That is the refrain these days with blasts in Bangalore and Ahmedabad, and bombs having been recovered from Chennai, Tiruchirapally and 18 bombs in Surat. An unattended bag on the road or on the train sparks off a completely understandable panic these days. And a blast in a hospital? That’s as low as a man can get. It’s a scary world that we live in. I feel as if I must say good bye every time after every meeting with anyone – don’t know if I’l see them next. Armed guards outside the Court is one thing, but armed guards within the court premises only seem to make the threat of a potential bomb blast so much more real.

Watching the blast sites, victims and their families is heart wrenching, and I can’t help but being thankful to God that till now none of my near and dear ones have been affected by a blast. I know that sounds selfish. These days on the roads and all other public places, you find people keeping a sharp lookout for unclaimed suspicious objects. I read about one incident where a suspicious object turned out to be an innocent lunch box, while at another place people who found an unclaimed object showing great presence of mind covered it with sandbags to minimize the effect of any potential blast. It’s definitely a sad statement of our current affairs when an innocent lunch box is taken as a bomb and people finding an unclaimed object promptly cover it up with sandbags. It is also a statement of how we, as citizens have become active and vigilant. Yes the fact that we as citizens have become more vigilant is certainly a pro, but I really hope that this does not become a regular affair.

And our mahan politicians like Sushma Swaraj are really not doing much to help allay the fears of the public by issuing statements to the effect that the bombs are a huge cover-up o the ‘cash for Votes’ scandal. I am ashamed of her as a human being. Can she really think that people are that low. Of course, the guilty would try to take away the media attention from the ‘Cash for Votes’ scandal, but at the cost of so many lives. I sincerely doubt it, unless of course the person is an unfeeling bastard with no heart who would rather have a few blasts to draw attention away from him, like we saw Amrish Puri orchestrating in that Anil Kapoor movie where he becomes the Chief Minister for a day (Forget the name). But that was a movie.

Whosoever these nameless faceless bombers are, I want to tell them one thing. We the people of India shall not be cowed down to submission by you cowards. You are a coward because you hide behind your mask of anonymity and then attack. That is not smart warfare. That is a coward’s warfare. And the day that your mask is lifted and the people of India see your face, you can run and but you will have no place to hide. You won’t be able to escape our wrath, and then you will be sorry. We shall take you to every victim’s family and home to show you what you have done. Then you will be sorry, you will cry and beg for forgiveness, but there is no forgiving as heinous an act as this. Know this now you faceless cowards, we are down but we are not out. And we shall not get out by faceless nameless cowardly bastards as you.

The words for this week are follow-up, buffalo wings, silversmith, furniture, as the crow flies, little red roadster, photograph, pencil pusher, argument, streaking.

"Oh well then, if its a sunny day, run along young man. My lovely little red roadster is in the parking lot behind the building."

"Huh? Where do you want me to go and why? I am here to….”

“Hush boy. I haven’t asked you yet why you’re here. Speak only when I command you to. Don’t argue with me. I just can’t abide arguments. Now the keys are there hanging on the peg. Run along now” and she continued stroking her Tabby cat with her gnarled veined fingers.

I decided to humour her this one time. This batty old lady however hadn’t told me where she wanted me to go. Guess she heard me for she then said, “Take a left from the parking lot and then go straight as the crow flies. Stop at the silversmith and pick up a photograph frame for this photograph of mine.”

She showed me the photograph. Wowwwwwwwwwwww!!!!!!! What legs!!!!! But……this lady with lovely legs wasssssss “Oh that’s a photo of me streaking outside the White House a protest against the Viet war. Am I not hot?” with a flirtatious grin.

Oh dude was this old has-been trying to now flirt with me. “Young man you still haven’t told me what is that you do?”

“Well nothing exciting. Just an accountant with Buffalo Wings. “Oh so you’re a pencil pusher with one of my favourite food joints. Interesting. Well pick me a plate of spicy wings also on your way back. You must be getting it on the house.”

Huh now she wanted me to spend a hundred bucks getting her a silver photo frame and follow up with a plate of wings. What would she want next ? Shoes made of gold? Gawddddddddd she was hell-bent on making my wallet lighter. Why was I putting up with all this madness?

Same time same place next week folks :)

Is being punctual a weakness these days? According to Facebook it certainly is. FB has come to this conclusion after a comparative survey conducted among my friends on strengths and weaknesses. 

Have people lost all value for time? When invited for dinner, people tend to show up at 9 - 9:30 p.m.. Arrive any earlier and you will e deemed as a vella forever. Is IST now Indian Stretchable Time? When I was in college, my friends would tell me " For us it is 8 pm and for you SMM, the time is 10 pm." That was done so as to avoid any angry scenes later, since 8 p.m.  for me is 8 p.m, and I would have invariably ended up waiting for 2 hours sending angry smses, and more often than not walking off hungry and boiling mad. Being on time these days certainly makes you a social oddity. If you actually turn up for dinner at 8 p.m., you would probably find your host lolling on the sofa in his shorts, while the hostess is still getting ready.

