Thursday, January 22, 2009

Randomness and Rahu

Be it 4 am in the morning or 2 am in the morning, at times, I hear them arguing so loud. So what, if her father is one of the elite aristocrats in the traditionally posh localities of Bangalore? The first time, I saw a red IP in the bin, I was thinking, why don’t these marketers in those titillating ads ever point to the fact, that over usage of IP makes the gal not carry a child, in the long run. Okie she can adopt later on. One orphan will benefit.

I was reading about German doctors, who do free service in Kolkatta in this day’s Mint. And immediately, I remembered city of joy. I remembered the 7 months pregnant woman, who offered her foetus for a fee and the quack doctors just left her to die half way through the surgery when the police came. I remembered some doctors wala fiction, where a black American doctor was murdered with her foetus with scalpels, to make it look like, she wanted to do her own abortion or C-section. Am going to do analysis now.

At times I feel, every time a guy cries and pleads, the next step is going to be violent. I just hope, he does not resort to extreme measures. “Please tell me” and all the crap, yes or no and all those open ended and close ended questions. Okie, she is under rahu influence. I was always thinking, swathi, maham, anusham etc. are maha nakshathras and one could marry such girls without thinking twice. Currently she has Guru maha dasha and rahu bhukthi. Also she has kala sarpa dosha with rahu in the 3rd house of aries and kethu in 9th house of libra. She is pretty with moon in her 7th house. Mmm kinda fits, with my arakora analysis, should I call this confirming bias? But am wondering, about rahu in general. 3 examples should not form the basis for generalization for the rest of the world. I feel, parents should resort to the earlier practice of child marriages, based on analysis of horoscope, rather than letting children (okie 23-24 year old gal is not a child or is she?) seek out themselves. Think I will rather go to the library. I need to switch off and start preparing for my midterms.

And there was this case of the gal, who had virschika lagna with mars and Saturn in the lagna. She was so cute and pretty young just out of 12th standard. She was engaged to my team member, who became my TL after my ilizarov surgery. She wanted to study and her parents wanted her to marry him. And she committed suicide, by hanging. Her birthday was nov 2nd or nov 11th.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Tejowati TriNAYANA lolakshi kamaroopini

There is so much to do, and am as usual watching movies. It is very rare that I watch a movie in full screen, I will be reading something in parallel or balancing my accts in other half of the screen, while I ffwd the movie for the actions and boring songs and watch the dance steps in those ridiculously fast and funny ways. This time, am watching Sorry Bhai in one half and Mauritius reminded me of my section mate’s honeymoon spot and I was googling it to see the island pics and then, suddenly Shabanas role reminded me of the most amazing woman I had met, I forgot her name, but she runs at least 2 beauty parlours in Chennai and she is from Sri Lanka.

There was this program on “Image building for corporate woman” or something like that. There were 17 of us, who went to this place past the Mylapore Bridge, nice posh daffodils hall, the usual place for these usual corporate training programs. It was kinda of raining that day, drizzling on and off and she came dressed in ivory white sari. There was something so elegant about her, so poised, so arresting. She snatched off one of the gal’s dupatta and said, you wear it this way. She showed us the colour combinations. She said, it is not her headache, if you get pimples it is because you are not careful. She said, people would come and ask her, if it helps to apply papaya and tomato on your face. I would rather say, eat them, rather than putting on your face. She spoke English in such a sweet Sinhalese way. She said how she saw us eating curd rice. Back there in Sri Lanka, women never had milk or curd in their food and she says we were lucky to have this. She said beauty was in how u carried yourself and all those gyan. She told these stories. When she was young, she stayed in the house where you could see the street below and the people walking on it. Every day, she and her mom used to see this handsome policeman. He was so handsome, that she and her mom, used to admire him so much and used to wait to see him from their balcony. Then when she was 18-19, that police man, came up to her house and asked her mom for Nayana's hand. Ya Nayana she is, Nayana is her name. Nayana was on cloud 9 and her mom was all ecstatic and said, Nayana should marry him, coz, he had asked her, before asking Nayana. Mom was all set for getting them married, but Nayana had her reservations. She told this story to make us follow our dreams. She wanted to be a hairdresser from the very beginning. Now she has more than 6 saloons in Sri Lanka and 2 in Chennai. She said, if she had married the policeman, she would have had to tag along with him, where ever, he got transferred and her dreams would have got shattered

