First Aid

Growing up with a doctor mom, I took medicine for granted.Since the last couple of years since I have been on my own and the recipient of daily/weekly/monthly small or big injuries (phew..not yet hourly), so when an opportunity to take a two-day first aid certification course came along I pounced at it (and didn’t trip).It was a course set up exclusively for my work place, we were taught all about CPR, bandaging wounds, what to do if you’re hit by lightning, and field surgery. I think my expectations were a little high, especially around the surgery part, because we were only being certified as Level C “first aiders” and not actual medical doctors (I DID learn about being hit by lightning. If it happens, you’re probably toast). I had (and still have) a wicked case of laryngitis, so the introductory part of the session, where we all had to say our names and our first aid background was even more awkward for me than normal. I sounded like a cell phone that was dropping out—luckily, I was sitting with some very nice colleagues who filled in the gaps for me. The instructor—let’s call him Abi— was a very interesting and well-experienced former fire captain, who had some amazing stories to tell about traumatic situations and injuries, the vast majority of which seemed to have happened to his him or his own family and friends. I think my favorite story was how he stabbed a butcher knife completely through his palm getting it out of the dishwasher. Abi had serious bad injury karma, and I was convinced that at least one of our group was NOT going to make it to the weekend. Nevertheless, I took copious notes.At the end of the course we were supposed to administer Heimlich maneuver to a dummy whom I called chuck (any resemblance to Netflix is purely coincidental ) to gain the certificate of “achievement”.I can totally picture this in my head. Imagine, how cool would it be to raise my hand when during my daily commute, the red double deck bus driver asks the question over the intercom "Is there a doctor onboard ?

ooops can’t do it, (8 years of med school vs. 2 half days of first aid course)

OK, Scene 2 : How cool would it be when this question is popped and there is no doctor and the victim’s buddy has a turned into a shade of desperate and I can raise my hand and slow walk (only in my head, I would rush in real life.”Pinky swear”.) from the upper deck as “Heimlich girl”.
So armed with this certificate, I travel everyday keeping the streets of Brighton and Hove safe from me tripping over someone/something.
It’s my turn to give back to society (not just by seeding the torrents)

:)

Snack for a coyote

My knack for being the data whisperer is sadly not preventing the fat cells in my fingers from multiplying. I know this when I fat finger all my texts and am left at the mercy of auto correct. We all know that has led to only clear communication (yeh right!). In fact I tried to draw Zentangles to practice my dexterity but the results are so creative that a 2 year holds a better chance of beating me at them. So perhaps running? This fine Sunday morning,  I chose to run at roadrunner park where we have  demographics ranging from one year taking their first steps to little league to Senior citizens walking to keep themselves in shape.  It’s a big park. The board near the parking lot boasts of covering 14 acres with ponds, baseball fields, tennis courts and just trails for hiking.

I started my pedometer and waded through the sidewalks. I took a couple of rounds around the pond and the ducks in the pond are pretty supportive. They only come in your way when you want to take a break (thank you!!). I crossed an old lady on the walker a couple of times, counted my steps, thought about big bang (the show not the origin of the universe) and weighted for Ryan gosling encouraging voice on my Nike app. Suddenly I got a tap on my shoulder, I turned around to a petite bespectacled 5 ft slightly bent figure who was using a walker to complete her walk. She complimented me on the length of my hair, I smiled in gratitude and then she said something very interesting,
“Every time you ran past me in this hour, all I wanted to do was pull your hair. It’s very tempting.” Duh! Hmmm.

That’s newJ. I took the hint (what if she was not joking??) and decided to change my course. I moved to less populated trail of the park to complete my run. It was just me on the trail as far as I could see. After running for a few minutes I soon realized how wrong my assumption was about solititude. I saw a pair of gleaming eyes in the distance, I assumed it was a dog on a leash with the owner close by, but as I approached closer my worst nightmares were soon coming to realization. A big brown and grey coyote was standing 150 feet away. I paused and thought will I be snack to this coyote? Dibs on oxygen to my brain cells, I immediately took out my phone to call 911. A patented mix of fear and fat fingers lead to me clicking on the flashlight app instead. The flashlight from my phone deterred the coyote. It traced a few steps back. Encouraged, I shone the lights directly in his eyes. The coyote turned around and walked away.

Ha ..Fat fingers to the rescue.

