KKare for Dinner Time Stories?

I've been watching TV and I've been very konfused.

7:30 p.m.

Neeraj loves his wife Archana. (The names have been changed because I don't remember what they really were.) She loves him back, but loves herself more.
Archana is, what I presumed from one episode that I dared to watch, a doctor. She is characterised with long rebonded hair and oodles of makeup. She wears only striped sarees and heels. At home.
Neeraj, is ugly. No, really. UGLY.
And, if he's at home all day following his wife from bedroom to living room to fight with her in a blue tie-dye kurta that does NOT suit him on how she is NOT the ideal wife, I also presume he is unemployed, but rich.

Now, cut to a kid in school, an oily kid with oily plaited hair who is supposedly cute. Her father, who looks like he needs babysitting himself has a crush on her teacher.
YEESH!

Cut to the teacher. She dresses to school like its the Principal's Bar Mitzvah. She's barely twenty two, and is very mature and loving and has failed in love. So obviously, oily kid's diaper bearing father doesn't interest her. She loves only the one she lost - NEERAJ!!!!!

Back to Neeraj in his blue hideous kurta. He tells his wife their kid is the head of the football team in school. She thinks that's ok, but what really rocks is she's going to London for a conference where only 1 in 1000 are selected to attend. Neeraj is upset, and tells her she is not the ideal wife/mother and even her hair's fake.

8:00 p.m.

Uncle's got some 200 sons. They all live together under the same darned roof. All his sons are married but only one of the sons is the reincarnation of Lord Ram. His wife, as you've guess by now, is the clone of Sita.
Uncle comes back one day with a new wife, who's not really his wife but a prank on the family because the women in the household are too liberated.
Aunty is scary looking, but is apparently the world's best mom/wife. Why so? Because she accepts her husband bringing in the new wife who really reminded me of my headteacher in 6th grade. She even.. sob.. GIVES HER THE KIJORI KI CHAAVI!!!!!!
Obviously, Aunty #2's a bitch.

8:30 p.m.

Raj (name changed for lack of memory) looks like seventh grade drop out. He's RICH so hell cares. He's apparently a spoilt kid (duhh!) and has recently been resurrected from the dark side of anti-tradition and all because he's in love. With a hooker. With a hooker who last seen, dressed like Akka Maha Devi.
He wants to marry her. Samskruti/Samskaar/Maa TV fan club head, his mom, will castrate him if he does so. So he thinks of the most brilliant plan in the world.
He tells his mom his Vivian Ward is a princess.. No kidding.
His mom falls for it. She wants her son to marry her.

9:00 p.m.

A good man has impregnated his wife's sister's neice's mother-in-law's uncle's step grandmother and has lost his memory.

9:30 p.m.

An evil man has impregnated his wife's sister's neice's mother-in-law's uncle's step grandmother and is dead.

10:00 p.m.

The rebirth of a fire fighting woman has come back into the same household and will take revenge on the family because she died 20 years back and remembers even what color underwear her daughter, now aunt wore then. According to logistics, the woman who was her great grandmother in her last birth who is still live, kicking and making parathas should be atleast 178 years old.

10:30 p.m.

Grand daughter who once insulted her father not knowing he was her father realises her father was really her father and wants to take revenge on her grand mother because the director said she should.

11:00 p.m.
I yanked out my cable connection.


I wish my life was half as interesting.
Actually, maybe not.

It'll take me a while before I pay attention to my life again. I'm still gloating over poor Hot teacher's lost love with color blind unemployed man and bad grand daughter who has no clue how the rash on her back has anything to do with going to bed in sequin saris with the lights on full blast.

Sigh.

KKuch KKeeda hai.

Photographs from A Vacation

I’m back from a brilliant vacation and I can’t believe it’s over!

The beauty of this trip back home was it came after 8 months of not seeing my parents and finally being there, I was thrown off balance with the amount our relationship had changed, or evolved.. as I like to believe it did.

I coincidentally got in touch with a friend I haven’t seen or heard from in seven years. We studied together from the time we were six till the time we were seventeen. Somehow, though we shared nothing of our lives or feelings with each other, had nothing in common, not even basic value systems, we called each other best friends.
Childish incidents and years later, we finally fell apart, probably for our own good.

Seven years later, I met her, this vacation and we talked just the way we did when we were in second standard, or in fourth.. or pre university.. and we still contained the same childlike comfort levels.
She still asked me uncomfortable questions and I still gave her with non committal answers.
Her voice was still the same, she still looked the same and trust me, I couldn’t believe anyone could still be the same person seven years later. She hadn’t changed in thought or soul.

Which set me thinking.. maybe I hadn’t changed either.


My mom took me to an ancient temple her family had just discovered in the outskirts of the outskirts of the outskirts of a wannabe city-but-really-a-cool-looking-village.

I walked in and realized what they mean when they say you can’t breathe when you see something this beautiful.
The temple was rock carved, ancient and virgin, and was the birthplace of two warriors who were now worshipped as demi-gods in the village.
A forest grew around the temple and you couldn’t possibly imagine something this beautiful could stand in a jungle of thorns and everyday weeds.
I heard overwhelming stories about how these two very great men attained god-ship and the Brahman in the temple showed me the dried lake they bathed in, the old wood cradles they slept in as infants and the weapons they carried.

A few days later I left my parents and the home I grew up in for an extension of my holiday. It felt strange because the house too seemed like my mother now – beautiful, affectionate, once mine, and solely mine. Today, they were both other entities besides being just my Amma or my home.

Anyway, mush apart, Hampi was terrific!

A vivid description of the history and archeology and shopping, you’ll get on Lonely Planet, so let me get down to what REALLY got me kicked.

The morning my friend and I left Hampi, we sat down to savor the last of our free identities and freedom here.
Over a Tibetian breakfast in a little shack there, we listened to the birds, the river and a bunch of stoned firangs singing off tune.

Just then two people entered the shack.
The woman, atleast sixty, was Israeli and her British companion, an excited little man of atleast seventy led her in.

We couldn’t help but notice how excited the two seemed and they sat down discussing how the hash brown potatoes were nothing like hash brown potatoes here for the next fifteen minutes. The chemistry between them was so charged, I felt much older for a while.

Then, we eavesdropped. (Sorry, Mrs. Beautiful Israeli Woman and Mr. Handome Brit Man)

We learnt the two were once seeing each other, thirty years back. For some reason, they went their ways then. He got married, she was too, and somehow, six months back they got in touch, probably on the internet.

They decided to meet, here in Hampi on a decided date. The two came alone, leaving behind their families, but once here, didn’t know how to contact each other. Mr. Handsome Brit Man went all over the place to every inn asking them if Mrs. Beautiful Israeli Woman had checked in and a week later, he found her, and instantly recognized her.

We sat there listening to the two so lost in their past and so oblivious to the world around, suddenly snapping back into the present, feeling awkward, and then gliding back in, lost in memories.

I wish I’d stayed longer and been evil longer enough to know what happened to the two after that Tibetian breakfast. But we had a flight to catch. So a silent prayer said to the couple, we picked our bags and departed.

I’m back now, and my ex-best friend, the warriors and their history, home and the inter-nation lost love story all are part of memory, a past vacation and old photographs.

Hopefully, life will seem interesting enough now on!

Cheers!