Wearing a saree

Inspired by an ad on TV of guys teleconferencing about wearing a necktie

Six yards of fabric spread on the ground

Six yards of fabric to wrap me around

I pick up one end to see Mom frown

Ahh it has the fall, so it should go down

-

I hitch the other end around my waist

And turn myself once in quite a haste

I trip on my high heels, fall on the ground

Six yards of fabric to wrap me around

-

This time I manage to hitch one turn

I’ll fold in the pleats, I’ve got to learn

Mom does it daily, so don’t put me down

Six yards of fabric to wrap me around

-

I take up a safety-pin to secure the pleats

I jab it into my stomach, it makes me weep

I’d rather wear jeans, sarees I renounce

Six yards of fabric to wrap me around

 

Growing up in the seventies

I’ve taken up Itchy’s tag and am taking a totally self indulgent trip down memory lane. The seventies were a special decade in terms of world events and things happening in India …. but there are way too many things, so I cant keep it down to just 7 things …

1 The outer world : War in Bangladesh … can clearly remember the blackouts and the sirens; The nuclear blast at Pokhran – we felt so proud and powerful!! The assasination of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and the frantic pleas that preceeded that ghastly event, I can also remember our school taking us to another school to watch the “Man Landing on the Moon” film clip and showing us a glass jar in which moon-dust was displayed … I was such a small kid then. The assasination of Mujibur Rehman, the first President of Bangladesh …. so many memories

2. Music & Movies : Beatles of course …. and more Beatles with a bit of Don Mclean and Neil Diamond thrown in. If you really wanted to impress people that you were hip, then you listened to Leonard Cohen. By the late seventies we got introduced to Simon-Garfunkel, Clapton, Jethro Tull and Pink Floyd and the likes – and have still got the taste for that. Kishore Kumar and Lata Mangeshkar were the music in those times, Rajesh Khanna was on the wane and Amitabh Bacchan was on the rise …, Mumtaz and Sharmila Tagore were okay … but Praveen Babi and Zeenat Aman were the babes. Could not watch a lot of English movies – I was allowed to go watch them only with my brother – and only got to see the Trinity movies or Westerns sigh!!!

3. Inner Life We were bullshitters par excellence in those days and pondered a lot on the meaning of life. “Get out of the rat race, expand your conciousness and tune in to the universe” was the mantra. The world was full of young people seeking alternatives to simple material gain … and a lot of those alternatives being marijuana and hash !!! It was really the time of rebellion and rejection of establishment and money was such a dirty word heh! Ahhh never mind, the parents insisted that we get a good education and a whole lot of us are gainfully employed and responsible citizens now. The hippie in me really surfaces when I listen to this song “While my guitar gently weeps”

4. Clothes Outasize kurtas clinched on the waist with huge belts, jeans, kohlapuri chappals and a jhola was the uniform of the era, shoulder length hair that was combed under pressure of elders and then carefully mussed up, preferably under a fan to achieve the proper look!! Lipstick was not acceptable … and if used, it had to be brown.

5. Phoren meant phoren …. there it was – perfumes, creams, shimmery fabrics, good chocolates and even chicklets were impossible to get for any amount of money, which made the clear social distinction between the phoren-returned and other desis. Those that had gone abroad or had close relatives coming in from abroad looked down upon the others …..

6. T.V. While we were doing our thing and rebelling, the world around us kept taking quiet conventional revolutions. That is until TV became a big thing – from the yesteryears 3 hours in the evening and Krishi Darshan types, more entertainment was telecast like HUM LOG and then gasp Lalitaji hit the TV screen without any warning … I wonder if any one remembers her and the hugely popular serial Rajni? I was fascinated – being the hippie no longer held any appeal – I wanted to be Rajni or Lalitaji taking the world by its collar and demanding that I be given quality service.

That marked for me the end of youth and the beginning of adult life ……..

Most Practical T Shirt

Give me a lazy day and a computer, and this is what we get ….. posts about the most interesting (To me if not to any one else) stuff. After the “I hate Clowns T Shirt”, I started looking up other T Shirts and found this one!!!! It beats every other T Shirt I have seen in terms of practicality. Suffering from an itchy back? No problem at all. Just wear this TShirt and ask for help.

You even have a map to guide people.

“Just a little more. Get to F5 and start scratching. The spot is between F5 and F6. Thank you so much!”

Simply awesome.

I Hate Clowns

Just browsing on the net, I came across the website dedicated to hating

clowns. Here is the link to it http://www.ihateclowns.com/

I loved it. I hate clowns. I think people are fun, and clowns are some kind of aliens. I mean, they hide their faces under weird paint, wear some kind of funny nose and wigs. When I was little, a clown came and sat down next to me while I was having candy floss at a fair. It scared me so much that I dropped the darn candy floss. My parents actually clicked a picture of me looking daggers at the clown and trying to shift away from IT on the bench. They even thought we made a cute picture and they had it framed. I had to see it in their room for a long long time, that is, until I pushed it off the dresser and the frame broke. Thank God no one saw me do it – otherwise I would have been punished.

People especially funny people with twinkling eyes and a kind smile are s much more approachable. I have often seen kids bawl, cringe, and in extreme cases run away from the Mickey Mouse costumed clown or the Charlie Chaplin. They are intimidated by the weird alien. One really does not have to don a funny costume to bring a smile to a kid’s face.

They even sell T Shirts like the one in the picture.