Single's Party Tonight

“Why be single, come and mingle,” tingled my cell in an early morning sms from someonematrimony.com. Opened my mail to be told “The woman of your dreams is waiting for you!” Umm ?

My understanding of dating, mating sites is that pot-bellied old men pose as young hunks to attract young nubile nymphets, who are actually over-the-hill women looking to attract young hunks. Complicatedly simple….

The singles I know are happily single. One has traveled 75 countries on her own, and is on her next. My most adventurous trip of late has been taking my dog to the vet with a ear infection.(My dog’s, not the vet’s – though the vet may have got a ear infection after meeting my dog – which just goes to show that not all arranged dates work so well.)

Anyway, I invite all the matchmakers, marrying sites and dust mites to my very own SINGLES PARTY tonight.

See, S is always cribbing that the washing machine eats up one of his socks. He never gets 2 socks of the same colour out again. S has the world’s leading collection of single socks. Next - I buy a dozen clothes pegs, and the next day, there are 11 left ! 1 spoon out of the new set has gone walkies, under my nose.

So where do these Singles all go? Is there some hip hopping party under the floor tiles of my house that I’m sleeping through? Only one way to find out. I invite all those who have been urging me to meet my match to my singles party tonight. Creep under the tiles and go seek. You never know.
You may have the time of your life. And meet the sock of your dreams.

The murder of Daisy Dee

My most faithful childhood companion was a doll called Daisy Dee whose hair I combed and shampooed; I told her many secrets, married her off to many suitable suitors, like Wind-up-Piggy and the boy on the biscuit tin.

Recently, I asked a tiny girl her favourite doll’s name. “I have 27,” she said, “and they’re all called Barbie.”
Today’s kid gets a toy when he does well in class, does miserably in class, Dad goes on a biz trip, Mom goes on a shopping trip (guilt), Sunday, Rain day, Uncle’s-coming-avisiting-so-you’d-better-behave day, election day in Alaska, found-a-toy-not-made-in-China day….
Do they know the romance of waking up every morning to the same beloved, raggedy teddy bear? Or is it quick flings, one-night stands with the train set, until the new car comes in? Will they ever know the magic of an entire afternoon spent fixing a toy soldier’s broken arm with string and grandma’s stolen dentures? Or will it be “Pa, just buy me the next-gen soldier with the laser gun?”

The other day I found Daisy Dee in an old box, and decided to introduce her to my little boys, with all her stories and dreams. We cuddled under the quilt at night, and I told them about value, sentiment and love. They looked at her and me with awe. I DID IT, I thought, I gave them a life lesson.

The next morning, my foot kicked something that went bouncing down the stairs. It was Daisy Dee’s head. A monster truck had run over her, a Transformer twisted her arms backwards, and a dinosaur had bitten a chunk out of her middle. I put her back into her box. Only one dainty foot was still un-attacked.
May her sole (and my heart) rest in peace.

Membership open for the Bleeding Hearts Club

Ok, so I get a lot of ribbing for being a pulp. I sob at sad movies, goo-goo over stray pups, buy anything from any seller with a sad face. BUT – it’s a firm NO to beggars.

This signal on 100 feet Road? – there’s a kid there – a regular. Sometimes, he appears with his head bandaged, after applying ketchup behind a tree. Sometimes, he’s selling ear buds. Today, he had a big God portrait, and a coupla garlands around his neck.

“I have no money to go to Tirupati”
Me : I have no money too.
Kid (looking through my car window) : You’ve got your handbag.
Me : That’s my mother’s handbag.
Kid : You’re so lucky. I have no mother
Me : (heart bleeding a bit)
Kid again : I’ll pray for you to Lord Balaji at Tirupati
Me (last ditch attempt ) : That won’t help me. I’m Christian.
Kid : Then I’ll pray for you at St. Mary's Church on the way.

I lost. I gave him something. Heck, I almost hired him. Trust me, he’s gonna be Big someday. And maybe sponsor my Bleeding Hearts Club.

Save My House

My summer holiday homework is REDO House.
S wants to know if my idea of saving money in a recession, is to spend loads of it.
The answer stares you in the face. If you come knocking on my door, that is. (And don’t knock too hard, or the door may cave in.)
Between my dog and my kids, they have peeled the walls and chewed the furniture. There is a stain on the sofa that looks suspiciously like some disgusting body fluid, but is actually orange juice, which by an anti-gravity miracle, has also splashed the ceiling. When a guest opened a cabinet, the Giant Book of Monsters fell on his head.
So I’ve spent hours in the sun, in various potty shops (as Priti so delicately puts it) looking for tiles and basins, and more hours arguing with a lost-looking contractor.
The salient points of my Redo House are therefore :
- Only space left for Ma’s expensive keyboard is in dog’s basket
- Nik fell off the bunk bed in the display at the furniture store – so that is out.
- S and I have argued over every item, colour and finish, and now reached a shade between jaundice-yellow and bile-green
- Neel has asked Asian Paints to paint a HYENA on his wall
Summary :
After copious calculations, (and bad sun tan), I have arrived at NO conclusion on tiles or walls, but reached an estimate. It will cost ½ the State budget, and take 13 years to complete my house.
And will be broken down the next day.

