The Heavens are calling...

Lately, the changing colours of the sky have begun to fascinate me, the brilliant optimistic blues contrasting with the mysterious deep blues in the evening sky are simply ethreal.

The colours of the sky are more different during the rainy season than otherwise, try observing that. Its as if the sky's getting a good spring cleaning these days :)

When doves cry...

Prince's song has inspired me to write a few lines to what i think what its like when doves cry...

when the fight's all gone out of you...
when all that remains are ashes and feathers of the dance of life

when the cry of an innocent embeds itself in your soul
you cry, you laugh, both at the same time, knowing no one can hear you
wishing that someone would

when you watch yourself in the mirror as you cry
amused at how distorted your face can look

when dreams change or when you have no more
no wish to dream anymore
no new paths to create

melancholy sets in
creativity dies
desires melt away

distant dreams remain so
life is nowhere close to what you imagined it would be

what's happening to me?
am i dying a new death?
living a new life?

is this how it is when doves cry?

Engaged to be married...

Nobody ever told me about this, i wasn't prepared for the force of it. In a second, a decision changed my life, my outlook, life as i knew it would never be the same again.

The catalyst for change i'm talking about is marriage. No, i'm not married. My current status is 'semi-married', and if there isn't such a term, well, i just created it, because i'm experiencing it! Hence this state exists.

I am engaged to a wonderful person, our wedding date is set for dec 2007. People sometimes smirk and say, "you won't be able to hold out for that long...have you ever heard of a year long engagement in our culture?" The culture in question here is punjabi. Anyway, my point is, i couldn't agree more with those snide remarks, but my reasons are vastly different.

The day our wedding date was set, i realised that no decision regarding my wedding would be based on my approval. All details from my wedding dress to the venue would be based on practicality and convenience. If i favoured a plan, it will be ditched, because whatever the youngest (spolied come automatically to my mind here) daughter wants, can't be practical.

So anyway, i have given up all decisions regarding the wedding plans keeping in mind that what's more significant is the fact that i get to spend the rest of my life with someone i cherish (i hear more snide remarks coming my way).

A lot is changing, the family that i loved, the aunts, everyone is suddenly on the attack, filled with a volley of advice that they constanlty hurl at me in shifts, "don't buy a new wedding outfit, use my daughters one, she got married in 1995", to things like, "keep your fiance under your thumb, get to him to do only what you want", "don't show him your fondness for him, let him come begging to you", "Don't encourage him to drink". Well meaning advice??? I don't really think so.

I like beer, he likes beer. We drink something like once in two weeks, how can i discourage even that? Not show him how fond i am of him? Have him beg me all the time? Isn't that disrespectful to the one i love and have decided to marry? Keep him under my thumb? We usually agree on most things, and if we don't i'd respect that and he would respect my opinion and we'd try to work a middle path. If manipulating things is how i'd get my way around him, i'd rather be single.

Life was far more fun before parents got involved. Earlier it was okay to go out and watch a movie, once we were engaged, everyone became hyper for a while, but yes, now things are certainly better.

But trust me, if anyone ever decides to get married, and if you know the person well, do it in an instant and get minimum relatives involved. If you need a long engagement, then i pray that you have reasonably sane parents, who don't think you're making out each time their back is turned!

Mobile manners....

This is for the callers, there are some things that are largely being considered rude by the owners of cellphones, see if you agree with these:

1. When you recieve a call and don't want to talk for any reason (busy, or just busy!), you disconect the call, and the person keeps calling back! THAT IS RUDE.

Tip: Call once, if disconnected, the person has SEEN your call and is BUSY. He or she may or MAY NOT want to talk o you.

2. When you SMS someone especially during office hours (or any hours for that matter) and don't recieve a reply immediately, the reciever is NOT ignoring you! Not everyone is looking at their phones every one minute!

3. There is something known as SILENT MODE, which a lot of people use frequently. This means that when you call, and your call isn't answered right away, the reciever may have not seen your call. So leaving ten missed calls won't help.

Ofcourse, i tend to disobey these rules from time to time, but only with those people that i'm at liberty to. Everyone's attitude towards mobile phones should be, 'My mobile is for MY convenience - not for everyone else's'

And please, don't hold it against someone if they didn't return your call, its easy to forget, but yeah if it happening constantly, you may not be a priority.

