tera bharat ma[ha]an

we dont usually take too kindly to people questioning our fealty to our country. after all our first career option was to die for the country [or at least make others die for theirs in defence of our land - cant allow such liberties after all].


recent exposure to the land of Gs has made us wonder if the ol' spirit continues. 3 ministers / CMs in the dock, 1 PM looks about to dock somewhere and two of the 3 ladies who make indian politics so entertaining look like they wont dock anywhere at all! [the 3rd one resembles a sphinx so we will reserve comment].


we also seem to be seriously considering a murderer and a doddering right-winger as potential PM material if god forbid we turn to the right in the next elections [btw, since the chinese cannot pronounce the alphabet 'L' and usually replace it with 'R', we are not surprised they dont have democracy...]


and bombay looks like she has been forgotten in the garbage dump. we are convinced its time to make bombay a stand-alone entity with its own governance. follow the dobuy principle and allow in people with specific skills for specific periods. crack down on nastiness and people spitting on the roads. and make people from bombay the leaders of the city, not from god-forsaken village or provincial town somewhere in the wilds of the state to which she is sadly attached.


any comments...?

a 'mom'entous occasion!

we are fortunate to have a mother [several million dont]. and last week we were fortunate to be able to celebrate a significant moment in her life - her 75th birthday! coming just a day after the guv'nor's 81st, we did feel a strange euphoria that our parentage, while of a fairly advanced vintage, can manage to rock!

our mother has been a mother since she was 20 years old, so a good 55 years of her life have been spent in motherhood. making her an expert at this very confounding art! we are the youngest child and according to our siblings have been a pest between the ages of 1 month and 480 months, after which faints spots of wisdom began dawning on us. however we can assert with all the authority of our 480 months that she is a mère sans pareil! she has put up with a less than ideal son [flunking undergraduate studies, choosing career options that still don’t make sense, remaining a bachelor even after 516 months and so on and so on] without any hint of disappointment or angst [guess all mothers are good actors as well!]. she was also responsible for us coming up with the invaluable concept [flicked from a tv serial] that ‘mother is the necessity of invention’! many a time has this saved our miserable hide from punitive measures!

we have been away from home and hearth for nearly 6 years. the weekly 15-minute call and the annual 30-day hey-mom-whats-for-breakfast-lunch-dinner-inbetweens barely helps to bridge the gap.  on the other hand we feel that her stoicism and faith in her karma [inherited from her mother, who is another story by herself] make her cope with this as well, and we continue to be away with this false hope.

happy birthday mom, and for a present we can only offer you a better future!


p.s.: this is also a requiem for another mother in faraway london who is doing rather poorly but can take heart in the fact that her daughter and son-in-law are doing everything they can to bring her round. hang in there both!

heres a blog of a thousand words...

live to eat...

the current environment and certain developments move us to write this.


we have just surfaced from the month of ramadan when the faithful fast. having observed the observation of this  month for 6 years at close quarters we can appreciate the strength of will required to go through an entire day without any ingestion whatsoever [including nasal drops] violating one's alimentary system. we appreciate it even more since we were sometimes forced to do likewise, given the restrictions on wayside inns and hostelries in dobuy and allied parts during the month! but we like the explosion of gastronomy at the end of the daily fast, when 'give us this day our daily bread' becomes a clamour rather than a silent prayer, and the fasting gentry square their elbows and get busy!


we also had occasion to observe the goings-on at ramlila maidan. where the concept of a fast was taken to its illogical conclusion. in a land where many go hungry due to circumstances rather than by choice it is a cruel method of espousing a cause. and nothing will convince us that fasting is a means of empathising with the lower two-thirds.


be that as it may, we have always lived to eat, as seen by our girth and the fact that we eat whatever doesnt eat us [we are convinced we have chinese ancestry somewhere up the line], and therefore, if we do have to espouse a cause, we will slow, rather than fast, and thank the powers that be for a good appetite and the means to have a good meal. rather be aspirational for the masses than join 'em!


bon appétit!

hope revives?

gleaned from a recent peek into the yellow press: "at 44, there are 15 percent fewer available males than females".


we are quite intrigued at the potentialities of this finding. for it makes the chase easier. back when we had hair we were a mere blip in a sea of eager males desiring female attention. now that the competition is tapering off, we will dust off our old waistline, buff the pate and step forth. attention les femmes!


however we cant help think that we may not really need to do all this. we are so used to our current celibatory status that any deviance gives us the heebies...


and therein lies our conflict.

petits pas de retour

we occasionally slip into la belle langue, just to check that we still know how the verbs go and to generally put on airs.

we are coming back gingerly onto our adventures so readers [both of you] kindly bear with us till we get used to thinking in blog-terms.

more posts to follow. un frisson de joie court à travers mon corps...

did anyone miss us...?

hellow world! nearly 6 months since we gave of our best. and what all has happened in that time!?
- apple has become almost an orchard
- the arab spring was sprung on us
- we almost saw a new corporate entity - nokiasoft [tho this may still happen]
- a wee lad from buck house married his sweetheart and showed the world that barbara cartland WAS in possession of her faculties
- didi replaced COM with CON in bengal. kolkata will never be the same. but can she now at least comb her hair and look a bit more human??
- we changed our look to bald n boo'ful and now look like a fraud lebanese man
- a kitten entered our life and gives us many a happy moment
- two very respected influences in our life left us suddenly
- tablets moved out of the pharma world and entered computing and telephony
- we switched from coffee to tea. and only a certain yellow label started by a lad named thos.
- our eldest sibling finally got her own email id and we are terribly proud of her
- un p'tit sarko is expected imminently
- herbie continues to give of her best. just back from a nip n tuck session
- we are lusting after an i-pad
- the space shuttle is about to get spaced out.
- osama kicked the bucket with a little help from friends
- the imf showed its not immune to a bit of nookie. but hey yankees need to understand that the frogs have a far more evolved world-view. so quit being so uptight!!
- we learnt that we can live without facebook [need to post that asap]

and what have you all been upto then...?