Statistics prove you are going to die

Woke up to the fresh smell of filter coffee. And opened the newspaper.
Warned the health column – 62% of coffee drinkers have ulcers and angina. Phew ! Just in time !
Opened the orange juice carton. Packed with Vitamin C and all that… Statistics prove that 46.3 % of people who drink juice, which has no fibre, end up with constipation and piles. Ouch !
Cornflakes… frown the statistics – cause cavities in 8.3 out of 10 kids. (what does a .3 kid look like?)
87 % of packaged foods have additives.
85% of fruits have pesticides.
99% of meats are instant cholesterol.
Idli, dosa make India the Diabetes capital of the world.
Ahem ? Water then? Statistics cannot believe my ignorance, pointing out how 77.6% of drinking water is contaminated with underground sewage…. Ugh !

Not hungry any more. Let me just live on fresh air…
Not a chance ! 9 out of 10 places in the city have air that is polluted with above average suspended particle matter which will give me asthma and cancer.
Stop eating. Stop breathing.

A crash course in statistics :
The interviewer met Betty and Sue in a small American hick town, over a cup of coffee. After that, Betty said Bye, tripped over her shoelace, fell down the stairs and broke her neck. The interviewer wrote – Statistics prove that 50% of women who drink coffee die premature deaths.

Statistics are bad for you. Don’t believe everything you’re told… unless I’m telling it to you. J

A question on drawing

I met a kid I know after her Board exam. “It was super easy,” she said. “Everyone cheated.”
We all laughed. That was funny. And then sad.

It took me back to my own student days. I remember an exam where I squinted hard at question no. 29, all the while being prodded by someone’s foot from behind, getting a loud whisper from the left, and a dig in my ribs from the right. The 2 students ahead of me had their heads joined into 1 big solar eclipse.
Did I cheat?
No. Maybe…. Yes ! Once or twice. Or maybe thrice. To help out a friend in need. Or just to be cool, and ‘with it’ and ‘with them’.

It took me to the future too. What am I going to tell my own little boy? To draw the line? To be honest, and then get shredded to pieces outside the class by his mates? Will I sweep up the pieces, cello-tape him up and tell him I’m proud of him? Or will I tell him to go by his instincts? To go with the “flow”? To do what he wants to do?

No, I will have to say No. Not once. Not ever.
Because I’m not his pal. I’m his Ma.
Because I first put that pencil into his tiny hand. And now, if I don’t teach him to draw the line, who will?

8 women vs 1 decision

Who said women can’t decide? A blue dress or green? Both ! – that’s a decision, isn’t it? Yesterday, for example, 8 of us women met for lunch and decided on where to have the next lunch. It took us 4 hours – but that’s not the point !

Minutes of the meeting :
-Let’s do Saturday lunch for a friend’s farewell. 2 women going to be stuck in hospital. 1 will be stuck with 2 kids (not even her own). So Saturday lunch is out.
-Saturday dinner? With partners then. 4 for the motion, 3 against, 1 in the loo.
Too much for 1 woman to cook. So eating in is out. Eating out is in.
13 restaurants discussed, 13 excuses for not going to any of them : - Too expensive - Too cheap (waiters are pigs) - Continental – too bland - Andhra – too spicy for kids (Kids? We’re bringing the kids?)
Realise kids are tearing each other apart in the other room. 1 is learning to skate, with another learning to trip him. 2 are trying to sleep on the floor, while the others play hopscotch on them. 3 are fighting over 1 car, while 77 other cars lie close by. 2 are trying to pull the fish out of the fish tank.
Eating IN is back in. Too much for 1 woman to cook. So who cooks what? (The last time we spent 3 hours discussing a picnic and who would bring what, and then 3 seconds the next day canceling it all).
EMERGENCY BREAK : 1 kid locks himself into a room. 35 minutes spent with everyone trying to explain to him how to open it. 11 minutes spent planning to climb the balcony to the window sill to the room – to find the kid is already out.
55 minutes spent discussing how we cannot decide on anything.
Monday lunch is now in.
Phew ! Finally ! 3 hours, 59 seconds !!!
The girl to be farewelled walks in. She cannot come for Monday lunch. We cannot have a farewell without the girl to be farewelled.
Back to the beginning.

