New Year Resolutions

It’s that time of the year again when there are only two annoying questions on the tips of most people’s tongues.

Pesky Question # 1 – What are you doing for New Year’s Eve?

Pesky Question # 2 – What are your New Year Resolutions?

Since tomorrow will be the last day of the year, it is a blessed relief to know that as soon as the sun’s ray decide to peep out on January 01, the first exasperating question will be flushed down with the previous night’s spirits and finger foods. Burp!

Which brings us to the second issue, which promises, like a leading telephone service provider, to follow you around, like a faithful puppy. Except in this case, the pug in question turns out to be a maddening greyhound, insisting on leaping at your throat at regular intervals, and causing you to choke and splutter, see red, and purse your lips, lest the foam and froth decide to trickle down your mouth – not a pretty sight at all.

So when your brother’s friend’s aunt’s son’s pal poses the same question to you, as did the fifty-fourth person before him, I can’t blame you for wanting to:

a) bang your head on the nearby white wall
b) ask to be taken to a clinic with white walls, so that your frazzled nerves can be healed under constant medical care
c) kill the person asking the offending person
d) all of the above

There are some people who take the annoyance to new level altogether. To your nonchalant answer that you repeat year after year, and which goes to the tune of, “Oh me? My New Year Resolution is to not make any resolutions,” prepare to be subjected to an incredulous look from the enquirer, who has obviously perfected the look one gives upon being told that the other has just returned from the Himalayas, after a brief stay with a Yeti. Some sympathetic clucks may follow. And unless you are one of those who are adept at running away, be prepared to be assaulted by not a bird’s eye view, but an in-depth, blow by blow, twenty-page report of his resolutions.

After what seems to you like hours, you realize that you have a faraway, glazed look in your eyes, your neck has somewhat of a crick, what with the constant nodding, and what were two feet, feel like they have been anesthetized, or worse – amputated. Your pointed looks at your wrist do nothing to desist the eager resolution-taker-and-speaker from sharing his precious resolutions, and he’s not even half-way through.
Your excuses sound contrived even to you, and you beat that hasty retreat, but not without that dull, ringing sensation whirring constantly in your ears, which you realize, with a shudder, is the aftereffect of that annoyance’s droning.

Tired and more than a tad exasperated, you make your way back home. A relaxed shower, and your mood is already lifting. Thoughts of the evening with that special someone fill your mind, and the edges of your mouth are almost creasing into a smile.

And then it happens. One ring. You pick your phone. It is that nauseating friend from college whom you would rather not speak with, for reasons best left unspoken and unnamed. Maybe it won’t be all that bad – boy! are you optimistic. Sighing, you pick the phone. Just as you feel that the conversation is not steering to irksome topics, bang! It comes.

“Hey, made any New Year Resolutions? You know what I’m gonna do…..?”

No wonder that smile curled up into a sneer!

Birthday Bumps - Lars Ulrich

Co-founder of Metallica, and drummer unparalleled, Lars Ulrich, celebrates his birthday today.

Who would have thought that a budding tennis player, would trade-in his tennis racquet for Tama Drums…

Not that we are complaining;-)

Tennis’ loss is heavy metal’s gain.

So I’ll lissen to his amazing pounding in Enter Sandman yet again, and wish that he bangs many more birthdays.

Happy Birthday…

12 Days of Indian Christmas

Though it’s a little early for Christmas, I couldn’t help but include this hilarious video about this guy’s 12 days of Indian Christmas. He looks like a mix between Elvis the Pelvis, and our very own Rajnikanth.

Go on, laff a while. Especially at the 10-minute yoga and the Lotus. LOL

Merry X'Mas in advance...

The (un)common cold

The common cold is pretty common, say around twice or thrice a year, for most people. That is the time for runny noses, watery eyes, congestion, hoarse voices, and an abundant use of tissues and kerchiefs.

It goes somewhat like this – “Atishoo. “Scuse me. Sniff Sniff. Thank you (when you extend a welcome tissue).”

However, this blog post is not about these regular people, who are assaulted by the twice-a-year-common-cold. This post is about that breed of people who suffer from a perpetual cold, and who go about, sniffing their way through, the entire year round.

They give a whole new perspective to runny noses. Sounds of all kinds escape from their noses, many of which often causing the hearers to give looks alternating between horror and disdain. Sniff sniff sniff – they go at regular intervals, almost akin to a hurt child or a puppy left out in the cold by its inconsiderate master. Their snuffles only get louder, when they realize that they have an audience. That the audience is loathing them, is only incidental. Their sneezes happen at such an alarming regularity that you run out of the "God Bless Yous," alternating them with the "Oh God, not another one pleases."

Slime green seems to their favorite color, what with the occasional uhmmm you-know-what making an odd entry into the ever-open tissue. The very sight of that gooooey phlegm is enough to make even the strongest of men nauseous, and ready to swoon.

Then there is the case of the cough. It starts as a slow, hollow, dry one, like a sheep’s almost, increasing in intensity, till it wipes out all other sounds, leaving the hearer with a pained look on his face, an aching desire to erase the offending sound, and a longing for the monkey cap that one stopped wearing years ago. Even those gaily-colored muffins would have come in handy, if only to hold to your ears.

So there you are, sitting around a table with some people, trying to enjoy your meal. Ha! Easier said than done. The guy sitting right across you has a permanent cold, and insists on sniffling sixteen times in every sentence.

