In Pursuit of the Idiosyncratic

So here’s the deal. Idiosyncrasies make a person interesting, or so I’m told. Agreed.

I can’t deny that I love watching my colleague kissing his fountain pen (no puns) every time he starts writing...and refusing to sign anything, even group birthday cards for other colleagues, if he can’t find a fountain pen. The logic being, ball point pens are not pens at all. Fair enough.

But apart from him, I can’t pin down anybody else who has an idiosyncrasy of some sort. And the fountain pen syndrome is far from being a true blue idiosyncrasy.
What about a person who doesn’t shave because he believes that hair is an extension of God’s love? Or the lady who married her dog, adopted his name as her middle name, took him on a honeymoon to Switzerland and left everything to him in her will? Now, these characters may well be fictitious but aren’t movies infested with idiosyncratic people? What about Dr. Evil’s account of his father in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery?

He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes, he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament.

Or for that matter, the pinky-sucking Dr Evil himself, whose account of his own childhood is:

My childhood was typical: summers in Rangoon ... luge lessons ... In the spring, we'd make meat helmets ... When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds — pretty standard, really. At the age of 12, I received my first scribe. At the age of 14, a Zoroastrian named Vilmer ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum — it's breathtaking ... I suggest you try it.

Or closer home, Dr. S. Asthana, played by the brilliant Boman Irani in Munna Bhai MBBS, who laughs when he is really angry and insists on calling himself Dr. S. Dot. Asthana.

Or even more close to home, Gobeshok Gobochondro Gyanotirtho Gyanorotno Gyanambudhi Gyanochuramoni, played by Santosh Dutta in Hirak Rajar Deshey, whose name, gait, profession, appearance and very existence define “idiosyncratic”.

Where are the Dr Evils and S.Dot. Asthanas and Gobeshoks of the real world?

Not sure about you, but I am so typical that I often fear that I may bore myself to death. I was better off when I was small. As a baby, I liked twisting one end of my mother's saree to make a pointed tip, and rolling it on my face. That’s how I went to sleep every day. I did not need my mother to sit beside me and sing me lullabies or read me stories, as most other children did. I just needed that ONE particular saree. This continued to an age when it was no longer cute or funny. One day, my mother hid the saree and told me that she had thrown it away. My child psyche couldn’t handle the shock and I developed a peculiar reaction. I started fluttering my eyelids constantly...all day...for many days. Concerned, my teachers in school reported it to my parents, who took me to a doctor. On careful investigation it was found that it linked back to the shock of being forcibly detached from that saree. Helpless, my mother returned it to me and the fluttering stopped magically. Eventually I outgrew that habit, thank god.

As an adolescent, I insisted that my two ponytails aligned perfectly and were of equal shape, size, height etc. So much so, that I had a ruler beside the mirror and when Ma was done with my hair, I would measure the alignment. At the cost of missing my school bus, I made her open and re-tie my hair in that perfect straight line that I wanted.

I was such a fine idiosyncratic baby and adolescent; so what suddenly happened when I reached adulthood? True, I like my toast burnt and my nails clipped so short that you would think I have some sort of a disease. But nothing close to a peculiarity that “only the genius possess”.

That makes me sad. Real sad, believe you me.
So KG, Manikarn, Debanjana, Madmax tell me about your idiosyncrasies (or the lack of it). Surely you are doing better than me in that field.

Dil to Bachcha Hai Jee

After years, even a decade perhaps, found a song that feels like sunshine on a naughty river. It’s like that warm sunlight that makes me happy no matter where and how I meet it. Whether I am sitting on the terrace of my grandmother’s 18th-century house, amidst poppadums and pickles....or on a beach looking at happy lovers holding hands and sharing candy floss, sunlight always makes me happy.
So does this song.

When the rest of the world seems to be gushing about the latest in sound technology, digitally morphed voice tones that sound almost robotic, this song uses the most archaic of musical instruments...flutes and even a harmonium I think. Its utterly hummable melody reminds me of an abandoned tree trunk...untouched, raw, unpolished, yet majestic in its sheer strength of character.

It woos me with the innocence of a black and white Bollywood movie:
...when heroines were still coy and heroes were content writing pages of poetry on their beloved’s eyelash...
...when “sweet” was more attractive than “sexy” and “melody” reigned over “beat”...
...when songs were songs and not item numbers...
...and music was happy being just the “food of love”...not a political statement or a voice of the materialistic world...
It takes me to such a time....

But today, when the sky was dark and sunshine was on a holiday, the song did something that it hadn’t done the numerous other times I listened to it. It made me think...it made me sad.

