Ten things I hate about you (new and updated)

1. I have built this pretty little pattern of dust piles all around me with an idea buried in each, and then you come along like a bad boy on a runaway horse and trample my dust piles away. And challenge me to rearrange the dust piles the way they were before you came. And I find that some of the ideas have blown away and some are in the wrong dust pile altogether.

2. You take efforts to dig into my corners and point out all the cobwebs hidden where no eyes but yours can see. And my Mirror of Erised always deemed me perfect or at least, well on the way there.

Excuse me, but are we from the same species?

The dictionary defines a species as “A class of individuals or objects grouped by virtue of their common attributes and assigned a common name; a division subordinate to a genus.” Biology says that it’s a fundamental category of taxonomic classification, ranking below a genus or subgenus and consisting of related organisms capable of interbreeding. Yup! I didn’t get most of that either. :D

By this definition, my chat “companion” of the morning and I belong to the same species. And damn, am I ashamed of myself!

Anniversary Blues?

It’s been a year. Five people. Our first day in Hyderabad. The beginning of a new chapter. The start of a year that changed everything. The start of a year that morphed 5 people into creatures they never dreamt they would become.

“I want to stay with a family. I know girls who get ruined and caught up in this kind of free living. My Papa will never be happy if this happens to me.” “I know I deserved university first! Damn! How could I be second!”

Opinionist

Was talking to someone who had read my blog comments (not my blog) and who asked me if I had opinions on everything. Set me wondering. Do I? Scraped the bottom of my blog comments and discovered that there were a few things I had opinions on…

On Creativity: Creativity is not about watching the apple falling. It's about making the connection between the falling apple and all falling objects, wondering why they go down instead of going up and discovering gravity. It's about getting into a bathtub, seeing the water falling out and discovering Archimedes' Principle. Creativity is not always about new ideas. It's about discovering existing truths and giving new interpretations to old truths.

Welcome back, my love

Walked home last night. "Wow! Mummy! This top is SOOOOOOOO cute!"
"Thanks Ken."
He comes and buries his face in my stomach, his arms around me.
"Wow! You smell sooooooo nice."

At the end of a long and tiring day, I walk in at 11:00 pm in the night and who else but Ken would say that to me? He does things to my ego. Good things. Welcome back my love. So lovely to have you back.

When the world is not enough

When you think about James Bond, you think excess. Too much of everything. He's got every gadget a 10-year old boy can dream up. He's got every woman an 18-year old man can fantasize about. He annihilates all the bad guys. He beds all the good girls, as well as the bad girls.

No wonder that the Bond movies inspired lyrics such as "No one ever died from wanting too much. The world is not enough. But it is such a perfect place to start, my love. And if you're strong enough, together we can take the world apart, my love. People like us know how to survive. There's no point in living if you can't feel alive." (The world is not enough)

How awesome the thought! When you go beyond the 40 or 50 years that we get to live and look at the larger scheme of life.

To catch a fox and put him in a box

A-hunting we will go A-hunting we will go

We'll catch a little fox, And put him in a box, And never let him go!

What does one do when one’s the fox? What do you do when people want to put you in the box and never let you go? Boxes of the mind. People are constantly catergorizing. Someone’s good. Someone else is bad. Someone’s hot babe. Someone else is good girl. What happens if good girl talks bad. Or bad girl cares about her public image? What do you label her? Madonna? Or slut?

There’s this chap at work who is so quiet that someone dared him to talk for 3 minutes.

The theories of Amudha

The latest addition to my eccentric household is Ken's new nanny, Amudha. I met her the weekend before the last. From that moment, life had begun. A new, strange, weird, amusing life. Amudha has now settled in and I have her figured out.

She talks. even Ken has THAT figured out by now. "Mummy! Why is this Amudha ALWAYS talking???" he asks exasperated when he runs to me for refuge and silence. And she talks nonsense with such conviction and such authority that I am completely bowled over by her self confidence. Here are a few theories she has expounded and tried to convert me to.

Don't bathe in hot water: When you heat water, it evaporates, it thickens.When you bathe in hot water, the blood inside your body also evaporates and thickens. This is all science. You claim to have studied a lot. This much also you don't know!

Inside the mind of a man

There is a delightful simplicity in the thinking of the male of the species. The male mind represents the complex meanderings of the human brain brought down to minimalism. When one’s mind is acting like current on a short circuited motherboard, to see something as easy to comprehend, as black and white as a chessboard, is refreshing.

Take the youngest male I know personally. Ken. He has his priorities all in place. He goes in for looks and blood relationships.

Welcome to my parlour

See, the thing with the whole drama thing is, I don’t seek it. I plan for quiet and peace and drama arrives unheralded. I have had no weekends now for two weeks. A quick trip to Chennai took up last weekend and the tumultuous arrival of Mum ate into the previous one. This one was meant to be quiet, getting-in-touch-with-my-inner-being kind of weekend.

Friday night was to be dedicated to an old soothing classic and early to bed. It all went awry when Blameless lost her cool with boyfriend and decided to “do something different.”

Confessions of a dangerous mind

Someone told me today that I should take it easy. Perhaps I should. But I am angry and I can't show anger at anyone except if I really love and respect them. The others have such a despicably low sense of self that a few home truths would break them. But added together, there are over 50 last straws on my back. I am so hopping mad that I don't wanna punch a sandbag, I wanna sandbag all of them. I wanna plunge knives into them and rip them apart.

I read this story about this 5-year-old who was so mad at her kitten one day that she said, "I'm going to kill you..."She went and drowned the kitten.. And when the temper tantrum passed, she tried to call the kitten. It was dead. It never wakened.

Inertia, ennui, equanimity, repose, and general sangfroid

A discussion during the ride back home triggered this post. I am, by no stretch of imagination, either science student or engineering-savvy (my talents at figuring out left from right are proof enough of my dyslexia with rational logic). However, there is something so appealing about Newton's First Law of Motion, as far as its relationship with life goes.

This Newton chap had the makings of a fine philosopher (what goes up must come down!) and it's a pity that the Science folks grabbed him from us Arts people. "An object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force."

My Family and Other animals…

….was the title of a book by naturalist, Gerald Durell. Often when I look around me, I believe he was talking about my family, not his. Absolutely amazing it is, to sit there, look around and choke with laughter. On second thoughts, however, My Family and Other Members of my Home-grown Circus would be a more accurate baptismal. For each of them are performers in their own right.

Star performer, diva sans par, a class apart is Mums. She lands up last Friday, Ken in tow, and a plastic cover with a couple of her clothes and his.