For me time is literally money (and the time that I am on a break, and blog, that does not count as a billable hour - FYI). I  CANNOT afford to be late. Period. 

I fail to understand how being late can be fashionable.I fail to understand that if you say 6 p.m. , and mean 8 p.m, then why can't you simply say 8 p.m. If you don't value your own time, how can I expect you to value my time.  And if you know that your going to get stuck in traffic, my logic says leave an hour early. And if you do happen to be stuck in traffic, courtesy demands that you call and inform whosoever you are meeting, and let that person take a call whether or not he wants to still stick around for the meeting. After all that person might have also made other plans. And if your busy and cannot make it, then inform the other person as soon as you arrive at that brilliant conclusion. 

I have been on the receiving end so many times that I now make it a point to inform people that I shall wait for fifteen minutes, and not a minute more, and they know that I mean it. 

"Yaheen to maar kha gaya India."

(I don't remember which movie is this line from but it seemed pretty apt as the conclusion to this post)

As I entered the room, I saw a lady in a magnificent red dress and ostrich feathers in her hat, scuffed red pencil heels and a whiff of cheap perfume with a cigar in hand, chipped red nails on a veined hand stroking the cat on her lap, and calmly rocking away on her chair. Looking around the room, I saw that, though now shabby, the room must have been really beautiful, some 40 years back. There was a lovely carved teakwood liquor cabinet in one corner of the room, a teakwood bookshelf with empty shelves on one side of the room, a few scratched plastic chairs and a worn beige carpet with longitudinal stripes of maroon. Clearly the room and the lady had seen better days. There were a few old faded boxes of Hamburger Helper on one of the book shelves. As I entered she said in a high throaty voice “Since you’re here, you might as well hand me that box of laundry detergent from the top shelf. I can’t reach it. Tabby and me have a partnership. She dirties my dress and I clean it. So where are you from young man?” “San Fransisco.” “So what is your prognosis on the weather for today? I don’t want to go out if its very sunny. I don’t want any pre mature crow lines.” “Ummm, well it is a sunny day today. You probably shouldn’t go out”

I shall continue the story in next week’s Wordzzle.

A random conversation with a friend led me to classify the kinds of friends into the following general categories :

Caveat: This list is by no means exhaustive. If you think there maybe any other categories which I may have missed out on, do let me know.

Friends Forever: The best kind :)

The Fair-weather Friends: The ones who run away at the first sign of trouble.

Daredevil Friends: The ones who get into trouble and pull you in as well - not once, not twice, but on quite a few occasions.

BBC Friends: The ones who broadcast, your every single sneeze as well.

The "Gimme" Friends: The ones who keep going "Gimme you green belt." "Gimme you red bag." "Gimme some money".

The "Wannabe Topper" Friends: The ones who remember you the night before the exam and want to borrow your notes, your brain and your lucky pen.

Friend Perfect: The ones your parents think are perfect but not you. The goody - goody variety, also prone to squealing about your latest escapades to your parents.

Money Money Money: They only remember you when they need to (permanently) borrow some money, and forget you when it is time to return it.

The Whining Variety: The ones who go "Oh your life is so perfect. I have no life. Nobody loves me, nobody cares for me...." and fail to recognize the fact that you care for them.

The Studious Kind: The ones in whose good books you need to be in for your own professional future.

The "Just Friends" Kind: The ones who suddenly realize that they are truly madly deeply in love with you and imply to all those who are not aware that they are your significant other, thus scaring off potential Mr/Miss Right.

The Saturday Night Friends: The ones who only surface on Saturday nights and know all the good hotspots in town and where the best party will be on after midnight.

The Hypochondriac Friends: The ones who consider Readers Digest Family Medical Referencer to be their bible.

The "Ooops I did it again" Friends: The ones who get drunk and then wild with any guy/ gal in the vicinity. Looks, age nothing matters - only sex matters.

The "Does he love me/ Does he love me not?" Kind: The ones who are obsessed with that one guy/ gal and spend their whole time trying to catch his eye but won't summon up the courage to ask him/ her out.

The "Drop everything right now" Kind: The ones who go "I am free. Come over right now" and hang up, without bothering to ask whether your free or not.

The Imposing Friends: The ones whom your not too fond and keep at arms-length distance, but they try to and do imply that you are chuddi-buddies.

The "Do it or else" Friends: The ones who blackmail you into doing something your not too sure you want too...or else they will spill the beans - either to your parents or to the boyfriend/ girlfriend or post it on the notice board.

"Daddy's pet" Kind: The ones who will only go for the movie if its the one they have chosen cuz that's how "Daddy does it".