Adrenalin filled; I did not know what to do?

Should I runback which might reduce the fat in my fingers that’s what I started for but then it was the fat fingers that saved me. Decisions..Decisions..Guess being a klutz has its own perks. I ran back to the park entrance and realized this was destiny. After all this was the roadrunner park, I was bound to run into the coyote. Finally they caught up.

Beep bEEp.

Go FIGure

South Mountain is a peaceful spot that has many beautiful peaceful hiking trails and the best part is that it is just couple of minutes away from Tova’s house. Tova or Tovazzie as spelled on her pendant is my window to the Native Indian culture .She lives with her elsi (grandmom) a kind-hearted warm soul. Tova can write many a haiku about her handmade eye arresting silver jewelry ..ohh..so am so J.
As the house is at the base of south mountain, it is also the residence of  a lot of non rent paying occupants that look good only in biology books and nowhere else. Yesterday as we sat on her porch after the hike trying to bring our heart rate down, we  spotted two caterpillars on her porch which reminded me of this one time with my Nanaji (Mother's dad). I am always pushed to do more things by him . His only regret with this philosophy he admits is when I want to talk about those things AND he has to listen about it .With grades in my report card  tipping in the lower scale of Biology, a subject which I never enjoyed ( I am so glad Ma you are the doctor in the family and not me..Biology..Euugghh.), he came up a indigenous plan.He spotted caterpillars in the park  and started asking me all sorts of questions about butterflies (basically let the goblins in my head think that it was my idea to raise a butterfly ). I fell into the trap and picked up the caterpillar carefully on a mango leaf and brought it home.I fed it with spinach leaves  (My driving licence would have stated my height as 5' 7 inches tall had the caterpillar not eaten my share of the spinach).
After 21 days of feeding ,staring,petting,singing,cajoling and lot of praying  and waiting and waiting and waiting for the cocoon to break and a beautiful butterfly to unfold instead  the cocoon yielded a
Black grotesque bug with 11 tentacles and 4 eyes.
My beautiful caterpillar had turned into a monster (I blame spinach)
Some anthropoid’s DNA is just sequenced wrong and they never learn from their mistakes  so when I spotted the caterpillar at Tova’s house I was still tempted to pick and see if this one turned into a butterfly. The goblins in my head resurfaced and I reached for the caterpillar. Before I could begin my journey of discovery, Elsi with her kindest warm heart stepped out and looked at the object of our captive attention . She brushed the caterpillars off the ledge with an air of complete nonchalance.
Tova and I echoed  “What did you do ?”
She shrugged and chimed “Dinner”.
Exasperated we sit on the dinner table. I am pretty sure that if we had housed this caterpillar this would have turned into an amazing butterfly, a rare species whose wings could be used to cure the Ebola virus.
Ah well ! We will never know now. This one’s Elsi’s fault..So close to a breakthrough..
2 min later..Bannock melts in my mouth..all is forgiven!
After all the pharmaceutical industry needs few viruses to make a living.
Live and let die!

Why do I blog?

I love to blog though ironically the frequency of blog posts on this site is may not be the best indicator of my passion. Let me share with you a little secret, I may be pretending to listen to you as I nod and my eyes glaze but if you throw in few buzz words like “Blog”, you have my attention. The word blog makes me focus the lens of my DSLR brain in manual settings and waits patiently to capture what you are saying.  Being on the listening side of the phone for tooooooooo long my sister finally asked me yesterday why do I blog? Hmm… To answer that I need to write a blog. The answer my friends and readers lies wrapped in the following paragraph.
Twenty years and few months back when I was 8 years old and my sister who has seen 365x4 years less of sunlight than me on this planet were tucked blissfully in our room. My sister Sakshi has a different version of the story but since this is my blog let me tell you what “really happened” that afternoon.
We were playing superheroes. We had the bed sheets tied to our necks as capes and we towered high above our bunk beds looking down at the neatly lined teddies and dolls on the floor of our bedroom waiting to be rescued from the evils clutches of the Invisible force.
I wanted to be the first when I saw that a bullet was coming Sakshi’s way and I pushed her only to save her life a heroic act for which I am yet to be thanked. The push resulted in Sakshi flying down from the bunk bed on the floor on all her four’s.
I nervously peered down, her overactive tear glands were ready to open the dam gates in her eyes, her face was a shade of fuchsia and her lips threatened to wake my parents. My parents who had lied down for a nap after a very long week and the only thing they had asked me to do was to take care of my sister and keep her safe. Well that did not go very well. Then at that exact moment my “creative” mind had dibs on the blood flow and I turned to Sakshi and said “Did you see that? You landed as Tinkerbelle. Only Tinkerbelle lands on all fours”. My poor sister had emotions conflicting on her face where she was in a dilemma of whether she should cry wolf which would ultimately lead to some kind of medication (eeyuckkhh) or be proud that she was Tinkerbelle, There was nothing more than Sakshi wanted to be in the world than to be Tinkerbelle. So Sakshi hobbled up with all the grace of Tinkerbelle but with a broken arm and climbed back on bed.

