Facebook photos uploading etiquettes

A lot of people go on holidays so that they could upload pictures on Facebook for various reasons. Enjoying with their family is the last thing on their mind. The reasons for uploading photos might vary from –

• Making their friends jealous (Hey! Look at me! I am hanging in the air upside down! Stare Stare!)
• Making their relatives jealous (Hey loser! dream on!)
• Making their colleagues jealous (Work smart party hard suckers!)
• Marinate in the comments (Lovely couple!! Beautiful Background!! Where did you go? I am sooo jealous of you guys! Blah!)
• Collecting likes (A dislike button is the need of the hour)
• To achieve inner satisfaction because people are jealous because they are happy.
• Sharing them with their family and friends (Didn’t I tell you that this is the last thing on their mind?)

Now, We are not against all the photo uploading sho-sha but there should be a level of decency to be maintained. You really don’t have to behave like Mount Etna and erupt your trip lava on our wall. So, here is a list of tips which might help people actually go through your pictures instead of hurriedly liking them and putting bland comments and be done with it. Here goes:

1) We understand you like mountains and lakes and deserts and trees but can you please not click the same bloody mountain from all the sides and dump it on Facebook? Also, standing and giving different poses with the same tree makes you a retard. Mountain, mountain, mountain-man, mountain-sheep, mountain-cloud, mountain, mountain. Seriously?!?

2) We know you love your partner. You are madly in love. No one, and that means no one, can love each other as much as you two. But can you please not drip all of us in your honey scooped butter scotch love? We don’t like to see couples entangled with each other like two grasshoppers where you cannot differentiate where one starts and the other ends. And we don’t like to see people slurping each other like dogs.

That poor thing is going to drown!

3) Your dog and cat are great! They must be really unique but for us, they are just an animal. So, it gets a bit amusing to see your dog’s photo shoot in all its glory. We are sure that they could give more expressions than a lot of our Bollywood stars but that is no reason for them to pose nude on our wall.

4) Oh! You had a kid! That’s so adorable! The poor thing can’t even open his eyes yet, but you have already thrust a camera on his face scaring him out of his wits and forced him to make all those take-this-thing-off-me faces while you click him. Your kid is beautiful but try not to put a picture on Facebook of his diaper changing activities. That’s Gross. And also, try not to put those pictures of that white cereal paste hanging out of his mouth. That’s equally gross.

5) Sunrise and Sunsets! There are already millions of pictures of our only star popping in and out of the Earth, so please don’t bore us with another of those pictures unless you have taken them from a space shuttle on a mission to re-fuel the Sun. Ditto for flowers, birds and insects unless you have unearthed a new species.

6) We are sure you love adventure sports. So you went to this cool destination and enjoyed paragliding but can you please not upload twenty pictures of you flying over mountains? Honestly, we can barely make you out in those photos. You might have just googled them and posted them on Facebook just to make people jealous.

Are you sure you are in there?

7) We hate blurred and shaky pictures. It’s hard to understand the psyche of a person who uploads a photo of his left hand or his girlfriend’s breast or his kid’s foot. We understand you clicked such pictures accidentally and we give you a benefit of doubt that you uploaded them accidentally but there is ALWAYS a delete button. It’s not a nuke which you have deployed accidentally and can’t retrieve back. If you don’t have time to check your photos before uploading or after uploading them, then don’t fuc*ing upload them.

8) You went to a disc and had a lot of drinks and enjoyed with your friends. Great! Try not to dump all your evening on our wall. We really don’t like to see people getting drunk, dancing as if controlled by a random number generator, taking off their clothes one by one and puking on their friend’s face. You are not making us jealous. You are making us groan.

9) Pictures of Gods and weird Independence day and Republic day pictures also make us dizzy. “Jai Mata Di” is great but first make your life straight. And if you are uploading a “Proud to be an Indian” picture then stop bloody wasting your time on Facebook and do something worthy of being proud of. And those “Happy Diwali!!!” pics on our wall make us very dizzy. Our whole wall seems to be on fire.

