Mumbai times

Impromptu trips are just SO great. All of a sudden, a routine week turns into something very much worth looking forward to. We had one just this past week. We were going to Mumbai where my sister and BIL live! And from there to Alibagh for a weekend stay. With family and extended family. Yaay!

So thrilled was I that my grin remained intact even as I scampered hard to meet work deadlines, threw clothes together feverishly into a suitcase in 30 minutes, wound up things at home and survived a night with only 2.5 hours of sleep to make it to an early morning flight. S matched me grin for grin just like he matched my rushed pace.

South Mumbai is an awesome place. The entire area has an old-world feel about it with cobbled streets, pretty architecture and quaint stores. Only thing, I was warned again and again that the trip from the airport to Colaba in South Mumbai would be a long one.

For the first time in my life, I saw Murphy's law work in reverse*. First thing, we were out of the plane 5 minutes after it landed. And we got our luggage almost as soon as we reached the luggage carousel (usually the arrival of my luggage signifies that all the luggage on the plane has been unloaded. And no, I am not exaggerating). And then the traffic was so unusually light that by the time I was told over phone (I have no idea what is where in Mumbai and hence had telephonic directions relayed to me) that I would be crossing some particular land-mark, I had already left it far behind. I was at my sister's place about 40 minutes before anyone expected me to. Yeah, I knew it was going to be a great trip!

And a great trip it was. We managed to do some mall-walking, plenty of great-food hogging and total week-end vacationing. I have fallen in love with all kinds of parathas. The feeling of a hot, freshly made, flaky paratha melting in your mouth is simply too divine to describe.

The beautiful coast

Sand, rocks and the sea.

Alibagh is a calm weekend getaway from Mumbai. We stayed in a place built in a mango orchard (the mangoes were alphonsos!! Pity it is not mango season yet) in airy, bright rooms.

View from the room

We woke to the sounds of chirping birds and ocean waves. Had breakfast, lunch and dinner made off the organic vegetables from the farm and fresh fish from the ocean. Got our exercise from walking to the scenic coast and from playing badminton. Got plenty of unwind time with laughter, chatter, drinking steaming cups of ginger chai, reading on the hammock, playing cards and did I mention, laughter? I can totally get used to this.

The fun bunch of travelers

Sunset as seen from the Alibagh ferry area.

My only complaint is that the trip was too short. Still, am totally basking in the glow of an awesome break. Vive la impromptu trips!

* When something can go right, it will.

Exercise

I have talked (or rather whined) about my exercising in various posts in this blog. My primary goal when I first started to exercise on a regular basis was to lose some weight and get some muscular definition.

For folks who have never exercised in their entire lives, even a few days of exercising can show a difference when looking in the mirror. Even other people notice enough to comment upon the altered appearance. And having muscles where none were before brought a high on its own. In short, it was quite easy to keep going.

But then, all new activities soon get the patina of boredom due to repetition. And sure enough, exercising too lost its charm.

Though I knew that exercising was helping me be fit and look better, it was still not a good enough motivation for me to do it regularly. Then I hit upon the idea of signing up for fitness classes. Knowing me, I knew I would feel guilty if I paid for classes and did not go since it would mean that the cost of every class I missed went down the drain (unlike the gym where I could always reason that I would go "tomorrow", though tomorrow sometimes never came for several weeks)

I was right. Where gyms had failed, fitness classes kept me exercising regularly. All this was back in the US.

Then, after we moved back to India, the first few months were too busy to think about resuming a regular fitness routine. I finally got back to exercising regularly in December. And of course, in January, I promptly fell sick. Fever and cough and cold and body-pain encourage lounging on the bed and not exercising.

Finally, I began to feel much better towards the end of January but (according to me  - I am great at finding excuses) still not in exercising shape. After all, I was feeling lethargic most of the time, sniffly-nosed and consequently, cranky .

But then after a week of excuses, even I became tired of them and finally decided that sniffles or not, I was going to start exercising regularly. I had exercised for 3 days in a row when it suddenly hit me that on all those 3 days, I was not lethargic and though the sniffles remained, they no longer made my cranky.

