Things that have happened to me in the past month

1. The Perm. Can't stop smiling. I have expounded on the subject at such terrifying lengths in my head that I have nothing to say to anyone anymore. Now I get this poetic surge of imagery everytime I'm trying to explain (justify) to someone why I got it done. My favourite: Imagine being a lovely stately Ashoka tree all your life. And then suddenly, you're a bougainvillea. Y'knowhaddimeen? You don't? Your name must be Pj too or Proofaholic. I'm just going to be a lovely Zen bougainvillea bush sitting next to you, tap-tap-tapping away at her keyboard. And I don't have to comb my hair for the next six months. How cool is that. Huh.
2. Return of The Lyric Jumble Disorder Attack. I had this when I was a kid, and it's all coming back to me now. Lately, with Paperbag. So there's this lovely bit where she goes, 'I thought he was a man but he was just a little boy' (where I always go nod-nod-nod or Siiiigh-The-Irony), but whenever I'd try to sing along or independently in my head, it comes out as 'I thought he was a boy but he was just a little man', which, erm, doesn't sound right at all (Freud would've kidnapped me for lab rat purposes instantly). Lately, to counter this malady, I've started preparing and rehearsing about five lines before The Line of Malfunction. But the bloody shifty crafty disease attacks a split second before the line, takes hold of my tongue and makes me go 'I thought he was a man but he was just a paperbag'. Aaargggh! Bloody slip-of-tongue. When I was little, there was a Neelam-Govinda song where she'd go something like aaja sanam or something and then, 'Baahon ka haar tere gale mein daaloon'. And I'd always sing it as 'Gale ka haar teri baahon mein daaloon' and immediately shut up, paralyzed by the horror of it all.
3. The jive. I'm only one class old (and have missed another already), but what the hell jingle bell, I'm self-appointed speaker on all things sundry (love that word. it's sounds so...nonchalant), so will talk. You're not interested. Hmm. So there's this guy... but more about that later (Don't skip!). So I chose to not do Salsa, which everyone's nuts over apparently (or so the main instructor told me) coz I thought it was just too intense and majorly chauvinstic. Yes, even a dance! When I did learn salsa for two months last year, I got pretty sick of being led all the time. By idiotic men who don't know what the fuck they're doing (yes yes, Rage Against the Ex-Boyfriend!). And if I did try to do some hint-hint thing by suggesting the next step and almost twirling myself (yes, that's possible), I'd get scolded at by the instructor! Like not even scolded, more like loathed for being such a bloody stuck-up feminist, who can't just stop doing the Independent Woman thing by letting a man (of extremely inferior talent, I scream) lead her to something! So anyway, this time, I chose jive instead, coz salsa is Intense and jive's Fun hence democratic and feminist-friendly. Of course, I was wrong. But so beautifully wrong. Wait! So there's this guy... there were many actually, and total namoonas! There was this sweet boy with very rock-star type hair-do and lingo (like, I'm-trying-to-get-out-of-my-air-guitar-strumming-comfort-zone type expression) who said the darnest things while he did the funniest awkwardest dance with me, but I danced with him most of the time anway. And then there was the Pretty Boy who I couldn't quite pin down (no puns, people) until he started talking - everything about his looks and accent was right out of PJ too's recent Siddharth Dhanavant Shangvi encounter. Like this very Reluctant Metrosexual as I call it. Like, spiky hair teamed up with an oversized loose full sleeve shirt with one sleeve dangling dandy-ly over one hand, there's a belt but his jeans are still falling, reeking of so much cologne that women would be swooning for the wrong reasons - stuff like that. And oh. The accent. So phoney, even he guessed it wasn't sounding right. I found it rather funny, but thought he's just the kind someone like Red Pants will like. She's almost as amused as she is intrigued, and planning to land up at the next class to pick me up (we're so not Sex and the City, we laughed when she suggested)! But the guy who I did not notice (analyse), was apparently watching from the wings and decided that I'm obviously the best in class and that he should just Lead Me into the jive I have not learnt yet. It lasted less than two minutes, there was no intense touching a la salsa, the eye contact was a zit more than you'd have with a doorknob, but I've been reeling from the rush for like, two weeks now I think. As I said to Pink Dino the other day, Fuck Feminism. I love being led. (No I don't know his name, don't remember what he looked like. He was wearing sandals and had long canines is all I remember. Ooh. Vampire magnetism).