The Alien Friends: The ones who act like they'r your best friend when your around and forget you the moment your out of sight. This refers to a particular friend who would forget us all everytime he went home and we would tell him "Jabalpur is on a different planet. Inter-planetary calling is waaaay too expensive on all parties concerned." And he would promise that he would call next time pakka se, and would again forget.

The Knife in the back Friends: The ones who are very sweet to you on the face, diabetically sweet in fact, and are actually maligning you behind your back and also trying to steal your boyfriend.

The Possessive Friends: The ones who hated it when you went out with anyone else and even tried to scare away potential boyfriends/ girlfriends;


or Those who would treat your stuff as "our stuff" but their stuff would be "my stuff".


The Roommate Friends: The ones you got back to at the of the whole day and had to share every small thing with them. The kind who recognize other friends without having to introduce them and vice versa. Also the ones who would lend you their blue top for the Big date.

The "Guide to how the Martians/ Venetians think" Kind: That one guy/ gal friend whom you would never fall for and vice versa, and tell you what would be going on in the boyfriend/ girlfriend's head and what to give for the perfect gift or which flower to choose to impress them.

My new phone folks...had gone out with Hubby after office to do a recce...ended up buying the phone only. My bank account has suffered a "zor ka jhatka zor se" :P Anyway tomorrow is second saturday - yippppeeeeee - the one saturday I have off in a month. Enjoy your weekend folks.

I have been an avid Mills & Boon (hereinafter referred to as 'MB') for the past 12-13 years. I got introduced to them by my aunt who was herself an avid reader in her college days. She had some old ones still lying around and I stumbled onto them. I got hooked onto them. Initially I hid them and read since I wasn't too sure whether or not they were approved reading for a 11 year old, and didn't want to take a chance. I convinced my aunt to get me some more. Very soon my mother discovered that my reading had a drastic curve from Enid Blytons to MBs. And after that I would proudly display what I was then reading. Made alot of trips over the years to the book stalls at Golpark (Kolkata) to buy old MBs for 20 bucks (well my pocket money was limited). I remember smuggling MBs into school and hiding them under our text books and reading. We almost got caught also onetime when my friend got excited at a "scene' while the teach was teaching. I remember passing the relevant pages around. I also remember how some girls (from conservative families who were not allowed to talk to guys) would xerox the relevant pages for future reading since they didn't want to read the whole book.

When I got to hostel I bought an MB in my first week itself since I was homesick and bored (was still getting used to the place - and besides I need to read for sometime before I conk off), and that's how I met one of my closest friends - RB (actually now RM). We bonded over MBs bigtime. She showed me the shops where I could continue getting my 20 buck MBs (which would deduct Rs. 5 as reading charges if returned within a week). Needless to say I was one of their most loyal customers. Once I shifted to Gurgaon, however I couldn't find any such book stall. Took me sometime but I soon found a lending library with one entire shelf (from ceiling to floor) devoted wholly and solely to MBS.

My poor Hubby had a big shock when he saw his 'intellectual lawyer' wife happily curling up with an MB and getting lost in the world of charming tycoons and dashing bosses and suave doctors and TDH Mediterranean men. I devore them all - right from the doctor-nurse romances to the boss-secretary ones to the tycoon series. The Hubby continued to needle me for sometime on my true love for MBs until he discovered that most of the women read them.

Yes I know that there are also many women who are not fond of MBs and dismiss them as boring trash, mindless romance with the same boy-meet-girl-they-have-fight-they live-happily-ever-after plot etc etc. I have had major arguements where I have defended my love for MBS passionately. If people think I am a dumb blonde if I read an MB so be it (after all as a Gemini I have multiple personalities hidden inside me - including that of a dumb blonde).

I thrive on reading love stories, about tycoons brought down to earth by the woman they love, about doctors who in the midst of saving other lives suddenly realize they are human just like their patients, about rakes who finally fall for the woman who can't stand them, about couples getting back together, about damsels finding their knights in shining armour, about TDH Mediterranean men falling for the English Rose......The MBS keep the romantic in me alive. I used to think that romance is only in MBs until I discovered my own charming rake (now reformed monogamist) in my Hubby who made the world of MBs come alive for me.

Missed doing it last week thanks to my amazing habit of procrastination. So this week I decided to do it asap.

He woke up. Looked around. Vaguely made out out something on the wall opposite him in the colour purple which said 'Puget Sound'. He heard some murmurs.He made out a fragmentary image of a machine making beeping sounds and a graph on the screen which was in a state of perpetual motion. A woman in a white dress and nurse's cap came running into the room when she heard the beeps and checked his pulse. He managed a croak and asked "Where am I?". She replied. "Well, Mr. Sen, you were monkeying around at the parallel bars last Sunday when you slipped and fell. You were lucky that one of our doctors were there too which was quite handy for you. You had an operation on your right hand." He asked her what day it was. She replied "Today is Wednesday." He felt that she was being rather evasive and secretive about something since she wouldn't meet his eyes. He asked for the doctor to show his gratitude. The doctor entered the room brusquely and told him "We had an option - it was either your brain or your legs. We took your legs." So that is how Mr. Sen has been confined to a wheelchair ever since and has become a manic depressive.