It did not take me too long to realize the only change I had made to my daily routine was to exercise. I had read in several sources about how exercise gives you energy and releases mood-enhancing endorphins. But, while I had always  agreed with being in a good-mood post-exercise (I attributed this to the wonderful feeling of knowing that I did not need to exercise for the rest of the day), I had always pooh-poohed the increased energy theory. Run over by a truck was what I usually felt like after exercising.

But now, I was a believer! I did have great energy for the rest of the day, the noon-time slump notwithstanding. And with this realization came another. Where I had not been motivated by the carrots of "being fit and looking good", I was motivated by "great energy and feel-good factor".

Not to say that I have now become an exercise freak. I still have to push myself to exercise on most of my designated exercise-days and I still sometimes continue lie down in bed long after being wide awake since getting up means having to exercise. However, it has become easier to not skip exercising and not come up with lame excuses since I started looking at exercise as something I do for mental and physical well-being and not for vanity.

Of course, since I have been enlightened only for a few weeks now, it is still too early to tell if this enlightenment too shall pass or not. Still, I am happy that it is working for now!

Indane

Indane is a great Indian company which sells LPG cylinders. Indane considers itself to be God's gift to Indians and makes sure you treat it with respect. After you register for a new connection with them, you wait, wait, wait and continue waiting till it generously decides to bestow a new connection to your name. Oh, the connection is not free or anything, of course, you have to pay for it. That way you can pay and feel extremely grateful for getting something you paid for too. Win-win all the way.

Among the other rules for getting a gas connection, is the rule that you should not have any other gas cylinder in house when procuring a connection. So essentially, when you wait, wait, wait, wait and continue to wait, you are expected to subsist with either wood-stoves or induction stoves or just keep buying your food from hotels. Since most people are not insane (wood stoves are too smoky, induction-stoves - haha, with the highly reliable electricity available here, you are kidding, right?, hotels would be too expensive and unhealthy), they borrow gas cylinders from kindhearted friends or relatives while they wait for the new connection to appear.

We applied for our LPG connection in August last year. After months of telling us they were processing our application, we finally got approval in the first week of February this year. Yaay, we got it in just 7 months - aren't we extra blessed or what? Right during the application process, S told the gas agency folks that we had a borrowed connection with a borrowed regulator due to the long drawn-out process of getting a new connection. Shouldn't be a problem, S was told.

Two days ago, a gas inspector came over to our place. Not for inspecting that the kitchen is well-ventilated or that the gas cylinder would be kept in a safe place. No siree - that would actually make the inspection useful.Turns out, his only job was to make sure that there was no other gas connection in the house.

Since I had no intention of dragging the borrowed cylinder and hiding it under the bed as soon as I saw the gas-inspector at the door, the inspector saw the borrowed cylinder in all its glory. The inspector then magnanimously told me that he would not report the existence of the other cylinder so we could get our own connection. I could not believe how he could shamelessly declare that while Indane took its own sweet time to grant us a connection, we are not supposed to have any alternatives. However, I did not say anything. In retrospect, this was apparently a mistake*.

Today I call up the Indane gas-agency asking what happened to our first cylinder which was supposed to have been delivered hours after the gas-inspection took place. Then we got the news.

After seven months of making us wait, the Indane Gods had gotten angry with us. Since we had a gas cylinder in the house, they had decided to cancel our application.

But I totally get it - how dare we mere mortals use borrowed LPG till the Indane Gods decided our time to use a LPG cylinder had come? Stupid, stupid mortals! When you are registered with Indane, till Indane says so, you don't get to use LPG. And hear ye mortal, Indane shalt make you repent your presumptuous folly. No LPG connection for you!

Thus, as of today, we are no longer in line for receiving our own LPG connection from Indane.

All this is happening in a the country which is aiming to become a future superpower. Bless its little heart.

p.s. BTW, the name of the gas-agency is Kalarani and it is located in Mylapore. Just letting you know so you know upfront what you are facing in case you get cursed and get assigned to them!

* When S went to the gas agency, he said the employees there actually hinted something like we had not grovelled enough for the connection. I guess I should have shed copious tears of gratitude and kissed the gas-inspector's feet when he magnanimously said he would not report the borrowed cylinder. Totally my fault.

