31 January 2006

Beyond these four walls...

...are these trees. Night after night, I have stared out my window to have these trees staring back at me. We share a good bond, these trees and I.
We've shared many sleepless nights together, and they listen into all my phone conversations, they've listened to every music I put on (which varies widely - from System of a Down to Don Williams depending on my mood) without complaint (but I have a feeling they prefer Country to Hard Rock) and they've probably seen me cry too. And that's why I'm putting up their picture, they deserve a place here.

30 January 2006

And on the streets

This is probably not a very nice thing to do, but I just have to post this picture here. We were in Carrots, Lifestyle the other night having dinner. It was a fabulous meal, and I had a lovely time, the kind that makes you feel the world is good and life is fair and worth living...then we stepped out and almost stumbled on these kids sleeping on the sidewalk right outside the restaurant!



I would be lying if I said that my heart goes out to all the homeless people I see everyday, but seeing those two kids sleeping all curled up against each other that night really made me feel like there's something I'm not doing quite right and it made me feel guilty for the food I'd just eaten, and the music albums I'd just bought. And the only thing I did was take this picture....

Uncle-ji


He gets my first smile of the day everyday, here's my favorite person in my whole apartment building - our gate-keeper! He's kinda old to be doing something like this, I don't think he'd be much of a 'keeper' if some real 'keeping the gate' job came up. But I like him best in this whole building. I often leave the house feeling cranky as hell, sour at the world after a night of restless sleep and bad dreams, and he'd be there smiling his toothless smile, his whole face crinkling up, raise his hands in a 'Namaste' and say just that.."Namaste, Ma". I don't know if that's a regular thing here but I always find it kind of amusing that he should be calling me 'Ma'(mother). But he is one person who makes me feel I 'belong', and he always makes my day!

The Bakery

Yep, where I bake my bread and churn my butter!

Me & Anu at work

One of the healthiest places on earth to be for me, one of the very few places where I don't feel useless.

Me & the noisy guy next door- Bennet!

28 January 2006

159 days in Hyderabad - minus some

Well, today is my 5th month+6th day in Hyderabad. And it has felt just that - like 5 months and 6 days. Work's good, health's good, the family's good, friends are good, dreams are still dreamt, sunscreen still screens. Everything's pretty much in order.
Update:
1. I'm bored.
2. I'm pretty bored.
3. I've found out one of the most annoying thing a mentally
sound human being can do is be 35 but act 10. Wrinkles
and tantrums just don't go well together.
4. I'm bored but I'll survive.
5. It bugs the hell out of me when a grown man of 35 puts on a
little boy's sulky voice, complete with the whole pouting
business just because you can't join him for dinner.
6. Still bored.
7. If boredom was a virtue, I'd be canonized this very hour.
8. Do you canonize people when they're still alive, or does
canonization require the lucky person to die first?
9. I still can't decide what would be more preferable - to be
just plain ugly or to be pretty ugly...
10. Darn! Just found out I gotta be beatified first before I can
be canonized.
~ just remembered - there's a way to 'get cannonised' without having to die. I'm gonna join the circus! You see it on TV all the time, people being cannonised alive and walking away hale and hearty, and very much alive to lap up the applause. And I'm sure that's something that'll make my family proud, I can just see it - people asking my mother - "What's Jerusha doing these days?", and my mom, voice quivering with pride - "Oh, she's extremely busy, she's being cannonised all over the country, you see!" and people going 'Oooh' and 'Aaah'! I better start polishing my halo now...

Mesmerized ~

Person-with-the-mesmerizing-eyes is leaving Hyderabad. It's not like person-with-the-mesmerizing-eyes was ever an important part of my life, but the person did mesmerize me. And for no particular reason at all, I find myself dreading person-with-the-mesmerizing-eyes' departure and absence to follow. And I surprised myself by being rather too deeply saddened by the thought of never seeing person-with-the-mesmerizing-eyes again. However, life goes on, with or without mesmerizing eyes around to mesmerize you. And if you look hard enough, every pair of eye has the power to mesmerize, given the right settings - the right lighting, the right angle, the right words, the right food, the right clothes and most importantly, the right drinks. Still, person-with-the-mesmerizing-eyes' eyes are especially more mesmerizing than the rest of us normal folks' and that too without the above-mentioned criteria for eyes to mesmerize a person's senses. And you can't deny person-with-the-mesmerizing-eyes' hug was as mesmerising as the person's eyes. At least, I can't.(might as well start singing Erin Go Bragh :))

27 January 2006

Fun Things to do in Hyderabad...

Hmmm let's see, I'm really not an expert on that, but here's what I do - go vent all your pent-up frustration at the shooting range at Runway 9.
Or better yet, go go-karting!
SMASH something, burn some tire...
Then there's the Imax theatre, Scary House is fun!
But in the end, you still end up feeling pretty empty, no matter what you do. So maybe we might all be better off if we just go traipsing around the world, join a bunch of wandering minstrels(now this sounds absolutely fun, but I wonder if you'd find wandering minstrels nowadays, they're all in Bangalore looking for a job), or join an ashram instead and strive to achieve a higher state of consciousness, where weekends and overtimes and bonuses won't matter anymore.

