Long due tag – 2

Since I’m being a super good girl today I’m doing another tag that’s been on the pending list for a while now. This blogger, Bhargavi, not only tagged me but also gave me a prize and said nice-nice things about me

As usual, I find the rules too much of hard work so I will stick to answering the questions.  Here, it’s not even questions. I just need to share 7 random things about myself. As if I’ve been sharing non-random things all along

***

It’s a good 10 minutes since I  wrote the previous line. I realize I don’t have too many random parts of my life left to share on my blog. So I’ll narrow it down to my reading, which I think I haven’t talked much about till now.

1. I read like crazy as a child, teenager, and till marriage. If there’s some mental disorder wherein people relate more to books than people, I suffered it.

2. After marriage I just stopped reading . Marriage, pregnancy and a new job happened almost simultaneously and maybe that’s the reason, but I’m not too sure.

3. Over the past year I’m back to my addiction and loving every bit of it. I feel I must make up for the nearly 2 decades that I lost.

4. I can’t just read the lines. I have to imagine each character’s face (I select my ‘cast’ from family, friends, TV/film actors, etc). I soak into the book.  Sometimes, if the book is very intense, I need a couple of days to recover before starting the next one.

5. My biggest regret in life is that my kids are not too much into books. The girl is allergic to them and the boy reads sporadically.

6. I read fiction – romance, humor,  classics, thrillers… not too fond of adventure and horror. I quite like non-fiction also.

7. A recent read I totally loved is Some Things That Stay by Sarah Willis. Neat story, wry humor, and 100 marks for characterization.

Long due tag – 1

Looks like I’ve totally given up blogging. I’m less inclined to write a post  than chop vaazhai thandu.

But people out here have been decent enough to tag slothful me. So I thought I should at least do the tags if not produce an original masterpiece. Here goes Ummon’s tag:

1. Name the friend you’ve known longest.

Very many. Thanks to FB, you can’t really stop knowing your LKG pals anymore.

2. How did you meet?

Eh! Weepy eyed on the first day at school, I guess.

3. How long have you known him/her?

37 years

4. Name an embarrassing crush, one you would hesitate to accept in public. But will now

Ravi Shastri. I was very public about it back then. His verbal  diarrhea  is rather embarrassing now…

5. A man/woman from history you would have proposed to.

Can’t think of any. I tend to think of history in sepia tones and it mostly depresses me.

6. Name an international city that you feel is over-rated.

Haven’t traveled much, so wouldn’t know.

7. An Indian dish that is over-rated.

Sarson ka saag

8. What do you think of same sex marriage?

I’m ok with it. If one of my kids opted for such a marriage I would be worried for them, but would not oppose it.

9. Reality shows are:……………..

Entertaining for the audience no doubt. But it must be so unnerving for the participants.. will not do it for billion bucks.

10. Designer clothes are:……………

Eminently unwearable

11. Illayaraja or A R Rahman?

Adi paavi… did you have to ask this… I love ARR. But Illayaraja’s music pulled me through very tough periods as a child and teenager, so I feel I owe him a lot…

The tag prescribes a whole lot of other things – adding questions, etc. Sorry baa

The leaf pickers

The Hyderabad Sisters sing. The Williams Sisters play tennis. My sister and I, as a pair, pick plantain leaves. We are the extended family’s unofficial Leaf Picking Sisters at assorted functions.

Thankfully, we are not employed at the mega functions like weddings and poonals, where the professional mamis take charge of the used vaazhai elais. At the lesser ones, like ayush homams, shashtiabdhapoorthis, seemandhams, etc, as well as at the various death-related ceremonies, it’s invariably my sis and I who can be spotted tucking in the saree pallus and picking up the darned leaves. Relatives who spend thousands of rupees booking caterers never think to spend an extra hundred or two to have someone pick up the used leaves. Instead they opt to invite me and my sister to the function.

Torn leaves with the rasam seeping into the floor, piles of leftover curries, broken appalams, untouched rice, mashed banana pieces, debris of payasam mixed with curd rice – we’ve seen ’em all. We even have a system of job rotation – one of us holds the bucket or huge plastic cover, while the other does the actual leaf picking. Then we jointly clean the table or floor.

When the function happens to be in my house or my sister’s, no guest is expected to do the job. We wouldn’t let them. Not that anybody ever offers.

