D BIRTHDAY

D turns 33. Next is my turn to turn ___.

Options: a) 16, b) 16, c) 16

Contest closes on 13th July.

One family to next

It was D’s birthday yesterday and the birthday blog was shaping up in my mind since the day I started preparations – bought gifts, ordered for a photocake (inspired by Mama Mia) invited friends over for a surprise party at 12, booked movie tickets.

But now when I sit to share it with my blogger buddies, an inexplicable pain is welling up.... I realize I have not shared it with somebody I have been sharing just everything from stomach aches and heart breaks, to new dresses and broken toe nails, since childhood. Brooding, I also realized D’s birthday is just one of the piles of events and incidents that have affected me in the near past, which I did not bother to tell them the way I used to. Not that they’re altogether unaware. We talk often. But the ‘need’ to download upon them is no more there. It was more of reporting a piece of news than sharing an experience.

Conjoined to D, it feels improbable that I belong to a different family, that I am bonded to somebody else with flesh and blood. Did Maa feel the same when she moved in with my father? I do not have the heart to ask her this. We were a nuclear family and without siblings, they were ALL I ever had before I got married. No emotional involvement has been so strong to wean me away. But today I feel different and this makes me feel so very guilty.

Until recently, my understanding of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ was – all those things I can tell MaPa are ‘right’ and those I cannot, are ‘wrong’. And I do not have the heart to tell them that I am drifting away, unconsciously, and do not know what to do!

Boomer, my son (so I believe) is just a dog, practically. Every time he’s under the rush of his hormones, he acts ‘differently’ and I feel let down. I tell D it hurts to see him get so mad for some wench (‘bitch’ I mean) when I have cleaned his pee and poop, fed him, rushed him to the hospital when he was sick (D was out of station), prayed to God to take away days from my life and give it to him, stayed awake entire nights to feel his heartbeat. And all this in just a year and a half! How would Maa Pa feel when after 27 years I tell them I cannot feel the way I used to feel about them? Not that I do not love or care for them anymore, but the relationship has changed.

It’s killing me.

D confessed to feeling a same sense of alienation from his parents. The question is whether to accept it as a natural phenomenon that happens to all men and women after they're united in matrimony or find true companionship, or to make an attempt to re-correct the equation? Or is it because both D and me have grown up in nuclear families and have not witnessed the attachment children have with parents post marriage that is making it seem so unusual?

World's Best Doctor

[D. sends me this when I sulked at not being able to fit into my old pair of jeans and for always giving in to sleep every morning when I should be going for my swimming classes]

Whoever fabricated this 'forward', I salute thee..... He's just the doctor people (you may read 'hogs') like me need to go to -----

Q: Doctor, I've heard that cardiovascular exercise can prolong life. Is this true?

Ans: Your heart is only good for so many beats, and that's it... don't waste them on exercise. Everything wears out eventually. Speeding up your heart will not make you live longer; that's like saying you can extend the life of your car by driving it faster. Want to live longer? Take a nap.

Q: Should I cut down on meat and eat more fruits and vegetables?

Ans: You must grasp logistical efficiencies. What does a cow eat? Hay and corn. And what are these? Vegetables. So a steak is nothing more than an efficient mechanism of delivering vegetables to your system. Need grain? Eat chicken. Beef is also a good source of field grass (green leafy vegetable). And a pork chop can give you 100% of your recommended daily allowance of vegetable products.

Q: Should I reduce my alcohol intake?

Ans: No, not at all. Wine is made from fruit. Brandy is distilled wine, that means they take the water out of the fruity bit so you get even more of the goodness that way. Beer is also made out of grain. Bottoms up!

Q: How can I calculate my body/fat ratio?

Ans: Well, if you have a body and you have fat, your ratio is one to one. If you have two bodies, your ratio is two to one, etc.

Q: What are some of the advantages of participating in a regular exercise program?

Ans: Can't think of a single one, sorry. My philosophy is: No Pain...Good!

Q: Aren't fried foods bad for you?

Ans: YOU'RE NOT LISTENING!!! ..... Foods are fried these days in vegetable oil. In fact, they're permeated in it. How could getting more vegetables be bad for you?

Q: Will sit-ups help prevent me from getting a little soft around the middle?

Ans: Definitely not! When you exercise a muscle, it gets bigger. You should only be doing sit-ups if you want a bigger stomach.

Q: Is chocolate bad for me?