4. Thamma got her first challan. And I'm officially in love with her (Like I have withdrawl pangs when I don't drive on Sundays). So the baby got a ticket for jumping a red light near Sarojini Nagar at 10 am on March 30 (now it reaches me). It's totally baseless, because considering the geographically obscure location of the gaon I live in, I can't possibly be there at 10 am, and even if I were on my way back from dance class, I'd not cross any red lights in that area. But still, Thamma got her first challan. This goes on the first page of her baby scrapbook with a photo of her first dent (It Wasn't Me).
5. Pabda is on his way. The ninth month has begun! Anytime now, Pabda will yawn and decide he wants a nice stretch, unfold his long-long legs, and show his beatific face to me, Auntie! I have given him homework: he must calculate his arrival according to complex mathematical Indian horoscope calculations and be born at a time and date that makes his auspicious name-letter an M so I can name him Milind or Mukund. Yes, like Soman, and yes, like Arjun Mukundan.
6. I survived another yearly out-of-town trip with my parents. So, am back and happy to announce that this time I not only managed to not kill them, I even had fun sometimes! I just get real guilty every time I go for an outstation trip with friends ( always have that horrible homesick feeling in the pit of my stomach just before I step out of the house to catch my train!) that I always do a trip with my parents every year. Just so I can tell myslf (and most importantly, them) the next time I go out of Delhi, that At Least I Did the Family Thing This Year. The thing is, my mother doesn't travel out of Delhi unless the place to be travelled to has two things: 1) Hills and pine trees 2) a famous temple in the vicinity, preferably a shaktipeeth or jyotirling or one of the char dhams. And problem is: I hate mountains. And I don't like holidays that are driven by the Religious Tourism bit. Plus, I have to share a room with them. And when my dad snores, it's like someone's sawing off a huge log of wood with such sadistic slow rhythmic precision that if caught sleepless in the same room with him, you could drive yourself to suicide! And my mother cribs cribs cribs to me about how my father is so soppy, all the time. So, throughout the trip, I'm not only sleep-deprived and uninterested in performing rituals that I'm being driven by the nose towards, I'm also at my wit's end, constantly bickering and snapping at my parents like some cranky 13-year-old! And it's pretty obvious we don't make a convincing Happy Family scene for any onlooker, and that irks me even more! You know that age-old break off line - It's not you, it's me - ? I can use that as excuse for not travellign with my folks.
So anyway, we went to Shirdi despite it not having hills, pine trees, cool breeze etc because mum's never been there and it's the pinnacle of all things Sai Baba, whom she loves. So we did go, and managed to pack in two of the 12 jyotirlings and half-a-zillion other minor temples in the nost-so-near vicinity. And i got to see the Ellora caves that I'd SO wanted to see. They're just
fabulous. There's an amazing chaitya (prayer) hall in the Buddhist part of the caves, and some of the loveliest giant-sized sculptures I've ever seen, in the main Hindu part of the caves. (There's a very sweet 10-feet tall one in which Shiva is doing the tandav, his ten arms flailing out in awe-inspiring, even frightening movement, and with one of the arms, he's patting Parvati on the cheek, telling her not to be too scared by his raudra roop. It's amazing how the sculptor got that lovely tender moment in the midst of all that goose-pimple inducing movement, and that too in that cold hard stone. But I digress.) It was also 5 days of too much road travel, and there's something about being on a highway in an AC car in an unknown landscape that totally sparks off neverending Thinking. So I thought a lot about myself, about things past, and what I think is to come, and ended up with much rumination, wasted time and energy :)
More pics and meaningful chatter about the trip laterz, on my other new blog (I ain't telling ya!)
7. AA is back! And I'm not as excited as I thought I would be.
8. People are reading my blog! Yes, you reader in Jaipur (who spent 5 minutes 14 seconds reading my blog today at 3.38 pm), Ontario (just 2 seconds? Shame on you!), and you sify.net using Asian who entered at the Paperbag page and read for 1 minute 2 seconds before you tried the what kind of panties are you quiz, and oh u evil Vancouver boy who searched for 'spanked stranger' on blogspot and landed here for a second before you realised it ain't no porn site and clicked Next Blog - do the following: Make V sign with fingers. Now, tilt hand horizontally so that you look like you're poking your eyes. Then, point similarly in opposite direction. Know what that means? Huh? Huh? I'm. Watching. You.