A Butterfly in Waiting

Night
I lie softly curled
In my mosquito-net cocoon
Watching
The shaman-witch wind
Weaving a shadow play
With the light from the street lamp
And the leaves of the parijata tree
On my soft cobwebbed walls

It’s an enthralling tale
Sung, not told
In voices that only I hear
Of how it will be
To have gaily painted wings
To flit and float
And sip from
Flowers
More gaily painted than me
And bask in the fame
Of a million delighted gasps,
“Oh, look, how pretty!”

I watch and listen
Enthralled

And think how much
I like it here
Close to the ground
After all, when I fall,
How far down will it be?
I like the way
It smells here
Of known darkness
I like that I am still
A possibility, a promise
Not a pretty fulfillment
Flying to my death

You could say
I’m not ready to be a butterfly
Just yet…

The Art of Having a Crush

“The Guide says that there is an art to flying,” said Ford, “or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and missing.” The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Come to think of it, there is an art to everything. Pouring exactly 32.5 sips of tea into your teacup every morning. (Barring Sundays and Flashers Unite Day, when it is 37.8.) Pretending your head lice are dandruff flakes with legs. Picking your nose during your question and answer round in the Miss World contest in such a way that the judges believe that it is your goobers, not your breasts that will save the world. Etc. Etc.
And there is an art to having a crush.
Now the dictionary defines a crush as an intense but usually short-lived infatuation. But that’s a shallow definition, as if having a crush were like having a zit or a sandwich and it doesn’t to justice to a noble, ancient art, fraught with such subtle intricacies, not to mention intricate subtleties, that it deserves at least 10 volumes of the Brockhaus Konversations-Lexikon. Which I am in the process of penning but till then, this little jotting will have to suffice.

BC (Before the Crush)
Before setting off to have a crush there’s a very important matter that you have to first sort out. And that is to make sure that you’re not Kareena Kapoor. Or Justin Timberlake. (Tick only one.) Nor have been ever listed as one of the World’s Ten Sexiest Warthogs. In other words, the number of people currently beating a path to your door (or website) on account of how hot and whatnot you are should be one less than that for a maggot. This instantly expands by nineteen million galaxies the universe from which you can choose the object of your crush (more on that later). Which can now be anyone from Laloo’s buffalo minder to the boiled potato masher at your favourite vada-pav stall, both of whom, we’ll have you know, are as crush-worthy as your next Kareena-come-latelys.

OOC (Object of Crush)
Having got that out of the way, let us now dwell on the tricky matter of choosing the Object of Crush, henceforth referred to as OOC. Now there have been instances of people having a lifelong crush on a slotted spoon, having taken the word “object” literally. But speaking from experience, people are better. (I once have a crush on a red pencil sharpener for about two weeks and it wasn’t much fun though I have to admit the “prup-prap” sound it made every time it sharpened made my superior gemellus tingle in the most gratifying fashion.)
What about animals, did someone ask? Hm. Well, there was one case of a crush on an amoeba but we’re still as hazy on the subject as the fetish wallahs are on having sex with a shoe horn.
The next and most important thing about your choice of OOC is that he/she (since we’ve now ruled out “it”) should be unattainable. And we don’t mean your everyday, garden variety of unattainable like buying up one floor of Antilla. (Those who are asking “Antilla who?” may immediately drum themselves off this planet.) We’re talking about unattainable that makes crossing the Atlantic on a rubber bath duckie seem like licking tomato ketchup.
Unattainabilty is critical because it’s like virtual sex - you’ll never get to know the more intimate details about your OOC. Spitting while eating boiled egg. Nymphomaniac vampire half-sister who visits every full moon. Barking in sleep. Passing garlic-scented wind during….well, never mind. Mother who’s just had a sex change and likes to discuss her (his?) post-operative plumbing during lunch.
We see you blanch. You’re thinking - Richard Gere and garlic-scented….?
Really?
Who knows me darlings, who knows. But more importantly, do we really want to know.
Also, hop off the beaten path, eschew the straight and narrow and venture to where few others have dared to go. So, while George Clooney is a good choice, George Bush is better. Similarly, Beyonce is sweet but Hilary Clinton is…well, you know. (You’d be surprised how many amongst us think that ice-queen-meets-AK-47-laugh is nothing less than a Playboy centre spread coated Viagra.) So are Prince Charles, aforementioned buffalo minder, Heather Mills, Michael Jackson’s children’s wet nurse, Osama’s third wife (not to be confused with Obama who has only one wife anyway), the man who left a crate of rotting Alphonsos at your door in 1993. Famous dead people are also a good bet, as long as the dead body has been disposed off. (I mean, we don’t want any talk of necrophilia muddying these sacred waters, do we now.) Which mean King Tut is off limits, Attila the Hun is not.

And Now, The Crush
Righty-ho. Unattainable, dream-the-impossible-wet-dream OOC selected. God in Heaven, coffee on boil, libido on roil. You can now get down to the actual business of having that crush. Which basically involves thinking of the OOC every waking moment (barring while shaving underarms and performing other ablutions that we can’t mention) and generally deteriorating into the most awful kind of drip. In other words, you have to pine and ache, hanker and crave, long for and lust after. You have to gnash teeth, tear hair and eat heart out. (All yours and mercifully, it’s all low cal AND organic.) And every now and then, you have to dissolve into a deliriously gibbering, slavering puddle of ecstatic saliva at what might be a glimpse of the right-hand corner of the hangnail on the left little toe of the OOC.
And you have to do this all the while making sure that the distance of sixty-three gadzillion light years of unattainabilty between you and your OOC has not lessened by a even single millimetre.
Naturally the question that springs to mind like a startled toast out of toaster is - but what if it does? You mean what if you suddenly find that you’ve just pipped Salman Khan to the sexiest-napoleon-with-hair-weave post and Katrina – whom you lusted after for so many long and hopeless moons – is giving you the eye, not to mention the once-over, laced with a couple of smouldery-over-the-bare-shouldery come-on-overs?
Well, remember the stroke-of-midnight trick in Cinderella when the coach goes back to being a pumpkin and the coachman to the dirty, two-timing, double-crossing, whisker-twitching rat that he always was?
It’s more or less the same thing with a crush.
Which is that without so much as a by-your-leave or a hey-ninny-no, it simply will vanish into the morning smog. (Or at the next traffic signal.) And the OOC will topple off the altar, shattering into sixty-three gadzillion pieces and then morph into an ordinary mortal of flesh, blood and gumboils that you can now proceed to have as bossa nova partner, running mate or to drape on your arm to the next Star Parivaar Awards.
But never ever again to be the OOC.

Finally, AD (Or What’s The Bleeding Point about the Whole Darn Thing)
I mean, that’s a bit like asking what’s the point about balloons at birthday parties. Or umbilical cords if it’s her apron strings that’s going to keep us attached to our dear mamas. Or the p in pneumonia if we aren’t going to pronounce it. These are the unquestionable essentials of life that don’t need silly, pointless things like points. (Which are mainly for fingers and the pervie-brain that designed the pointed bra.)
But since you’re asking, actually there is a point to having a crush. It’s a lesser known but well documented fact that the secret of the longevity of the centenarians in the Upper Silesia (no relation to Yash Chopra’s Silsila) is not bathing in the urine of the Caucasian tur but a lifelong, unwavering, passionate crush on the Abominable Snowman.
And that’s simply because a crush is cross between an emotional laxative and Oil of Olay.
Lemme explain.
See, basically life’s mainly a dreary drag, a grimy grind and the daily diet of the ho-hum and the humdrum clogs up the bowels of soul to ultimately give you the worldview and complexion of an ageing constipated eel. Having a crush evacuates and expels, it also opens up the pores, irrigates the pons (not what you are thinking but close), hydrates the appendix and generally gets what till now was a grudging, grumpy trickle splooshing in great, happy gushes through your tubes.
Leaving you with softer, younger-looking….um….er….well, certainly the bowels of your soul will look like that of a sprightly 17 year-old. We can’t guarantee anything else.

Sheep’s Eyes and Baboon’s Bottoms – Reading the Signs.

“Biologically speaking, if something bites you it's more likely to be female.” Desmond Morris
“The power to charm the female has been in some instances more important than the power to conquer other males in battle.” Charles Darwin in The Descent of Man.

