Pieces of the Puzzle

I have been working like a worker bee (for the lack of better example for hard-working beings). I am totally surprised at myself. I didn't realize I could sit in my cubby hole designing roads after the sun set. We have a system where we work an extra hour every day and take alternate Fridays off. At one point I couldn't fathom myself actually working on my Friday off. Forget that, lately I have been even working on weekends. Next thing I know, someone actually called me workaholic. I wouldn't have winced if I were called an alien.

But you see, I am gaining a lot of worthwhile experience and thoroughly enjoying what I am doing working 12-13 hour days. You would think my boss is breathing down my neck at this moment. No, I write this in perfect sobriety and in the tone of an enthusiastic geek. I am not even regretting the fact that I can’t call friends or party or blog or paint or read books or cook or clean bathrooms or do laundry (ermm... this list actually is making me glad about staying this late on a Friday night). Heck… I am not even regretting the fact that I have to wear nerdy glasses now for all that eye damage (Can I ask for worker’s comp?). But what I regret is this phone call-

Nowadays Pi has realized that to get my attention while at work, he has to be really creative. "How is it going?" will be met with a non-enthusiastic-almost-at-the-verge-of-nervous-breakdown "What do you mean- how is it going.. Don’t you know I have work to do…blah blah.. Ok, Gotto go!" *bang*

Back to the fateful phone call,

Hubby (from home, ebbing with enthusiasm): Congrats!

Me (thinking we got someone’s socks in our laundry): Tell tell! (as you can see, I am intrigued easily)

Hubbs: Your credit card bill is at an all time low!!! You haven’t charged anything this month. Great job.

WHAT?!! Now I am highly enraged and guilty! All this overtime money and no time to spend it?! I need to get out more, get a life! Basically, I need to shop.

Pulling out credit card, typing- www.amazon.com.

One inch, is what I told her. When she spun my chair around to face the mirror, one inch was what was left. I looked like a retard from a recent trip to Thirupathi. Or worse like a cross between a balding German Shepherd and Hilary Clinton. Remember these words of wisdom, my friend - When a short haircut goes haywire, going shorter is not the solution. Grow it out. You will look like a demented wet sheep for a while, but it will eventually pay off. The long lustrous mane will bounce back to original length to make you look slightly more demure than Shahrukh Khan in Ashoka.

Next morning, I saw a banshee and almost got a heart attack. Calmed my agitated self when it was brought to my notice that the mirror reflected the mirror’s observer- me. However much I tried, I couldn’t get the hair to follow Newton’s law of gravity. Gel, oil, mucus… everything was slathered! I stuck a few pins, and wrapped my head with scarves. Much better.

My colleagues are nice people. I will trust them to come up with some compliment for this piece of art on my head. When I had grotesque clothes on, they praised my color sense. When I heated spoilt sambar in the microwave, they went ‘hmmm.. yummy smell’. But no one said a thing about my hair till I couldn’t take the suspense anymore and asked them, ‘What do you think?’

‘I like it.’ She says, almost wishing I wouldn’t give it to her. ‘You look settled,’ says another.

‘Settled? As in a woman? As in married?? As in mom with kids??? YIKES!!!"

So I go and pick another barber to cut it shorter and make me look younger. Younger is what I went for last time around too.

Long story (hair) short, I have finally agreed with myself to be in transition phase. I will just hibernate. I will grow out my hair and definitely not meet anyone till my keratin fibers reach my shoulders. No parties and no video shoots. *popping Vitamin E pills and checking growth with vernier calipers*

I used to look up to you as a kid and now things have changed dramatically. I grew taller. I can never thank you enough for being what you are for me- the best big sister.  You made the mistakes, and I learnt from them. You set the standards really low, so everything I did was a big achievement in the family. My first step, my first bicycle ride, even that fact that I managed to barely scrape through high school. I even got things I didn’t ask for. You fought tooth and nail for the BSA SLR, while I was handed the Street Cat without even having to wince. You rallied hard and strong for a study table, and they bought two instead and put one near my bed. (Frankly speaking, I wouldn’t consider that as a perk.)

You wanted to go to an engineering college away from home. They protested, you cried. They finally relented after making you sign a 20 page pact, but they drove me to the same college in a black limousine 3 years hence. You were notorious in college, always getting into trouble. I was the apple of their eye even when I was fined for vandalism in the college premises. You changed your branch from coveted Electronics to lowly Civil Engineering in the middle of a semester giving them a heart-attack. While I was praised to the skies for wanting to make it big in Computer Science. You joined some unheard of Civil Company while I got into Microsoft like many. But back home, I was an instant celebrity.

Thanks my dear sister, for being what you are and what you will be.

You did get married against their wishes. You paved way for me, I thought, much to my delight. But alas, you did not do enough damage as they are angry with me for the first time in their lives. It's too much to deal with and I'm traumatized. O’ Sister, why did you NOT pick a Mallu non-Brahmin for your husband?

