Challenging myself!

I just realised that we are almost halfway through this year and, if i look back, i haven’t done anything significant in this period.  That doens’t go to say that its been a bad half year.  On the contrary, it has been good, fun and comfortable.  However, i feel that there should be more to life than just the weekday routine of home-office-gym-home and weekend routine of home-shopping-hanging out with friends-home. 

I have never done this before;  atleast not publicly!  But i have decided that i am going to give myself some goals for the remaining year.  So, here goes:

- Learn a dance form:  This tops the list.  I have joined dance classes in the past only to quit after a couple of weeks.  However, the urge to dance, and to do it well, couldn’t have been greater than what i have experienced in the last couple of months.  I have been doing random steps while standing in changing rooms, waiting at takeaway counters, driving the car [please do not try this in your car], sitting at my desk and at nights infront of the mirror.  But i think that i could do with some professional training.  So, i must start learning atleast one dance form and not quit.  The ultimate goal is to learn as many as i can but i think one would be a good beginning…

- Travel:  I am ashamed to admit that i have travelled to only two places in the last two years and both were just weekend getaways.  While, i have managed to convince myself that i have genuine reasons for not traveling, deep down i know that i haven’t tried hard enough.  So, this year i want to travel to atleast one doemstic and one international destination.

- Plant trees:  Driving in Bangalore is becoming extremely distressing these days and its not because of the traffic or the distance.  It’s because of the diminishing green cover.  I remember how my heart used to dance while driving through some of Bangalore roads resplendent with their greenery.  But today those very roads are bare and seem to be crying.  I cannot bring back the trees that have been felled but i can plant some.  I am surprised that inspite of having so many people who feel the same way we haven’t managed to plant any trees this year.  I will try harder.

- Take career decisions:  I have not given my career the importance it deserves.  I want to sit down and figure out where i want to be, what i want to do and chart a roadmap for myself.  Knowing me, it will the most difficult thing to do but then, i need to get started…

- Participate in a marathon:  I want to start running and train myself to participate in a marathon.  I have books on running and some of the fanciest running shoes/accessories but the maximum running i have done is 2.5 kms. on a treadmill. 

- Go for a Himalayan trek:  This is for next year.  I want to train myself physically and prepare mentally to go for atleast one of the Himalayan treks.  I have friends who have done this and i am proud of them.   I just want to join them next year and feel on top of the world.

There are thousand other ‘i-want-to’s’ but for now i will stick to these.   This is the first time i have set clear goals for myself and done so publicly.  So, there is no turning back this time!  Best of luck to me!

Travel Wisdom

Recently acquired wisdom:

- Mobile charger is like a mistress.  Men love to take it everywhere especially while traveling!

- Everyone on a bus looks like a creep for the first 20 minutes!

- It is hard to decide whether you are irritated or amused by the constant chatter at the seat behind you!

- If traveling by bus, you might pick up some hilarious lines/songs from a regional movie!

- Never board a bus on a full stomach…The rate at which other around you empty theirs will make your stomach go through a major upheaval!

- Sometimes you are so bored that you cannot sleep and then you call up a friend and beg him to bore you to sleep!

- Its good to be back home…to your own toilet seat!

An attempt not earnest!

I am a big Oscar Wilde fan but until yesterday, I hadn’t watched any stage production of his plays. So, when I heard that Evam was bringing ‘The Importance of Being Earnest: a trivial comedy for serious people’ to Bangalore I was, understandably, quite excited.

 

I managed to catch this play on Sunday [January 11] at Ranga Shankara. The electric atmosphere at the venue, huge crowd, an interesting introduction and the slow and mystical dimming of the lights before the start of the play promised a great experience. But promises are seldom fulfilled; and this production was no exception.

 

Without getting into too much detail, I will just list down the wonders and blunders.

 

Starting with the positives:

 

- The script: Thankfully, was original. They didn’t try to get too creative here and let Wilde be wild and we sincerely thank the Evam team for that. I feel every line in the play is a gem, if only the actors had done justice to them. I remember whispering along some lines to myself with more passion than the actors on stage!

 

- Performances: Though most of them are forgettable, and the sooner one forgets the better, a mention must be made of the actor playing Lady Bracknell. She was in her elements as the snobbish, arrogant but proper Victorian aunt to Algernon Moncrieff. She did complete justice to her role and was the only one comfortable with the language and British mannerisms that the play demands.