Saturday night.
You are single and so willing to mingle that it hurts but you know that tonight’s the night because you are one fourth Marilyn Monroe, one fourth Angelina Jolie, half a hank of Mallika Sherawat, whisked together and stir fried with a few pinches of Silk Smita.
(Yeah, the mirror. Well, you’ve politely asked it to shut up and go suck eggs with the Wicked Stepmother.)
Through the mists of cigarette smoke rolling over a sea of Margaritas, you spot him. George Clooney meets Akshay Khanna. Pure dishy-ness. On the rocks.
You give him the works. Zinging come hithers like flashes of liquid lightning from under thick, languorous lashes. (Okay, so they’re false but by the time he knows it will be too late.) Interspersed with smiles so mysteriously seductive that Jezebel would’ve slashed her wrists in jealous despair. All done while throwing your head back so that your hair cascades down your back in voluptuous eddies, showing off the long, lovely line of your neck.
(Shut up, mirror.)
Quick break, pretending to sip drink but actually checking cleavage as you think - should be reeling him in any moment now.
You wait.
Nothing.
Shocked, you peer across aforementioned Sea of M. No GC-met-AK, instead a Frankenstein-meets-pyorrehea is leering his way over to you. You now feel like one-fourth yesterday’s cat vomit, one-fourth today’s doggy poop, two bags of saggy, stale underwear stir-fried with….
I know.
But girls, do not despair.
Because the fault is not in your come-hithers, but in the men.
Apparently the poor dear baa-lambs can’t tell flirting from a boiled egg. So you can flash those come-hithers (and whatever else you’ve got to flash) as much as you want, you can wiggle all your wiggle-ables, you can giggle the sound that’s supposed to turns saints into helpless putty, sinning as if sinning is going out of style. But unless you’ve have also sprayed “Hey, you’re cute! Wanna….?” across your naked breasts in neon pink and have thrust them – jiggling - into his face, he probably thinks you’re asking if you can join his car pool.
Thus spake not I but the findings of a study just conducted by the University of Indiana.
Now, before we all skewer ourselves on our tail combs (not what you’re thinking), let’s take a few deep breaths and mull on the matter.
Maybe there is a reason why men are so confused.
Maybe it’s because in most other parts of the animal kingdom, it’s the males that do all the hard work. For one, it’s they that have to be pretty and titivate (again not what you’re thinking) - all those gaudy colours and stripes and horns and humps and antlers and shiny feathers. Whereas the women mostly slop around in nighties and no make-up. I mean, have you looked at a peahen lately and what do you think the lion gets to have the mane?
For another, the lads that have to do the impressing - flashing and prancing and singing and swelling up and puffing out and generally strutting their stuff while the ladies get to just sit back, languidly sip iced tea, check out the merchandise. And if something catches their eye, then they select. (“You. Yeah, you with the bright green feathers growing out of your butt…”) Naturally, if the bloke’s bump-‘n-grind is not up to snuff, he don’t get any tonight and if it is, he may even be rewarded by becoming a tasty post-coitus snack. Chomp, chomp. I tell ya girls, the women have it good in the jungle.
So, I’m thinking why should it be any different with our boys considering that the genetic distance separating us from the fruit flies is only some 43 and a half DNA helices or something. I mean the poor things have been asked to squash deep-seated primordial urges to paint and pout and flaunt their fishnet stockings. So, naturally they are confused when the women start doing what they should be.
In other words, fellas - there, there.
We understand. Kinda.
And come to think of it, we women shouldn’t really be complaining because there was one other very important finding that popped up in that research. Not only do men not get it when we make sheep’s eyes at them, they often also mistake mere chumminess for the glad eye. Which makes it all very simple now. All we have to do is just walk up to the he-who-we-lusteth-after, give him a sisterly peck on the cheek, maybe arm wrestle for a bit, rain a few hail-fellow-well-met slaps on the back and before we knows what, we’ll have him sucking our toes all night long.
Or whatever.
Incidentally, girls, while we’re on the subject, the next time you’re desperately dateless, you might want to try a fruit fly. I’m telling you, these chaps have got their romancing fundamentals down pat. The minute a male fly spots a prospective date, he wastes no time and starts tapping the lady’s abdomen with a foreleg. (The fruit fly equivalent of “haven’t we met before somewhere”.) If she’s interested (he’ll know when she doesn’t slap him and stops yawning and painting her nails), he serenades her by vibrating his wings. (I have it from the best authority that Eric Clapton’s “Wonderful tonight” is a hot favourite.) If she melts, he clinches the whole thingummybaba by licking her…er, well let’s just say that it’s an anatomical region that is a favourite hang out of male fruits flies.
The best part? The lucky (picky?) lil’ lady fruit flies reserve the right to refuse any suitor who do not perform all of the above and in the proper order. (No licking before serenading, no tapping before licking etc., etc.)
But back to humans…
And the question that trembles on our lips is - is it time?
Is it time to retire our Wonder bras? To pack up our Kissable Krimson lip glosses and stopper up our Chanel No.5’s? Is it really time to put away our secrets of lace and satin and silk, to undo the pouts in our lips and admonish our hips not to sway?
If it is, what a pity.
Because flirting is such a blast. We do it for the pure heck pleasure of it. It’s almost as good as shopping, often beats chocolate truffle cake by points. And some of us will tell you it’s even better than sex. (By the way, many a time, we aren’t all that interested in finding out whether you’re as much George-Clooney-meets-Akshaye-Khanna in bed as you look out of it.) And never mind those peacocks, we love dressing up and totting out our best gorgeous-creatures-made-for-love for all the world to see. Because nothing can describe the incredible rush of watching a man’s eyes mouthing the words, “Boy, you’re beautiful.”
Even if we are imagining it and you’re actually saying, “Yeah sure. There’s one seat vacant at the back.”

CrazyKiya Re....or Heroes I'd write Letters in Blood to

What would you say are the chances of women writing thousands of these letters to a short, stubby man with pimples and a haircut that looks as if it is from New Paramount Haircutting Saloon?

My point is this. We ladies are a picky lot. After all, there’s blood involved here. So, you may be the greatest superstar, an acting legend; your films may have raked in gadzillions, declared as immortal classics, your waxwork might be rubbing bottoms with Cary Grant’s at Madame Tussauds. But if you don’t make our hearts (and other regions too) throb, go boompity-boom and dhak-dhak, if the knees ain’t turning to delicious moony mush, if you don’t start a conflagration in our sweet, womanly jigars that would light a million beedis, if there isn’t a sudden and insane urge to rush into our boudoirs (yes, we all have one) and slip into something more comfortable at the mere sight of you, then sirjee, we ain’t wasting a drop - forget blood, not even drool.

Also, beefcake palls after the first two nibbles…

Now I’m not one of these khoon-bhari-khat (KBK) types.
(For one, e-mail doesn’t fell any trees. For another, I can’t stand the sight of blood.)
But if I were, there is only one man to top my list.
Vinod Khanna.
Even now, pushing sixty-two, on the wrong side of burly, thinning hair et al. They say that if he hadn’t suddenly taken “sanyas” in 1982 at the peak of his success, Amitabh Bachchan would’ve had serious competition for the post of Uberstar. Well, I for one am glad he did because otherwise, I’d be writing so many of dem damn letters - all the way from Reshma Aur Shera to Leela and Risk - that I’d have needed blood transfusions by now…

And his most gasp-‘n-reach-for-my-khoon-bhari-pen moment?

Well, I’m going to skip the obvious one - which is the kissing scene in Dayavan because according to me, there’s almost no one who can fill a uniform quite so, er shall we say, satisfactorily as Vinod Khanna. (I take a moment to compose myself and wait for knees to solidify.) So, for me, it’s Achanak (the entire film) and of course, the scene in Amar Akbar Anthony when he and Amitabh Bachchan meet for the first time. When Khanna starts unbuttoning his shirt and growls, “Dekhte hai tum main kitna dum!“? …..

Oh my goodness gracious me.
(I take 5 minutes to compose myself.) Did I say “uniform”? Make that dhoti, lungi, shorts jeans, tuxedo, bath towel, bandit jewellery, shorts, Rupa baniyan…. Oh, the heck with it. The man would make lace garters look like regulation jock wear. Not to mention orange caftans with rudraksh malas. On any other man - even Vincent Chase - you’ll bust your boob job laughing. On Vinod Khanna? I need a whole week off to compose myself…..
(Vinod Khanna’s other KBK films - Mere Apne, Hera Pheri, Mera Gaon Mera Desh, Shaque, Rihaee and Imthihan)

And coming a very close second to the Sexy Sanyasi (thank you Devyani, for this and so many other delightful handles) is Jackie Shroff.
Even now; fifty, silly pudding-basin hair-weave et al.
And I don’t care how many of you jeered, “wooden! Wooden!”. And it’s not what you are thinking though how many men do we know who can make a bandhini dupatta look as macho as …well, as Vinod Khanna in an orange caftan?
You see, it’s like those liqueur filled chocs. What separates mere beefcake from a prime cut of KBK is a soft, delicious, heady centre that makes every woman feel that she is this maddeningly irresistible goddess-sex-kitten-houri….. and reach feverishly for her trusty blood-dipped-nib. And we always know. With just one bite…er, I mean one look into the fella’s eyes and by the feeling of a 60-piece orchestra playing somewhere our nether lumbar regions.
And our Jaggu Dada has that stuff by bucketfuls. Just watch him in Parinda, Gardish, Aina, Kaash, Saudagar (to name only a few) and even as the utterly ch-se-chunky-hunky “Chunnilal” in Devdas, even though he ch-se-hammed it to the hilt.
But the highest point of our Shroff‘s KBT-ness was (and is) as the swoon-a-licious “Raj Kamal” in Rangeela and what on earth was that Urmila thinking?! I mean, Aamir was cute but if I wanted cute, I’d get myself a Care Bear.
That’s just Jackie on screen. Off screen? The man should ring a warning bell or something five minutes before walking into the room. Because when he does, there isn‘t be a dry female ...er saliva gland inside a 10 mile-radius.
Sigh.
Now I know I said “list”, but I’ll have to stop here because after Vinod Khanna and Jackie Shroff, I‘m almost clean out of blood and what’s left I have to save for the man who really did get KBK’s by the sackfuls. Sada Jatin-Kaka a.k.a Rajesh Khanna. Pimply, yes. Stubby, short body, yes. Haircut from New Paramount Haircutting Saloon, most definitely. Guru kurtas, retch-yetch-yes. But the eyes, oh the eyes. Look into them and you feel you are drowning into a tub…no make that a jacuzzi full of that soft, delicious, heady stuff that makes you feel that you are this maddeningly…..you get my drift. Baharon ke Sapne, Aradhana, Khamoshi, Kati Patang, Amar Prem, Mere Jeevan Saathi, Daag, Aap ki Kasam, …. so please don’t ask me to pick the most KBK of this lot because ….
Oh wait a minute.
There is one - Aavishkaar. For weeks, nay months afterwards, there was nothing I wanted more than be “Mansi”, married to “Amar” and live in a house outside which a lamp glowed this message of conjugal bliss - “Ghar Mansi Amar ka”.
And I can’t think why I didn’t dash off a KBT…

The Importance of Being a Mindblowing Mahiyah…

This is a question for the ladies. (Though of course, there might be some gentlemen who would like to be included as well, if yer know wot I mean.)
When was the last time you watched a member of the Indian cricket team and felt a gusty (lusty?) sigh escape from your lips as a large, purple, throbbing….(no, sorry boys, but it’s not what you are thinking) thought blurb balloon over your head with just one word in neon lights.
“Hottie!”
No, don’t answer just as yet because here’s question number 2.
When was the last time you spotted the aforementioned member (sorry again, fellas but not what you’re thinking) and wanted to tear out your kurti/hair/Wonder Bra in ecstatic handfuls and then faint dead away because you could not for another minute stand how utterly, devastatingly, to-die-for cute he was? Or because you couldn’t bear the delicious shivers of God-alone-knows-what doing the rumba-salsa-watusi up and down your spine (and whatuchmacallits) whenever he smiled that slow, lazy, doozie smile?
Don’t answer anyway because I know the answer.
You can’t remember. Nor can I.
But do not despair because the long, dark night is over. And as dawn gently breaks over the barren acres of the cutie-pie-less cricketing green, a single brave, blade of hope sprouts…

I have to admit though that the first time I noticed him was because of his name. It reminded me of a song, an old favourite….
“English people sleeping in the sun to get a tan,
Pouring oil upon their faces like a frying pan,
Funny thing about it is they all go rosy red,
Next day when the peeling starts they're crying in their beds.
Oh to be in England
Now that spring is here,
Oh to be in England, drinking English beer.”

