Random. Structured. Haphazard. All Me.

A Tangled Yarn of Thoughts Being Unravelled…

Recent Posts

  • With Divine Sanction

    With Divine Sanction

    I tend to be a wee bit foul-mouthed while driving. And rash people on two-wheelers annoy the crap out of me! They try to squeeze through miniscule spaces a dog would hesitate to pass through, just so they can be first in line or be the first off the starting line with the rest of the imbeciles who keep revving their bikes during a three minute red light halt.

    I mean what is up with that?? Why keep burning fuel for so long and act like Mad Max when you’ll just be stuck behind the cement mixer along with the rest of us just 2 kms down the road?!

    Yesterday when a prime example of an imbecile scraped against my car and sped off, I mouthed certain profanities that am not proud of. And an unlikely champion piped up from the backseat! This is how the conversation went.

    “GOOD JOB Ayu!! That guy is a a******! (With me mentally correcting the grammar and going Crap…I did it again). God made parents to be tough. You have to be mean and protect your kids from bad people who drive like a******s. You did the right thing Ayu!!”

    “NO BABY…I shouldn’t have said a bad word in front of you. I was angry and I apologize.”

    “That’s ok Ayu. Moms can say a******* when someone is trying to hurt their kids by driving bad. And what’s a h******** (Hindi word casting aspersions at someone’s parentage)?”

    Oh Fudge me!! Who ever thought absolution for cursing would come from a nine year old, channeling fire and brimstone Old Testament style?

    On the flip side, there’s going to be an earful from the husband once the husband reads this.

    *Runs and hides*

  • Wordsworth Had It Wrong…

    The clouds were *not* lonely and he could have done a lot more of the waxing on eloquently about clouds rather than daffodils- which are pretty flowers all said and done.

    I’m sure I usually drive my co-passengers a bit batty with the clicking sounds from my camera or my mobile, but something comes over me when I see clouds. The poofier the better.

    It’s a privilege really, to be soaring in the skies and seeing everything be so close and yet so far away.

  • Musing At The Waiting Lounge

    Musing At The Waiting Lounge

    I like tea. I like tea infused with herbs and flowers which many people (read husband) make a face at and deduce that either am a hippie, far-Left, tree-hugging kook or a pretentious individual who wants to stand out by ordering hibiscus tea when everyone else at the table is just fine with their latte, thank you very much!

    But despite caffeine being the lifeblood, I really enjoy a good cup of tea from time to time. Brewed well, steeped just long enough and fragrant as well as flavorful.

    Am sitting at the Chennai airport right now, watching humanity rush, loiter and basically mill about. A subdued cyclone brought gusty winds and heavy rains and suddenly I needed a tea fix. And while grub or anything at an airport is hideously overpriced but the heart wants what the heart wants especially with 2 hours to kill before a flight. 

    So I chose a tea bar (yes…teas have their own bars now..le posh!) and found that they had a lemon-chamomile blend which seemed like a good choice. Alas…seeming and being are two ends of a spectrum at times. This blend is blah. And to top it off, it looks like a specimen one reluctantly gives at the doctor’s office and tastes like nothing. Just a big, fat nothing.I think I’m qualified to rant a bit because I’ve had the real deal and it was just lovely. 

    Nearly 20 years ago, I was on a trip with my folks up in the hilly areas of Himachal Pradesh and we ran into a colleague of my dad’s who was a local there. He and his wife lived in a lovely, quaint wooden house and she grew chamomile…just because. 

    She brewed it and added it to various things and also had it as a tisane. She also knitted some lovely woollen socks and gave me a pair; which I ended up giving to an ex-roomie because her toes were freezing off in Frankfurt in the middle of their rather harsh winter, but that’s another story for another day. 

    My mother had that baggie of chamomile tea for years. It was fragrant, mild and soothing. It grew in good earth, without too many pollutants and was given as a going away gift by an extremely simple lady who didn’t know how that tea would travel with us over the next couple of years and become an anecdote each time it was brewed.

    The only good thing to come out of this cuppa is the stirring of memories of a sunny days, hills and good people. 

    Salut.

  • Don’t Have Kids…

    but be around them. Children are Nature’s balm. They may come across as incomprehensible, demanding, whiny brats who you often fantasize about leaving on someone else’s doorstep, but kids have something we end up losing as adults- an ability to laugh at the silliest and simplest of things.

    Take a little boy who’s recently become a friend of mine. He’s suffered an irreparable loss. That of a parent. He’s asked all the questions kids do when they don’t really understand death. He’s cried. He’s been sad and am sure he’s looked up quite often when the doorbell’s rung, hoping to see a particular someone. But while adults around him grieve and struggle to let go of their pain, shared and individual, he has his armor on and it’s keeping him safe. And the beauty of it is that it’s intrinsic 

    He’s laughed at oranges that rolled off a table and went under a couch, a squishy grape that hit him on the chin while being deseeded, a wobbly banana that could no longer hold its pose and fell down with a splat or the little toy engine that went off the tracks and into the belly of an alligator.

    He laughed again when he remembered what seemed like utter and complete silliness to him and seeing him we laughed as well. And felt a little better. Because unalloyed laughter is precious. And rib tickling, clamp-your-hand-over-your-mouth kinda laughter is infectious, uplifting and makes things seem just a little bit better; even on the really tough days.

