Tag Archives: Trivia

General update – translation – I just wanna chat

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First of all, I know I know, the blog seems colourless compared to my blog in the yesteryears.  Kya karen, my blog design had a trojan.  I hung on to it for dear life …. but had to discard it.  You guys would have abandoned me on the wayside, and I love you all and want you guys to visit and comment.  So adieu fancy blog design.  I have shed bitter tears, implored on Godji to curse all virus and other meanos.

But I have a very big axe to grind with Godji.

I’ll tell you why

1. Mayawati got that humongous thousand rupee notes garland on her birthday today, worth 15 crore or something.  Well, I had a birthday a couple of weeks ago.  I did not get even a marigold ka haar, let alone the thousand ke note ka haar.  Kyon bhai??  Simply not happening.  What has Mayawati got that I dont?  No – dont answer that!  It was a rhetorical question.

2. Another axe to grind with Godji ~  seems like all the Godmen in this country have a hot and happening sex life.  We dont :(   This is not fair.  I mean I can understand if yogis have a rocking sex life.  They eat right, exercise so their libido has to be up. ;)   What about these Godmen?  I mean just telling people to pray and meditate and dishing out commonsense and feel good mantras and gyan should not be reason for them to have all the money, the adulation and all that sex.  Aur ab this malaise is international.  We have swamijis here and priests abroad.  Kya ho raha hai.  They are having fun, bad sort of fun, sometimes evil, sometimes kinky, and here we have dull and drab lives.  Godji kuch toh socho!!!

3. Godji, my third point ~ Mera pretty pretty blog design.  Damn trojans killed it.  They effin ate it up.  Sob!!!  I am teaching myself HTML and weird stuff so that I can design me a nice header.  I am fifty years old dammit and the grey cells are not as agile as I wish they were.  Okay, I’ll behave…..  Sorry about that ;)     I am such a ham!  I simply cant resist turning the senti stuff on.  Actually I love the challenge.  I assure you, I will make me a header that is nice.  Godji help me please.

4. I have just had to refuse 6 people who wanted to help me save taxes/give me loans/issue me credit cars.  Darn!  At least there are folk out there who think I am rich.  Godji kya kartey ho yaar?  Mujhko style de diya, without the substance.  Simple hai, make me as rich as I apparently appear.

Sigh I have vented.  Now I shall go back to HTML, PHP and other sundry alphabets that will help me personalise this blog design.  Nice talking to you Godji and nice talking to you dear reader.

See ya

Some Indian Women I admire

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You’ve come a long way Baby!!! Or have you?

 

Sati Savitri : The courageous and determined lady who won back her dead husband from Yama

 

Draupadi : The princess who got to marry five most eligible princes of her time – and when humiliated instigated a war, echoes of which reverberate through time

 

Sita : The loyal companion, the lady who softened the rigid persona of Rama.  Also the lady whose ill-timed laughter when Srupnakha was wooing Rama led to Srupnakha’s mutilations and eventually the destruction of Lanka

 

Gandhari : The woman who confuses me – if I were married to a blind man, I would make sure that I could see and compensate for his lack of vision.  100 Sons? I admire her fortitude and she has my sympathy.

 

Kunti : The first recorded unwed mother – also the mother of braves.  Must have been quite a personality to have managed to mother 6 historical men

 

Kaikeyi : Agreed she got bad press, but this was a warrior queen who saved her husband’s life in battle – and she was just playing royal politics and being pushy for her own son.

 

Laxmibai, Rani of Jhansi : The woman betrayed by her childhood friend, Scindia in battle.  The queen who died – or did not (since the British did not find her body) is the stuff of legends.  I idolize her

 

Mrignayni : The Gujjar queen of Scindia who single handedly killed a boar and died fighting an invader, fighting by her husband’s side

 

Ahilyabai Holkar : Child widow, came to the throne of Holker after the death of her father in law.  A very able administrator. 

 

Jijabai : Mother of Shivaji – She proves that the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world

 

Panna Dhai : Nurse of Udai Singh who sacrificed her own son for the safety of her charge

 

Meera Bai : Intense and mind boggling devotion that foiled all kinds of plots to get her killed

 

There are so many others like Radha, Menaka etc that I have not put up here.  Knowing how feudal our country is, these women must have been special to have gained their place in history.  I wonder how many of today’s women make it to the history pages.