After which the singer breaks into a delightful Anglo-Carnatic-gamaka refrain, which goes something like this.

“Dhani-dhani-dhani Dhoni-dhaani dhani-dhani-Dhoni-dhaani…”

So, every time the name cropped up – and it started to do so with increasing frequency because the chap seemed to be some sort of a rising star - that refrain would start to play inside my head and wouldn’t stop. So I thought to myself, who the heck is this Dhoni fellow…
(Blasphemous, you shriek. But I’ll have you know that small as our numbers may be, there are people in this country to whom the word “cricket” first means an kind of insect and then everything else.)

Anyway, I started looking out for “Dhani-dhani-dhani-Dhoni”, which wasn’t hard because he was all over the place. And I tell you, it wasn’t love at first sight.
You see, it was the hair, about which – Mushy’s remarks notwithstanding - I had very mixed feelings. Which were mostly “yuck” (those dirty-gold highlights always make me break into a rash) mixed with a few pinches of “okay-yuck-but-maybe-not-so-bad-and-anyway-it-grabs-your-attention”. But, even then, there was something about the fellow that was….
Dishy?
Cute?
I couldn’t put my finger on it because the hair really did come in the way.
Meanwhile, the dratted refrain continued to warble in my head.
“Dhani-dhani-dhani-Dhoni…”

Then, one hot summer’s night, it happened.
Not quite like the movie, but as far as I was concerned, what was draped so casually on that bar stool could give Clark Gable a run for his money, yumminess-ly speaking…
Oh dear, I’d better begin at the beginning, shouldn’t I?
The barstool was… no, not Saturday night at the Fire&Ice and no, I was not the gorgeous bar butterfly on the neighbouring stool that he couldn’t take his eyes off.
(In any case, I’ve heard the chap gets high on milk.)
It was on the sets of “India Questions”, Prannoy Roy’s show on NDTV on which the fellow was the guest and I was one of the thousands of potatoes watching the show from the comfort of my couch.
Roy’s introduction was gushing. There were comparisons to Sachin. (Just so that we are all on the same page, that would be Sachin, the cricketer, not the actor) There were grand references to the man changing the tide of the game. There was talk about a strike rate that would make even Adam Gilchrist blush.
Gilchrist who, I’m thinking. Isn’t he some Aussie batsman-type? And strike rate would be the number of times you hit the ball?
Just as I was sinking deep in vexed puzzlement and also wondering why the girls in the audience were simpering and fluttering excitedly as if Brad-Pitt-rolled-into-Matt-Damon (the latest Sexiest Man in the World) had just walked in, the camera slowly zoomed in on the Barstool….
To cut a long story short, lightning struck.
And the earth didn’t just move but for the next 45 minutes, it damn near did a cha-cha-cha to the 78-piece orchestra playing somewhere in the strawberry-cream-soaked distance.
It’s difficult to decide what is the sexiest thing about Mahendra Singh Dhoni.
Because he’s not the handsomest of men, nor does he have the greatest body (but more on that later), or the most money, power or any of the other blah-blah-blah that turn women on.

So, maybe it is how easy and comfortable he look in everything.
Success
Jeans (well-worn, workman blue and no-fuss, just the way I like it…)
Pressure
Dirty-goldilocks.
Female fans.
Acne scars. (Beats John Abraham’s by points.)
Jharkand-English accent. (I can’t decide which is cuter - the way he says “wut” for “what” or the way he peppers his sentences with “ki”.)
Or just in his skin.
Maybe it is that he sounds so real, such a regular guy, even when he’s dishing out those careful, politically correct answers at interviews.
Or that he likes bikes (he owns seven) and chocolates and ice cream. (Move over, all you metrosexual sissies. Mahisexual is here.) And subscribes to Gandhigiri – what else would you call looking Shoab Akhtar straight in the eye and giving him a big smile every time he tries to intimidate you on the field?
And talking of smiles, maybe it is that lazy, shy-cheeky, I-know-I’m-kinda-killer-cute grin that would melt Hitler on a bad moustache day.
Or maybe it’s that cool, clear, straight gaze which seems to unerringly home in on parts which other men don’t even know exist.

There comes a moment in a relationship when in a sudden, searing flash, you have a startlingly clear idea of how completely hook-line-and-sinker you have fallen. (But of course Mahi and I are in a relationship – that Padukone babe is just to keep the paparazzi at bay.)
For me, since that Barstool, there have been two.
The first was when he took off his shirt just after winning the Twenty20 finals. No, it was not because he took it off to give it to that little boy and made the entire female half of the nation swoon into an ecstatic “Cho-chweet!”. (I did too, but mine was a more restrained “Awwww!”). It was also not because shirtless, he confirmed what was hinted at in that biceps-hugging T-shirt on Prannoy’s show - great body. (Eat your six-pack, Shahrukh!) It was because he looked so completely unselfconscious about it. As if it was the most natural thing in the world to do your victory lap with your shirt off in full view of a 100 million people. (Give or take a few million.)

The second was at the felicitation ceremony at Wankhede stadium
Everyone including Sharad Pawar had just done their number in aamchi English or Queen’s Marathi. (In most cases, you couldn’t tell the difference.)Then, up walks our dashing lad and when Harsha Bhogle starts to trot out his questions in shudh Angrezi, don’t you know old sock, he announces that since he is a Hindustani, he’d like to answer in Hindi.

Clean bowled.

The ultimate measure of my goner status is that I recently shelled out 199 whole rupees to get my year’s subscription to the Neo Sport channel on my Tata Sky. And life in now jhingalala. In case you’re scoffing, “Piffle!”, I’ll have you know that this is from a person who last watched cricket when “match fixing” was something that Bishen Singh Bedi did to his beard. To whom ODI is something which Britney Spears lost the custody of her sons for doing and who thinks that mostly, cricket is about as riveting as a documentary on the dating habits of an amoeba.
Finally, I thought it might be worth mentioning that there was another Indian wicket keeper who was also famous for his pizzazz, hair (our first Brylcreem model), high cute-pie quotient and love for bikes.
Farokh Engineer.
I tried to make something deeply significant and meaningful out of that but couldn’t. Except, I’d like to say this much.
Man cannot live by bread alone. At least, woman can’t. So, every now and then, we need to have a fella around us who fills us with the insatiable urge to break through security cordons, fling (would “throw” be a more wantonly appropriate choice, I’m wondering?) ourselves on him and kiss him madly, deeply, thirstily before we are dragged away and thrown back to our ho-humdrum lives. More so if we are constantly going to have our KSBKBT’s interrupted by our Bonny Babas in Blue peddling champi-sabun, chaddi-baniayan and danth-manjan. So, you’d better make them cute and the cuter the better and I have to say this.
As far as Mahi goes, I can’t complain.
Gotta go now. Have to figure out what exactly it is that a wicket keeper keeps. I mean, I don’t see him watering those wickets or feeding them biscuits or anything….

Chalat Musafir

"It is one of Indian Cinema's tragic ironies that a sensitive and poetic film like Teesri Kasam sank without a trace indirectly leading to its producer lyricist Shailendra's death due to stress of financial problems caused by the failure of the film. The irony is even more so as today the film is recognised as one of the the all-time great films of Indian Cinema."

Many, many years ago BCP (Before Couch Potato), the BBC World Service (radio) had a superb program show called Desert Island in which one Person of Consequence would put together a complation of music ( I think the list was limited to 10) that he or she would take with them if they happened to be marooned on a desert island
Teesri Kasam would definitely figure on my list. Sajanre Jhoot Mat Bolo, Sajanwa Bairi Ho Gaye Hamar, Duniya Bananewale all sung by Mukesk ....it's difficult to choose which makes my heart ache more.
But this delightful song, along with "Pan Khaye Saiyyan Hamaro" is one of the film's happier moments.

