Cosmopolitan

I am not a regular reader of Cosmopolitan magazine nor I do I personally know any other regular readers. But I have read about other people either swearing by the magazine or making fun of its articles. I am currently reading a Cosmo and I think I will fit snugly into the latter category.

Sample one of the tips from a Cosmo article about "50 ways to become a legendary flirt" (no, I have no idea why anyone would want to become a legendary flirt):

Take a sip of your mocha latte, stare into the eyes of the barista who made it and moan "Oh, yeah...that is sooo good." Next time, watch your drink appear before everyone else's.

Just visualizing the above scenario made me dissolve into laughter. If I moaned in the coffee shop at a barista, I am sure the barista will back away slowly while simultaneously reaching out for some heavy object.

Seriously, who comes up with these tips and ideas? More importantly, who are the poor sods who implement them??

p.s. I did not read the rest of the tips. After laughing through the first 9 tips, I decided that I do not have it in me to become a flirt, much less a legendary one.

Woman's era

When I was a kid, I remember two English magazines for women used to be popular. One was Femina and the other was Woman's Era. Of the two, Women's Era was my favorite since each issue used to feature at least 5-6 fictional stories and I used to be a story junkie those days. See, I even used to read up all the stories in my English textbooks as soon as we picked up new books for the school year. Thus, Woman's Era (WE) was my favorite since it featured far more stories than the non-fictional-article-rich Femina.

However, it did not take me much growing up to realize that though the stories in WE were plentiful, plentiful in quality they were not. Most of the stories featured English which sounded like it had been written by someone with a Standard 8 education (with English as a second language) - for all I know, it *had* been written by such authors. Many sentences and phrases sounded like they had been literally translated from some other language. The pictures accompanying the stories mostly matched the stories' written quality.

Soon, I started reading the stories more for the unintentional  humor the English usage sometimes provided and also to hone my English grammar police skills. In my immediate family, all the lady folks have this tendency towards grammar-policing. I tell you, we can get pretty annoying when we "gently" remind someone that it is whether not weather and it's and its are not interchangeable.

Once I moved to the US, my WE reading came to an abrupt halt. We used to get WE back home from the circulating library and obviously, the US did not feature circulating libraries which included WE in its collections. Soon, WE and its stories got relegated to some distant corner of my brain.

Then, during one of my India vacations, amidst all the eating, relative-visiting and function-attending, I glimpsed a WE on the coffee table at home. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it now featured a glossy cover with a decent layout and the pages were also of better quality. I had a slight twinge of nostalgia though, as I thought of the WE of yore and how so many things change as life goes on.

Then I browsed to one of the stories. Photographs had now replaced the amateurish drawings which used to accompany the stories earlier. I started to read the story. And slowly a smile spread itself across my face. In spite of the all the fancy-shancy packaging, WE was still the same. All the Standard 8, English-as-a-second-language authors were still very much on board.

I tell you, it is such a great comfort to know that no matter how much the rest of the world marches on by, some things will never change!

Weather forecast

How does it never fail?

Two days from Diwali, so that the last of the crackers could be burst too (isn't that perfect timing?), it started raining in Chennai. Not just ordinary rainy season rains but rains due to Cyclone Jal. I woke up on Sunday morning to heavily clouded and darkened skies, gusty winds and the sound of incessant, water-fall strength showers. Cyclone it was.

Cyclone Jal was off the north Tamilnadu coast and was expected to cross into the land on Sunday night, bringing heavier showers and winds with it. Sunday noon was spent in talking about the impending cyclone and how it would affect nephew's upcoming wedding reception on Monday evening.

Then it happened. The TV news came on and the newscaster announced that all schools and colleges would be closed on Monday on account of the impending cyclone. Immediately, cheers went up.

Because this announcement meant two things: 1. All my school/college going relatives would get an unexpected reprieve from school/college. 2. The cyclone would most definitely circumvent Chennai and Monday would be a rain-free and quite possibly, a sunny day too. Hassle-free wedding reception, here we come!

For, you see, it is one of the unwritten laws of cyloning. Whenever a day is given off for educational institutions on account of an impending cyclone, the cyclone shalt not come by and normal weather shalt prevail*. This law has *always* been followed  for as long as I can remember.