Ans: Are you crazy? HELLO Cocoa beans ! Another vegetable!!! It's the best feel-good food around!

Q: Is swimming good for our figure?

Ans: If swimming is good for your figure, explain whales to me.

Q: Is getting in-shape important for my lifestyle?

Ans: Hey! 'Round' is a shape!

Well, I hope this has cleared up any misconceptions you may have had about food and diets.

And remember: 'Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways - Chardonnay in one hand - chocolate in the other - body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming 'WOO HOO, What a Ride'

Michael lives on...

"Dangerous" was my first English album. I was 9-10ish. Papa had this knack for planting surprises at unlikely places and since my now pea-sized brain was rye-sized then, I could never guess. So it took me one whole day to sniff down that small packet of three cassettes - Baby Doll Alisha's Superman, Suneeta Rao's Dhuan and Michael Jackson's Dangerous.

While I went bonkers catwalking to "Paari Hoon Main...mujhe naa choona" [timed well with my crush on my school's Computer Sir] and hopping and jumping to "Supa Supa Supaman, udke aana" [with a bunch of curly false hair on my head as prop], I listened to Dangerous just once and thought the singer had some vocal-chord dysfunction and hid it away, lest Papa finds it, plays it and develops a liking.

It was not until I was in my 10+2 when with my roomie, Ashmita, I developed a taste for English music and movies. But that went no further than MLTR, Bryan Adams, Lionel Richie, Richard Marx and George Michael. Grads saw my debut in to the world of 'love' and 'tears', drug and dope, pubs and late nights, and with these a 'queer' liking for loud, head-banging, ear-jarring music, of which I did not understand a word. I still don't. Nor could/can I differentiate an Iron Maiden song from a Black Sabbath's. Not that I care. But I started liking listening to them (fav. being PINK FLOYD - I dote on them, Marilyn Manson and Rammstein) everytime I was mad. Pop also came in round about that same time and Ruby Ba ('Ba'=elder sister in Assamese), our Imitator Queen, would entertain us with Mike-a-laal-Jaikishan (a nick we picked from some C-grade joke on MJ) acting.

I particularly love MJ's voice modulation in "Do you remember the time" (found the video quite interesting), the rhythm in "They don't really care about us", absolutely love the lyrics of "Heal the World" and the Thriller's video (his turning into the werewolf was quite funny but). And love him doing his phenomenal moonwalk and thrust-the-hip-up move. I repeat, 'love him' doing it. The world's full of (inferior) imitators and tell you anybody else doing it (including my dahling D.) make me imagine it's some ritualistic move to make people ROFL.

I could not really gulp down his paedophile controversy and even if it were true (though I consider child sexual abuse and rape the highest and the only form of SIN), it would not have affected my admiration for his music. We love an artist for his/her art and we should keep it at that. Wanting to be him/her or castigating him/her when he/she doesn't live upto our expectation, is being overtly emotional, don't you think?

Like a book, every song too has a life of it's own - like I'd keep wondering what Saleem Sinai's mother would think if she read about how her son so unabashedly talked about her secret love for her ex-husband, like "Padi hoon main" is a virgin in her mid-teens who I see struggling with her new-found sexuality, like "Hello" is a lover pining to say the words to his lady and I love his hesitation, even though it is so obvious she'll say 'yes'....

This morning, when D. read aloud "Michael's dead", it did feel like a shaft through my heart. But that was it. In no time I started humming "Dangerous..." and has been doing that ever since [usually one song glues on to my tongue and remains there the entire day].

If he's listening, I'd like to tell him that I love him for being the great Showman he had been and that he looked lot better in his natural dark skin. And that he'll live on in me and many like me.....

I wonder what you guys think of MJ...

Added later: When I read "Ode", I got very curious --- how would it read...Mister 'funny' blogger Rajan writing serious stuff: http://ouchmytoe.com/archives/2009/06/28/an-ode-to-michael-jackson/

Me and Machines

Whether God purports that I live like apes sans science or machines, or I am technologically jinxed, I am beginning to doubt. Could all of these be mere co-incidences? Please enlighten me:

1. Immediate context: I cannot send emails from my gmail! I was replying to a mail thread about a Music event we're to attend this Sunday, till one of them replied to me: "Should I guess your reply or is it a cryptic puzzle to be solved" and rummaging through the entire thread, I suddenly realized that my signature was all that was visible in my reply mails and not a word of what I wrote. Hell! I immediately got on to Google Chrome (thinking maybe finally Google declared - if you wnna Gmail, you better use Chrome). Scarlett was patient enough to open all my mails and confirm she saw NOTHING on them. Now I do not know what bug could that be that eats up the words from your mail by the time it is delivered in the recipients Inbox (coz’ I could see my full mails in my 'Sent Items').

