I walk alone... I walk alone

I walk a lonely road

The only one that I have ever known

Don’t know where it goes

But it’s home to me and I walk alone

I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
When the city sleeps
And I’m the only one and I walk alone

These were the lines from Green day (one of my favourite number  ) that were ringing in my mind when I decided to take a stroll on a lazy Sunday evening… errr… no… noon… I don’t know to categorize (it was 3 pm  ) Yes, I felt the entire city was busy in the afternoon nap after a heavy Sunday meal  The noise and the honking was pretty less  I somehow wanted to go for a walk (may be cos of the unusually pleasant weather  ) alone that noon (evening)… There were many scenes that caught my attention and made me to capture it in my blog…

Caution: This is gonna be a long post… I tried my best to reduce it but this was the max, I could do 

Here goes my walk to remember

I left my house and as soon as I stepped out of my street, my ‘walk alone’ concept was challenged by a black dog… It started following me, wagging its tail, its eyes pleading to make it part of my walking chronicles… As you all know my dog-phobia… I tried my best to follow my friends’ and parents’ suggestions (Ignore a dog… Don’t give your attention… Only when you keep noticing it, it will follow )… Trust me, inspite of my heart beat which beat with a huge decibel (am sure it would have been heard out  ), I tried walking without turning back but I knew it was close behind my legs  I kept walking till the end of the street and finally when I made up my mind to turn back, I found that my black friend had got distracted with the food packet, a few paces behind… I smiled to myself, thanked the owner of the food packet and his immense road sense for throwing it near the dust bin (not in the dustbin ) and quickly turned to continue my walk alone…

There was a pretty deserted bus stand and a ‘cobbler’ couple were sitting… They were very old… Definitely 80′s something… They took a break from the work (I observed a needle with a thread near a half torn shoe… so decided the ‘work in progress’ board was applicable here ) and having one of the best moments of their life… The old man opened a small tray, that had a scoop of strawberry ice cream… He took two plastic spoons from a jute bag near him and placed it in the tray… Both were all smiles and started enjoying the ice cream… The vehicles, the shoes near them, the dust… nothing mattered to them… They enjoyed every little moment and the teethless mouth was beaming, time and again, making it more cuter…. seeing that scene, my lips curved a smile involuntarily 

I moved on cautiously , not to disturb their moment of togetherness… There were many shops on to my right… A tea shop was one among them… I found 4 people reading tamil newspapers as they show in movies, 90′s song in the background , the tea-master busy with his well practiced tea-stunts and a boy waiting with tea-glasses… While I was giggling seeing this, a white indica was blaring at me… I moved to my left giving it more way… but still he continued to honk urging me to turn and give him a cold stare… I hopped on to the broken platform, making up my mind not to  get irritated… I continued my stroll, with hopping and jumping through the broken tiles in the platform… Actually, I had fun doing it 

The silence was suddenly overshadowed by the hustle and bustle… I took a turn and entered into that road… Market road…The colorful painted dolls, people with bags, loud bargains gave me a clear signal… Dussehra has begun  So many different colors, the paintings in each of the doll exhibited the intricate art work…A guy was giving a final touch to a ‘Mahatma Gandhi’ doll… The paint was glistening under the mild sunlight (it was a cloudy)… His concentration and passion exhibited was immense… Our ‘Mahatma’ soon joined his companions ‘happy man’, ‘a set of cricketers’ and ‘charlie chaplin’.

This street was crowded and I apologized thrice for dashing the ladies who were busy bargaining and who didn’t even bother to give way to me… I squeezed my way past them… There was a reunion that happened on the other side of the road… A few relatives who had come shopping waved and got near eachother… There were two kids who were the most affected ones by this reunion… Already the two of them were irritated about getting them to shop in their play time… One of the women from the gang pinched the elder kid’s cheek and am sure would have given the usual comments “How big you have become… Do you remember me?” The kid didn’t respond while his parents were continuously giving clues about the ‘new’ aunty… The kid continued to display the language of our Prime minister… muteness  Like the Indian Janata, after repeated attempts, the elders moved on to other topics… Am sure the kid now would have made up his mind to practice the art of muteness as it was useful in times of need  The next attack was on the younger kid… Girls are always a bit more expressive than boys , so was this kid unlike her brother… She smiled… It was the gravest mistake… She had a cadburys diary milk unwrapped in her hand, when she was about to take the first bite, this over affectionate ‘relative’ lifted her in the arms so fiercely that  the kid missed her control over her precious chocolate.. It fell right on the ground… Tears swelled up in her eyes… The crowd had a tough time to minify her tears… While the entire attention was on this girl child, the elder one slowly moved away from the crowd, opened his dairy milk carefully and started relishing it… Muteness zindabad 

At that time I got a call to my mobile…. The display read “Aish calling”… I wondered ‘how can I call to my own mobile’… Stills of Madhavan’s 13B passed through my mind… I attended the call expecting something unusual… “Where are you? Come home soon… Your aunt and uncle are coming home”  My mom’s voice… Ufff ! I had stored the landline number as Aish… I decided to rename it to ‘Home’ to avoid any nervous breakdown in the future and made my walk back to my home 

PS: A picture is worth a 1000 words… Since I didn’t click a pic, I used 1000 words to recapture the picture 

Beauty…Ugly… I am what I am

Lizzie Velasquez… I don’t know how many would have heard the name… She was termed as ‘The world’s ugliest woman’… She was in news few days before, for her book “Be Beautiful, Be you”…The world which once termed her as ‘ugly’ is now all praises for her ‘motivation’, ‘determination’, what not…( We are born politicians you see).