10) Stop tagging us in every picture of yours even when we are nowhere in the pic. We are not your dog’s tail or your best friend’s ass. Spare us the embarrassment of moving our mouse on your sorry torso to find out which body part of yours is named after us.

I hope you understand the mental trauma we undergo while we browse through your photos and will try to make honest corrections.

Thanks,

Your fellow good for nothing Facebook addicts.

p.s. We must admit that we ourselves indulge in a lot of the above mentioned activities. So, don’t take the post seriously. Keep *groan* uploading.

The long and short of it…

Hello to all the fellow internet crawlers, to all my friends connected to me by zeroes and ones. Now now! Don’t jump from your seats and to conclusions. I am not back. It’s one of those three-months itch. Yes, I was missing my affair with my blog.

Like all other bloggers who go on a sabbatical, I am supposed to dive into an egotistic and pompous rant about the happenings in my life in the past few months, which I will dutifully indulge into, to satisfy all the masala hungry people here.

So, this is my first winter in Manchester and what a dull and gloomy place it has turned into. It gets dark at 4 in the afternoon and by the time I get up from my desk at 6, I feel like I have been working since eternity. There are cold winds bellowing all the time making those spooky horror movie sounds and turning my umbrella inside out. One thing that I really hate is wearing caps, which I have to do now because otherwise, I will not be able to feel my nose and ears by the time I reach home. It rains all the bloody (Yeah! Bloody and Bollocks are the two latest additions to my dictionary) day and the bell of my house gets short circuited in the rain and starts ringing continuously at 2 in the night. So, I have to get up from my bed and go to the door in freezing cold to throw out the batteries to make it stop hollering. Bollocks!

And do you think that an Indian landlord in Manchester would do you good? Well, think again. I shifted my house three months back and fell upon a smiling, obese Punjabi Uncle who acted like Mother India before I said Yes to the house. After I shifted, I literally had to rub my nose on the ground in front of him to get a few minuscule things to be fitted. He gives miserliness a new definition.

The reason I went on a break (and I am still on a break) was that I wanted to write a book. Now don’t hit me with a cliché by asking me the bloody story. As if I am going to tell you! Buy it and make some dough land in my wallet if it gets published. Ever! And it’s going on fine. Thank you very much. Some wise man said once – The first draft of anything is shit! Got the picture?

And then in between all this mayhem to which my life was subjected to…

I GOT ENGAGED!!!! YAY!!!

Well, long story short, it was through a matrimonial site. My parents had put my advertisement (I like imagining myself as a commodity. It’s quite aphrodisiacal) on a matrimonial site and had almost given up hope. It’s not because there were no takers. 😛 Far from it! It’s just that my parents had set some very high standards. You see, they think I am Hrithik Roshan and the rejection rate was as high as 50 girls/week. No kidding! Then along came Polly (Yeah, that’s what I’ll call her on the blog), and we started talking over phone. Our parents matched the horror-scopes and Voila! 33/36! They almost jumped out of their skin! So, we talked, talked on phone, talked on webcam and talked each other into saying yes without meeting. Kind of romantic, I think. So, I went back to India and there was a small ceremony called Roka. Done! Amit is sold! He is now Polly’s slave (this is such a turn on! 😉 ).

What else have I done in the previous months that was exciting….Ummm…

I saw a play for the first time in my life in the Palace Theatre here. It was a musical called Chicago (you might have seen the movie). Before the play started, I thought that live performances can never match the ‘razzle dazzle’ of the movies, but I was wrong. It was splendid (another word that I have picked up here. Everything is either splendid or wonderful or excellent). The downside? I went alone and missed Polly and thought that it would have been great if she was sitting next to me instead of the wonderfully fat lady who could barely fit in her seat and was brimming all over me.

Autumn was beautiful. I went around the city with my camera and took some photographs. I visited Style Mill with MB, a British friend and was literally transported a 100 years back, specially in the apprentice house. I’ll put the photographs soon. And now I think I am rambling.

Anyways, the reason I actually started writing this post was because Visceral Observations had recently announced the Avant Garde Bloggies Awards, which is wonderful! Since this is a kind of beat-my-own-drum post, I must jog your memory cells and remind you that I won 8 awards last year and again thank all of you who voted for me. So, the nominations have started and are open till 20 December. Nominate your posts and the posts which you think are worthy of recognition. It’s fun, believe me!