Making you look miserably into your hot and sour soup, and wishing you could drain it all down his throat. Might just help the dratted guy.

Atishoooooooooo. There he goes YET again.

Oh hell. Time for another trip to the washroom – the only place of solace for you.

Run! Run! Unless you are up for another display of the greenish liquid.

Blech!

All right people, Say Cheese

At my brother’s wedding last week, I realized the major role that photographers play. The cheerful lad, upon whom rested the onus of making people look good while getting their pics clicked, lay hidden behind the huge lens, for most part of the wedding. The only words he would mouth at regular intervals were, Say cheese,” which he would use to orchestrate the retinue to all count simultaneously, and utter a perfectly-synchronized “Cheese.”

A random question to my father as to why people say “cheese” while getting snapped, when the alternative “whiskey” would do equally well, and also force the face into a smile, brought about a predictable frown from him.

Hushed temporarily, I couldn’t help but think as to how people, even if they were fighting, would crease their faces into uncharacteristic, bordering-on-fake smiles – and all to get that elusive happy face on that Polaroid.

My mother is an exception to this rule of blinding-smile-while-getting-clicked. She will smile for a picture only if she genuinely feels like. All pleas to her to flash one of them elusive smiles(only during clicking sessions), fall upon deaf ears, and the photographer will be rewarded with a grin, only if he catches her in a good mood. Otherwise, an au naturel look is all that he will get. Besides the polite “Thank you,” that is.

I, on the other hand, am her exact opposite. Every time a camera makes an appearance near me within the vicinity of half a kilometer, my eyes light up and crinkle, and there – all my pearlies are on full display, ready to be immortalized in yet another pic with the exact glazed, happy (but fake) smile, that you can see, in photo upon yet another photo. Shameless I am, when it comes to getting clicked. Some of my goofy smiles have been compared to Garfield's, when he sees a piping-hot plate of lasagna. Burppppp!

Some, like my entire family, believe in a half-smile, showing a few teeth. There are others who consider a full smile, without any display of teeth, their most flattering self. Some like me, believe in going all the way, and flashing brilliant, sunny smiles.

For the rest, there is always the option of the brown paper bag tied tightly around the neck…;-)

Of black cats, cracked mirrors, and Friday the 13...

We call each other perfectly rational beings, pride ourselves on our ability to call a spade a spade, deduce logical conclusions, and banish ignorance as one of the chief evils way into the past, where it rightfully belongs. However, despite all said and done, there are more than a few occasions when many give in to old wives’ tales, folklore, stories about supposed jinxes, hexes, and curses, and then do the unthinkable, sometimes bordering on the plainly absurd.

Like take for instance, the old notion of people going to great lengths to avoid walking / driving, if a black cat chooses to cross their path. Last weekend, I was surprised to see my neighborhood spry ladies huddled together in the park, bringing their evening walk to a standstill. When listening-to-music-me hastened to cross them, I couldn’t help but detect a look of pity on their faces, much to my bewilderment. It was only when a pair of greenish-blue eyes stared out at me from behind a hedge that I understood that I had dared to do what the others had stopped for. I had done the unthinkable – walked, when a feline had chosen to cross the path, and hence the tons of sympathetic looks that came my way. My day – considering that I had spent the most part of the day with my two best friends, I wouldn’t say my day went bad (chuckle).

Back in school, I would scoff each time one of my classmates / friends would burst into recitation, upon seeing magpies / sparrows. Seeing one of these birds was a sure-shot indication of ill-luck, though seeing a pair would often make the schoolgirls breakout into impromptu dances of ecstasy.

While leaving one’s place, if someone calls out to you, it is believed that whatever task you are setting out to do, will remain undone. Pshawwww, I say. However many times my brother would call out my name, I would still have to make my way to the dreaded dentist and his high chair, and return home, teary-eyed, jaws-swollen-with-anesthesia - the only silver lining being the soothing ice-cream that my Mom would lovingly feed me with.

Debt is long considered to be the bane of anyone’s lives. Understandably, there are quite a few superstitions about it. Moving your leg causes you to go into debt, as does rattling keys. Cutting your nails on bed at night is sure to get you robbed, they say. I’ve cut my share of nails, on the bed that too, but fortunately, haven’t ever been robbed. Touch wood. Tee hee.

Ever the sloppy one of the house, I have, on numerous occasions, spilled salt at the dinner table. They tell me now that I ought to have ”undone” the jinx by tossing it over my left shoulder for every time I was slipshod.

It is said that “time heals all wounds.” Some say that it originated from the superstition that breaking a mirror can bring you bad luck for 7 years. A mirror was considered to be the window to the viewer’s soul – if one broke it, it would take those many years for that “cracked” soul to heal.

Walking below a ladder is definitely a “stairway” to damnation. So is stepping on a crack in the sidewalk – something that even Leonardo DiCaprio is reluctant to be “departed” from.

When my Mom was pregnant with yours truly, she was advised not to go outside, lest I would be born with a facial birthmark. Stubborn she however, refused to relent, and did venture out…Some months later, a bonny child made a grand appearance in all her dimpled glory. And no, there was no mark on her face.

It is said that one should refrain from using the same match to light three cigarettes. God knows the reason behind it.

The last one is a classic – eat something green and leafy on New Year’s Day. That will ensure that you never have to worry about paying your bills, and will bring your riches and happiness throughout the year.

Salad, anyone? ;-)