Ponderettas

December’s going to be a stressful month, as it has been since October. Work-wise, that is. In fact, the project I’m working on is in an interesting quandary. The client gets more confused with every bit of information that is provided to him. We try to remedy that by giving more information accompanied with several caveats and disclaimers. This is responded to with equal and opposite frustration, again accompanied with many addendums. In fact, during conference calls, you can hear the fine prints in our voices.

Meanwhile, we are working our butts off to cover our asses. (Asses being the slow, plodding and dimwitted personnel – a herd that I am a prized member of) Only to be told that you are slow and therefore, well, umm,..okay. (What can you do to donkeys after you have figured out that that’s the way they are, and that’s the way they’ll stay? Really, what? Bray tell.)

So, it was a particularly rough day with bile lining my pancreas or whatever organ they’re associated with. But then, as it is with rough days, this too ended.

On our way home, Z, MS, and I heard a Sumo honking furiously. We walked ahead and saw a rickshaw fellow pushing his rickshaw to the stand. I mean, the guy could sit inside and drive it. But no. This being Pune, this being us, this being us in Pune – it just sort of added up. The sight released our collective nervous energy and we collapsed into giggles, scaring a dog.

And Z, as usual, had an interesting movie scene in mind that she deemed fit to recount. Not surprisingly, the movie in question starred Kadar Khan and Govinda. Govinda is a robber and is running away from the police after committing a theft. Kadar Khan is hot on his heels. However, as luck would have it, the police jeep breaks down, and Kadar Khan is left to finding his own devices. So, he hails the first auto he can find, hops in, and urgently tells the rick guy, “Peecha karo!”

The rick guy, in all earnestness, gets off the rick and starts running after Govinda.
We heard that and looked at the Sumo now waiting patiently for the rickshaw to inch towards the stand.

I laughed so hard that my bile swilled around in rude surprise. MS swayed in the middle of road, and Z started snorting. She does that when she’s very pleased with herself. Several other dogs scampered across the road.

Anyway, that was that.

Later in the night, I met up with J for some dinner, dessert, and drinks that got added on as an after-thought. (The after-thought followed pre-thinking about the price of liquor. Liquor was beer.)

Our first surprise was when beer was served to us in tall, slender Collin glasses. I dutifully crossed my legs to begin drinking. Cutlery influences my manner so.

Then J, all regal and empress-like, asks for a straw. I hiccup and look at her. She nods sagely. A straw for the beer.

Sigh! That brought back memories. I was in college and had not begun drinking. However, once I was with my friends and was keen that I not be identified as a novice in the alcohol arena. So, a round of drinks were ordered – most being combinations of pithy sounding ingredients (gin and tonic, rum and coke, vodka and lime, etc. etc.) My turn. I say, ‘Beer’. My friends look at me. Somehow I feel obliged to qualify my order, so I add, ‘on the rocks.’

‘First time, huh?’, I was nudged through the evening.

But seriously, I sometimes wonder, why is beer never had with ice? I have tried it with vanilla ice-cream though, and it’s really yummy.

My tastes are generally weird that way. I didn’t like Top Gun and didn’t like Tom Cruise in it either. And really, how slow was ‘Cocktail’? But I adored Jerry McGuire and that movie deserves to be acknowledged as a sociologically relevant film – in fact, as a film that will be enduringly relevant. Just because the movie happened to make money, it will never be acknowledged as much. Reverse discrimination.

And ‘Da Vinci Code’ was no literary masterpiece. It was a great, thrilling book, but really, it was written in the manner of a contiguous screenplay. The book did get me referring to many many books on Leonardo though. In doing that, I think, it served it’s purpose of being a work of significance. (Yes, at times, it is all about me.)

And if I ever made a movie on the book, ‘Goodbye, Mr. Chipps’ (Now, THAT’S a book), I would cast Russel Crowe.

I also wonder if ‘ponder’ comes from ‘pond’; ‘see’ comes from ‘sea’; and ‘leak’ comes from ‘lake’.

Sometimes I wonder about these things. But more often than not, I think to myself, what’s wrong with beer and ice?