TALENTLESS

Let’s begin with some happy news; my bhai is getting married. After having badgered him no end into getting married, my efforts of the last 5-6 years have finally paid off. No one will be more excited than I am. There’s just one small problem.

The shaadi (shady business this, as MS word would tell you, or ‘shads’ as my little cousins will call it!) demands that we put up an elaborate song-and-dance performance. And why shouldn’t we* sing and dance, when all we’ve* done well as a nation is this? Supreme Court judges have waited to pass their judgement under the Indian Penal Code dafaa teen-so-do (302 for the uninitiated), armies from the other side of the border have waited to start a war, the Rain Gods have waited to provide just the right climax; they have all waited. Waited for a song-and-dance to either get over so that they can resume their business, or waited for just the right moment to jump in and be a part of the fun-and-frolic.

In fact, the song-and-dance sequences of Bollywood movies are one of three things that my firang class-mates know about India, arranged marriages and cows-on-roads being the other two.

(*the author would like to exclude herself from the ‘we’, but in order to uphold the sense of belonging, ‘we’ has not been replaced by ‘they’.)

Where was I? Yes, the ‘shads’! I do realize that my writing it as that is as annoying as people calling a Vikram, Viks, a Golu, Gols, and a Bhuru, Bhurs! But it is way better than “mah kollin it Shadezzzz”, you have to hand me that!

SMS-lingo, as it is popularly known (or was known when I was a kid, now I guess it’s just normal lingo) was introduced to ensure we can fit all our thoughts and opinions and emotions in 760 characters, or else pay an extra 1 paisa. Noble idea! I’ve saved many a paisa (and then bought Fata-fat with them) by saying “luv u” (I wasn’t stingy enough to say ILU) to many boys. (OK, I accept I’m a loser, just two boys! One boy! Hey, why are you sniggering? My brother is a boy!) But today’s kids have taken the lingo to a whole new level; maybe they are not as stingy as we used to be. They feel a need to add more characters than necessary to make up for the loss of characters in some words. Lil wndr mah cuzn doznt lyk mah ritin wayzzzz! (“Little wonder my cousin doesn’t like my writing ways”, for those who didn’t get it; though I think I’m the only one who didn’t!) Not that I don’t use the lingo myself. In a desperate attempt to stay young, you can see me dropping off a scrap or two in my brothers’ Orkut scrapbooks that read something like this, “Wazzzaaa??!!” I never quite knew what that meant, don’t think I ever will! But since every eighth-grader uses it, I believe it will work better than Pond’s Age-defying complex in helping me stay younger and hipper!

I began writing this with the hope that I’d be able to get some sympathy from fellow two-left-feet’s as my lack of talent in singing-and-dancing is giving me the jitters, because singing-and-dancing is something that should, and does, come naturally to every Indian girl. But I’ve rambled on about inconsequential matters. (Not that my lack of talent in the singing-and-dancing department is a very important matter.) And instead of getting a kind word of sympathy, all I’ll get are a couple of hate-mails and one death-threat. And that is the best case scenario! I say best because I believe, with all the confidence that education has instilled in me (Duffer! 2.5/15 in the first test! 1.5/15 in the second!), that no more than 1 person will read this post! (Hey! You’re sniggering again! I am a person!)

I was thinking of changing the title of this post, but I think I will not! Because after reading this post everyone (or one, as I suspect) will think of me as just that, TALENT-LESS! “Saala likhne ka talent nahi fir bhi blogger banne chale hai! Loser! Talent-less! Bad at singing-dancing, bad at writing, I bet you are ugly that’s why you are on the other side of the computer screen; tum bechari se shads kon karega?!” Ahhhh! Sympathy! I got what I wanted! Now I’m out of here!

The Wind Beneath My Wings, Belated Happy Birthday Bhatia, and other stories!

The Wind beneath My Wings

Came back from a week long trip to Pennsylvania, and boy am I in love! I thought Massachusetts/New England was pretty, but Pennsylvania was awesome.

Loads of fun stuff happened, but the “high point” of the trip was sky-diving! I can go on and on trying to put into words how I felt, but this is one thing that is to be experienced, not written or read about. There are a few important lessons I have learnt though, and will keep in mind next time I jump from a plane 10,000 feet above the ground.

1. The quality of the video of the dive is inversely proportional to how well you feel after the dive. The more nauseated you feel after the dive, the better (more Bond-ish/Bourne-ish) you look in the videos and the pics.
2. Start working out a few months before your actual dive, and try to build some muscles. There should be no loose flesh whatsoever on any exposed parts of your body. The extremely high speed is sure to play clay-modeling with your flesh. Now we don’t want to scare our parents by looking like Elastic-man in the videos, do we?
3. In case you can’t develop muscles by then, be well-covered.
4. When attempting to give flying kisses during free-fall, be prepared to give kisses emanating from the nose and the fore-head instead of the lips. Similarly, don’t be surprised if when attempting to give a thumbs-up to the videographer in front of you, one of the thumbs-up is received by the aunty sitting at the window seat of the Boeing 747 flying past you toward your right, and the other by the bird flying below you that just happens to look up toward the heavens.
5. Smile! You’re on candid camera! It is a little difficult to pull-off, considering you are thrown off a plane from 10, 000 feet, but it’s worth trying. You’ll have the pictures for life baba.
6. Enjoy the experience to the max. In spite of all the little bloopers (we have many, amongst the 14 of us who took the “plunge”), the experience is unbelievable! You might not look like a Lara Croft and the pimples adorning your fore-head might be the high-light of every pic, but nobody can take away from you the experience of falling freely, of flying!

*Yeah I’m freeeeeeeeeee….Free falling!!*

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Belated Happy Birthday, Bhatia

It was Bhatia’s birthday on Friday, and since I wasn’t around, I couldn’t write an “ode to Bhatia”. Sorry baba An extra-special ode to you next year! *uummuuuaaah*

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Other stories

There are no other stories, fortunately!