2. No machine ever survives hale and long in my life, even though I am everything but clumsy, really. I did not break a single neck or hand of the toys I played with as a child. In fact I have all of preserved (“for her kids”, Ma kids) and all in one piece. This might not be ‘the proof’, but says some thing, does it not?

Machines-gone-bad-made-me-mad examples:

i) My DELL laptop was just 2 weeks old when two keys popped out. I did not have long nails and my fingers, dear readers, are pretty lithe. At least I know how to type without popping out keys of the machine. It must be the guy who fixed internet on my machine, I concluded. After the keypad, within a year the speakers and the motherboard had to be replaced and since it all happened in the warranty period, it did not pinch much. You can read about my experience here. As if that wasn’t enough for one machine – very soon my ‘@’ got exchanged with ‘close inverted commas’ and the ‘back slash’, type ‘#’ is it shows ‘£’, while ‘\’ disappeared altogether and became ‘#’. And since the warranty period is over and I had no faith that this one more repair will be its last, I decided to get used to my ‘new’ keys and Google for back slashes whenever required.

ii) Biometric Fingerprint systems cannot identify my fingerprints. I discovered it when in my second organization they introduced biometric fingerprints for attendance. In that office of some 1500 people, I was the only one whose fingerprints it would not recognize. Two whole weeks we tried to capture a sample, rubbed my fingers so many times to free it of all moisture that whatever little imprint was left that too much have eroded off. Finally we all gave up and while my colleagues did it with a small thumb, I had to write down my entry and exit timings every day in that just-mine register. History repeated itself when I went for my Learner’s Driving License. It was a long, restless queue and my finger lived upto their reputation. Irritated, the security guard put his own thumb impression. Does it mean if I am to be convicted ever, no one will be able to prove it using my fingerprints? Can somebody have no fingerprints AT ALL? And I found this, just that noone came to interview me. Sigh!

iii) My assembled desktop (my 1st PC) became a pain in no time, but behaved after a few slaps and kicks at the CPU (I was the rough n tough type then), so no grumbling about that.

3. My BSc 1st year exam results had highest in English, 2nd highest in Zoology, while I flunked in Chemistry. I could never accept the theories at face value

4. Little did I consider these things when I decided to join this software giant. What ensued is a little hard to believe considering its reputation as one of the best workplace in the globe. If I go on to tell you point after point, it will make a thesis to prove that I'm tech-jinxed.

However, being the optimist that I am, I can tell the God of Technology has not completely disowned me. My 2 year old Nokia 3230 alive and ringing and as handsome as a 6 month old is a glaring testimony, besides the newly bought gadgets and machines post marriage.

At the moment, the few glaring ones are all I can recollect, but tell you my life has seen much more and over the years I only feel surprized if a machine is behaving itself for too long with me. Sure you have your share of experiences.... Or is it just me???!!!??? (Thinking....)

And D. sends me this

It can be a co-incidence. But it happens every time...and unexpectedly. Just when I finished writing all that I could have been doing to feel better and concluded I set 'me' free at some secret blog, D. sends me this (if you're a fan, you can save the pic and read read, it seems I cannot upload a larger pic):

Rattle and Hum

I should have (only if I could have) been writing the review for this place now. Rattle & Hum is a premium lounge, newly opened in Hyd and this review is over-due since Sunday.


Or I could have been doing that compiling bit S. wanted me to complete by Thursday so that I have a good bulk ready before I am on-boarded.


I could even wrapped up my cooking so that when D. is home, we can all go driving. I badly need some fresh air and also get a hang of our car. Besides Boomer loves jutting out his head to smell and see all that he can't from his pigeon coop of an apartment and I so love watching him do that.


I could get back to Midnight's Children and find out what happens after our Sinai family move into that sabkuch ticktock hai Methwold's bungalow....


I could call up one of my (equally frustrated) friends and bitch about life, job, SIL or some other friend.


I could take a nap, like I usually do. More so on a day like today, when I had slept 3 hours less than my stipulated doze as I had to go for a swimming class (at 6) that never happened.