And here are a few details to kick start the process (which I am shamefully copying from Oxy’s blog).

Here is once again the link to everything you need to know about the Awards as well as how to nominate your and other’s posts. CLICK HERE.

Conceived by Visceral Observations

Badges Designed by Chirag. Have a look at the Badges by CLICKING HERE.

Volunteers Vimal, Vee and Magik

Publicist Nikhil

The Categories CLICK HERE.

Official Video CLICK HERE.

So, go ahead and have fun and I’ll see you around.

Feminism, A and the Award

Ages ago, I was tagged by Nita and Sulz and till now I have been shamelessly ignoring the tags. But the guilt is killing me and I must finish the task assigned to me. Keeping the melodrama aside, I’ll start with Nita’s tag. This is what she tagged me to write about.

What does Feminism means to me

First of all, I was not sure what the word meant, so I landed up in an online dictionary and this is what popped up there : 

fem·i·nism n.  

1. Belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes.

2. The movement organized around this belief.

Ahem! Well, I think, the socio economic structure of the society in which we live plays an important role in determining the level of the “movement”. When the First wave came, India was still fighting for its freedom and there was no way it could have affected her. When the second wave came in the 1960s, India was all up and ready for it. Even today when we are in the third wave, an American society is much mature when it comes to a woman choosing the kind of life she wants to lead. In India, we still beat up the girl if she falls in love with a guy outside her cast. Infact, even if you compare the freedom given to women in a city with a small town/village in India, you would be shocked by the difference. After three waves, we still have to go a long way in India. Even after having laws in place, there are rapes, sexual harassment, forced abortions, forced reproductions, domestic violence etc and what not! People still think that women are vulnerable because they are weak but its just because of the kind of environment we are all brought up in. I am sure any woman who is a black belt in Karate can throw me two feet towards the sky with a single chop. 🙂

The problem is in our brains. We are wired in a wrong fashion from the time we are born. Women are not born vulnerable but are taught to be so. Similarly men are not born strong. They pick it up from what they see in their family and surroundings. I could never understand how we reached a stage where a human has to ask for her rights? And what surprises me is that we are still there. 

All these issues are way too big, but people need to understand the basic rights of an individual. I can understand when a father asks her daughter to return home before twilight because raping a girl is becoming an activity as common as wiping your ass with a tissue. But, I cannot understand when he asks her to forget the guy she loves because he does not belong to the same community. I find that laughable. Similarly, I don’t believe that a homemaker is worse off than a working woman. Its a very individual choice and depends on many factors. Equality of sexes certainly does not mean that a woman has to work to be a true blue feminist. 

It all boils down to the theory of Live and let live. We all make sacrifices in our life, but let’s not force someone to make a sacrifice because of her gender.

The alphabet A

Sulz’s tag. I have to write 7(?) words starting with alphabet A. I am putting up words which describe me. Here goes :

Absurd – Yes!Yes! I am ridiculous, illogical and senseless at times, but then even God is sometimes! So you see, no one is perfect. 😛 

Able – Leaving aside the fact that I am destiny’s favourite toy, I am quite able if I am left to my own means. If I find something interesting enough, I’ll take it up with perfect dexterity till the time I get completely bored of it. I told you I was absurd! 😛

Assiduous – I have obtained this quality from my Mom. Whenever I have to shop for clothes and I take her with me, she picks up clothes which are poles apart from my taste and then both of us “assiduously” attempt to disparage each other. 😐 Well, I consider it to be a good quality. Atleast I pick up clothes of my choice and I always win! 🙂

Aloof – I can be alarmingly aloof with strangers, so much that I am mistaken as an Egotist whose nose is always at an angle of 80 degrees from the ground. Many of my friends were surprised when they dared to know me better after that initial cold shoulder. 

