My First Live Footy Game: A Not-So-Brief History

It would be fun to watch a game I did not understand and had no interest in, I thought. I could concentrate on the crowd and the food and could wear my Eskimo jacket that I can’t wear anywhere else unless I want to look retarded. In a stadium full of mad fans, no one would notice me...and even if they did, it’s an open stadium on a winter night; not totally different from the Arctic anyway.

Thanks to the new “Win tickets to AFL” initiative at work, we would finally get to watch a live match in the Subiaco Oval...something we always wanted to do, just for the experience (and also because Subiaco has the best restaurants).What? You seriously must be kidding if you thought I would actually carry homemade “dabba” with roti, dal and chicken curry to the stadium...or even homemade chicken sandwiches for that matter. And surely you don’t suppose that the burger and chips available inside the stadium at half time could fill me up for dinner. There you go...every finger was pointing towards a restaurant in Subiaco. What joy!

I had witnessed the AFL madness for the last 2 years... having shared my office cubicle with two Dockers fans who could sell their wives if they had to in order to see a game. There were at least a dozen others at work who chatted in the office kitchen every day, sharing notes, renewing their loyalty pledge for the purple team, showing off statistics like school kids at a quiz.

This bubble of excitement was punctured right when it was at its peak, by our Office Manager who thought she brought me good news. “By the way Deblina”, she said “hope you know that you have premium seats in the stadium and both Jack (MD) and Jill (CEO) will be there with their families to watch the game”.

And before you think that I work for Nickelodeon, where the MD and CEO are called Jack and Jill...let me assure you that those are pseudo-names for the purpose of this post.

WHAT! Both Jack and Jill would catch me at my dumbest best? I don’t even know who’s playing who....had been planning my dress and dinner instead! What the hell am I going to talk to them about? My Eskimo jacket? Shit. Shit. Shit.
I was covered in shit.

So I did what I do when am in trouble. I Googled. And there it was... “12,500,000 results”. That could keep me busy for the rest of my life! But with my post-graduation in “Skim Reading: 100 ways to read a little and know a lot”, I was sure I could do it. I could fool the University of Calcutta...I believed I could repeat that with Jack and Jill.

So after an afternoon of frantic research...brief history, rules, teams, players...I wasn’t looking too bad.

We took the train to Subi, as chances of getting a parking on a footy night was as strong as me playing for the AFL. The Peth station looked like Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus. And am not exaggerating like I usually do. Only difference was that it was painted purple. The Dockers fans in their purple jumpers, socks, scarves, t-shirts, caps, bags, wallets…even lipstick (trust me on this), were quite a sight. Amit and me were the only “plain clothed” passengers on the train. And now I stand corrected…Perth does not have a population of 400. It has at least a little more than 41,283 (the stadium attendance on the night). Little more than that I say, because I know 2 friends who have flu and could not go to the Oval that night.

With my head crammed with footy facts, I reached our seats. There there…I could already see Jolly, a company shareholder (again, not real name) from a distance…so Jack and Jill wouldn’t be far away. But Jolly did not know me, thank god for that.
In a few minutes, neither Jolly, nor the constant fear of seeing Jack and Jill mattered anymore. The game got addictive…the excitement, contagious. Beers were passed around like water bottles…Aussie swearing, and flags and whistles and cheering and all that it takes to make a spectator sport fun. And I ended up loving the game that I did not understand and had no interest in…

P.S. Turned out that Jack was out of station and Jill couldn’t make it either. So much for my cramming.

When the days are short and the nights are cold...

We know it's winter. But this year, May though it is, we were not convinced.

It's been like that for the last few weeks. The winter wardrobe was out already...washed and dusted and sun-dried almost. The leggings and scarves brought a dash of colour to my otherwise drab closet. The cute little hand knitted caps flaunted those flawless patterns we often see on knit-books. The black leather boots...the one I picked up from the Myer sale...the one that had the pretty laces near the calves...stood up straight, promising to keep me warm and comfortable...and also secretly assuring me that I need not shave my legs all that often.

The personalised twin thermos flasks that we kiss every morning, all through winter, all through our drive to work, till the last drop of coffee is licked from the lid...lay on the kitchen bench top....spotless and unsipped since last winter.

The electric blankets were fitted but not connected to the power sockets yet. The ugly stand-fans were replaced with the cosy room heaters that had not been brought to life either. They stood there waiting to show off their radiance and light.
The stage had been set. Yet there was something missing.

So while we were all asleep last night, the Heavens sprinkled some dressing on Earth. Magic fingers hovering over the masterfully cooked dish that lacked just a bit.

Yes, that’s what the first rains felt like.
Welcome winter.

Survival of the Fattest - Fat Fact 2

If your bum size is not big enough to be scary, you can never enjoy a Lazyboy leather recliner to its fullest potential.

