My Umbrella…

Everyone remembers their first… the first time you flew in an airplane, the first time you saw the sea, the first time you kissed a girl, the first time you fell in love, the first time you cried (strictly in case of guys), the first time you sang a song, the first time you won a prize… the list is endless… I too, like others, had a ‘first time’… I remember my first umbrella… No, it’s not a metaphor… Stop laughing… It was a Saturday, I remember because I had an off at school and mommy did not… She only had an off on Sunday unlike me and that really made me feel like a King… We were well-off at that time but not enough to afford a house-sitter ever week and hence here I was with mommy at hospital. No, I was not a bad boy… hospital was where Mommy worked and she took me along… every Saturday…

It was 5pm and it was already as dark at night… I saw the bright flashes of light coursing thru the sky accompanied with thunderous clap-like sound… I receded to the shadows cowering, closer to mommy where I felt safe… She looked at the watch and announced it was time to leave; I did not want to… I did not want to venture out in the rain lest the bright flash of light strike me or mom… the distance between the hospital and the bus-stand was a good 100 meters… the rain was coming down hard… Just before leaving the expansive courtyard of the hospital mommy stopped to open her brown bag… I was thinking to myself, “This is an odd time to hand out a chocolate…I was trying very hard to recollect what I had done that deserved a chocolate… but nothing notable came to my mind”

Read More

What a day that was…

Recently I went to Thor… “What is that” you ask… Well it’s a bird sanctuary some 25 odd kilometers away from Ahmedabad (now don’t ask what this is… else we will be playing this game endlessly…) So, now you ask what was so different since I did this (visited Thor) in August last year too… well this year I went with a friend fully armed with two things… Firstly I had with me a Nikon D40 and secondly (hold your breath) 50~300mm lens with Macro (now gasp…) both of these courtesy of my friend… my close best friend since he bought the spanking new Nikon D40… (Who says I was taught nothing at the Stalin school of business management…)

This trip was good for me because of several reasons, one of them being able to pursue a pure interest without having to worry about the aftermath… Ornithology… an interest which is practiced by our sex (the ‘man’kind) throughout their life… After I shared the photographs a friend actually pointed out that she never thought that “…this was not the kind of bird watching you kept mentioning (in your blog)…” I almost never realized that I have never once mentioned ornithology in its true light… The article where ‘Ornithology’ previously appeared was in the post titled “of perseverance…”

This was the day that so many things happened…

• I fell in love with ‘pinky’ – (a curious bird, the real kind complete with wings and all, with a  deadly combination of pink, black and white)
• Came close to encounters of the third kind – at one point while shooting the friend abruptly stops and says, “…lay down on the grass…” I don’t know how to react because I am shocked… I mustered up my courage and said “No way…”he retorts “Dumbo, you are missing the shot… the pelican is flying away…” I have never been more relieved… of course, I thanked God, who would not in this kind of situation?
• I saw a ‘helicopter’ using streax (hair color advertised by the oh so… Malaika Arora Khan)
• I found one more reason to love India. I am not talking about the smart-ass reasons that we give to the phoren junta (foreigners) like…

 

Read More

A Social Klutz…

Although I am nearly perfect in all ways, I do have one minor flaw: I can’t pull off a proper introductory handshake. Being able to conduct a firm, effective hand clasp is a basic requirement for manhood, which is why I still ride a bike with training wheels at the age of twenty-two (just kidding I drive the new and improved 150cc Pulsar…) A proper handshake has more than a dozen steps, but I seldom manage to pull off more than one or two of them before my attempt at an assertive, masculine greeting degrades into little more than awkward hand-holding. The problem lies mostly with my total lack of social grace, but I also place some of the blame on whoever decided that such a complicated process was the best way to introduce yourself to another human being. If it was up to me, the official way to make a new acquaintance would be to point at them from a safe distance and possibly offer a friendly grunt or a chuckle. Alternatively a namaste should also do. Unfortunately, mankind’s need to form an instant opinion of a new contact would still be present, meaning that even my point-and-grunt/point-and-chuckle technique or the namaste thing would eventually become just as nuanced and overanalyzed as the current handshake system. The rigidness of the pointing finger and the manliness of the grunt or the funniness of the chuckle would be under the microscope or the symmetry of the hands folded in case of namaste. It would be used to assess your value as a human being, which quite frankly seems a lot more fair than evaluating irrelevant factors like the content of one’s character. The more someone knows about me, the more likely they are to join one of the many groups devoted to my destruction. My best chance at survival is to deceive people into forming a good first impression of me and then never talking to them again. In this, at times, I succeed; not of my choice ofcourse…

Unfortunately, making a good first impression is nearly impossible for me to do under the current  greeting system. I’m not stranger to failure, but I still manage to impress myself with how I manage to come up short in every stage of the handshake process. I know trained dogs that can navigate the ritual better than I can, but they get a treat for their trouble whereas I just get another name I’m forced to remember. My problems typically begin when I encounter either a new person or a person who I’ve met only briefly in the past or has been recently introduced. When said person holds out his or her hand, my fight or flight reflexes instantly kick in. I need minutes of advanced warning and a few helpful diagrams to pull off even a marginally successful handshake.

Read More