I could even play one of those stupid...nay...on second thoughts, 'timepass' games on Facebook, comment on comments or play scrabble and the end of it all curse FB for tempting people to waste so much valuable time on-line.


I could catch the missed episode of Splitsvilla at Youtube and find out whether Juana gives in to the competitive spirit or to her affection for Mohit....and later try to figure out what is it that attracts me to that far-from-sensible, faked and tweaked-to-raise-TRP, scripted reality show.


I could take Boomer out for a walk and take that time off to clear my head and see if I can do some productive thinking.


I could finish that collage I am planning for D. birthday. Planning a mix of photographs and mementos - all from our childhood, on an wooden panel. D.'s keeping too busy lately to drop by my blogs. So no worries.


I could shortlist few hiphop tracks and burn a CD for the car. I am so tired of all the Al di Meolas, Dave Mathews bands and MegadETHs.


I could cry and let that clog explode. But tears no more come easy, unless it is infused by some touching scene in a movie. I'm becoming a hard nut everyday.


I could try flirting with one of my buddies at PM and give my degenerating self confidence a boost and my same-story-every-day life a surprise just for today.


I could write a secret blog and set 'me' free.


I can write a secret blog.
Yes!

How to Post a Blog with HTML Codes

While Publishing the post below, I found I cannot simply hit Publish and have the HTML codes in my post stay unchanged, like other alpha-numeric-symbolic elements in my post. The HTML codes in the post are treated as part of the post's HTML file, so that when you publish your blog those HTML tags are either altogether gone or are visible in bits. How in the whole wide world could that have occurred to me! But my stars aren't all muddled, at least not all the time. I remembered to save a copy in Word. How about slicing out all the code tags from the word doc using the Snipping tool (one of my fav. IE8 features) and publishing them as image files? But that would turn my post literally meaningless because how the hell would one copy the HTML script from files. It has to be a right click, copy, paste thing.

After all that big big proclaimation -- this will create history, this is my first tech blog, I'm lit up like a 100 watt bulb, trust me - mislead you I shalt not, trust me, this that -- it would be both embarrassing and unfair to write a blog on codes, with half codes gone. I know you guys would be kind enough not to come looking for me (inspite of my disclaimer) or you would?

Google can be such a life saver (Sorry Bing, I'm yet to bing in such situations). I found this magic link.....

http://centricle.com/tools/html-entities/

Now this site allows you to decode/encode your codes into different formats. For my post, I copy pasted each code tag into the sites' code-transform window and got it encoded into a format so that the tag scripts look like regular alphabets and not like special charatcters. This way I converted all my HTML code tags and got my post replaced with the encoded ones. And when I published it finally and saw all the codes in the present format, this time, I really did beam up like a bulb.

But the temporary alignment of my stars was over by then and once again the turmoils of life stood there looking at my face. All done, all tags added, the post will now not scrape off with the Read More leading to the expanded post. Would that not be a complete anti-thesis of the very soul of the post - my toil of an hour and a half or more. Jeeees......... But good Lord intervened and I thought of copy pasting the entire post in the notepad to set it free of all bugs. This done I copy pasted it back to my blog and all fell into place. Phew! Hallelujah!

How to "Read More" in 10 Steps

10 steps, when one can just do it with one little "click" on the damn link!! :-O

(This girl got to be crapping again)

Dear Readers, I swear to god, this blog is going to make history - in my own little life, that is. You will soon know why.... I first wanted to call it "How to add the 'Read More' link to posts and create expandable posts", but considered.....

1. My Friend Blog Readers will fall off their chairs laughing and that too at office. Some will simply faint. I care for them you know.

2. My we-know-what-she-writes Blog Readers will simply not bother to read (haven't she unabashedly admitted, time and again, to her being a complete tech-nitwit?).

