Gossip Grannies

The seat cracked as if a heavy body had lowered itself upon it. The protagonist whose posterior had been responsible for the embarrassingly audible event, belongs to the category of toothless grannies whose jaws go smack-smack while relating, what seems to them, juicy and delectable stories of people who are unfortunately acquainted to them. A true gossip granny is always inclined to make a good story out of everything and the truest of them all had just made herself comfortable on a couch near our front door.
What followed was a sheer torrent of ‘Do you remembers’ and ‘That reminds mes’ followed by the customary reference to my increased or decreased bulk. She’d go ‘hiss hiss!’ at the curious inability of her immediate circle to appreciate the value of being able to report succulent and eyebrow-raising developments in the lives of the unfortunate.
“Whose marriage is on the rocks? Whose kid failed in the exams for the fifth time in a row? Who poses a serious threat to the harmony of the locality?” It would be a rarity if such questions would go unanswered by the end of her visit. Gossip granny has always tended to wake the fiend that sleeps in me. All the endless jib-jabbing makes me feel loony to the spleen and increasingly taxes my powers of endurance. Loud vocal deliveries through part-falling dentures about her oh-so-perfect grandchildren leave me convulsing in a corner of the room.
Serving refreshments is a far more daunting task. At first, she’ll click her tongue irritably for having interrupted her when she was on the verge of making a profoundly vital revelation. This would be followed by stinging complaints about how hot the tea was (the saccharine content of which was a diabolic scheme against the diabetic) and how the chocolate chips in the cookies stubbornly stuck to her dentures and refused to budge despite heroic efforts of her overworked tongue.
Some people would rather have an epileptic seizure than entertain a gossip granny. Gossip after gossip, she’d take refreshing draughts at the fountain of pleasure after she had thrown a bomb of a story and seen it explode. Right when you think she has run out of news, she’ll surprise you with a piece of information more shocking and more alarming than the ones related so far. The stories are well-sequenced with the best saved for last! Gossip granny delivers all these equipped with a finely honed, well-sharpened set of demeaning vocabulary tools while I sit quivering in my slippers.
After hours of painful waiting, it finally comes like a spring in the desert! – the moment she pulls herself up the couch and inches doorwards! It is an infinitely relieving feeling – a balm to the tortured spirit.
“Frightful!”, exclaimed my friend as I related the experience to her.
“Dreadful!”, I assented.
“Terrible!’, she suggested.
“Most!”, I agreed as I left. It wasn’t a very good exit speech but I’m a girl of too impatient spirit to find solace in an unending war of synonyms.

Nursery Rhymes-NOT FOR KIDS!!

There are times when I suddenly get monumentally fed up!I've had enough of the mind-numbing effects of information overload.Somewhere in the middle of the lecture,I allow my attention to wander.When the lecturer's eyes roll in my direction, itseems safe to nod intelligently.
At times, I take secret pleasure in penning down mangled versions of nursery rhymes just to keep myself entertained during the long,boring,never-ending lectures.And so I scribbled in my notebook trying hard to make it look like I'm taking down stuff written on the board.

"Trickle Trickle little scar
How I blunder made - you are
Up above my forehead so high
Like a slime-mound in the sty"

Different moods demand a different rhyme

"Randy's braces falling down,falling down,falling down
Randy's braces falling down
I'm scared already!"

Sometimes I find solace in writing mean things about the biggest jerk in college

"Bala black sheep
Have you any shame?
'No sir,No sir
I'm desperate for a dame
One for my right hand, one for my left
One for the little heart that lives down my vest' "

Or about the endless chatter that always gets on my nerves

"I hear slander,I hear slander
Oh don't you?Oh don't you?
Chitter chatter hush-hush,
Chitter chatter hush-hush
I hate you,I hate you"

One more year of boring lectures to go!Frankly,I'm running out of Nursery rhymes!!But if I do manage to come up with something new,don't worry..I'll keep you updated!

'ALTAR'-EGO...

