So.

Merry Christmas and all.

I've been M.I.A for a while after the whole discourse on staying committed to this blog. If you trusted me, that's your failing, not mine. And, I've been busy - life doesn't waste itself, you know. You've got to go out there, make safe choices, take the easy way out, give in to your fears, let the day slip from your chubby-from-not-typing-one-word-of-that-story-you-started fingers - it's hard work, but someone's gotta do it.

Meanwhile I'm surrounded by people who are living out every cliche in the book - reach for your dreams, lose weight, live every moment like it were your last, be stonking rich. Whatever happened to good old fashioned just letting it be. Jee-zus. Slow down people! Watch an episode or two of Californication. Hank Moody yourself back into yer comfort zone.

Ambition is for amateurs. Yeah

Idiot's Box!

I've watched more TV than should be lawfully allowed anywhere. I think it's my addiction this year. I develop one every year.

I don't drink much, I don't smoke much (anymore) and food too, I've been pretty restrained lately. The coffee and tea eating(don't ask)/ drinking stopped a long time ago too. But the damn telly! I can't seem to tear myself away from it.

So far has this gone that I have now formed a heirarchy of TV show types.

The ones I watch because I'm genuinely interested:

Sex and the City - I've never watched the show before and I want to see why it was so iconic. Some days I get it, other days I just don't.

Big Love - Because I love that it doesn't come across as overly contirved even though it obviously is. I think all the characters have amazing chemistry.

Heavy Petting - An animal show for you who're thinking 'too much information!'

ANTM - That Jade is a bitch!

The occasional cool movies on either HBO, Star or the hindi ones.

The ones I watch on auto pilot:

FRIENDS (hurrah! I resisted compulsive need to put full stops in between each letter) I like them still.

Seinfeld - They're still so funny.

All Reese Witherspoon movies. Formulaic. Cue joke. Laugh. Get warm fuzzy feeling.

The ones I watch because the only other option is doing actual work.

FRIENDS - Even though I've watched all episodes more than thrice. Could I be anymore lame?

The Wonder Years - There's nostalgia mixed with sadness because I'm too old to relate to Kevin anymore.

The Jimmy Kimmel Show - he just doesn't do it for me. He's good for a few underwhelming chuckles but he's no Conan O'Brien.

I suddenly feel very tired. More later...

It's been a bloody easy day's night

It's been a semi-fruitlful day mostly. This work-from-home business is easier than it sounds. Too easy actually. And when you have someone like me, who's prone to procrastination, like a freebie whore is prone to freebies, it's a task getting anything constructive done.
I have got to, got to, GOT TO start managing my time better. I'm begun taking baby steps. I've cut down on the mind-numbing hours I usually spend sprawled in front of the TV. I've convinced myself finally that I do not absolutely have to know if I remember every FRIENDS dialogue verbatim or whether Imraan Khan likes his mojitos virgin or potent. It's not that this stuff excites me. Okay maybe it does. But the main reason is that I'm trying to avoid something big. I know I must eventually do it and that I'll end up a miserable old woman if I don't. But right now, i'm just not able to gather the confidence to sit down and just do it. I'm afraid I'll find that I'm not very good at it and I don't think I could take it. I've pinned a lot of hope on this one.
And yes, I know that technically this counts as an excuse and it is. But it's very true too, go figure.
In better news, I cooked today, if you could call an underdone-on-one-side-and-overdone-on-the-other omelette cooking. I made tea too.
And in even better news, I didn't snack in between meals and actually got some official work done. So huzzah for the miniscule victories!
Now for the best news: Things are better with the fellow. We talked about stuff, figured we've got issues. And given how neither of us is big on the emotional sharing, a talk was good progress. We did a very nice dinner at the GoodEarth Cafe the other day. We laughed, talked and made inappropriate jokes - just like the normal happy times. I usually tend to avoid using phrases that would encourage what we used to refer to as 'non veg jokes', back when my mind wasn't a gutter, but. It warmed the cockles of my heart.

