Till we meet again

Yesterday was Easter & I'm still recovering.

No, I wasn't following lent for 40 days that I overdid it yesterday. I just overdid it out of realising that I won't be eating a large quantity of Marzipan for another year.

Yesterday also happened to be Sachin Tendulkar's birthday. And how do I know that? Only because every year on 24 April Sachin related articles take up 40% of the newspaper. Sachin happened to be a big follower of Sathya Sai Baba and yesterday unfortunately was his last day on Earth. Coincidentally the same day Jesus was resurrected.

Who is Sathya Sai Baba? Well, it's a shame but to be honest till today I wasn't completely sure myself.

I was clearly not a devotee, mainly because I didn't know anything about him and had only heard about how he could perform miracles.

He was said to be an incarnation of the Shirdi Sai Baba and announced himself at the age of 14.

He had millions of followers from all over the world because his teachings were simple and yet so powerful. He said everyone is God but the difference is just that he has realised it. He gave out a strong message about the importance of service. He was also said to have had many special powers like making vibhuti (ash) appear before his devotees and make objects like watches and rings appear out of nowhere.

At first, to me he just sounded like a good magician. But then, I read a little more about him and his teachings and he seemed like a pretty amazing man. He didn't preach any particular religion and only taught the people about being good and living well.

He said he would die at the age of 96 after leading a healthy long life and he died at the age of 85 after being ill for a while. How did he always know the future and yet not see that coming after having predicted his own death? The next incarnation of Sai Baba is to be born a year after Sathya Sai Baba's death. But, now people are confused about whether this will be next year or 12 years from now. 

This sort of future related predicted information really puzzles me.

I keep wondering about how Sathya Sai Baba knew he was the incarnation of Sai Baba at the young age of 14 and could convince the world about it. To me he seemed to be a great man, maybe a Godly figure or even just a miracle-worker.

His teachings seemed really good. Very positive. Not focusing on any particular religion.

Always seen in his orange robes and distinctive hairstyle, he was a man who definitely did not look his age. So, here's a silly question. If he was 85, how was his hair still so black since I doubt he was dyeing it.

Desperation makes such insignificant and vain thoughts enter my mind since I seem to be greying faster than George Clooney.

Hoping that the next incarnation will be here soon.

I watched 2012 (the movie) yesterday and am a little worried.

Tomorrow is my dear sister Aku's b'day.

Sorry Aku, I haven't got you a present.

Happy Birthday :)

The Hunt continues...

The hunt for the perfect easter egg never ends. Atleast for me.

I have hated eating eggs for most of my life - poached, boiled, benedict, florentine & all the others.

Recently however, I've begun enjoying the special eggs my mother brings from the farms in Gorai (which I've been told can hatch into little chicks if kept for long enough). Maybe that's why they taste so good.

Before this I was never a fan of eggs unless it was used as an ingredient in making some sort of dessert.

I've probably cracked one egg in my life to make a fried egg - the only way I can eat it.

Or as an omelette. But, that's because it's generally camouflaged with what I like to call a bunker of cheese.

It's the same with cold coffee. I only like it when you can taste more chocolate than coffee.

Anyway, the one day I have always looked forward to the entire year to eat an egg is today - Easter.

By Brett Bara

When I was a little girl, my friend Sabrina & I would paint & decorate egg shells and leave them to rest in a cane basket on a bed of cotton and confetti. It was very creative and pretty looking but completely pointless. 

So, now I just focus on buying and eating good easter eggs.

The hunt, like every year began 3 days ago. I went to many different stores around Bandra and this is what I got.

Regal was alright.

Candies had run out.

And Cheron was ooook.

More maida than marzipan according to my mom.

Then my friend Ken came and gave me a chocolate egg and life seemed not so bad again.

Whether you got Chocolate, Marzipan or just plain flour, I wish you all a very Happy Easter.

And as for tomorrow, let's hope it's Sunny Side Up.

Paloma's Nest

Have a great da(y)ne

by me

Noone can pull a cloud and make it rain

So put on a bow and have a great dane.

A New phase for me & India

Now that the love of my life/ my sister/ my everything has left home, a sudden emptiness has flooded my heart.

Do I fill this void with food/ movies or just air?

Aku & I have taken most of the decisions in each other's lives. Yes it's a good combination of pathetic and sweet.

So what am I without her?

People say you are what you eat.

So for now let's just call me tons of chocolate with a healthy side plate of watermelon (topped with olives & cheese) to reduce the guilt a bit.

In order to come out of this Food Coma I have started going for walks (once), am joining Yoga (tomorrow) and took pictures for a friend's blog (cause I'm a talented control freak, right Smita?)

