Dogworld

Whats with the human being's obsession with dogs.

In America, people treat their pets as their own.

They take care of them. Feed them. Walk them. Talk to them. Kiss them.

They give them interesting names often inspired from idiosyncratic cinema characters and sleazy television personalities.

Lets talk about dogs - supposedly a man's best friend. But I think they more are an American's best friend ever.
People in America walk their dogs on a leash. And they can be unleashed only in specific fenced parks or grounds labelled as "Dog parks".

This is where dogs celebrate their daily day of nirvana and find comfort in the travails of other fellow dogs. This is where they play with each other. Fight with each other. This is where human beings behave as sane creatures and respectfully look at each other (lest they dont embarass their dogs)

When the dogs are done playing they are curbed back on their leashes.

And then the owners continue walking them.

When the dogs want to relieve themselves they levitate towards certain geographic locations where the owner walks the dog too.

They relieve themselves.

And guess what happens next.

The dog-owner takes out a pair of plastic gloves from his/her pockets. And then actually picks up the droppings of the dog from the road.

And then throws everything in the nearby garbage bin. (unthinkable in India!!!)

The roads are clean. The dog-owner is saved from a fine/penalty or even a jail -term for 2 years.

And the dogs wink at the royal treatment ( "bow wow!!yeah my master cleans my S**T twice a day baby!!!")

The world is Facebook crazy.
Someone also thought Dogs need social networking. So they created Dogbook.And Catbook. Wow!
(yeah, go to FB and check it out)


American take their vacations seriously, and those with dogs need to plan additionally.

Most often they leave them with their neighbours (with notes on when to walk the dogs and how to pick up their S**T). 

Neighbours like it too.

I recently saw an ad in the apartment that said "Hi! I am in 8th grade. I want to make some pocket money. I can walk your dog every morning. Please call me at XXX-XXX-XXX"

Dog owners planning on a vacation to Hawaii would probably love the deal.


Another option owners have is to leave dogs in a dog shed.

These are communal dog shelters to take care of dogs while owners are away.

Except that they are a big business today.

They are called Dog Motels. or Dog Hotels.

Yeah you can do a google search and u ll get a host of places.

Here is an example: http://www.petswelcome.com/

The link also has tips for pets emergencies. And "how to prevent heat stroke" in pets.

There is also something called as 'Dollywood' - which is supposed to be a dog-only (thankfully) social event to guage their celebrity and status updates on Dogbook

Amazing!

Most Americans dont like to drive their own cars to the Dog Motel or Dog hotel.

So there are Dog Taxis (gimme a break!!!!!!!!!)

Like this one: http://www.seattledogtaxi.com/

Some families like to carry their dogs with them.

Yeah in the planes too.

And airlines permit dogs.

And they dont even have to buy a ticket.
And they dont have to go through security check.

Except that they should fit in a Dog basket that can be placed below the seat.

And the basket should be closed so that the dogs dont get out and eat all the food that the wild air-hostess wants to serve to everyone on board.

Also, we dont want the dogs to drive the plane.

Shopping stores have whole sections on Dog food. And Cat food.

Entire aisles are draped in Dog lingo.

They have Dog cookies and Dog snacks too. And its all so amazingly packaged.

The first time I was in the USA I hadnt realised i was in the animal section. And I almost bought a pack of Dog cookies!!

Omg!!

Thankfully I realised what I was doing!

:D

-

Its Me!

Glee In The Summer Sun

Somewhere in the busy streets of a city in New York:

A group of office colleagues in the room are busy wondering what the temperature is like outside. Its a summer's day. And they are wondering if they can step out to have some ice-cream.

They are dressed in summer wear. 

They pull out their iPhones and check the temperature outside.

A couple of them log-on to their computers and laptops to check the weather.

Some look at a cool iPad app that does a weather forecast every 10 minutes and predicts if there will be monsoon in Sahara that will cause the camels to do a salsa!

After sometime one of them decides that its too hot to go out.

Then another complains that that the dress she is wearing is too difficult to step out with.

A few minutes later a bunch of guys join the group.

The act repeats.

Smart phones, iPhones, iPads all come out and everybody is wondering if the temperature is 2 degrees up or down from yesterday.

Some of them appear to have solved the Global Warming problem of the earth.

Some others were lost if its Fahrenheit or Celsius- and accordingly if they had to complain along with the group or smile.