If you can fill up the recliner with your body mass, every part of your body is in contact with that superbly smooth leather that feels like silk. For the lankier mortals, what do you plan to do with all that space between you and those luscious hand-rests? Grow weeds? Or build the next Pentagon?

For Fat Fact 1, visit:

http://scribblingawaytoglory.blogspot.com/2009/11/survival-of-fattest-grand-opening.html

Poyla Boishakh (Bengali New Year)

I never thought of Poyla Boishakh as a “date” really. It was always like the name of a festival like Bhai Phota or Holi. It was my favourite festival for long (as long as I was the youngest member of the extended family, to be more precise). And that was because our family, quite a run-of-the mill family otherwise, had a fantastic nobo borsho ritual which we called “thol-khoroch”.

How it worked:

Step 1 - Wear new clothes and reach Mejo Jethu’s place as early in the morning as possible (that was the only day of the year when didi or me did not need an alarm clock or an angry mother to get up from bed).

Step 2 – Keep a bag, preferably with many pockets and at least a zipper, ready at hand.

Step 3 - Bend down to touch the feet of anyone who is older (even if by a day).

Step 4 – Smile and stretch your hand to collect the “thol khoroch”, which could range from anything between Rs 5 (some miserly pishis) to Rs 50 (generous uncles or aunts with cataract who mistook the 50 rupee note for a 10).

Step 5 – Put it in your bag and add up (for the zillionth time) how much money you have made so far.

Step 6 – Close the bag and keep it with you at all times.

Step 7 – Scan the room/house for anyone who you might have missed…or anyone who you can approach the second time for the same purpose (old dadus with failing memories and a heart of gold were the best targets for this approach).

Step 8 – Stay away from cousins who are a few days/months younger. You never know, they might just drop at your feet for that crazy thing called money.

Step 9 – Call the relatives who haven’t yet arrived at the central venue and ask them to make it fast as you are already “missing them” too much.

Step 10 – Force your father to take you to the houses of those relatives who are sick (or just pretending to be sick).

Step11 – Come back to Jethu’s house and add the money for the final time in the evening.

Step 12 – Decide on a menu with your cousins and order home delivery. Tell the adults that you’ll would pay it with the money collected but quietly sneak away when the delivery boy arrives with the food and the bill.

Step 13 – Eat to your heart’s content while still holding on to your bag (the wicked cousins know that this is the best time to catch you off guard).

Step 14 – Form a committee of “We Have Been So Good All Year; So We Deserve A Raise And Will Not Accept Anything Less Than Rs 10 Next Year” and let the adults know about it.

Step 15 – Go back home and hit the bed, making sure that the bag is under your pillow (own siblings too cannot be trusted on matters such as these).

Years have passed since then and today Poyla Boishakh is about:

Step 1- Set a reminder to call people in India.

Step 2- Exchange wishes and “virtual” thol khoroch over the phone.

Step 3 – Go out to eat (if not too lazy or tired) and sound like your dadu who always said “those were the days…”

Cleaning Bras

It’s so annoying to know that school days are fun. Annoying, because my 1GB human memory hasn’t archived experiences from so long back. I try to tell myself that it’s good to travel light. But having forgotten your camera, and toothbrush, and medicines and slippers is not really “travelling light”. It’s like taking off in your thongs!

If it wasn’t for those school photographs that my mother preserved…where the whole class sat with the class teacher, in neat rows (in ascending order of height) I would have thought that I was born married. But apparently not.

These days, I get some more proof. I get flashes of those ancient days (surprisingly, they are not in black and white). Suddenly, on a lonely afternoon, I laugh out loud. I stumble upon a funny tale from those apparently fun days of pigtails and acne and heartaches and calculus and rolled-down socks and Maggie in lunch boxes and, God bless us, Home Science classes.

I am not sure why I took Home Science as my additional subject (I think Accounts was the only other option and I never really liked anyone or anything that asked me “where the money was spent”). Anyway, before making this life-changing decision (NOT) of selecting my additional subject, I spoke to a few seniors who had been there and done that. Just to get a view of what I was getting myself into.

Me: So what is it that you do in Home Science?
Senior: Oh, nothing much. We knit tea-cosies, lay dinner tables, bake muffins and clean bras.
Me (shocked): Clean bras!! Yuck. Whose bras?
Senior: Mostly Ms Sabarwal’s bras. But sometimes other teachers lend theirs too, if they are exceptionally dirty.
Me: Yuck Yuck! How can someone make you clean their bras? It’s so…yuck!
Senior: Well, I know. But we have no choice really. If we refuse, they will fail us.
Me: Am shocked and insulted! Knitting tea-cosies is stupid and archaic (who uses tea-cosies these days, anyway?)…but cleaning bras is outright degrading.
Senior: Yeah, but we are at their mercy.
Me: So you clean them with …err…your hands, and detergent?
Senior: Oh no no! That’s the first thing they will teach you. Detergent is not good for brass at all. We use Brasso.