Am not gonna talk about how she became a successful writer, how she battled criticism… media is doing a good job about it… so I’ll leave it to them… My point is how can we term somebody as ‘ugly’.  Doesn’t it show how heartless we are? Her video clip in youtube few years back, received thousands of hits and there were comments like ‘how disgusting she is’ and many more… Nobody among those thousands bothered to pause a second to think how would she feel when she sees this…

If somebody comes and tells me… leave alone looks… even at my dress that it doesn’t look good on you… My immediate reaction would be “If you don’t like, you don’t see… Simple”… But trust me, that day I would atleast look into the mirror a 100 times analyzing whether its really that bad… I would have that comment ringing in my head (though I try to ignore) throughout the day… I guess this would be the case almost with all of us (hope am not abnormal  ) This is the scenario with one person … When the entire world terms you ‘ugly’… OMG!

We always preach and go around acting goody goody saying “We don’t believe in looks… A person who is good at heart is actually beautiful…” bla bla bla… But do we follow what we preach?

When we see somebody who is fat… we immediately term that person as a big “foodie” even if the person hardly eats… we crack silly jokes seeing their appearance and get away by saying ‘Be a sport… Why do you always take everything seriously’  Same applies to somebody with thick framed glass… We call the person ‘nerd’, ‘soda buddi’ (hey don’t ask me to translate it in english  ) irrespective of whether he/she has some medical problems… May be after moving with them for a while, we might turn into that ‘goody goody’ lot again but its not the case when we see them first…

‘Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder’… Oh yeah… Really? Then we must have people being taken to eye clinics for terming somebody ‘ugly’… It is the problem with their eyes and not with us…But its not the case… we immediately rush to beauty creams, 15 ways to to become beautiful in 15 days,… Uffff… what not! We struggle to ‘look beautiful’ rather than to ‘be beautiful’.

So ultimately what am I trying to convey through this post… Errrr… I don’t know… I felt so angry reading that article about Lizzie and immediately wanted to vent it out somehow and my blog came to my rescue as always 

‘Brand’-ucts- Our Desi Way

I had gone to my cousin’s place and when it was time for some evening snack, my aunt promptly came to us and asked “Do you like to have Maggi ?” We still had that usual ‘Indian Kid’ feel in us that makes us get excited at the mention of Maggi  So when finally we were called to eat it… The first few strands made me realise its actually not ‘Maggi‘… Its some other noodles (I guess Yippee or Top Ramen… Not sure  )

Certain brands that are first of their kind and been in market for long, have become the identity of products on their own… ‘Maggi’ has become a generic term… which is equivalent to noodles here. ‘Am making Maggi‘ refers to ‘Am making noodles’…

‘Cornflakes for breakfast’ doesn’t sound as good as ‘Kellog’s for breakfast’  Yes, kellog’s has by far been the famous Shhhtylishh desified breakfast 

I had gone to a hotel and a lady in the table next to me asked the waiter ‘Is it Bisleri?’ pointing towards the glass of water that he placed on the table… He mumbled an yes and left the place… The ‘Bisleri’ in this context refers to ‘Mineral water’ and not the brand ‘Bisleri’.

My mom still asks me to check whether the clothes are soaked in ‘surf’ water… ‘Surf’ is a synonym of ‘Soap powder’ regardless of whether you use the one that a lady in a stiff cotton white saree suggests to other ladies who would look like they have lost 5 kgs cos of brushing clothes or the one that puts a dhobi to shock with its extra white promise  Choice is yours… But all come under the generic term ‘Surf’ 

And we know only one medicine for fever from ages… Yes ‘Crocin’ … You tell you have fever to anybody… You will get an immediate reply “Put crocin and sleep”. Dare not ask back whether Will it not be ok if I have any other paracetamol… It will be misunderstood as passing a sarcastic comment at them  Yeah… I have tried it  We are a bunch of sensitive lot you see 

Baby soap is never only baby soap… Its ‘Johson’s baby soap’ always  And Jam is never only jam… Its Kissan jam 

If you go to a shop and say ‘I want petroleum jelly’… Am sure he’ll say ‘We don’t sell it in our shop’ and don’t be surprised if he asks you to find it out in the nearby petrol bunk   Instead if you ask ‘Can I have Vaseline‘… He’ll surely hand over it to you and will also suggest equivalent to ‘vaseline’ (not petroleum jelly) 

Few years (not few…many ) years back… ‘suzuki’ referred to bike and ‘maruthi‘ referred to car…Any japanese who visited India at that time would have remarked ‘Ureshiii !!! Waell daone muay buoy’ (Pronunce properly… ‘buoy’… I know it rings a bell…Yeah.. ZNMD  ) and bowed at us 

These brands have become products on their own which I term as ‘Brand’-ucts… I don’t know whether its cos they have been in the market for ages, or as they are very popular or cos they are the first of their kind…

These names are no longer proper nouns atleast for we Indians  This kind of substituting products with brand names are an unique attribute of our language . And if this is used with people outside India they give a    expression… But trust me after a month’s stay here, my cousin asks for ‘Maggi’ instead of noodles and ‘Kellog’s’ for cereals in Atlanta… Such is the influence 

May be this is also a part of our act of ‘desifying’  Though the brands may be foreign ones, the way we use it makes it a pakka Desi product 

I stop it right here… As the time has come for me to go to pantry and say “Anna… One maggi ” and he’ll promptly open a packet of Yippee noodles and say 2 minutes… It will be ready