Today everything everywhere is silent. Mainly because last night everything everywhere wasn't.

India is in a state of party recovery.

We won the Cricket World Cup yesterday after 28 years. The first win for India in my lifetime. Ok, that statement was made just to show how young I am.

Picture taken from Google Images

I heard the match was fixed. Then I heard it wasn't. Then it was pretty obvious it wasn't.

Then we gave up all hope. I even changed the channel for a bit.

To be honest I am not the biggest fan of cricket. I watch it once in a while when India is playing and it's an important match.
The other day when India played Pakistan in the semi-finals, I was hoping Shahid Afridi wouldn't get out only cause he was something pretty to look at. If I made this confession during the match, I would've probably been stoned by my countrymen, but now that India has won, I feel a little braver to admit it.

The final match yesterday between India and Sri Lanka was definitely the most interesting match I have ever seen.

I watched it with my grandmother for whom cricket is a religion. We sat at the edge of our seats, forgetting to breathe and then when we won we couldn't help but jump up and hug each other and start clapping like 5 yr olds at a birthday party.

We had tears in our eyes and couldn't understand how or why. The stadium was buzzing with so much energy. And so was the quiet road I live on. By the time I went to bed, my house was smelling of crackers. It was like Diwali in April. Special!

Today is a new day. India has entered into a new phase and so have I. Everyone's on a crazy high and every kind of behaviour seems justified. But, let's face it, it's just a game. So, next time I go all psycho while playing Taboo, I'm assuming that that would be thought of as normal behaviour.

Hoping to enter a new phase full of focus, good food & exercise.

Hoping the yoga phase lasts and I learn to touch my head to my feet instead of doing my more regular pose of Foot-in-my-mouth.

The Other Stuff

illustration by me.

Been a crazy few months but full of fun and unusual moments. In a nutshell this is what it was all about:

• Aku looking thoroughly bored in every saree shop trying hard to understand why women love it so much when it's just a long piece of cloth. She had a point.
• I on the other hand noticed how all the ladies who come to saree shops seemed to have back cleavages.
• Going shoe shopping and trying to dodge the shoes falling from the ceiling. Always scary. Why can't they store it someplace else.
• Going to Aroma Thai foot spa and letting our minds go on a one hour holiday.
• Pretending to understand Gujrati spoken by saree salesmen hoping to get better service.
• Explaining the length of my blouses as 'it should cover my stomach crease formed while watching too much TV'
• Experimenting with different makeup looks. Smokey eye was more like black eye unfortunately.
• Packing cards for what felt like a lifetime.
• Going out and grabbing a bite when we had too much to do.
• Planning menus, decorations and everything that goes with it.
• Crying when my blouse didn't arrive on time and trying to make myself feel better about wearing a non-matching blouse by walking to Carter Road and eating Bhutta.
• Eating chocolates to put myself in a better mood when stressed. Ok, this is nothing new.
• Being really bad at helping Anand find a tie for the reception. I don't know why this was so hard.
• Documenting everything on my phone camera.
• Not doing anything like we planned which includes eating healthy, exercising and beautifying in whatever way possible. No time. And how does one suddenly transform?
• Having a thousand thoughts running through my head and still finding time to think about things like - If people didn't eat eggs wouldn't there be too many birds? which in turn would lay more eggs. Eeks.
• A lot of firsts - got my first manicure, bought my first lipstick and blowdried my hair 5 times in one week for the first and last time.
• Going to Kerala a week before the wedding and discovering that Bananas there are different. Yellowish-pink banana is just plain weird.
• Heating my hands over the fire in the kitchen so that my mehendi would dry faster so I could eat faster. Though I'm pretty sure I did eat some mehendi too.
• My mehendi getting darker everyday for 4 days. So either my hands are really warm or my husband's going to be head over heels in love with me. I'd rather go with the latter.
• Waking up with orange spots on my feet on the morning after the mehendi and wondering what the hell happened.
• Not opening the door the the Eunuchs who were demanding money. Such a weird custom.
• Getting more nervous than Aku on her wedding day while Anand remained as cool as an ice-cube.
• Making up for missing eating Jalapeno poppers at the wedding with all the desserts.
• Troubling Aku & Anand to practise their fake smiles for the reception.
• Watching so many almost love stories happen.
• Mom not understanding why I would go to buy t-shirts on the reception day just because.
• Trying to desperately learn last minute makeup tips from youtube.
• Aku being terrified of eyelash curlers.
• Sleeping every night with the earings I'm supposed to wear the the next days function so I don't cry at the last moment.
• Deciding not to have a Sangeet since we are not disciples of Karan Johar.
• Waking up every morning with Tim Burton/Helena Bonham Carter hair - whichevers worse.
• And then transforming into something else by the evening.
• I even started eating salad hoping I'll suddenly look like a movie star. Doesn't make a difference.

