When i was smaller and more malleable, mum often said — study now child, you cannot see time move. Before you know you will be staring down at the question paper.
I have spent many afternoons staring down (or up) at the long hand of the clock, just to prove that i can see the time move, but most of the studying has been done in the ‘eleventh hour’ as father calls it.  I am hoping this eleventh hour will rise to the ocassion this august and september.

I have an exam, but besides that, pasta girl and i are on a secret mission. We have plans to accost a lot of random people, even the ones on the roads, into being our fnew best riends.  I have to basically find new best friends within a fortnight. Pastagirl will be away for more than a month between august and september, another good friend ‘72 mm’ (:D)  is leaving the clan to cross the seven seas in mid august. A dear friend akshoo has applied for a transfer out of pune. I am just running out of people i can still call on a saturday night at 11 pm and crib. I will admit that my immediate future looks rather bleak and unfriendly, so i have pressed into action – the eleventh hour plan. 

Which we put into action on saturday, walking down FC road when we spied an interesting looking house, which we thought  was perhaps a theatre group because of a pablo neruda quote outside. Pasta girl wanted to poke around. And when we rang the bell, the lady welcomed us in and it turned out to be the house of four hopefully interesting architects, who are sold on the wadi-type, minimalistic, mediterranian type style of architecture.

And as much as i realise that i might not be able to afford these guys when i build my home, nor can i call new architect friend at 11 pm on a saturday night, my movie plans for saturday evenings are at least taken care of, so said new architect friend – apparently they screen fancy european movies on weekends at the architect house, which has a pretty water body — by the by. And im thinking this is atleast better than a year ago when i would end up working for lack of other options.

Yes, maybe i wont have to pay for my sins jusst yet. p.s : i am so effing tired of this city. I so want to move, but being friendless and clueless in a new city is something i am not up to, at present. I need more time. I want to climb up to the menacing clock, unscrew the glassy cover and tell the long hand to stop moving, and if it doesnt listen to me, physically stop it from moving. Stop long hand stop, it is not yet time. I am still young and i want to be fine.

how i came to make friends with pasta

When pasta girl and I met many full moons ago for the first time, she was the only non-journalist friend i had in Pune. Then Ay came, then Ay left, then DD came, then DD left and then December came and then she left and a year down the line, she is still my only non-journalist friend in the city.

And this may make me sound like an anti-social, friendless person. Sometimes im all that, (and to be fair i know many journalists including my collegues who are great friends)

But while i know many other people in the city as acquaintances or sources, they would not pass the guest list test.

(the guest list test is my collegue’s invention and my axiom. If you are willing to add a name to your wedding guest  list, then it is likely that you would add them to your friend list. Collegue and i run all our sources through our guest list test. I was shocked, for instance, to learn that many of our common sources have already attended collegue’s wedding, which inversely probably explains why my collegue has so many friends and gets so many gifts – if you invite someone to your wedding, its likely that they will eventually like you and maybe even go dotty over you.)

so anyway, we met because of a common man friend. Pasta girl told me once that she was hoping i would be a man. And really, i would have hoped the same of her as well, but i knew our common man friend (who sometimes passes off as my cousin ) better – he doesnt know many men, his guest list for instance, when he gets engaged this month, would probably not feature any men. 

So anyway (again), i recognised pasta girl immediately as the other half side of me, if i came  to be compared with a shiny coin. And thats not only because we share a name. Like me  she is a whiner, a diner and an old fashioned piner. (We pine for people constantly, so much, we could grow a pine tree in our back yard and it would really drip — with pines). We dont know what we want, but like me, she ends up liking men who are not interested in us ( being fond of us does not count, we are fondable people) . Ay, on the other hand, just doesnt have to try. Ay picks up men on sundays who would pick her up from the bus station and drop her home on mondays. I mean, really, the only man I know who has done that, would do that for me is my father, and these days even he doesnt offer, says journalists should manage their bags on their own.  

So ya, shes pasta girl because she likes pasta; she likes pasta with feminist leanings, she likes pasta that is eaten by day and saves children by night, she likes pasta with violent violet salad helpings, with a dash of vinegar and yes pasta that is penne, i think both of us dislike spagetti, and yes pasta will be eaten when we go to sindudurg this year. No, we dont hanker after Italians.

Agra

It would be a good idea, I thought, to buy UG’s in Agra — Mumtaz special. A laugh it would be we decided if we found someone selling something similar to what Mumtaz Jahan wore for the Shah.

I didn’t have the time to go looking. Nor did our Agra Fort guide mention if the Mumtaz wore Ugs or if any of the Mughals liked wearing Ugs (we also did not broach – although he did say that the Mughals loved women and had loads of them, there were harems with over 3,000 women or that the Mughals did not like messing with doors, they preferred curtains, they liked hanging out with their wives in the balconies and doing nothing during summers.) 