As in the 32 syllable Valmiki’s Ramayana, the Truth had again defeated evil. The truth that I love my sister (and myself) over the evil of being reprimanded for my actions at that moment had won. So I blog so that I can share the beads of wisdom that I have gathered and hopefully inspire you to be evil to your siblings.

PS: Sakshi still secretly adores Tinkerbelle and was overjoyed to see her at Disneyworld Florida, She might not admit to it but that was the only time during the Disney parade when she did not focus on the Turkey Leg in her hand.

FAQ

These are some of the questions, in no particular order that people ask me. So next time when we meet virtually or face to face and both of us are looking at our cellphones and thinking about the next thing to talk, you could take a pick from these questions. I have mastered most (99.99%) of the answers to these questions.So go ahead take your pick.

WHAT DO YOU WANT FOR DINNER?

HAVE YOU EVER CUT YOUR HAIR ?

WHAT TIME IS IT?

DOES MY ASS LOOK FAT IN THESE JEGGINGS?

DO YOU WORSHIP COWS ?

WILL YOU TAKE MY PICTURE ?

HOW DO YOU SAY YOUR LAST NAME ?

WHY IS IT 2 CENTS WHILE GIVING INFORMATION AND A PENNY FOR A THOUGHT. WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH ALL THOSE SAVED PENNY'S ?

CAN I BUY A VOWEL?

ARE WE THERE YET?

IF TRAIN A LEAVES THE STATION GOING 60 MILES PER HOUR AND TRAIN B LEAVES ONE HOUR LATER GOING 85 MILES PER HOUR, HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE TRAIN B TO CATCH UP WITH TRAIN A?

WHO?

WHERE DID YOU GO TO SCHOOL?

HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW? 

Sample Taxonomy of Tax evaders

Wheeling-dealing politicians don’t generally have much time for literature, or even for popular pulp fiction which might be described as litter-ature. But it’s possible that today’s scamsters could take a page or two out of William Shakespeare’s book. Or, more specifically, his book of accounts regarding his commercial dealings.
According to a recent study conducted by a team of literary historians, the Bard of Avon was, measure for measure, one of the most adept tax evaders and blackmarketeers of his times. Describing the patron saint of English literature as a “ruthless businessman who did all he could to avoid taxes, maximize profits at others’ expense and exploit the vulnerable, while also writing plays about their plight to entertain them”, the study narrates how over a 15-year period the poet-playwright amassed a fortune by hoarding and selling food grains at “inflated prices to neighbors and local tradesmen”. Though once prosecuted for his illegal activities, he managed to get himself off the hook and went on to retire in 1613 as the “largest property owner in his hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon”.
The politicians whose pro-common man rhetoric often masks their underhand dealings might find an affinity with the dramatist who duped his audiences by deftly lightening their purses even as he held them spellbound by his verbal virtuosity that convinced everyone that everything was as you like it and that all’s well that ends well.
Indeed, inspired by the study which, unintentionally, draws a parallel between the Elizabethan playwright and those who script the political scenario of 21st century, academics could open up a new line of inquiry as to the real identity of the man known to posterity as William Shakespeare.
From time to time, various attempts have been made to prove that the poems and plays attributed to Shakespeare were actually penned by someone else altogether. The list of surrogate Shakespeares includes the philosopher Francis Bacon and the contemporary dramatist Christopher Marlowe. Bardolators – as Shakespeare fans are called – have pooh-poohed such claims as a tempest in a teacup, and a comedy of errors, if not a midsummer night’s dream
All this squealing but I still have to file my taxes. Sigh!!
Oh No ! Wait I have 4 more days .
Procrastination – Thy name is ....

