Raining Thoughts

Pic Courtesy: Here Some things in life are as pointless as dogs peeing on random car tyres. It might not be as much of a necessity to the car owner, to have his car tyres peed on, as it is for the dog to demarcate its territory on a piece of asset that travels around a lot. The same thought applies to those uninvited geniuses who spend half their lives prying across the wall into the privacy of unwary people, unsuspectingly dazzling them with their hitherto unrevealed moral intelligence. However, what exactly they are trying to demarcate with their unsolicited wisdom still remains a mystery to that section of mankind stranded on the receiving end of their bounty. These morally super-intelligent beings are everywhere now. Breathing the air we breathe, viewing the very same sights we see, but perceiving a different and perhaps a more stimulating version of reality, which simply cannot be kept to the confines of their brilliant minds. They spew wisdom anywhere and ever...

From in-between the clank clank of vessels in the kitchen, I could make out heavily accented telemarketing commercial voices emanating from the main hall where the TV had previously been spewing out Doraemonish Chotta Bheemish voices. Sensing that it was time for my kiddo to hit bed, I called out to her, “Bedtime…now go brush your teeth like a good girl..”  After continuing with my kitchen scouring for a few more minutes I  realized  that the telemarketing show was still on with the mock American accented Hindi speaking female voice continuing to wax eloquent on the 199 benefits of some bogus gym contraption that guaranteed all the right things in all the right places. What my brat was doing there listening to it puzzled me. ‘She might have slept off on the divan', I thought. Even if that was not the case, Silence had never been a healthy sign when it came to my baby angel. I moved to the hall to see what was happening. A mind-boggling sight greeted my eyes.. ...

A highly ornate BMW diesel auto-rickshaw that was stuck in the slow moving traffic in front of the non-branded rickshaw I was travelling in triggered off the amusement button in my head today. Amusing though it might have been for me at that instant, it sure would not have been so for the car owner who would have suffered the loss of his precious car emblem. I could almost picture him somewhere  in a posh Pune suburban villa, wringing his artificially re-grown crown of pitch black hair in angst, possibly at an emblem’s distance away from sanity altogether... Car logo thieves are frenziedly spreading brand equality all across the country nowadays. A slice of ‘have-ism’ gouged out and blatantly plastered across the foreheads of the have-nots. To anybody who asks ‘What’s in a logo?’ the answer would be ‘a whole lot!’ because that’s apparently what the ubiquitous mafia-like body that is involved in this ignoble art across the length and breadth of this nation suggests. One cann...

Watching posts and discussion threads from others scroll up the facebook wall is rather like overhearing conversations in real life. However the guilt is comparatively less or nil, as most of these exchanges find their way into the shared cosmos post authorization from their owners to run amok and roll out the joy among mankind. A conversation thread I happened to recently over hear  glimpse was one between my school-going nephew and a couple of his friends; a conversation that revolved around 'F.R.I.E.N.D.S'. It is surprising to see the circle grow and overlap generations of friends all around, or is it? After all humor has no death, and F.R.I.E.N.D.S is proof. My relationship with F.R.I.E.N.D.S was rather complicated and strained until a few years back. I had never been a fan of the series in my younger days, unlike my sister, who used to hold the series responsible for not letting her smirk for an hour everyday, and like my husband, who till date strongly believes i...

I've always been fond of certain words, though I've never been able to explain why. Certain words like elusive... insane... perhaps…reason…poignant…absurd…tranquil…twist…. TWIST!...  Let me stop and breathe for a moment… A recent turn of events on a bygone evening certainly seems to have caused a few tectonic shifts in my perspective of words. Looking back it seems that I've always loved certain words very much, as they have always maintained a safe distance from my life. Tranquil, Absurd, Poignant & co. are all welcome for tea at my table, provided they have the tea, samosas, chit-chat and leave my table to never come back, unless I request them to return. But this guy…Twist… Well, he came for tea, uninvited, ate up all the samosas too and never left. A minor road accident which involved zero vehicles, but ‘n’number of loose gravel on a busy road-side and who else, but the miserable me. Wish I could just rewind and delete off that ill-fated minute from my li...

There’s something that I share in common with the famous fictional Prof. Robert Langdon.  No…it’s neither religious iconology nor his love for dead languages. Neither do I have Cordovan loafers or a signature Mickey Mouse watch to match. Not his eidetic memory or his un-paralleled swimming skills either. In fact my memory has always been as dusty as the old soda bottles in some Abdu Bhai’s paan shop and if dropped in water, I might as well just go down gurgling and sit there ogling at the piranhas getting thrilled about my arrival… Ever felt the fear of being stuck in crammed-up spaces?  This is the part where I empathize with Langdon. It is this fear of enclosed spaces that has always haunted me ever since I could remember. Elevators, basements, crammed dentist cabins and even spa cubicles scare me. I have tried this so-called psychological self-counseling therapy during such claustrophobic stints. It sure is useful to a certain extent, until the moment you st...

I've always romanticized bus-rides. In fact bus-rides are an inseparable part of my existence, and it's always been so, not just because I love them, but more so owing to my fear of the steering wheel.  I’d been harbouring the impression that mine was a unique case worthy of study until I came across Wikipedia gyaaning starkly on this grave but thankfully-not-unheard-of condition.  "The fear of driving can be severe enough to be considered a phobia. It is often great enough that people will avoid driving at all costs, and instead find someone to drive them or use public transportation, regardless of how inconvenient or expensive it is. There is no Latin term for this fear, though it is comparable to hodophobia, the fear of traveling."  And Good God! That sounded so very ‘me’ in a lot of places! I’m certain that I’m not, as Wiki puts it, hodophobic. For I lurve … travelling. And perhaps the intensity of my love for travelling can be matched only ...

Me: Hello…Hello….Amma… can you hear me? Amma: You just left! What happened? Me: (* excitedly *) ….Amma… there’s a peacock perched on the rooftop of a house on my way to the bus stop!!! Amma: (* skeptically *) Look more closely…that must be a crow or a hen. Peacock!? Ha… and that too in Trivandrum??? Mmm but…are you sure it’s one?…look more carefully… Me: (* irritated * desperate * ) : Aiyyooooo….IT IS A PEACOCK!!! I’m SURE. Amma : (* uncertainly *): eh?... mmm… Me: (* nail-bitingly *) Wait!! Guess I was a bit too loud. I’ve scared it off. Ohh!  It’s jumped on to the coconut grove adjacent to the house now. Ah! There it is…I am watching it. Amma: (* blandly *) What’s it doing now? Me:  (* breathlessly *)   It’s pecking at the ground & strutting around in the grove. Oh!... I wish I was carrying a camera phone at least… I could’ve shown you… Amma: (* non-chalantly *): Pecking at the ground…hmmm….that’s exactly what a guinea...

              It was one of those slapstick moments of life when my husband’s aunt pulled out the chair on which I was about to park myself, from right underneath my bottom. Swish! Plop! A crash landing right on the floor.We both were lost in our respective conversations to different people, when I thought to sit and chat comfortably and simultaneously our aunt felt that it would be better to grab a chair to get a better look at all of us ‘seated’ around the table. My gleeful husband lent me a hand & at the same time congratulated me heartily on this achievement. On taking a 180 o  sweep of the surroundings I could see that our cousins were also trying hard to suppress their bubbling laughter. I rose up from the other end of the table, with my picture-perfect 32-teeth grin and a crushed bum, with a highly apologetic aunt hovering over me, apologizing profusely and trying to pull me up even after I was ba...