A Quick Round-Up

I’m nearing the end of my vacation now, and much has transpired between my last appearance on this miserable page and today. I’ve been gripped by a dreadful writer’s block, and heck! I’m not even a writer. Anyway, I’ve successfully finished my engineering in four consecutive years without any major lapses save 5 missing kilos and a few million strands of a fibre that its possessors call hair. I have wonderful memories of my stay in Varanasi and hope to pen them one day.

My stay at home has been loaded with stereotypes- and I won’t bore you with the regular stuff like tv soaps, Indian Idol, good food, etc. Perhaps the most exciting activity at home this time was revamping my loo and ‘westernising’ it. For years my sister refused to step into that bathroom because it was frequented by he-who-must-be-thrown-into-a-washing-machine, and revamping it and making it less offensive to the strong-nosed has hardly changed her stance.

The honeymoon years have ended, and with it has ended the freedom to dress in rags, move around in a barbaric beard, and not change clothes till you forget when you last changed them. Resultantly, I’ve been shopping actively for good clothes. Every shopping trip follows the same pattern. We enter any shop that says “Up to 50% off” (with the “up to” a billion times smaller than “50%”) and my role in these trips is strictly Presidential. That is to say, my clothes are picked by the trio of mom, dad, and sis, and my job is just to shake my assenting head.

I watched 3 movies this time- Metro, Cheeni Kum, and Aap Ka Surroor. For the uninitiated, Aap Ka Surroor stars the-one-and-thankfully-the-only Himesh Reshammiya. I couldn’t believe I paid to watch that movie, and I literally paid for it! It took me a Coke, popcorn, and a bulls-eye (a large chunk of cake bathed generously in chocolate sauce and topped with vanilla ice-cream costing as princely as it sounds) to digest the movie. The movie lasted two hours and was punctuated by a few official songs and a few nasally rendered -uh…hmm…okay let’s give him the benefit of doubt- songs, peppered throughout the movie. In fact if you have the habit of going out for a smoke or to the loo during songs, you might as well carry an extra pack or a portable urinal with you respectively. The best dialogue of the movie was Hanssika Motwani saying, “Mein duniya ki sabse lucky ladki hoon kyonki mere paas aapki ek smiling tasveer hai.” or something to that effect. She then pulls the photograph and shows it to him. For the benefit of my readers, here’s the closest match I could find on the internet.

TV was a little more exciting this time, with French Open, Wimbledon, and the Future Cup being telecast. I’ve always been amazed by the dresses women tennis players wear. Anna Kournikova’s presence on the tennis court used to be so Serena and Venus Williams have always been the torchbearers of on-court absurdity. Their weird hair dos and weirder dresses have made them look like escapees of an African zoo. Particularly this time, Serena’s clothes looked like she had run away from the middle of a rape.

Well, I have a lot more to tell you guys but it’s 1 am and I’m leaving tomorrow (or today for sticklers who don’t believe that ‘tomorrow’ starts only after waking up). I’m off to Bangalore to begin a new phase of my life- so I need all the aashirwaads, pats on the back, and kicks on butt that you can give me. I’ve been very careless by not updating this page often enough, and I can’t promise that I will be any more regular. But if you have a good internet connection and time on your hands just stop by my page once in a while- I’ll try not to disappoint.