Unfortunately, I do not know the names of all the actors, as, even though the cast and crew took a bow at the end of the play; they weren’t introduced to the audience. But I guess, Lady Bracknell was played by Shannon.

 

Coming to the negatives:

 

- Dance sequences: The play had two dance sequences; one with Jack and Gwendolen and the other with Algernon and Cecily. Both were poorly choreographed and terribly executed and, as far as I could see, not even integral to the script. As my friend put it, the dances reminded her of the physical education drills in school! Not sure if they were trying to elicit some laughter and claps through their poor dancing skills since the acting hardly got them any! I would have been happy to see a sincere effort, if not perfection, on stage. Maybe some of them should just follow the simple rule, ‘Have two left feet; will not dance on stage’.

 

- Sets: The sets were mediocre and the time taken to change them between acts was unbelievable. Also, the flower pots used for the garden scene were dirty and shabby.

 

- Performances: Karthik, as Algernon Moncrieff, could have definitely done better. His comic timing was not really bad but I think the lack of English mannerisms, was his biggest negative. In the dance sequence with Cecily, he looked and acted like a hero out of a B-grade Hindi movie.

I do not know the name of the actor who played Cecily but she was horrendous quite bad. She had no stage presence, comic timing, throw of voice and her overall performance was extremely lifeless and mostly irritating.

The other performances were average.

 

I have generally heard good things about Evam but, ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ was the first play by the troupe that I watched and one can see that they have not made a good impression. I found the merchandise they were selling more exciting than the play!

I will not forget!

 

Life hasn’t changed much. Unless, one considers a new route to work as significant change. There are traffic jams, horns blaring, people cursing, trucks rambling leaving a dense trail of smoke behind and autorickshaw drivers… well, they being themselves. Oh! I forgot to mention one small change..I find myself in the middle of all this sitting in my car, fingers gripping the steering wheel tightly and my eyes welling up with tears. At this point, I might as well admit that this has started happening since November 26, 2008.

 

Bombay! A city so near yet faraway! I have always wanted to visit this city of dreams but somehow never managed to. Every time my friends invited me to visit them in Bombay, I would reply, “I will come only if you promise to take me to Leopold’s”. You guessed it right; I had read ‘Shantaram’ by then. Little did I know that a couple of others had the same idea, of stopping by Leopold’s..only in their case, with AK-47s!

 

November 26,2008- The city of Bombay was under siege. The terrorists had struck once again and this time it was something that the world had never seen before! I followed the news on television at home and on internet at work. It felt like someone had come into my house and was killing my loved ones indiscriminately and I was helpless to do anything to protect them!

 

- Policemen firing from .303 rifles in answer to AK47s

- The NSG commandos being transported in BEST buses

- Irresponsible coverage by the media

- The horror stories narrated by those lucky to be alive

- The plight of the loved one’s of those who were not so lucky

- Two years old baby Moshe crying for his mother

- The death of our brave fighters

- The apathy of the government

- And, the iconic Taj hotel in flames

 

Will I ever get over all this? Will I ever be able to laugh again without a sense of deep loss lurking underneath? Will I ever be able to vote knowing that the politicians do not give a hoot about this country? Will I ever reconcile to the fact that we are not wanted outside and are unsafe in our own country? Will I ever stop feeling angry? Will I ever stop hurting? Actually, I do not want any of these to happen. I do not want to forget and do nothing this time… I am feeling helpless and do not know what I will do yet, but I know one thing for sure ….I will not forget!

The War

I had noticed the infiltration a long time back and was keeping a close eye on their movements. I was determined not to do anything drastic unless there was an emergency.

Then I declared a war; for a ceiling full of cobwebs definitely qualified as an emergency and called for drastic cleaning measures. Armed with a can of Mortein in one hand and a broom in the other, I climbed the treacherous steps on the ladder and aimed the spray at every spider I could find. I then whacked one with the broom and watched it fall on the ground. That’s when I noticed some movement below and realized that the spiders were just a ruse; the real enemy was on the ground.

An army of roaches marched into my room from the small crack between the door and the wall. One against so many, but I did not lose courage. My position on the ladder gave me a good view of the battle ground. The roaches had now divided themselves into two smaller troops; one marched towards the east and the other on to the south west. I debated about calling Captain Mom from the kitchen camp, with additional ammo but decided precious time would be lost. I shook the can of Mortein to take stock of the ammo left and quickly descended from the ladder and launched a spray assault on the eastern troop and a broom attack on the south-western one. After a fierce battle, victory was mine.

