One Fleeting Moment

Have nothing to say and have been totally trampled by the elephants of the wedding circus. This juggernaut is beyond our control and the daily telephonic exchanges with the Boy provide some relief on either end. Have been asked to stay indoor to keep the skin clear. Will also be subjected to some vigorous scrubbing, souring and cleaning some time before the D-Day so that I may outshine the yards of silk that shall be used to drape me!!!!

Then there is the bird flu. My brilliant ideas of turning vegetarian (even Baba Ramdev agrees) and feeding a largely carnivorus Bengali crowd vegetables, grains and pulses was met with howls of protest. So now they will be fed 250 varieties of fish and mutton instead.

Loads of women are going through the wedding gifts and other stuff in the next room and the occassional peals of laughter are jarring my fragile nerves. Strange rituals with equally strange names and involving even stranger things are being discussed. I need a really wild bacheolorette party now... Bengali bhadromahila-ness be damned!!!

Landed in Kolkatta on the 12th and soon set out for an intense bout of shopping for things neither of us will ever use but we will apparently need during the wedding or else they-who-can-not-be-named might talk. At the end we were half dead from the pollution, the noise and the crowds. Then there was our driver who insisted on driving in the middle of the road as he was a loyal Communist Party supporter!!!

Day two in Calcutta was also Valentine’s Day. The Boy and I went out on our own and had a nice time. I also got to travel on Kolkatta’s Metro train for the second time in my life. Got told off by a rather disgruntled old man for hugging and exchanging stiff, formal peck-on-the-cheek thingies at the door step…I was very amused. Apparently in the land of Kamasutra (how clichéd!), of 800+ movies a year about love, lust and everything in between, a little public display of affection is very affecting indeed.

The wedding circus has set up its big top in town. Clothes are being bought and have been bought for no particular reason and with no particular person in mind. Ditto for jewellery. Invites are being sent out to pretty much half the town. In a country where drinking a 50 Rs. cold coffee can send you on a guilt trip (more on that later)….weddings like this should be banned. And I have been told that the shopping and spending has been curbed on both ends out of consideration for the fact that we might not be able to lug everything back to the USA. The Boy has been learning big and funny Bengali words in the meanwhile.

Your friendly neighborhood grouch/crib pot/pestilential annoyance is back. Safely ensconced at home, with the smells of Mom's cooking wafting in she lets her fingers play on the keyboard. Ha, the pleasures of a 37.2 kbps Internet connection...one can type at one’s own sweet will and then let BSNL upload at its own sweet will (make it pace).

So the flight was awful. On the first leg to India a young woman from Mumbai proceeded to drive everyone within earshot deaf by her loud banter about her globe trotter like experiences. Little-Miss-Me had seen it all, done it all and the problem was that she remembered it all. Then there was the baby who had his mind set on screaming his little gloopy baby lungs out. We lost Little-Miss-Me on the second leg, but the screaming fuzz ball was joined by another ten screaming furry, fuzzy, bald (take your pick!!) diapered devils and this time they let out their full throated yodels in unison!! I did what any sane sleep deprived human in a tinpot floating in the clouds would do. I watched movies….yippeee!! So here are the one line movie reviews. Mrs. Henderson Presents is an all out Judi Dench affair, full of the stuff the sophisticates call joie-de-vivre. The Shop Girl is a good, touchy, feely chick flick. And sometime in between when the nappy clad devils were taking a breather I managed to sleep my way through Elizabethtown.

We are off in another couple of hours. Posts from India will be few and far between...not an earth shattering event I am told. For a change we are looking forward to the flight as we are assured of each others company. We also plan to get around Calcutta and explore the city a little, eat at all the places Calcutta folks rave about when they get together etc. etc. Since both of us are not originally from The City it should be fun.