Chalat Musafir Moh Liyo Re
Uploaded by waferthin

Crazy Kiya Re….or Heroes I’d write letters in blood

What would you say are the chances of women writing thousands of these letters to a short, stubby man with pimples and a haircut that looks as if it is from New Paramount Haircutting Saloon?
My point is this. We ladies are a picky lot. After all, there’s blood involved here. So, you may be the greatest superstar, an acting legend; your films may have raked in gadzillions, declared as immortal classics, your waxwork might be rubbing bottoms with Cary Grant’s at Madame Tussauds. But if you don’t make our hearts (and other regions too) throb, go boompity-boom and dhak-dhak, if the knees ain’t turning to delicious moony mush, if you don’t start a conflagration in our sweet, womanly jigars that would light a million beedis, if there isn’t a sudden and insane urge to rush into our boudoirs (yes, we all have one) and slip into something more comfortable at the mere sight of you, then sirjee, we ain’t wasting a drop - forget blood, not even drool.
Also, beefcake palls after the first two nibbles…
Now I’m not one of these khoon-bhari-khat (KBK) types. (For one, e-mail doesn’t fell any trees. For another, I can’t stand the sight of blood.) But if I were, there is only one man to top my list. Vinod Khanna. Even now, pushing sixty-two, on the wrong side of burly, thinning hair et al. They say that if he hadn’t suddenly taken “sanyas” in 1982 at the peak of his success, Amitabh Bachchan would’ve had serious competition for the post of Uberstar. Well, I for one am glad he did because otherwise, I’d be writing so many of dem damn letters - all the way from Reshma Aur Shera to Leela and Risk - that I’d have needed blood transfusions by now…
And his most gasp-‘n-reach-for-my-khoon-bhari-pen moment? Well, I’m going to skip the obvious one - which is the kissing scene in Dayavan because according to me, there’s almost no one who can fill a uniform quite so, er shall we say, satisfactorily as Vinod Khanna. (I take a moment to compose myself and wait for knees to solidify.) So, for me, it’s Achanak (the entire film) and of course, the scene in Amar Akbar Anthony when he and Amitabh Bachchan meet for the first time. When Khanna starts unbuttoning his shirt and growls, “Dekhte hai tum main kitna dum!“? ….. Oh my goodness gracious me. (I take 5 minutes to compose myself.) Did I say “uniform”? Make that dhoti, lungi, shorts jeans, tuxedo, bath towel, bandit jewellery, shorts, Rupa baniyan…. Oh, the heck with it. The man would make lace garters look like regulation jock wear. Not to mention orange caftans with rudraksh malas. On any other man - even Vincent Chase - you’ll bust your boob job laughing. On Vinod Khanna? I need a whole week off to compose myself…..
(Vinod Khanna’s other KBK films - Mere Apne, Hera Pheri, Mera Gaon Mera Desh, Shaque, Rihaee and Imthihan)
And coming a very close second to the Sexy Sanyasi is Jackie Shroff. Even now; fifty, silly pudding-basin hair-weave et al. And I don’t care how many of you jeered, “wooden! Wooden!”. And it’s not what you are thinking though how many men do we know who can make a bandhini dupatta look as macho as …well, as Vinod Khanna in an orange caftan? You see, it’s like those liqueur filled chocs. What separates mere beefcake from a prime cut of KBK is a soft, delicious, heady centre that makes every woman feel that she is this maddeningly irresistible goddess-sex-kitten-houri….. and reach feverishly for her trusty blood-dipped-nib. And we always know. With just one bite…er, I mean one look into the fella’s eyes and by the feeling of a 60-piece orchestra playing somewhere our nether lumbar regions.
And our Jaggu Dada has that stuff by bucketfuls. Just watch him in Parinda, Gardish, Aina, Kaash, Saudagar (to name only a few) and even as the utterly ch-se-chunky-hunky “Chunnilal” in Devdas, even though he ch-se-hammed it to the hilt. But the highest point of our Shroff‘s KBT-ness was (and is) as the swoon-a-licious “Raj Kamal” in Rangeela and what on earth was that Urmila thinking?! I mean, Aamir was cute but if I wanted cute, I’d get myself a Care Bear.
That’s just Jackie on screen. Off screen? The man should ring a warning bell or something five minutes before walking into the room. Because when he does, there isn‘t be a dry female ...er saliva gland inside a 10 mile-radius. Sigh
Now I know I said “list”, but I’ll have to stop here because after Vinod Khanna and Jackie Shroff, I‘m almost clean out of blood and what’s left I have to save for the man who really did get KBK’s by the sackfuls. Sada Jatin-Kaka a.k.a Rajesh Khanna. Pimply, yes. Stubby, short body, yes. Haircut from New Paramount Haircutting Saloon, most definitely. Guru kurtas, retch-yetch-yes. But the eyes, oh the eyes. Look into them and you feel you are drowning into a tub…no make that a jacuzzi full of that soft, delicious, heady stuff that makes you feel that you are this maddeningly…..you get my drift. Baharon ke Sapne, Aradhana, Khamoshi, Kati Patang, Amar Prem, Mere Jeevan Saathi, Daag, Aap ki Kasam, …. so please don’t ask me to pick the most KBK of this lot because ….
Oh wait a minute.
There is one - Aavishkaar. For weeks, nay months afterwards, there was nothing I wanted more than be “Mansi”, married to “Amar” and live in a house outside which a lamp glowed this message of conjugal bliss - “Ghar Mansi Amar ka”.
And I can’t think why I didn’t dash off a KBT….

dark and lovely

I made this video as a tribute to all the lovely dark skinned girls and women whose beauty has not only gone unsung but even scorned.

The Goddess Flower

Once again, it is that wonderful time of the year...when we celebrate the Devi Festival - Durag Puja to some, Navratri to other and in my part of the world, Dussera.

So, this is a piece about Her favourite flower

The Goddess Flower
By Ratna Rajaiah

It’s rare that someone so gorgeous is also so easy-gping I mean, it grows just anywhere, needs no mollycoddling other than large splashes of sunshine and water, flowers spectacularly and lavishly throughout the year and because of that, attracts lovely birds and butterflies. And if all that wasn’t enough, it is an ancient and legendary cosmetic, medicine and is currently being researched to possibly become India's first herbal contraceptive! (More on that later.) I speak of course of the hibiscus. Cousin to cotton and lady’s fingers (bhindi), there are around 2200 varieties of this gorgeous flowering plant and the variety that grows in such abundance in our country is the Hibiscus rosa-sinensis. Or the hibiscus that is the rose of China, probably because its association with China is a very old one. But no less than it is with India…

The Goddess flower
“Swargapavargada shuddha japapushpa nibhakrutih….”
This is the 147th stotra of the Lalitha Sahasranama which roughly translates as “Who bestows the eternal bliss of Swarga, Who is pure, Whose colour is of the nature of japa flowers…” So, it is but natural that the hibiscus (japapushpa, japakusuma, japaphool or the prayer flower) is the primary flower of worship for the Devi. (In many places like Maharashtra, it is also the flower most offered to Lord Ganesha.) And equally naturally, one so favoured by the Devi is blessed with much goodness and healing, which is why the hibiscus is also called “rogapushpa” is Sanskrit! So, for centuries, in almost every continent, almost all parts of the hibiscus plant has been used as medicine. In Bangladesh, China, Peru, Trinidad and Vietnam the flowers are used to regulate menstruation, in Malaysia the roots to treat venereal diseases, in Fiji and Japan for diarrhea and in Kuwait, it is even used as an aphrodisiac! In Ayurveda, the flowers, roots and leaves is used in pancha karma therapy, the flowers as a blood purifier and according to the ancient Indian lexicons on medicinal herbs (Nighantu Granthas) like Raja Nighantu, Bhava Prakasha Nighantu and Shodala Nighantu, to treat a whole host of ailments from coughs and fevers to insomnia, even hypertension.
But its most popular use, both in Ayurveda and traditional medicine, is in the treatment of gynacelogical problems like excessive and painful menstruation, vaginal and uterine discharges, menstrual irregularities etc. And the hibiscus’ greatest significance and one that has serious long-term implications for women the world over is its potential as the world’s first herbal oral female contraceptive! Research carried out in the last 10 years, initially at the College of Ayurveda and College of Medical Sciences at Varanasi, and later by the ICMR Task Force on Anti-Fertility Plants has given clear indications of this. Not at all surprising because the Yogaratnakar says, "The lady who takes the paste of the Jabakusum in rice water mixed with molasses for three days does not become pregnant” and in traditional medicine, it has been used as a contraceptive for hundreds of years in many places in India like Kerala and Assam.
Actually, the hibiscus’ healing powers may not be all that surprising if you consider the fact the hibiscus flower is good sources of beta-carotene and flavanoids (flagged by its gorgeous colours) and also contains calcium, phosphorus, iron, thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, and vitamin C. Which is why, apart from being a medicinal plants, the flowers are made into drinks, salads, teas, curries, pickles and the leaves are even used as a substitute to spinach!

Crowning glory!
The hibiscus flower, seemingly sent by the Devi on a special mission to look after us women, has also quite a reputation for making hair beautiful, black and healthy. So, loaded with all those nutritional goodies and natural emollients which makes the hair soft and promotes hair growth, the hibiscus works its wonders as shampoo, hair oil, hair tonic, hair conditioner, hair dye, as treatment for all kinds of hair problems including premature graying, dandruff – and since we don’t want the men feeling left out - even balding. So, as you can see, there’s not much that the hibiscus can’t do, hair wise. Which is why every grandmother has her own favourite hibiscus hair oil recipe and many Ayurvedic hair oil formulations contain hibiscus including the famous brahmi amla hair oil. Incidentally, the reason why hibiscus flowers are used as hair dye is because when crushed, they yield a dark purplish dye. Which served as not just hair colouring but also as shoe polish (hence the hibiscus’ other name- shoe flower!) and as mascara, darkening the eyelashes of the ladies all over the Far East, where the hibiscus occupies ancient place of honour…..

Asia’s darling
The hibiscus is truly a flower of the Orient, making its presence felt not just with its glorious colours beautifying every countryside from China to Hawai but also as trusted medicine, cosmetic, even symbol of statehood.
Chengdu is China’s 4th largest city, capital of the Siachun province and an ancient administrative and cultural center, tracing its existence back to at least 3000 years ago. It is also famous for Chinese brocade….and hibiscus! In the 10th century, the then ruler, Mengchang, ordered the planting of hibiscus on the fortress wall surrounding the city. The walls have crumbled but the hibiscus remain and ever since, Chengdu is referred as the City of Hibiscus with the hibiscus still its symbol. The hibiscus appears on famous 14th century Ming dynasty Chinese porcelain dynasty (1368–1644) and on ancient Chinese silk tapestries.
The hibiscus is also is the national flower of Malaysia. Like China, India and many other Asian countries, the flower grows in abundance throughout Malaysia So, in 1960, when Malaysia's first Prime Minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman, looked for a flower to be the appropriate symbol of his newly independent country, the hibiscus was a natural choice. And he chose not just any hibiscus but the scarlet five-petaled Hibiscus rosa sinensis or Bunga Raya (our very own Goddess flower!) because the colour red represented courage and the 5 petals symbolized the 5 principles of nationhood for Malaysia – unity, democracy, justice, progress and secularism. The official crest of Sarawak, one of the states in East Malaysia features 2 beautiful scarlet hibiscus.Two other varieties of the hibiscus are the state flowers of of South Korea (Hibiscus syriacus or "Rose of Sharon") and Hawaii (Hibiscus brackenridgei).
The curry leaf, the neem, turmeric, coconut, amla…..and the hibiscus. In India, we are so blessed by Mother Nature that we often take much her wonderful bounty for granted, often forgetting their fabulous healing powers are just there in our gardens and backyards. The hibiscus is such a common sight in our countryside, growing so easily and eagerly that we almost pay no attention to it. But as you can see, it is no ordinary flower….
I end with the story of Harriet. Last November, she celebrated her birthday, which was a milestone of sorts. You see, though it is rude to tom-tom a lady’s age, especially one of such vinatge, it seems the birthday was Harriet’s 175th! Which even by tortoise standards is a great age to achieve and makes her the oldest living animal in the world. Did I say “tortoise”? Yup, Harriet is a giant Galápagos tortoise and lives in the Australia Zoo in Queensland, Australia. But it’s not just Harriet’s age that makes her famous. In 1835, when Harriet was just 5 years old, Charles Darwin visited Isla Santa Cruz, Harriet’s home in the Galapagos Islands. So fascinated was he by her and her tribe, that when he left to return to England soon after, he took Harriet and two of her friends with him as subjects of scientific research. It is said Darwin’s observations about Harriet and the Galápagos tortoises contibuted significantly in his formulating that his theory of evolution! (Harriet left England for Australia two years later and has lived there ever since.)
Why am I telling you all this? Because as part of her birthday celebrations, the zoo had a giant tortosie shaped cake (naturally!) and Harriet was fed a lavish helping of…….bright pink hibiscus flowers!
"We gave her hibiscus flowers because that's her favourite food," said the zoo's Laura Campbell. "She's in fabulous health and there's no reason to think she can't live to 200." (Apparently, the hibiscus is not just Harriet’s favourite chowder, but all tortoises’!)
Sources: Medicinal Flowers by Gyanendra Pandey, Ayurveda, the Secrets of healing by Maya Tiwari, Wikipedia, the HumanFlower Project and other websites

******
Hibiscus hair oil
Over low heat, warm 150-200 ml of coconut or gingelly oil and add 10-12 freshly plucked red hibiscus flowers. Simmer until all the water from the flowers evaporates making sure NOT to let the mixture boil or burn the oil, as too much heat will destroy goodness in the hibiscus. Remove from heat - the oil would have turned a dark purply-pink. Cool and store in a clean dry jar.