Howzzat folks?

I'v been finally tagged (well Solitaire said the first twelve to comment were tagged ). The rules are quite simple:

1. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
2. Using only the first page of results, and pick one image.
3. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into Big Huge Lab’s Mosaic Maker to create a mosaic of the picture answers.

The questions:

1. What is your first name?

2. What is your favorite food? right now?

3. What high school did you go to?

4. What is your favorite color?

5. Who is your celebrity crush?

6. What is your favorite drink?

7. What is your dream vacation?

8. What is your favorite dessert?

9. What do you want to be when you grow up?

10. What do you love most in life?

11. What is one word that describes you?

12. What is your user name?

Thankfully wasn't too hard...though I had a tough time with the last one. I wonder if any of you could figure it out. I tag Utopia.

Yelooooo....Have been trying to get around to writing a post for a while. Lots of things to say. I'l just put them in bullet points (instead of random paragraphs) :

• Well we had the alumni reunion on Saturday night. party started off well...we were all having a great time catching up with old friends and reliving our Pune days, when some *&^%$#@ got totally drunk and picked up a fight with the club people who immediately called the police (this is Delhi after all - never know who's carrying a gun or a knife). We tried stopping the fight, but it only got worse. So we just packed up and left. The Hubby was awfully pissed with those fuckers and wanted to teach them a thing or two. Cooled him down and then we moved the party to Buzz, Saket (have some good memories of that place since Hubby had taken me there onetime before we got married on one of my flying visits to the capital). From there we moved to Agni, park. Finished off with dinner at 3 am at Park and returned home at 4 am where I again made scrambled eggs for the Hubby.
• I am wondering why people drink when they can't handle it, and if you drink and then go abuse someone or break someone's property, then being drunk is no excuse. if you can't handle the drink, then don't drink and if you do then face the consequences. Don't blame someone else. I was pretty upset at those bloody *&^%$#@ for ruining the party and then coming to me and saying that I should understand that they are drunk. Didn't even make sense in giving them a piece of my mind - they were too drunk to even get that.
• Courts have reopened. Back to work in full swing. Feels good to get out of office - I was getting cooped up sitting in office all day. Lots of filing t be done. Lots of "Where is the certified copy? Why didn't you have the clerk get the certified copy out this month?" "Where is the affidavit?" "I need 10 copies - I said tennnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn". Well things will settle down after the first week. feels like school reopening after the summer vacations.
• I want to do the Wordzzle thing` - just need to find some time
• I made some yummmmmmmmmmmmm Khara Masala Mutton (I was told so - not bragging) Sunday night for my in-laws. Had promised my FIL mutton made in one teaspoon of oil. And he gave me a compliment which i really treasured. He said "Beta, you have come a long way in terms of cooking in the past one year." You see I started cooking only after I got married. I was never home for my mother to teach me some cooking. The Hubby has bravely eaten alot of crap literally (Yes I admit that).
• Back to blacks and whites again. It was soooo much fun getting up every morning and deciding what to wear. I tried to be a good girl and stick to salwar-kurtas initially, but soon moved over to jeans and decent tops :p (No cleavage display in office please)
• Another whole year for my birthday to come around - anyway I made a good killing this time. Hubby got me a camera which I have been using quite a bit since then :D
• I realized that most of b/w salwars are w/o dupattas while my civvies mostly have dupatttas - guess the practicality thing kicks in. Handling a file and a coat and a band in the killing heat is tough enough without adding a dupatta to it
• I seem to have been running on my feet since Saturday getting everything ready. Tis morning we had to amend an entire writ petition to a petition.
  
• I still want red stilletoes - maybe for the Pujas I'l buy a red outfit and red stilletoes to go with it
  
• My new black n white shirt ruined. Now it is a dirty yellow and black :'(
• I am getting up early these days to make myself a dabba for office. I don't want to eat outside food. Ruining my skin - and besides they'r swimming in oil.
• I like that song from Aamir Khan's nephew's film 'Pappu can't dance'. Its been playing in my head since morning.
• Jeffrey Archer's new novel - 'Prisoner of Birth' makes a good reading so far. Reminds me of Count of Monte Cristo - the whole wrongly framed and jailed protagonist bit
• I have not yet started the treadmill - getting fattttttt :(

Ya well that's it. Curtainssssssss and see you again. Just keep a watch on his space folks :)