In other news, the Boy has been entertaining me with his humorous renditions of the wedding announcement (read with a lot of enthusiam and seriousness from the two sets of scanned cards our parents have sent). So last evening putro-badhu was read as putri-badhu which was further translated to " maane girlfriend" for a rather stunned, mortified me. And some words are more funny than others, so I was treated to a rather nasal poon-ohh every few minutes too, last evening...MEN!!!!!!


putro badhu: daughter-in-law

maane: means

I just came back from a surprise lunch with my colleagues. It was supposed to be a pre wedding luncheon for me...blush! blush! and they sure did pick the right place. They also got me a gift card for the same. Hmmm...interesting, wonder how they figured that out!!! Anyway after lunch I did a little guided tour and the first timers got to check out the 580 and 255 square foot homes inside the store.

And yes, we (the Boy and I) are getting married on March 2nd in India. Hence the month long trip. We shall be wed in true Bengali tradition, he shall wear the white dunce hat and I shall get my face painted and I promise there will be no dancing (this one is for an acquaintance who refuses to believe that a bevy of nubile nymphets dancing in electric pink outfits is not de rigueur at weddings).

Now if you will excuse me, I have to figure out how best to spend my gift card money.

A smiling kid on crutches sat next to me last night and together we waited for our partners to come out from the locker rooms. Wavy brown hair tucked into a red baseball cap, red sweatshirt and sweat pants ripped apart near the left calf to make space for the bandage, friendly from the word go - standard issue American boy.

"Jeez, what did you do to yourself? That leg looks messed up.”
“Aeei-Rack.”




“You know what’s happening there, don’t you?”


“Hmmm....Iraq, I know.”

“A road side bomb….but they fixed me up pretty well at Walter Reed. Look the arms have healed nicely and the foot should be getting better.”

“......hmmm....would you mind if I asked how old you are?”

“Twenty one. I come here as a dependant, my wife goes to school here. What about you?”
“Twenty six. Dependant too.”

My partner arrived before his did, and we wished each other well before I left. Walking away I noted how the smile never left his face, not even when I stared at him in silence after he uttered the I-word (his way), not even when he showed me his scars. I don't know his name but I know that he wants to have kids soon.

Kid, someone up there really loves you and may that love never cease. And sometimes its reason enough for me to believe that there is a being beyond us, larger than us – a benign being who really watches over us.

I decided to stay home last evening for this:


and this. Loads of brownie points and warm fuzzy childhood memories for the first one. The second one...a totally blah chick flick with two good looking people. And now back to the warm fuzzy stuff.

I guess Maggi was first introduced in the Indian market when I was still in the primary section in school. Like all big evil corporations with millions to spend on ad campaigns, Nestle came up with the perfect way to market Maggi. Target the kids and lure them with schemes like get a box of sketch pens when you return ten empty maggi packets (for five you could get some stupid toy which no wanted) and lure harried mom's with the 2-minute promise. I am not so sure about the numbers stated above but I do remember the sketch pens/felt pens and the bi-weekly trips to the neighbourhood convenience store for the exchange ritual. I am sure the store owner got really tired of this but he never complained because the product was literally flying off the shelf. Then it suddenly stoped. Someone somewhere started a Maggi-makes-you-blind hulaballoo and people stopped buying Maggi for their children. Nothing that drastic happened in our household but the rate of consumption did slow down a little. My mother (bless her heart!) had nearly unflinchable faith in Nestle and that other company- Glaxo (of Complan and silly Complan boy fame).

But things were never the same again...until August 1997 that is, when I was shipped off to the deserts of Rajasthan. I remember trying the rather insipid Top Ramen and hating it in the interim period. Anway back to 1997, Rajasthan. There, in a quaint colege town I re-discovered the joys of Maggi, only this time it came dressed with blobs of paneer and had a new name - Fried Paneer Maggi. This dish could fit in anywhere from late night hurried meals in the NC (between cramming sessions for the compre's) to romantic dinners at Blue Moon. A good dish of Fried Panner Maggie (Priced at 20 Rs. for a full plate and 10 Rs. for a half plate) could make or break a deal. Girls bragged about how guy X treated them to it and if they kept smiling pizza and cold coffee at Volga's would surely follow!