Amiable – Well! That is what I actually become once I allow you to be my friend. 🙂 Its a difficult path and only a few daredevils have dared. 😛

Anchor – Whenever I become a part of a group, I end up becoming the anchor which holds the group together after everyone moves away to their new life/city. I met a group of friends recently after 7 years and again(!!!!) it was me who made all the phone calls and arranged the meeting. Good old Amit!

The awards

Finally, the awards. I was given the Friendship Embracelet by Kiran sometime back and the Garland Award by Kanagu. Thankyou both of you. 🙂

 

That is all guys and girls. Over and out.

Protected: F.R.I.E.N.D.S (forever!?!)

This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Randomizer Revolutions

Smita and Vishesh awarded me the Butterfly award and the Cup. Thank you so much guys!!! I really have to make a new page for my awards section before my sidebar exceeds the distance between the Earth and the moon. I am supposed to pass this award to  bloggers I like. So, I would like this opportunity to pass this award to Nita, Liju Philip, Amreekan Desi, Pr3rna and Trailblazer. 

I am officially closing the Salsa Diaries Category. I have attended the first few classes with enthusiasm but then this new work came along and I got really busy. We are creating a new website for our client which is supposed to go live in January, so loads of work and no time for Salsa. I was really doing great. 😦

 

I was also busy with photo shoot and release of my new album. I had such a great time recording it and it was really sweet of Paris to come and release it in front of the press. Also I would like to thank Madonna for being a part of the video shoot and for singing a song with me. The female models were great during the promotional photo shoots but I am a little unhappy about my pictures in the exhibition. I didn’t like the red ones. Here is a sneak peek.  

 Here is Paris unfolding my new album in front of the media

Madonna grooving to my new song – “You gave me wings at the wrong place”

A model at the promotional photo shoot for the new album. The designers of the dress had such a harrowing time as it kept on unhooking. It was quite fragile.

The promotional Exhibition in New York

I always knew that our directors copy Hollywood movies and our Music directors copy Korean songs blatantly but can we at least make original movie posters? 

At least they could have changed the positions of the males and females OR AM I ASKING FOR TOO MUCH? Never mind! 😐

So, Congress won again in Delhi!!! Well, I think the simple logic is that if the people have to choose between a government “who is incapable of fighting terrorism and is elemental in the development of the area” AND the one “who is incapable of fighting terrorism”, then they would definitely choose the former. Its another story that the “development” is happening because of the Commonwealth Games and both the parties are equally bad at handling terrorism. 

I am having this feeling that I am turning into a major success as an Agony Uncle. Many of my friends turn to me whenever they have problems in their love life. I sit and listen to them very very patiently and give some sound advise, which thankfully has not backfired till date. One of my friend even took my advice about whether he should go ahead and have sex with this girl he met a few months back. Ok, that’s not the full story. The girl was about to get married to someone else and just wanted to “have” my friend once before she got married to the other guy. I don’t remember the last time I moved my head from right to left to right so vigorously. My friend who was ready to take the plunge under the stress of testosterone was somehow rescued by Yours truly. And………………………………………….I just now realised that he reads my blog. 

I am completely in love…….with this song. There is something very suave and romantic about it. (the video is not that great and it would be good if you don’t see the message which comes at the end of the video. I have been laughing ever since I saw it)

 

Do you believe in signs? Sometimes such strange things happen which do not make sense at all. A few days back, mom was coming back from the market and she took a rickshaw. After she got down and paid the rickshaw puller, he returned back the balance. This is what he gave her – 

Now last I remember, the Britishers left in 1947 and my mom gave him 10 Rs while he returned back 85 Rs(=1 Pound). Does that make sense? Is this some sort of a sign for me? Am I going visit the Queen’s land?

With this incredibly positive thought, I will end this post.

Addicted to Himesh

Ever since Camera Phones were banned in my account in office because of increased security and because the Client raised concerns over security, I have been constantly taking cognisance of what my senses had to offer and the conscious movement of my mind to a plane about which I was completely unaware of. I don’t know what I am writing! I am in a trance! 😐

So, my beautiful-still-brand-new Motorokr E6 was snatched away from my hands by fate and the mobile landed up in my sis’s lap who was anyways going to buy a new one. Some people are so darn lucky! I had to buy a new “cheap” mobile which was not supposed to have a Camera. It was hard to move back to the stone age but somehow I did it and finally bought a Sony Ericsson’s mobile which atleast had an FM. I had a one GB card in my earlier phone which was choc-a-bloc with songs of my choice but now I was completely and helplessly on the mercy of 91.1, 92.7, 95.0, 93.8, 104.0 blah blah blah. 

