It’s Raining Mess,Hallelujah

It is that time of the year, when finally our country has a chance to sanitise itself with annual showers! Considering how filthy our roads and any other land, which doesn’t bear the burden of dusty buildings, are, I think we should have rains all year long. That way, atleast a minute part of the vast amount of dirt accumulated over half a century on our part of the earth is washed away.

On second thoughts, I don’t think we should have rains AT ALL. Because, when it rains in Bombay, it doesn’t pour, it just floods! Trains refuse to run, it becomes a Herculean task just to get to office for some people and when they do accomplish this mission impossible they are left stranded and hungry, news channels at last find a way to air something useful ,weather reports (not the saucy weather girls, we don’t even have them anymore), irritating devils masquerading as children swarm the building halls since they can’t go out and make life hell for others, newspapers arrive at your doorstep shredded in bits and pieces and that too DRENCHED, clothes left out to drip dry don’t dry they just keep dripping and make you smell like it’s you who hasn’t showered since you were 10 and a special and honorable mention again to our only lifeline, TRAINS, local trains don’t need rains to stop functioning, they just need clouds enough to block the sunlight to go on a sabbatical.

Phew! I think I have cribbed enough about the rains considering many are delighted with them falling on our HEADS. I shall sign out before my laptop dies on me, as it hasn’t been refueled because the lights went out and no points for guessing why the lights are out.

Cracked!

The fateful day of 2nd June saw me fall prey to the one of many things that makes Bombay (I refuse to call it Mumbai) infamous. Potholes! (BMC, are you listening……err……reading…err….god damn! How are we supposed to get through to these guys?) Anyways, so while on my way to a job interview I twisted my leg while walking because I almost tripped on a goddamn pothole in the goddamn Dadar! However, being a smart lady that I am *Smiling proudly like a monkey*, I managed to not fall over the mangy dog nestling right next to the goddamn pothole and was surprised to find that my foot didn’t hurt even a bit. At this point, I am thinking to myself, “Wow, I am strong” and breaking into the same monkey smile and scaring away some of the kids on the roadside.

And so I trudged along and fared quite well in the interview feeling good about the nice day I had just spent, completely unaware of the peril awaiting me in the afternoon. I went for a delicious lunch of chicken biryani and sat with my legs folded in the hotel to savour the delicious delicacy. After I had swallowed the last morsel of the lunch and paid the bill (or should I be cool and say “check”?), I realised I could not put my foot back in my chappal! It had swollen to twice its size and would send shots of pain up and down the whole foot even if the air rustled around it.

Scenario: I am in Kurla at this moment and I live in Ulhasnagar, which is 1 and a half hour away and to add insult to injury (literally) my rest of the family is out of town and not expected back till night, so no chance of dear daddy and Swift coming to the rescue.

What happened next and how I got home must go down as miracle in the Pepsi Book of World Miracles, wherein I would like to thank only and only Hari who took upon my burden on himself (and I am not talking metaphorically here) and brought me home safe and sound.

Currently, I am sitting home and since this supposed sprain has turned out to be a hairline fracture, I will LITERALLY be sitting home for the coming 10 days.

The Bluest Eye.

Toni Morrison’s books have been endorsed and especially preferred by the Oprah all these years for, what I can comprehend till now to be, only one reason. Toni Morrison strives to bring out the plight of black people in America or just black people in general. All her novels vividly bring out the REAL, and not what is perceived by others, life of black people.

The Bluest Eye, as expected, is based on the same lines as Toni’s other novels.

The novel’s protagonist Pecola Breedlove, an ugly black girl coming from poverty stricken, shattered beyond repair black family harbours a wish to get blue eyes which are stereotyped as the eyes of beautiful girls. Pecola having been ignored all her life and jeered at by others for being ugly wants to get blue eyes to turn what she believes to be beautiful.

The book is broken into parts and the narrative takes on views of different people at different times. It brings out the intra caste racism prevailing in the black society at the time of Depression in America. Digging deep into the history of Breedlove’s family Toni Morrison dishes out the much talked about black people’s life in America in a succinct and heart rending manner.