She told how her rich husband ate chicken, nice hot pepper chicken. He and his friend would strip down to a loose lungi and sit down and eat chicken on a banana leaf. She said, the best way to man’s heart was his stomach. Don’t fight over, who has his or her way. She said, why bother, who has the remote. Let him have his way and u act the lady, gentle and dainty and he will lift the heavy groceries and do the hard jobs. Back home, of course, I didn’t have to act that way. Guess, right from the beginning, since Cheenu was there, he would never let me lift any heavy bag and I would be instead leaning heavily on him pulling his shirt and some point down the road, he would say, idho take my shirt, rather than tearing it away but I knew, that it was only till I let him have his way. Till this date, I don’t know, why he said to dad, he drank that whisky that I drank. That was the last time, dad got whisky in house. I loved presenting food. Even if it tea or coffee or plain water, it had be in that tray, beautifully placed. Even if it was sambar sadham, I used to present sambar sadham and curry beautifully decorated on the plate. But when he did it for me, the glass tumblers would have his dirty finger prints but I was glad. He would complain to mom, that I made him get water for me a dozen times, but though he complained, he got me water never the less. I was such lazy bones at times and had everyone ootify me rather than walk up to kitchen and serve myself. Cheenu was very protective and I started liking Scorpio guys because of Cheenu.

Back to Nayana, she had this beautiful way of doing things She had this 2 gold bangles and she said, I know, you are looking at these bangles. If you want something, go for it. She told this story of this guy, who pasted this picture of red Ferrari in his workplace cabin and she used to look at this picture every day and say, I am working for this. Next time, Nayana met him, the picture was not there and he said, look down and you can see the red Ferrari.

She said, she had 2 sons. One was in Australia, who was studying. She said, you need to prioritize and do things. I would often ask him to hire a maid, but he would not hire a maid. She said, cleaning the house, cooking was not exercise, unless, you broomed pretty briskly that you started sweating. I keep a maid, and ask her to prepare the dal and chapatti for dinner, while I take care of the clients. Spend time on things that are more productive she said.

Something, she said, after that, made me understand a mother in law’s perspective. She said, all these 20 years of my life, my son, would come home and come to me with ma on his lips. Now, when he comes home, he will go to another woman and I will have to prepare for that. I will have to share my son with some other woman.

She also, said, don’t sacrifice. If there is one egg, Indian mother usually gave it to her son. But if there is one egg, make an omelet and divide into 3 and share it. Show your son, how to share responsibilities instead of sacrificing every time. She was more than 50, but looked years younger. She is one lady I really admire. Back home, my mom, my periyamma, my grand mom, and my aunty everyone made up such creative lies to make us have the only glass of milk etc left. Gosh, wish mom had not made all those sacrifices.

She said, none of us, in the hall, wore any proper bras. She said, triumph was the only brand she wore. Years later, when I saw the rates, I decided, its better without any. She said, she came to tnagar to get her blouses stitched, because, there were no good tailors in Sri Lanka and we buy such costly saris and wear such ill fitting blouses. I was like thinking; someone taking flight to get her blouses stitched is so ridiculous. She said, she had 500+ saris and she has as many coloured petticoats. For me, it is the same one black acoba inskirt that I got specially stitched. For me anything, that does not fit in one small samsonite luggage used to get disposed when I shift, now thanks to my blazers, I have changed the policy to the bigger samsonite trolley. No more than one trolley of apparels. Why to hoard and wear something, once a decade? Why to hoard anything at all. Much before bhogi, I have started disposing everything, other than bare essentials.