new feelings

I am domesticating. This occurred to me just after a glass – newly washed ,wet with water — slipped and crashed at my feet. This was just after I had decided I must stop drinking out of juice cartons . It was uncool, uncouth and unsafe. Only recently had father emailed about someone dying after having drunk straight out of the carton — many a rat or a lizard has at some point at some Inland Container Depot made a carton its home was the general drift. 

So when the wet slippery glass left my fingers and took less than one tenth of a second to shatter into tiny shards, my first thought was: well, thats new. I have never dropped a glass before. Unlike previous instances of spilling milk, dropping heavier items like telephones, Internet modems, mobile phones and televisions, this time there was no one chastising or calling the pot, a black or kettle or anything – just an odd sort of a ringing silence – the glass many very well have rung the temple bell. 

Yes I love it, getting used to it, even if I am sometimes afraid I could get habituated to this — this silence, the golden hue of it and the ringing peals of it. I feel like a fearless woodpecker building my nest, cluttering it up with pillow cases, breaking glass, making beds, clearing up, paying the help and newspapers, killing cockroaches and even getting my own food, sometimes maybe cooking it. 

Who do you live with, wherever you live, people ask and I shrug and say, oh I don’t think i can do the whole PG thing any more ( but I’m doing the roosting thing, I think) or when young curly office colleague expresses wonder and awe at the death a cockroach, fat, flying and the first at my hands — just a week after pastagirl and I shrieked the house down ( it was my other friend who got blood on her hands for killing that cockroach) it dawns on me, this is domesticating – if that’s even a word. These are the moments when I can actually see time moving – not just a second hand and another after that but time moving like how a particle of matter moves in space. These are the moments when I feel life slipping or changing and thats when I hear someone singing– SO How Does It Feeeeaaal? To be on your own, no direction no, like a complete unknown. But the rolling stone, me, is domesticating, for lack of a better word.

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.

pearls and squirrels

a couple of strips back, Stephen Pastis of Pearls Before Swine ran a cartoon on the ’sumo squirrels’ . Rat and Pig were jealous of squirrels, and wait! squirrels figured on Pearls! Around this time, squirrelhood acquired a new member; for parody’s sake we’ll call her sumo. Parody cos she’s absolutely not a sumo, she’s the antithesis of it.

But anyway, we take it as a sign. squirrels are getting famous. now we have representation from all streams.

A little sumi about sumo: she’s not sumo at all. and she’s got mallu hair. ( btw,we have too many mallus in this club. except me, everyone else is a mallu. I didn’t know i could get along with mallus. historically, I haven’t. ) plus she is the general secretary of the squirrel club. Mip and I are the co-presidents, ofcourse. Small is the treasurer. We seem to be MRS. so and so.

The thing also is we are all going home in a few days. this may be the last post from here. we’ll be building new nests of love ( not exactly love nests) in different cities — Pune, B’lore and B’bay.

ok then. wee .

Introducing Squirrelhood

Mip and I have been doing this gig for a month now. Each time we want to scare innocent people on the road, we talk about the GDP to sound very smart and then once we’ve crossed them, we go OUI OUI in our shrill, loud voices. The day before yesterday , we actually got a reasponse. A fellow in his bike, I cannot describe because I didn’t notice, squeaked ‘wee wee’. WE might have to accept him in our squirrel club if he applies; that ofcourse is subject to a unanimous decision in the club, which right now has two members — Mip and I ( me?).

We had Sparky — flashing her white, straight, some places uneven teeth— two steps behind us gauging the response of our victims. She claims to have been embarrassed. Her true feelings towards our dignified club will never be known. Sparky is generally not known to endorse clubs that parody the GDP.

Anyway today, I was kind of spaced out ( or maybe desolate, depressed) because of lack of sufficient employment when Mip decided to chip in with some nut and cheer. She convinced me that one of us would get a job soon and then they would have to hire the other ‘cos they can’t hire one squirrel without the other, the union won’t allow it’. So I think we must get our union registered, just in case, companies did not recognise un-registered unions, but ofcourse this is subject to a unanimous decision in the squirrelhood club.

I should probably explain more about squirrelhood to everyone reading here. We are generally happy people. We espouse feminist and squirrelist causes. We are nature friendly, like you didn’t get that. We love love ice cream. We love adventure and tree hopping. We love travelling, and not just from one branch to another. We like to believe that the sky can be touched, that the world was made for us, that we can get anything if only we tried, that it is always better to move, even if it’s one millimeter at a time, than to stay still. We believe in progress of not just in distance or in promotions but also of the mind. We also love giving unsolicited advice. We like funny people. If you are one and believe in all of the above, we might consider you in the squirrelhood club, but only if the decision is unanimous ofcourse ( by now, you might have figured it out.)

OK then . Keek. Keek. We are rather busy these days owing to some theorising, but you may contact us on our keek phones.