Me Blogging

6:30 am, and I'm awake. For anyone who knows me, this is disturbing news. For those who know me too well, the only way this can happen is if I'm yet to sleep. But I'm awake, ready to face the day. I'm at Gurgaon, and I've to travel a few constellations to get to class in North Campus.

Welcome Kapashera border. Buses, drivers, conductors, potholes, cows and paan. I make my way towards the bus, and get on, narrowly missing a peeing cow. For the next half an hour, the bus doesn't move. Worse still, I'm greedy enough to stick on to the 10 rupee ticket I've bought. I'm too determined to make my ardous journey in this bus, whose driver is busy fighting with the other bus drivers. Half an hour and a bottle of water later, the bus decides to move.

Next stop: Dhaula Kuan. There is a bunch of chattering women waiting for this bus to come. They get on. They want to sit. The seated men make way for the garrulous ladies. The bus moves. 'Oops,' they realise, 'we've got on to the wrong bus.'We're cursing our luck already, and these women want the bus to stop so that they can get off. But women have a way of getting things their way, and not even being grateful about it. So the bus does stop, they do yell at the conductor, and they do alight. Meanwhile in the bus, the males they had displaced from their seats, battle to regain lost thrones.

A few naps later, its Connaught Place. Thats my stop, and I've almost missed it! There is a flurry of reactions, and I'm rushing out of an acclerating bus. I knew something was wrong the minute I woke up so early in the morning. I escape with a minor leg twist. A limp to the metro and a suspicious cop follow, but I'm finally within perceptable distance of North Campus.

I finally reach North Campus, but its only 9:30 am. A class is happening that no one attends. So essentially, I have nothing to do till 11:30. So I make my way to the rented roof in Indra Vihar, where I stay. But even after I reach there and have a bath and resist great temptation to mix some of the whiskey lying there, its still just 10:30. Another hour!

The cafe is usually a saviour in such situations, and thats where I headed. But by the time I reached there, it was already 11:15. Something like a half and half, too early to go to class and whoever sat in the cafe for just 15 minutes?

I'll skip the part about the classes. The important part was that they were over at 5:30 and again I have nothing to do. Worse, its Friday and I don't have class on Saturday and Sunday. For someone who can't find things to fill a few hours with, weekends are a dreadful prospect. I decide to head back to Gurgaon.

Now Di is planning to get married, not in the old fashioned way where the parents get the boy and they live happily ever after, but the modern fusion, where she chooses her suitor and the parents approve. And today was such a day. The suitor with the parents were to meet Di's parents. My situation in the whole affair was really dubious, so I decided to delay my reaching as much as possible.

But things went wrong again. The bus I got on to now was a superfast one. 48 minutes, and I;m at the Kapehera border. The same journey had taken 2 hours in the morning when there was lesser rush. Another 12 minutes and the rickshaw I took got me to the house I didn't want to enter. So I hurriedly paid him and ran away lest someone from the inside caught me and there was awkardness.

The real awkardness was still to begin though. I was close to home, but couldn't enter. And I had to find things to kill time. I walked to the nearest market. CDs could be rented, but nothing interesting. Phone calls, but to who? Its 10:00 pm right now and I'm still looking for things to do because the parents who'd come decided to stay for dinner. Most probably they were eating my dinner.

Then brilliance struck. I wrote a blog.

Them Grandmothers!

"Who's in the kitchen?" My Grandmother is in bed for her post breakfast siesta.
"No one," I say, in a voice louder than deferential.
"Who?"
"No one," I say still louder.
"Tell her to wash the tava with care."
"She's not in the kitchen".
"Then who is there?"
"No one is."
Silence. That the kitchen is empty seems to have registered. I can finally lie down and laze around.
A few minutes later, "has the milk come?" she asks.
"No it hasn't."
"Did he leave the bill?"
"He hasn't come."
"Then who got the milk?"
"The milk hasn't come."
There is silence again, but there is a vague pertuberance that suggests conversation is about to start again.
"You're leaving for Delhi today?"
"Haan ji"
"Have you got your admissions?"
"Ji "
"So when will you come to know?"
"Know what?"
"About your admission?"
"I already have an admission."
"Where?"
"In college, doing Masters there."
"When will they tell you?"
"They have already told me, I've got an admission."
"But you said you haven't got a place?"
"I said I hadn't got a place to stay."
"But then where will you stay?"
"I don't know, Naniji. I haven't found a place yet."
"Aren't they giving you a place in college?"
"No, they are not."
Another break, the most restful of all the pauses till now. I'm waiting for conversation to begin, but there is silence. Conversation is not going to begin, it seems. The delirium induced by an effort to sleep when one is not sleepy begins to set in.
"Beta just see if I've put the fan off?"
Paulo Coelho was right. See the signs in your life. This one has just said that there is no sleep to be got at this time today.

The Newspaper

You wake up grudging existence because there is no electricity. Breakfast isn't made yet. Brushing requires too much effort. It's Sunday, which means they're running yoga programmes on the television. One needs something to do when one isn't eating. So one reads the newspaper.

London's blown up. Ayodhya's blown up. Half of India's flooded. Greg Chappel making Ashish Nehra run around with a drum. Some twelve year old kid's been winning some chess games. Sania Mirza's confessing to have given two hundred percent in the Wimbeldon. Mulayam Singh feels that it was intelligence failure that Ayodhya was attacked. Advani's confused.

So am I. So one tries the Sudoku. Difficulty rating: extremely difficult. Five stars on five. 81 squares to be filled. Six squares and one hour later you drop it for breakfast.

Postprandial lethargy sets in. Bath is postponed. One comes back to the newspaper. Rohit Bal is hot because he feels he is "ordinary" and possesses the "X-Factor". The woman who interviewed him mentions the "warm feel of his skin from under his shirt" then adds that he was feverish. Someone wore the national flag to a party that simultaneously invited vituperation and drooling. Sachin Tendulkar is getting operated. Chidambram wants more taxes. Sheila Dixit wants to tax cars. One feels disgusted.

So one reads the cartoons. Then one checks the daily shows. Then one goes back to the Sudoku. This time, lunch rescues from impending frustration.

One reads the matrimonial section. Brahmin boy born in India living in USA, 5 feet 11 inches, earning 7 figures, seeks holy union with sweet, homely, tall, fair, educated Brahmin girl. A Kshtriya seeks alliance with another.

One finally throws the newspaper away and pick up some esoteric stories by Maupassant.