The only nightmare I could for-see was being subjected to Himesh’s songs. Believe me, I haven’t listened to a single one completely. Two lines into the song and I get all panicky as my brain cells start revolting and threaten me that they would stop working! I can’t stand that nasal twang and those lung exploding histrionics. But fate, it seems, can’t work without an irony. So, while listening to FM, the first song which I came across was from Karzzzz titled Tandoori Nights. For a second, my mind went completely blank. Who the hell wrote that atrocity anyways???

Surprisingly, I didn’t flick the channel but sat through the whole song(something I still don’t believe I did). And soon I realised that I sorta…….kinda………errrr……. liked it. OK WAIT!! Its not exactly “liked it” but its hard to explain how I felt. It was the same kind of feeling one has when one bite nails or pick nose. You know you are not supposed to do it but you still do it. Its the urge which you can’t stop, can’t control. I don’t know why I sat through it, but I did!

Now a days, I listen to the song almost every day while returning from home because its always there on one channel or another. I feel I am being hypnotised by the song. There is something incredibly incredulously insane about it. Infact, I don’t believe I have written a post about it!! What are my friends going to say when they read this confession? My family is going to debar me….

Know what, we should just pretend that this never happened. I never wrote this post and you never read it. Lets just erase it from our minds. Lets not ever talk about this. Lets this be one of our dirty little secret which we would take to our graves.

Oh!!! They are again playing it on the FM. Have to run and enjoy/love/hate/like/abhor the song. I AM SO CONFUSED! 😐

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Basic Etiquette

Lets clear the airs first, shall we? The post is not about girls!!!! Its just about people in general. Its about those inconsiderate, tactless and thoughtless people who perform the most disgusting acts in public(and at home too!!!) and don’t feel the S of Shame. Infact, the insensitivity is so deep rooted that they don’t even realise that they have done something despicable unless, maybe, you go and scream your lungs out in front of them. So, here is a clear list of a few Basic activities you should not do in public(or when you are visiting someone). If I ever find you doing any of them in my presence, your score might just scale the heights of negativity. 

 

1. Don’t make that GURGLING sound, for God’s sake!!

I Could never understand why people make that irritating sound when they are brushing their teeth or rinsing their mouth after a meal. I mean, is it really necessary? Specially in public places? There is this guy in my office who can’t digest his food without making that noise and I have to bear that trauma of listening to it every bloody day. Sometimes I even feel like chocking him with all the hand towels. And did I tell you that my mom and dad also make that sound while brushing their teeth? And even Grandma and Granddad used to do that? And, oh boy!! The sound which Granddad made did cracked a few windows at home.

2. Could you eat with your mouth shut?

Some people just can’t help it. They have to talk while there is food in their mouth. The only difference between such people and a Buffalo is that the food is not dripping from their mouth. Otherwise its pretty much the same sight. There was a friend of mine who used to do this and she was a sight when she used to eat ice-cream. Lips smeared with vanilla while she blobbed her mouth to speak. Earlier, I just looked away, but now a days, I have turned completely shameless. I just tell such people to shut up.

3. Do you know what a “LANE” means?

In India, people have pathetic sense of driving and we all know that. But STILL we don’t leave any chance of creating chaos. Even if there is a slight problem ahead on the road, we jump in the opposite lane and move our vehicles ahead. Soon more cars follow and the whole road is one way with no place for the vehicles coming from the opposite direction. From what I have observed, the only way to stop people from doing that is by placing electric dividers in the middle of the road, which would send an electric shock as soon as a vehicle come in their contact.