Operation Zero Crack

While being the first to admit that I am quite far from the Miss World mold, I am nevertheless quite vain about a few physical features of mine. When I was kid, I used to love the smooth feel of my ankles. For some unfathomable reason, cracked heels were disgusting things to me and I would primly inform my mom that she and my aunts had ugly feet when those horrible heel cracks appeared (for some inexplicable reason, mom continued to love me). I had no idea back then that cracked heels were prone to afflict adults more. Instead, I just assumed that I had been born with divinely blessed perfect heels.

Fast forward to adulthood. Regular readers of this blog will know my penchant and fondness for moisturizing. If a person bathes themselves in moisturizer I guess that person's heels will have a very hard time trying to crack. So, while I did not make the connection, I continued to have smooth heels and I continued to believe in my divine perfect heels.

Fast forward some more. Last year we moved back to India. As I said, moisturizers were mostly unnecessary in Chennai and I had to regretfully give up on using so much. Then, the winter set in. Now, in Chennai, you have to look really carefully to find winter. About two days of the ceiling fan being unnecessary and winter is over. Still, the air does tend to get a bit drier than usual.

Fast forward to a few days ago. I was climbing the stairs to my in-laws house ahead of S when he asked, "Hey Archu, are those cracks in your heels?" I froze mid-step. Just like in that ad where a teenage boy calls a prematurely graying lady "aunty" and the lady hears echoes of "aunty, aunty, aunty", I could hear echoes of "cracked heels, cracked heels, cracked heels".

Stunned, I checked my feet and sure enough, I could spot two cracks on each heel. Noooooooooooooooo. All I could think about for the rest of the visit was "I need to get rid of the cracked heels NOW." How could I have neglected my favorite activity (moisturizing) so much?

Now I have launched Operation Zero Crack. I soak my feet in warm water and scrub my feet morning and night. Then douse them in moisturizer and cover my feet with socks. So what if I look like a geriatric wearing socks in 29C weather? Getting rid of the heel cracks is priority #1.

After 4 days of this routine, I don't know if the heel cracks are healing. But I do know that I have the cleanest feet in the whole of Chennai.

Here's to crack-less heels!

Only in India

For the past three days, celebration (read, eating plenty of yummy food) has been in full swing in honor of Pongal, the harvest festival.

I ate sugarcane today after eons. I still remember the days of yore when we kids used to spread plenty of newspapers on the ground and then seat ourselves in a circle around them and chew and spit the sugarcane husks away to glory. This was probably a negative calorie activity since tearing away the sugarcane's outer layer, chewing the inner layer, spitting the husk out and navigating through the sugarcane eyelets (kanu) used to be quite energy-consuming. This was the macho (and time intensive) way of eating the sugarcanes - the cut and cleaned pieces were for sissies. We kids used to enjoy this ritual a lot and it was one of the highlights of Pongal.

Today, maattu (cow) pongal day, as I stuffed yet another vada into my mouth at my parents' place, I was thinking about how Pongal has mostly lost its significance for urban dwellers. After all, hardly anyone living in a city is tending to farms in their backyards that they can give thanks to their hardworking farm-animals or for a bountiful harvest. Still, considering that Pongal comes with its share of festival food and celebrations, I really was not complaining too much.

Later in the night, as S and me set off home, we bade good bye to my parents and took the elevator downstairs. We were about to walk out of the building when the strangest sight met our eyes. Standing outside the building was a cow and her calf!

The cow had tiny bells tied to its horns. Both the cow and the calf looked resplendent in the silk clothes covering them and the garlands of flowers and glittering paper hanging around their necks. In front of them stood one of the ladies of the apartment complex, venerating them with aarti as the animal-caretaker looked on.

So what if we can't give thanks to our own cows? Just rent-a-cow :-)! Still, it was great to see maattu pongal being celebrated in its true spirit!

There is still one more day of Pongal left tomorrow. So:

Wish you a very Happy Pongal!

