aioli

last evening i had my parents over for a couple of drinks and a meal. as i sweated over the aioli, i had an insight worth sharing. here it is.

Most ventures in life are like making aioli. after an enthusiastic start, there comes a phase of doubt when it looks like the egg yolk and olive oil are will not meld into one. the trick is ignore the doubt, hang in there, add the olive oil with patience, and continue beating. sooner or later, it will come together. and that lemon that life gave you? add a twist into the aioli. Yum.

more google gyaan

google has this ‘intelligent’ search prompt in which it tries to ‘guess’ what’s on your mind by what you are typing. its guesses are probably from the top-ranking queries or maybe it has a dossier on me and anticipates based on that – i don’t know. but it does appear that google is trying to communicate with me. anyway, the last time i encountered its suggestions, i almost died laughing.

this time, i burst into tears.

here is what happened – the first set of prompt questions was offered when i was typing in ‘why do meerkats sleep standing up?’ and i had gotten to ‘why do me-’:

. i also wondered about how many people have to ask these questions for google to register them as top choices. must have been many anyway.

so, that got me curious about what men might be asking about women. i entered ‘why do women..’ and lo!

see? men get profound questions interrogating their sexuality and about the internal workings of their heads (although the presence of the question ‘why do men wear underwear’ amongst questions on men’s sexuality is bewildering). and all that people want to know about women is why do we put on weight after marriage? why do we bleed every month?

that frames my life in the most mundane perspective. and that is what is making this woman cry.

navel-gazing

of late i’ve noticed that when i’m being naughty in my head – wandering into dark territories, ruminating along unhealthy patterns all over again – i just have to scold myself out loud in a stern voice, and i instantly drop whatever thought i was thinking.

i don’t know if that is funny or sad or disturbing that a 30-year old still needs an ‘adult’ to chastise her.

the world after an afternoon of bacchanalia

i’m in the mood to feel love for all the wonderful people whose paths have crossed mine. so many have become good friends, and others i’m simply happy to know they exist. it’s a good life.

why four swearings-in can’t make me smile

following the recent state elections which saw a record number of women taking the top prize of chief ministership, this status message has been making the rounds of facebook

“Amma in South; Didi in East; Bhenji in North; Aunty in the Capital; Madam in Center; & “Wife At Home”… And yet people say.. It’s a Man’s World! what a joke!”

and it gets my goat every time.

this piece glibly sweeps over the fact that three out of the four chief ministers have never married. they had to choose between their ‘careers’ and their private lives. a choice a male politician never has to make. not only that, their political opponents think that it is okay to take jibes at their single status, making it out to be a personal failing just because.

the other more dangerous thing is that on the face of it, these women who have made it to the top actually provide ammunition to those opposed to making space for women in politics. they say ‘what’s so great about women politicians when they are as corrupt as males if not more?’ in fact, it signifies nothing but the fact that politics is still so patriarchal that to be successful, female politicians have to become proxy-males, and ultimately perpetuate the same standards of ‘leadership’ as males, examples being Jayalalitha and Mayawati. i don’t have hopes from Mamata either; her stint as the central minister was spent not doing her job and instead behaving in the most partisan way towards west bengal, in preparation for the state elections.

in short, whichever way you look at that message, it misleads and misinforms. it only reminds how far we are from a world that is just to both men and women.

Bus Karo

my stint in delhi this time has been largely spent on the buses.

that is partly because i am house-sitting for my brother in the Dilli Chawni, while my workplace is across town in Lajpat Nagar, so that necessitates commuting. on the other hand, as a consultant, i had in fact chosen to keep my visits to once per week, but it has become so much simpler and convenient to bus it, that i like going to office. (plus, it’s a fun office, but that’s another post)

in the post-CWG Delhi, the volume of buses has exploded, and so has the number of routes. with a little exploration, one can get to almost any part of town with a combination of buses – occasionally right to the doorstep of one’s destination. in fact, with a combination of the metro, and buses, Delhi is not far anymore.

well, there are still a few wrinkles that need to be ironed out, mainly the frequency of the buses and the timing. as of now, there is no schedule for when a bus is to be expected. so one cannot really ‘plan’ the time a trip would take, because one doesn’t know when a bus would arrive. and then the frequency – occasionally, buses plying the same route come in twos and threes. and sometimes none comes. once, a friend and i ended up waiting for 40 minutes because after a point, one feels like ‘i’ve waited so long already, so the next one must be right on its way’. also, there is a not-so-minor matter of overcrowding. i guess the best way to solve this would be to increase the number of buses during peak demand, and also make them run through mid-way stops.