The final validation for Maggi however came much later, after I had left Pilani and was visiting some friends at INS Shivaji, Lonavala. In their rooms each of my friends had a small electric heater sitting in a corner. This is was a smaller version of the type of heater you cook on. Since all of them ate all their meals in the mess, its presence was intriguing. The mystery was explained later in the day, when after a gruelling trek in the nearby hills we were treated to a quick Maggi meal made in little pots which sat on ...you guessed it...the little heaters and regaled with stories of cadet days in NDA when the little red and yellow packets with their 2-minute claim was the only solid food they had for days!! Maggi-the fuel that drives our Millitary...ultimate validation of the curative, restorative and life giving powers of this highly processed curly noodle-y meal of white flour and GKW.

And now on these distant foreign shores a hot bowl of do-minnit still works wonders.

Incase you did not get it:

NC- Night Canteen

Compre's - Comprehensive Exams. These were a set of annoying end semester exams.

Blue Moon - A Pilani institution famous for its milk shakes (legend has it that they even sold dosa shakes!!) and Chimpu - the owner. The romantic dinner at Blue Moon's was a two part affair with dinner on the tables outside followd by romance in Shiv G later on. Hmmm...I need to do a post about Shiv G some day.

Volga's -upscale restaurant where boy and girl could order just one coffee and sit for hours till closing time. Why upscale ? Coz this was the only place with completely indoor seating, soft lighting and dark corners.

INS - Indian Navy Ship. Don't know why a camp in the hills is called that.

NDA - National Defence Academy

GKW - God Knows What

Labels: Food

Working...that's how. I am trying to wrap up a lot of my open assignments before I leave for India next week. A long time ago in a passionate moment fuelled by youthful naivette I had decided to volunteer as team leader for an in house pilot project and am still paying the price for it. Just to drive home the point about my work load here's a confession, I had my first meal at McDonald's yesterday, after what can be described as an eternity. When hunger pangs attack on the road (which for miles on end has no grocery or eatery and only pawn and liqour stores) you do what I did...drive out images of the fellow from Super Size Me from your mind and bravely drive up to the robotic voice of the first McDonald's drive-thru you find.

Another confession, we have pretty much given up on the gym. There is the workload and then there is THAT crowd...you know, the ladies who don't sweat and the grunting cavemen with perfect six packs who make our rag draped flab miserable. The Cancun Crowd (as I call them) magically appears at the school gym just before spring break to polish their already well polished assets. We of normal genetic makeup (read:with a propensity of storing fat in our guts) are no match for these alien clones in form fitting designer sports wear and quietly move out. It not all bad, atleast you get the lowdown on the hottest fashion trends in women's sportwear, like this year it is the track pants with a rolled down waist band. I could kiss the designer for his/her ingenuity and for sparing us the sight of additional cleavage in places unknown to us!!!

Somewhere along the way, we went and watched King Kong. I know what you are thinking, but dearies one can always make time for what's close to one's heart....which in this case was watching a three hour long drama involving loads of gigantic mean dinosaurs, icky creepy crawlies, one big, big ape, some humans and a mish mash of ghoulish leftovers from the LOTR animation studio. Also watched an assorted variety of strange artsy fartsy movies like:

• My Life as a Dog: Good look at the strange time called puberty which we don't usually like talking about.
• Bad Company : Okay this is not artsy, fartsy but sub-standard Hollywood fare carried through on the able shoulders of Anthony Hopkins
• Tokyo Godfathers : Japanese animation movie about a teenage runaway, a middle aged homeless man and a transvestite who find a stolen baby abandoned by the suicidal thief - one word - really strange.
• Persuasion: Based on a Jane Austen book, this one is really well done. Almost in the same genre as the latest cinematic version of Pride and Prejudice. The poor look poor and life is not one big, candle lit ballroom here.

The Oscar nominations are out and the Boy I believe is routing for Munich or Crash. I would prefer Munich but I believe it will be Brokeback Mountain's year. Its a moving love story which I liked very much (I am a sucker for sad, tragic love stories) but I am getting a little tired of the whole gay cowboy movie byline and the politicising that has been going around. I would loved to see The Constant Gardener up there too....oh well!