Thy name

On 8th March, 2013, I became a proud “bua“/Aunt (my cousin gave birth to a really pretty angel) .I popped the question in high pitched excited tone the day she was born “What do we call her  ?" I was asked for suggestions and I did my homework and here are my 2 cents (Rs 4 in INR) :

When Juliet said “What's in a name ? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet." Shakespeare was definitely deluded!!
As I dig through Wikipedia entries, I realize increasingly, parents are giving their children unconventional, made-up names which are not linked to any specific language or cultural tradition and could belong to any part of a cosmopolitan planet. Saddle a little kid with a name like Subharnarekha and likely as not she'll grow up and emigrate to Antarctica, or Adelaide, or Kotakinabalu, where everyone, starting with herself, will call her Subs for short, and also for long.
No, made-up names, which sound good and are easy to pronounce in any language you like, including Esperanto, are definitely a yes-yes, as distinct from a no-no. The name that identifies you should be like your fingerprint: exclusively yours and yours alone, as individualistic and un-interchangeable as you know yourself to be.
A made-up name doesn't carry unnecessary and sometimes inconvenient baggage. A child named after a well-known politician, say, might well be embarrassed in later life to be the namesake of a politician caught out in a major scam or scandal, as well-known politicians seem increasingly likely to be.
History has a way of turning heroes into villains. Unlike an Adolf, or a Stalin, or a Mao, made-up names don't run the risk of one day turning out to be politically incorrect. Free of the burden of history, made-to-order names — or designer names, if you prefer — are not about the past, but about a future which will be as independent and creative as the out-of-the-box-named individual chooses it to be.
Indeed, this business of unusual name-calling could well turn out to be just that: a mega-business, like iPhones or Twitter. Future jobs could include that of the professional name-caller, whom people would consult to devise an original name for them, much like people go to event managers today to devise original theme parties for them.
Lawyers and patent attorneys would also benefit, what with people registering their names under the Copyright and Trade Marks Act. After all, little use going to a name-designer, and paying the person a lot of money, if a couple of weeks later you discover that the person next door has pinched the name you've chosen so that there are now not one but two Ulianilonias, or Zingaloos, or whatever, on the block, whereas by all intellectual property rights there should only be one, your Ulianilonia, or your Zingaloo, or your whatever.
Numerologists will ensure that the name you chose is not only one-of-a-kind but also numerically calculated to bring good fortune to the person who is called by it. However, as in all things, moderation has to be exercised in name-calling. For instance, while Zyxwrut, or Aeiou, might be even uniquer than an Aadhaar number/SSN, as well as being numerologically sound, that they require a contortionist's tongue to pronounce should rule them out.

Some names are just too bizarre to be for real.
For example, what weirdo would end up being called Swati?

Duh!

Why are we sitting in the refrigerator ?

Why are we sitting in the refrigerator ? I asked Chinu (roomate/partners in crime) with one eyebrow lifted at an angle of 40'.
We`re not sitting in the refrigerator; we`re sitting in our living room she replied. This conversation took place during the recent cold wave that swept Scottsdale (Believe it or not Scottsdale actually got snow!!), the app on my phone read the temperature as 50 F making not just the living room but all the rooms of the house feel like the inside of a Ice box.
Teeth chattering in Morse code I marveled at this unique phenomenon of global warming. How had this global warming which was melting the Arctic ice cap and giving polar bears heatstroke all of a sudden become a global colding? What next??? Would they schedule the skiing and ice-skating events of the forthcoming Winter Olympics in the Mojave Desert in mid-July ?
However, environmentalists soon came up with a phrase which explained why the planet was freezing over even as it was heating up; it was an example of what they call Extreme Weather Events (EWEs). Thanks to global warming the Earth would increasingly experience extremes of weather; unusually hot hot waves, unusually cold cold waves.
As we huddled in front of the fireplace , both of us bundled up in woollies, Mili my pet ant (We met during my camping trip and I mused on the wondrous laws of Nature which could turn global warmth into global freeze, all as part of the day`s work and no overtime either. How cool or how globally warm was that. How cool indeed, Mili wiggled in acknowledgment, an icicle forming on the tip of her nose .As we shivered and shuddered in sympathetic unison, it struck me maybe if I go on a virtual expedition on google maps in the warm sunny beaches of Macau the placebo effect might kick in. Google can you please launch FIBRE in Scottsdale sooner, my fantasy for soaking in the sun needs to be supported by sonic speed