but if DTC is paying attention to improve its service, these are minor glitches. i have no other complaints. which is why i am doing my bit to promote bussing by ‘forwarding’ this ad:

the left side of the message that got chopped off:

haan, toh Bus Karo. at least, whenever you can.

youtube classics – charlie brooker on making news

this clever little gag works at so many levels that i wouldn’t be surprised if it IS the portal to the universe of 22 dimensions.

my bank, my bane

my bank never ceases to make my life just a bit more difficult. take for instance a small matter of activating transaction rights on my already active internet banking facility. notice already that the transactions rights are not automatic. once one has net-banking, one has to go ask for transaction rights separately. and then, the bank doesn’t trust its clients with the main password, so therefore there’s a profile password too -  the closest analogy being that the main password is for getting inside ‘the safe room’ and the profile password is for getting into ‘the safe’. also, bank thinks that a hacker who can hack into ‘the safe room’ would for some reason not be able to hack ‘the safe’. so anyway, i write an application in order to be able to create a profile password. for THAT, my home branch makes me jump through mobius-like hoops for three weeks at the end of which i still don’t get a profile password or transaction rights.

this injustice leads to a hapless customer care executive being subjected to an impassioned rant from me. in order to get rid of me, the executive gives me something called the  ‘customer unhappy’ number where one can crib to one’s content. interestingly, this actually leads to someone from my bank calling and enquiring about the problem. within four days – a blink of an eye by my bank’s scale of time – i get an sms from my bank that starts with ‘respected customer’, and that i can create my profile password and access transaction rights.

WOW! so with hope restored, i set about to create a profile password. and then i realize that it’s not over until the bank says it is over.

behold what i was faced with:

it’s a triple bind – i can’t leave the page without creating my profile password, but the page won’t accept my password unless i choose a security hint question, but the range of hint/security questions is such that i have to self-eliminate because i don’t fit the target profile – bourgeois middle-aged man* who works in companies and buys shares AND has more than one child – or i dare not choose the question because built into the question is the guarantee that you shall forget the answer as soon as you type it in. now, if my memory were capable of dredging up obscure bytes of information at my beck and call, i wouldn’t need to access the hint question in the first place, would i?

see, i have had my suspicions that my branch people are sadists and they probably bet amongst themselves who would make how many customers cry on a particular day. but having now seen these hint questions, i realize that it’s nothing to do with the people – it’s part of the bank ethos. the bank promotes mind-fuck.

for instance, consider the last one ‘what plant you like or dislike’?  first, how many people have favourite plants? okay, people like me. but then if you are the kind that has favourite plants, you don’t have just ONE favourite plant, you like many because it is the profusion and the bounty that makes plants beloved. then the question goes even further into complexity and chaos by adding ‘or dislike’ ? my mind is boggled already. but it doesn’t stop. fourth and final, the syntax of the sentence is just wrong. by this time i’m slamming my head against the wall.

in short, i see it as clear as the light of the day now – my bank and i don’t get each other, we don’t like each other, and i’m running out of reasons why we should be together. i think our relationship is doomed.
—-

* favourite sports columnist? how many women, and men also, do you know who follow sports columnists?

if you are that rare person who went through the list of hint questions and thought, ‘what’s the fuss about? these look reasonable to me’, congratulations and you are welcome to be a State Bank of India customer. you are made for each other, probably.

words

news has it that arnie the robot and erstwhile guvnor of California was dumped by his wife because not only did he have an affair with a woman who had been working in their household for 20 years, he had unprotected sex, and managed to impregnate her; she wants to keep it which is fine, BUT he lets her continue to work in the household, so the woman with whom he cheated on his wife was probably helping her pick birthday cakes for the kids. Now ten years after the fact, Arnie Unburdens himself to his wife. why? and what did he expect?

what an idiot on so many counts.

but apart from his personal traits, i think ‘love child’ is a lovely and much-abused word. don’t you think that our progeny would grow up much happier and better-adjusted if they were called our ‘Love Child’ instead of mere ‘Child’. it would give them the sense of they were brought into the world in love, and not just as a matter of biology. you know, ‘make love and make a love child’, instead of ‘have sex and have a baby’.

i’m definitely going to have my baby outside of wedlock just so that i can call it ‘my love child’.

web wonders

i am a most amused recipient of the internet’s inexplicable suggestions. for instance, here is what a domain seller wants me to buy.