However, the bluest eye goes beyond talking about black people and the ordeal that is their life. It delves in critical problems of how people have stereotyped ‘a beautiful girl’ and how anyone who doesn’t fit this image is subjected to jeers and made to feel ugly and how it can devastate a fragile life of 12 year old.

An excellently worded book, The Bluest Eye, will be a pleasant read for book lovers. Every reader would learn something new, something different and something worthwhile.

As for me, I would read it again to find something I missed the first time.

The Strand Book Festival

The front page of Wednesday’s HT was adorned with a mediocre ad proclaiming the return of the Strand Book Festival with their standard “up to 80% off” at Sunderbai Hall, near Churchgate Station.

Even though I am an Advertising student and should’ve seen the catch in the phrase “up to 80% off”, I willingly turned a blind eye to the deceiving line due to my undying love of reading and decided to finally catch this time’s book “sale” and actually buy some respectable and readable and worthy books for myself, rather than borrowing them from unsuspecting classmates and friends and forgetting to return them until threatened for my life.

Finally, I got hold of a friend and planned to travel all the way to Churchgate to check out the book sale.

After crisp instructions in English from a paanwalla to find the aforementioned hall and 2 minutes walk, we finally reached the book festival which was nothing but a huge room that reminded me of Hogwarts’ Great Hall with 6 very long tables crumbling under the pressure of tonnes of books (new) dumped on them. But the almost haphazard display of books didn’t prove to be much hindrance and the available of plethora of titles made me forget the fact that just to find one books of Toni Morrison took me close to 2 hours of browsing.

The long tables though divided into some sections don’t really help. But if you have the time and the passion to look for that book you want, a keen eye and diligent digging will prove to be fruitful and if you are an ardent book lover it is a treat to browse through thousands of titles and you never know when you may hit upon an interesting book.

From Leo Tolstoy to Salman Rushdie, The Kite Runner to Lesbian Erotica, Jane Eyre to The Ultimate Break-up Guide, the sale had all the titles you could ask for, well almost all, because I didn’t find the three books that were the ultimate inspiration behind me visiting this sale. Not to mention various Indian authors and I even chanced upon a book on Amitabh Bachchan “The making of a superstar” or something on those lines. All of this at discounted prices!!!

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (Leather Bound) available at mere Rs 200.

Few more from titles/authors I saw:
Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.
Bill Bryson books.
PG Wodehouse
Unpublished work of Ayn Rand
Salman Rushdie books
William Dalrymple
Charles Dickens books
Ruskin Bond books
And loads of other ones.

A must visit for anyone who loves books. Make sure you have plenty time to spare and don’t expect to get 80% off on all the books but you will sure find classics at mere Rs. 200 or so.

I plan to pay a second visit to see if they will really add new titles everyday as the ad proclaims and maybe buy some books too this time.

Lesson from Leno

An excerpt from “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno”:
Scene: Jay is interviewing Brandon Azziz who they allegedly call an Iraqi actor acting as a double of Osama Bin Laden in the tapes released by Al- Queada.
(I don’t remember most of the interview but the ending has been etched in my brain)

Jay: So, Brandon who gave you this idea to pretend to be the leader?
Brandon: Why? George W Bush, of course!!

Now I know most of you have a feeling where I am headed with this information. Yes, I am wondering if Shekhar Suman or any other host on any show had ever done this and said something even minutely degrading about Man Mohan Singh or better yet, about some BJP leader, what would have happened.

This is what would have happened: Shekhar Suman and the show writers would have been castrated. A curfew would have been called in whole of Maharashtra. The channel would have been banned forever.

I am pretty much certain this is exactly what would have happened. Most of the Indian politicians are a bunch of intolerant good-for-nothings. Yes, face it! We Indians have the lowest threshold for tolerance; the level drops even further down with politicians. Their levels of insecurity are sky high. They won’t get a joke if it bumped into them on the road and smacked them in the face.

And the root cause of all this is Unemployment!

Yes, since the unemployment rates in our country are higher than the Eiffel Towers people have nothing to do. So they resort to inventing problems out of thin air. Any comment on anyone is taken as an offence which is answered by a PIL. So much so, that all the “comedy” based shows and other mediums in our country have therefore now refrained from endorsing and expressing any opinions, good or bad, about anyone who is even remotely related to any politician or has strong political opinions, which has in turn ruined and degraded the element of humour in those shows.