I removed all traces of filthy cobwebs and swept the gory remnants of the war. I surveyed my clean room, and in that space of 300 sqft, I felt…. patriotic!

Incredible India!

The Living Room

The Living Room [TLR] has been on my ‘must visit’ list for the last one month. And I am not talking about ‘the living room’, ‘the bathroom’, ‘the kitchen’, ‘the bedroom’ kind of exhibitions that one sees Kanteerava Stadium playing host to. So, this Sunday afternoon when AL called up to confirm our plans for the evening, I suggested we check out TLR.

The Living Room is an ultra-modern Xbox gaming lounge, which consists of eight ‘living rooms’ made up of plush sofas, coffee tables and large flat panel TV’s connected to Xbox 360 gaming consoles. These are also connected through LAN to enable group play. The exposed brick walls, dim lights, black sofas and wooden floors lend a very New York feel to the entire place.

The place was quite empty and only one living room was inhabited. We were greeted by Mohan, the co-owner of the place, and I told him point blank, if we were expected to sit quietly I would do a right about turn and head straight out of that place. He assured us that we could make as much noise as we wanted and noisier the better…. that set the tone for the evening!

I haven’t been on the gaming scene for a long time and let AL pick the games. The first one that we played was ‘Unreal Tournament’, a FPS [first person shooter] game and I quickly realized shooting was not among my better skills and in dire need of some familiar grounds, promptly switched to NFS [Need for Speed], hoping to take that smirk off AL’s face. Bad choice! The “Duke” controllers don’t quite behave like the PC keyboard, and I had absolutely no control on the cars and went around blaming my cars for being ‘drunk’. AL had started to enjoy himself, and being the magnanimous gamer he his, allowed me a few handicaps and still beat me in all the rounds.

One hour gone and I hadn’t done enough screaming and shouting and, more importantly, hadn’t drawn any blood; I was feeling quite depressed. Then came Rohit, the other co-owner, and suggested we try Soul Calibur IV. I had nothing to lose so I promptly agreed.

Soul Calibur IV is a fighting game and the goal is to defeat your opponent by depleting his or her health bar or knocking the opponent out of the “ring”. For the first game AL chose to be Yoda and I was Tira. I KO’ed [knocked out] AL in two consecutive rounds and the screaming and name calling started in earnest. We were beginning to really enjoy ourselves. After twelve rounds, with different characters, we were tied and played a decider in which I beat AL…Whoopeeeee!

We tried a couple more games; Kung Fu Panda and Fight Night and ended our evening with a few rounds of FaceBreaker. The cartoon style boxing game that allows one to break the opponent’s bones had us in splits and screaming for blood in equal measure. Sparrow [Me] beat Kekoa [AL] in all the three rounds, and now I couldn’t keep the smirk off my face!

So, if you are bored of the malls, cafes and movies, grab a few friends, put your feet up, order in burgers and pizzas [Yes! They allow you to do that], get gaming and feel right at home in ‘The Living Room’.

Official website: www.thelivingroombangalore.com

Chick lit-aholic Anonymous

Hi! My name is Manjari and, I am a chick lit-aholic. Yes, I am addicted to chick-lit.

I have had a very normal childhood and have a nice family and great friends. As far as I know, there is no history of this addiction in my family.

I haven’t always been like this and my reading pattern used to be normal. As a child, I read children’s classic, went on adventure trips with the ‘famous five’, deciphered codes with ‘secret seven’, hero-worshipped the ‘hardy boys’ and aspired to be the next door ‘Nancy Drew’.

In my high school years, I discovered the world of Danielle Steele, Sidney Sheldon, John Grisham, Dickens and Jane Austen. I never had my identification number printed on any of the Mills&Boons books that were so much in demand in the local circulating library.

From objectivism to black humor, from drama to thrillers, from warfronts to courtroom scenes, from Indian authors to Irish ones, I read books to broaden my horizon.

And then I discovered chick lit! The sassy heroine, with pointed stilettos, sharp mind and a sharper tongue, whose idea of an investment is always a new pair of shoes or a fancy purse, who has had a string of broken relationships, who invariably has either a jerk or Adonis for a boss and an enviable group of friends, and for whom all-always-ends-well, was someone I could relate to. I devoured these novels like one devours a double cheese pizza after months of dieting.