Eventually one of them steps out.

And then rushes back "guys! we can step out. its not bad"

"Oh is it? Great!"

Somewhere in middle of nowhere i mean...the dusty by-lanes of a sweltering city in India:

A group of young students are waiting for their school bus in scorching heat.
A business man is having a conversation with his wife in the AC confines of his car. Over the phone that is.

He steps out and continues his conversation; oblivious to the gradient of the temperature that he is about to experience. His nagging wife is not sure how to change the TV channel of his new 7-in-one home theatre set imported from Italy. 

He ends the argument. 

She begins a new one- she doesn't like the new washing machine. She prefers to warm her clothes under the open sun.
The businessman gets into his office. The cooler in his office is broken. A bunch of guys plan to fix it later in the day. The argument with this wife continues.

Two ladies are walking in the blistering heat towards their office campus.

One works for an ice-cream company. It doesnt matter.

A train is bursting with people in sweat. A bus is filled with people who are immersed in their local newspaper.

A truck driver is busy thinking if he can indulge in a Pepsi.
An insomniac has stepped out in a leather jacket. His bike contributing to the 'coolness' of the summer!

A bunch of people want to step for a cup of coffee.

One of them picks the local coffee shop.

They rush out. Within a minute they are sipping the best of coffee.

Karate Kids

When we were growing my parents relied on the public awareness that fitness and exercise was extremely essential for a child's good health. A good way for this was to introduce kids to sports or games.

Most of us would play (what else!) cricket in the playgrounds.

Or sometimes soccer.

Yet parents often felt cricket was a waste of time and was hard to succeed in.

They also felt cricket was a slow game

Bypassing all the other myriad Olympic sports that our colony had to offer, they somehow landed on the rather illogical decision that the sport that brought the child maximum strength and fitness was martial arts.

And so, I too was asked to join Karate class.

God! how I hated this!

Twice a week (including Sundays) we had to wear that white karate uniform and go to some school or hall where some moustached monster would teach us how to break bricks and twist every conceivable organ our body had in the hope of adorning a different coloured belt on our enormously fragile waistlines.

When I was in primary school I obediently joined the class because my parents asked me to.

The instructor would make us do exercises in the beginning.

One of them involved holding your hip and shaking your right toes to the count of 1-2-3-4-5 even as you had to look upwards at the ceiling and watch two mosquitoes mating with elan.

Then we had to run.

Take rounds of the school.

And as onlookers outside saw us slog like losers, we felt the equivalent of slavery.

One of the excercise involved sleeping on the floor and waiting till the instructor came and stepped on ur stomach. Ouch!

It was supposed to increase our stomach muscle. What a farce!

The girls would be spared from this ordeal. Thankfully.

After more wretched exercises we were split into groups where a junior instructor (a fellow who had joined the class few years earlier) would teach us karate steps. And we had to shout "kyaaaaaaaih" each time we punched the air as if we were simulating Aamir Khan in Gajini. 

The junior instructors would love to teach the girls - holding their hands and feet and coaching them to get the step correct. Such bliss!

Some of these junior instructors acted like poor cousins of Jackie Chan.

Little minds like me were clueless.

All I would be thinking was about the game of cricket or soccer that my other friends were playing.

What torture this Karate!!!

Wish I had spoken up and told my parents "i dont want to go"

I did.

The verdict was that I was being lazy.

Then one day the head instructor announced a Karate summer camp to the nearby Alibaug beach.

We were to leave on a Sunday morning and return that evening.

I was least interested.

Until I got to know that there would be free breakfast, lunch and snacks.

Almost 20 years later the only thing i remember from that camp was eating those bread rolls laced with jam and that awesome lunch on the beach.

And yeah..i remember shouting "kyaaiaaaaah" in the sand - guess I was shouting for chole bature.

A few years later my sister was also made to join the classes.

I have no idea if she enjoyed it or not. I think she didnt. She was more into the creative arts.

But she would come along with me.

The one sweet moment I remember very well though was our walk back home after the Sunday classes.

She was small.

And I had to escort her back home which was about a kilometer away.

We would walk on the sidewalk.

Telling stories to each other.

Joking and having fun, even as we were pissed off and tired by the crazy karate class.

I would guard her from the traffic on the roads.

There were no mobile phones then so the only way parents would know where we were was when we got home.

Once in a while we would feel thirsty.

