Wednesday, July 28, 2010

The Return of the DCP Queen



Every MBA out there is aware of that one dreaded concept of grading, which makes absolutely no logical sense, and gives rise to some of the worst memories of life.
Class Participation.
Mark kids on the basis of the amount they speak up during class, ensuring mass attention and good class dynamics.
Yeah, sure.
Every class room from nursery till the last possible course you could do in life always has that one irritating person, the one who always has way too many questions, and way too many opinions s/he graciously likes to share with the world.
“I actually have three points to make about what you just said…a)…..”
This is what the education system of this country does. It empowers these people. It causes….[suspense]…. DESPERATE CLASS PARTICIPATION!! [shocking music!!]
So its only expected that once I left MICA, I safely assumed that I had seen the last of DCP for a long long long time to come.
And then I joined yoga.
You know yoga…that nice relaxing meditative exercise…helps you get in touch with your inner self…calms you down….
And then I met her…the..ack…DCP Aunty!

Scene 1
Instructor: It is important at all times to understand the difference between your mind..and your brain…
DCPA: Oooh! Oooh!! I know!! There is a left brain and a right brain…and one is for….”
[Complete Silence]
Instructor: [clears throat] Yeah so as I was saying…

Scene 2
Instructor: 1……..2………3……….4……….
DCPA: 3..4..5..6..7..8..9..10..
Confused and now totally out of sync class: WTF……

Scene 3
Instructor: Today we will do balancing exercises….
DCPA: Oh oh oh! I will do them well today…just you see…I’ve been practicing in all my free time!!
Instructor: Erm…good for you.
Rest of Class: ^%^&^$!!!

Scene 4
Instructor [irritable after the entire class not knowing whose counts to follow this day]: Please count in your heads and do the exercise at your own pace.
DCPA: Oh, I slept really well, and now I have so much pent up energy inside me, I feel like exercising a lot!
Instructor: Sometimes the problem with people with a lot of pent up energy is that not only does it show in their physical behavior, but mentally as well. They don’t know how to pay attention to other people and basic instructions.
[Deathly silence in the room]
After two minutes…
DCPA: Wait, are you talking about me??

And that was the last we saw of that sweet, bulgy, venom spewing DCP Aunty.

Now if you don’t mind, I need to go back to my deep state of meditation…the amazing art of being mentally asleep and physically alert in office.

Monday, July 26, 2010

A Walk in the Rain



Yes, I’ve been cribbing to anyone who would listen about how sick I am of Mumbai rains, of the muck, of the dampness, of never reaching anywhere completely dry.

And then it hit me yesterday, that I’ve never reached anywhere completely wet either.

Well, at least not since I was a little kid, and monsoons meant actual rains for hours in Delhi (and not just a fifteen minute spray which leaves you wondering about the origins, and hoping it wasn’t just a really huge bird…ok ok…bad exaggeration!).

So there I was yesterday, at a Havmor parlour with Yo-Bro, fighting a losing battle with melting ice cream and a broken cone…when suddenly it started pouring. And I mean absolutely pouring. With gusty winds from the sea nearby turning it into the most beautiful tormentor ever, ensuring that not even the shelter above us could possibly save us from getting devoured.

I looked at Yo Bro, and smiled what I hoped would be a sweet enough smile to not be considered insane. 

And so we both stepped out from under the shelter, and decided to walk in the rain.

It was breathtakingly powerful. The wind and the rain literally knocked the breath out of my lungs for a mili-second. 

It was excruciatingly beautiful. Feeling each drop of rain tracing a path down my skin, the clothes sticking to us, weighing down, pulling on every muscle, making me conscious of every breath I took.

It was mind-numbingly overwhelming. Feeling like a kid, dancing around in the rain. Feeling grown up, knowing exactly what I wanted to do. Not feeling anything. Thinking of words to put down on paper. Realising that the experience was indescribable.

It was cold. Very very cold.

It was bothersome, once the rain stopped.

It was tense, wondering if my phone would survive.

It was irritating, involuntarily getting drenched this morning again.


Thursday, July 22, 2010

The Pursuit of Happiness


As is usually seen in life, or in Bollywood, there is no low not achievable by a man guided by the plight of his stomach. He’ll let go of his morals and integrity, he’ll loot, pillage and plunder, he’ll even make pigeon love noises and dance with fat and well endowed, scantily clad women in his mid-life-crisis movies.

Sigh! The things one’s stomach makes them do.

Yours truly was recently faced with a similar dilemma. And she sank down to something she was sure she’ll never, ever have to do in her life. Well, at least not for a few years…not until there was no way to escape it.

I..(cough)...erm...(cough cough)...err...(cough cough cough!)...cooked!!!

Well it was actually an amalgamation of a number of reasons, some being driven into me since I was a kid. Choose whichever one you think has the highest probability of explaining such a shocking and heinous act as I have committed.
  • I inherited my Mum’s genes and love for awesome cooking
  • I always secretly wanted to be a chef…MBA and media were just a farce for the sake of the world
  • I’m very worried about my future husband’s tummy, and my future mum-in-law’s state of mind, and that I might not be accepted as a good ‘bahu’ if I can’t cook well
  • I got tired of having cornflakes as two meals a day
So one fine day I finally decided it was time for me to start cooking. And that’s when I realized that starting a kitchen is pretty similar to starting one’s own enterprise. You need existing capital to purchase the initial raw materials and equipment, you need knowledge and expertise to be able to convert that raw material into the final output, and most importantly, you need contacts to give you insider tips and top secret information to be able to manage your balance sheet as well as product quality efficiently and effectively.