Forget politics, now they can’t joke about anything lest someone would be offended. Humour writers have to live by certain rules in India and hence our comedy shows have lost their charm. I think it’s about time our writers went on a strike and gave the entertainment business a stroke here.

Customer Service On My Fingertips.

One of HP’s sleek and chic notebooks found its way in my humble life just as 2007 was to have its farewell. As it happens with all the electronic devices that my dad buys me even this black beauty, as fragile as it is, had to be subjected to gruelling scrutiny by me.
I spent my next few days trying and certifying each and every feature that HP claimed my laptop had. All seemed to work just fine but for a few glitches that were sorted out like ironing the creases by the software engineer who came to install the OS (Windows Vista).
All seemed to work as smoothly as Germany’s train until I had this urge to take a screenshot of my desktop and brag about Windows Vista to my friend. After much peering into all the buttons I found the “Prt Sc” button on the top extreme right of the keypad. Now, as I was taught by a tech-savvy friend on how to use this feature (which I didn’t know till some months ago) I took following the same steps here… but as bad luck would have it, I didn’t seem to be able to copy paste the image on either Paint or Adobe Photoshop.
After several tries I started panicking and raging with fury and started hurling curses at HP at the speed of light for giving me a faulty keypad (or is it still called a keyboard with notebooks?) Finally, I turned to Windows’ trusty Help and Support that has helped and supported me in finding ways to solve Windows’ innumerable never-ending problems for countless years. I tried to find the solution desperately from Help and Support and for the first time ever, it failed me. At this point, I had lost all hope and I tried to convince my shattered self that I would have to live with a faulty keypad (keyboard?) for years to come.
And then, a tiny glimmer of hope appeared taking an angelic form of a hyperlink that said “Connect to chat with an online technician”. It felt like my mouse (yes, I got an optical tiny mouse for my laptop too) was moving on its own when I clicked on that link that lead me to HP’s official website.
To my surprise I did get to chat with a technician online, I don’t care if she was a Bot since she solved my problem. The conversation that followed was like this:

Melisa: Hello Tamanna.
Melisa: Welcome to HP Total Care for Presario Notebooks. My name is Melisa. How may I assist you today?
Tamanna Jaisinghani: hey melisa
Melisa: Looking forward to assist you.
Tamanna Jaisinghani: the thing with my laptop is that i can’t use the Print Screen button
Melisa: Do not worry; I will do my best to assist you.
Melisa: I will help you. Could you please provide me the detailed description of the issue?
Tamanna Jaisinghani: When I press the Print Screen button and then go to paint to paste it, i can’t seem to paste anything there
Tamanna Jaisinghani: well?
Melisa: Thank you for the information.
Tamanna Jaisinghani: What about the solution?
Melisa: Perform these steps to isolate the issue.
Tamanna Jaisinghani: ……
Melisa: Hold Fn key and press print screen to save the data.
Melisa: Perform these steps :
Melisa: We can use Print screen function to take snapshot of the desktop. Here are the instructions to take print screen:
Melisa: 1. Keep the image on the desktop to which you want to take a snapshot (print screen).

2. Press and hold down the Function (fn) key and tap on the Print screen key (prt sc).

3. Click start, Run, type MSPAINT and click on Ok. It will open MSPAINT window.

4. Press and hold down the Ctrl key and tap the ” V ” key to paste the print screen on the MSPAINT.
Melisa: Performing the above steps should resolve the issue.
Tamanna Jaisinghani: hey thanks a lot, it worked
Melisa: You are welcome.
Melisa: Are there any other questions that I can assist you with?
Tamanna Jaisinghani: No, this is it. Thank You so much.
Melisa: Its my pleasure assisting you.
Melisa: Thank you for contacting HP Total Care Real-Time chat support. If you need further assistance, please contact us again at: http://www.hp.com/support/chat. Chat support is available 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week.
Melisa: Have a fantastic day! Tamanna.
Melisa: Goodbye.

Needless to say this made me trust the company and the curses that I hurled flew out of my mind!

PS: This is the first time I had seen this online real-time problem solver by any company. So, I couldn’t help but write about it.