(That’s when I first learned the importance of every “s” … and that detergent was indeed very bad for any metallic object at home, including those made of brass).

The Good Samaritan

There was a buzz in my ears and my head went light. There were strange creatures in my stomach…and my heart skipped a beat.
(No, I wasn’t about to experience the Mills-and-Boonsy first kiss. Have been married for 3 yrs…what were you thinking?)

It is just that being “good” sometimes makes you sick (especially if you are out of practice). This time, literally.

I had bravely volunteered to donate blood in response to an email at work, urging employees to be noble. Am sure the sudden popularity of vampires (thanks to Twilight and True Blood) has made blood donation pretty fashionable. But my reasons were different (am too old to buy vampire stories or santa clauses). I volunteered just for the experience…and of course, to feel good about doing something good.

It was pretty amusing in the start, especially answering questions like:

• Have you had male-to-male sex? (which was a compulsory question irrespective of your gender!)
• Have you ever been paid for having sex i.e. received gifts, cash etc? (Amit does give me flowers occasionally…does that count?)
• Have you had un-protected sex with multiple partners? (with my luck, NO!!)

Anyway, our group entered the Australian Red Cross office at 10.30am. We would be done by 11.30am at the most, we were told. We all had meetings to go back to. So we were donating two things really…our blood and our time. Having worked for some blood-sucking companies in India, this would be cake-walk.
Or so I thought!

After a formal round of interview with a handsome and kind Red Cross officer (I was beginning to reap the harvest of my noble work already), I had my blood pressure, blood iron content and body weight measured. What I lacked in the first two, I sufficiently made up in the last.

And then I lay in a reclining chair, watching Australian Open on a Plasma screen in front of me. There were at least 50 other people lying on similar chairs, elbows resting on colourful cushions and holding spongy balls to squeeze on to ensure a rhythmic flow of blood. You could make out between first timers like me, who clinched their fists and put in more effort than needed to look relaxed. And then there was the “been-here-done-this” category who chatted and laughed with the nurses.

I was doing pretty well, I was told. Except one time that my blood flow wasn’t enough and the nurse told me to change the rhythm at which I squeezed the ball (sounds pretty gross…but that’s exactly what he told me). So I changed the rhythm…and the happy corpuscles oozed out in joy, as if liberated from a body they didn’t fancy much.

When the 500ml pouch was filled to capacity, the needle was removed. I felt a funny buzz in my ears…and the cells on my face seemed to dance a little. But in 5 minutes, I was fine and I headed to the cafeteria for some refreshments.

I asked for a cold coffee…and the next minute, someone was telling me to quickly lie on the floor with my legs up on the chair. This rocks, I thought. Not only free refreshments, but a free body massage as well!! But before I realised, people started fussing over me. Someone fanned me…a colleague made sure my skirt wasn’t on top of my head in the incorrigible position (thank god I was wearing my tights underneath!)…someone said “Call a nurse”, while the one who was fanning me, snapped back “I AM a nurse”. I hadn't a clue what the chaos was about…but I couldn’t stop laughing either. A wheelchair arrived from somewhere and I sat on it, feeling happily dizzy. By this time, my colleagues had caught my contagious laughter…and I caught one of them holding her stomach while she laughed. At this, another nurse asked her “Are you feeling sick too?” And she couldn’t stop laughing to muster a decent reply.

Anyway, I left that chaotic scene on a wheelchair. I was taken to a small corner with curtains all around (guess that was because they didn’t want to scare off the other donors). They took my blood pressure, and it was considerably low. I had managed to stop laughing by now and stared at the blood pressure measuring machine, praying for some decent score. No luck, still. Seconds turned into minutes. I was forced to eat two chocolates (They said “It’s good for you”…wow, no one has ever said that before. I was falling in love with the place). After about 20 minutes, the monitor looked happy and I was allowed to go.

How my colleagues blackmailed me (with posting pictures on facebook, or at least the intranet, of me lying on the floor with my skirt up, laughing like one possessed) is another story. But they also said that just before I …errr…”took the floor” my face went white as paper and I did not respond to a question someone was asking me. How could I? I was concentrating on the buzz in my ears. That’s when they realised I was crankier than I usually am.

Only last week I was telling a friend that I haven’t been blogging for a while because nothing “interesting” seems to happen around me anymore. As they say, be careful what you ask for!

Since you left...

I could feel that glitter in your eyes…
When we changed continents to start afresh.
I know you are full of wonder…
At the new places we see…the new lives we live.

I know you watched me misty-eyed…
When I tied the knot and said my vows.
I know you blessed us heartily…
When we bowed before you that day.