Weird tag lines

I simply *had* to write about this somewhere. When stocking our kitchen after we moved into our new place, one of the things we bought was maida (all purpose flour). Now, I am quite used to some desi products having funny-sounding names (kali mark, bovonto, seval-mark beedi (translated to cock-mark beedi), sudermani veti, poomer veshti, Bommi nightie etc. etc.). But the new love for having tag-lines associated with products have me reeling again.

So our maida had the brand name Naga. The tag-line? Naga - the glow of satisfaction.

??!?! So the maida glows or it glows when made into parathas or the Naga company owner's face glows when he sees the profits? No idea. What an irrelevant and weird tag line for an edible item I thought.

Then I saw this ad on TV today: Naga bubbly-bubbly maida. Complete with a lady singing about her bubbly bubbly son and bubbly bubbly husband and how they eat bubbly bubbly parottas made with bubbly bubbly Naga maida.

Ayooooo! I tell you, this company needs a new marketing team, stat.

Clean slate to write on

Happy New Year 2011, folks! Boy, 2010 went whizzing by or what? Though, like S said, instead of mourning for a year gone by too fast, I should look forward to adding many more new experiences in 2011. That's a great way of looking at it, no?

My 2011 got off to a flying start. First, we went on a family outing to a resort in Pondicherry. The weather was great, the company was great, the food was great and the beach was a stone's throw away. What more does a mini-vacation need?

Then, as if my cup of joy was not full enough, this happened: I went to the in-house spa to get a massage done. The masseuse first asked me if I was a student. Amused, I said no and stated that I was working. We continued talking about some other topic. In reply to a question, I started off saying, "Yes, my husband and I..." only to be interrupted by the masseuse with a, "What, you are married?" followed by, "Oh, then you must be newly married.". I am told I wore a cat which has drunk milk expression for the rest of the day.

Before touching the big 3-0 last year, I was briefly depressed and felt that as soon as I turned 30, I would be standing with one foot in the grave. Only after turning 30 did I realize that except for filling in new digits next to my age in application forms, absolutely nothing had changed. I was going to be as old or as young as I felt and not as dictated by the number of years I had spent on the planet.

Still, it was a total cheap thrill to think that I had looked young enough that particular day to be assumed a student. Especially, since being ID-ed is something which happens more and more infrequently these days!

Yup, like I said, this New Year got off to a flying start :-D!

Here's to a wonderful 2011 *clink*.

Party girl

My friend Shilpa had invited me to her kid's first birthday party. This party was happening on the 26th of December in Bangalore, the same day that a milestone occasion of close relatives was being celebrated in Chennai as well.

Thankfully, while the family party was in the afternoon, Shilpa's party was going to be held in the evening. The total party girl that I am (or more truthfully, wanting to attend both parties), I decided I would attend the family party, then hop onto a flight to Bangalore, attend the other party and return to Chennai the next day (sounds so jet-setting, right?).

Thus, tickets were booked and I was all set.

December 25th night, I decided to check in for my flight to Bangalore for the next day, at 3.25pm. To my delight, I found no one else had checked in for the flight and I checked into seat 1F, right behind the pilot, as I told my family proudly later. Which was when my dad pricked my delight bubble and told me that if no one else had checked in, it was quite possible that my flight would be canceled. Oh? Ouch.

The next morning, the day of the parties, saw me feverishly packing stuff to take to Bangalore. I would be leaving for the airport straight from Party #1. That was when the SMS alert came on my phone. Ta da! The flight to Bangalore was canceled. Ugh.

The next 45 minutes saw me on the phone to Jet Airways while they confirmed that I had now been moved to the 5.35pm flight to Bangalore. Um, I would be landing right when the Party #2 started, but as long as I went dressed in my party dress, I would still be able to make it to most of the party. Okay, all set again.

Party #1 turned out to be a total blast and everyone had a wonderful time. After the party, some guests came back home with us. While S entertained the guests, I dressed up for Party #2, again at a feverish pace, wishing that I could have spent more time with the guests.

After bidding good-bye to our guests, S and I rushed to the airport. I was dropped off and I went off to check-in, all the while feeling utterly conscious about my blingy party dress (maybe from now on I wont be so judgmental about people in airports who look like they ran away from a party). At the counter fell the first blow. My 5.35pm flight was now delayed to 6.25pm. What!!!!

