MY FIRST BADGE :-))))))

Well, here I am, at last with enough time and honesty at my disposal to accept with great humility and happiness the first badge that I’ve been awarded, and that too, by one of my favourite blogolleagues : Discovering M.

Yay !!!!!!!!!!

Dear DM, here’s a big THANKS for the honour and a bigger SMILE for cheering me up with your flowers (for the confused majority, I suggest checking out his comment on my last post) !

I live upto the legacy of my illustrious predecessors by naming 7 honest blogs and revealing 10 honest things about myself :-)

The honest blogs I can personally vouch for are as follows :

Barnali's World

Sunny Days

Crumbs of Life

Buckets of Rain

Just Like a Watermelon

myselfpallavi.com

The City in July

And well, here's a random 10 honest things about me :

1) I’ve a thing for colours. Almost an obsession. I can't function in a room where the colour of the wall jars on my senses.

2) I believe in the supernatural. But I’m not scared of it. Death has always fascinated me. I don’t think I’ll be afraid to die.

3) I can’t be bothered to small talk or go out of my way to try and impress my intelligence on others. You have to draw me out. Lots of people consider me aloof. I think I’m just reserved.

4) I often hate my closest ones as much as I love them. There. I said it.

5) I detest alcohol. In all forms. Even if I happen to say it’s ok to drink socially.

6) My first ever crush was Ajay Jadeja. I even wrote a 37 page romantic novelette starring him and me. Man.

7) I can’t write happy poems. Sadness inspires me.

8) To me, plagiarism, racial discrimination, gender discrimination, war-mongering and snobbery are crimes. When caught, the guilty should be hanged. Well, at least boycotted.

9) I need to learn diplomacy. But using tact somehow makes me feel like I’ve been lying.

10) I’m afraid the Kolkata Metro automatic ticket checking gates won’t let me past some day. No particular reason. I might have an ‘I, Robot’ or ‘Eagle Eye’ hangover, perhaps.

For more on this note, you're welcome to check out a former post that was actually a response to a Facebook Tag.

tada, guys. I'm off to arrange a belated badge-day celebration !

Ad gone Bad

Lured on by Beth's post , I watched the ad...and decided it's the hands down winner of the silliest ad I've ever spotted on any TV channel. I found another video of the same ad on YouTube and the comments (which amount to 254 !) are hilarious...I spent about 15 mins chuckling to myself after reading them. Have a look !

Joie De Vivre : Journo Style

This made a wonderful read today morning.

I couldn't but help shoot off a prompt email to Sudeshna Di, telling her how much I liked it :

" Sudeshna Di,

Bhallaglo dekhe je kaajer maanush USA giyeo lekhar obhyesh maintain kore...:-)
(I'm pleasantly surprised that you've managed to remain in writing mode even after your arrival in the USA, considering how much you're engaged here in diverse activities !)

Lekha ta khub bhallaglo pore (I really enjoyed reading the article)...informative yet not monotonously factual, personal and yet with that subtle touch of the objective outsider's tone that renders it a pleasant read and most importantly, none of the cliched ecstasy that all Indians coming to USA for the first time seem to somehow effortllessly exude...it made a good breakfast accompaniment for K and me today. Glad you're having fun !

And yes, aage theke baron kore dile (if you request them in advance) they won't serve the regulation ice in your drinks...bole dekho (try it) ! :-D "

But I feel kinda low now. Reflecting on how much I should have been writing, considering the amount of tourism we've been indulging in since our arrival here. Well, maybe soon. Inspiration, I await thee !

Btw, this review has set me thinking anew about the portrayal of women in certain much lauded Bollywood films. Talk about wo(e)men !

Of untimely phone calls and undesirable etceteras

I was indignant at being summoned from the depths of sleep by the monotonous staccato of our landline phone. Thankfully K attended to it and I was just drifting back into sweet slumber when I heard his voice, out in our living room, where he seemed to be talking to a certain colleague back at his offshore office in Kolkata and enquiring about the reason for the call at such an ungodly hour (somewhere around 6.30 am, I think). My first thought was that of killing K, my second was that of killing the same colleague, my third of blowing up their offices both here and back at home. After such successively violent thoughts, you can hardly be astonished if I tell you that I was wide awake. I did my best to keep my eyes shut and contemplate nothingness. But there. I had been rudely woken up by all those unholy noises and there was no going back to neverland. K says I was so angry that when he tried to wake me up gently after my alarm clock rang (an hour or so later) and I showed no sign of reacting to it, that I actually smacked him on the nose and almost damaged his eye as well by flailing my fist wildly in the air. I vaguely recall hearing him groaning in pain and grumbling at his even trying to be affectionate in the morning. It was so obvious that I preferred sleep to him.

But it wasn't the phone calls alone. An elderly couple had been occupying the apartment below ours for an astonishing 19 years. They had recently left and been replaced by a young fellow who seems to have musical fits occasionally and more perplexingly, very early in the morning, that is, just when I'm clinging on for dear life to my last REM session. Well, he was apparently afflicted by the same sort of symptoms this morning, so that all my attempts at retiring back under the comforters proved to be of no avail. The entire world seemed to be conspiring to wake me up prematurely.