23 January 2006

And we call it 'eve-teasing'!!!!

Too nice an euphemism for so crude a behavior! I'm so furious my hands are still shaking! Getting home tonight, I'd just gotten out of the car and was standing on the roadside waiting for the traffic to clear up a bit so I could cross the road, rummaging inside my bag looking for my keys when I felt a hand on my behind, and not just lightly too, but in a highly vulgar and obscene way, all women who have been 'eve-teased'..you know what I mean. My initial response was shock, I didn't do anything, just turned around and looked at the person who had touched me, and he gave me an insolent, leery smile and calmly strolled past me, his friends snickering loudly! The only thing I wanted at that moment was to see that person die, but I still stood motionless, I was too shaken. And there were a group of men standing nearby who saw what this monster did, but nobody did anything. I looked at them helplessly, and they all stared back with cold, unfeeling eyes, that was when the tears came. I walked the rest of the way home crying, tears streaming down my face, I didn't even bother to wipe them, didn't care who saw me and what they might think. I was just so disgusted with the people here. I felt violated, humilated..and alone. If anyone had dared to do something like this back home in Mizoram, I could've turned to anyone, a passer-by, an onlooker... and rest assured, the guilty person would surely get a good thrashing. How were these people brought up that they can possibly think they can just go grab someone's body part just because they feel like it? What kind of parents gave birth to and raised such barbarians? What kind of values were instilled in them?? People say a lot of things - education, legalisation of porn, they blame it on testosterone, they blame it on the women... I say it's none of these things, I have known uneducated people with the warmest hearts and the strongest moral values and all the basic life-ethics in place. Even the most illiterate of men, if he is human being at all, must know enough to realise that such an act is perverse and outrageous and sooo not right. You have to be a woman to know what it feels like to have a stranger touch you like that, it feels dirty and gross and ..mostly just DIRTY! It is at times like these that I don't feel grown-up, and I can't handle things so well on my own and I want my mother and my friends and long for the cleanliness and goodness of the people back home.
I know many women face the same problem everyday, it's kind of disappointing to see how no 'real effort' has ever been taken to stop sexual harassment, given the prevalence and the extent to which it often goes. Surprisingly -
In Indian criminal law, sexual harassment of women has not been enunciated as a juridical category of crime. It was only in 1997 that, in the realm of juridical interpretation, the object sexual harassment of working women was named and defined (See Vishakha and Anrs v. Union Of India 1997).

This does not imply that there are no related laws in the Indian Penal Code (IPC) that may be evoked when a woman is sexually harassed. However, these related laws are framed as offences that either amount to obscenity in public or acts that are seen to violate the modesty of women under sections 294,1 3542 and 5093 of the IPC.
http://www.india-seminar.com/2001/505/505%20pratiksha%20baxi.htm

I wonder if I could get that bastard punished by law, his 'action' did certainly violate my modesty.
(And for those who might be wondering - No, I was NOT wearing anything revealing or provocative. It was a bit chilly and I had a shawl wrapped around me, literally covered from head to toe, the only visible parts of my body being my face, parts of my feet which my open-toed shoes didn't cover, and my hands. It was around 8:30 P.M, and the streets were still busy. NOT THAT IT MATTERS!)

Runway 9



Me and Akshay at Runway 9. As you can see, Akshay is clumsy on wheels and needed my help staying up!

Want a Translation? You Got it!

Everyone's been asking me for an English translation of the Gospel Master Laiking Fashion Show post, so here it is-
A friend of mine emcee'd a gospel rock show for well, lizards (Laiking=Lizard). Most lizards came dressed appropriately, you know, long flowing robes, leather sandals and the like, a lot of them in the latest trend - an ensemble that's supposed to resemble Joseph's multi-colored robe. But it has been reported that some wayward teenaged lizards were seen flashing a little too much skin, or should I say, scales, much to the annoyance of the older crowd present. Herod, General Secretary, United Lizards of the Wall, commented (may I add, with a very pharisaic tone)"The entire generation of the new-age lizards have discarded the holy laws of their ancestors, and dare to turn even a sacred event such as this into a mere fashion show where one cannot make 'scale nor tail' of this rowdy bunch!"

18 January 2006

The Sky is Falling!





"I saw it with my eyes, I heard it with my ears, and a bit of it fell on my head" - Chicken Little

16 January 2006

Gospel Master Laiking Fashion Show

Mawngho, ka blog in lo en hian pawngpaw melh ringawt lo khan a hmingin comment chhete te chu lo dah ve thin ta che u, a har loh hi aw, 'comment' tih kha click ula a dang zawng kha chu in hre ve tawh em em ang chu maw. Mawl hi bansan rawh u@

14 January 2006

Squirrel with a mohawk

I saw one the other night! Don't believe me but I swear I did, as plainly as I see this computer now. Thought maybe it was a sign, an omen of something to come, tried to divine some meaning from it, but I was left stumped, divination is one of the few talents I've always lacked :), maybe someone out there will know what kind of times lie ahead and what we should expect when squirrels start sporting grand mohawks!

06 January 2006

2006 ... Finally!




Back! And I still feel, well, Christmassy..by the way, that's a picture of me showing off my new shoes..more later