!@#$%!!

There are horrible things, and there are shitty things. Horrible ones make you cringe or cry when u remember them, shitty things are frustrating, but only make you shrug at the memory, and make others laugh cruelly when narrated.

For eg, when you unknowingly step into dung on the road, it’s a shitty thing.. but when you slip in it and break your nose and are left disfigured forever, it’s horrible.

I travel in local trains to go to work, and the other day, I left office early, and there was a train leaving at 4.30 pm. It was 4.29 in my watch. I rushed to the ticket counter, and I saw the train pull into the platform. I pushed everyone in the queue aside, yelled at the aunty to gimme a ticket and threw a Rs10 note at her. And this dumb female, starts counting coins to pay me back without handing over the ticket. I yell again, snatch the ticket and rush out. The train has started moving, and I started running towards the entrance of a compartment, movie style. I almost got into it, with one foot on the foot-hold, when I slipped. I would’ve gone crashing down onto the platform, and got injured, died whatever..

If he hadn’t pulled me inside. Well, I’m no Simran, so he wasn’t Shah Rukh either. More like Amrish Puri, judging by the length of the lecture he gave me. “you know what could have happened? You know how irresponsible it was?” so on and so forth. Interestingly, every thing he said was a question. “How would your parents feel?”.. “blah blah? Bblah?” it was quite funny after I’d noticed this. I counted 14 questions before he shut up and looked away. He had a shiny bald patch on his head. So, let’s call him Anupam Kher? But he had the strength to pull me, (ME!) into the train, so more like Dara Singh.. Well whoever.

I pulled out my book and began reading, and looked out when the train approached a station. My mouth fell open. This train wasn’t supposed to go to this station!! Turns out I was on the wrong train! This explained why the ticket counter lady was so nonchalant when I told her that the train had arrived. Turns out she wasn’t the dumb one after all. I was so frustu that some really nasty words flew out of my mouth, causing our Amrish Puri to stare at me with a horrified look. “I bet you wont ask me any ‘questions’ now” I thought.

That same evening.

I was going to my aunt’s place and my cousin had come to pick me up on her 2-wheeler. On the way a drain was overflowing, and I was telling her to drive very very slowly. “I don’t want even a drop of the dirty drain water to splash on to my foot. Slow down”.. “slower”..” Slowerrrrrrr” at that precise moment.. ‘Splash!!’ a goddamned truck driver went speeding past us. Again a string of expletives flew out of my mouth, much to the shock of my little cousin, who had never seen this side of ‘Manasa-akka’.

But it’s useless to bad-mouth anyone. It’s no one’s fault, and there’s no way to escape it. When there’s shit waiting to happen, it will.

Tangled

Never trust an Assamese hair stylist.

I specifically told her that I wanted to keep it long. I just wanted her to trim the edges which started looking like overgrown bushes. Just that morning I was admiring how long it’d become. It had taken me two long years for it to grow so much. She acted like she understood me, said ‘umm’ and ‘ah’ and all that. Then she stuck many colored pins in my hair, and started the demolition. Snip snip snip.. it went on and on. Now with my glasses off, I’m half blind and since I was sitting so far from the mirror I couldn’t really see what was going on. Only a blurry shape which looked like it had horns, coz of all those pins stuck in the hair.

After a while, she removed the pins and my still-wet hair fell to my shoulder.. my shoulder!! It was HALF as long as it used to be.. I squealed.. startling her.. I wanted to yell at her, to call her names, make her see the horrible sin she’d committed, and all I could manage was “where’s my hair??” to which she obviously laughed. You know, some people are intimidating customers.. the people who make others really careful in their presence; and the rest of us are a bunch of clowns who nobody is scared of. She wouldn’t have dared to cut all my hair off if I’d belonged to the former set.

But after she blow-dried my tresses, and those exquisite curls landed softly on my shoulders, I could just sit and stare at my reflection. I didn’t hate that woman with a funny name anymore. Yes she’d butchered my long hair, but she’d turned wild tangles into bouncy curls. I was gushing like an idiot thanking her profusely. We even made plans how she’d style my hair when I got married. Ya, I haven’t yet met the guy I’ll marry, but I have a hair-stylist ready.

Have you ever looked into a mirror and felt a truck-load of happiness? Ever been so much in love with yourself that you are bursting with the joy of it? I was suddenly in this place where I loved looking in the mirror, and where previously I saw Shrek, now I saw Fiona (the human one). For the next two days I skipped around, tossing my hair and smiling, and liking that smile.

And then , I shampooed, and lo and behold, my wild tangles were back again, only shorter.

Book Review - Delhi 14 Historic Walks

This review is a part of the Book Reviews Program at BlogAdda.com

They say you aren’t supposed to judge a book by its cover, but I guess you are allowed to fall in love with the cover. Like I did, as soon as I opened the package and looked at ‘Delhi – 14 Historic Walks’. It has a beautiful cover, with a picture of an ancient stone passageway, as if beckoning you to come inside.

I love taking random walks in the morning, by myself, taking in the surroundings. And hence the concept of Historic walks described in the book intrigued me so much. A historic walk is a walking tour of a historical place, either enjoyed alone or with friends or an organized heritage walk comprising a bunch of strangers.

The book describes 14 such walks in Delhi in great detail. Each place comes with a detailed site map directions, entry fee details, best time to visit and many other pieces of trivia that will help you visit. But this is not another boring tour-guide. You can enjoy reading this book even if you aren’t planning to visit. For the tone of the book is personal, giving it a feel of a story rather than a boring narrative.

Each historic place has a story to tell. Of how it came to be built, what ancient events took place there and the royalty connected to it. The author, Sapna Liddle tells these stories in a concise way, taking the readers along, as she walks by each place. Hence, this book is as entertaining as it is informative. It’s like getting little lessons in history, narrated as fables.

The photographs accompanying each description are beautiful and well chosen, to provide a complete experience of getting to know a place. The walks are arranged in a chronological order – oldest areas to newest. As we go from one to another we capture the systematic history of the development of the city and its architectural heritage.

Embarking upon each walk is like taking a little time travel into the past, and our first destination is the Qutub Minar complex. The narrative begins with a brief history of the rulers who built the various buildings in the complex, and the changes brought in by the change of regime. This is followed by a description of the architecture. The author writes about how ‘the Arch’ was introduced into Indian architecture after the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate.

For those planning to visit the places mentioned in the book, there’s also information on the amenities available at the sites and also trivia like the difficulty level of getting there, and also draws attention to details like the presence of thorny bushes and the required precautions to be taken.

Another site mentioned here is Tughlaqabad. I enjoyed reading this section because I have finally come to know the story behind the commonly used saying ‘Dilli duur ast’ or ‘Dilli abhi door hai’. The sufi saint Nizamuddin Auliya was under a death-threat from emperor Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq who was out on a military campaign and sent word that the saint would be punished in his return to Delhi. When urged to leave the city, he said ‘Delhi is yet far’.

The book is thoroughly entertaining, and so full of detail that reading has been a real delight. Reading about Humayun’s tomb, the Red fort and Shahjahanabad brings back memories from the time I visited those fascinating places, steeped in history, and I’m sure that the readers who haven’t been there, would love to go take those ’14 Historic walks’ in Delhi.

And if you really wanna visit, Delhi isn’t all that far away.