18.6.08

Tagged!

Now that I am finally over with filing a cover story I think I am dying to do something random. So here I go responding to Male AB's tag.

Ten random things about myself

*I am a very, very lazy creature. When I was staying with S and E, my former flatmates, I had competition though. Serious competition. If anyone wanted anything done or even wanted to say something to one another, you could hear us shouting to each other from our respective beds. I miss them.

*I love doing different things. Since I was a wee thing I have been trying my hand at singing, drawing, dancing, swimming, yoga, tennis. Every time I would join something new, my brother would say -- AB goes swimming, AB goes dancing...I have covered pretty much in the way of entertainment. I am on my way to more -- having given up on Salsa and Jive for lack of a good partner -- I am thinking of joining Jazz classes now besides enrolling for Japanese classes and rejoining guitar and brushing up on my tennis lessons.

*I love getting drunk and then dancing my two feet out. I have been doing a lot of that of late. It rocks. My best memory of drunk dancing though was at Paradiso in Goa. Where I took off my high heels and danced on bare feet throughout the night with cute French stranger. Oh, it makes my toes curl!

*On certain weekends, I love nothing more than to sit at home. Order myself a lot of food, switch on the telly and then settle in front of it surrounded with a mountain of goodies. No amount of persuasion can make me step out on those days.

*I heart reading. When I was in school, I would read books, not my study books, in every possible place. I would even carry them to the bathroom with me and my mother would often wonder aloud as to what her daughter would do for two hours inside. The fault was hers really. She never let me read in peace in my room. She would always pounce on me and confiscate whatever I was reading.

*At one point, I wanted to become a detective. It was derived from my love for reading in a way. I mean not just reading Nancy Drews, The Three Investigators and the rest, but more from trying to recover those confiscated books from my mother’s secret hideouts.

*I have always liked walking. What I enjoy most is walking through woods, importantly not the bear and snake infested kinds.

*Dreaming up new ventures. I do a lot of that. One was to own a shack in Goa. To which extent I did all my research but somewhere along the way realized that I was way short of capital. Another idea, which I think is viable even now, is to sell churros and hot chocolate at Khan Market. Walk around in a maid’s dress with apron and all and sell them churros.

*I love packing a bag and setting off for somewhere. Which is why sometimes I wish I earned gallons of money. Otherwise I am content with what I have at the moment.

*I don't believe in religion. I think it has given a lot of grief to a lot of people. Including my own family. I want to wish it away.

Nine things I wish I wasn’t/didn’t

*Mull. You can say I am a thinker though not like in the good sense. I once met this old astrologer-holy man at my neighbour's when I was very young. He looked like Father Christmas. There was a mutual fondness there. He had told my mother that your daughter likes to think a lot. Sometimes unnecessarily. I think he was so right. I think about so many things and most of all of things that could have been.

*A bottomless pit. There are days on which I am akin to one. I even put my colleague AM, a big big eater, to shame. He has warned me that I might be suffering from an eating disorder.

*I still read Mills & Boons. In a way I am pretty sheepish about it. But I think I can read them even when I am 80!

*I can be very dense at times. I slip into my own world and you have to jolt me back.

*Keep shut. When I get bugged with someone, even though it is my closest friend, I clam up. I get all sentimental and I cannot for the life of me express myself. Really, why is it so difficult for the other person to understand what I am going through?

*Procrastinate.

*Dine on chilly pepper popcorn every night.

*Fight. I need to curb my fighting instincts. I have suffered considerably. Hell, I even got slapped once.

*Behave badly with my parents. I don’t know why I do that. No, actually I do. My mother can drive me up the wall and over it with her admonishing. Every single day. Several times a day. Her favourite topics – her daughter remaining single at the age of 27, the same growing thinner by the day and her son who got married to a girl from another religion. My father happens to bears the brunt of my temper because I get to speak to him after my mother is over with her talks.

Eight things I’m wondering right now

*Will I get to gym today?

*Should I go for the khao suey at Kitchen or grilled chicken in piri piri sauce at Big Chill for dinner?

*What to gift my friend who is taking me out for her birthday dinner.

*Why do people bother to walk into my life when all they want to do is walk out.

*Why don’t I steer clear of such people? It’s like being a moth to the flame.

*Why I hate my job at times when it does give me free time like this to play Text Twirl on Facebook and generally respond to tags.

*What kind of questions is headed way from my editor.

*Why Rupa has sent a colleague bright yellow toffee boxes with Chetan Bhagat’s face on it. And guess what’s in it? Mango Bites and Melodys!

Seven things that cross my mind a lot

*Will I ever get the fairytale I promised myself when I was young?

*Will I ever get over certain people?

*How do I live out the next few days? (I am hugely broke)

Six things Id like to do before I die.

*Live life the way I want to. Umm…maybe I am already doing that!

*Get married on a beach in Cyprus.

*Bungee jump.

*Get to solve a murder case.

*Let my tongue hang in a tub of dark chocolate.