A Perfect Date

I'm getting older and shittier

Last night had all the makings of my kind of Saturday night. Alcohol - check. Cigarettes - check. Music - check. Good food - check. Lovely farmhouse - check. But I just wasn't feeling it. Probably was the company - a new bunch of people and nice enough, mind, but I just couldn't muster any sort of enthusiasm.
Truth be told, these days I hardly ever feel it with new people, or actually even the usual suspects for that matter. In the last few months, I've sort of let go. I rarely go out, I eat twenty four seven, I'm still smoking, I haven't been writing or reading too much and been spending much too many hours watching TV.
Relationships well, HEH. I'm as good at them as I am at refraining from a steaming pile of... fries (potayto potaashit!). I don't think the mard and I have been hunky dory in a long time, although he vehemently declares this untrue. If you asked me to name my closest friends, I'd have to say, after five minutes of thinking, names that are only still on the list because we don't meet that much and there's a comfortable distance.
I'm not sure when this happened, but it did. I feel listless, unsatisfied, disoriented, ugly and cruel. And like Lu-Tze, the time-keeping monk would say, it's getting on my thungas.

Oh, Emma, I think I love you *gush*

Hermione's all grown up...and what a natty job she's done of it. I am digging those caterpillar brows and underplayed makeup.


1) Must get me those booties. Actually must lose me some leg mass first.
2) Love the tailored jacket and the carrot-y pants. 3) Alright, so maybe she's looking a tad presidential here, I wish she'd skipped the stockings.

4)I'm not sure yet, how I feel about the lame (le-may, not layme) top though she makes it work anyway.
5) I see a bit of Rachel Bilson in this street outfit. Holy brogue love!



6) I do think this dress a bit fussy but I like the nude shade on her.

7) She looks adorable here, sufficiently dressy and sufficiently slouchy.













Ps: Click on the pictures to see the larger versions

Dancer In The Dark

Jesus. Wow.
Dancer In The Dark is like one of those things that come and hit you like a brick wall when you're least expecting it. In a good way.
I had planned to spend this evening watching FRIENDS reruns and SATC reruns and sat down to this one after a good bit of coaxing. So I was mentally prepared to dislike it. Did not happen.
The film had me from start to finish. Selma, played by Bjork is an impoverished Czech immigrant who lives with her son in a trailer on the property of a policeman and his wife. She works at a nearby (sink-making, I think) factory with her good friend. Selma loves musicals so much she often imagines that the mundane jobs and ordinary people around her are part of a grand musical, taking sounds around her (machines moving, sinks clanking, footsteps) to set the basic beat. Selma suffers from a congenital eye disorder that has her almost-blind and worries that her son will eventually be blind too. Therefore she saves every last cent she makes so that she can afford to get his eyes operated. She has not let anyone in on her blindness, managing to fool even the opthalmologist by learning the test alphabets by rote.
One day the policeman comes over and confesses to Selma that he's gone bankrupt and is afraid his materialistic wife will leave him. Moved by his plight, she tells him her secret to make him feel better - the blindness, the operation, all the money she's saved.
Here their cameraderie is palpable. You can almost feel an unspoken friendship being fostered, between two people who can perfectly commiserate with each other.
You don't even realise when the plot sneaks in and just knocks the wind out of you.
Selma is fired because her near-total blindness is taking it's toll on her job. As it turns out, the policeman so frightened and hard up on his luck, steals her money and tells his wife it's his and that Selma tried to come on to him and needed to be evicted. Selma goes up to his room and pleads to have her money back. He is full of self loathing because of what he did but still refuses to return her money, this time holding her at gun point when she snatches it. She struggles to take it back and he's shot in the bargain. He begs her to finish the job well upon which she shoots him several times and bludgeons his head. She's arrested, found guilty of first degree murder and sentenced to death. The last scene particularly turned my stomach. Selma is singing a song in her haunting voice when the floorboards open and she's hanged.
Bjork is unbelievable as Selma. She has the soft, amicable yet dreamy voice, except when she';s singing. Then it takes her over and fills the whole screen and you know whoever is singing at that point, Selma or Bjork or both, it's being sung deep from the heart. Listen to 'I've seen it all', it's heartwrenching. Throughout the film there's a disarming smile playing on her lips and her mannerisms and even laughter and tears make her so real, it hurts. All the other characters were fantastic too but none of them could touch her.
Lars Von Trier is the director and the movie is shot with hand held cameras. I don't know much about cinematography so I won't bother commenting. I did love the way the he made the distinction between her day dreams and reality by simply brightening the colours, though. And the rawness of it as opposed to feeling like every last bit was pre-meditated and perfect. You got the feeling that the director did what he wanted to do without giving an eff about what you thought. If you liked it, you were welcome on board and if not, he didn't care.
The songs from the movie are on an album called 'Selmasongs' if you feel like giving it a listen. I for one will be downloading it. And listening to more of Bjork.
To think that till just before watcing this movie, my knowledge of Bjork went as far as 'that nutty lady with the bird dress.'

