The day after

It's not what you're thinking. I am talking of the ‘day after the bunk’ looks that men and women commonly adopt, not realising that everyone knows. A man does with a stubble (if he lacks one usually), a woman does with eye make-up, actually, the lack of it. Why do they do it? Beats me. May be they feel it authenticates their case, in case they are faking it. And many times they are…

Even though casual leaves are meant to be taken ‘casually’ and ‘sick leave” is for being sick, I am always foxed by the bunking gems that I encounter time and again. Here are a few bunk gems that I have encountered in recent times:

“I don’t think I am feeling too well, so I’ll take it easy today..”

I don’t really know what that means, but I never feel ‘too well’ to show up at work.

But the boss and I both believe that when you have a job, you show up. Life is always better at home—watching mindless TV or those DVDs you have stacked up, cooking, listening to jazz, reading, cuddling your cats or taking your dog for a walk, but until we find someone to pay our bills, or know that we have finally got our nest egg in place, that ain’t happening.

“ I am down with a throat infection and I will not be able to come today.”

There is a technical problem with this, because, when you have a throat infection, you are mostly ‘up’ not ‘down’. You are up gargling, drinking hot tea, water, or any beverage that makes you feel good.

“Hi, I seem to have a neck ache. So may not be able to make it.”

The word ‘seem’ is what I have a problem with. Either you have an ache or you don’t. Also men with neck-aches are so not cool. Also, exactly what will not be able to make it? You or your neck?

"My train didn’t stop at Mahim, but went to Bombay Central instead…"

Okay we know you are not from Bombay, but do you have to make it so obvious?

“I got my period on the way to work, so I had to go back home”

There is something called contingency plan. And ‘knowing your dates’.

“I think I have food poisoning. May be it was the ostrich I ate last night.”

People who are prone to food poisoning have no business eating ostrich. Or anything for that matter.

“My gas ran out as I was cooking…”

Now that could be a real problem. After all, who can eat a half-cooked rajma? But may be your office doesn’t have a microwave, unlike ours. Lucky us!

“ I was getting on the bus and it will not move…”

Dear BEST loyalist. How about plan B?

“My electricity has got cut off because I didn’t pay my bill. Have to go and get it back”

Have you heard of Bill pay? Or the ten-rupee errand boy?

“My train has just encountered a buffalo…”

Nice one.

“My eye refuses to open…”

Wow! Perfectly plausible, except for the fact that when that happens, you can’t show up bright eyed, and kohl-lined the next day.

"I have to rush for a family emergency”

So far so good. But when you call up three days later in a badly faked voice to say that the emergency hasn’t ended, it makes it curiouser and curiouser. I am imagining you waiting for an aging relative to sign his will and leave you a legacy.

May be I should listen to the able Moorthy, our sanity check who tells me of people in general, “Have leave, will take”

Happy happy joy joy!

Hi. I am Happy Singh and I am the kitten that just got adopted by a kind lady in HT. Okay, I know I created quite a flutter in their office as I was the only good looking thing in the compound, but sorry folks, no free shows anymore. I have a home address now. I just thought since all of you have so many questions, and I obviously can’t answer all of them, as I only know felinespeak, I am going to use this column to tackle a few:

1. Why am I called Happy Singh?

I think the writer of this column has a cat called Lupooh Singh and she is oh-so-smitten by him. And the lady who adopted me also liked the name, so who was I to protest?

2 . Why do I not respond to “Happy Singh”?

Frankly, I don’t care if you call me Osama Bin Laden or David Dhawan. I am just amused that you guys read so much into a name.All I care about is:

a) Are you going to feed me, which is usually a good thing

b) Are you going to pet/cuddle/kiss/squeeze me, which is usually not a good thing

3.Why do I never listen to you?

Because, if you notice, I am a cat and not a dog. Are you going to expect me to respond to doggy commands, like ‘catch’, ‘jump’, ‘down’ , ‘stay’ which, frankly are quite annoying. I just do what I want to do and not what you want me to do.

3.Why is my stomach so round?

Have I ever asked you why your nose is so big, or why you leave a trail of deodorant till Mahim station or why do you smoke so much or how did you get so fat? So leave my stomach alone. But if you must know, it’s worms. I lost my mommy when I was three weeks old and I had to eat garbage till I wandered into the HT building. Just give me a week, I will get my shape back.