Shilpa's party would be starting at 6.30pm and I would now only be landing at 7.15pm. But the brave little soldier that I am, I figured that since this was an Indian party, the guests would show up according to IST only and thus I would not miss too much of the party (I can be a little too optimistic sometimes). When told about the delay, S asked if I was planning to go all the way to Bangalore just so that I could wish Shilpa good night and come back. Har har.

So 4.10pm to 5.40pm saw me seated at the gates in the airport, shivering slightly. In my rush I had forgotten to grab a jacket and a book. The latter was remedied by buying a magazine.

At 5.45 pm, I was all ready to be called for boarding. Which was when a voice over the intercom announced that the flight to Bangalore was now delayed to 7.00pm due to unavoidable reasons and "we are extremely sorry about the delay". I had a great idea about where exactly they could shove their sorry but being of the polite type, decided not to tell them.

At this point, even optimistic me had to concede defeat. There was no point traveling all the way to Bangalore for a party if I couldn't attend the said party. I lugged my suitcase back to the jet airways counter to ask for a refund. The funny part here was I had more difficulty in getting out of the security check area than getting into it (I was not asked for ID at any point while getting in). However, my thundercloud-like, irritated, disappointed and annoyed face got me out quickly enough.

Thus, 2 hours after entering the airport, I was outside again, waiting to be picked up by S, without ever stepping onto an aircraft.

The best laid plans of mice and women...

Thanksgiving

I know its almost a month past thanksgiving but hey, it is always the season to give thanks! Never mind that most of these thanks are for inconsequential teensy things.

1. I am thankful
... that we can now afford to employ a house-help to do daily household work. No more washing dishes or folding clothes. Hallelujah!

Not so thankful though
... that I can't sleep in on weekends because I have to be up to let the maid in.

2. I am thankful
... that we have a circulating library which delivers weekly/fortnightly/monthly magazines right to our doorstep to be read and returned in 2 days.

Not so thankful though
... that when I am busy, I get so guilty about returning the magazines unread that I actually read through them at a feverish pace like I was cramming for an exam.

3. I am thankful
... that festivals are such a joy to celebrate in India.

Not so thankful though
... that all the happy stuffing of yummy festival food always results in post-postprandial remorse after looking at the newly added bodily inches.

4. I am thankful
... for the abundant rain Chennai has been blessed with this rainy season. The weather is lovely and Chennai rains are a joy to get drenched in.

Not so thankful though
... about the crater-sized potholes roads are spotting these days. Seriously, do they construct roads here using mud or what?

5. I am thankful
... about our new washing machine which has an absolutely cool delay feature which lets me set up the wash before going to bed to be ready just in time for the maid to hang up to dry the next morning.

Not so thankful though
... well, this one is all good. I ain't complaining.

6. I am thankful
... that curd sets without any molly-coddling here. Seriously, you just add some yogurt to a bowl of warm milk and five hours later, the curd is brilliantly set. Only people who have tried making curd in cold climes will understand the joy of watching this happen!

Not so thankful though
... that set curd goes sour at a very rapid speed too. Ouch.

7. I am thankful for
... having both our families so close by that we can visit and get visited whenever we want.

Not so thankful though
... this one is all good too!

Overall I am more thankful than not-thankful.

Great

I met again with my friend Shilpa after more than a year and a half. Since we first met (19 year ago now, man, time flies), this is probably the longest we have gone without meeting up. But of course, the moment we met, it was like we had been chatting together forever. That is the best part about close friends, time apart never affects anything.

Shilpa had traveled by herself to Chennai to attend to some official work. Though she was here for exactly a day, it was a great one day. We shunted S out to the hall and chatted late into the night till we couldn't keep our eyes open any more. We talked about everything under the sun - it was just like the good old times when we were in school. The chatting continued at all the times when we weren't asleep and time just flew.


Since we have known each other for so long, there are hardly any sides, good or bad, of one, that are unknown to the other. And since we like each other the way we are, we can simply be ourselves when we meet and get right down to the business of having a good time.

I totally had a jolly good time!