Hibiscus Cooler

30-40 single red hibiscus blooms
1 litre/2 pints/4 cups boiling water
freshly squeezed lime juice
sugar to taste
Take about 30 freshly picked single red hibiscus flowers, preferably from your own garden so you know they are not contaminated by chemical sprays. Remove the calyx and the centre pistil and put only the petals into a heatproof bowl. Pour 4-6 cups of boiling water over the petals, cover and leave to cool. Strain and discard the petals - the liquid will be a pretty, clear pink. Add strained lime juice and sugar to taste and serve as a refreshing beverage. Said to have blood purifying properties. It may also be served as a hot drink after a shorter steeping time.
From Charmaine Solomon's Encyclopedia of Asian Food.

********

The red flag of romance!
In ancient Egypt, hibiscus flowers were associated with lust so much so that the Egyptians believed that tea made with red hibiscus flowers and sepals could induce licentious cravings in women. As a result, for many centuries Egyptian women were forbidden to drink hibiscus tea!
In some Caribbean countries Hibiscus flowers are often carried as wedding bouquets because they are believed to ward off bad omens. “The flowers of the brilliant Red Hibiscus native to Hawaii (Hibiscus kokio) were worn by men to send messages to women. Worn behind the right ear, they meant, “I am married”; behind the left ear, “I am single and looking for a lover.” If a flower was worn behind both ears the message was clear: “I am married, but looking for another lover”! (Flowers are for Love by Kathy Lamancusa.)

Find Yourself - Cars

The words of this song are almost more beautiful - if that is possible - than the film - Cars"! This is a film that everyone must see and maybe own!

In Celebration of the Real Woman

This is for every single sigh that you have heaved evertime you have looked at an ad for L'Oreal or Clinique or whatever and wished why God didn't take a little more time making you up. The answer is because he was too busy planning the Photoshop!

What if you said you loved me....

What if you said you loved me….
Reciprocating
Ache for ache
Measuring your longing
Against mine
Sigh for sigh

What if you said you loved me….

What would I do for dreams
Day and night
What would slip under my eyelids
Open and shut
And fill my soulscape
With the 70 mm, Technicolor impossibility
Of you and me?

What if you said you loved me….

Would it pall

If I had on call
Your arms to wrap around
And lose myself in that urgent tenderness
Your face to nuzzle
Any leftover nook that your arms overlooked?

If I had on tap
The taste of you to dreamily lick off my lips
And savor in some vacant reverie
Your head to fill
My lap?

What if you said you loved me

Would I tire,
No more desire
To claim you in every public place
With my eyes, my thigh
Proprietarily ranged so warm, so close
Against yours?

Would it be a bore
To know that you adore
Crave
Rave
Yearn
Burn
Hunger
Hanker

After, for me

Just the way,
(Will you say?)
I am
Was
Ever will be

Hangnails, varicose veins and all

For the way
(Will you say?)
my skin spills, satin
over my shoulders
And disappears to some undisclosed destination
That you
Crave
Rave
Yearn
Burn
Hunger
Hanker

To find…..

What if you said you loved me?

What if then
When
We reach Happily After
And have sipped the welcome gin
Settled in
Walked hand in hand
Over the indulgent, insouciant sand
Traced the rest of our lives
On each others’ bodies, breaths,

What then?
What would we do for afters….

Ella sings

My all time favourite

Tales From A Celphone

I shot these pics while fooling around with the camera on my Nokia 6070 celphone....and then since they were all flowers, i thought i'd put some music to it and what better song than Kishore Da's beautiful "Phoolon ke Rang se...'

Mysooru

Er, firstly we liked to apologise. In Mysore we no have acres of golden beach to loll around on. sip chilled beer and pig out on chili crab. (There are a few little rivers but I’m not sure how they’re stocked up on crabs). No healing hot springs, no exhilarating mountain views, no night spots, no shopping worth talking about and to top it all cuisine that has as its star performers a dosa and a not-very pretty looking sweet called Mysore pak. But – and this is where we stop apologizing – we do pack in a wallop of centuries in pedigree. Mysore is most likely the “Mahishamandala” mentioned in the ancient Buddhist texts, the place to which the emperor Ashoka sent the monk Mahadeva to propagate Buddhism. And that fact that we were till recently the capital of a kingdom ruled by a 600-year old dynasty of Lord Krishna’s Yadu vamsa shows. A clutch of fabulous palaces (at least 2 of which you can stay in) and royal mansions in the pink of health scattered around nonchalantly like so much chopped coriander on bhelpuri. (Every government office worth its weight in red tape is housed in one). Naturally, with such ancestry (how many can claim to have a throne which, as one story goes, once belonged to the Pandavas?), we don’t forget easily. That we were once terrorized by the terrible demon Mahishasura and that the Devi took it upon herself to liberate us. Who then, because we have such pretty weather, decided to take up residence atop a charming little wooded hill as the goddess Chamundeswari, a sobriquet acquired because her habit of slaying demons had made short work of 2 other fearsome demons, Chanda and Munda. So, in gratitude, we named the hill Chamundi in her honour, built her a fabulous temple with a 120 ft high gopuram that you can see from almost any point in Mysore. And in case the demon had any ideas of resurrecting himself (demons are known to do such things), in a cunning sleight of hand, we put up a massive likeness of him on top of the hill so that he’d scare himself away. We also called ourselves Mahishasura Ooru, now corrupted to Mysore, because in a way, we’re indebted to the demon too. After all, he did bring us the attention of the Devi!
So, first to the palaces. Now we Mysoreans are a modest lot and bragging doesn’t come easily. But, I must say, we’re rather good at palaces. Of the two most spectacular, the first one is simply called – what else, the Mysore Palace. When the old palace was partially destroyed in a fire in 1897 just after his elder sister’s wedding, the then heir to the throne, Krishnaraja Wodeyar IV was just 15 years old and his mum, the Regent Queen decided that if they had to build a new one, it should be something fit for a er, king. So, what began in 1897 finally emerged in splendid glory 15 years later, its massive central golden dome imperiously poking the azure blue Mysore sky. With five imposing gates, the largest 45 feet in breadth and grandly called the Jayamartanda Gate, and in the protective embrace of 8 temples of varying antiquity, the oldest more than 6 centuries old, the palace itself is a stunning example of Indo Saracenic architecture. (Which is a politer way, perhaps, of saying a khichdi of Western, Indian and Moghul architectural styles). Three ceremonial halls, the first for the royal weddings with a ceiling made entirely of stained glass with a peacock motif and a floor to match. The second reserved for private audiences by the Maharaja with 3 massive doors, 2 of them silver. And the third, a magnificent 155 ft by 42 ft Durbar Hall or the Diwan-e-Aam in breathtaking turquoise and gold arches and columns, lined on one side with paintings, many of them by Raja Ravi Varma, framed in semi-precious stones under a painted ceiling depicting amongst other things, the 10 avatars of Vishnu. This was the astonished comment of a British visitor. “No short description, if any, can do justice to the beauty of line, wealth of material, blaze of colour and exuberance of decoration in the great Durbar Hall…” And in case you don’t get the point, we light up the palace on Sundays, government holidays and festivals with 97,000 light bulbs.
The thing is, when you build a palace like this on, it can become a habit. So, the maharajah decided that the Mysore palace was all very well, magnificent seat of power and all that, but even a king needed a bit of privacy now and then where he could potter around in peace and quiet, undisturbed by pressing matters of state. Besides, there was the British Viceroy to also keep happy. So, away from the heat and the dust of statesmanship, nestling cosily at the feet of Chamundi Hill, he built another palace. Nothing very posh, mind you, just a little summer cottage, a cross between an English stately home and an Italian palazzo (with marble imported to match) with a piffling 54 rooms, a ballroom and a viceroy room (whatever that is) on an estate that sprawls over lush acres of land and situated so that when he could keep a longing eye on it whenever he held durbar in the Diwan-e-Aam. Lalith Mahal Palace. Which it is called to this day, except that now it is a 5-star hotel, with the original stunning architecture and interiors beautifully preserved. Naturally, the prices match. So stay there if you don’t mind paying upwards of 6000 rupees a night to find out what it is to live like a king and if you really want to go all the way, plum for the turret rooms at the top of the palace.
Now if staying in palaces are a turn on but your pocket isn’t of kingly proportions, then there is the Chittaranjan palace, a beautiful little mansion which the maharaja built for his princesses, now called the more prosaic “Greens Hotel” to cue its eco-friendliness. Ergo no telly, telephone, elevator, air-conditioning and no mosquito repellant, just small ponds stuffed with tilapia, the mosquito-eating fish. If you can afford it, stay in the main building where the tariff is a stiff upwards of 3750 rupees but the rooms having been painstakingly restored to their original beauty; their names should give you a clue - Marigold Room, Rose Room, Princess's Room and The Honeymoon Suite complete with a 4-poster bed! And if you can’t, there is the “garden block” with rooms rather less well, princess-y but nice all the same (1300Rs. a night). Whatever you stay in, make sure you take a peek the Bollywood rooms (large and small!). And the hotel has one other thing that gives you an idea of what kind of holiday it expects you to have – a quaint little library complete with stained glass window, easy chair and R.K. Narayanan. Rated by the Independent newspaper as one of the best 50 budget hotels in world, the hotel is run by a UK charity that donates all profits to charitable and environmental projects in India. Two other ex-royal residences - one on top of Chamundi Hill and the other at Brindavan Gardens - used to be hotels but have since been closed down. (The one at Brindavan has a view of the garden from all the rooms!) The good news is that there are plans to revive at least one of them, together with the very elegant Hotel Metropole, which used to something of a landmark and a must-stay in Mysore.
But if you really want a great getaway, your best bet is the Village. At the base of Chamundi Hills, it’s an exquisite property, winning it the both the National and South Asian Award for excellence in architecture. Sprawled around a perfectly manicured, emerald green expanse of lawn, the rooms are large and beautifully airy with French windows that overlook this or the other verdant patch. Some of the rooms even have their own little sunny terraces. Bamboo, guava, grapefruit, frangipani, acra and coconut palm jostle hundreds of little flowering and other plants and shrubs. Brick and wood and terracotta blend simply and beautifully into the gorgeous surroundings. A gym, a tennis court, a bright blue jewel of a swimming pool with a little Jacuzzi and here and there, garden furniture inviting you to do nothing except soak up the sun. Actually it’s all there in the self-effacing little tariff card – “Work out, chill out. Dive or dream. Walk, jog, saunter or swing. Feast on a morsel, a hug, a book, a game or just on the smell of fresh earth...”
Right. So you’re all settled in, the free welcome drink is down the hatch, now what’s to do?
Well, apart from palaces, we’re pretty good at gardens too. (We have something of a reputation in flowers, growing a jasmine so sweet-smelling that it is named after us. Mysore Mallige.) There’s one called Brindavan – if you can call an acre a garden – complete with dancing fountains and lights. A garden so pretty, it used to be the favoured location to shoot Hindi film songs (remember “Kehna hai” and a besotted Sunil Dutt serenading the pertly pretty Saira Banu in Padosan?). Till Yash Chopra discovered Switzerland. We must warn you though - to get to it, you have to walk a 3km stretch over spectacular cascading waters across India’s very first irrigation dam. The Krishnaraja Sagar Dam which tames and harnesses the waters of 3 rivers - the Kaveri, Hemavati and Lakshmanathirtha – all in one masterly swoop. Then there’s the Mysore Zoo. Or rather a zoological garden that houses animals in what would be more or less their natural habitat. It’s over a century old, some of the trees are older, but newborns really in comparison to the tree stump, carbon dated as having been around since a few million years ago. Zoo or garden, it’s the perfect place to lazy day, strolling around and looking at the spectacular display of both flora (85 different species of plants and trees) and 35 species of fauna –, everything from king cobras, tigers (Royal Bengal and white), elephants (Indian and African), lion-tailed macaques, Australian emus, giraffes, Himalayan black bear, Indian bison, Egyptian baboons and a rather boastful bunch of peacocks; about the only unashamed braggarts in Mysore…..
Which leaves the art gallery, studded with Titian and Rubens and Roerich and Raja Ravi Varma, housed in yet another palace (I told you, this palace thing can be catching) the Jaganmohan Palace, which the maharaja built because he was in between residences and needed a place to crowned and married in. And if by now, you’re not yet suffering from an overdose heritage buildings, there is the St. Philomena’s church, said to have been modeled after the Gothic cathedral in Cologne, its exquisite twin spires delicately stretching 165 feet up. And if you are, then you can take off. To Srirangapatna, to visit Lord Vishnu, taking time off from the increasingly difficult job of Divine Preserver for a well-deserved lie-in under the protective hood of the mighty Anantha in the fabulous Ranganatha Temple. Or Tipu, perhaps still dreaming of battles yet to be fought, lying buried near his gently dilapidated but still beautiful summer palace, the Dariya Daulat. . “It’s better”, he said, "to live once like a lion, rather than have ten lives like a sheep". Or then to one of the 2 national parks, (Nagarhole or Bandipur) to check out what the tigers and bison are up to. Or to the Ranganathittu bird sanctuary where after peeping at egrets and kingfishers and ibis and whistling teals (some of them coming all the way from Siberia and Australia), you can munch on a picnic lunch and drift dreamily down the river in charming round boats made of cane.
That’s the lot then. And now that I have done my bit as a tourist guide, dutifully selling palace-temple-garden-bull ( oh dear, I did forget the bull-on-the-hill; name - Nandi, 48 feet high of undiluted black granite, preferred wheels of Lord Shiva.), I’ll let you a little secret about Mysore. Don’t get fooled by the odd glittering showroom or Johnny-come-lately supermarket or the gaggle of excited, rickety mopeds rushing to Nowhere. Remember, as you watch that shiny-rude Santro trying to overtake that bullock cart, that in these parts, the bullock cart has right of way. In the fast lane. What I mean to say, me darlings, is this. When you’ve been around as long as we have, you kinda figure that a century is just an apologetic drop in Time’s backwaters. So, more than anything else, come to Mysore to learn to just be. Twine the scent of a Mysore Mallige around your nostrils and listen to your thoughts thinking. The air is air-conditioned, the sunshine just hot enough to lovingly toast your skin and ….. well, let just say it’s all there on the signboard outside a nearby Tibetan monastery. “It’s better to be 15 minutes late in this world than be 15 minutes early in the next. Speed 10kms per hour.” Our sentiments exactly.