A Myth Busted.

A cold murder is depicted in the much acclaimed movie Johnny Gadaar, or so people (reliable sources) told me before I got to see it. Now, either I have the whole concept of cold murder wrong or I didn’t get the movie. The chances of being the latter are quite high.
Let me first get the concept of cold murder straight here before I delve into a whole self-opinionated ramble here. Cold murderer as far as my tiny brain cells can comprehend means a person who would kill someone like he is squashing a mosquito. I mean, with no feelings of regret or with no feelings at all. So, if we follow the aforementioned definition then do we not come to the conclusion that then a cold murder should be a murder committed by the aforementioned cold murderer?

*everybody nods vigorously in agreement*

So, to take this irrefutable point further, shouldn’t the movie’s protagonist (screen name: Vikram) in order to depict a cold murder, had not felt any kind of regret or fear after having committed those heinous crimes?

*everybody nods vigorously in agreement yet again* Yes! I thought so too.

But, didn’t Vikram, at several points of time in the whole course of the movie, express regret and did his face not show that he was terrified when confronted about his crimes by several of his companions?

*everybody nods, (of course vigorously)*

So, if the alleged cold murderer of the movie did feel all the emotions that a cold murderer is not supposed to then how did he commit cold murders in the movie?

Having put forward all my valid points, I would like conclude that there were NO cold murders in the movie Johnny Gadaar. *smiles contentedly*
*everybody applauds vigorously*

Lord Of The Sleeping Pills

I have finally found the strength and the will to start with the hefty book Lord Of The Rings. It would be a staggering understatement to say that the book is big. The book is HUGE and the fonts are equally miniscule. Nevertheless, the raving reviews of the movie and many ardent book-lover friends personally endorsing the book encouraged me to peruse it and led me to think that the book is revolutionary.

So, when a friend told me she had the book I borrowed it to fill up my empty life after the college ended. Yes, I am pathetic and I have no life. Anyways, like with all the books I have been waiting for eons to read but never got a chance to (because I couldn’t borrow it from anyone and I am too cheap to spend my precious money), I was jumping with joy at the sole prospect of finally reading the famous LOTR. I actually lugged the hefty book around with me on my last exam just so I could start with it on the way back home (it takes me 1 hour and 15 mins to reach home).

This was a week ago. Currently, I am done with most of the first volume of the book that has the word ‘trilogy’ on its cover but the foreword denies that it is one. However, this doesn’t matter much because trilogy or not, this book is tedious and boring to the core. I don’t get what the whole fuss is all about.

Almost the whole of the first volume describes a drudgery of a trek embarked upon by a group of hobbits all over the mountains and forests and what not. When the hobbits are not walking, they singing lame songs. A quarter of book so far seemed to be filled with songs for all the things. It almost feels like reading a Hindi movie.

However, the only saving grace in the book so far has been the whole magical story of the ring.

I am still in the process of reading the book and I will not abandon it no matter how many times it puts me to sleep. Now. I think, for the first time in the history of mankind the movie might be better than the book.

I shall keep updating my views on The Book……..

An empty life.

An empty life gnawing at the self-confidence. Devil’s workshop in full swing. Eating away like a parasite. Loneliness hits like a hammer to the head at unexpected moments, springing up unsuspecting tears. An uncontrollable rage that does more harm to the mind and soul than to something external. A constant lump in the throat. Strange thoughts that sit heavy on the head. A craving to howl and bawl. An urge to hit that wall. A desire to hurt.
Feeling useless. Things go the other way. People turn their backs. An inner cry for help and when the help comes, inability to accept it.

An empty life. A wandering mind. The most dangerous thing.

When friends turn into classmates.

It’s hard to see someone you trust push you in the ditch when least expected. You are up there counting on the one person who will be the one to bring the axe down on you. It’s like they have turn into ‘mystique’ from X-men. A new appearence. A new person. All of sudden the friend has turned into a classmate.
It’s hard to believe they did it. It’s even harder to see them as friends anymore. A perfectly blossomed friendship is effectively ruined with no scope of damage control. All that was needed was one unfortunate moment to bring down a carefully built friendship of several months.
Friends who ditch unintentionally are worse than friends who are enemies in disguise.