Gold is cheap – fuel expensive

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I was reading the Indian Oil advertisement today which exhorts us to use fuel judiciously. “Dur Ki Soch” they implore. So I decided to think – I have lots of time – kya karoon, am on forced internet fasting because of various reasons.

  • Heavy rains have caused water-logging on the roads
  • After seeing the condition of the roads our authorities have woken up from deep slumber and decided to give us very precious storm water drains.
  • The guys who have to put the drainage in place have dug up the roads, which mean the telephone lines, internet lines, the roads themselves.
  • For some strange reason, they have left the potholes in place. Weird huh?

So now I am in deep thought. What will oil shortage lead to?

  • All of us will lose a lot of weight because we will walk or cycle. Cardiologists and chiropractors will be seeing a slump in business, so will dieticians and slimming centers.
  • We will move out of home only when we absolutely need to. There will be no such thing as romantic long drives. This is going to lead to lots of angst. Can you imagine tolerating your spouse or other members of the family 24/7?
  • Psychiatrics and divorce lawyers will see a steady rise in business.
  • Our favorite channel on TV will be National Geographic and other armchair travel programmes. That will save us a lot of fuel.
  • Journeys to office will be different. It would be normal to share a car with other people. In theory I don’t mind that, that is if my car pool has gorgeous muscular hunks. My social life will become happening heh! But if I get unlucky, I will have to share with women who are busy knitting and discussing the latest twists and turns of the Ekta Kapoor serials – or men discussing economy or the political situation. Gaah!
  • We will save a heck of a lot of money which is otherwise used for fuel. Since gold is becoming cheaper – I know where most of that money will go.
  • Advise for families with more than one car – Cars can double as extra storage space – one can always put in lot of Odonil or other moth repellants and then neatly pack our winter wear in the car. The boot can hold all the tools that one never knows where to stash.
  • If one is mechanically inclined, one could always dismantle the car and reassemble it on the terrace where it can work as a greenhouse for difficult to grow plants.
  • We will see the return of horses and camels as modes of transportation. Since cars will be storage space or green houses, community garages will be built to house our horses and camels.
  • Roads will be deserted, and what do you know – we just may be able to grow daisies in the damn potholes to green India and lower the pollution levels.

The Weasley Clock

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Kid#1 came back yesterday from land far away where he is learning to fly planes and my empty nest is full again.  We all loaded into one car and went to the airport to get the boy home.  It was fun.  The plane landed at 9:30 which means that we came home by midnight.  I normally am fast asleep by 10 in the night, but did not feel tired or sleepy.  Instead I felt totally complete.  My babies were home and momma could rest easy.

This made me wish for a Weasley clock, you know the one owned by Ron Weasley’s family in the Harry Potter series and I googled about it.   A  prototype device has been made by Microsoft researchers which would be able to keep track of the general location of your family members using their wireless cell phone network, and translate that information back to a clock at home. The device works by using a preset location of a persons work, school, or home, and when the person goes back to that area, ‘the software sends a signal through the network back to the Whereabouts Clock at home. The clock interprets the signal and uses it to move an image of the person’s head into the appropriate area. The image moves into “elsewhere” when the person’s mobile phone is in an undesignated area.’ Families would also be able to text a message to the Clock, leaving a note of their activities if they should change.

You can read the article here http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/11/13/whereabouts-clock.html.  Damn, I wish I knew how to make those small link thingys.

Kid#1 is back, skinny but happy to be with us.  DIL is over the moon and Kid#2 is all smiley and nice.  It is full house right now, all sunshine and love.  Hmm, give them all two days with each other and the drama will start.  Kid#1 will become all angry and irritated, DIL will be catty and complaining and Kid#2 will be at his crabby best.  That should be entertaining ….. and normal.

Oh and he got me a digital camera ….. for my blog he said with a wink, and no – I do not think its sufficient bribe.  I wont fall for it and give him a link to the blog.  After all I do need a place to vent, and he and DIL will be chosing my hospital and be looking after me in my old age.