I read one, then I read a second and then I kept on reading. The books by the likes of Khaled Hosseini, Hemingway and Amitava Ghosh started gathering dust. I always promised myself that this will be my last chick-lit novel and I will get back to some serious reading. I failed miserably and that’s when I realized, chick-lit is like potato-wafers…‘you just can’t have one’!

The addiction has escalated to such a level that my eyes scan only books with stilettos, martini glasses or man-on-a-leash covers in bookstores. I then hide these books between others and when the cashier gives me those knowing looks, I pretend that the novels are for a ‘friend’.

Earlier I used to participate in conversation which revolved around autobiographies of women in the middle-east or war-wives but now, I have no interest unless it is about a 20-30 years old high achiever, shopaholic, wine drinking and ‘almost single’ woman.

So, I decided to join CA [Chick lit-aholic Anonymous]. Today is my first session here and I must say it’s a little overwhelming to see the mountain of Shakespearean tragedies, prose and biographies that have been collected here for us to read in the coming months as a cure for our addiction. The young man [!], who spoke before me, left every pair of eyes moist with his heart wrenching accounts. I am sure we, as a group, will keep faith and motivate each other to overcome this difficult phase of our reading lives.

Keep faith and we shall overcome!!

Thank You!

Ahem… Someone thrust a pamphlet at the beginning of this session…offering… er….a 15% discount on…*coughs*… ‘The Zoya Factor’ and ‘Trust Me’. Can you please see me at the end of this session?

Safety and Spray

On Tuesday, when our usual group headed to the cafeteria for lunch, we noticed some spray cans displayed at the promotional counters. There were nice looking black/red and white/ violet cans with names ‘Spike’ and Venom’ and my first thought was “Why is our office selling deodorant spray?” On a closer inspection though, we realized, ‘Venom’ and ‘Spike’ were not some corny names for deodorant sprays but self-defense [pepper] sprays. The group immediately lost interest and moved on to grab a table leaving CS and me to do some research on the merits of the products. One of our lunch-time conversations some time back was around pepper sprays, so we were quite thrilled to see them in office.

We grilled the salespersons, watched videos on how the spray worked and tested some dummy pieces. We were told that spray contains Oleoresin Capsicum and Propanol and can be sprayed from a distance of seven feet. They also explained the correct and most effective technique of using the cans; gripping it firmly, using the thumb to spray and aiming at the assailant’s eyes causing temporary blindness that can last for an hour. The cans also have a specially designed ‘easy lock’ actuator to prevent accidental spraying and ‘quick open and release’ mechanism keeping in mind the limited time available to defend oneself. We decided to pick one each and were told that we were the first ones to buy them since morning. That took us by surprise as we thought these sprays could be pretty handy in difficult situations and people would buy them. The next day too we were told the response had been really pathetic. That got us thinking and here is the list of reasons that we could come up with for people not buying the sprays and our take on them:

- The sprays were expensive, priced at Rs. 260 and Rs. 300 for 35ml and 40ml bottles – safety and security should not be weighed by price tags

- People didn’t need them- Right! Which planet did you come from? Haven’t you been reading and hearing horror stories about robberies, mugging, rape etc. Just because it hasn’t happened to you yet doesn’t mean it never will

- They already know/are learning some art of self-defense- Good, you are on the right track but you could definitely use additional ammo

- They generally hang out in groups- made of superheroes?

- Buying the sprays will somehow trigger an untoward incident – do we have a cure for superstitions yet?

- Its illegal to carry and use pepper sprays- The box mentions self defense is admissible under IPC section nos. 96, 97, 102, 105, 106 subject to case specific legal interpretation

- The assailant is normally after valuables and will grab the purse in which one carries the canister- are they always after purses? is that the only threat?

There is nothing much we could do beyond spreading the word around. We could also see that the salespersons were really thrilled that we had bought the sprays and were so enthusiastic that the next day, when we passed by, they asked us if we had used our bottles? I was like, “Yeah right! I went around inviting people to mug me just to try the pepper spray on them!” They had also tried selling a slightly more expensive canister the previous day saying that it was prettier and we were aghast, as the last thing on our mind was packaging aesthetics!

So, now CS and I have less ‘pretty’ pepper spray cans and I seriously hope that we never have a need to use them!

Mid-week Holiday: The Inner Conflict