Learning : S tells me it takes 8 men (or 80) exactly .33 seconds to decide on where to have lunch. There is only 1 criterion. There has to be beer.

Love goes around - and around

6 years ago, I opened an anniversary gift from Shilpa, to find a poisonously-pink scented candle, with a huge LOVE carved into it. I grimaced in pain, put on my dark glasses and hid it on the top shelf (don’t deny you have one) – to give the gift you’re never going to use – to someone else who’s never going to use it.
When Riyah, an arty-party-pink-candle person insisted I come for her kitty party, I gave her the LOVE candle as a sign of protest. (She’s been giving me sly smiles ever since). Riyah then gave it to her boyfriend as a sign of their eternal love. He left her next month, and gave it to his new girlfriend Alia, as a sign of their eternal love. Alia put it on her grand-aunt’s grave, hoping they’d bury it too.
But the priest took a liking to it and took it back. He gave it to an Australian called Barry for a reason no one knows (or dares guess at). Barry took it back to Australia and gave it to Sam as a sign of Indian Tribal Art. Sam flung it out of his back window. Vanessa D’Cruz, who was Sam’s neighbour, found it flying at her while she was de-worming her plants, and saw it as a sign from God. She took it back to Goa on her next trip back to India, and gave it to Sr. Nobilia as a sign of Australian Tribal Art.
Sr. Nobilia put it on the altar, and Cindy stole it (this part of the story is not proven, since Cindy denies it). But Cindy, who wanted to make it in Bollywood, gave it to Kareena Kapoor’s make-up assistant who was doing a shoot in Goa. Who gave it to his wife’s younger sister, Meera, as a sign of his love. Meera hated him and the candle. She left it in a fish market.
OK, so here the story got lost… but last week, I met Tanya, whose hair I once put chewing gum on. Tanya tells me all’s forgiven, and she’s taken days to make me something special. It smells of fish and graveyards. And there it is…in all its pinkness - the LOVE candle.
Learning : Please don’t send me candles. Please don’t send me invites to kitty parties. Please don’t send me junk mails. And please do send this junk mail pink candle story to atleast 43,118 people you know immediately, and wait for a miracle to happen tomorrow

Look Ma, 10 hands !

“My son can count 1 to 100 – backwards – in Latin,” said 1 proud mom in the park.
My son thinks Latin is the next action hero. I gotta do something NOW… so I dashed around picking up info on how to make my kid into Superkid. Surprise – there are tons of classes offering to turn Neel into Tiger-Bill-Gates-Barrack-Obama-Woods !

Where I live, every kid goes to math genius class, soccer genius class, Art genius class, reading story class (takes a genius to start a class for that), music genius class…. So I enrolled my 4 year old in music, badminton, swimming and dance class – all of which he lasted a week in.

Anyways, so we’re going to have, in the next 10 years, every child who is brilliant, comes 1st in class, is a tennis pro, a swimming champ, wins the Oscar, Nobel and Pulitzer together, plays 6 instruments, speaks 16 languages, and builds a submarine with his bare hands, while doing backward somersaults on the trapeze bar.
Or they’re gonna land up to be very bad losers (because no one wants to come 2nd !). And pick up a gun and shoot everyone who’s done better than them.

Learning : So – me ! I’m going to find something my son is really bad at, and then train him to do even worse. We’ve all gotta learn to come last – I did in the marathon – even after taking a taxi half-way ! He’s going to land up as a loser-hippie-rock n roller on the beach (hmm – should I send him to Rock music class?)

I've got less friends than you on Facebook

I just got a ‘friend invitation’ from someone I don’t know on Facebook who has 872 friends. Some collection huh? Beats my mom’s collection of old newspaper recipes since 1958.
Anyway, I’m sorry, it’s a no. I’m not a collector’s item – but I could put you onto my Ma, if you’d like.

So here’s a list of my own :

If you’re my friend, you gotta earn it, dude (And never call me that) ! Meet over a coupla coffees (and spare me the lecture on my 3 sugars), have a few earth-shattering fights (over an issue you can’t even spell when you’re sober), rush me to hospital after bad prawn curry with me puking all over the back seat of your car, sock someone in the eye because he called me a bad word (something only you can do!), let me fix you up with a blind date and threaten to kill me later.

Do 872 people actually know your deepest darkest fears, like the chicken kabab on your plate may suddenly come to life?

When I change my status line on Facebook, only those who know me will say “Jane has now changed her status to “Jane is a raving lunatic” but hey- isn’t that what she always was?”

My apologies to the 872 – or now 871er ! Put it down to a bad case of Sour Grapes, ok?
And hellooooooo there to my good many good friends on Facebook, and out of it. And a few who are almost there! But first I’ve got to find out if they’re worthy – or rather if the backseat of their car is puke-worthy !