Pissed,

Li'l bro Beta

A bachelor’s party before the wedding doomsday

Before your first day at school you got a Milky Way

A cancer that started off as a Cindy Crawford mole

They close the bowling alley just when you are on a roll

Like your last meal before the death row penalty

You dig into the chocolate dessert to realise it is salty

Your perfect location for solitude attracts a crowd

The way a silver lining leads to the gloomiest cloud.

So….

I refuse to admire the brilliant orange, red and yellow

I’ll not applaud when nature performs it's best show

I shall tear my eyes away and close my gaping mouth

'Coz I know winter is coming and I can’t go south.

If I hadn’t I chanced upon Madhu’s site and drooled over the picture of Tao Hoo Pad Bai Kaprao, I would have mistaken it for another swear word the Vietnamese pedicurist uses on me. That’s a whole different story. Someday.

Frankly I have never ever used basil leaves or white pepper or for that matter shallots in cooking before, but hey! Recipe is the bible and Madman (No, I didn’t just abuse him- He calls himself that) is God. You kinda trust a guy who owns a restaurant. Never question a dentist when he is drilling your tooth (the fact that you can’t speak at that time has nothing to do with my theory).

‘I hope you make more of this dish’, said Pi when he looked at the bill that included the Wok, the big dabba of white pepper and half a gallon of peanut oil. He hadn’t even tasted it yet and I could already see positive vibes.. Aha! I combed the whole town to get the freaking shallots. I distinctly remember what shallots are… they are dry fruits inside shells. Forget I even mentioned that, coz when I did find the shallots- they were nothing but miniature onions!! Jeez Madhu, why the hell couldn’t I use plain ol onions? I wouldn’t have minded discarding ¾ of a large onion if need be.

Armed with everything other than light soy sauce (here, I become a little adventurous and wild- I use dark soy sauce instead), I start my project only to realize it's easier than I thought. The hunting is the more difficult part, the wise one had once said. I am already in the last step even before I started. I hope this still qualifies for an exotic dish. Now I get slightly worried, but I decide not to share the recipe with anyone. I’ll just say, it's too difficult to explain. Problem solved. Unperturbed, I throw in the basil leaves and I pick up my novel while I wait for it to wilt. It takes 5 seconds… never mind! Needless to say, it was a howling success and I can only hope and pray that Madhu will help me to finish the white pepper… or else its going to be Tao Hoo Pad Bai Kaprao for every meal without Tofu & Basil (both being shit expensive!).... with idli on the side.

I am thankful for Lovely Bones. Alice Seabold is a very charming writer and has done a wonderful job in expressing human emotions through her characters that come to life almost instantly. She aims to shock at the same time relate. The book definitely kept me away from everything else I had planned for that Sunday. I had to know if they found Susie’s killer. Don’t worry people, I haven’t killed any suspense of the book. The book itself starts with Susie telling us, "I was fourteen when I was murdered on ….." It made me sit upright till I finished what Susie had to say from her heaven. Susie Salmon was brutally raped and murdered and was the last victim of a serial killer. Seabold leaves out the graphic and sordid details. She doesn’t make you sick with grief, but rather she makes you want to reach out to her family members who try to pick up the pieces of their lives after her death.

The story is from the perspective of the little girl, Susie, who cannot let go of her life even though her niche in heaven is all she wanted during her stay on earth. She has Vogue and Glamour as textbooks and in her school in heaven and the boys don’t pinch her butt. But she longs for her family and wants to kiss Ray Singh again. Her soul wanders around watching her distraught dad desperate to find her killer. She envies her sister, Lindsey, for leading a life she never could, but is proud of her fortitude. Susie helplessly looks on as her mother drifts away from the family, unable to cope with the tragedy. Her kid brother, Buckley, will never understand why there is a void in his life.

The most touching moments are when the father remembers the time he spent with his daughter building little sail ships inside the bottle. Susie was his only child who loved his crazy hobby. You cannot help, but cry for the mother who is fighting to find her real identity and in the process hurts herself even more. Susie wants her family to move on and stop crying over her, but as times goes she yearns for the mention of her name every now and then. Its not a very easy thing to let go and move on.

It is a sad and depressing book, I agree.. but it is emboldening and very real, the recounting filled with innocence… the voice of a child. Lovely Bones is a book that is compelling, spooky, heartbreaking, sometimes funny and definitely worth it. I am a sucker to good endings and I feel Alice Seabold has done justice to it…unlike my recent reads, Da Vinci Code or The Namesake (both recommended).

Never done a book review before. I give a book to Patrix and let him do it. I have always wanted to tell you all about this book and Toinks just instigated me.

I am lucky to be still employed in spite of some people’s repeated efforts to frame me and get me kicked out.

