Friday, January 26, 2007

Meri Mummy Ko Gussa Kyoon Aata Hain

Crash!
Boom!
Break!
Split!
Woosh!
Upset!
Fall!
Splush!
Throw!
Cling!

Just about some of the usual sounds that reverberate in the Chatterjee household when A Chatterjee Junior ( yours truly) is around have been listed above. I have been spoken of among the legends of goof ups. The other day when I could not get any sleep thinking of that bar of Lindt chocolate that tasted so good at dinner, I stealithily sneaked out of my room and opened the fridge at midnight. The crashing sound of the milk bowl falling woke the entire house. I was caught red handed.

The kitchen is my favorite battleground - burning food, breaking glasses and upseting the pan seems to be a normal day's work for me. So, when I was banned from entering the kitchen for sometime, alongside everyone else, I also heaved a secret sigh of relief. But even if you take me away from goofing up, you can't take goofups away from me. Like leaving the hot water tap on and cold water tap fully off and walking off only to hear a scream of agony as the person who turned on the shower next got scorched. Like dropping the terrace keys in the kitchen garden and remembering it at night when we had to use a torch to hunt for the keys in a virtual jungle. Like forgetting to lock the kitchen garden gate in the excitement of finding the keys and remembering it only after I reached the third floor of a building without a lift.

I have been good with the car so far, but I almost drove into a wall the other day as my father watched enraged because despite his warnings, I took to driving it when he wasn't around.

I also burst a bulb the a days ago. The fuse had blown up and I was looking at it intently, when somebody shouted behind my back. I shuddered and dropped it. I tried to clean up the mess, but when somebody hurt himself while stepping on the glass accidentally, I realised that the cleaning could have been better.

Talking about cleaning, Ma usually has to clean up my act - all the time - from forgetting to take out my lunch box from the bag to leaving home sans wallet - leaving my mobile phone at unknown places - she manages to handle it all. Patient that she is - sometimes (and this happens all the time) I get on her nerves. Yet, she never scolds me much. I have often wondered why, while slipping over sme oil that I had split in my room, she comes to my rescue time after time and why she never gives up on me. The only thing I could come up with was:

"Kyoonki Ma bhi Kabhi Main Thi"

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

New Year yes, but Happy????

Another year's here again and I hardly noticed how 2006 came and slipped by. As usual, I am stuck 2 years behind time, and I find it tough to believe that its not 2005 but 2007 that we are in - that's me as usual - jaded, confused and all muddled up.

Saji - a good friend - has resolved this year to eat his words if he cannot keep them. He has written down his resolutions on a piece of paper and has promised to chew it if he breaks any of them. Saji, if you are reading this - I already broke a resolution before writing it down, so I am glad that I did not chose to go your way!

My foremost resolution is not to miss the 7:20 train in the mornings - unfortunately, I missed the train on 2nd January. It would have happened earlier had 1st January not been a holiday. My next resolution is to give work a royal ignorance this year. Work must suffer and cry out in neglect, but I refuse to heed. I had a particularly harrowed time in the last three hundred and sixty five days and it has left me with coal black circles under my eyes and a bloodshot look above. I have been jaded and confused most of the time, have fallen asleep in all ( mind you all!) dinner parties that I have attended, forgotten friend's birthdays and feel like giving up this job by the age of 27.

New Year started with a rather ugly feeling. Some people empowered by USA hanged Saddam Hussein. The whole affair was distasteful. If the people of Iraq were the ones to sentence him to death, I would not have felt so strongly - but this was clearly a case of US orchestration. If the USA can get the President of a country hanged by his own people, then they can get any of us - ordinary citizens - killed any day without a reasonable cause. To begin with, the entire war centered on WMD’s which were never found, but it ended with the hanging of the head of the country. Can any of us be sure of our freedom and right to life after this? I also do not support the idea of capital punishment. Life imprisonment seems little more merciful. Who are we to take away the life that we have not created. When a common man kills, it is murder, but when the law decrees that a man be hanged, it is hailed by all. Isn't the end result one and the same thing?

Umm....terrible things have been happening in Noida too, with all the killings of children. Suddenly, the world does not seem as rosy as it used to be, when I did not know or understand these brutalities. Looking at everything through rose coloured spectacles, is merely a means of escaping from reality, but sometimes its best to ignore those things that we can do nothing about. On the better side, Mamta Banerjee will eat in 2007. The President of India, a former Prime Minister and low blood pressure made sure of that. True, it did not make much difference to the farmers in Singur, but she will live to cause more traffic jams, and train disturbances and make my 7:20 come a few minutes late. Touché!

PS - Tatas sure want to make a car that costs 1 lakh. Do they also want to create more roads for us? When a car starts costing 1 lakh, even an impoverished Indian as me will be able to buy a car with a few years’ savings. What will happen to our streets, when millions take to Geeta Pishi (our cook) who instead walking to our house in the morning suddenly drives her new Tata IndiSmall?