Ahmedabad - A cold city?

Ahmedabad shivers. The shivers can primarily be attributed to the sub-zero temperatures… just kidding… the lowest it has gone is 7 degrees but this is extreme cold by ahmedabad’s standards.

Yesterday while returning after having a hearty meal at one of the better known ‘dhaba’ I happened to be see two distinct sights…

Sight 1

Cruising on the highway we passed a secluded area and then we stopped to answer nature’s call (What?…Your bodily functions change in winter…) Anyway, while trying to find a dimly-lit area we came upon a secluded garden. We saw a couple sitting on the park bench. Of the 4-5 benches only one was occupied and I was surprised that they were unaffected by the biting cold. The couple seemed to be arguing about something. I mean the lady seemed pissed off and the guy was trying to please her. 

After answering nature’s call we were back on the highway and on our return we could not see the couple on the bench. I thought that the cold finally got to them. Further down the road I saw a couple walking. The guy was practically hugging the girl while walking…

I was glad that things had worked out for them and they were enjoying every moment of togetherness…

Sight 2

We got back on the highway making way back to the murky sidelanes of the city. While crossing over a bridge we saw an old man, sitting alone on the pavement. I could see that he was fidgeting, maybe he was trying to adjust his posture or something. This is when I realized that he was trying his best to fit himself into a jute bag (a jute bag that is primarily used to transport wheat) to fight off the cold. From the way he was shivering it was obvious that the jute bag was not doing a very good job of fighting off the cold.

As we entered the city limits my mind started to wonder at the two diabolically different ways in which cold affected people to a few it brought them closer and for some a question of survival…

Sight 3

Finally me… I dream about the mercury dropping further down all the time; but I forget that I am cozily tucked in three woollen blankets when I think about this.

I am sure that the couple probably would not mind the lower temperature but I am sure that the jute bag just might give up the losing battle against cold and  this is true metaphorically too. He was shivering not only due to the cold weather but also probably due to the indifference of the world at large… What has caused us to become so insensitive to the outside world, I wonder and now…I pray for warmer weather …

Date with Destiny…

DK recently landed from the god-forsaken city of Chennai (It’s she who calls it ‘god-forsaken’, Me, I just love it) so we were to meet up for coffee. Oh! and this was not ‘Koffee with Karan’ - a show where an obviously gay host shoots air kisses to almost everything alive… To avoid any semblance we went for ‘chai‘…

We fixed up a time to meet. I had already done my homework i.e. being ‘prepared’ with a list of topics that I could talk to her about… her career, her success failure at groomsearch (nice name for matrimony site, I think), and if all of this could not last an hour I thought talking to her on her favorite city [Chennai ;-)] should do the trick. When you are meeting a friend with whom you have spent more more airtime than the ‘K’ serials produced by Ekta Kapoor, you would think there would be an underlying uneasiness about what to talk about. Hence the ‘preparation’.

I can hear you cry out ‘Whatever’ by this time. You are not alone in this agony. Welcome to the club, join the queue.

The Lonely heart…

I am alone. I can almost picturise you tilting your head a little bit, raising your eyebrows and exclaiming “Oh!” but it’s not that bad. It’s worse. There are two parts of it being worse, first is that it’s only now that you realize the true worth of your near and dear ones and second is that all things considered I now understand why they say “Women make the best managers!” I agree with that statement 100 percent, I can actually give that in writing if somebody will just take care of all the household chores. (At this point lot of my friends would say “Don’t look at me, I cannot help you with that!)

About realizing the true worth of your near and dear ones – this is the point where you feel comfortable saying “I love you” and mean it. Almost always if the person is present in person you sort of take them for granted. I am not saying otherwise, but once in a while letting that person know how important he/she is would not be as bad.

Coming back to “Women make the best managers” part… There are a lot of aspects that automatically get taken care of when womenfolk are around (all feminists pls. stay away from my blog!). Cleaning, washing, paying the milkman, dealing with the maid, or dealing with pesky neighbors. These are some of the things that probably come naturally to them, I guess! They seem to do it so effortlessly that anybody would think it’s on auto-pilot (the word auto-pilot has a long history of household fights so pls. replace with a suitable synonym). When it has been a tiresome day you would want to come home to a welcoming home-member and not a heap of unwashed laundry, took care of this today by the way… (if you are thinking I made a bonfire of it in this chilly weather that we have in Ahmedabad – I didn’t).

Sorry. I digress but my point is that you would want to come back to a easy-chair and homemade delicious food and not wheat bread and 3-days old tomatoes (i will use the tomatoes as soon as I figure out where the knife is…)

I don’t have too much time so signing off now; need to get back to the pile of utensils that need to be arranged on the rack (don’t even think about the other rack, that’s the farthest thing on my mind right now!)