Larry and Sergey are you guys listening ??
=)

Call NOW !! 1-800-CHEAT-ME/1-800-BELIEF

CONGRATULATIONS! Your mobile phone number has won GBP 7,500,000! SMS your full bank account details immediately to Mr 420 to receive the money!
Yep.
It's another 'pesky' message. And the peskiest part of it is that it assumes that the recipients of message - you and I - must be idiots to believe in what is so obviously a scam. Who on earth would be so dumb as to send off their bank details to some totally unknown person who, having promised them the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, will clean out the entire contents of their bank accounts? And of course the answer to that question - who on the earth would be so dumb etc? - is:
Plenty of people.
And no, they're not necessarily dumb. They suffer from - or should that be that they are gifted with? - something common to us all, and without which day-to-day life would be impossible:
Hope. All of us live in hope.
 Which is another way of saying that we make ourselves believe what we want to believe. What are the things we want to believe? As children we want to believe in magical kingdoms where the trees are made of chocolate and the rivers of lemonade. As students we want to believe that, after all those hours of study, we'll top our class in the exams. When we get our first jobs, we want to believe that we'll end up being the CEO of the company. We want to believe that our friends like us, that the new diet will help us lose weight, that if we brush our teeth religiously every night we won't have to go to the dentist for root canal treatment. We want to believe in so many things. Most of all we want to believe in belief itself. We want to believe in hope. We don't have much choice. Because if we didn't believe in hope we'd have to believe in its opposite thing; we'd have to believe in despair. And if that happened - if we believed in despair - then life literally wouldn't be worth living.
So, from childhood, we train ourselves to believe in hope, to believe in what we want to believe. That there are indeed fairy godmothers who will make all our dreams come true. That hard work must inevitably lead to success. That in the book we are reading, or the movie we're watching, everything will turn out all right in the end, and that the hero and the heroine will finally be united and live happily ever after. It's called the willing suspension of disbelief . And this is what con men, and crooked brokers, and racketeers of all descriptions, rely on when they take us for a ride (Congratulations! You have won ten gazillion dollars...!) They're not cashing in on our stupidity. They're cashing in on our hopefulness, the human ability to keep on believing what one wants to believe, repeated disappointments and letdowns notwithstanding.
Call it foolish gullibility or the sucker syndrome.
(beep.. beep)
Wait, I just got a text
"Invest today and double your money in three months.
Send your bank account number in a text to 1-800-CHEAT-ME or 1-800-BELIEF."

Mr Bain:Is Rain–boon or bane ?

Of the 15 days I was in Seattle, it rained for 13. Dark clouds gloomier than an economists forecast covered the skies. The locals hated the cold and the wet. Sakshi and I loved it. The locals thought we were mad to prefer rain over shine. Either that or we were high on Starbucks Chai latte (from the first Starbucks store ever ), a surfeit of which might well have hallucinogenic effects.
Our preference for cloudy skies over clear had nothing to do with insanity or Starbucks. It had to do with the grass being greener on the other side. In Scottsdale, we crave for raindrops to hit our car windshield, even though that might spell into multiple unplanned car washes. Seattle on the other hand, is a peacock heaven,the locals wait for shooting stars and wish for sunny days,the slightest glimpse of the sun makes the locals rush in hordes to hard, pebbly beaches where they take off their clothes and turn themselves into human barbecues in a tribal ritual called sunbathing.
Having left phoenix when it was a sweltering 115 F, Sakshi and I didn't miss the sun at all. And we welcomed the rain clouds that kept it away, ensuring that the mercury never went beyond a maximum of a very pleasant  60 F .
Sakshi and I love walking. Equipped with umbrellas which we'd had the foresight to pack in our luggage and thick-soled, puddle-resistant shoes.We walked along the banks of the river for three and half miles where tourists fed bread crumbs to a quackle of ducks. We stumbled upon Anglers, a picturesque café with tables outside .We played scrabble as we munched on our salad .Sakshi was leading the game .All my pleas that “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” is a real word were coolly gulped with lemonade.
With nothing left in my artillery I resorted to the last arrow in my quiver of whimsies .I decided to distract her with cute street dogs that bounced on the street .Ahh well it made her smile but not happy enough to be bad at the game.
Sheesh. I continued to struggle to make triple word scores when the gentle man sitting on the next table spilled his drink .The helpful staff was immediately trying to clean the mess and replace his drink but in the commotion we didn't realize that it had started to rain again and we had to abandon our game (I knew my faith in almighty will pay off some day).
So Seattle with your green grasses ,unplanned showers and yummy lunches, you made me realize , It's not just about walking, or rain, or sunshine. It's about how all of us yearn for that which we don't have. Those who are brown-skinned use Fair & Lovely to whiten their complexions, and those who are white-skinned spend fortunes getting themselves fashionably suntanned. The paparazzi-pursued celebrity seeks the protective cloak of anonymity, while the anonymous hunger for the limelight of fame.
Yes, the grass is always greener on the other side. The credit for greenery goes to rain .Phoenix eat your heart out.
=)