And we would amble into a nearby Army canteen.

We didnt carry any money then.

But we would go to the tables and drink water when no one was looking.

I drank first. Made sure it was good.

Then I allowed my sister to drink.

I would never imagine doing that today given the large scale pollution and contamination of water today.

Then we would walk back home.

And when we got home..we would love staying in our karate uniforms.

Most of the times we would just sit and watch cartoons till mom would come and scold us to change.

I left Karate class in 6th standard when we moved to Vizag.

Unfortunately I was forced to join again in Class 8.

This time i was more in love with cricket.

So i would cheat the instructor and skip karate classes and play cricket/soccer.

I still had to attend karate class as my parents had paid the class fees (without even asking me)

My sister was lucky to be spared. She went onto attend Bharatanatyam classes.

Progress in karate was by belts.

You started with white.

Then moved to yellow..orange...and other colors of the rainbow.

Before you ended with a black belt!

Some guys were super serious about Karate.

One of the guys I knew went onto get a black belt and participated in the nationals.

For me though..I just wanted more colors.

I remember getting a purple belt and coming home proud.

I eventually ended at a brown belt.

But thats because I had been stuck at green for a while and I had told the instructor that he had to give me a brown belt else I would go to court.

Occasionally the instructor conducted tournaments.

And on a pretty big scale.

He called it Regional Level Championships (LOL!!)

The funny thing here was that we had to actually fight people.

I would much rather fight boys by matching wits on the cricket field or soccer pitch, or even the tennis or badminton courts.

But here I was fist-fighting in a quarterfinal with another guy.

The referee said "#@#%#$^#$^#@#%@#@@#$@#$@ Azmi" (he mumbled something in japanese!)

And I was looking at this other guy dressed in karate clothes.

I saw his belt. He was an orange belt.

I was a purple belt.

The seniority of the belts demanded that I command all the respect.

This guy came charging down at me.

I just moved.

He fell down.

I bent down and pointed my fist towards him and shouted "Kyaaaaiaah" - an action signifying that I had grounded him (one of the junior instructors had told me this tip)

Referee said "stop"

And declared me the winner.

I repeated the same in the semi-final and final and lo - I was the Regional Karate Champion!

Rofl!

Soap Inauguration

One of those little things in life that bring you cheer is waking up realizing that you are going into your bath with a new soap.

The thrill of opening a new soap is always an act of personal celebration for me.

No. Not the champagne and the jazz.

But just something that gives you a spring in your step.

The night before is when the previous soap is at its tiniest bit.

I know it wouldnt last till the next day.

Even if it did,  I wouldnt want to trade the opportunity to inaugurate a new soap at the start of a bright new day!

I laugh in a glee of contempt as I crush the last bit of soap and make such deadly lather out if it that the pores on my skin cry for peace.

In a jiffy, there is only lather.

No more soap.

The next morning as I reach out to my soap box, there is a joyful reminder that hits you that its time for the new soap.

I then dig into my personal warehouse in one dark corner of my closet.

It usually houses additional toothpastes, cartons of tissue paper, broken combs (the kinds you see in Dracula movies), accumulated but useful junk, and ofcourse, soaps.

I pick my new soap.

When I was in India, the soaps would be housed in a separate carton.

And depending on the length of your hand, your ability to see in the dark, and some luck, you would either end up with a refreshing Cinthol Lime or a dumb-u-smell-like-a-pig-Lifebuoy.

The latter was mainly used for domestic purposes until Hindustan Lever re-branded and reinvented those soaps to a much more (thankfully) saner soap. Yet, if you were not lucky or were having a bad morning, you would end up picking a Red Lifebuoy soap over and over again until you found a rose-petal-Aishwarya-Rai bathing-Breeze soap.

If it was the end of a quarter, you would probably just have the Red Lifebuoys (yuck!)

Sometimes you would end up with a Mysore Sandal. These were mainly meant for the women in the house, but men relished these as well. These were also grim reminders about the brigand Veerappan. But the aroma of the soap made u forget all your worries in the shower.

Sometimes one would end up with a "Lux Beauty Bar-Sitaron Ki Pasand".