So faced with a lot of start-up dilemmas and delays, I hemmed and hawed for a few more weeks, until my mom finally lost her cool, and sent a start-up kit in a full ‘cooking for dummies’ kind of mode. And hence it started.

So for the last two nights (yes two nights in a row!!) there has been food…like actual food for dinner! I made a delicious concoction of mashed bread and tomato and onions as my dinner the first night (gimme a break, I’ve never cooked before!). It was yum. Ok, it was VERY edible. Better than the custard I had subjected Le Dudes to before.

And last night I decided to wade in further, and I made…(gasp!).… jeera aaloo!!!

And a very tasty jeera aaloo, might I rightfully add!

Please find below a picture of my dinner. It tasted much better than what it looked :P


Ya ya laugh all you want you Maggi eating suckers!!!

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Le Dudes


This might be a good time to introduce you to my new friends, aka, Le Dudes.
So thanks to GrumpO I’d met his Mumbai friends a couple of times. Background: they all had come together to form an event management agency, so they pretty much now work together, eat together, live together…u know, the works. So according to GrumpO, they’re all so sick of each other, that they love welcoming new people to hang out with and talk to. I’m not sure how far the explanation is true, but they sure as hell are a welcoming bunch.
As it turns out, three of them live in Andheri East, and since I live in the supposedly-not-so-far Andheri West, the Andheri gang decided to take me under its wing. Of course, at the slightest hope of human dudely interaction…I easily fluttered under it anyway.
So this is the grand entrance on my blog (APPLAUSE!!!) of Bewra (I did give him the option of being called Boob-frog in-stead, I thought it sounded cooler, but oh well…this is the screen name he chose!), Yo-Bro (no, nothing brotherly about him at all…but he’s from U.P….bhojpuri…..come on, I know you can make the connection!), and Kid-Zzz (somehow misleading but self explanatory name).
While I am very very tempted to go into character sketches of the above three, I think I’m going to try and refrain myself, simply cuz they might hail an auto, somehow fit themselves in, and drive down to Andheri West to beat the shit out of me.
Oh yeah…
I’m one of Le Dudes now.
:D

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

All that Rant!

So much has happened since this blog died, and was revived by the multi-talented yours truly of course. So perhaps a quick recap won’t hurt anyone (you’re insured, right?)

For one thing MICA’s done and over with, once and for all. Pheeww!!! The two years were fun, but they were more than enough of MBA and student fun for me. Yes yes I know, a year into work I’ll supposedly be stuffing these words right back down where they came from.

I’ve moved to Mumbai to work with a leading production house (name being with-held for legal purposes…I don’t want to get fired cuz of a blog that barely anyone reads anymore for God’s sake!). So as it turns out, I do get to live my dream of working in media, and being the next Rupert Murdoch (yup, you heard right, you sniggering *^%^%$!). Of course what I hadn’t accounted for was four months of mindless facebooking and staring at the brown walls closing in on me. Oh well.

I was also extremely excited about living in a city which I had previously loved, during my two month summer internship. The city that really stays awake at night. The city that lives, breathes, eats and talks…all the time…always. And it does. But what I skillfully missed out on last year was this little anomaly in its weather called monsoons. No, these aren’t just any monsoons. It’s not that sweet civilized peek-a-boo season which shows it face for a week or two in Delhi anywhere between July and August. No Sir. THIS happens to be a monstrous season of the year, the only season that Mumbai actually seems to experience (apart from humidity…and some bit of chills which they proudly call their winters apparently). It rains in this city all, and mark my words, I mean ALL the bloody time! Without fail. From June through September. Like. WOW.

“Today’s special, madam…An open sizzling gutter, served with a portion of earthworms and muck to accompany the fine taste.”

I had also been excited about Mumbai as some of my closest friends were going to be in this city with me. Pappu and GrumpO had in my head assured me the most amazing times in a city where I knew no one. As my luck would have it,Pappu got busy being Pappu...and GrumpO  nicely got his fat ass transferred to…wait for it…of course none other than MY very own city Delhi!!

So I geared myself up for some of the most boring months of my life…limited human interaction in office followed by no human interaction at home. Not a very difficult task for a pretty anti-social person. Or so I thought. Thankfully I was saved by good old GrumpO’s good ol’ friends, who swooped down and took me under their wing. Literally. More on those dudes later.

So to summarise (hey, wake up!! Yes…I’m talking to you…you lazy bum with the attention span of a cockroach!)… I’m in a brand new (rotting but..oh well…) city…in a brand new (currently dead-end) job…with brand new (le dudes) friends…a brand new blog (recovering from heart failure) template…and a brand new (yes, your read it right) life.

And I intend to tell you all about it! :D

DNR...not!!!!


I logged onto my blog today.
Wow.
I’m shocked.
This blog must have officially been pronounced dead months ago, and I was just not aware of it! It hit me, it hit me hard. It was like the silent passing away of a dear friend, who you always owed a 100 bucks, but kept postponing…until one day, you realize those 100 bucks can never be returned.
After 3.76 seconds of my mind going blank, I took out my emergency first aid kit, and decided to do some self improvised resuscitation.
Preparing for defib…
700 volts…
Clear!!!!
Alright alright….too much Grey’s anatomy and Private Practice filled the months of blah-ness this poor blog witnessed.
Oh wait…was that a heart beat?????