Meeting woes/Me eating s ‘mores

I spent all of last week trying to get hold of a person i needed to speak to about something that needed doing. But no matter what i tried - mobile , landline, email, facebook, twitter - i just couldn't seem to get through to him. By now i was desperate. What should i try next? Courier pigeons? Telepathy? Then, by sheer chance, i bumped into the person, in the mall. Where in the world have you been, i've been desperately trying to get in touch with you, i said. And he replied: Sorry, but i've been frightfully tied up; all these business meetings i've been having to go to, you know.
Arghhh..
Business meetings are what people who are very important in the corporate and professional world go to. And the more such meetings that they have to go to, the more important they become. I'm not sure which came first. Did important people become important as a result of having had to attend all those meetings? Or were they important to begin with, and so had no choice but to go to all those meetings because they were important, and meetings have to have important people in order to be meetings?
It's a chicken-and-egg situation, trying to figure out which came first.
And people who are not just important but very, very important, like Mayawati, for instance, have so many meetings to go to, all at the same time, that they build statues of themselves so that they can be at several meetings simultaneously in moorti avatar.
The other thing about meetings was that they had to be as far away from wherever it was that you normally were. The farther off the meeting you had to attend, the greater was the importance given to it and to you for having to go to it. For instance, if you lived in phoenix and you said you had to go to a meeting in, say, Scottsdale, Tempe, no one in the audience was likely to ask you for a date but drop a hint that the meeting you were going to was in Amsterdam ,Dubai or New Zealand and everyone present would know that you were a big toots and no mistake.
Every time I book a room for a meeting or have to move between building to reach the meeting room I always think why can’t we book beaches or campgrounds where we would all gather around the campfire and make some s ’mores.
Just some more s ’mory food for thought..

MRP

Reading about the FDI in retail in India makes me wonder if actually the advent of the BIG wigs would wipe the small kirana shops in India. There is a 10ft by 5ft kirana shop (with a big curtain as the backdrop) near our house. The owner looks like # 3 in the 6 stage Darwin evolution theory pictures .

In his tiny shop irrespective of what you ask for he has it all and at all times.

(Not that i have ever asked for firearms to verify the completeness of his stock but i still wonder if there is tunnel connected to a supermarket behind that curtain ).

Irrespective of his looks i know running a store can be hard work, as i discovered on my first visit to "Sukriti" boutique, during a trip to Los Angles . It was delivery day and a large van was parked in front of the shop. The driver was unloading goods from the wholesale warehouse and piling them on the pavement. From here, the boxes and crates had to be carried into the store, unpacked, and their contents put on the shelves. While my cousin did the unpacking and shelving, she had hired a couple of college kids to do the heavy work of lugging the boxes into the shop. To help out, i picked up a bag of tissue and carried it in. Assuming that i too had been employed for the chore, the two kids began to pile more and more of the boxes and crates on me: C'mon, don't be so feeble and carry only two of those, take that third

box as well. Under a triple load of silk, cotton , i staggered into the shop under the direction of kids who had promoted themselves from labor to managerial supervisors: Easy now; put it down gently, don't break anything.I was carrying in my fourth — or it might have been fifth load — when Shilpa spotted me from the rear of the shop and came rushing up. She yelled at the kids. She's not the hired help; she's my sister! You're the hired help, said Shilpa. My self-appointed supervisors mumbled apologies, which i brushed aside. Sukriti was a family enterprise, in which all the family pitched in to help. And as a sister , it wasn't just my job but my pleasure to lend a hand. 

