Poppy season

Why are poppies suddenly everywhere these days? Am of course not being literal. Poppies crop up incessently in the latest Bond novel, Devil May Care. Its even on its really stunning cover. And last week I attended a reading of 'Sea of Poppies' by Amitav Ghosh. Maybe we all have opium on the brain because that of course is the poppy's main claim to fame. And both books deal with that. In the former, the chief drug lord is the villain of the piece and in the latter, well the British are the villains I am sure but the Opium Wars form the backdrop for the story. Or so I think. Cant really be sure since I wasnt completely sober when the reading was going on.
A colleague of mine invited me to the Penguin do at the Taj and since I usually associate the Taj with 'free drinks', I jumped at the chance. In the event, the free drinks werent the only thing enjoyable about the reading, the society ladies, the airkissing, the hobnobbing with the literati in Madras was more fun than I imagined. Oh plus there was the book too. Not that I really liked it much.
This is how the evening went:
1. Meet colleague in huge Taj lobby (previously having taken care to avoid very senior company boss) and then proceed to the Clive and Dupleix halls.
2. Arrive at aforementioned halls to find them mostly empty; instead head to Willingdon hall, where all the people are. With good reason - thats where the bar was.
3. Grab glass of white wine from nearest waiter while keeping an eagle eye out for champagne. Meanwhile watch the rich and mighty meet and greet each other.
4. Holler across room to waiter bearing the all-important champagne. Grab champagne flute; so does another colleague (yes, there were three of us).
5. Spot Smal's ex boss and ex colleagues with new interns. Toy with idea of saying hello and then decide (wisely I think) not to invoke wrath or the cut direct (if we were living in Regency times as envisioned by Georgetter Hayer).
6. Realise its time to go to reading and reluctantly do so. Bump into former colleague and her husband. Also see Smal's ex ex boss. Message Smal and congratulate her on having the foresight to not come to this do.
7. Everyone troops into Clive (or Dupleix) hall. By some strange concatenation of circumstances, find myself sitting next to Smal's ex boss's interns.
8. Colleague points out people she knows. I point out Smal's former employers.
9. Penguin marketing person introduces the Ghosh. Boring.
10. Ghosh reads. Something about people on a ship. Lot of hindi floats around. I rapidly lose interest. Instead watch PR girls, all very smart and well-groomed, trouser suits, straightened hair, perfect makeup. Its strange but they dont seem to have anything to do. Also very tall. Are they actually out-of-work models?
11. The Ghosh keeps on reading. Notice intern next door attempting some species of sketch.
12. The Ghosh is done! Now Smal's ex ex boss takes up the baton. Has very public 'conversation' with the Ghosh. Wish it had been private. Notice colleague seemingly struggling with champange. Very kindly offer to relieve her of burden, which she sweetly accepts.
13. Champagne downed. Now realise intern's sketch is of Smal's ex ex boss. Compliment him on sketch. Senior company boss hoofs it.
14. Right. Q&A session. Everyone asking questions seems to have read the book. Unlike the ex ex boss who opens admits to have been coached on it.
15. We're through! Thanked for being there and then told to either get book signed or have drinks. I pursue option 2.
16. After a bit of a wait, colleague and I order champagne from bar. We chat, meet people she knows. I finish my champagne. Colleague confides that she cant finish drink as she has to drive. Very nobly I agree to finish it for her. Colleague, weeping with gratitude, brokenly thanks me.
17. Room seems to be swaying a bit but otherwise everything seems to be A-OK, as the Americans would say. Besides, people look better when a little blurred around the edges. Like soft focus.
18. Summon horse (car) from stables (parking) and trot home.
Oooh did I mention, someone from some mag took pictures of me and colleagues, drinks in hand? Well, if you see that pic anywhere let me know!

Drool - different kinds of

If Sherlock Holmes can write a monograph on 28 different kinds of cigar ash I dont see why I cant have a go at different kinds of drool. in my own fashion obviously. I'm not that grandiose in my ambition either. I only know two kinds: dog drool and nephew drool.
Dog drool only becomes apparent in the presence of food. It is thick and gloopy and ages to scrub off the floor. And, my grandmother's biggest fear is that she's going to slip on it and break her leg. Poor dog gets scolded and shooed out of rooms on account of drool.
Nephew drool is apparent 24/7. No real stimuli required. Drool production is continuous and doesnt ever seem to let up. The drool as such is quite thin and runny but since nephew is allowed extraordinary licence with respect to furniture, no part of drool ever reaches the floor - it lands on sofas, cushions, bedsheets, tables, chairs, what have you. Is nephew scolded and shooed out of room on account of drool. No. People coo over him and think its cute.
Human beings are full of double standards arent they?

