form of Suchitra Pillai's good looking firang hubby. The two designers who managed to put a finger on the pulse of the girls in the audience were Manoviraj Khosla and Arjun Khanna. They had only men walking the ramp and after watching just semi nude females, I must say it was very refreshing.

Aha how can I miss out the food that was specially put together by Shikha Sharma. It was all low calorie stuff but I wonder how low cal could it get if you really piled up your plate. The amount of baked fish I had two times a day for the five days can probably make up for the lack of it in my life the rest of the year. What I freaked out was with the dessert spread out there. Blueberry cheesecake, apple strudel, rich chocolate cake, fruit tarts, kulfi, malpoa...the list would run at least a mile long. Lunch and dinner were clearly the highlights of each day for me. I wish my mother could have seen me at work on during meal times. There's no way she wouldn't have done a double take.

Fashion week is fun but it leaves you as exhausted as it can. So I am kind of glad to get back to my normal routine. Except the day we got back to office, there was a fire here. Though some of my colleagues made fun of us for running down with our bags, the same night I caught the Meerut Fire clips on the channels and realised how scary it can be. Especially that our building has no fire exit. Just one entrance. It's liking waiting for a disaster to happen.