Shilpa minded the till and chatted with customers as they came up to pay: How are you today, luv? Got over that nasty cold you had last week, i'm glad to see. And how's your daughter doing at university? Coming down for the holidays, is she then? Good company for you, so nice when the children come home.

This was what Sukriti — and the thousands of such across the country — had to offer which the big supermarket chains didn't: conversation and human contact, no matter how brief. Each customer was a known face, a remembered name. And in an increasingly impersonal society, where anonymity is the norm, this made all the difference.

How do you put a MRP on that. 

=)

A case study:Indian paunch

Objective:To visit the temple.

Achievement:Me and my sister manged to get up early.Like 5 am early.(oooooooo...ahhh...whistles..applause)
Scenario:We are sitting at the back of our car and driving through the parking lot of a temple.
View from our car window:A young couple has come down to get their new car blessed .The priest who was performing the ceremony stood a 5.4’’ ,300 lb whose only clothing was the lungi .He had a lot of body hair (looked like a fur coat) but his head was shaved and was shining bright. In fact for some reason the sun and the surrounding shadows from the trees seemed to make the world map on his head. He had his eye shut and was busy chanting the mantras.
Request made : Our driver honked and requested the priest to move so that he could park next to the new car.(only parking space available after taking multiple rounds looking for one)
Response received:The priest without batting an eyelid (infact with closed eyes) sucked his paunch in and said  "Nikaal lo "(Go ahead)
Reaction:Me and my sister exchanged amused glances (I promise i did not laugh)
Next scene should have been: A growl/comment of exasperation from the driver .
Next scene was: The driver could smoothly steer the car in.
We(Me and my sis) are now fans of :

• Indian paunch.--Our amused expression had turned into awe . The disrespected indian paunch had now taken a whole new dimension.It can serve as a table top and at the same time the owner can take a deep breath and give the illusion of non existence...even to make a car pass without opening one's eyes.
• Indian driving skills-- Countless tales and hymns have been written in appreciation in history..and history has again repeated itself.

 Afterthought:The priest with his paunch sucked in would make a good poster for bikram yoga studio wall. 

Victoria’s secret no longer a secret

For all of those i have not been in touch..let me begin by saying i completed my first 45 days in phoenix today !! So here goes my first entry for 2009 from Phoenix,Arizona.

I have been strongly advised not to venture alone...but alas the nomad in me wins as always..
I stepped out last week ..just ambling around when for all i know i bumped into Rashi my bachpan ka chudi buddi pal who i did not loose in the all time favorite kumbh ka mela but something more monotonous her family moved out of Mumbai..
so we went shopping n took many plunges in the memory pool..some good!!
some better forgotten !!(That’s another story..will elaborate some other day)
She told me she was shopping for a friend who was getting married,so i joined in
We moved around the shopping complex and landed in Victoria secrets..

we got the stuf..et all..now this friend (whom we were shopping for) comes along
named "Hari"..and rashi says heres something for Ishita(his to be wife) the guy blushes pink!!!!(mera wala pink..courtesy..asian paints) eyes pop in and out and he blurts
"nahi"
suppresing a grin we look at him and he says
"chee"
we both smile( I bet he preferred the Alcatraz than his current position )
and we go
"arrey have a look"
he was mortified by the thought that we were going to divulge out
the contents of the packet in public and he will be on the receiving end
the blush turning deep scarlet, out comes a vehement .."no" and turns his face...
boy the pink packet with the label in silver was bad enough for him to see
next we threatened to open it we both smiled(though we wanted to burst out)
Rashi cajoled him,"dekh na"
Rashi takes out the tissue wrapped contents ,slowly unwraps it and out comes a

" a bottle of body lotion"

YEHHHH..
Victoria does sell cosmetics as well and that’s all that was there in that packet...

the guy having his face turned the other side….just not wanting to look but looking
saw it and out came a subtle (heavy on coffee breathe)
"OH"
Followed by a sheepish smile..
Now this was our stage, both me and Rashi were rolling off our chairs..laughing and
the starbucks crew..seemed bewildered but they smiled as if sharing the joke..boy hope they read this blog and can demystify those giggles…

Last night...The guy has tied the knot in india and we hope his better half liked
what we gave her!!!!!!!

:)