Friday, February 16, 2007

On buying phones and getting married

In the old days of my innocence I used to imagine that getting married was a very simple thing, the next natural step in the progression of life. You study really hard, get the degree of your dreams, then get into the job of your dreams.....wow life's really beautiful and God loves you so much. What next? Maybe in the middle of all this work and partying and travelling you'll meet some nice interesting guy who will be nice enough and interesting enough to make friends with. With time it'll grow into a wonderful close relationship and you''ll both feel that this team is good enough to be launched officially onto the world. There will some sort of ceremony and then the partying will continue , now in the company of this great creature . As a bonus, you get another family to love and be loved in turn.

Welcome to the real world. With the world's population touching seven billion, and about half of being in possession of the XY chromosome and at least maybe a tenth of it being of eligible bachelorhood...things still look rather bleak. That wonderful lovable creature that God meant you to have seems to be as well hidden as hay in a haystack. You travel the length of the country , you meet and make friends with some really great people, and meet and deal with quite a few creeps too in the process.....but that what you expected to happen doesnt seem to happen at all. Then your well meaning parents organise this project MARRY MANU .They follow the set guidelines for the project - put matrimonials in the newspaper and on the net and collect and compile the results in a highly organised manner. The trouble with this technique is that it makes you feel like a car that needs to be sold....plus it makes you feel like such a loser -"God, I'm so boring I couldn't find someone in real life, need help from the virtual world!"

Phew! Other than who to marry, the other thing that is occupying my energy and time is which phone to buy to replace my old fuddy duddy model. And I confess that the latter decision is the one I'm actually working hard for. Because contrary to whatever you might have believed, buying a phone is as important a life event as any. So now Nokia India can actually employ me to write reviews for all their latest models. I've spent maybe 20 woman hrs on researching their phone models. I can now categorise them quite comprehensively based on looks, features, camera quality, music quality, prices et al. Today when I went to the Nokia outlet the salesman had his eyes popping out of their sockets at the stuff I knew and the stuff I wanted to know.
So today when my mother came to me and said , come let me show you some more of the guys we've shortlisted, I said, I'll show you something a lot more cheerful. Let me show the two phones that I've finally got to decide between and tell me which one you like better!

On skydivers


February 5, 2007
5.45pm
Five days ago I had no clue that such people existed. Today I suffer from acute skydiver deficiency. Were they here really? Or did I dream them up out of my monotonous daily existence? I should write about it before it fades away into my imagination and I can no longer separate fact from remembrance. And it WILL fade away. It always does. So it needs and deserves to be preserved some where out of my head. So here's my Pensieve:


DAY 1. January 30. Tuesday Evening. Sudden Panic. 04 in no. army officers have arrived at the mess. And they absolutely hate our mess (who wouldn't? but that's part of some other pensieve). The utterly absent mess secretary that I am, I had no idea whatsoever that such an arrival was expected. The first I heard of it was when I was asked whether Comdt Sidhu's cabin could be given to these snooty, used-to-living-in-style devils. Of course it can be given. Why else did that poor old man spend so much money on his cabin dressing it up and then go away on compassionate leave? The mess driveway was strewn with luggage - a veritable mountain of suitcases and rucksacks when I returned from the gym to give Sidhu sir's cabin keys. And two beautiful creatures (I had a near-instant crush on both) were guarding the mountain. My memory was rather fuddled up so I couldn't remember which of the four these two had been, so I asked them later. On day 5.This was Maj R.D. Singh and Maj Sarvesh Dadhwal. I expressed my sorrow at not being able to provide more suitable accommodation and they assured me that they'd survive. What an army officer would feel, on being so suddenly exposed to the coast guard way of life - the confusion and the misery and the disbelief that they were feeling - it's all forgivable I think. I went back to resume my 20 minutes on the treadmill and it was only later that I bothered to find out why these creatures had descended on us. Turned out that there were 04 of them- one colonel, two majors and one captain. They were a skydiving team and they were going to perform as part of the mela celebrations. I was mildly impressed but I had no idea that less than a week later I would be writing about them!!


DAY 2. January 31. Usual Day. Still unaware that my life is about to change.



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