The soap cover often had the attractive Kareena Kapoor or other size-zero Bollywood actresses that made me forget my morning rush as I stood enchanted in my solitary towel. As much as these soaps are targeted at women, men love to use them only occasionally (good break from the Hamams, Cinthols and Dettol soaps)

Some of these versions also had the words "Made with Milk, Honey, Amla, Pista, Protein and 100 other nutrients"

Two special soaps that brought a smile on my face were Hamam and Dettol.

Both had a wonderful fragrance that even made guys feel conscious about.

Both also had lovely advertisements played out on television.

So u always long for them.

Another popular soap for medicinal value was Medimix.

The best part of this soap was that you could use it on ur body as a soap and onto ur head as a shampoo.

Back to what I was talking about: so..yeah..i find my soap for the day.

And then unravel the neat packaging.

This is the soap that I would use for the next 2 weeks (or lesser depending on how many times I would fall into the dirty puddles while playing football).

The relationship gets pretty emotional.

The first day the soap is given a nice welcome.

I splash some water on the soap and get a feel for how I would smell for the next 2 weeks

As days progress the soap starts thinning.

You dont realise it till one day you are able to hold it with just 2 fingers instead of ur entire palm.

Thats when you start thinking about the soap.

How it had served you well.

How it would be missed when its gone.

How you pray that you would get the same soap when you searched your closet in the dark.

You scrub the soap one last time!

And then its time for a new soap :)

How Wonderful It Would Have Been If

 The Akshaypatra provides the meals for mid-day meals in schools across various locations in India - you can also be a part of this noble cause by donating - you can donate at ISKON centers. Akshaypatra has been started by ISKON and is an integral part of ISKON

The kitchen from the outside - a three-storey building which uses Gravity Flow Mechanism developed in-house
by our team. Each kitchen has the capacity to cook between 50 000 to 100 000
mid-day meals per day. Costing approximately 9 crores to set up, they are built with funds from public donations.

 The kitchen from the inside, consisting of rice cauldrons each of which
cooks up to 110kg of rice in 20 minutes. Sambar cauldrons cook up to 1200
litres of sambar in two hours.

 It is washed thoroughly on the 2nd floor

Washed rice is sent down the chute to the 1st floor

Rice pours down into steam heated cauldrons for cooking. The entire cooking process
takes place on the 1st floor

Super heated steam is used to cook food instead of flame.

When cooking is finished, it is loaded into trolleys

Cooked rice is sent down the chute to the ground floor

It flows down the pipe into containers

Piping hot rice on its way to being loaded into food vans. Around
6000 kilosof rice are cooked daily in each kitchen.

Food materials in Kitchen

Stock in the kitchen

Washed dal and vegetables flows down the chute into sambar cauldron on
the 1st floor.

Vegetables and dal ready to be cooked

Sambar being cooked on the first floor

Cooked sambar is packed and sent to the food vans to be loaded.

Chapati dough is mixed

Heavy rollers flatten the dough into thin sheets

Dough is cut into the classic round shape

Making chapatti

Collecting all the chapattis

Transporting akshayapatra food through bus

Happy Kids

Students benefitted from Akshayapatra!!

NOW SOMETHING TO REFLECT

How wonderful and thoughtful it would have been if lavish money thrown over IPL cricket matches was used for something like this by the sponsors

How wonderful it would have been if the Rs 96 Crore that was eaten up greedy individuals in the CWG scam was used to sponsor more free lunches for hungry children in the country. We could have fed hungry children in about 11 different cities.

How wonderful it would have been if the Rs 176,379 Crore that was eaten up by greedy individuals in the 2G scam was used to create more such Akshaypatras in the country. We could have built atleast 19600 such Akshaypatra Centers in our country!

How wonderful it would have been if our governments ensured that the poorest of the poor kids in the country had access to something like this. They would study. They would be educated. They will earn a livelihood for their families. And the number of people living below the poverty line in the country would decrease. We would be a happy nation. And thrive in prosperity.

 The Akshayapatra centers are not a government venture but built from public donations

How wonderful it would have been if you were reading this and felt like doing your bit for organizations like Akshayapatra

http://www.akshayapatra.org/

This is not a post written by me, but from an email forward

Little Vishwamitra

I was walking back home from work today evening.

The streets of New York were back in the summer glee.

I crossed the street and took a turn.

I kept walking towards my train station.

A musician was playing on his guitar on one of the sidewalks.

A few people dropped some pennies for him. He wasnt counting. He was lost in the melancholy of his song.

I felt for him.

A Chinese lady was walking with her husband.