Well, I was in the kitchen preparing breakfast and hurling imprecations at every do-no-gooder around me I could recall at that point when I saw the pretty young musical fellow swaggering down the complex path towards the main road, armed with his usual outdoor musical accoutrements (IPod et al). For one minute I seriously contemplated pushing up the kitchen window and screaming out "Damn You" at him but thankfully, the seed in the plum I was dissecting was determined not to be dislodged and its resistance forced me to concentrate on the job at hand, thus allowing better sense to prevail. I did however notice that the creature crossed the road to board a van with the picture of a janitor painted across it, which seemed to belong to some company named 'Worldwide'. After that, I somehow lost the heart to remain annoyed any longer at him.

Talking of companies, things seem to be going very wrong almost everywhere nowadays in terms of jobs. Employees of K's company have been losing jobs left and right in Kolkata and Chennai. When last heard of, 800 of the projected 1400 had been shown the door in Kolkata. Those unallocated for more than a month or more and those with poor annual appraisals are the unfortunate majority to be handed pink slips at the earliest possible opportunity. One indeed wonders how times have changed when you even have a target of sorts to meet in terms of terminating employee contracts. Yesterday, K shocked me with the news of the mysterious 'resignation' of one of his colleagues who'd returned to India to get his visa renewed, had had his papers processed and formalities over, was supposed to fly to the USA next week. His wife and child are still here. In fact, his wife is working here right at this moment. God knows now how they are all going to handle this catastrophe. My heart goes out to them in sympathy. I hope things work out well for them soon. On two disparate occasions, two of K's colleagues, one based in Minneapolis and the other in Maryland (the latter in a managerial position) were prematurely packed off to India and asked to continue in their respective capacities at their original locations. Work hours have been increased on weekdays by an hour (a total of 9 per day), promotions and increments have been indefinitely stalled and all this means we are ourselves living under constant fear of some obscure sword vaguely hanging over our heads. I think I'll try out more recipes and improve my cooking skills (and bring them up to the high standard set by my indubitably superior half) , since we might have to consider alternative avenues of employment very soon.

On a lighter note, we've been going out on regular walks, now that it's spring by universal consensus and the weather is occasionally warm enough to allow the heaters to be switched off, the window let up and comforters left untouched at night. Just by virtue of sitting on our backs at home (to avoid the unmentionable anatomic technicalities), we've managed to gain what small chapbook size self-help by-the-cash-counter books at Walmart are euphemistically terming 'winter fat'. We've bought jogging attire for our considerable (pun certainly intended) selves last Sunday and intend to start on a sober daily regimen of exercise to shed the excess masses of unshapely fat that our bulky and then what we apparently (and obviously wrongly) considered body-friendly winter garments had helped conceal for so long. Amen to that.

Jogging Outfits :

For me :

For K :




Now if only the thundershowers would hold up...

City Centre

City Centre, Salt Lake, has its own website , I just discovered...I'm a happy girl now :))))

Making an effort...

Have finally taken Barnali's advice and emailed a couple of poems to a couple of e-magazines of a good standard and reputation. Have also mustered enough courage to send a photograph I took to another e-magazine of a slightly more multifaceted nature. Am keeping my fingers crossed.

Tried my own version of rajma yesterday night as K was dead tired, having had a long day at work. It didn't taste as good as the one K prepares, more so as I decided to experiment with it, leaving the methi out at the end. I think I'll leave this particular dish to K, in future.

We've been watching 'Oye Lucky Lucky Oye' in instalments (we are so lazy, OMG) over the past two days. Couldn't care less whether it turns out to be a hit or a flop. It's racy and ridiculous and roaring fun. Am loving it !

Am reading Coetzee's 'Slow Man'. I have a bit of trouble concentrating when a concrete plot goes abstract, but then, having read 'Foe' during my MA has managed not to totally unnerve me. Plan to finish it soon. Hope it ends as brilliantly as the other novel did. I remember having been impressed enough to churn out an appreciably large term paper on 'Foe' for our PoCo classes. I must have been really inspired, now that I think about it.

A huge heap of weekly shopping illustrateds await my inspection. This time, there's also a Holiday Gifts Special booklet from Walmart. I guess their Christmas is equivalent to our Durga Pujo. In terms of meaningfulness, I mean. I just realised my vocabulary is getting limited. Must catch up on my reading. The more you read, the better you write, I've always noticed.

Jhinuk has written a funny post on Srinwanti's orkut-related problems on our group blog. Had fun reading it. To think Srin hadn't know so long how to change her profile photo when we people have been vain enough to change ours several times in a week itself. Come on Srin, all you need is just ask ! LOL.

Have been GTalking with Ma and Mitu for the third day in a row now. Am on top of the world. Nothing like family gossip to cheer you up when you're alone at home.

Took some new photos of this place (home) and uploaded them on orkut (where else? !). They look much better, now that (1) we have a few more things to fill up the rooms and (2)I had the intelligence to use the flash.

Rony-Tanima and Pintu have finally been able to see both the photos and videos of Siddhant that we took during our recent trip to Atlanta. Picasa seems to have introduced a new set of options in terms of album accessibility. Well, at least they made sense to me. What with the new Gmail themes, introduction of video chat by Google and now this, I love the very name of Google. Oh, and I even managed to locate our block in Salt Lake in Google Maps. The place has finally received its due in the virtual world. Hurrah !