Money Talk!

Money talk

It’s a man’s world honey
Cause he’s got the money
And you don’t

Think about it

Why its Mister Money Bags, sweetie are you surprised
When the only bags you’re allowed are those under your eyes?
Why pretty girls have sugar daddies
But there ain’t seem to be no sugar mommies

It’s a man’s world honey
Cause he’s got the money
And you don’t

Think about it

Why a lakh or a crore is always gotta be a pati
And a patni’s just a dharm or sometimes a sati
Why “Play” plus “boy” equals to lots of lolly
And “Play” plus “girl” is just a centrespread dolly

It’s a man’s world honey
Cause he’s got the money
And you don’t

So that’s the bottomline

He’s got the paisa so he’s the boss
The sooner you get that the more you’ve got
So bindiya chamka ke kajra those eyes
It’s time to take my advice

Bank balance ko dekho, bas yehi hai khaas
Gun aur gotra, yeh sab hai bakwas
Lav-shav ko chodo, say bye to romance
Dulah-mia’s the one with lots of finance

So chodo liberation aur sambhalo choola
Hubby khush hoke dega tumhe lotsa moolah
Then kya jodi banegi uski tumhari
Tu roop ki devi, who dhan ka pujari

So…….
It’s a man’s world honey
See, he’s got the money
But now it’s your world too
Cause he’s attached to you!

Thoughts of a Water POTS

We are reeling in the throes of a very severe crisis of water.
“We” as in all of Karnataka, the thumb rule being, the poorer you are, the more “wrong-side-of-the-Cauvery” your address and the smaller your town, the less water you get.
Yesterday, the front page morning news said that 3000 villages in the state have “severe shortage” of drinking water. That means we won’t even talk about how much water they get to bathe, cook and ablute…
Naturally, the Chief Minister, always sensitive to such situations, immediately sanctioned 50 crores of rupees to “tackle the problem”. I know that I should have been impressed but since I am a foolish, uninformed, naïve “Person On The Street” (POTS ), I can’t help wondering about a few things.
So, here’s my Naïve, Foolish Question No 1:
If there is no water, how do you “tackle” the problem of water shortage?
Maybe we could take a leaf out of Marie Antoinette’s book and give people…let me see, now….if she suggested cake as substitute for bread then could it be cola for water? And how many villages can be cola-fied for 50 crores? (I’m told that Hrithik Roshan’s current fee is 10 crores per film. So, how many “Sabka Thanda” films would Aamir do for 50 crores?)

More importantly, the Chief Minister also “endorsed the idea” of opening 24/7 (no relative of the TV news channel) control rooms to repair water pumps and such like things.

Naïve, Foolish Question No. 2 : Why weren’t the pumps repaired earlier – like say before the onset of summer?

Naïve, Foolish Question No. 3 – If there is no water, what are they going to pump?
Cola, maybe?
Or better still, Eau De Cologne? Which, if you think about it, will be great because it will cool you down AND tackle the stink of unwashed bodies, stagnant drains and toilet cooking in 35 + degrees heat. And it will also put Karnataka on the global map because “Eau” is water in French…
(Though I’m not sure of the Eau’s properties as a thirst quencher even though it means water in French.)

Now, fortunately for me, I don’t live in one of those 3000 villages but in Mysore - a city that is flanked by not one but two rivers – the Cauvery and the Kabini.
So, obviously we don’t have a water problem, right.
Ah.
Let me answer your question like this.
As of this Saturday, we get water once in every 2 days. And we live in one of the “righter” side of the Cauvery areas – not posh, but getting there. Now, the critical word in that statement is “day” - which can be a tad misleading because most POTS will assume that “day” means what is also called “waking hours”, stretching from about 6.30 am to 11.30 pm. (Those were my waking hours.)
Wrong
For the Water department of MCC (which does not stand for the Marleyborne Cricket Club but the Mysore Municipal Corporation), “day” begins roughly around 3 am and ends at around 6.30 am. I know. You’re thinking that’s only 4 hours. Well, these are difficult times you know and everything is rationed. Water. Daylight hours.
So now, I have turned into a water POTS, sleeping deeply by “day” and napping fitfully at night, leaping up at the faintest sound of drip-gurgle-goosh-drip-gurgle-goosh-goosh-goosh (the sweetest sound in the world), so that I can hunt water in the stealth of the dark, trap a few bottles to drink, prowl and prey on a few buckets to cook and bathe with.

And so, my day begins at 3.30 am…
But only on alternate days, I must add and marvel at the thoughtfulness of the MCC. Because on the days when there is no water, I get to slumber on, nary a care in the world, not a drip-gurgle-goosh-drip-gurgle-goosh-goosh-goosh to disturb my sleep.

Now if this sounds like I am cribbing, I’m not. I am just counting my blessings, because you see, we are the very, very fortunate ones. There are places not so far away from here where water comes only once a week, maybe even once in ten days….And places where they may not even know when the water will come and all they can do is call the 24/7 control room to repair the water pump to pump the water that isn’t really there…

I have devised ingenious methods of conserving water – nothing that will fill the KRS, mind you, but gargle 3 times after brushing my teeth instead of the usual 6 and have perfected the art of bathing with ¾ of a bucket of water. (Not that difficult if you concentrate and pour right) We choose the lunch menu based on what takes the least amount of water to cook with and clean up later and we aren’t encouraging guests.
Don’t laugh. If shutting off a tap that drips 10 drops of water in a minute can save 270 gallons a year, my cutting my morning gargle by 50% should amount to something, is it not?