I couldnt but help notice the shoes that she was wearing. They were of leopard skin. 

I was tempted to call this post  "The Leopard in NY", but I had other ideas.

Read on.

I entered a park.

People were pacing up the streets.

All headed in one direction - to the train station

A host of people were also coming in the opposite direction - from the train station

Men were pacing up towards the station.
The street sellers were housing their wares for the evening.

One man was standing outside his salad shop and cutting carrots as if it was the end of the world. It appeared as if he wanted to serve the whole city of New York a dish of carrot salad.

Larger showrooms had set up the evening lights.

There was a buzz of activity at this time of the day.

A man was playing drums using a pair of paint buckets.

These are the unsung heroes with abundance of talent that no-one notices.

I kept walking.

I was nearing the station. But had to cross a couple of streets and then one mini-park.

There were tourists everywhere.

Of all shapes and sizes.

A guy was taking a picture of his girl with the Empire State building as a backdrop.

But he was squatting at the foot of the girl.

It looked weird. But he essentially wanted to click a picture with the Empire State in her fingers.

It worked I guess!

An old gentleman was adjusting his camera to click the picture of his wife.

I think they were on their 25th honeymoon.

By now I had entered a mini-park - sort of like the final exit point before I reached my train station.

The park was a small one.

The lanes or walkways were ventilated.

Basically they were covers for pipe systems that ran underground. 

There was air blowing from the pipe systems.

And since the covers had holes there was air blowing out to anyone walking on those covers which were the walkways!

I was walking on them.

There was a blow of air from beneath as I walked.

There were people sitting on the chairs in the park.

And a whole sea of people were making that final cross across the park to the station

Then suddenly amidst the rush of all the activity in New York, a little boy wearing a red shirt and a blue trousers landed in my sight.

He must have been about 3 or 4 years.

He stood on the ventilated walkway.

He just stood there as the cold air from below blew upwards onto his face and causing his brown hair to curl up.

Then he sat down on the walkway in Yoga or Padmasana style.

And put his hands on his knees, the way sages did penance in the Ramayana and Mahabharata serials.

And he closed his eyes

I just stopped. Smiled at the little boy.

And continued walking.

I turned back, the people behind me were also looking the boy - who had squatted for doing penance in the busiest of walkways in the city.

They smiled.

I smiled too.

Then after a while the boy opened his eyes.

"Maum! Where r u??"

"Come here Steven! I have a bagel for you!"

And the boy rushed to meet his mother who obviously had no clue what her boy was upto!

Hall-Ticket

Hall-tickets!

In the Indian education system the term brings to mind a period of temporary upheaval caused by school or college examinations. Everyone of us who studied in India has had them.

Essentially these are the admission passes or entrance passes or admission tickets (or basically hall tickets) for you to enter an examination center (known during the British Raj as the Hall) and prove to the authorities that you are authorized to take the examination.

These are not the typical classroom exams.

These are state exams, board exams, basically any one of the 12000 different exams Indians can take in their lives to get 12 steps ahead.

To clear class 10, or to clear class 12.

To get an engineering seat.

Or a medical seat.

To get an MBA seat. 

To get a seat.
To sit.

The logic is there.

After all people need a way to track your attendance in an examination or test.

Most of us got our first hall-tickets when in Class 10.

These were our first board examinations, though I knew of some school districts in our country where they scared the child in Class 7 itself.

I remember when our class teacher told us to collect our hall-tickets at the end of the day.

It was 3 weeks to go for the big Board exams.

The arrival of the hall-tickets was like the final nail in the coffin - your preparation time was up.

You were either going to be doomed. Or you would crack the exams.

For some though, it would be the wake up alarm that they could not snooze anymore.

They would be seen frantically spending the rest of the day trying to understand from other classmates what the syllabus was, when the exam was going to start, which class they were in, what was the name of the teacher who taught the subject they never understood, what the never-understood-subject was, and who was the best girl in the class who could solve all their problems!

The sincere students would make a bee-line to the school office.

They would collect their hall-tickets and then place them in a notebook (usually the one where they got 10/10 five times the last 6 months).

And would go home.

The adventurous ones would pick it up only a few hours before the actual board exam coz they feared they would lose it. Some students would campaign for the school management to warehouse the hall-tickets as it was burdensome for students to remember their trigonometry, chemistry, history AND their hall-tickets to the exam center.

