Indulge thyself

Once every now and then everyone needs to be pampered. I know the modern definition of that has become a spa-cation or indulging in Jimmy Choo shoes. But whatever happened to good 'ol fashioned pampering?

Like the reason I have not blogged in well over two months is because there was nothing left to rant and whine about. Birds chirped, jungle cats roared, people smiled, the weather in Houston became bearable and I stopped cooking.

Now it isn't like I hate cooking. On the contrary I rather enjoy it. Even more so when I am upset or angry because then, I make believe that the vegetables are people I am upset with and just cut them down to size. You get the drift right? But for the past few months, I had been agonizing over how to make a meal for Chuckles and me, what with his insane no-carb diet and my you-need-carbs-to-party diet. Oftentimes that would mean making four different dishes for two people. Trust me, the novelty wears off even if the glossy recipe book doesn't.

Add to that equation, the absolute scourge of grocery shopping every weekend and we have a miserable couple on a definitive path to murder-suicide.

Enter Chuckles' parents. Who visited for two months and took care of everything. They took over the entire kitchen, the pantry - what was running out, what needed replenishing; thought of new and interesting things to make daily, cooked dishes I loved eating as a child and in general put up with all my food fussiness. They were also constant conversation companions and made sure I ate healthy. Which is really all that matters anyway right?

Once time came for them to leave, I knew things would be back to normal and so I indulged myself. For the first time ever, I cut my hair short, have tickets to see Sting and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, will spend Thanksgiving with Chuckles, reading by a fire while it snows in gorgeous Seattle. Buddies Sano and his blushing bride will join us. If in spite of this line-up something fails, a spa-cation awaits during the first few days of 2012.

After all I will be 30 soon and that is stress enough.

Milestones

I was cruising through the murky under waters of the social network and suddenly, after a mere ten minutes, I had to log out and shut down the computer. Nope, no ugly, nude photos of over-touchy, boundary-challenged new lovers but just a reminder of my age and a not-so-subtle shout out to where in life I should be.

Over the years we have heard parents compare us to everyone around us. Cousin Skinny scored this much in Math, cousin Bitchy topped her class, pot-bellied uncle's daughter is learning Carnatic music, gossipy Ganga's son is now working here and earning this much. You get the drift. It was a weird, convoluted, loving way of informing us about their achievements and reiterating where we should be, but are clearly, not. 

Years later in the throes of making a career it was not uncommon for phone calls from home to be filled with news about Skinny cousin now getting married or cousin Bitchy eloping and basically everyone but you finding marital bliss. This would inevitably lead to the mater hinting, whining, pleading, emailing pictures of strange men and in the end threatening you with dire consequences if you did not get married within the year. 

And then you finally find someone you want to marry, spend money, and travel with and you think that is all. Every one is happy. No more requests. You create FB, Twitter, Google+ accounts and watch from afar what friends, cousins, peers are up to. You are happy knowing that everyone is well and are content catching up at frequent intervals. You see that everyone is pretty much at the same place in life as you are career-wise, relationship-wise and well mental level-wise I guess!

Till one day you log in and see status after status, ten consecutive messages to be exact, about babies, new-born, toddlers, infants. Parents holding their tiny bundles of joy, commenting on sleepless nights, some announcing their arrival to the world, yet some with cute pictures of shenanigans their little devils did. You read through them all, look at all the pictures and slowly realize where you are. All around you, your peers are having babies. Will you be left behind? Are these subtle albeit strong reminders of milestones along the highway? 

Well played, Mother, Well played. 

Once every five years

I have been thinking a lot about friends and family over the past few weeks. Doing that made me think about just how fast everyone was moving on with their lives and how much we have all changed since college. Gone are the days when we said, ''Promise you won't change once you move'', or ''Don't turn into so-and-so or such-and-such''. Things happen, people change. Almost everyone I know has realized, zeroed in or found purpose and is working towards a milestone. 

Earlier this week I heard about a friend planning his impending proposal, to his love, in a far away exotic  land. Tweedeldee has been working hard to lose weight. For someone who has eaten rice for every meal, every day of his life to finally say he will not eat starch till he loses weight, is a huge battle won. He now survives on salad leaves and unheard of vegetables. Khabri will have her little baby button soon and with that she will warp into someone new. Bee has been married for a whole year and travelled to exotic places for work. She is planning to go to Cape Town this year! My kid sister, Pumbaa successfully graduated from Law school. Little T found his true calling and is hoping to make it big in the bad world of Bollywood. Sano made the transition from cool casanova to smitten kitten in less than a year. Five years ago, none of this could have been foretold.