And in the 2 inches of brackish water that sloshes around in my water-deprived brain, more Naïve Foolish Questions bob around like so much jetsam…
• Last night, I was reading William Dalrymple’s book, “The Age of the Kali”. Pages 165 to 173 are devoted to Bangalore and I quote: “ The government of Karnataka, which has proved itself adept at attracting foreign investment, soon showed itself to be wholly unable to cope with the massive expansion that it was able to generate. Suddenly there was never enough electricity….it was the same with water, which was usually available in taps for less than an hour a day…” The book was written in 1998. Nine years later, the morning news says “40% of Bangalore are getting water once in 3 days”. When will we ever learn?
• What is it like to have a 2 month old baby, not be able to afford disposable diapers and manage to have clean nappies using water that arrives once in 3 days for 4 hours?
• Why is it that we always wake up to a water crisis when the “water level in the KRS is 12 feet lower than it was at the same time last year”? Shouldn’t alarm bells start ringing much earlier? When the water is 3 feet lower, maybe?
• Don’t the Municipal authorities know how to do simple math? I mean, how difficult is it to match the amount of water needed by a city with the amount of water available in the reservoir? By how many feet does the level of water in the KRS have to be lower than it was last year before this happens?
• Why is water – or any other civic issue for that matter – always only a problem for the authorities to solve? How come in all the caterwauling and screaming about the incompetence of the authorities to manage the “water situation”, there is not a single drop of a suggestion from “concerned citizens’ groups” about we can do to help? For example, in Mysore, most people live in independent houses and wash their compounds every single morning, often with the tap running constantly. How come we aren’t rallying together to tell the MCC that we will was our compounds only once every 3 days until the water problem abates?
• All over Mysore – and I am sure it is the same in Bangalore – buildings of all kinds are continuously under construction. If there is such a water crisis, where are these builders getting their water from? Or are they simply using cola (or Eau de Cologne) to mix the cement...
• How many gallons of water would you need to run a hotel with 200 rooms, 4 fancy restaurants and clientele who are paying upwards of 5000 rupees a night as tariff? Of the millions of gallons of water being pumped out to a city every day, a fair number must be going to hotels. So how about the hotel industry in Bangalore chipping in and announcing that for one day of the week for the next two months, the hotels remain closed in order to do their bit for water conservation?

And here is my final Naïve Foolish Question….

What if the monsoons fail this year?

Picture : http://www.ifrc.org/PHOTO/Guatemala0303/p4660.jpg

Colours of Joy

The Colours of Joy
By Ratna Rajaiah


Chaitrotsava.
Phagwa.
Madhutsava.
Madanamahotsava.
Kamotsava
Sirapanchami.
Rangapanchami.
Or then, simply Holi.
Tomorrow, much of India is going to be drenched in riotous colour and music and dance as we celebrate what is popularly known as the festival of colours. And no, I am not going to talk about the health hazards of coloured powders that are used these days to play Holi.
Nor rave and rant about the rude, impolite, often nasty practices that have crept in like using mud and cow dung and oil paint, even sewage. Nor hold forth about celebrating Holi the organic way. Though being a die-hard New Age type, I will touch upon the subject!
Instead, I ask you to walk with me and discover the many wonderful and little known aspects of Holi, in the hope that we will thus capture the magic of one of the happiest, most joyous and glorious festivals that dot our calendar.
Phagun aayo re!
“ketaki gulab juhi champaka….”
Phalguna. One of Arjuna’s many names because he was born in this month - Phalguna or Phagun.
And what a month! When the earth, getting ready for summer, shrugs off the last remaining sluggishness of winter and sidles up to the sun. Who, rather pleased by this attention, warms and coaxes everything to lustily, merrily sprout and bud and flower and hatch and breed and turn from withered ol’ brown to lush new green. A heady, rapturous, enchanting month, where mango blossoms burst forth like torches of lace, kissed here and there by tiny green baby mangoes.
So Phagun marks the beginning of what they call spring. But we have a much better name for this season in India – Vasant or Basant, a season so heady that we even have a couple of ragas dedicated to it! And Phagun is also the month when we celebrate Holi because of which it is also called Phagwa or Phalgunotsava. Or then, more appropriately, Vasantotsav - the festival of spring.
Colour me Red!
Think about it. Holi is the only festival which we “play”. And so, how can we speak of Holi and not talk about colour? Colours that we steal from Mother Nature, decking herself up in her spring finery, to joyously splash each other with.
Scarlet from the hibiscus, purple from the jamun fruit, yellow from the lemon and the sun, blue from a hot summer sky, and green from the parrot’s wing and the cheeky green chili. And saffron from…..
Actualy, Nature was the source of the colours with which Holi was played in ancient times. “Gulal”, the Hindi word which today refers to all the Holi coloured powders, was originally the kesar (saffron-colour)coloured powder made from the dried flowers of a tree.
A tree appropriately called the “Flame of the Forest”, because its velvety flowers (shaped like a parrot’s beak which is why it is also called the parrot tree) are a breathtaking, blazing orange that virtually “set light” the place where they grow. And with Nature’s impeccable timing, the trees burst into flame…er, I mean burst bloom flowers, in February, staying on nearly to the end of April!It is said that Lord Krishna played Holi with this very same "gulal".

But the Palasha tree (as it is called in Sanskrit and Hindi) is not just a pretty face.
First let me tell you the rather charming legend about it. Considered sacred to the moon, it is said to have come to life when the feather of a falcon was dipped into soma, the nectar of the Gods. And so, it came to be considered is a sacred tree, an integral part of many Hindu religious ceremonies, the trifoliate formation of the leaves said to represent the Holy Triumvirate, Vishnu in the middle, Brahma on the left and Shiva on the right.
But legend apart, this tree (botanical name : Butea Monosperma and Butea Frondosa is the rare Indian variety with yellow flowers), also called the Dhak or Bastard Teak, has many uses. The tree acts as a host for the lac insect which produces lac, the base ingredient for shellac and varnish. All parts of it are used in Ayurveda for panchakarma therapies and in Unani medicine. The dried leaves are used to make plates and cups and for wrapping tobacco to make biddies.
And of course, come the month of Phagun, thousands of the flowers are dried and then ground to produce the gorgeous Holi powder called ‘gulal’…..
Ancient Holi
A spring festival has to be as old as…well, as old as spring itself, but Holi is celebrated for other reasons as well. Here are two of the most popular ones:
The demon king Hiranyakasipu’s hatred Lord Vishnu for killing elder his brother Hiranyaksa was so great that he wanted to destroy his own son Prahlad. Because despite his father’s best efforts, he had turned out to be Lord Vishnu’s most ardent devotee and continued to be so despite the most terrible tortures heaped upon him by his father. Hiranyakasipu’s sister Holika had been given the boon that fire could not destroy her. So, Hiranyakasipu ordered that Holika sit with the child Prahlad in a huge bonfire. When she did, the fire destroyed Holika and the child was unharmed. And so Holi is celebrated – like so many other festivals– as the triumph of good over evil.
One of Holi’s lesser known names is Anangotsava. Ananga means “without a body”. When Kamadeva, spurred by Lord Indra to make Lord Shiva fall in love with Parvati, shot an arrow in Siva's heart as he sat deep in meditation, the enraged Maheshwara opened his third eye and reduced poor Kamadeva to ashes. And so, Kamadeva got another name - “Ananga”, and the occasion is celebrated as Kamavilas, Kaman Pandigai or Kama-dahanam (or Madanamahotsava meaning the Festival of Kama), especially in many parts of South India.
I know. We’re all thinking - is being reduced to ashes is a reason to celebrate or a reason to mourn? Well, it is said the festiva honours Kamadeva’s selfless sacrifice for the cause of true love! And the traditional offerings to this God of Love are sandalwood paste to soothe the agony of his burns and mango blossoms which apparently are his favorite flower.
Incidentally, the story also has a happy ending because after he was so devastatingly incinerated, Kamadeva’s wife Rati, prayed to Lord Siva to restore her husband to life. Siva was placated by Rati’s prayers and arranged so that Kamadeva be reborn as Lord Krishna’s son by his wife Rukmini.
Krishna’s festival
No discussion on Holi can be complete without talking about Lord Krishna. Because, the most evocative, sensuous, rapturous, enchanting images of Holi are that of Lord Krishna playing Holi with his beloved Radha and the gopis. In Mathura, Holi festivities, even to this day, extend over 16 days and are centred around Lord Krishna’s birthplace, Nandgaon and Radha’s birthplace, Barsana.
There is even a beautiful lake called Gulal Kund!
These images have been repeatedly captured and celebrated in art and poetry and theatre and dance. And been the inspiration for the genesis of a very beautiful genre of Hindustani classical music called hori or compositions about Holi, sung in a very ancient style of singing called dhamar, dating back to the 13th century. When the great musical geniuses of Swami Haridas, Baba Gopal Das, Tansen and Baiju Bawra were taking dhrupad singing to its finest glory, the hori was also coming into its own.
In fact, hori songs were performed with great gusto in the court of that famed royal patron of music, Emperor Akbar. And typically, all hori compositions are about the mischievous, irresistible Krishna, cavorting with his Radha, among the gopis, drenching them not just with his favourite colour, kesari, but also with love!
“Khele shyam sangh hori aaj, bhar pichakari rang bhar kesar ke” .
And so, befittingly, the last words on this festival of colour must be those of that other ardent devotee of Lord Krishna, Meera Bai. This is one of her compositions and depending on how you want to look at it, it’s a bhajan or a hori geet, or a romantic song or then an impassioned cry of a beloved’s heart describing the colours of love.
Because, at the end of it, that is what Holi is – a celebration of love. Happy Holi!
Syama piya more rangade chunariya
Aisi rangade ke ranga nahi chhute
Dhobiya dhoye chahe yeh sari umaria
Lal na rangaun main, hari na rangaun
Apne hi ranga mein rangade chunariya
Bina rangaye main to ghar nahi jaungi
Beet hi jaye chahe yeh sari umariya
My beloved Shyam, color my dupatta
Colour it so the colours will never leave
Even if the dhobi washes it a lifetime
But I won’t be coloured red
Nor green,
Colour me in only shades of you
Without being thus suffused by you, I will not leave
Even if I lose a lifetime….

******
Hori or Holi?
The musicologists say that the word “holi” got corrupted to “hori” because it is easier to pronounce while singing. Lord Krishna’s bhakts say it was originally “hori” or happiness in Brajbhasha, a dialect of Hindi.

In Bengal and Orissa, Holi is celebrated as Dol Jatra or Dol Purnima to mark the birth of the great singing saint, Mahaprabhu Chaitanya

******

How the Abhishek-Aishwarya wedding may save the Ridley Turtle

Question : - How many times can you run the same 15 second post-engagement footage of Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai before the dumb-sucker audience figures out that there isn’t anymore? Nobody has been able to answer that question as yet, but whoever does will inherit the Earth, not to mention the entire Imelda Marcos shoe collection.