Old age doesn’t scare me. But what if I am too young to understand it? What if I am naive in not being scared? As if aching joints and coughing all night weren’t bad enough...life in old age is like living in a courtroom. You wear red...the world will call you garish and unsophisticated. You enjoy food...the word will call you gluttonous. You fall in love...the world will prosecute you with the meanest of comments.
What if this isn’t a happy song at all?
Can someone please listen to it and tell me if it's supposed to be sad or happy?

Koi to rokey, koi to tokey
Is umra mein ab khao ge dhokey
Dar lagta hai ishq karne me jee
Dil to bachcha hai jee

Snail in our Mail

If you thought that that our family was 11 of us only, you were wrong.

Our mailbox is home to a family of snails. They think our mails are their meals. I think their favourite dish is important bank documents. Our pin numbers and bank statements are digested and excreted overnight. All that is left of those is the ANZ Bank logo. They don’t seem to like the junk mail at all. The fliers from cheap Chinese restaurants in the neighbourhood....or the price list of the local grocery shop are left untouched. It’s just the mails with our names on it that they like. This makes me sure that it’s a conspiracy. They do it deliberately. If paper was food, surely they wouldn’t let go of the colourful brochures, which look (and maybe even taste?) much better than the bland looking bank documents. But no. They want to chew our financials. True, our savings account balance is $0.00 (after buying this house). But come on. Some respect? At least leave the “minimum balance due” and the “due date” intact?

We have to call up the banks and redirect our mails to our office addresses. But the softy that I am, I don’t want to starve them. So I have decided that after I pay the bills, I will put them back in the mailbox for the snails.

If Sister Anne Mary (of Loreto convent) was reading this, she would know that I may never have memorised the Christmas carols, but I was paying attention to “All things bright and beautiful...all creatures great and small”.

But most importantly, I hope the snails realise what a kind lady I am and leave my “End of season VIP shoe sale discount vouchers” alone, which I was told by the shoe shop had already been dispatched and cannot be redirected. I have spent thousands of dollars all year to win these (and that explains our savings balance too). If anything happens to them, the “creatures great and small” better have their tombstone ready.

Graphic - Courtesy Google.

Our family is growing...

And suddenly, we are a family of 11. Some of us...2 to be more precise, prefer to stay indoors. While the other 9, prefer the pond outside. Yes, we have a new house now....with our very own fish pond too!

Introducing 9 new characters in the Sen family. I apologise to them for not coming up with gender-based names; but I thought they would hate me even more if I held them out of water to inspect their bottoms to determine their gender (not sure if that’s where lies the secret):

Anarkali, Kathakali, Peyajkali - They are coy, Japanese coy (Koi)...and their names are part of an aquatic experiment to see if fish can get an identity crisis if they are named after legendary humans, dance forms and vegetables.

Katrina – The prettiest gold fish named after the Bollywood actress. No prizes for guessing who named her. If you know why I am forced to watch trash Hindi movies starring Katrina Kaif, you will pretty much know why we have one in our pond. She exercises all day (swims every second, while the others often float lazily, enjoying the sun and the moss). And really watches her diet (eats the least) to maintain that figure of hers. She may have won quite a few pond enemies and I am praying there are no cat fights in there. (Can fish have cat fights anyway? But I do have catfish in the pond too!)

Gupi and Bagha – The 2 catfish, rather shy. My tribute to the legend that Ray was....and hopes for some good song and drums for the pond mates. Again, not sure if fish enjoy song and drums. Maybe their version of it involves sending out bubbles of different shapes and sizes and creating ripples of varying lengths. Will need to watch them for a while to know.

Utpal Dutt – Another Japanese Coy (JC). Need some good quality sense of humour in the house, considering that Amit’s and mine are pretty rotten.

Dilip Kumar – JC, again. What’s a home without some drama?

Arjun Rampal – Another JC. I thought I needed some macho presence in the pond... to keep Katrina motivated and to stop fights and maintain pond peace.

So that's that. I have christened them now...and I already worry if they don't eat their food. True, I don't need to change nappies. But I still deserve a belated Mother's Day gift. Anybody listening?

Survival of the Fattest - Fat Fact 3

Always envied that dream dimple? Well, wait no longer. You can now have 10 dimples…not on your face, obviously.

But on the back of your hands (nails facing upwards). If you can gather enough fat so that the bones that join your fingers to the main bones of the hands are carefully hidden inside spongy fatty skin tissue, you can flaunt ten cute dimples!Yahoo!

For fat fact 2, visit:
http://scribblingawaytoglory.blogspot.com/2010/04/survival-of-fattest-fat-fact-2.html

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).