I could sense your eyes widen with joy…
When Rai was born…and then Rio.
I can feel you stealing a smile…
When Rai recites a poem…and Rio breaks a toy.

I know your heart beamed with pride…
The first day I went to work.
Was it a different kind of pride?

When you saw me at my college awards?

I know you are amazed…
That didi is no longer skinny.
I know you are happy…
That your child is now a mommy.

I know you look after Ma…
As you said you would in your wedding vows.
She misses you for sure...
But you have made sure she is fine.

A lot has happened since you left…
Though it seems like just the other day.
But I know you have been watching over us all…
Then…before then…and always since then.

For Baba, who isn’t there in these happy photographs but has never really left our side.

Date:14.12.09 (8 years since you left)

All's not-well when it ends not-well.

The drive to work every morning follows the usual pattern of: cursing weekdays, yawns, coffee in my thermos, mints after the coffee, lipstick after the mints and the radio all through. Since I am not much of a newspaper person these days (never was, actually), my only dose of world affairs is the morning radio. Most often it is about another shark bite or skin cancer, but occasionally there is word about wardrobe malfunctions or celebrity separations. I never really take the news to heart…and my heart doesn’t wake up that early anyway.

But it did, last week.

After the familiar voice narrated all the familiar things, it mentioned something that jerked me out of my morning fuzzes. Apparently, there were 60 dead bodies in the Royal Perth Hospital that hadn’t been claimed over the last 8 weeks. There was growing concern among the hospital authorities on the cost, time and effort that would be necessary for the burial of these bodies, if none of the families came forward to take responsibility of the last rites. Authorities also reported that each year the number of unclaimed dead bodies was on the rise. There was reason to believe that families often abandoned the bodies of their relatives/friends as the cost of a funeral was far beyond what an average Australian family could afford. The Global Financial Crisis and unemployment had found yet another manifestation.

Shocked, angry, confused and mostly sad, I couldn’t help but think that in spite of all the progress and development that our generation takes credit for, the human race was getting farther away from being “humane”. Researchers have found burial grounds of Neanderthal man dating to 60,000 BC with animal antlers on the body and flower fragments next to the corpse indicating some type of ritual and gifts of remembrance. And here we are in the 21st century, abandoning our loved ones because “they wouldn’t know, anyway”.

And suddenly those annoying advertisements that urged everyone to get a funeral cover made so much sense: Naturally you don’t want to burden your family and loved ones with outstanding bills and funeral expenses if you were to pass away. With Funeral Expenses Insurance you can help make life easier for your family and loved ones should the worst happen to you.

The worst has happened I think. Not so much the death…but the life that is so helpless or selfish.

Survival of the Fattest – Grand Opening

Dear Readers,
Today is a special day. I introduce to you, my very own blog-serial called Survival of the Fattest. Through it I will share with you, on a regular basis, the joys of being on the wrong side of the weighing scale. Enough has been written on how good it feels to be slim and trim. Time for a different perspective.
Love,
Scribbler

Today's fat fact -
Fat fact 1: A big tummy won't let you paint your own toe nails.
But it doesn't let you see your own toe nails either, when you are standing straight. One less thing to think about. Imagine all the great things you could do with the extra time. Save the planet, perhaps?

December better hurry up!

I am so impressed with myself that you can safely avoid me for a while (I am basking in self-glory and my mind is filled with the two letter word that starts with M and ends with E).
Why?

Because I have done the unimaginable…the unthinkable…the unconceivable…the wondrous… the miraculous…the supremocious…the marvellonious…the astoundisauraus…the amazingopottanus…the incredibleccious….the astonishormous…(Yes, I have been interacting with my dinosaur-loving, human-attacking, 2.5 yr old nephew a lot these days).

I have made patishapta. You got it right. The “pithey” that heralds winter.

It’s another story that it is the beginning of summer in Australia…and it’s getting harder every day to eat anything at all, leave aside “pithey”.
Anyway, I wouldn’t let that take away any bit of my glory. I made patishapta…and it is a superb achievement from a kitchen-phobic like me.

I have been desperately waiting for December (that’s when my family comes to visit me…and I can take a long break), right from January this year. Now that it is almost here, I could wait no longer. I thought about all things that I associate with December…the woolens, the monkey cap, the school holidays, the socks and stockings, the bare trees, the cracked feet, the Nivea cold cream, the Christmas lights at Park Street and of course…pithey. Since it would be almost suicidal to wear a monkey cap during peak summer in Australia…or cover myself in cold cream, I reckoned that the only thing I could do to make December hurry up was to make “pithey”.

So I did.

The raw materials:

The process:

The outcome:

Now, December better hurry up.

P.S. If you are wondering that some chef has hacked my blog account and is posting cooking-related posts one after the other, let me assure you that my blog account hasn’t been compromised. I am just in a rare form. And no, I don’t have multiple personality disorder either. I still hate cooking.