4. Are there beetles in your shirt?

A few days back, one of my cousin came home with her husband and the first thing which he did after he entered our house was to take off his shirt. WTF???? Even my cousins(male ones) used to do that and this pisses me off to no ends. Its ok if you dance naked in your own house but can we maintain a level of decency when we visit someone? And the worst part was that I was expected to do the same thing when I visit them. Arghhhh!!! What am I? A porn star?

5. Remove those Smoke signals

I hate smoking, so much that I can’t even stand a person who had just smoked and forgot to take up a mouth freshener. I have the nose of a dog and I can smell out such a person from a kilometer away. Thankfully, most of the people in corporate offices use mouth fresheners because some clients are very particular about such matters but then you can always find some idiots everywhere. A few of my colleagues smoke and sometimes I have to give them company to the roadside smoking counter. While I stand there watching them whiff of the smoke, I wonder whether I am being drugged enough or should I ask them to blow the smoke somewhat more closer to my face.

6. Do you know the difference between a dog and a man?

I have always wonder how women can hold the urge to urinate in open public places while men don’t even think twice before copying dogs? I mean, if women can hold it, men can too. Can’t they? I remember, in class 12, we were returning from a school trip to Haridwar and the driver stopped the bus somewhere so that all the boys(who were awake at that odd hour) can take a leak. I could just imagine what the girls would have gone through at that point. The curses would have hit Gods really hard!

7. When you borrow, guard the thing with your life

I hate it when people return my books in a deplorable condition. I love my books and DVDs and earlier I used to share them a lot with my friends, but when they started to come back to me torn and scratched, I stopped sharing. I could never understand why people can’t take care of other people’s stuff. Is it so tough? I think it goes to show how insensitive a person is to small small things and some people just don’t have it in them. Losers!!!

8. The world is my spittoon

Piccchakkk!!!! That sound just drives me crazy! I could kill a person right there when I hear that! If you spit on the road or any other goddamn place, you can’t even be my acquaintance. Period! The worst I have seen is that when the Delhi Government announced a fine of 50 Rs on people who spit on roads. There was a hoarding on the road announcing this and people have spitted on that! How incredibly shameless can we get? And, ofcourse, I don’t have to say anything about the way we throw litter where ever we like.

I could go on and on about many such basic etiquette which we lack, but this post is getting quite long. I have a few friends who belong to a few of the above mentioned categories but sometimes you just have to grin and bear it. But let me declare it today – I ABSOLUTELY HATE IT WHEN YOU DO IT!!!!! 

There! A stone lifted from my heart.

Please be a little more sensitive to your surroundings and fellow humans. Lets learn the basics first.

Hoodwinked from the slideshow

So…Diwali came and went and all I got was one lousy holiday. Life, it seems, is running faster than I can fathom. A day after Diwali, I got an invitation to view a Picasa album of a friend who is in US of A. She was there with me in Chennai from the last two and a half years and was lured by Uncle Sam at almost the same time when I was being sucked into the whirlpool of Delhi. In the Album, she was performing the evening Diwali Puja with her new friends. Many of my friends who were there in Chennai with me are in USA right now and I am used to watch such Picasa slideshows in which they are standing and laughing with strangers in strange lands, but this Diwali slideshow left me with a slight tinge of envy. 

No, I am not unhappy because I am still waiting for an overseas assignment which seems to be too difficult to grab and which my friends got served on a golden platter AND which, God might just throw at me after sucking and chewing out every ounce of hope from my heart. No, I am not unhappy because I wish to see the world through my own eyes rather than through some bloody Discovery channel AND I know that God might just grant this wish after trampling it under his feet. Yes, I get everything in life….when I don’t want it anymore…when I am done lusting after it. 

Anyways, the point is that, I felt slightly envious(and nostalgic) because I went into flashback when we were all together and had such good time back in Chennai. And now I see them having a good time with strangers. Once I was there in all those slideshows but now I am not there in any of them. Sometimes I feel like a part of those scenes in the movies where the hero is dancing with his servant and thinking about his lady love AND then Voila!! The servant is replaced by the love of hero’s life. Its as if, I am watching a slideshow of the pictures of the great time we had together and then suddenly I start disappearing from the pictures one by one till am not there in any of them. Hoodwinked by God and replaced by strangers. 