*Own a pretty, little bungalow with bay windows facing the sea and wake up every morning to the sound of the waves crashing against boulders.

Five turn on’s

*Knowing when to let silence speak out.

*You know your perfumes? I am sold on you.

*A fit body.

*An intelligent mind. Do not confuse it with an intellectual one though.

*Knowing how to deal with me when I am cranky.

Four Turn off’s

Oh the usual…

*Malodour

*Contrived accent.

*Lack of etiquette. Let me give you an instance. It just popped up in my mind as I thought of etiquette. I was once out on a date when the guy happened to talk to the waiter like he was a piece of nothing. That was the moment I mentally wished him far away from me.

*Meeting people who love themselves to the extent that the other person does not exist. I keep meeting them.

Three ways to win my heart

*Be patient with me.

*Buy me the usual girly things – dark chocolate, flowers, perfumes… I am easy to please!

*Treat people with the respect that is due to them.

Two smileys that describe me

:D The mischievous me

:-) The coy me

One confession

I cannot stand nincompoops who are in places where they are not fit to be in.

This was fun. If you like it, consider yourself tagged.

13.6.08

Greedy guts!

I was happy, very happy with life so far. It all started with my trip to Shimla for a story. I got to stay at the Wildflower Hall, an Oberoi resort, on a higher altitude than Shimla in a place called Chharabara. I felt like a princess.

I used to get up early in the morning and do yoga out in the open with only the gushing sound of the wind through the tall cedars and spruces and the occasional twitterings of a lone bird. Thereafter I would go on wild strawberry trails through the woods around the resort. Sip on wine and settle down for long lunches while staring at the pouring rain through the bay windows of the restaurant. Roam around and take in the beauty of the old buildings surrounding the Mall. Or even stop in at a mini zoo and see sloth bears, brown bears and black bears in all their incredible fatness pacing around their pits or just lying around and once in a while shaking their heads to shoo away pestering crows and flies. I found them incredibly cute though the person with me did warn me that they are anything but that. "Once a man tried to shake hands with a brown bear in this very pit. The bear pulled him in and thumped him all around the pit," he told me. I couldn't stop laughing hysterically at the story -- I could actually visualise it playing before my eyes. And the comic element tickled me more than the scary side to it (I know it was not justified at all, but when did we react the way we are supposed to!)

I returned and after zapping in my cover story in a matter of days hurried off to Calcutta to attend my brother's reception. Which however turned out to be a wedding! It was not exactly to my parents liking because my brother went ahead and had a registry marriage. It is something I don't like him for at all, because it has given birth to a very dysfunctional family. And it is very annoying because I am the outlet for my mother's woes. Also I do not happen to be the most sympathetic listener to her.

Nonetheless I did have a good time there because that is where I started my fondue trail at KK's Fusion with a Bourguignonne Fondue (a pot of hot oil on a wicker of flame is served with a selection of marinated raw meats and seafood and it is almost like tapas because you dip the cooked dunks into an assortment of tangy and cheesy sauces) and a Cheese & Spinach Fondue (that was paired with tender kebabs, grilled fish yakitoris and crumbly batter-fried chicken). Along with it I had their Crepe Fantasia for dessert which turned out to be a chocolate pancake stuffed with vanilla icecream doused with whisky and topped up with slices of mango. They flambéed it on the table itself. It was the perfect way to wind up dinner for sure.

Back in Delhi I continued on the trail and tried out some fondues at Mocha. Where they serve the cheese one with crisply done bread sticks and red, deep fried potato wedges with skin. A whole egg also comes with it, with the invitation to scramble it in the fondue. But I am not very fond of scrambled egg not cooked well that remains kind of raw, the way the Swiss apparently like it, so we did not attempt to break it into the fondue. I couldn't stop dipping into the yummy fondue which was as cheesy as it gets with three kinds of cheese melted into the pot. So at one go I was tasting a blend of Gruyère, Emmenthal and Cheddar. We of course overdid it when we chose to dig into a herbed chicken pie as well. But even with our tummies threatening to explode, we did dunk profiteroles, vanilla cookies, Angel Hair Cakes and marshmallows into the dark chocolate fondue they served. My next stop was Tabula Rasa where they offered us a mean cognac-flavoured pool of chocolate. It was right out of my chocolate dreams.

So with so much of happiness in my bag, I guess it was not meant to be that I should have been sitting in a cafe in Mcleodganj, even as I am going clickety clack on this keyboard, slurping hot soup down my system. I had come with packed bags to office to take the Volvo from wherever it started. Everything was done except the booking for the Volvo. Which is where we erred big time and this is the end result that I am wallowing in a well of self-pity.

The bad thing about feeling low is, at least for me, that I start counting all the things I don't have in life. I think about this Bombay guy I really like and I cannot ever have in my life, I think about the unsuitable guys I go out with (I don't know why), I think about my sad family, I think about the official trips I should have been on and wasn't on...the reasons then seem to go on and on.

I guess I am greedy. Greedy for happiness. I also guess that I will have to wait.