Isn't it nice to stop and take stock once every five years? To think back and see how far you have come, how much has changed, for the better or worse. Are you moving or stagnant? Are you where you wanted to be or have you strayed off course? 

Is over consumption a deadly sin?

A few weeks ago I was talking to Chuckles about a gorgeous Fossil handbag that I saw while on a trip to a department store and I began expounding its many positive qualities while consciously steering the monologue to a place where he would say, ''Get it if you want to.'' Then I would innocently say, ''You think so? Fine I will pick it up over the weekend.'' That did not go as planned. It was either bad timing or worse karma.

Chuckles had been reading all about minimalism lately and sprung a surprise on me. He saw where I was going and steered the conversation instead, towards consumerism, over consumption, hoarding and how society was suffocating under the weight of unnecessary purchases. Yes, one handbag was going to end society as we know it.

Moving to the US from Germany meant making a list of everything we owned. Everything. From how many spoons, to how many pairs of socks. From the number of iPods between the two of us to how many CDs and books. Staying in Houston for 15 months has doubled our possessions and I squarely blame the sales for that. They called out to me and I followed and eventually succumbed to their wily ways. But then I started reading this,  this and this.

Imagine being able to live in a world, in your world with just 100 possessions. Doesn't that sound liberating? No rules on how you group your things, but just limit them to a 100. Do you think you can do it?

A few days later my car drove itself to my favourite store. I walked around and saw this. I stopped to think instead of greedily piling it into my shopping basket. Am I buying the most gorgeous bowl in the world or contributing to the downfall of society? Needless to say, faced with that much pressure I turned around and walked out of the store.

An English Holiday

I spent the last week in London with Pumbaa. It wasn't like I needed a holiday but Chuckles was being overly indulgent so I took advantage.

Those who know me know I am a closet anglophile. I can't tell you the exact moment when that happened. It may have been while I read Shakespeare's sonnets or the highly embellished poems of the Romantics. It may have happened over a particularly spectacular description of the moors in Wuthering Heights or even as the grit and grime of Dickensian London slowly unfolded itself before me. As a curious teen I spent hours discussing Darcy and Rochester and Carton and inevitably falling in love with the same characters like countless women before me. Were all Englishman like them? By the way, is there a woman who isn't in love with Darcy?

Five years of English Literature and many, many P.G. Wodehouse books later I knew that I had to visit London. Though I must admit the recent hullabaloo over the Royal wedding, I did dither a little. But my faith was strong. After all Pumbaa and I had been planning for the past three years.

I dreamt of going on long literature walks, treading the same paths as Austen and Dickens. Reading a book by the Thames. Sitting at a cafe and sipping tea as I watched London pass by. Visiting Liverpool to pay homage to the Beatles. Or just flipping through a book at Hyde Park. All that was surprisingly not to be. We did go to London but it was not dreamy and airy and frou-frou.

It was all about being the perfect archetypical tourist, complete with guide book in one hand and map in the other, camera slung around the neck, asking for directions. We walked through the bustle of Oxford Circus and caught the lights at West End. We rode the bus through Bloomsbury and Holborn and imagined the narrow lanes of Dickensian London. We watched Dr. Faustus at the Globe while standing for two hours and 45 minutes. We toured the Tower and gasped at the decadent opulence of the Crown Jewels. We shared space with fellow tourists at Stratford-upon-Avon and silently discussed what a waste of a day trip it had been. We listened to a woman squeal about her unbelievably good fortune at scoring tickets for a Take That reunion concert, in a north English accent. We ate ice-cream by the Thames and I practiced my fake British accent. We looked ridiculous as we took pictures at Abbey Road. We walked till our legs threatened to leave us. Through Soho, through Leicester square, through Southwark and Westminister till finally it was time to go. We saw everything and simultaneously saw nothing.

After Faustus at the Globe

Not once did I open a book and read at Hyde Park or sit by the River Thames and marvel as Wordsworth had at London. I had done everything a tourist would do and then some. Well played London, well played.