Mental Manjas

I have a history of bumping into people named 'Manja' .In India,in the state called Karnataka,in a city called Bangalore, 99.99% of all the people named Manjunath are nicknamed as Manja..All the 'Manjas' that I have met have three things in common:


1)They were all called Manja


2)All of them assisted the driver in my school bus



3)All of them had a strange liking for me



The whole universe was conspiring against me..Each one of the 'Mental Manjas' had access to new and interesting ways of getting on my nerves.Lets discuss Manja No.1 first...

1)When I was in eighth grade,I learned about the existence of Manja No.1.His job was to make sure that all the little ones had a seat.He had a strange and rare lisp which caught my fancy.Anything thats strange and interesting catches my fancy and I was fascinated by the lisp instantly."SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSweety, ssssssssit here!Ssssssssssssssssssweety!!"I had never seen anything like it before.It was a wonderful combination of gross and interesting.Little did I know that my exceeding interest in the lisp would be missssssssssstaken for my exceeding interest in Manja No.1..For the rest of the year,Ssssssweety had a special seat reserved for her right next to me so that every time she fell asleep and drooled all over my uniform,Manja No.1 would come to rescue the damsssssssel-in-dissssstressss(me) and he would fix his eyeballs on me the rest of the time and not look away even if I caught him staring, giving him a look of utter disgust!
LessonNo.1:Stop being fascinated by lisps in all their wondrous glory.
2)The next academic year : Enter Manja No.2...It was a new school bus and a brand new Manja..This time he was a couple of years older than the previous one and a little taller than I was(Manja No.1 was half my height)There was something exceptional about Manja No.2's mouth..it reminded me of an alligator for some reason...This time I resisted all temptations to observe the unusual.Yet I failed miserably in escaping Manja No.2..Right opposite my seat,and a couple of seats ahead of me was the door where ManjaNo.2 would stand.The glass door unfortunately bore my reflection and ManjaNo.2 would gape at it all the time.All other seats were taken and i was trapped!!!I wriggled uncomfortably in my seat..being watched all the time isn't a very nice thing...One fine afternoon,a boy in third grade who had grown quite close to ManjaNo.2 asked him if he had a girlfriend."That's my lavvvvvvvarr(lover)", he said and I almost fainted when I realised that he was pointing at me!
Lesson No.2:Never take the seat right opposite the glass door
3)Manja No.3 would follow me around in school and threaten boys that if he'd catch them speaking to me again,his 'gang' would take care of them..Life was hell - people were too scared to talk to me.Mental ManjaNo.3 was definitely the most mental of them all...
LessonNo3:STAY AWAY FROM MANJAS
After completing high school, I was ever unfortunate enough to meet another Manja again and I thank God for it!!!So all you Manjas out there - GO EAT DUST!!

It happens only in India!

Neeli Aasmaani Chatri

A black polythene cover executed a perfect pirouette mid-air as I proceeded towards the theatre with my family.I was surprised to find a child-like enthusiasm brewing within me as I fondly remembered the movies similar to the one I was about to watch.The innocence and the simplicity in these films were the two things that appealed to me the most.'Halo','Makdee' and now 'The Blue Umbrella' have left a sweet aftertaste in my senses...

The story revolves around a girl called Biniya who trades her lucky charm for a beautiful blue Japanese umbrella-a piece of the blue sky on a stalk as she describes it!Biniya centers her whole world around the umbrella and wherever she goes,she takes the umbrella along..as she plays by the river,frolicks along the hillsides,and dances about the streets.Biniya and the umbrella complete each other.

Her world falls apart when her umbrella suddenly disappears.Was the umbrella stolen?Was it Khatri, the owner of the tea shop who had tried to lure Biniya into giving him the umbrella before?These questions plagued my mind while my heart was heavy with the feeling I usually get when I lose something dear..Based on a novella by Ruskin Bond,this one's yet another simple yet unforgettable story.

Interval time..right when all of us were preparing to leave, a couple of guys sitting right in front of us opened a blue funny-looking umbrella.All of us laughed and clapped in unison!I'm not giving away the rest of the story!Go watch the movie,dahlings!!!