3. Wouldn't that be too long for a title?

4. Only Newbies will be curious

Now, in case you haven't noticed all my blog posts now end with a "Read More" link that leads to another page with the entire post. I found this way my posts look petite, one can view more posts in a single scroll and my blog, on the whole, looks pretty hara-bhara at a glance with many posts one after another, which could be a huge boost when I get into my blogger's-block next. It's saying, it has been tried and tested and mislead you into messing with your blog template ---- I shalt not. So here goes my FIRSTest Tech-post..... (I look like a 100 watt bulb, saying this) :)

How to add "Read More" link and create expandable posts in 10 simple steps

Step 1: Go to Layout --- Edit HTML --- Download your full template (Just in case)

Step 2: Now in your Template code file, search for </head>

Step 3: Copy paste the given code before </head> so that it lies between ]]></b:skin> tag and </head> tag

<style>

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>

span.fullpost {display:inline;}

<b:else/>

span.fullpost {display:none;}

</b:if>

</style>

Step 4: Save template

Step 5: Check the Expand Widgets option

Step 6: Search for <data:post.body/> and add the given code immediately after it

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType != "item"'>

<a expr:href='data:post.url' target='_blank'>Read more!</a>

</b:if>

Step 7: Save Template

Like I did, please do not expect all your posts to suddenly sit there peeking their heads out on the Homepage with their torso embedded somewhere else in the Read More link. There's way to go.

Step 7: Now go to Settings --- Formatting --- Scroll down for Post Template box

Step 8: Copy paste the given code in that box and save settings

Here is the beginning of my post. <span class="fullpost"> And here is the rest of it.</span>

Step 9: Say "Abracadabraaaaaaaaaaaa..........." and aloud and clear.

Step 10: In your Create Posts, you'll now find: "Here is the beginning of my post. And here is the rest of it." already written there.

Simply begin to type in your blog so that the first bit appears instead of "Here is the beginning of my post" section and the rest in the "And here is the rest of it." section.

And you're done!!!

But that only does good to your posts henceforth. What about the older posts? That would be so step-motherly to leave them unattended and all exposed in your homepage.

A little tedious but this works great and you can in fact apply this you all blogs you write instead of overwriting everytime on Here is the beginning....And here is the end....:

Step 1: Take up any past blog and click on Edit

Step 2: Go to Edit HTML and add <span class="fullpost"> where ever you want to chop it off with a Read More Link. And add a </span> at the end of the post.

Step 3: Say Gi-lee-gi-leee-gi-lee choooooo. Repeat thrice. Now take a deep breath. Save your post.

Congratulations......................................................! You did it!

In fact, for every post I create, I do Cntrl A + Del and clear the space of the "Here's the...And here's the rest...." shit. After I'm done writing, I simply go to the HTML and add <span class="fullpost"> where ever I want and close the post with </span>. Like I'll just do.......

Hope that was good gyan and useful one at that! All the best!!

Disclaimer: For any fuck-ups, please do not come looking for me. I already confessed on having a peas-sized brain, totally hopeless with anything that contains the word "tech" ;-)

I set the street ablaze. Part II

27th day of May, 2009: I CAN DRIVE....................................

After the first few days at the steering wheel, next few picking up the ABCs (Accelerator, Brake, Clutch), today I learnt 'the wonders of the gear'. How drivers co-ordinate all of these props - I could never understand till I did it myself. And it felt heroic.

And that's not all - I already banged into a scooter (not my fault TRUST ME) and I showed him the middle finger (D. never does that and warned me not to repeat it EVER. And I gave him my devilish smile. Heh heh.)

Muzeeb (the trainer from Escort Driving School and who recognizes his burqa-clad sisters from their sandals) must have trained at least a hundred blokes in his career of 10 years, and there is no reason, whatsoever to consider me special. Even though after 15 min of driving I take to humming some song and begin to look around checking out people, shops and.... M., very curtly reminds me "Rastey ko dekho madam, idhar udhar dekhne ko baadme bohut time milenga" and that I'm only 6+ class old. Even though I leave both my hands from the steering wheels to shift to 2nd gear (must be the car) and M. goes totally crazy "Madam sterring wheel chodoge to gadi kaun chalayega". Even though I bring the car to a screeching halt every time there's a dog even intending to cross the road. "Darne ka nehi. Kutta aye, jo bhi aaye. Apna life sabse important hai, baadme dusro ka. Full confidence se chalaneka." Even though I make him feel suicidal with my pen and paper and get him draw and explain the entire mechanism of the car. He would only be thanking his stars, visiting the mosque for his namaaz every Friday, when he passes this test - of patience in teaching me How to Drive. And D. will be thanking him (it could have been D.!). And I will forever remember
"Rastey ko dekho madam, idhar udhar dekhne ko baadme bohut time milenga"
"Madam steering wheel chodoge to gadi kaun chalayega"
"Darne ka nehi. Kutta aye, jo bhi aaye. Apna life sabse important hai, baadme dusro ka. Full confidence se chalaneka".