I'm having an ethical conundrum.
Recently the Mater went to Israel and brought me back a jewellery set - earrings and a chain - that cost her her pinky. Now we're not a gift-exchangign sort of family. On birthdays we cook mutton and on festivals we cook pork - it's how you can tell there's a celebration. So when one of us decides to buy another a gift for no particular rhyme or reason, it's big shit. Conundrum is this is quite possibly one of the ugliest jewellery sets I've ever laid eyes on. It's gold (absolutely not my metal) and has coral ("FROM THE DEAD SEA, MIND!") embellishments which to me look like large zits. So, yeah, ugly.
And as it goes with really really ugly things (paintings, piercings, pugs), it is very dear to someone whose feelings matter to me alot. So I said, "Ohh nice! I really like the orange er, stuff!"
Bad move.
Here's why: a) I almost never lie. Not because of an overactive moral fibre but because I really suck at it. I'm one of those people whose eyes dart furtively even when they've done nothing. b) I almost never lie to the Mater. Besides being extremely cool and making it evry easy for us to talk to her, she's also very astute. Uncomfortably astute sometimes.
So ever since I told her, one too many times, how pretty the thing is, she keeps asking me why I'm not wearing it. "You don't like it?" Ofcourse I do! "I thought I'd buy you something nice with love (her ace card) and you don't even like it." I DO, I SWEAR I DO! Look I'm putting it on right now! So I um, do. And as soon as I'm out the door and safely behind closed elevator doors, it goes straight into my bag.
I'm leading a double life and it's making my palms sweaty.

The New Phone

Yeah baby! This is the best model I've owned so far and like the ever derisive Fats quickly supplied, "That's not saying very much."
It's true though, I haven't had very many nice phones. This is mainly owing to the fact that I tend to lose them more often than I use them (I'm not a phone person at all!) After much thought (Those winding queues to reclaim your number at the telecom office really gave me time to think) and several phones - various models and various price points - I've arrived at the following conclusion: The cost of a phone plus the way it looks is inversely proportionate to my chance of keeping it.
For example, take the pretty Motorazr. I got it at half price (a press-only offer). I lost it about two weeks later.
I own a basic Nokia for whenever I'm between phones. Now when I say basic, I mean really basic - feature-bereft, ugly as sin and asexual as far as being identifiable as a girl's phone or a boy's phone goes. This phone was created to be an interim phone. And. It. Just. Never. Goes. Away. Like a loser who's desperately in love with you. Great for rebounds, but you'd rather be dead than be seen together in public. Mixed feelings.
So given the history here I'm cherishing this phone because as I see it we don't have very much time left together. "Or you could take care and just not lose a phone again?" chimes the mater.
I do take care of my phones. But as with all things in life, shit doesn't happen till it does.

It's been a year and a week since my last post.

I think it's safe to say I'm not committed to putting down my thoughts nearly as often as I'd like. It's also safe to say that so far 2008 has been the year of procrastination for me.
I received an offer to write a novel at the end of January 2007 from a very fine publisher. The nice lady mailed me over and over again asking about my writing progress. Lots of encouraging words and sincere promises were exchanged by her and me respectively. Since May this year, she's stopped mailing. A slew of books by other writers and bloggers I assume she approached at around the same time she did me just came out. Complete books with fancily illustrated covers with spiffily written press releases to boot. That smarted, I can't lie.
It's also been a year of loss.
Of the invincibility of teenage years.
Of ambition.
Of faith. In others and of theirs in me.
Of hair. No really. I have a 'patch' now.
It's probably not obvious at all but it's also been the year of some serious self pitying.
How very December 31st of me. Well I can't wait that long to call it a year.