my niece random dialled numbers from my phone. resulting in three most awkwardest conversations in the entire week.
and for reasons unrelated, i feel a wee bit bluish.

i lost my emerald ring and found it again.

brown paper packages tied up with strings

lotus perfume, drumling, purple glass lantern, silver star shaped candles, candle shaped like chnapa phul, purple tshirt and green beads. more to come. present. presents.

lunch

ac section in sabir, where i bullied middle-aged lonely guest to move into a booth, by calling him uncle loudly thrice in a row, so we could join tables together.
chicken biriyani, non-greasy, light and fluffy with the potato done just right. mutton rezala, with even the shukno lonka glistening like it's crafted out of red tourmaline. a torn bit of the softest tandoori roti with the outer skin baked to a crisp and all moist and flavorful inside. kashmiri kabab - not bad - wrapped in egg. firni and a spoon of shahi tukra. good old thumsup. and daber jol on chandni mor.
of course people solicitiously asked about my diet plan when they got to hear about it and not so solicitiously called me 10 ton hati. but that can't be helped.

note to self

there are people who live by plans and there are people who live by dreams. if plans fall apart, you change plans. but you can't change dreams. if you choose to live by dreams, you can't afford to get intimidated. deal with it bitch.

i am zen. no, i was zen, after days of rapidly swinging phases of anxiety, stress, nerves, anger, despair and the whole works, i told myself that it matters so much that it doesn't matter any more. and i attained zen.
thus equipped i went for a pedicure to soothe the residual nerves - very neat with girlie colours and fruit massage and the works. i was walking back admiring my coral pink toes, when i bumped into the most acerbic old man. before i could apologise he yelled "paayer dike takiye hnatchho keno? paaye ki phul phutechhe?"
i couldn't say anything apart from looking at him open-mouthed and then mumbled a bit. i WAS in fact thinking right then that my toes looked like golap phul.
they do. the polish is just the right sort with a bit of something giving it a texture which makes my toe nails look like bits of petals gelaming with something like dew and the texture could easily be taken for the flecks you see in the fat roses.

i am reading the wind-up bird chronicles. at one place, murakami describes a feeling - anger seeped with sorrow.

happy dussehra

or shubho bijoya as we say. I've wondered long about the connotation of shubho - it's more than happy, less than holy, but indicates a sense of grace, wellbeing, what else?
anyway the semiotics aside, this morning i have something very precious to be thankful for.
the southern wonder called and in course of conversation let it be known that he has spare cash which can be used as reserve fund for payments. i am shite at being emotional. so i snapped it aside and asked him to concentrate on his job at hand.
friends.
they make such an easy job of chasing dreams.
one day, i hope, i'll have it in me to live up to them. apart from that, i have nothing much to ask for at the moment. life seems very full.

my new haircut is cool. i am very proud of it. when random pesky kid tugged my hair in the pandal, i, however did not bust a vein. i looked at it and made sure it was old enough to understand. and then on the pretext of giving it a toffee told it that i'll break its twiggy little arm if it did that again to me or to anybody else. and i said i'd be watching. it had an extremely satisfying expression (to me) on its face for as long as i could see it.
then i came home and couldn't go out for dinner and cooked myself the worst chicken roast in history.

not doing anything can be such a high. and speaking of highs, thanks to the wee drummer, i slept large parts of last evening, night and this morning, in a pink, i beg your pardon, ponk haze, punctuated only by the worry that something was trying to come out of the top drawer on the study table. i woke up this morning to a large pile of hard bound books, piled meticulously (and alphabetically organised) on the right side of the table, directly on top of where the drawers are.

i need to grow up. pronto.