Old is gold. Really?

Flashback

"Oh c'mon mom, you are taking a break again???? We still have halfway to go to reach the top of the hill...." little Arabica wailed on her visit to some remote hill station..."Beta, stop jumping around, let me catch my breath. One day when you get older, you will understand..."

Fast forward to the Present

Alarm rings...Arabica fumbles for the cell phone eyes still closed, managing to push it to the edge of the bed. It teeters there for a moment and crashes with a loud "thump". Opening one eye, just a crack, Arabica reaches down for the phone gingerly, pushes a few buttons, and heaves a sigh of relief. It's working! Just then, Arabica notices the time...This is the order of thoughts running through Arabica's head:
1)"Omigosh, I'm late for office yet again!"
2)"Oh no, I have to go to office yet again"
3)"Oh crap, my eyes are burning, my head is throbbing and my body is aching yet
again"
4)Arabica's mom's words ring through her head..."One day when you get older, you will understand."
5)"Oh man! Am I getting old??? Already???"

With this heavy thoughts weighing on Arabica's brain, Arabica reaches office. She picks up her ritual cup of coffee, and mid way through the cup, a bulb lights somewhere... Arabica looks down at the cup strangely, holds it slightly away...The mind races..."Could it be possible..." Lost in thought, Arabica gets through the drudgery of work, to arrive spent at the current lodging. Staring down at the laptop screen blankly for some time, Arabica furiously jots down this:

Signs that you are growing old:

1) The very thought of coffee at wee hours of the morning(read 7a.m.) makes u weep with joy, break out in a song and dance sequence from a SRK movie, and randomly kiss anybody who suggests a cuppa coffee(Costa coffee if you are nitpicky about your caffeine) OR alternatively you are trying your level best to kick caffeine with pumping your system in the morning with fruits(read Papaya).
2) You complain/rant/make fun of your work with your equally "old" friends, colleagues, strangers you meet on the bus, people sitting next to you in a cinema hall or random people walking down the street.
3) Your Google web history looks something like:
o (Inflation) AND (implications for the common man)
o (Recession) AND (job prospects)
o (How to combat hair loss)
o (High blood pressure) AND (signs) AND (symptoms)
5) You are attending an 8 year old’s birthday party or alternatively the kid’s friends mistake you for an adult, and asks in a piping voice, “Uncle/Aunty, Can I please have more chips?”
6) You would rather spend your weekends sleeping than getting up.
7) Which presents a dilemma, since, your body habituated to early mornings, refuses to let you get some shut eye on a Saturday morning.
8) You have acne. Not the teenage hormones variety, but the stress induced kind.
9) Your monthly bank statement can transport you into a state of delirium faster than anything on the planet.
10) You actually own a bank account.


And you know you are really really getting on in age, when you lose track of finer details… Like point no. 4…..

Zindagi Kaisi Yeh Paheli Hai...

I have been toying with a number of ideas for the blog for a long time…Though I have posted a post here or there, there has been no consistency in thought or purpose of this blog. Though my previous blog was borne more out of curiosity and sense of adventure than anything else, it unsurprisingly became anecdotal for others and a vent for me. Now, don’t ask me vent for what, because I am not very sure myself. I just know it felt good interacting without any pretenses, and for the first time, as a teenager who always felt awkward, I felt as if I belonged. But that was then. I have of course undergone a sea change in personality, evolved or should I say adapted to my environment quite sucessfully. But, why do I still feel as if I have something to vent? I have come back in the past year again and again, trying to be regular, bring back the same zest into it. I have failed. Miserably. Not from the lack of trying though. Maybe I am not the same person anymore. Correction: I am definitely not the same person anymore. So, maybe it cannot be the same kind of blog I used to write, just like I cannot be the same person I was five years ago. New person, new blog. Now that my life is going to be turned upside down completely in a matter of few months, there are times when I am left craving to put all my thoughts down in words… And speaking of craving, my “healthy” interest in food has now become a full blown obsession, thanks to the free run of the kitchen provided(or should I say earned) to me at my current lodging. And no, it is not about eating as much as it is about cooking and feeding. I must say that there is something to be said about the satisfaction derived entire process of toiling in the kitchen for hours, and come up with the perfect amalgam of aromas and tastes, of creating something new from the raw materials. Of course, people falling out of their seats with appreciation is an added bonus! Over past few months, I have been actively tracking few food blogs, and this further fuelled my appetite to document my experiments. Unfortunately, I have no clue how I am going to do that, since I have acquired the very traditional way of cooking. By estimation. I wonder if “dash” is a perfectly acceptable terminology for measure. At the same time, I don’t want to restrict myself to food. So, what else goes with food? I know, how about :

