Getting out of Bandra and other tidbits

-

 A friend was free and we decided to go to Granth in Juhu. Now Juhu is not really that far from Bandra but I cannot explain the relief I felt. I think I have been in the house or just going around this neighborhood for so long that some kind of weird uneasiness was gripping my mind about traveling to a different suburb.

It was so lusciously rich to be in a bookstore. There's a line by Voltaire where he says, "Some thoughts are like prayers. No matter what the position of the body, the soul is on its knees." I felt that...that complete absolute gratitude of something so pure as a place that houses books. Okay, so they are for sale...still.

I bought a book and we decided to walk towards Juhu beach. It was so bizarre and awful! The sea was mighty and plush with roar and tide. The strip of adjacent beach was empty. There were long stretches of large, thick ropes separating throngs of crowd from getting onto the beach. Cops with large sticks and walkie-talkies were pushing back an adoring and slightly desperate crowd! It seemed as if the sea was a rockstar! 

Well, I suppose that is in order. 

When nature becomes scarce, it will be celebrated like a celebrity. And just like a celebrity, she will ignore us, put on her shades, get into her glitzy car, and drive off without so much as a wave. We stand along papping her - losing time, life, dignity.

Nature exits as mother. Returns as diva. And exits again. 

My friend and I returned and he made tea. It was quite exceptional.it was really, really good! First I felt bad that I was not making tea for a guest. (I didn't feel all that bad. I mean, it was the kitchen, after all. Not my favorite place.) But after I tasted the tea, I felt bad for whatever I was serving him earlier. Maybe that's why he insisted that he make it. (Come to think of it, yesterday V had insisted that he make coffee.) Yeah well...what can I say? It suits me just fine. But I feel bad for these guys. They come to visit and they have to do the work also. 

I wish I cared enough to want to improve. He he!

Father and brother were supposed to call today. Neither did. Not surprised. 

Spoke to A. Spoke to So in Bangalore and we talked in length about our long-term friendship with procrastination. Spoke to J.

Hmm. I do have a few friends despite how I make tea and coffee.  That must count for something.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Check (the) mate

-
My cousin, who was born sixteen hours before me, got married recently. I am expected to follow her footsteps soon. Thankfully, I have been granted more than sixteen hours to do that. My father’s health has taken a turn for the worse. My mother is completely exhausted. Rationally, points 1, 2, and 3 would be distinct from each other. But in my family there is no such thing as ‘rationally’. Therefore all these points are inter-related. Strangely, here, we believe my marriage to be an antidote to mortality and fatigue. I happened to be sitting in my parents’ room while Ma looked through Papa’s blood reports. They didn’t look good. Ma was worried and Papa didn’t help matters much. He kept talking about Sourav Ganguly and why he deserved better. Ma got further agitated and after flinging the reports somewhere inconvenient to retrieve (I should know), she snapped, “So what? There are many like him.” Papa doesn’t believe that and would have no one in his family believe that either. He went to
Read more

Not the same, all the same - Rang de Basanti, being a Hindu, uniform civil code, and Hostage – in that unrelated sequence

-
I watched ‘Rang de basanti’. That, however, is not the point. Everyone now wants to go to Delhi and cruise around in jeeps at night. And that too is not the point. I need to say something. That, really, is the point. ‘Rang de…’ is a good movie but frankly, I’ve seen better. I’ve seen ‘Yuva’. It is creditable, though, that the movie could say what it did without using the ‘sage on the stage’ (as we say in Instructional Design) approach. The movie does have a couple of ideas that I have been besotted with for a long time now. One is the life of a story. There is the germ of an idea about men who go to their deaths cheerfully. There is fascination about what could inspire such courage in ordinary people. That story lays inside a diary for a long time. How long? Long enough for history to play itself out and begin the process of repeating itself. A nation goes the ‘Animal Farm’ way – humans out, pigs in. The story lays untouched – fermenting in latent vigor. Then someone discovers it. She
Read more

Save the Indian (male) child

-
This isn't exactly a feminist tirade, but this is written by a woman, and it is written in annoyance. You raise your girls to be sweet, strong, and independent. (Wise parents teach their children to listen to opinions and discard or heed accordingly. The other ones just teach their kids to bullshit everything that everyone says. Still others bring up girls to be on guard and forget that spine so that everyone thinks well of them. I am not sure which is worse, but I detest people shoving their opinions down other people's throats in a show of liberation, so I'll lean towards the former. But only slightly.) As the gender construct of being a 'female' is pushed even further, you teach your daughter complicated activities – driving, perhaps, sending them off away from home, wearing a sari (those freaking pleats!), cooking and de-veining prawns for added advantage. At the end of that, you have a person who genuinely dislikes blending into anything, doesn't like bei
Read more