Phew. I tell you, the timing couldn’t have been better. I mean, when the tickertape running at the bottom of the screen of your favourite news channel screams, “Just in - 40-year-old woman molested on Antop Hill!”, we know we’ve begun to scrape the bottom of the dog-licks-man news stories barrel. (They were seriously thinking of throwing another prince down a tube well, this time a real one. But real princes are hard to come by these days – at least ones that will fit into a tube well - and the original prince-down-the-tube now probably charges 4 million rupees for every tumble.) But we’re now safely home and dry, thanks to Shilpa Shetty’s thoughtful housemates on Big Brother who came up with those lovely racist remarks.

(We’re hoping Prince Philip will chip in and do his bit for the cause…)

And of course, there is the Marriage of the Millennium.
(Whoever just asked, “who’s getting married?”, has to immediately stop reading this and drum themselves out of known human civilization. Which we all know stretches across the length and breadth of one Page Three.)
Now some celebrities are so sweet and considerate. For example, when they hook up, it’s always sparing a thought for the hard lives of Page Three writers. So everyone knows that Tom hooked up with Katie just so that we could call them Tomkat. And Brad with Angelina which so seamlessly became Brangelina.

But there are others that just don’t care. Like what on earth are we going to do with “Aishwarya” and “Abhishek”? “Abhiwarya”? That sounds like Shakuni’s sidekick and till Copplola makes Mahabharat, we aren’t going there as yet. Or “Aishek”? Puhleez. That’s more like the name of a milkshake that you’d get in Outer Gummidipundi. I mean, these bachcha-log should’ve learned a thing or two from Papa Bachchan. See how nicely he slipped into “Abby Baby”, then so thoughtfully named his son Abhishek so that the little tyke could be Abby’s Baby. And now that the baby is all grown up and ready to have his own babies, he is Abby Baby, mark II.

But what on earth are we going to do with “Aishwarya” and “Abhishek”? It’s enough to make one tear out one’s hair weave in despair...

Anyway, till someone comes up with something better, we will just have to sprain our tongues and make do with “Abhiwarya”. Besides, we have no time to waste because there is so much to be done. Again, the considerate celebs would have given us at least three months to get this shaadi-show on the road.

Wait a minute, isn’t what the Bachchans and the Rais are supposed to do? No, you silly, naïve thing, you. They have to just organize the wedding.

We – as in the Page Three public - are the ones that have to do all the real hard work. For example, we have to get together all the experts who will spend every waking minute from now till the wedding (and if we are lucky, till the first Abhiwarya baby), on every available public forum (barring the inside of public toilets), predicting, analyzing, forecasting, estimating.

For example, they will tell us the political implications of who is given the prestigious job of designing the presiding pundit’s gamcha. And would it topple the UPA government if it is picked out in Swarovski crystal coconuts instead of zardosi zucchinis? And if the colour of the pagdis worn by the baratis is the same shade as the flag of the Communist Party of India, would that mean that it is now cozying up to Bade Bhaiyya? (Mulayam Singh to you.)

Experts, national, international even extra-terrtrial( for after all this is a marriage made in heaven), will tell us what will happen to next years’ rabi crop if the nail polish of the hairdresser doing Aish’s chachi’s best friend’s hair does not match the epaulettes of the trumpet players in the baraati’s band.
(They are having a raja-ki-aayegi-baraat band and everything? Ooooooh…isn’t that just darling!
Er, we don’t know but our experts are already on job predicting the possibility)

And even as we speak, meteorologists and weather expert are setting up special satellite-powered weather bureaus to tell us the likelihood of the colour of the skies on the wedding day matching Aish’s eyes….
There will be live, round-the-clock debates on all kinds of things. Whether Karan Johar’s driver will attend if Shahrukh Khan’s cook isn’t invited and how that will impact the size of David Beckham’s er, annual fee with LA Galaxy. And what will happen to the Sensex (not to mention Monica Lewinsky’s chances of getting a job on Hilary Clinton’s presidential campaign team) if Mukesh’s manicurist and Anil’s numerologist are housed in the same floor of the chateau.
(Mukesh is invited?! Really?!!
Er, we don’t know but our experts are…..
And the wedding’s at a chateau?! Ooooh…the same one as Laxmi Mittals’ daughter?! Dunno but once again, our experts…).
The breaking news just in is that there may be a terrorist plot to have Karisma Kapoor’s daughter’s nanny share the same maalishwaali (masseur) with Shweta Bachcchan-Nanda’s daughter’s governess. But since these are unconfirmed reports, we will keep you updated on that story.

We are trying to invite Miss Manners and Martha Stewart to debate on how many times the guests should change their underarm deodorant during the pheras and whether that will be any different from the number of times they should change their underwear during the wedding ceremony.
(Why? Dunno but our experts….)

We will try to predict whether 100 will be number of varieties of kebabs served at the reception or the pieces in the orchestra playing at the pre-wedding, post pre-nuptial- agreement- signing- cocktails. And whether the entrée at the mehendi dinner for the guests’ pooches will be oysters on ice or lobster Thermidor.
(Dogs can eat oysters? Dunno but our experts…..) Incidentally, a debate is already raging about whether the mehendi will have 289 ingredients according to the secret 547-year old recipe or 547 ingredients according to the 289-year old recipe
And that’s only the tip of the tip of iceberg lettuce salad...
Did someone ask, “what about the actual coverage of the wedding?
Well, let me answer it like this. There are two reasons why we need to know all this.
Firstly because an event of such earth-shaking proportion cannot but effect all the things I have already mentioned plus global warming, the size of the next Miss Universe’s breasts, Oprah’s net worth, the sex life of the fruit bats, whether by “WMD”, Bush was referring to the Big Mac, the outcome of the World Cup, the design of the next Play station, the chances of finding the yeti in Lower Parel Basin and also determine which will collapse first – Michael Jackson’s nose or Donald Trump’s marriage.

How?
Dunno really but don’t worry because we are having a whole other 37 panels of experts to tell us….

The other reason is that when the wedding day actually arrives, hopefully we will all be so exhausted and sick to the gills reading writing, watching, debating, speculating and generally gnashing our teeth about the whole thing that nobody will really care how many magazines and newspapers and internet sites will be circulating the same 3 and a quarter pictures and how many times all the news channels are replaying the same 8.35 seconds footage which could well be the footage of the wedding of Ram Khilona and Chameli for all that you can make out of it.

Which leaves us with one last question. Am I invited? In reply, I narrate an anecdote about the delightfully irrepressible Art Buchwald who died recently and left a hole in the stratosphere of the world’s greatest humourists more dangerous as the one in the ozone. On the eve of what was billed as the biggest wedding of the previous millennium, i.e. the marriage of the breathtakingly gorgeous Princess of Hollywood, Grace Kelly to Monaco's Prince Rainier, Buchwald wrote that the only reason he wasn't invited was because of a 500-year old feud between the Buchwald family and the Grimaldi dynasty! In Buchwald’s case, his invitation from the prince was hand-delivered the next day.
I'm still waiting for mine.....

Ode to Talcum

The talcum powder ads have got it all wrong.. They show secret, delicious, crevices being powdered with it; emitting fragrances so enchanting, it can do almost anything. Clinch the deal, stop the traffic, and/or hook the man, in one Dreamflower-scented swoop. But they’ve got it all wrong. Talcum powder isn’t about coming out smelling like roses. It’s not a blotter of sweat and BO. The true meaning of talc is known only to a South Indian.
Let me explain.
You’ve to understand one thing about these people. Their skins may be black….. sorry, melanin-challenged, but their souls are dazzling white. Unfortunately, that’s not how the world sees them. Where they’re just a bunch of kaalias, so what if they’re very clever at two-plus-two and put us on the world map with Idli-Dosa and the Raman Effect. If your skin’s not the right shade of Aryan, your life’s over. So, to compensate, God gave Southies talcum powder. To slather their faces with it and let its ethereal translucence allow the pure, white depths of their souls shine through. In other words, to be a good Southie, talc is mandatory. Not in the armpit or the cleavage. On the face. An un-talced face is tantamount to indecent exposure and you get drummed out of Southie ranks if you’re caught. Never mind if a dusting of the pearly-white magic turns your black skin into a interesting shade of pearly grey. Remember, grey is white with a dash of black. Or black with a splash of white. Depending on how strong you like your coffee. What matters is the white, in however minuscule a dash-splash.
India produces about 21,000 tons of talcum powder annually and about half of this is consumed by the Southies. Remember the story of Sleeping Beauty? The Southie version’s a bit different. One day, Mrs. Wicked Step-Amma, freshly triumphant from having sent S. Beauty to the Permanent-Swapnalok-in-the sky (or so she thought), stood in front of her beloved mirror and asked, “Mirror, mirror….” Before she could finish, the mirror shattered into a gazillion pieces! W. Step-Amma had forgotten to talc her face! Poor Mirror. Shocked and horrified at having to see naked, un-talced Southie skin, it cracked up. And Mrs. WS did what any self-respecting woman-without-a-mirror would do. Shriveled up and died. Meanwhile, S. Beauty, having waited for her man, like all good Southie girls, with her face well-talced, was kissed and woken up by P. Charming (also well-talced) and lived happily ever after. Moral of the story? Beauty is talc-deep.
For Southie women, talcum powder is what turns frog into prince and kaddu into Mercedes Benz. Good Southie Ammas whisper this mantram in their daughters’ ears as soon as they’re born. When in doubt, talc. When your husband leaves you, talc. When his wife refuses to leave him, talc. When the idli batter fails to rise, talc. When other things fail to rise, forget Viagra; just talc. Nothing like a puff of the ol’ Dreamflower to sizzle the fizzle. In other words, when all else fails, talc.
Ask Amma. Who, by the by, doesn’t throw tantrums, she throws talc. It’s rumored that the only thing she took with her to prison, takes to bed and to all her guftagoos with Atal-Anna is her tin of talc. We can’t, due to national security reasons disclose the brand , but it’s talc. And if you’re a scoffing skeptic, smirking at this panegyric, look at Amma’s skin. Flawless alabaster. Or look a little further. At Hema-Amma’s. Or Vijayanthi-Amma’s. All exquisite testimonials to the power of the powder. The magic that turns duckling into swan. At least inside the Southie’s head. Or to put it another way, talcum powder is Southern Comfort.