4. Why do I attack you when you sponge me or try to take my ticks out?

Because I don’t like being messed around, is why. And has anyone tried to sponge you or take your ticks out? Just so you know how it feels.

5. Why do I scratch everything around so much?

Why do you think God gave me claws and not you?

6. Why do I curl up and sleep so much?

Because, I don’t have to slave in the office so much, hoping that some day I don’t have to work and then I can curl up and sleep all day like a cat. I am ahead of the game, as I am already living the good life and don’t have to wait till I am 60 or 70 or however long humans take to stop working and start living.

7. Why do I never stay in my assigned corner?

Because frankly, I have better taste and I don’t work in an office.



Purrs,

Happy Singh

Plot thickens

There is a reason why it’s called a big fat Indian wedding. The number of people coming to it is usually big, a third of them are people you don’t even know and at least a fifth of them are fat.

Big is a relative term actually. At a recent wedding of a close friend who insisted it was a ‘small’ gathering, there were 400 odd people. It was a scene from a K-soap—her lehenga weighed 10 kilos, her card weighed a kilo and shed glitter with a vengeance, her make up weighed another kilo and rendered her smile-less, almost botoxed. She needed four chaperones to stand, sit or move and it took me a while to spot her, as she was beyond recognition.

The average family wedding I have attended has anything between 400 to 800 people. So my folks were a bit shocked when I told them our magic number was 120. Only immediate family and friends— people we celebrate and those who celebrate us—that was what me and the beau wanted. The list was a dream come true.

“What about all the weddings we have attended? Don’t we owe them an invitation?” was the initial worry from my folks. Fortunately his family was much cooler and totally believed in the ‘small is beautiful’ concept.

I can’t speak for others, but I don’t exactly dig going to my grandfather’s sister-in-law’s niece’s brother’s wedding. Or such innumerable miscellanous weddings to which one is invited at age ten, when you don’t want to go anywhere except to play with your friends.

And I get no joy out of someone telling me how he/she is connected to my family tree.

My parents are largely cool, and they came around. But the uncle from down south thought otherwise. “Well, I will need some cards for my wife’s brothers, sisters, their spouses and their children. Also, you must invite my son’s in-laws, they might expect it… I quickly added up the utterly dispensable cast and shuddered.

More trouble.

There is a problem with wanting tradition, but also wanting it to suit your sensibilities. My pundit was a bit stupefied when I told him that I only wanted rituals that celebrate womanhood and are not in any way sexist…That I had issues with kanyadanam and being offered as a bribe to stop the groom from embracing asceticism. He mumbled something about getting back to me and hasn’t called me since.

The wedding card was another thing I was concerned about, and I somehow managed to extract rights from the mother, else it would have been Sow…, daughter of……., niece of …………., grand-daughter of………….. weds Chi…….., son of …………, brother of ……………., brother-in-law of …………….

She relented, as she gets me..but she had her two bits to leave behind:

“It should not be black”

“It should have a ganpati”

“People should know it’s a wedding card..”

Ok, that much I can deal with.

There was more—the whole sari and jewellery business. I saw no point in picking something that weighs a ton and that I will never wear again, so I picked up something light, yet elegant.

“It’s not grand”

“It doesn’t look like a wedding sari”

“What will people say?”

“You only get married once…”

And to think that I still have more than a month to go.

Pushing daisies

Many years ago, when we had the nerve to deal with double roles, Amok Palekar once waxed eloquent to Utpal Dutt about nirmal anand (read,something that gives you pleasure without purpose) and its many joys. As I watched my pet squirrel Ismail bathing in the sun and washing himself in adandon one morning, I wondered how little we indulge in it nowadays and sighed.

Walking down Chimbai lane (ah, for lanes) a few evenings later, I sighted a skin and hair clinic called Nirmal Herbal. Ah! Time for some nirmal anand, I thought… and walked in…

The vibe was very fenshui—santoor sounds, some fish having a wild time in a tank they seem to have outgrown, a fountain in a corner… and there was just one soul other than me partaking of the joys of skin or hair treatment. Should have meant something. But I continued undaunted. “I just want to pamper my hair a bit…” I said to the girl with the practised husky voice.

“Sure.. we will give you a complete, non-chemical, deep-conditioning treatment. We only use vegetable juices and fruit pulp. Nothing artificial.”

Curiouser and curiouser. I thought I could deal with smelling like an orchard for a day or two, so asked them to bring it on.

“But for good results, you will have to come here at least 12-14 times..”

