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Jun 8, 2009

Poetic Justice.

‘People would not appreciate those clothes’, the preachy Keralite housewife warned the young Italian couple. I, however, begged to differ having seen the intense attention the Italian girl was getting. Word had spread. Everywhere up and down the train eyes were lighting up. People from every corner of the train were submitting to the spontaneous impulse to take a walk. Everyone wanted a piece of the smiling ‘firang’ in hot pants. (And I might add that this IS appreciation enough for clothes).
The housewife took no notice and kept speaking. Her lists of do’s and don’ts kept coming. Advice poured and everyone around her was drenched. Then she started talking about stuff that had no connection to anything. She went on about culture, tradition, morals, clothes- you get the drift. The helpless Italians just nodded not knowing what had set her off. The housewife, in fact, was so eager to impress on her values that she impulsively kept adjusting her dupatta. Her little kids, apparently hurt by the mother’s disinterest, were lying on the top berth staring at the roof for solace.
And then it happened.
Touch Me Touch Me Touch Me
Ah Zara Zara
Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me
Ah Zara Zara
Hold Me Hold Me Hold Me
Ah Zara Zara
Oooo ooo ooo.
sings the 7 yr old girl at the top of her shrill voice. The Italians are surprised; I am shaking with laughter while the housewife just manages a lame smile in response. An awkward silence followed. Eating humble pie didn’t suit the housewife, it constipated her ego. The rest of the journey passed in peace (sadly) with the housewife maintaining a dignified silence.

BOTTOMLINE: Save yourself the blushes, use protection. As you sow, so shall you reap.


Jun 2, 2009

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LOST AND FOUND...

I’ll be wearing a white mundu and am hoping it rains. Then, I’ll enter the temple. IN YOUR FACE,GOD…….random fantasizing before my visit to Kerala.

I wore a mundu just for the heck of it. I went inside the temple cause an uncle highly boasted about the temple and insisted that I see the beauty of the temple which highly intrigued me and cause by then it had indeed rained! I enter the temple grinning madly.
Now 1stly this temple wants men to enter the temple bare chested and without shoes, wearing just a mundu. And then they expect me to buy oil to pour in a gigantic diya- like after being stripped off my pants I’ll carry my wallet in my underwear! As soon as I enter, a pundit hands me a vessel filled with oil and asks me to hand over 10 rupees. I say I don’t have money. He smiles and pointing his hands heaven wards says ‘Narayan Narayan’ and takes away the oil with the same slickness that he’s handed it to me.
Now, this temple is so enormous that I didn’t even reach till the idol. So big, in fact, that I have to ask people for the Exit. They frown but show me the direction. Apparently, this temple has 4 exits- a fact I didn’t know then. And as expected, I take the wrong exit- something named the North Nada which leads out in the exact back of the temple.
There I am- in a city that is highly reluctant to speak either English or Hindi and whose language I can’t understand. I have no shoes on, no money, no idea of where the hell I am, in an area that’s not exactly lit up to my liking and half naked with my nipples showing. To make matters worse everywhere I look around me I see hefty guys talking amongst themselves. And somehow none of those people find it funny, apart from me. Finally I spot an elderly woman who looks highly unlikely to mug me. I try asking her for the main enterance and her 1st reaction is to hide her gold necklace with her palm and she keeps walking in the opposite direction averting me- like I was a threat to her! I start walking vaguely in the direction that I’ve assumed my pious family to be waiting for me. I have to walk almost 500 meters barefeet, around a big pond!!! And as my family would later point out, the idol was the highlight of the temple and not the stone-carved exterior of the temple.

God did have the last laugh that day. And Murphy might have done the I-told-you-so in his grave.
Narayan Narayan.