Thus, today, Monday, is a cloudy, albeit rain-free day. And this is the news I read this morning.

I told you right? It never fails.

* corollary to this law is, whenever educational institutes are not closed for impending cyclones, heavy rains shalt hit with great fury and causing much discomfort and inconvenience to the full-time learning public. Basically, you can't win.

Ten steps to write a chick-lit novel

1. Start with a heroine. She has to be thin and have other characters tell her from time to time that she is pretty. So that readers know that inspite of her modesty, she *is* attractive.

1a) Heroine could have been fatter/uglier before current time - this opens possibilities for adding dimensions to heroine's character.
1b) Heroine has to be a sweet little innocent thing. But most importantly, she is also "endearingly" stupid. Foolish women look a lot more convincing as damsels in distress.
1c) Heroine is grown-up physically only (can be anywhere in her 20s). Mental age is about 3.5 years with generous doses of selfishness, self-centeredness and neediness thrown in. All of which only adds to her endearingness.

2. Introduce heroine's female (or gay male) friend/sister who is way more interesting than the heroine and also functions as a responsible adult acting her (his) age. This person is great friends with the heroine. Opposites evidently attract.

3. Put heroine in a situation from which anyone with an IQ greater than -30 could have got themselves out of satisfactorily. Heroine though, should wait with enormous bambi eyes to be rescued.

4. Enter the tall, dark and handsome (or blond, blue-eyed and gorgeous) hero to the rescue. Note: hero should not look like he is rescuing out of a general sense of pity for stupid people. He should be rescuing because he is charmed by the heroine's endearingness (see point 1c above).

5. Heroine starts mooning about hero. Exhibits innocenter and innocenter(read: stupid) behavior. Hero gets more and more charmed.

6. Ominous music - introduce hero's current girlfriend. Current GF is a totally hot, confident, independent and smart woman. Making her the total b*tch.

7. Add episodes showing how hero and current-GF are totally unsuited for each other. Hero obviously did not realize he digs only innocent and helpless (read: stupid) women.

8. Make hero and current-GF break up over some trifle. Note: don't make current-GF look jubilant like she got the luckiest break of her life.

9. Let hero make a move and proclaim undying love for heroine. Let heroine accept endearingly.

10. Hero and heroine should continue proclaiming undying love for each other and sail off into the sunset together.

THE END.

Optional
- ex-boyfriend for heroine. This BF can be used to create the next optional situation.
- in between, allow the hero and heroine to have misunderstandings and then understandings and then make up and continue down the path of true love.
- if the story warrants, pick unbearably smug over endearingly stupid as the heroine. The pretty and thin requirements stay the same.
- throw in conflicts with parents/siblings etc to show why heroine/hero is to be pitied for being such a brave little soldier.

******
Ugh, ugh, ugh - do most easy-breezy rom-com type novels have to be this annoying and formulaic? Ever since Bridget Jones' Diary came out, most chick-flick novel writers seem to be laboring under the impression that dumb, wishy-washy, immature women constitute the most attractive female species on the planet. Just because it worked once (I loved reading Bridget Jones' diary), it does not mean that the reading public does not want to bean the next self-absorbed twit of a heroine on the head as hard as possible (case in point, Rebecca Bloomwood of the Shopaholic series - ugh ugh ugh).

Serves me right for reading such books, I guess.

p.s. These are NOT M&B books - I have not read M&Bs and never will. These are the supposedly easy-reads written by authors like Sophie Kinsella, Meg Cabot etc. Not that these are superior to M&Bs or something.

You know you have been working too hard on new technology...

... when you google for a recipe for Vegetable Pulao and are surprised to not be flooded with the usual results featuring a cornucopia of foodie blogs and instead seeing generic food sites.

Then realize your search term was not "Vegetable Pulao recipe" like you thought you had typed but "Vegetable Pulao example"

Sigh. And they say working remotely is so much more relaxing.

Right.