But, then come to think of it, isn’t this the story of our life? Just take out all your photographs of past 10 years and have a look at them. You will realise that in all of them, you are standing at one place while the people around you keep on changing. You are the center of your Universe. You are not moving. Its the Earth that is moving around you, bringing new faces to stand besides you. You are hoodwinked out of a slideshow so that you become a part of another one, but the point is that, you are ALWAYS a part of one of them. 

So, yes, I was envious, but then I smiled. Life always come up with its own set of surprises. It never stop amusing you. The way it unfolds is what makes it beautiful. Yes, you can’t get back what just passed you by and you can’t fight the absence of a person or an unfulfilled dream but then you always have those slideshows…the portals to your past and your past’s present.

And GOD, well, I think he is just a child spoilt silly by all of us. 🙂

A Capsule for Amnesia

“itni shiddat se maine tumhe paane ki koshish ki hai ki har zarre ne mujhe tumse milane ki saazish ki hai” (Its a poetic version of – When you really want something, the whole universe conspires to take you to your goal)

I know this dialogue has nothing to do with the “capsules for Amnesia”, but have you ever had this feeling? Ever since I came back home, I have been craving to cure the Amnesia-istic bend of my mom’s cerebral activities. I mean I really really want a solution from the bottom of my heart. 🙂 I have written a long post already about how she put things away and forgets, which incidentally, she read. Don’t ask me what happened afterwards. She counted all the lines on her hands as she recounted the incidences when I had put things away and forgotten. My toothbrush, my T-shirts, my books, my DVDs….you got the idea? I shrugged and told her that maybe it was genetic. 😉

I vouched to find a solution to the mini Amnesia Tsunami in my home and landed up in a Furniture shop to get the capsule. Well, now don’t stare at the post. Keep reading. I tried to search for the capsule, but could not find a satisfactory solution. I took my parents with me too, as they knew about more furniture shops, but Alas! the prized future possession was still ever elusive. I reached back home, dejected and pondered about the next step to achieve the capsule. I was desperate and wanted it with all my heart. I have dreamt of it ever since I remember and wanted the universe to conspire to get me to it.

With sadness, I opened my laptop and my eyes widened. The software to create the image of the capsule’s outer container was right there in front of me and I never noticed it!!! I clicked on the Google sketchup button and started drawing the structure of the capsule. I wanted to give it a very modernistic look but I was a little apprehensive that it might compromise its strength. When I was satisfied with the sketch, I took a printout and took it to the furniture shop for a price estimation. The guy sitting there had a look at the design and made a few changes in the capsule for better effects and strength. Initially the capsule looked somewhat like this.

What were you thinking? I was not talking about a “capsule” per se. Be a little more imaginative. 😛

After I finalised the price and gave the order, the capsule was delivered within 10 days at my home. It was an empty container and I was supposed to fill it with all the required colourful medicinal pellets. This is how the capsule container looked like when it arrived. Empty and waiting for the magic pellets.

I had an uphill task of filling the capsule container with these colourful pellets of medicine. There were too many of them. Colorful and beautiful. Aren’t they? I took a deep breath and started.

After two hours, the capsule was ready. Adorned with the pellets and ready to fulfill my most dearest wish. The cure was finally here!!! Eureka!!! I finally got what I had always dreamt of. I called mom and showed her the capsule. She smiled and a calm washed all over her and she was fully cured by just looking at the capsule. Now, she would never forget anything because the “Capsule for Amnesia” contains all the answers.

“Where are the books?” “In there”

“Where are the DVDs?” “In there there”

“Where are my other stuff?” “Oh! In there there there”

Peace finally!!!!! 😀

So, Ladies and Gentlemen, presenting, THE CAPSULE.

Salsa Diaries – I

Salsa classes started in my office yesterday. I was a bit skeptical in the beginning, thinking of skipping the class but 30 minutes into the class and I realised what a mistake that would have been. Where else can you find a chance of dancing with five different girls. 😉 More on it later. 

First a little bit about Salsa. 

