It's been a while

Previously in Ag’s life:

1. Endterms. Studied hard for FD (Financial Derivatives) and did well, relatively. Professor marks a grade on the paper, there are no tick marks, circles, numbers; just long slanting or horizontal lines. Going to be screwed when StratMgt and ERC grades are out. Ugh.

2. 3-4 days spent idling on Kampus, watching two movies in one night (Shawshank Redemption and Office Space (yes, I know it’s high time I’d watched SR) (loved both)), a trip to the Kadavu resort for breakfast (lauly) and dinner at T with J and Orgy.

3. 1 week’s trip across the ocean to Dmm. Only this time, via Colombo.

4. Back to Koledge. Not gaining any noledge cause just a couple of classes a day.

5. Ramadhan’s here!

6. Ammy turns 6 months old today. She has also become a lover of potato chips. She also has eczema :’( I wonder if she’ll turn out to be a smarter version of me :D 

About the Dmm trip:

1. Muster & Fuster had recently shifted headquarters, so it was like a move from Hyderabad to Secunderabad. New house, new surroundings. We should’ve grown up in a similar place when we were little, at least we’d have had more friends outside school! More commercial locality, but still quiet. Best of all, the chat place we’d been going to (since even before Blister was born) is quite nearby. That meant two trips in one week. Apparently Fuster thought he would take me there every day

2. I don’t think I’ve ever watched one movie a day in my whole life. I don’t think Muster & Fuster ever did too. But this time, that’s what we did. Thanks to the poet’s lovely gift, I was taking home with me Kitaab (an obscure Gulzar movie) and Kora Kagaz, from the LAN - Bawarchi and Choti Si Baat. Also took my Burma Bazar acquisition, Children of Heaven.

3. Then Fuster’s friend had loaned him a case full of Hindi movies, it was a very weird collection – with movies like Uphaar, Traffic, Vivah and Govinda-type movies resting peacefully side by side.

4. So the day I arrived, I made both of them watch Khosla Ka Ghosla. I think it’d been months since I had been trying to get hold of that movie. Both of them laud it. Made me sooo happy.

5. The next day, we were going through the collection and Muster saw the Uphaar CD and said, ‘Oh, this was one of Jaya Bhaduri’s first few movies. It’s a lovely movie’. With some time before her Pakistani tution student to arrive, (and Fuster calls her their ‘teesri beti’, hmmf!) mom and I sat down to watch it. Then student arrived and later in the night, all of us sat down to watch it. Nice it was, but a little slow for yours truly, who fell asleep on the sofa during the second half.

6. The next day we watched Children of Heaven, and parents laud it. Specially Fuster. Once that was done, the two of them decided to watch Omkara from the weird collection. Me having watched the ending of Omkara wonly, decided to skip it and stayed in my room chatting with Blister. Mentioned to her that parents were watching Omkara and would it be okay for me to sit and watch with them? She said ‘Superb movie, but very obscene language. Better stay here and chat’. So I did. Asked her if there were any ‘scenes’ and she said , ‘No, I don’t remember but I don’t think so’. Still I sat. Later sis said something funny, so after carefully checking the TV screen (where Kareena and Ajay seemed to be running around trees innocently) I went and stood there, talking to Muster more than looking at the screen. And suddenly what happens? Out of the blue there’s a marriage bed and hero throwing down heroine on it. Being in mid-sentence, I try focusing complete attention on Muster, stay as long as I can and bolt. Fuster shut it down after sometime remarking the next day ‘Art aur culture ke name pe kya kuch bhi daal denge movie mein?’

7. There was a lot of watching of Peace TV too which I realized, grows on you. But you need to take fixed doses first.

8. Then there was Kitaab, a strange movie, life through the eyes of an 8 year old, but not exactly a children's movie, it was too grown up for that. The song, A aa I II, Master ji ki aagayi chitti was a sudden blast from the past. Kora Kagaz is a very nice movie – gentle humour and deep too. Jaya B’s dad (she's so plain yet so beautiful!) tells her in the movie (after she’s been divorced) dialogues to the effect of ‘Tumne bahut jaldi haar maanli. Shadi mein ek insaan ko doosre insaan ko samajhna padhta hai. Maine tumhari ma ko samajh liya, warna aaj yeh ghar aur tum log nahin hote’. So it’s not always the women who compromise in a marriage. But stories I’ve been hearing recently say otherwise :< Is it just Indian culture?
9. Watched Bawarchi too and totally loved it. No love-angle, no melodrama and
it isn’t even saccharine sweet. ‘Apna kaam toh sabhi karte hain, kabhi doosron ka kaam karke dekhiye kitni khushi milti hai!’

