One Fleeting Moment

First the skies turn a heavy shade of grey, accentuating the green in the trees. Flattered by the light, the treetops might even start swaying and dancing. Soon it will start raining, the wet bedraggled birds will look on dejctedly, the squirrels will hide in the bushes and the storm drains will overflow creating little rivulets through our perfectly manicured lawns.

As the rains die down, while the last drops will cling hard to the steel rails a defiant spider will try hard to hold on to its wispy web. They will soon learn what I did in middle school- about gravity and its humiliating ways.Up in the skies, the sun's battle with the clouds creates this. You remember V-I-B-G-Y-O-R and the many phsyics classes that were devoted to the clinical dissection of something this beautiful.
Soon there is another one but this one is R-O-Y-G-B-I-V, you say proudly. You vaguely remember the analysis, the reasoning, the mechanism. You make a mental note to look it up later...some habits die hard.
And in this light even your corner garden glows beautifully. The sweet smelling jasmine buds open up stealthily, just when you look away...
The herbs, the money plant from Grad school days, the replacement pepper plant for the Boy and and Rono-the Nordic garden gnome to gaurd them all.

Soon after I discovered my neglected-for-20-something-years tear ducts, Nature discovered hers and now she can't get over the fact that they work. I don't know about you folks, but rainy days are the perfect excuse to lie around the couch and do nothing. That was exactly what I was doing, when along came Kumari with her meme and now the couch really misses me.

I am thinking about...
something profoundly thought provoking to write.

I said...
“wakey wakey wakey” at the top of my voice about 5 hours ago.

I want to...
have a dazzling conversation with Bill Clinton about achieving total world domination through charisma, intellect and a beatific pearly, white smile.

I wish...
the squirrels would tell me where the beavers went.

I hear…
Himmesh Reshammiya’s tin can “Jhalak Dhikla Ja” ripping apart the fabric of space, destroying the delicate balance of things, unleashing primordial screams from the depths of the universe!! Darn them Internet radio channels and their bad, bad choices.

I wonder...
where prejudice comes from.

I regret...
ever meeting some people and never meeting others.

I am...
quite cute, if I may say so myself.

I dance...
no I don’t, Naaaeeextt.

I sing...
quite well and usually on long drives, again even if I may say so myself.

I cry...
to exercise my lachrymal glands and to check if all systems are go-ready to be fired at a moments notice.

I am not always...
responsible for her actions. Her, you know her-the one who keeps babbling about Ikea and other silly things here.

I make with my hands...
nothing earth shattering, life altering, patent generating-at least not yet!

I write...
imaginary letters in my head which are never delivered.

I confuse...
my right with my left.

I need...
a good cuddle once in a while.

And finally...
The Boy: because he needs some silly diversion.
Supratik: because he is so dilligent.
Sagnik: returning a favor from long, long ago.
Aditi: because it might be fun.
Bidi-K: because too much anime can be unhealthy.

PS:Btw, who started this meme? I only got as far as this. Given the fact that it murmurs summer breeze, candle lights, wispy clouds and candy floss bits of fluff (read seriously chick-ety, chick, chick), I am really curious.

that tiny, little hole in the corner of my eye (more like in the lower left corner of each eyelid) is a tear duct...yipeee!! Its like discovering a whole new organ you didn't know you had, like noticing for the first time that extra finger on your right hand!

the movies we have been watching for some time now. The lack of and-we-watched-this-or-that type of posts can be explained by the words SATC*. It started harmlessly with a couple of late shows on TV, soon we were staying up late to catch the shows and before we knew SATC had hijacked our Netflix account. For us, 2006 will forever be the year when "Sex and The City" caught up with us or rather we caught up with the hit series from nearly a decade ago.

Apart from SATC there is the post Oscar drought when the rivulet of good releases dries up. And since we hate wasting money on the "soon-to-be released-on-DVD" flops that usually mark this time of the year, we are left with a decent bank balance (yipee!!) and a strange feeling in our stomachs every weekend when our usual dinner and a movie outing gets shortened to only dinner for the lack of anything decent to watch.

However we still managed to watch a few good ones this weekend. We started of with "Cars", the newest flick from the whizkids at Pixar. Its no "Toy Story" or "Finding Nemo" infact children might get a bit bored, but it does have a few thoughtful moments and brings up some important urban planning issues (who would have thunk?). We also watched a German film called"Nowhere in Africa". Its one of the few films that deal with the Holocaust from the point of view of a survivor who is left a refugee. And like most European films, the children in this movie are treated intelligently and not mollycoddled. Continuing with the European theme, I watched "To Be and To Have" a French documentary about an old fashioned one room school in Northern France. Really sweet and moving till I read this...spoils the nice aftertaste left by the movie. The Boy passed on this one as he was very busy.

And since this is a post about movies, here are a few more:
Water~ beautiful movie with an unbelievably beautiful cast..but it works overall.
Friends With Money ~waste of money,yours as well as your friends
The Way We Were ~tried to watch this one- failed miserably
Must Love Dogs~lovey dovey rom-com with hardly any doggie presence..suscpicious
What's Cooking~heartwarming Thanksgiving movie, loved it more than Pieces of April
Farewell My Concubine~Chinese sexuality 101...could not watch this one
The New World~Its a chick flick, its a chick flick...with unwashed heroes


* If they mean nothing to you...Oh!, you poor, miserable child you!!

Apparently these dowdy notebooks from the days of Natraj pencils, Eagle drawing books and Ajanta erasers are hip...or atleast the covers are. Where were these people when I was growing up?...when the only way of making these notebooks halfway presentable was to cover them with brown paper and sticking equally boring b/w labels on them.

She is one of Raja Ravi Verma's lovely women (not original...just a reproduction), but that doesn't stop her from being the prettiest woman in our living room. Incidentally she is supposed to enticing her lover with a lemon...really strange. The Boy and I have still not figured that one out!
Many thanks to Nandini's Mom for this lovely wedding present and Rajesh's parents who carried this all the way from India for us.

I like to keep my political views to myself and tend to share it only with people who agree..I hate arguments. I usually try to keep this space suitably trivial and apolitical, but here's something that made my day. A few days back, this innocent piece got me totally riled up...yes, nothing riles me up like a hearty dose of good old fashioned patriotism. But then someone did say that patriotism is nothing but the love of the foods we had as children or something along those lines.