I'm hoping a few tele-callers read these and when they do talk t me over the phone, they don't demand answers as to why i didn't take their calls. That's real rude. Cellphones are a good thing, but misuse and lack of respect for another person's privacy is increasingly being voilated.
People, i'd really like your comments and views on this.

Thanks

Gurgaon's fashion sense

Its neurotic at times...seriously speaking, this winter i was hoping to spot people in my lil hip village wearing sophisticated winter clothes...i was thinking tweed jackets and overcoats, chic business suits worn by the ladies. I did see some, but too few. What i did see in excess (which i didn't need to see, really) was a plethora of ugly u-pointed woollen caps. Moms, girls, boys, uncles, babies, puppies, everyone was wearing them!!! And then there was the enthusiastic but short-lived trend of the pointed red santa caps with a little white ball on the tip. It was being sold aplenty by the roadside, even the dhaba guys near the Convergys building were wearing them! Though that did look cute, as if they were trying to be festive in the grimy surrounds :) it did make me feel nice. But otherwise, it looked silly and overdone really.

Tip of the week:
This ugly thing i've noticed is applicable not only to the men and women of gurgaon but of delhi as well. Low rise jeans HAVE TO BE WORN WITH A BELT and the the belt must work!!! The unsightly things one can see when you're innocently bending and admiring something else, should be avoided! Please. This is a message in the interest of the public. Either wear high-rise undies or tight belts :P

Be Good :P

Wild West Delhi Women!!!

Uff! I hit my hand to my forehead even before i can begin telling you about this one! Last night was when my sweet lil cousin bro asked me to attend his friend's sangeet with him...i asked him where it was..."some five star" he said, i agreed and dressed to avoid the chill...a long overcoat, heels, and a nice black top.

Wait a minute, we missed something here, the 'five-star hotel' was in pitampura...oops! Anyway, 'how bad can it be? i thought? just a bunch of folks celebrating...and i get some daaru in my belly...what else could one ask for?', He missed telling me more, "My friend's a sardar", 'OH-KAY THEN!', Bracing myself for loud music and lotsa chicken we kept going, into the darkness of the night, through the ghettos...

The first thing that caught my eye when we entered was the sight of yellow fur...a human size canary was preening all over the place and had left her little trademarks a.k.a. little yellow feathers all over the chairs the stage, i'm sure everyone had a little feather on them sometime during the night...she was the groom to be's sister...hoo boy!

She was carrying a yellow feather stole...i mean can you believe it???? Her outfit was yellow, and if i could see her facial features, i'm sure her lips and eyes would be yellow too!!!

Just as i had enough time to adapt to her style of dressing...there passed by a whole parade of razzlers and dazzlers...or chamakchallos if you prefer...so much shiny stuff...not only on their outfits but on their faces and hair as well...i wonder if they've ever heard of the term, "inner glow" or "radiance"? To them these concepts would have reached as 10X the volume or shimmer..or whatever!

Then there were those aunties who were wearing revealing stuff...cross-backed fully embroidered outfits that did nothing for the way they looked...maybe it did for the way their husbands looked because all that jazz don't come for free!

In my last post on the dress sense of the men in west delhi, i think i overlooked the fact that women here dress weirdly as well...but why? Why can't you try and look beautiful instead of trashy? Why are the vamps of hindi daytime soaps your inspiration? Of which reminds me, this lady who was like in her late thrities had on a CLOTH PATCH on her back as a tattoo!!!

Yes!!! its TRUE!!! People actually do that in real life!!! This leads me to declaring Exta Kapoor and her natak paltan as a serious hazard to our comrades (i'm not socialist!) in west delhi...they need help...save em!!! Please!!!

After the rains...

Today the rains swept into our little town like an unexpected, but very welcome visitor! It was a sunny day but constant gusts of cool winds made it pleasant...just a hour back, the rain drummed upon the roofs of gurgaon, announcing its presence...the air was infused with the scent of silt...it was chilly, yet perfect!

Ms. Skeeter was with me, and just like the rain, she was a very sudden and very welcome visitor! We ate sweet potatoes from the street vendor as we marched up back into the haven of the mall...the scents from body shop au naturel products pleasantly lingering on to us...aah days as beautiful as this are hard to come by...it was perfect :)

thank god for small blessings :)