A dash of anecdotes
Sprinkling of humour
One teaspoon of trivia
A dollop of travel, fun and adventure
Smattering of romance

And

Three slivers of philosophy…..

Hmmmmm….Sounds like it has the makings of a spicy recipe. Now, what shall we call it? I vote for Subz Zindagi Bahar.

Been a long time coming home...

Ok...So, the hunger pangs are back. I feel ravenous after two months, and I can't hold myself any longer. After several half hearted attempts at home, after desperately trying to steal time during the weekday at office(that too a light week with mid week off), here I am, desperate for a release. Anything would do. Even gibberish will do. It is mine after all, I can do whatever I want. This craving for writing reminds me of my earlier blogging days, where I couldn't wait to get in front of a computer and pour all my thoughts as they formed liberating my frenetic brain at the end of it. There have been times since, the burden of liberation is borne by one poor soul who doesn't have the faintest idea what hits him each time.

Have been seeing lots of movies of late(what can a girl alone in this horrid city do?), and pretty decent movies I might add. Its been a refreshing change after a series of crappy movies(both hollywood and bollywood)that got released recently. It seems the money makers have come up with a new mantra to make money- Spend a tidy amount of money to publicize it, and earn as much as they can BEFORE the movie gets released. i.e. before anybody realizes that there were last minute budget cuts, and the screenwriter was fired half through the story.

But I digress, coming back to the half decent movies I saw: Slumdog Millionaire(needs no introductions, I guess), Khuda Ke Liye(a Pakistani movie surprisingly well made) and Luck By Chance. I will refrain from giving my "expert comments" on Slumdog Millionaire, I think everybody in the blogdom have done a pretty good job thrashing it apart. I just want to say one thing: 'There is no place on earth like Mumbai'. I know it is dirty, it is downright filthy, there is no end to the red tape, there is no infrastructure whatsoever, BUT I will always love the spirit that keeps it alive. You can have the best infrastructure in the world, but if you don't have the spirit, you don't have much to keep it alive. Danny Boyle has done a marvellous job of bringing out that unapologetic 'Can do, Will survive' attitude Mumbai has.

Khuda Ke Liye was the only movie among the three that had it all. It is a masterpiece of direction, has an indisputably strong storyline, remarkable actors and mindblowing music. Kudos to Pakistani cinema.

I think Zoya Akhtar din't want to leave her luck to chance in Luck By Chance and so she got so many actors to play in it by a lucky chance. It was the same old tired line about how shallow Bollywood really is. We have seen it before. Om Shanti Om anyone?? Ok, so it was a bad example, but Zoya shows how you can STILL make a masala movie, with the latkas and the jhatkas, sans the hamming. Yes, she DOES have SRK, but she does the smart thing by keeping his onscreen presence to a bare minimum. She does have a gazillion celebrities, but none of them overpower you all at once. And she keeps it realistic. The odds of a dusky lady getting a lead role in a major production over a fair damsel will be 0.0001 out of 10 even in the 21st century, the 'stud' who becomes a 'star' overnight will leave the average looking intelligent girl for a saccharine pastry. Such is life dearies...