I'm waiting

Now I know what I have been missing for the past nine years:
(in no particular order)

• Deciding what fireworks to order.
• Planning for the arrival of guests.
• Happily braving the crowds to get new clothes shopping done.
• Visiting sweet shops buzzing with activity, busy handling advance orders.
• Seeing offers on sugar, ghee and other such groceries so that the ladies of the house can get a head-start on the sweets and snacks prepartion.
• Reading newspapers filled with pages and pages of special offers.
• Navigating through temporary platform shops selling mud lamps.
• Watching TV inundated with ads hawking everything from sarees and veshtis to discounts for refrigerators and TVs.
• Feeling the festive spirit all around, Indian style!

Yes, Deepavali is fast approaching! I can barely wait! So much so, I am even eagerly waiting to get up at 4.00am to have the traditional oil bath. Really.

Yes, it feels great to be home for Deepavali!

Mummee

With the number of reality shows broadcast on Tamil television growing by the minute, the number of judges required for judging such shows is also going up exponentially. Thus, any person who is even slightly famous (read: acted in one movie) can be spotted "judging" one or the other of these reality shows.

S and I were watching one of these shows today while playing cards. The show featured participants who had some special talent to showcase. The best of these participants then got to go to the next round.

The judges were JM (male) and JF (female) both of whom have in all probability acted in 3 movies(combined total) so far. Which explains why I have absolutely no clue who these folks were. But I can tell for sure that both these judges were definitely over 20 years of age, quite possibly older. Definitely not 2 years old. This point is relevant later in the post.

On the show, one of the participants let hot candle wax drip all over himself (!!!!) and finished the act by dripping wax over his tongue (!!!!!!). Not surprisingly, JM and JF ooohed and aahed over his ability to endure pain. JM then jokingly told JF that she should try to drip wax onto her tongue too. JF refused pronto - obviously. Then JF volunteered that she would let a bit of candle wax drip over her hand instead.

The compere promptly brought over some lit candles to the judges table. JF was about to drip wax over her hand when she suddenly stopped and said in a childish voice, "Wait a minute. I need to ask mummee". I thought this was her way of releasing tension before doing some thing.

Nopes - JF was serious and her mother was in the audience. JF turned her head to mummy to wait for the response. A second later she said, "Mummee said no, so I am not going to drip wax."

I was gobsmacked. Which adult person asks their mother to give them permission to do something so trivial? On TV? Especially when they are judging some show? Unless of course, said person is 2 years old which JF was most definitely not.

I have heard that many adult actress's mothers come along for shoots. Never realized that this could be because darling daughter might die otherwise because she could not ask Mummee permission to breath.

p.s. In case either the channel or JF thought it was "Awww - so cute!", unfortunately, it was much more like "Ugh - so retarded!".

Ayutha Pooja

Happy Ayutha Pooja!

Remember the part about being in India to celebrate festivals that I had written about in my moving to India post? Here's one of the whys:

That's the absolutely delicious home-cooked Ayutha Pooja special lunch at parents' place today. Shown in pic: Medu vada, sundal, beans usili, arbi fry, sankegourd kootu, potato pal-curry, poori and appalam. Not shown dal, sambhar, rasam, rice, curds and payasam.

Burp!

Strangers and magnets

Yesterday noon we were at home. Being the good bharatiya nari that I am 0:-), I was busy making lunch. The door bell rang. We usually don't have visitors showing up without calling first. Thiking it was the service-person asking if we had clothes for ironing, I peered through the peep-hole. Only to find a complete stranger-lady outside. I cautiously opened the door.

This lady said that she was coming from the Indane (gas company) office and she had come by to check the safety of the gas connection. Now, considering that we have not even received our long-ago ordered gas connection yet (we are cooking on a borrowed gas cylinder currently), I thought sending someone to check the non-existent connection was a bit rich. However gas-lady was not to be put off. She was running checks on all houses and would check borrowed connections too - for free! Thinking it over, I realized, a) S was at home too b) gas-lady was female. So risk of letting stranger into home was kinda minimimal. Thus I took her to the kitchen.

Gas-lady started checking connections. That was when my brain engaged into paranoia mode. What if this lady belonged to a gang of thieves who were surveying potential houses to rob? Or what if she was a solo-robber? I stood a little away from gas-lady (to avoid being chloroformed - I told you I have an active imagination) and watched her like a hawk so I could scream at the slightest odd behavior.