Thus it went on for years and years. One fine day we noticed that, along with the other guests, the host had also washed her hands and sauntered into another room while my sister and I got busy with the leaf picking routine. The light bulb moment came very late in our life, but when it came it made us feel like worms. We officially gave up leaf-picking.

Last week, at a shubasweekaram, we decided to test our resolution. We ate, got up and sashayed into an adjacent bedroom, studiously ignoring the big black cover that was strategically placed near the pandhi. From a corner of our eyes we noticed the host mami throwing glances in our direction, losing hope, and then asking another ilicha-vaai relative to help her with the leaves.

The sister and I belched.

For the New Year

Like all those paavam-looking Wikipedia contributors I too want a favor from you. While I do accept Indian Rupees as well, my bigger, and more immediate, request is for you to pray for me. That I lose some stubborn kilos. Ten, to be specific, though 5 would do just fine.

There are some conditions to this:

1. It should not require gymming at all. No treadmill, no elliptical, no weights. Walking allowed only if it’s about twice a week, to the local supermarket, with little sweating.

2. No dieting whatsoever. None.

3. No diseases. Actually I tend to waver on this one. Whenever I go for a lipid profile I half expect – even hope – to see some hint of diabetes or thyroid trouble. It would help me lose weight with nil efforts. But I’m careful in what I wish for. Plus these diseases require lifestyle changes strict diets. So no, thanks.

4. No weight-loss pills. Total trash, that stuff.

So there. Please say a small prayer for me sometime somewhere for a thinner me.

The aim is not better health or anything that lofty. In fact, from recent examples in the family and friends circle, I’m beginning to suspect that the slimmer and fitter ones tend to succumb more easily to diseases. The fat ones do fall sick but they seem to rebound rather well. Apparently all that adipose does store some survival potions.

I don’t even want to get thinner for beauty reasons. For that man this will do.

That 5 kg loss is to ensure that I get into my lovely designer blouses.  Painstakingly selected, tailored and paid for garments that are so mean that the minute I gain 0.005 grams, I’m notified thus. Hateful things.

Just wondering… 13

The song can become viral, bacterial or develop gangrene. That’s not my issue. Mine is – why are so many people getting so offended by the ‘di’?

Di. A two-letter, monosyllabic word (single-letter, monosyllabic in Tamil) that carries about as much import as Shruti Hasan in the song’s video. Totally dispensable, no doubt, but absolutely harmless. It’s just a sentence crutch, much like the Hindi yaar and the Anglo-Indian ‘man’.

This is not the first time it’s being used in Tamil songs. Yaradee nee Mohini… ; Adiye, manam nillunaa nikkadhadee…; Yevandee onna petthaan… Even Bharathiyar used di quite liberally in his Kannamma songs that ooze romance even today.

Finally, there’s an equivalent da. So it’s not even sexist.

So why? I am not understandu.

Just wondering… 12

… about all the privacy fuss on Facebook.

“Aiyyo! FB is showing everybody my photos.” “My phone number is listed and I wasn’t even told about it.” “I only allowed my friend’s athimber’s machchini to see my wall post but now I realize her LKG classmate can also view it.”

Well, if you are that particular about your privacy why the eff are you on Facebook? Nobody is begging to see you baby’s kitta papa vesham snaps.
It’s not like you pay FB to keep you Gummidipoondi holiday photos a secret. Neither did they steal info about you from your bank or hospital records. Whatever nonsense is up there about you was carefully keyed in by you.

There was a ruckus some time back because some idiot somewhere compiled a list of phone numbers from across the world. While I wonder at the joblessness of said person, I care two hoots about my number being on his list.

If you can tell all of humanity your bra color what’s the big deal about giving it your phone number?

Kolu scandal

With the recent spate of shifting houses, we lost quite a handful of kolu dolls. One such was Rama. Seetha, Lakshmana and Hanuman remained fit and I saw no reason why they shouldn’t come on stage.

Kutty was mighty perturbed by this Savitha Bhabi-esque state of affairs after one of her friends found out (the rest were too busy  trying to guess the ‘gift’ from the size and shape of the thamboolam cover).

So at the end of Navarathri we hit the market and begged the bommai sellers to give us a solo version of Rama. We did manage to get one but this Rama is a good inch or two shorter than our Seetha. Kutty bristled again.

“If Surya can sing duets with Anushkha, surely this Rama can stand next to our Seetha,” I reasoned out. She’s now okay with the idea.

As they like to say in India Today/Outlook/Week/etc/etc regularly, we Tamilians eat, sleep, vote and convince cinema.