    Thank god for children. Thank god for all they find silly and thank goodness for fruits that’ve stopped being firm. It would seem that there’s plenty to be thankful for at the end of the day after all.

  • Movie Review: Andhadhun

    Image result for andhadhun
    Image courtesy http://www.freepressjournal.in

    In a nutshell? This movie is a mad cap caper. Andhadhun translates to Blind Tune or a state of being slapdash and both definitions fit the scenarios perfectly.

    Led by Ayushmaan Khurana and Tabu in their usual capable ways, the movie starts out strong in the first half but the director ends up dropping the ball with the tautness in the latter half. Made more elaborate than needed at certain parts and leaving a couple of gaping holes in the story line, the overall execution and narrative is quite a refreshing change. This movie did not come out from the Barjatya stable for sure!

    The way Bollywood tells its stories has undergone a major change. There is black humor, taboo topics, flawed people and all without middle-aged people playing roles decades younger than their actual age, taking off clothes or bursting into a flash-mob of dances 5xs in a movie.

    Watch this movie for the piano recitals, the peppy songs, Tabu’s unflinching off-kilter moods and the seemingly unending series of greedy, money-hungry, ready to kill people with a rather flexible moral compass.

    In Andhadhun…everyone’s crazy and playing blind man’s bluff in the most neurotic way possible. And that’s the whole story right there!

  • When I Eavesdropped…

    My son and his friend were exchanging mucho importante info on their respective tabs when TO realized that his friend was able to unlock his tablet without any help from a grownup.

    This caused an even more important conversation to take place which I shamelessly listened in on. It went something like this:

    S:Hey, you know the password to your iPad?? (shocked voice)

    A: Yes!

    S: My MOTHER(raising the voice so the mother can hear it) doesn’t tell me what the password is..(sad voice). I have to ask her to open it each time…(even sadder voice)

    A: I have so much to remember. I have a phone, an iPad an Xbox…

    S: Yeah…so much to remember (commiserating voice)…

     

    First world problems much?

    Image result for first world problem meme

  • Lessons In Parenting

    Letting your kids win at games may cause tiny faces to erupt into smiles but it doesn’t always teach them how to aspire to win. Even worse, they often begin to expect that everyone who plays against them will also lose. 

    When this happy state of affairs doesn’t come about too often, the little face is nothing short of woebegone with signs of tantrums lurking here and there.

    So be a good parent and do your kids a solid…beat the pants offa them! Winning isn’t everything but they need to want to win enough to try for it. Everything else, the fun and giggles, is just the icing on the cake.

    Nuff said.

  • Lessons In Parenting

    Letting your kids win at games may cause tiny faces to erupt into smiles but it doesn’t always teach them how to aspire to win. Even worse, they often begin to expect that everyone who plays against them will also lose. 

    When this happy state of affairs doesn’t come about too often, the little face is nothing short of woebegone with signs of tantrums lurking here and there.

    So be a good parent and do your kids a solid…beat the pants offa them! Winning isn’t everything but they need to want to win enough to try for it. Everything else, the fun and giggles, is just the icing on the cake.

    Nuff said.

  • Palpitations On A Saturday Morning

    In the paraphrased words of Dolly Parton- I stumbled out of bed and tumbled to the kitchen and to pour my self a cup of salvation…and stopped still. There was a small rat on my dining table!!

    I was still sleepy and did not have my wits about me so I swayed in one place for a bit, trying to think if I should throw a shoe at it or try to trap it under something when I thought again…why would we suddenly get rats when our pests have been lizards and roaches. So I did my Martha routine and crept up sneakily as much as a chubby woman can and saw it was MLM’s stupid armadillo toy!

    That kid is going to get a lecture on keeping things back in the proper place once he surfaces from under the covers today! Jeez!

    Note to self: Hear Salvation today, it’s been a while.

  • Movie Review: Baywatch

    Image result for baywatch movie poster
    Image courtesy amazon.com

    Unless you have a few bottles of booze handy OR are supremely bored OR just want to test the waters and see at what point you say ‘enough’, don’t watch this movie. Reasons are given below in no particular order but with a lot of feeling:

    • You will never get back those 116 minutes that the movie runs.
    • You will wonder why The Rock would pick the role of Mitch Buchanan over other roles where he can be macho up to the gills and still not be a part of a gag reel.
    • Zac Efron has weird ears, cannot emote and has bulked up. That’s it.
    • Priyanka Chopra is constantly sashaying her way into every scene a la Bollywood movies and ending every sentence with an “already”. She’s working quite hard, trying to look seductive, alluring and femme fatalish. None of which works. She should stick to Dil Dhadakne Do-type roles.
    • Alexandra Daddario- has a perplexed look on her face the entire time and genuinely seems to be confused half the times that she’s on a beach and would actually have been perfect for the role played by Pam Anderson in the teleseries. Image result for pamela anderson baywatch gif
    • The rest of the cast kind of meanders through the movie, using the F word liberally and acting like a bunch of goofballs playing at being crime fighters. They also keep calling each other ‘brah’…as if!

    If you’re ok with “junk jokes”, people looking toned, tanned and having botoxy lips and with no effs to give, then this movie might even end up being entertaining. But hey, I watched the entire Sharknado series so who am I to be a critic?

    Image result for brah gif