Gas-lady made some motions of checking the connections. Then she revealed the real reason for her visit. She was selling some magnetic gas saving gadget. Instead of being annoyed at being conned like this along with being interrupted in the lunch-making process, relief flooded through me. Yaay - she was not a potential burglar!

By this time, S came by to see what gas-lady was upto as well. We both listened open-mouthed as gas-lady gave some ultra-vague theory about how affixing magnets near the cylinder source would miraculously allow gas in a cylinder to last for 60 days as opposed to 40 days. Umm - right. We asked if she had proof of some study conducted to validate that claim. Oh no, said gas-lady, people have been using the device only for 6 months or so now. That there are plenty of 40 day chunks in a 6-month period did not strike her.

At this point, gas-lady realized that S and me were of too scientific a bent of mind to buy into her magent-attracts-steel-in-gas-tube-leading-to-fuel-efficiency theory. Disappointed, she packed her magnets and left.

When I later narrated my thought-sequences to S, he told me that it was good idea to listen to misgivings *before* letting strangers into the house rather than after. Good point, that.

p.s. I did google search and apparently there is some credence to magnetic fuel saving contraptions. Who would have thunk! Though the reason is most definitely not what gas-lady told us.

Conversations with friends - II

So this morning sis sent a forward. I found it funny and forwarded it further to a few friends. This was the subsequent email conversation between friend V and me:

On Sun, Oct 10, 2010 at 11:46 AM, V wrote:
BLASPHEMY!!!!!!!

On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 12:15 PM, Archana wrote:
Oh no - does this mean I am going to be smote by lightning anytime soon :-P??

On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 12:32 PM, V wrote:
God is very angry with you right now .
You know which God, dont you... dont you, infidel?

On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 1:10 PM, Archana wrote:
Um - are you talking about Jesus? One likes to be clear about such things so that when one is about to be smote by lightning one knows which name to ask for mercy.

On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 1:30 PM, V wrote:
no, idiot - Jesus is the son of God, not God! - duh!
just God - English God!

On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 1:46 PM, Archana wrote:
Why English God? Huh, huh? Why this racism? That too, for a forward forwarded in India. Hmph. Racist Gods!

On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 1:49 AM, V wrote:
Ufff - it is the official language!

On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 2:26 PM, Archana wrote:
No dummy I was referring to English as in the race. Not English as in the language. Doh!

On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 2:52 PM, V wrote:
English is not a race.. Doher!!

On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 3:37 PM, Archana wrote:
Um - so explain the term Englishman.... Dohest!!!

Much later:

On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 7:07 PM, V wrote:
Yea.. there was no comeback for dohest. So I slept and took a shower instead.

On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 7:40 PM, Archana wrote:
Eeeehaw .....
*Archana does a victory lap around her Gmail Inbox*

*****

And they say you get more mature as you get older. Right!

In case you are wondering, this is the forward which started it all:
There were 3 good arguments that Jesus was
Black:

1. He called everyone brother
2. He liked Gospel
3. He didn't get a fair trial

But then there were 3 equally good arguments that Jesus was
Jewish:

1. He went into His Father's business
2. He lived at home until he was 33
3. He was sure his Mother was a virgin and his Mother was sure He was God

But then there were 3 equally good arguments that Jesus was
Italian:

1. He talked with His hands
2. He had wine with His meals
3. He used olive oil

But then there were 3 equally good arguments that Jesus was a
Californian:

1. He never cut His hair
2. He walked around barefoot all the time
3. He started a new religion

But then there were 3 equally good arguments that Jesus was an
American Indian:

1. He was at peace with nature
2. He ate a lot of fish
3. He talked about the Great Spirit

But then there were 3 equally good arguments that Jesus was
Irish:

1. He never got married..
2. He was always telling stories.
3. He loved green pastures.

But the most compelling evidence of all -

3 proofs that Jesus was a woman:

1. He fed a crowd at a moment's notice when there was virtually no food
2. He kept trying to get a message across to a bunch of men who just didn't get it
3. And even when He was dead, He had to get up because there was still work to do

AMEN!!

p.s. All of this is in fun. So please to not come after me wielding pitch-forks.
p.s.1 First installment of conversations here.