Salsa refers to a fusion of informal dance styles having roots in the Caribbean (especially in Cuba and Puerto Rico), Latin and North America. The dance originated through the mixture of Mambo, Danzón, Guaguancó, Cuban Son, and other typical Cuban dance forms. Salsa is danced to Salsa music. There is a strong African influence in the music as well as the dance.

Salsa is usually a partner dance, although there are recognized solo steps and some forms are danced in groups of couples, with frequent exchanges of partner (Rueda de Casino). Improvisation and social dancing are important elements of Salsa but it appears as a performance dance too.

(source – Wikipedia)

So there I was staring at the Thin, Sensuous, high heeled, Curly haired lady instructor(I’ll call her WOW) and her male apprentice(UNWOW) while they taught the first three basic steps of forward, side and rock to the 20 something boys and 25 something girls. WOW and UNWOW looked so elegant dancing together that a sigh got released from my mouth. How much I wanted WOW to dance with me. Anyways, since there were more girls, so they took turns to dance with the boys as we started dancing in couples.

The-pink-trampler

Pink-trampler was my first partner and is incidentally my project mate too. She was a little awkward in her movements and ended up landing on my feet quite a few times. WOW saw her trampling my feet and asked her to practice alone first before trying the steps with a partner and replaced her with the-Black-top.

The-Black-Top

I award her the perfect-partner-of-the-day. Her movements were rhythmic and not awkward at all. The moment I cupped her right hand in my left one as she placed her hand on my shoulder and I placed my right hand behind her back, we danced magically. We did not missed a single step and our foot movement never went awry, even when they increased the tempo of the song. It was lovely, dreamy and delightful.

The-Jaya(Bachchan not Lalita)

My next partner was so short that I felt like Amitabh Bachchan, although I am just 5’8″. Her head ended somewhere near my chest and I had to stoop down a little bit to place my hand behind her back. She was quite shy and was not looking at me at all. 😦 We did a few side hand movements in a closed loop position. It was a little tough to move your hand as well as feet in two different directions and co-ordinating with your partner as well. She was good and picked up quite quickly. 😉

The-Follow-me-will-you?

Although as the class started, it was explained , that in Salsa the guy leads the girl, but follow-me-will-you? somehow missed this piece of information. Now we had to move in an open loop position which meant that she could not place her left hand on my shoulder and my right hand was free too. We had to join the free hands and move them upwards while we moved our feet to the music. It had to be done very gently but the lady just forced her hand so much, that it looked as if she was scrubbing a wall in her home. So, instead of our hands going up in 90 degrees, went 30 degrees towards my right ear. I tried to explain it to her, but she was adamant on scrubbing the wall. Sigh!

The-Black-Top(again)

The moment partner change was announced, the black-top ran towards me. 🙂 Now we had to do the closed loop and open loop positions alternately while we moved our feet. It was tough and I heard a lot of OOOOOs and AAAAHHHs as it was just our first class. But, since the-black-top was with me, we mastered that in a few seconds. We laughed and smiled and clapped as we ended.

The-Jaya(Lalita not Bachchan)

My last partner was taller and wider than me. 😦 I looked like a small kid who was holding a teddy bear bigger than himself. We had to do the same steps again with faster music. The first question she asked me was – “Did you get the hang of it?” I was quite speechless.

“Are you crazy? Didn’t you saw the girls falling on top of each other to dance with me?”, I wanted to ask. (Ok. I admit that that was a bit of exaggeration, but then what the hell!)

“Yes. I guess.”, I mumbled and smiled. 

She too was a little awkward and clumsy and almost trampled my feet again. The ordeal was over in a few seconds as she picked up the steps somehow. She forgot to place her hand on my shoulder time and again as we went from the open loop to the closed loop position and I was reminding her again and again, looking like a sex-starved-maniac. 

So, this is how the first Salsa class went. It would have been a disaster if the-black-top and WOW would not have been there. Its been after such a long time that I am “learning” to dance. The last I remember, it was in school for my Bhangra group. Sigh! Good old days.

Anyways, will keep all of you posted with the spicy gossips from the forthcoming sessions. 

That’s all folks!

p.s. Now that I re-read the post, its more about girls rather than Salsa. No?