These students would never succeed in getting their way.

But most of them are well on their way to become trade union representatives or squabbling Members of Parliament.

Some of us would collect the hall-ticket and worship them in the family temples and take blessings of the Lord. My mom would take a flower from the pooja room and place it on my hall-ticket. It felt sacred. It felt blessed.

I remember wrapping my first hall-ticket (class 10) in plastic to avoid any water or oil or air or sunlight or breeze from affecting it.

For most of us, the hall-tickets were the first official and important identification documents.

Not that they would be retained for use forever, but for the time that they were valid and important, they were useful modes of identification.

They carried a picture of you - a photo id.

Most guys looked like minature versions of Tarzan - thin adolescent moustaches, sloppy hair, white teeth.

Some guys still had baby faces like when they were toddlers.

If the school uniform required ties, then that was captured in the photo too.

One or two guys would have pictures of their baby fancy-dress competition as their photo-id.

Not sure if this was by design coz I think i saw some guys dressed like Popeye the Sailor during the examination.

The girls would typically have their hair neatly braided or combed.

Some of the girls looked as if they were born in the chemistry lab. Their faces were so excited that it appeared they had drunk a bottle of hydrogen peroxide the night before taking the photo.

When the examinations would begin, students would normally use their hall-tickets to fill out their details on the answer sheet.

Most students would have memorized their their hall-ticket number.
They would close their eyes and fill it.
And open their eyes to confirm.

If it was wrong, they would start crying. Anxiety. High blood-pressure. Everything!

The most irritating aspect would be the exam invigilators coming around to verify your hall-ticket and ur answer sheet details.

It often rankled me coz it always took up 2-3 minutes of your time.

The worst is if an invigilator finds your surname interesting and starts asking you about the origins of your grandfather and whether he owned a farm-house.

My sister told me one girl in her class stopped bringing her hall-ticket to the examination after the 2nd paper of the 6 paper examination in her board exams. Apparently she had the hall-ticket in her bag but did not want to bring it to the exam hall. When questioned, she mentioned that her photo in the hall-ticket was in black-n-white and distracted her when she was writing the examination. Guess the girl eventually contested for Miss India.

After the examinations got over most students forgot about their hall-tickets.

Till another examination came along.

And another...

Its insane: I recently bought a movie ticket to go and watch a movie in a movie hall.

And i heard the ticket collector say "Sir! Hall-ticket?"

LoL!

PS: image sourced from the internet

Kitty Party

While browing a recent family photo album I came across pictures of a recent Kitty party at home. I think my sister had clicked them.

What is a Kitty party?

I am not sure why it is called Kitty party.

I have never been in one.

But I know that is a ladies-only affair. And its supposed to be their afternoon/evening of indulgence.

I tried to think of what exactly happens. Here is my understanding:

A group of women and their other women friends - okay lets call them aunties - get bored.

So they decide to have fun.

They pool in money and every month or every 3 weeks (depending on how fast they get bored), they group together in one of the ladies' homes.

Usually they meet around 3pm when they are done with lunch and when the men of the house are (thankfully) away at work.

They come dressed in sarees. Some in beautiful salwars.

Usually each one is trying to out-do the other.

Aunties bring their daughters if they are old enough to play games, but young enough to not understand complicated gossip. Aunties that brought their sons are considered losers.

The host of the party prepares a host of snacks and sweets. Pun intended!

Or just orders them from the nearby shop.

The goal of each host is to out-do the previous host.

Typically the menu would include: khara (hot condiments), sweets, sharbat, poha, upma, rava idli.

If Nita and Tina Ambani had their kitty parties, probably the menu would include: low-fat-high protein-medium carbo-high oxygen-i-love-ipl-grass-n-leaves....
to something more healthier such as.....chocolate-dressed-brownie-laced-with-sugar-syrup-soaked-in-dont-make-me-cry-anymore-marmalade!

They play games. The games usually consist of:

# Using their nose, ears,elbows and whatever else they can (except their hands) to pick vessels from a basket and place them on the carpet. The aunty who picks the most, gets a prize. The prize is usually one of the vessels. The winner immediately thinks about what she can cook in it the next day.

# Musical chairs:

Hi-tech host aunties beam songs from their ipods. 

The low-tech ones create music by banging spoons on plates. This scares the little babies who have complimentary passes to attend the kitty party. As a result there is more noise and more music.

