It's Christmas!

It's Christmas, and it seems almost sacrilegious to talk about anything else except Christmas. But this year, it's just me and H, in our tiny, albeit cosy hostel room. We have two Christmas cards between us, and the room is so far devoid of any decorations. H thinks it's folly to buy more stuff when we already have so much to take home next year. And I suppose he's right.

Everywhere you go in Delhi, it's Christmas big time. The newspapers are full of it, recipes for cakes and goodies, what gifts to buy, etcetera. In the markets, it's the same. Shops are decorated in red, white, greens; even petrol station attendants are wearing Santa suits. The non-Christians overwhelm us with their fervour for the Christmas season. I guess everyone is cashing in on Christmas.

So as it is every year, and as it will probably be every coming year, we have to yet again make a conscious effort to remember what Christmas is about. It's easy to get caught up in the lights and the Christmas sales, the cakes and the glitter and the songs, but all Christmas signifies is the birth of Jesus after all. I'm a fine one to talk, but here's a poem from Gerrard Kelly...

The gift
We were so glad to welcome him
On Christmas day;
It was like having a new member
Of the family.
He looked so small and helpless,
It made you want to pick him up
And cuddle him.
We made promises, ofcourse,
Said we'd make room for him in our house,
Said we'd alter our routines
To fit him in,
Said we'd take a walk with him
Each day.

But the novelty
Soon began to wear off.
By New Year,
We mentioned him less often.
Daily chores were less of a thrill,
More of a reluctant duty.
By February he was unwanted.
By March we had abandoned him.

We should have read the warnings,
We should have counted the cost.
A God is for life,
Not just for Christmas.

Oh well, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, everyone!!

Christmas past

Christmas had flavour then, it had an aroma, a magical essence of festivity. It had something to do with the smell of baking cakes in mom's rusted oven. The ornaments were simple, ribbons of coloured paper strung along the ceiling, a few clusters of balloons at strategic corners. My mother's fir tree in an old tin pot stood in the corner, brightly done up with gold and silver strings, a big star ceremoniously stuck at the top of the tree. Christmas cards arrived daily, from relatives and friends and well-wishers. My brother and I would collect the ones bearing our names, a childish competition to see who receives more.

I was, as a child, even more gullible, lead hither thither by an elder brother. I believed fervently in Santa Claus, but my brother put an end to that. 'There is no Santa Claus, it's only mom and dad pretending' . And before I could recover, 'Let's look for the gifts while they are gone'. And so my innocence ended at the tender age of 5 years. I learnt to deceive too. 'Look, mother! Santa got me exactly what I wanted'.

I did not know those Christmases represented phases of my life. Because every year, there were changes. Some were subtle, some struck closer to home. You could tell from the decorations how progress was happening. Cards are passe, real trees replaced by bigger, greener plastics. You could see how dear ones slowly disappeared from Christmases, some died of diseases, some in accidents. I remember a new year's eve spent mourning an uncle. The elders cried, we children huddled together, uncertain what to do when New Year arrived.

Every year, a little more numb,a little more pain, a little more smarter, a little more cynical, a little more adult. I mourn the death of childhood, the glee of being alive. Our worries were so small then, and our joys were so simple. Everyday was an occasion, Christmas and New Year were only the icing on the cake.

(Lungleng thut, inspired by Caliopia's post).

When words fail

A slighlty overstated title. Just a few pics to keep the old blog running:)









It was our institute's golden anniversary recently, so our campus got a major makeover, including putting up an Amul kiosk, complete with swings and garden chairs.






The already existing Nescafe too got a facelift, with a pretty red roof. Just a tiny picture, it's too blurry to be any bigger.





And I went for a seminar in Ludhiana, Christian Medical College last month. The Christian-ness of the college was always vividly palpable, the conference being started with a benediction and a choir. They had a bookshop on campus, I got a Bible as a souvenir. Overall, the college seemed to be well-run, no frantic patients etc. But I could be biased too :p Anyhow the place looked mighty clean.


At dinner, some undergrads entertained us with songs and dances. This pic was for the guy in yellow satin lungi (lungi not v visible tho).








Lastly, a pic of a humungous mutton leg. We had dinner at Karim's near Jamma Masjid. The area left a lot to desire, but the restaurant is top rated in Delhi. But Too much meat will kill you, me thinks.

It's time

It's time..

To take out the blankets, to dryclean the unworthy, to snuggle with the clean. It's time to bugger the caretaker, 'Fix the old geyser, or else........' Or else I shall suffer a minor a heart attack, when the cold jets of water fall, or else, I shall simply stop having my baths. The latter is easier, but my colleagues may have something to say.