Boys and Bugs

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It would take me a long long while to list the myriad reasons for being grateful (truly) for having boys turned men in the house. But the main thing is the bugs!!!! They are the in-house bug exterminators. :) Delhi-NCR has many cockroaches, mosquitoes, flies, crickets and what nots. Having two dogs means that the door is always open – wish they could be trained to shut the door after they came in. But it does offer opportunities for the boys to be amused all the time. Yeah, there is just something hilarious about hearing a grown woman shriek like a two-year-old at the sight of a bug. I kid you not, I am a lapsed Jain …. That means I can’t kill the darn things even though I might officiate in the proceedings. My D.I.L. aka daughter in law will not even do that – and she is no Jain lapsed or otherwise!!!!!

The scenario is something like this :

<!–[if !supportLists]–>1. <!–[endif]–>I scream like as though I was being assaulted by an E.T.

<!–[if !supportLists]–>2. <!–[endif]–>Sons hear me over their TVs blaring the latest metal or rock assault on ear drums and try to evaluate the level of danger (based on the pitch and the level of commitment behind the scream) and decide that Mom has had the coronary that she has been promising all these years.

<!–[if !supportLists]–>3. <!–[endif]–> They run to investigate.

<!–[if !supportLists]–>4. <!–[endif]–>They find me looking at the darn bug in anger, I raise my eyes and say like a bloodthirsty warrior squaw “Kill it, kill the darn thing”

<!–[if !supportLists]–>5. <!–[endif]–>The D.I.L. flees at this point.

<!–[if !supportLists]–>6. <!–[endif]–>The boys laugh at me. Oh and then they squish the darn thing with my slipper, while I try desperately not to puke.

<!–[if !supportLists]–>7. <!–[endif]–>I squeal in protest.

<!–[if !supportLists]–>8. <!–[endif]–>They laugh again at the sight of a grown woman who can scare the entire world with the force of her bullying tactics reduced to a bimbette at the sight of a tiny bug.

I mean, I am not scared of bugs. They would be fine by me, if I could show them the door and they would scoot into the big whole world outside. I don’t like killing them (its messy and disgusting) and they don’t understand spoken language or sign language. So I just settle for screaming in the vain hope that I could startle them to death.

Taxes

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That time of the year has come much too soon

All around are worried frowns, doom and gloom

The taxmen thinks its funny

To take all our money

They rub their hands happily and grin

And say the fun’s about to begin

Tax is the system

Tax on our income

Tax on every one’s property

And each and every utility

Tax on our liquor

Is such a kicker

Tax when we are born

Tax when we are gone

Tax on our pills

Makes us so ill

Tax on our cars

Cant take us far

Tax on our wheat

Tax on our meat

And when we work hard to pay all that

The just laugh and impose on us more tax

With March 31st looming in the horizon, and two kids in college ….. this is all I could come up with :)

Most Practical T Shirt

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Give me a lazy day and a computer, and this is what we get ….. posts about the most interesting (To me if not to any one else) stuff. After the “I hate Clowns T Shirt”, I started looking up other T Shirts and found this one!!!! It beats every other T Shirt I have seen in terms of practicality. Suffering from an itchy back? No problem at all. Just wear this TShirt and ask for help.

You even have a map to guide people.

“Just a little more. Get to F5 and start scratching. The spot is between F5 and F6. Thank you so much!”

Simply awesome.

backscratcher_shirt1.jpg

I Hate Clowns

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Just browsing on the net, I came across the website dedicated to hating

clowns. Here is the link to it http://www.ihateclowns.com/

I loved it. I hate clowns. I think people are fun, and clowns are some kind of aliens. I mean, they hide their faces under weird paint, wear some kind of funny nose and wigs. When I was little, a clown came and sat down next to me while I was having candy floss at a fair. It scared me so much that I dropped the darn candy floss. My parents actually clicked a picture of me looking daggers at the clown and trying to shift away from IT on the bench. They even thought we made a cute picture and they had it framed. I had to see it in their room for a long long time, that is, until I pushed it off the dresser and the frame broke. Thank God no one saw me do it – otherwise I would have been punished.

People especially funny people with twinkling eyes and a kind smile are s much more approachable. I have often seen kids bawl, cringe, and in extreme cases run away from the Mickey Mouse costumed clown or the Charlie Chaplin. They are intimidated by the weird alien. One really does not have to don a funny costume to bring a smile to a kid’s face.

They even sell T Shirts like the one in the picture.13603_135295_1_big1.jpg