What? But I guess I was being particularly brave that day, so I asked, “And how much would that cost?

She mentioned a figure that was more than my monthly car EMI. I shivered.

Noticing me flinch, the incorrigible hustler of a girl added, “But we have a package… take 12 and get 13 and 14 free!

It wasn’t working. “I will just try once and then decide,” the saner half of me told her. Then followed an hour of feeling that my cerebral neurons are being attacked and then drenched with green and orange gooey substances. Now, I have studied enough Pharmacognosy to know that the liquid was neem and pulp was papaya and the rinse was shikakai and reetha, both detrimental to my already dry hair. So I piped, “But this can’t be good for me… my hair is dry…”

“Don’t worry, there are no chemicals….”

She gave me a cold stare, and continued in the most stoic manner. Where do they go for training? To the Matrix?

Don’t they know that every natural product is a complex chemical structure? It’s just that it doesn’t come pre-packaged with its composition.

At the end of it all, I felt like a nervous wreck, poorer by what could buy me a Mango dress. Plus my hair felt like straw.

The next day, it still felt like straw.

Two days later, I had to douse it with my chemical infested shampoo, conditioner and hair serum to give it some semblance of grace.

A few days later, my colleague walked in to work, her face infested with what looked like insect bites. “Are you just back from the Amazon?,” I asked.

“No, I just went for a facial yesterday, and it looks like they have used some wrong product,” she wailed.

Both of us want our money back.

XS,S, M, L, XL, XXL

There are four types of big women: there are those who thrust their bigness in your face (read, if you are walking down a corridor and they are walking towards you, you can be sure that if you don’t retreat, they will run you over).

And there are big women who don’t give a damn, and would never try a slimming product or aspire for a certain size or fit… they wear their bigness with style and in fact you actually like them because they are big, and couldn’t bear to imagine them any other way. In fact, you hardly notice they are big , as you are so in sync.

Then there are those who hate you for being small and secretly wish they could fit into your clothes. Such women go on crash GM diets, dancersize and zoomba classes, or pretty much anything that promises to make them svelte. It does, relatively speaking—it helps them lose 3 kg of their total 70 kg body mass, but that hardly shows. So they are usually sore and grimacing most of the time.

And finally, there those who are almost apologetic about being big— they try to physically shrink when they are near you. They have a genial attitude, softer voices, gentler footsteps, and you feel safe and protected around them—almost like mamma.

For most of my life, I have been surrounded by women bigger than me, which is not a difficult thing to achieve, as I am 5 feet nothing and I pretty much stopped growing at age 15, horizontally and vertically. Fortunately or unfortunately, I have never aspired to appear taller or larger by wearing heels or padded bras—I really didn’t see any point in creating an illusion.

Except my mother and two of my aunts, I don’t know many women who are smaller than me (except a niece or two, but they don’t count). This becomes difficult when you want to give away clothes that you love, but have managed to outgrow. My sister was a prime candidate, until recently. But sometimes, when you have to kick ass, it helps to be bigger than your opponent, so you at least know that they can’t punch harder than you.

I read a book a long time ago called A prayer for Owen Meany in which there is a boy who stops growing at the age of 12. And you make his presence felt, he speaks in a volume four times the required one, and all his words are in ALL CAPS. So you know what it means when he says REALLY, HOW ON EARTH DO THEY MANAGE THAT? He’s just making a point.

A friend of mine told me how she finds it tough being taken seriously by her juniors at work, as they were all bigger than her. “It’s about filling a chair”… she told me. “You have to have to appear big to look intimidating.” I tried wearing layers and appearing large, inhaling deeply and filling myself out, outstretched arms and all in an ample chair, but felt like a bit of an idiot. I finally reassured myself that sometimes, great things do come in small packages.

Yours, peasfully

Recently, I was invited to dinner at someone’s house and when the dinner was finally served, I found it to be all-meat.

“But I am vegetarian..” I mewed.

“Really? You don’t look it….” said the host.

“Meaning? Do I look carnivorous?”

“You don’t have a vegetarian face,” I was told.

Hmmmm…I was intrigued. It was not the first time it was happening to me, although I find people less shocked by my dietary habits now than they used to be ten years ago. It might have to do with the fact that Madonna, Richard Gere, Gwneth Paltrow, Tobey Maguire, Natalie Portman and more have turned vegetarian, so I am not such an oddball after all.