It's time to restock on body lotions. 'Body cocoon' sounds so inviting, tho I'd never buy it in summer. It's time to hybernate, atleast till 9 in the morning. It's okay to say you're down with the flu, because it's that time of year again. It's time to snuggle, switch off the alarm. Because this year, you're not flying home, come rain or shine, on rickety planes nor on reindeer sleighs.

This year, you're stuck here, with the cold, with your books, with your frowning turbanated gods. This year is the last year, this time, it's going to be a blue, blue christmas.

And it's time to close the old blogger, because I never had that much to say, and it was anyway mostly just a lot of yarn. And I need the yarn for a nice old sweater. It's time I hit the books, because, time, my friend, is ticking away.

(pic from landscapedpic.com)

Happy Birthday to H !!!

October 16th, Happy birthday, dear H!!

Music

My single female friend was telling me about her romantic escapades, and she said,'...we even have the same taste in music'.

That made me think of two things. One is how mature and practical I imagine myself all of a sudden. I used to like guys with the same music taste as mine, in fact, it was almost a vital criteria. But if we're talking of ingredients for a good match, similar music taste probably would not be in the top three. Although totally opposite music preferences could probably play havoc in married life too; a constant barrage of rap music would possibly turn me into a knife-wielding lunatic. The same friend and I had once made a list of all the things we would like in a guy, and I remember some of the things I wrote:

• same taste in music.
• must be a smoker.
• preferably have long hair.
• can watch endless movies.
• should hate cricket.

....and more juvenile things. The list now reads more like a guy I would avoid at all cost, except for the movies part of it. hehe. More important are trust, respect, similar ideals and principles, and the really, really liking each other aspect of it that can make you bear each other for long.

Another thought was, what has happened to my music taste? I remember when I was into Alanis Morissette, Oasis, the Cranberries, the Beatles, Cake, Travis, Fiona Apple and the like and I kind of 'adopted' them and even felt sort of possessive about them. Now I listen mainly to country music, Tracy Chapman and other mellow songs. I am totally unaware of new hits, and I'm quite happy without them. Someone once lambasted me for liking country music. He said people who like country music are all complacent dolts. He could be right, but what's wrong with being a dolt if you are complacent about it ? :)

@#$# !! Monkey

October 2nd, Gandhiji's birthday, and H and I were enjoying a sleep-in, alarm being subjected to multiple snoozes. There was a loud noise from the balcony, I thought it was our neighbour dropping something. But then it happened again and it sounded suspiciously like it was coming from our balcony. My first thought was that it would be a monkey, having had one creep into my room before.

I opened the door a fraction, and there it was, perched on top of the AC. I quickly closed it again and banged on the door and window. But I could still hear it moving about :( I woke up H, he went to the loo, grabbed a stick, and the monkey was gone (before H could wield the stick, ofcourse).

We use the balcony as a kitchen and so there were raw potatoes and onions scattered around and bitten into. It must not have liked the taste much because it spat out everything, but it tried quite a number of them. It had tried opening the jars too, but he gets zero for dexterity. We already had a net in place covering the whole of the balcony, but the furry thing had managed to creep in from the top. I have a feeling it'll be back:(

I hate monkeys. I dislike them because of a number of reasons.

• They are just so smart and human-like. In my previous hostel, the monkeys used to knock on closed doors, and get inside as soon as the door is opened. They know how to open jars, they even take tablets out of blister packets and eat them. God knows why.
• They can tell the difference between male and female humans. When I tried to shoo away one, it actually charged towards me, making me run faster than fast. There were recent reports in the news about how monkeys specifically bother female workers in the fields. Chauvinistic little things.
• They are just not cute and cuddly like the rest of the small animals, like dogs, or cats.
• They don't seem to know when they're not wanted. I wonder if they ever go bother Maneka Gandhi.
• They have really sharp teeth. They can harbour rabies, simian virus 40. But mostly, they have sharp teeth.

According to my friend, there is a monkey in Sikkim who hitches rides on jeeps and buys food with money. It does not know the denomination of the money but it shoves the money towards the shopkeeper and takes what it likes in return. I don't know how much truth is in the story, my friend likes to tell me stories sometimes :P

Complaints of monkey menace are usually dealt with in a nonsensical way. The authorities either ignore the complaints, or they station a langoor (pic) where monkeys abound. But when they go all out and catch them, they stuff them in cages and maltreat them, so that the animal activists are up in arms breathing fire and venom. We can't seem to win.

Change

Nothing is carved in stone. Even if it was, there is no guarantee that something stronger than stone would not break it. The Iron Curtain crumbled, Myanmar may yet be free.