And so the Taj variety of love is surf excel clean ( as if you didn’t know).  The owner of the place  where we lunched ( as did everyone else) referred to the Taj as a ”Pyar ki nishani’ – the sacrificial kind.  
 The only comic endearing moment during the Taj trip was when a warden ticked off a tourist for smuggling cigarettes in the soles of his shoes. (As the sheepish tourist with his love for cigarettes walked back to the locker, Aye asked the by now smug warden how did he figure out where to look. The warden said he just knew. )

as i have complained to most people, the Taj is a big letdown. The guides we followed – we didnt hire our own — at the Taj were insipid. A friend had asked me to hire a guide to learn about the architectural wonders of the Love Mahal. It didnt work.

Heading back from the love mahal was a nightmare. We were three girls, one visiting the Taj for the first time, one after 20 years, and one after four years, though that was not the reason why we hooked ourselves up with an auto driver for day long transportation. It was a  very bad idea. We got into a bus in the evening that took the longest time – from 6 pm to 3 am — to get to Delhi.(In Delhi, we got hauled by cops when we couldn’t find a single open gate into the society.)

 One soaring moment during the day was the lunch we had at the back alleys of Jama Masjid. The chicken I nibbled on from Aye’s plate was better than Delhi’s Karim’s. I had asked for dal-chawal  ( i was trying to be vegan), but they gave me a mild version of fried rice, with peas, boiled and fried in oil,with cashew, cloves and other spices.

 Aye has coined a sobriquet for Agra – ‘city of thieves’. Agra ke log chor hote hain,  is what we told everyone who was within ear shot as they forced us to sight-see through Mathura and Vrindavan in the dark, both filled with mercenary priests. 
People say, one is predisposed to like the Mahal, even before one steps in. Some other people said before we left that that it is a symbol of one man’s ego. If one feels compelled to try out the Taj Mahal, then it is useful to remember that the Love Mahal is like a temple at the time of an ‘Aarti’. Or do the night trip – which is about Rs 500 for 20 minutes.  

I feel sage enough to add that it is best to talk less in Agra. Do not strike deals with the auto drivers to take you around. Stay away from guides. Stay away from crowds. It would be a good idea to carry as less  money as possible. Aye said the city is renouned for pickpocketeers. Do not buy anything, you will most definitely get fleeced.  The city is really not worth it. One ends up with an unsavoury taste, it erodes most things positive in you. Aye and I felt like our years of education and so many years of working and dealing with hardboiled eggs was wasted on us.

Spitian Notes – I

On our drive down to Kee monastry in Spiti valley, an animal loving friend got off the jeep to hug one of the two donkeys. For the donkeys this was probably strange even for Spiti standards.

In the next two days, Pooh Jha ( as she will be called here ) would hop out of the jeep to fondle another donkey, some sheep, a few blue, brown and yellow mountain goats and one domesticated and saddled horse. And although she expressed a desire a number of times to sink her head into the hairy mane of a yak, we never found one close enough for her to hug.

This was perhaps good for the yak as Pooh managed to spook the majority of the animals we spotted whom she tried to hug, despite proclaiming deep love and affection for all of them.

It began with the donkey pair that was quietly grazing on the road side, the day we went to Tabo and Pin. Pooh moved one step towards them only for them to shuffle sideways, away from her, without interrupting their afternoon meal, pretending to ignore the world, which perhaps allowed a distant thought to lull into her head that a hug may be possible after all.

She stretched her hand to pet one of them and they wriggled their rear and put a couple of more steps between us. She lunged one last time to hug and they broke into a trot and scampered away in tandem, their bums and tails synchronized and swishing. Oddly though, the donkeys never brayed.

She never named this couple citing treason on their part as the chief reason, but her next donkey love, Pooh called Ghanshyam.

This one was grazing away unsuspecting of what was about to descend on him. But Ghanshyam was quick on the uptake. The instant he sniffed non-four legged presence around him, he put in as much distance in between as was possible on donkey legs after an interrupted meal and days of non-bathing.

For a while, Pooh and I ran with Ghanshyam, calling out to him to wait and be hugged and then pose. But Ghanshyam ran unmoved.

I do not have pics of Ghanshyam. Of the first pair I have a forlorn Pooh looking at two donkeys running in the distance.

These were our later days in Spiti valley. And this was much before my camera phone broke. There was one horse — I forget his name — who Pooh managed to hug, of whom I have a video clip. Otherwise sheeps ran away, goats ignored, even a little kid didn’t take being pichkooed too well, but that is another story for another day.

On the third or the fourth day, journeying in Nako, we found a water beetle, who Pooh adopted and called Augustus Kramis – the third. Augustus ran away when he was scrubbed, force fed and force-sent to learn Sanskrit to be a Brahmin. An adopted housefly called Raghupathy in Kaza fled home when Pooh offered to get him married – or so I think, I forget the real reason. Of these I never managed photographs.

Yaks we never found in Spiti. They said they were abundant in Leh. But I have a postcard of a bunch of yaks on a farm in Spiti. Two of them, Pooh has named Ganpathy and Kundalika V. Young Ganapathy is peacefully grazing unaware that Kundalika is eyeing him. Kundalika is good at math and Ganpathy is good with knitting, or so Pooh said – I think. I might frame the postcard as an ode to the hug that never happened.