Today’s day at work. I check my hotmail (where I get only junk), 2 yahoo ids (make that 3), one gmail (only Smiley and Lee write to me there), one angelfire (from which they deleted all my mails), one more yahoo id (to threaten unsuspecting souls under fake name) and my office mail. So, here I am minding my own business unmindful of my boss telling me to work and shit like that when I get the melodious ‘ting’ noise. Excited as hell, I know it’s an email that too not an official one. Gosh! What a productive day! I open it with all ebbing enthusiasm the four soft walls of my cube will allow. I even manage to muffle a rapturous laugh.

The email is from my friend. It’s a forward. So I yawn and curse him a little in very mild language. But I am courteous and curious, so I still open it to see to what level he can actually stoop. I want to know what disease I'd be affected with when I ignore this mail so that I can alert my medical insurance. I’ve already stocked medicines for astigmatism, gingivitis, african bora bora and just in case, I've also purchased an extra kidney in black.

So I click to this link. I have to spot 10 differences in the two similar pictures. My friend claimed to have spotted only 7. This is so very Champak! What next, I thought, join the dots to form a Donald Duck? Jeez, how juvenile! But like I mentioned, I am courteous and bored, so I decide to take up the challenge. There is sweet sober music that actually makes me sleepy.

Immediately I go to get some water from the water fountain leaving the screen as it is.

When I come back, there are agitated people crowding around my cube. Some colleagues are catering to an old lady who has just had a mini heart attack. Many more guys are making their way to my area. ‘What the heck was that?!!! Sounded worse than your laugh, Alpha!’

 Here, try it at your own risk!

I was still reeling with this embarrassment when our Admin guy hands out a stack (80 pages) of papers. ‘Alpha, there’s something really crazy going on. You are getting all this junk fax from someone. The fax machine has run out of paper! I put some in and there’s more coming!’

‘Junk fax? No way! I didn’t ask for the Bible to be faxed. Cant be for me!’ Yes way! The first sheet was an email format (like a forward) with the sender’s name, say Jane Fonda and a message saying’ This was too funny not to forward’. I don’t know who Jane Fonda is, but I do know she has the worst sense on humor. I saw my full name on the top of every sheet and with loads of undecipherable crap.. like some weird code language. And interspersed between the lines was the only legible word- Iraq. *gulp*

The pages kept coming…126…179….370….

No amount of stopping and starting the fax machine was working. Unrelenting fax message. So while the IT guys were alerted and the big shots in my company, who are supposed to receive some real serious fax, were pacing up and down, I was squirming in my seat hoping to God that Saddam Hussain wasn’t sending me a plea in Arabic. Oh well! He seems to have a lot to say.

While I was squirming, I googled for Jane Fonda and I got a lead… Tadaa! A very familiar company in Canada. I made a frantic call to Starfest (we all know her for her smartness). ’Hey! Does Jane Fonda work in your firm?’

‘Yes..why?’

‘Why the heck is she sending me a huge fax?’ I was unaware of the absurdity of that statement.

‘Fax? No, I sent you an email which she forwarded to me.’ said Star obviously thinking I had some Vodka for lunch.

‘Something about Iraq?’

‘Yes. But it was an email.. not a fax.’

Aha! The quest narrows down. So it was Star!! ‘Ok what the heck? How did it get to the office fax machine?’

I was shocked at the revelation. It can actually happen when you think my email id is my fax number. She sent a video clipping to me by fax!

By hook or by crook (read- by email or by fax), they all get me!!!!!!!

Grrrr… Now how do I get this fax to stop? ‘ermm..heh heh.. Mr. Gilbert, do you want to tell the client to send your fax to my husband’s office? I can bring it tomorrow!

‘I think you should wear jeans and this T-shirt thing more often.’

‘Wow Ajji (granny), you are so cool!’ I said beaming and proud that my granny was suddenly beginning to have a modern outlook towards life.

‘These kinda clothes will ward away the evil-eye.’ she was quick to clear all misconceptions.

________________________________________________________

‘You look like a Barbie doll today’

*blush*

’Ajji has never seen a Barbie doll before,’ my brother clarified breaking my bubble.

________________________________________________________

Granny is generally a healthy woman for her age *touch wood* who just had an appendicitis operation. Poor thing! She has recovered now but she was obviously shaken and could not fathom why it had to happen to her. ‘Just one more day and my stomach would have burst,’ she loved to tell people who showed any concern about her health almost choking with emotion. In the most serious tone, with tears welling she professed confidently , ‘There should have been five deaths in the family, but He averted them’.

The five should-have-been-deaths were that of my dad, one far away aunty hospitalized for back ache, my mami and my cousin who had a minor accident and of course, herself. Jeez! She can be so morose.

She has nine kids.. Nine freaking kids! But the love and concern she shows for all of them and their spouses and their children makes me wonder if she ever did anything else with her life other than strive for her family. Probably not, but aren’t we eternally thankful for that.