But when it comes to little things, for people like me, who take comfort in the familiar, changes are always regarded with a certain dread. I prefer the tried and tested restaurants, the old familiar songs, the company of old friends, the same flow-chart to life’s tests, and I like the well-trodden roads. I like the certainty of knowing what I can and cannot do, and to a certain extent, I appreciate the restrictions that society puts on us, so that we cannot do everything that we want to do. This could sound extremely restrictive and could very well be the antithesis to progress. But in things that don’t have serious repercussions, I like being stuck in my well-loved rut. Listen to Keane’s ‘Everbody’s changing’.

You say you wander your own land
But when I think about it
I don't see how you can

You're aching, you're breaking
And I can see the pain in your eyes
It's as (if) everybody's changing
And I don't know why.

So little time
Try to understand that
I'mTrying to make a move just to stay in the game
I try to stay awake and remember my name
But everybody's changing
And I don't feel the same.

You're gone from here
Soon you will disappear
Fading into beautiful light
'cause everybody's changing
And I don't feel right.
Everybody's changing, And I don't feel the same……

Postscript: I wrote the post trying to focus on the changes in language, the use of short forms, the vowel-less words, the now-validated obsolence of the hyphen, even some Mizos wanting to replace 'T' with 'Tr' etc(My dad should have taught me how to type it). I wanted to protest about it, but I sounded so feeble, and I got distrated by Keane's song, so none of the original thoughts went into the post. Just so you know :)

Gerard Kelly- poet

I know very little of his work.. I just read one book of his "Rebel without Applause", but I thought he was rather fantastic.Here's one of his:




Cocktail Conversation


If I pretend


That you're noble,


Will you agree


That I am kind?


If I act as if


I'm talking about you


But talk about me,


Would you mind?


If I take up your bait


About a fascinating job


And don't challenge what you do,


Will you fall for my line


About noisy colored neighbours


And say


That you'd have moved too?


Will you confirm


All my convictions


If I don't notice


Your assumptions are absurd?


If so


We can talk like this for hours


Without meaning


A single word.

Right now...

Right now...

I'd like to be a silent spectator, watching old men enjoing each other's company. Maybe something like this.I'd love to have a cup of great coffee, made with real coffee beans and everything.

It would be lovely to re-read a favourite book.

Definely not doing this....
Because I am not doing this!!

(Pics stolen from all over the net. Don't sue me, I'm stressed)

Latest craving

I am an unlikely gadget freak. I love obssessing about a particular gadget, read endless reviews and finally buy something I think is best. After all the research though, I don't always make the best choices. For example the Olympus Fe 190 I bought was just mindbogglingly disappointing. The 6 mp camera had a lousy lens, is all I can say.

Z550i was so-so. I was bemused with clam shell phones at that particular phase. Some beautiful actress in some movie could have flipped her phone and made a lasting impression on my feeble brain, maybe. I 'lost' that phone when I went home last, supposedly at Lengpui airport. I thought it was a particularly pushy fellow traveller who was the culprit, against whom I bore a silent grudge all these months. Only to be informed recently by my wonderful brother-in-law that he found the phone in the back of their car. (They're wondering how the phone got to be in the back seat, when H and I obviously sat in the front seats. I blame gravity, traffic movements, but it's not whatever else it is they are thinking. hahaha). The phone had a terrible 1.3mp camera anyway. My mom or someone else will probably end up using it.

To get back to the original train of thought, after the last two months of using my old trusty Nokia 1600 (great battery life, supports nothing, not even a torchlight), I've been looking at the k550i. Its camera is probably not as good as k750, its keypad supposedly sucks, some people positively hate it. But there are reviewers who are all praises (you get all kinds). I am just not inclined towards nokia, samsung or motorola. If anyone reads my posts, and if anyone has any idea about k550, or if there's a better phone with better camera at the same price range, please let me know. Am planning to buy a phone before the month is out. Thank you!

(Update: Without much input from anybody, I bought the phone 2 days back. It seems to be a good buy. )

I am one of a million people who acutely dislikes being woken up. I can't help it, it's probably in my genes, encoded in the short arm of some obscure chromosome. So I was on 24 hrs duty yesterday, and one thing leading to another, I managed to fall asleep at 2.30 am. 15 mins later, there was a very confident, loud knocking on my door. I opened the door and there was this brain-deficient security guard asking me if I sleep in room no 8. Brain-deficient I say because Room no 8 has '8' painted on its door, and I sleep across from it in an unmarked door. I told him 'No' in my very elegant Hindi and crawled back to bed. That's when tragedy struck, I couldn't sleep till 4, only to be woken by my mom on the phone at 6. * Sigh *