This is the only time u will find lazy aunties running and trying to grab a chair.
Something brings out the child in a woman when she plays musical chairs. The winner of the game usually has her "Miss World" moment, and almost decides to write her name on the chair.

# Lemon spoon:

20 aunties race with a spoon in their mouth and a lemon on the spoon.

They run as if an Olympic medal is waiting at the other end of the living room.

Half the aunties reach the finishing line without the lemon.

Some aunties cheat and hide the lemons in their ears.

Some really brave aunties swallow the lemons -- good luck with that!

#Antakshari:

Half the aunties dont watch films.

The young aunties use this to make a statement.

In the end it becomes a case of gen 'X' versus Gen 'V also exist'.

The little girls, the daughters, take over and sing in elan.

Nice!

As the party goes on, the host doles out gifts to all the ladies.

These range from obscure shaped trinkets to butterfly shaped hair bands.

Fruits, and stuff are also exchanged.
Kids in the house are given toffees that will further spoil their teeth.
Babies in the house are given a cheek-punch, which is basically all other women pulling the babies's cheeks out of affection. Thankfully the babies dont know whats going on. More importantly, they survive the ordeal.

Most aunties keep gossiping as the games go on. Their gossip would typically revolve around:

# How their daughters got 1st place in the fancy-dress competition by dressing up like Sheela ki Jawani.

# How their servant maids never sweep the floor properly

# How the neighbouring lady got angry when they watered their plants in front of her door.

# How they recently learnt a new recipe from The Great Himalayan Continental Mexican Maple Safari Cooking Challenge on Doordarshan.

# Which tailor stitched the dress they were wearing, and what the color of his sewing machine was.

# How their daughter-in-law taught their son a lesson in cleanliness, and how their son taught their daughter-in-law to cook upma (if the daughter-in-law is also at the kitty party, then effort is made to forget about the upma)

The party stops on time if the host and guests are very punctual.

Or when the husband of the host rings the door bell and smiles as he greets woman power in the living room.

Or when the husband of one of the guests rings the door bell and makes an angry face that he doesnt have the keys to his house.

3 Bills and Masala Dosa

Last weekend at the Indian grocery store, there was a rather hilarious sight.

I purchased my stuff and stood in the line.

A lady two places ahead of me was at the counter, and I saw that her bill was $20.19

Not sure why I registered that in my brain.

But next in line was a grumpy old gentleman. He had a cap over his white sloppy hair. He wore spectacles. He looked like a Delhi-ite.

He began arguing with the cashier, a Gujarati lady, about the price of the tomatoes. Apparently he wanted it to be $2.7 and not $2.5.

Oh ok!

He haggled over a few more items, until finally he agreed to pay the bill.

The cash display showed it to be $20.20

By this time there was this wierd feeling in my head, as the lady began scanning my items.

I didnt want to jump the gun but I waited and watched.

And yes, I didnt haggle like the gentleman in front of me.

With bated breath I watched...and lo! My bill was $20.21.

I paused the song on my ipod and smiled as I took out my card to pay.

"Did you see that? The last 3 bills were all one after another. What a coincidence right?", I asked the Gujarati girl in Hindi.

She gave me a stare that is normally associated with angry grandmothers.

"Sign here sir", she bluntly tossed the receipt and a pen.

And kept looking at the pen.

I signed it and picked my stuff and went.

I tried to put on a brave face and act honourable, though I was feeling disgusted at her rather acrimoniously dumb response.

I went to a small indian restaurant to eat dosa.

I ordered a masala dosa.

When my dosa arrived, I realised I can plan my dinner too.

I took a take-home box and took out all the aloo sabji from the dosa and packed it for my dinner.

And then ate the masala-less masala dosa with sambar and chutney.

Why do we call it Masala dosa?

Should it not be called Aloo dosa?

All that they do is add aloo sabji inside the dosa.

I finished the dosa.

As I was about to leave, I went to the lady who was taking orders.

"Excuse me! Why do you call these Masala Dosa? You dont add masala right? You only add Aloo sabzi. I think you should call it Potato Dosa", I took a stand hoping to hear something interesting.

"Sir! do u want to order something else sir? If not, thank you sir", she replied in Hindi+English.

"Oh sorry. Thanks", I said and took my things and ran away.

My God! Whatever happened to people's sense of humour?!!