Richa
Jha
Excuse
my language there, but yes, I am in a whiny mood this morning,
and this is the only word in my active vocabulary that captures
the mood of the hour. Mot Juste. Besides, this despondency is
not unfounded. Things haven't exactly gone my way over this
past week. Why this particular week, and why me, are two existential
inanities few among us are equipped to decode. I certainly am
not, which is why the only way to vent my frustrations is by
putting it all on paper.
The
Hubby says that it may have been something to do with the overall
mood of the nation- tense, volatile, and highly-strung, but
also sleepy, lethargic, and unproductive, all at once. I urge
you to run through this list, prepared in no particular order,
and tell me if my yammering is uncalled for.
A new duppatta I give for ironing comes back to me
with a hole. The burnt out case doesn't get a chance to be argued
because the launderer has quietly vamoosed to his hometown some
100km away from Dhaka.
A toy car that I bought as a child's birthday present this afternoon
suddenly finds itself being flung out from my balcony; my child
wants to see it fly-- he is Chitty Chitty Bang Bang's slave
(and Ian Flemming's tiniest fan) these days. By the time it
gets retrieved from four floors below, it is fit enough to be
sent to the junkyard. Needless to say, my son is ecstatic to
see it thus.
On its downward trajectory, this toy car (capable of feats of
epic, mythical proportions) first hits against the carefully
nurtured hanging mini fern-pots on the balcony of the floor
below ours, and then gets deflected towards the road. The damage
happens at both the levels. In emotional and monetary terms,
the damage at ground zero is insignificant compared to the one
at level three.
The large community of red ants have taken it upon themselves
to bother me in every possible way they can.
Yesterday's sudden downpour takes in this year's first casualty
inside my house: the floor cushions in the lounge. If I am to
go by the previous year's experience, few rugs and carpets,
a couple of poofs, and the lounge curtains are soon to follow
suit. But then, after this first jolter, I plan to be better
prepared.
For past three days in a row, our local cable provider has been
doing his 'maintenance work' between 1 and 1:30pm. If Prerna
has gone ahead and married Anurag all over again, I wouldn't
know. Kasauti
is the only serial on Star Plus that
I follow, and if this is the cable operator's way of putting
me in my place (we had an argument, of sorts, some time back),
he wins.
The Hubby's sudden passion for ghazals doesn't help either.
I am still struggling with the name game in chapter 5 of The
Namesake, stuck on the fourth page as I was four days ago. Hartals
and weekends have ensured that the children stay home and try
out the parents' patience to the brim. Gogol's predicament will
have to wait. To have come this far, but no further, is not
a nice feeling to have with un-putdownable pieces of work.
The domestic aid threatening to leave in the middle of this
is not a particularly merry development on the home front.
No bua in the house next to mine, and a new-born baby
in the one next to that have ensured that children from these
two houses as well make themselves comfortable in my house.
There are only so many strands of hair I can tug at in misery.
My maid's ultimatum is understandable.
But finally, letting 3 and 4 year olds pummel you with soccer
balls is actually a good stress reliever.
In
the midst of these dampners are several other occurrences, too
commonplace by any standards, which haven't exactly helped me
brighten up. Like The Hubby deciding to snore louder at night,
and then deciding to wake up before the first cock crows to
go for a walk. "Hartals, you see, I want to make the most
of these days. The empty roads are beckoning me to jog on them
"
Uugh,
don't you get it? At 5:30 in the morning, hartal or no hartal,
on any morning, it is the same, why just this week? I try my
best to pull him back in bed, but he looks determined. I wouldn't
have lost sleep over it if he were a tad discreet with his movements
around the house. But he isn't, which means that the rest of
the household wakes up with him. Oh, it doesn't help, I tell
you. An overnight-turned fitness freak of a husband who needs
his wife to be as supportive as his old pair of sneakers (I
don't even remember which of us came first in his life), is
not your best companion on days when the sun refuses to shine,
the rains refuse to stop, the ants refuse to go away, the internet
connection doesn't go through, the water in the outdoor swimming
pool is uncomfortably cold (the breeze makes it worse), and
the water in the heated indoor pool is not quite refreshing
enough, and the one movie I've been dying to watch for weeks
still refuses to play on my DVD player. You get it, don't you?
Basically, life sucks
And there's little I can do about it.