But there was definitely a subtext there. May be it appears that a woman who can speak her mind and call a spade a spade has to have meat-generated toxins in her body—where else will the aggression come from? Surely capsicum and spinach don’t pack in that punch.

“So, is it by choice or habit? Health or religion?”… is often what follows next.

I know next to nothing about religion. As far as habit goes, well, my dad did try to fortify us puny tots with chicken cube soup once upon a time, so I am sure I have tasted blood. Health sounds fashionable for sure. But, frankly, I just like eating things that look colourful—so I would rather choose a carrot or a beetroot or peas over meat..

So I fox them by saying.. “None of the above. It’s aesthethics..”

No more questions.

A handy retort would also be, “So are you carnivorous by choice? Or is it just that you like padding your body with toxins?”

Then there were the questions about singledom in a galaxy not far far away…

“So, are you seeing anyone?”

“No…”

“So you are single by choice?”

“Well, you could say that..”

“Hmmm interesting. But would you like someone in your life?”

“Ummm…I don’t know.. I am quite happy…”

“Don’t you want to settle down?”

This is the point when the said subject deserves a cup of tea/glass of wine, as the case may be… on his/her head. Or may be a twist in the questioning…

“Are you married by choice or did you sleepwalk into it?

Or better still….

“How come you are married?”

Exit party.



******

Then there are people who puff in your face without even asking whether you mind and raise an eyebrow when you refuse a cigarette. Again, stereotype. (Smoker=Cool)

“Don’t smoke?”

“Well, that would be technically incorrect. You are smoking for the both of us..”

No more questions.

Bride interrupted

Okay, the D-day is looming large, and in two months, I will no longer be single…(sigh!). Much as I love the man I am marrying, I am quite irked by the questions surrounding my impending wedding. Here are a pick of the top ten most ridiculous questions:

How does it feel?

Okay, you want the truth? Feels like I am going to be part of a circus or a musical in which I hope to have some fun myself, else, what a waste…!

What kind of rings are you planning to get?

Huh? The fact that we set a date, found a venue, booked it, made lists, sent it to our respective control-freak siblings/parents, is hard work enough. Now if I have to engrave his name on my ring, I will just stutter….

Have you shopped for your jewellery?

What they actually mean is, “Will you end up having better jewellery than me? Then I better start refurbishing...” I find women idiotically competitive about jewellery. Is her diamond bigger than mine is not a concern I am about to have. So ladies, please flash all you have. I am not in the race.

So is it a big wedding?

Define big to me. In my opinion, hanging out with a hundred odd people who I ordinarily will not hang out with is big. Changing costumes at someone else’s whim is big. Sitting in one spot for three to four hours is big. Not laughing my lungs out when my beau repeats the mantra after the pundit (gosh, I hope he does!) is big. Not breaking into dance at any given opportunity is big.

You haven’t started shopping yet?

In my opinion, trosseaus are a waste of time. Technically, if you have the cash, a day or two is enough to shop. Unless you are Pamela Anderson and need to get everything made to cup size FF. One wasn’t exactly living like a Neanderthal before the wedding, was one? I mean, one had good shoes, bags, make-up, clothes, pretty much everything that is ready to go. So why pretend that you are a just-born baby and shop head-to-toe?

Where are you going for your honeymoon?

Now that’s a cool question. Except I still don’t know and will get back to you as soon as I can.

What does the groom do?

This question, although very geriatric was actually asked by an under-30 cousin of mine with a suitable degree, corporate job, the works. I found it strange. This is a generation that should be celebrating love, freedom of choice and all the things their parents didn’t have. Instead they were being less cool than their parents.

I realised I was being marked. What they actually mean to ask is, “After all that wait, I hope you have picked well…”

Where did you two meet?

More marking. Would I say I met him while investigating a story on how singles network in the city? That our first date was a nine-hour chat about single malts? That he proposed to me in the car on the way back from an Indigo brunch? No, the politically right thing to say would be “We met at a party”

Where is he from? What do his parents do? Siblings? Are they married? Where does he live?

More marking.

But I couldn’t be bothered. I have moved from white sheep to brown sheep to black sheep to very black sheep in the last fifteen years in my family and now I am back again to being the white sheep. Simply because in their eyes, I have redeemed myself by choosing to marry a suitable man, who also happens to be cool. And managed to escape getting hitched to a fat, balding divorcee with two kids, a fat alimony and low self esteem, as they would imagine happening to girls ‘my age’