10. Another movie that we watched (Dad had gone off and slept cause of standoff :D) on Dubai One was Path To War on the Vietnam war and the dilemmas facing US Pres. Lyndon Johnson. How many times will they commit such horrendous crimes in the name of democracy and all that crap?! How many times will the world just stand by silently?

The poet who was watching Ghosts of Abu Ghraib said suddenly in the middle of another discussion on gtalk,

Poet: yaar yeh batao kee abu ghraib ka hur ek banda agar fidayeen nahin banega tou kya banega?
me: :)
i dont want to watch all those things… even that parzania thing you said
too many negative feelings will be generated
waise bhi nobody's listening so what's the point of saying anything

11. Parents were watching Al Jazeera for news when they weren’t watching BBC. Mom was saying that they make sure that all their correspondents are locals of whichever place they’re reporting from but speak fluent English. I thought that Al Jazeera being a Middle-Eastern news agency (based out of Qatar), would have local newsreaders with heavy accents, but no, they have really good British newsreaders. Their programs too are quite different from the standard news channel and don’t even think about comparing it to NDTV, Aaj Tak and others of their ilk. We should start watching such channels so that these idiotic entertainment channels in the guise of news providers, learn and innovate!

12. Another interesting program was ‘Are you smarter than a 5th grader?’ There are 5 5th grade children on the stage (10 year olds) known as the class that stay the same during the entire show. Each contestant faces questions from 1st grade to 5th with the cash prize going up to a million dollars. He can choose a classmate who can help him answer up to three questions through various ‘helps’ like Peek, where you peek into your classmate’s answer, Copy – where you copy your classmate’s answer and Save, where your classmate’s correct answer saves you from losing because of your wrong answer. It’s hilarious, specially cause when there’s a question and the contestant is biting his/her nails and hoping that the classmate has the answer, the anchor says things like ‘Think about it, you’re depending on an answer from someone, who a few years ago, was drinking out of a sipper cup’. I initially thought, ‘Come on, how hard can it be?!’ but there are things you’ve studied and forgotten, like ‘Is it possible to see Saturn with the naked eye?’, ‘How many national holidays are there in the month of October?’ and ‘Which is the second largest state in the USA in terms of land area?’. A couple of the kids usually have these smug grins on their faces! Most contestants can’t go past five questions and when you decide to leave with the money you already have, you ‘Drop out of school’ and can only do it after you declare ‘No, I’m NOT smarter than a 5th grader’. Awesome :D And of course, if you don’t win any money at all, then you ‘flunk out of school’. Someone should start something like that here, Indian kids are way smarter than the US ones!

13. Z mama came by and stayed on the weekend and we played a game of scrabble and where I won by 4 points even though he’d made a Scrabble! Played a couple of games with Mom after that, where I finally made ‘Juniors’ using a blank. Yayy! One game with Dad where he cheated as usual so I cut 20 points. He lost by like 100 :D Serves cheaters right!

14. On the way back, I got bumped up to First class on the flight from Colombo to K. But thanks to the heavy rain, we had to go back all the way… and a 1 hour flight turned into a 5 and a half hour long journey. I was still absolutely delighted to be back, because after the desert that Dmm is, K is delightfully lovely. Plus it was raaaaaaaaaainiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing. Soon Sept will be over and the rains will go away  Also, it was SO irritating that people on the K airport kept asking me, ‘What you are doing here?’, first in Mallu thinking I was Mallu, and then in Hindi accompanied with a disgruntled why-do-they-make-us-demean-ourselves-by-making-us-speak-in-hindi look? And I had to launch into a long explanation of how I was studying here. One even asked ‘Husband here?’ X-( Mom said I should have just flashed my ID card at them. I wanted to make a rude reply once, but restrained myself thinking that I did not want to land up in jail all of a sudden. It’s my country; let me enter it in peace!

Images that are such a treat to the eyes, shot from phone while in auto from the airport:


15. Migad, this is one long post! Finally it's out of my system!