That's all for now. I'd better start packing Aku's honeymoon bag while she rests like a princess.
Tomorrow it's back to the normal life and to my non-glam look. Welcome back Tim hair.

And to my Aku and Anand - bon voyage.

And don't worry Aku, there will always be a toothbrush for you in our bathroom. Just remember yours is the green one.
Or there may not be one the next time to prevent grossness.

Wedding Planner

I've been wedding planner for a while now thanks to my dear sister Aku who got married yesterday.

She conveniently made me CEO of her wedding which left me feeling like a one-man band. Something like Vinod Khanna in Amar Akbar Anthony (which I always thought was pretty cool).

So, Aku & Anand met while working in the same Bank a few years ago but he managed to charm his way into her heart by teaching her tennis. Clever one!

This is what I made for Aku so she could send out Save the Dates emails to her friends.

save the dates emailer by me.

But, Aku being Aku thought it was cheesy and rejected it.

Luckily the same didn't happen with her wedding card.

Congratulations!

chocolate box label by me.

Happy Wedding Day :)

In the middle of it all

My sister is getting married. It's the biggest event of her life. And mine.

With loads of to-do-lists which seem to be walking the tight rope on my mind, always threatening to fall out, I managed to forget to buy my mother a birthday gift but remembered the food tasting.

I even missed my alarm for the Oscars.

White carnations with red roses or red carnations with white roses? Does it matter?

Am I losing my mind? 

Maybe.

People probably think I'm crazy when I say no peas in the lasagna and no filling in the Gulab Jamuns.

I was on the verge of thinking I needed help or atleast an evening at Aroma Thai foot spa.

And then I saw this in the Mumbai Mirror and it ironed out my crinkly forehead right away.

Time to Recycle

2 days ago, it was No Car Day/ Cycle Day at Carter Road.

What happens on this day every year?

I'll tell you what happens. Last year I enjoyed walking down Carter Road without being afraid I'll be hit by  a speeding rickshaw or an animal that appears out of nowhere. There was lots to eat, a great environment full of happy people and musicians performing too.

This year wasn't quite the same. So, I skipped going to Carter Road and was pretty much trying to get around the rest of Bandra with a lot of difficulty, sulking out of the car window or then being forced to walk distances I wouldn't normally walk.

While walking around I saw all kinds of people

• Serious bikers wearing the weirdly shaped cycling helmets. I never quite understood the reason for a helmet to have that shape.
• Kids who are one-fifth my age cycling too easily. Some even without the extra wheels.
• Babies in strollers being wheeled around by their mothers who looked effortlessly skinny.

Life seemed so unfair.

Mostly cause I still can't cycle. 

I have just once before. 

The day I do it again, I'll tell everyone I recycled.

Since I've been planning my sister's wedding I haven't had time to do some things I planned on doing. Like

• cycling
• conquering the world
• learning underwater swimming

For some reason I've always been afraid of swimming underwater and have never been able to.

I'm not sure how you're supposed to breathe exactly and don't want to risk experimenting and doing it wrong. Also, I feel like I am incapable of keeping my eyes open underwater.

Unless ofcourse I become a movie star and am required to kiss Leonardo DiCaprio underwater.

Now that's what you call commitment!

So, what I'm trying to say is if the right script comes my way where I'm required to be on a tandem cycle with Leo, you never know.

Keeping my fingers crossed.

The struggle continues.

For the rest of you

Take that leap of faith.

For those newly and truly in love, you've got enough going on so I've got nothing for you.

So, what about me? Well, this year I have no plans. 

Probably since I'm no Lady James Bond - a term coined by my mother with no real meaning.

My plan for tonight : To watch Black Swan if I can manage to steal it from one of my friends who download movies. You know who you are.

My back-up plan for tonight: To re-watch The Holiday so I can float into a happy world where I believe that someone as gorgeous as Jude Law is as nice as Jude Law. Atleast for those 2 hours.

If you don't have plans, I recommend you do that too.

And if you're more of a book person, I'd recommend the one & only book I've truly loved reading called The Curious Incident of The Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon. It's been a while since I read it so can re-read it now or read what seems to be it's readalike - When we were Romans by Matthew Kneale.

When I was reading Eat (which is what I call Eat Pray Love since that's as far as I got), I read something really nice where the author had quoted Dante from the last line of The Divine Comedy. Dante is faced with a vision of God and describes it in possibly the most beautiful way when he writes that He is most of all, l'amor che move il sole, l'altre stelle - Italian for The love that moves the sun and the other stars.

Something everyone ought to find.