Ponto de Vista

I’m such a gavaar, I did not know that the Triveni Kala Sangam (~ arts center) in our capital city has a lovely garden cafe. I was quite pleased that someone in community radio suggested meeting here one spring afternoon. Ironically, we were seated right beside this sign and it totally tickled me. Apparently art and work are mutually exclusive. And maybe meetings, they think, kill – just like cigarettes do. It’s a distinct possibility, no? ;D

(In case it’s not clear enough to read, the sign says: “Right of entry reserved. SMOKING or MEETINGS Not Permitted”)

I am back in a neck brace. And I didn’t fall down the stairs this time. Let’s say it’s a combination of bad computer posture, too much computer time and a PT-teacher-turned -drill-sargeant- turned-yoga-instructor who pressed a stressed shoulder a bit too hard. Anyway, this is what I feel like. (Yes, yes, I’m in full drama queen mode. Also known as iWithdrawal.)
In the picture is Rajinderji, Man Friday at Breakthrough, who tracked down the funny smell in the second room –> pigeon fledglings amidst feathers and droppings inside the AC! And bravely caught them and relocated them. Outside. Sigh.
(Oh and for those of you feeling bad for me: continue to do so, please. Though I’ve read more books in 5 days than I have in as many months and seen more movies than I can keep track of, I’m in PAIN! and work is piling up. And I’m too OCD to deal with this much longer!!!)

This was taken in Delhi. I’ve seen images of gods adorning walls in public places all over India – a brilliant idea to stop our desi brethren from peeing just anywhere … though it’s now against the law.
However, this set of Hindu deities inside the elevator of an office block puzzled me. It was kinda cool to see the two doors whiz shut and the pictures appear  😉 Ok, yes, I’m still a kid 😉
Oh, and the song is the one in which Mr. Sami is beseeching god for a ‘lift’ (up, not a car ride): “Thodi si to lift kara de/ Dollar de ya pound de de/Cash de de, check bana de/Dirham-o-dinaar de de…”

When my brother and I were little, my mother decided we were using too much ‘bad language’ — we were calling each other ‘stupid’ and ‘moron’ — and to curb our tongues, she instituted a fine. We were to drop 25 paise into a gulak for adjectives like that, 50 paise for using sh!#. These colorful gulaks in Mazjid Moth, Dilli, reminded me of that failed behavioural modification experiment 😀
Were this gulak thing instituted in our house again, all of us would be contributing quite a bit — parents included! Hmm, maybe we could use the spoils to get some good PG-13 DVD’s … 😉

This is a Delhi photo – of course! I was nearly home when I looked to my left and to my right and found myself eye-to-eye with not one, but two Barbies. Most rickshaws have posters up of Bollywood stars. This was a first for me. In Mumbai though, last Thursday I was in a cab that the driver (also the owner) had furnished with a plush red and black, umm, carpet. It was on the seats, the ceiling, the flooring, and the dashboard. Then I noticed it was even on the inside panels of the doors. On further inspection and inquiry, I found out it really was the same furry fabric, only he’d had it laminated! How ingenious, no?

This is the “NICE beauty hair style” joint for “gents and kids” near Lady Shri Ram College for Women in Delhi. I passed this for a year and on my penultimate day in the city, I finally managed to get a decent shot of the signboard. My line of sight in the past has always gotten obscured by traffic … I can’t tell you how many blurred/blocked shots I’ve deleted. Anyway, this is still not the best photo, so I’ll help you read what the NICE beauty hair style place offers. If you’re a gents or a kids, you can get “FACIAL, BLEACH, MASSAZ & BODY MASSAZ” … lucky you! Nothing for the ladies, sadly. Sigh…. no massaz of any kind 🙁
Timings: 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. And you can get a paan when you’re done 🙂

Juicing is hard work. Last month, I went to Janakpuri for a work visit and exiting the I just loved these two little boys who were selling sugarcane juice  (replacing the shakharkandhi chaat of the winter) from this rotary machine which took all their strength. There were plenty of takers on that hot day — one of the first sweaty ones in Delhi’s so-called spring…
Their ice blocks are covered with jute sacks and the sugarcane stems
are then passed between the two grinding wheels. The result — a flattened stick of fibre, and sweet, sweet, sticky liquid sugar 😉

Last month, my trusty iBook crashed on me and I was near devastated. I had such a crap day that I really was in no mood to do anything but crawl into bed and cry over lost data. My parents, however, cajoled me into coming out to dinner with them on the promise that their friends would cheer me up with funny stories of their misspent youth. They lived up to their promise and I did feel better. But the highlight of the evening was seeing two sambar forage in the B course in the moonlight. Here’s one with shadow thrown on the gumbad behind. Blurry, but then my camera phone isn’t really made for nighttime shooting.

I’ve been ‘home’ for one year. A whole year!
That happened sometime late last night and I was too frazzled to even think about it. Walking with my mother this evening before dinner, discussing my impending move to Bombay later in March, I stopped in my tracks at the realization that I’ve made it through an entire year — relatively unscathed! I can’t even begin to enumerate all the great things that have happened to me and the awesome people I’ve met, the fabulous stuff I’ve learned, done, and become a part of … not to mention the amount of street food I’ve savored… (I’m going to gloss over the crap radio job, the horrid winter, the awful allergies/ migraines/ bureaucracies/ roads …). And to make it all seem most fitting, today, I was given my first fortune cookie since I left America. And it read “You will have new adventures!” No $%*#, Sherlock! HAH!

Aight, when I was a pimply adolescent in Delhi, infatuated with boys on bikes (damn, not much has changed, eh?) my friends and I would walk over to Defence Colony Market to flaunt our stuff and check out the boys. The market was very ‘happening’ by those days’ standards. A veritable teenage meat market where you looked, made comments on, but didn’t touch. 18 years later, not much has changed! The youth ogling are even younger than we were, but they’re indoors, in Barista and other coffeeshops. Def Col even has two ‘clubs’ (RPM and something else I can’t recall), three bakeries, lots of clothing stores and this:
Woohoo baby! Check out the headless, legless mannequin on the curb. Can you imagine a Def Col babe wearing THAT? Wowsers!
Which brings me to wonder out loud – how is the new lingerie store “Straps” doing? I never even see any women in there, let alone <gasp> men! Hmmm. It’s such a brave new world out here in the markets of saadi Dilli