But I am post duty today so I shall be sleeping the day away, except to cook. Because my cousin arrived yesterday, laden with goodies like mai an, behlawi, bekang ro, tumbu pickle and even the dried version of them. So I shall make use of my cullinary skills and make mai an bai. It will be quite an occasion because, for the last 2 months, I have been feeding my husband nothing but fried potatoes, dal and a stew of cabbage, eggplant and beans. H has been stalwart and stoical and has not complained even once ( I don't take his suggestions of dining out as complaints). I think he really deserves the change, I think I may even add a dash of butter for good measure :)

Talking of cooking, I have been cooking for the last 3 months or so on a regular basis (alternative days I suppose), and I have burnt food only twice. That works out to be approximately 4% of total cooking episodes. I say the statistics are very encouraging. I will try my best to remember to simmer.

Wedded Bliss

I used to think I might never get married, living forever with your parents and being a bossy aunt to nieces and nephews is not a bad option. But tying the knot with someone you can't live without is the better option :)

Niece and nephew on the wedding day.

H and I?

Cars et al

Have you ever noticed how many people have 'Ram', 'Om' and the like written on their car windows? Or whenever they get a new vehicle they do 'pujas' and they have that ribbony thing on their car hood for a few months?

I just wondered, we Mizos are supposedly very strong about our religion, but how many of us in Mizoram have 'Jesus' or 'Isua' etc written on our cars? How many of us hand over our cars, houses and other possessions to God even by a small prayer? Many Christians here in Delhi (and other places) have 'Jesus saves' or some such pasted on their cars. I know it's probably not a very important issue, but it's just a thought, are our material possessions kept separately from our spiritual side? Maybe we are just not too showy about how we feel, maybe it's not a very cool thing to do, maybe we don't think it's all that necessary. But for some reason, it feels kind of nice when I see Jesus' name anywhere, even on the back of a car. It's just a thought :)

Transformers

Pic www.movieweb.com

Just got back from a movie with H. Read the rave reviews of 'Transformers', and since H is a big fan of action movies, we decided to watch it. Definely worth the 2 and a half hours spent. It's amazing what Hollywood churns out, it must be all computer graphics and stuff I suppose, but it's pretty mindboggling what they can do with it.

Came out of the movie hall at 10 pm and all the cars outside with their blinking red lights looked pretty robotic to me. Hell, even the autorickshaw we came home in felt like it was going to turn into an autobot. That's how inspired I am. The movie really tickled my fancy.


It started out very well, but the second half turned into too much of a mob fight for my liking. The movie has got it all, humour, a little bit of romance, fast cars, everything except horror and tragedy. The heroine was hot (forgot her name), the hero was suitably bit of a nerd, just not unattractive to be unworthy of his part. Anyhow, the movie's definetely worth a watch.

And the pic of Megatron (I think?) goes very well with the pic of the wedding cake :)

Dear Diary

Dear diary, what is wrong with me?
Cause I'm fine between the lines.
Be not afraid, help is on its way
A sentence suspended in air way over there
Dear diary, what else could it be?
As nightshade descends like a veil under the sail of my heart
Be still don't stop until the end.

Melancholy lines of Travis, sung in their beautiful melancholy way. I like the way the sentences are written, in a vague helpless kind of way. Not their most memorable song but I loved it nonetheless.

I used to keep diaries before, frantically noting down stupid emotions on handmade papers :) It was kind of nice to exaggerate feelings and events in your own personal novel. Even if not much ever happens, it makes for a good reading later on. I remember in school though, I had to pay my brother everyday to keep my secrets. Those little heartshaped locks did not offer much protection against naughty little boys.

I loved reading as a kid, and I was quite delusional for a while that I could be a writer too. (I was also once delusional that I could sing, but my dad rid me of the notion before I tried it in public). Even after being told quite clearly by two palm readers that I don't have an artistic bone in my body, I continued to churn out so called poems, they mostly had no rhyme or reason. Thank God I grew out of it.

Anyway, after undergraduate days, with all the shifting around, it became kind of difficult deciding which diaries to throw and which ones to keep. And getting rid of a diary meant shredding whole lots of pages manually, and disposing of the bits in godforsaken places. On retrospect, I think I stopped keeping diaries when things actually started happening. When my life was oh-so-boring, I guess I compensated by making my diaries more interesting. But diaries are still a girl's best friend, where you can write about your deepest feelings and thoughts, because thoughts are fleeting sometimes and you forget, and the moment is forever lost.

Escape

I wish I didn't need to have a blog. But I suppose it can't be helped :P