Houston, we have a problem

OK. I'm not sure how many of my friends even read my blog (we wont even think about the non-friends) but I need some help. My Big Boss spies on me. Well, not just me of course, but everyone in this team on this floor. You see, we have a room all to ourselves - light, airy, beautiful view of gul mohars out of the window and unfortunately, even more beautiful view from the corridor right into the room. And even more specifically, of my monitor. The Big Boss, aka The Prowler (for obvious reasons), has somehow taken it into his head to climb stealthily up the stairs and have a good long look at the inmates of the room. In fact, he sometimes lingers long enough to take in entire chat conversations I think. Ah, you see, this is the problem. Like everyone else, I dont 'work' all the time. I like to take breaks. And I seem to have the worst timing with my breaks as far as The Prowler is concerned. Everytime I take one, he's outside prowling away. Sometimes I think he does it to liven things up for himself, for you never can tell what I might be looking at - a newspaper, fwds, email, chat. I once even caught him taking a peek when I had a 360 degree view of the Chelsea Flower Show going. Nowadays I'm so jumpy I think I'm well on my way to a strained neck because I turn around every time I hear the smallest noise on the corridor. Its most unnerving, not to mention rather tiresome. Right, so how do I tackle this? Should I write to NASA? The CIA? The KGB? Suggestions please!

Summer movie hell

This summer is turning out to be one of the worst as far as movies are concerned. Thus far I have notched up three awful movies in a row. Not just bad movies that one can shrug off but groan-all-the-way-through-it, tear-your-hair-out-from-frustration movies.
First up was Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull. I was probably not the right audience for this movie, never having seen any of the earilier movies in this franchise, but anyway, I'm always up for a good laugh even if it is the silly kind. This film was rather short on laughs and sadly long on ridiculous plots, tedious explanations of the aforementioned ridiculous plots and general entertainment. This was my first Harrison Ford movie and while I'm not a fan I dont dislike him either. I've loved Shia LeBoef since his Even Stevens days and he was competant enough in this movie. Cate Blanchett was fun as the Russian agent - such a throwback, isnt it? KGB agents. That was part of a different world. Anyway, one can put up with incomprehensible story lines and bending of the laws of physics and similar but I will not be fobbed off with bloody Martians. I think thats just lazy and real insult to our intelligence.
Sex and the City, the following weekend, made Indiana Jones look like an Oscar-worthy film. The four women were nightmares: silly, shallow, sentimental, self-centred, completely materialistic, not to mention just plain stupid. Felt ashamed to be female actually. It was that bad!
Finally, The Happening. Poor Shyamalan. Someone should sit him down and tell him to stop making rubbish movies. He seems to have lost touch with reality. Mark Whalberg as a schoolteacher was quite hard to swallow. But at least he seemed to genuinely care about what was happening in the film. The rest of the cast was just bonkers or plain bad. But on the plus side, the movie was short (unlike Sex and the City) and didnt feature Martians (unlike Indiana Jones) and for that I am very grateful.
So if The Incredible Hulk is released this weekend, that gives me the chance to extend this bad summer movie list to 4 in a row. When I was young, I once read this fairy tale about a tailor who killed 7 flies with one stroke. Paraphrasing that a little, I wonder if I can make this the 7 in a row summer.

Champagne and culture

Last night, my Dad and I gave a dinner party for my nephew who's off to Bangalore to become a master of tooth extraction, brace-fixing and other orthodontal work, which is bound to make my sister run like a hare the next time she sees him (she hates/fears dentists to an unreasonable degree). Also in attendance were my cousin and his lovely wife, two of the nicest people I know. We thought we'd mark the occasion by cracking open a bottle of champagne and drinking to my nephew's future glittering career. My Dad and I were quite thrilled about getting to drink champagne (we tend to be thrilled anytime we get near C2H5OH). Its such a celebratory drink, dont you think? While my cousins and nephew were very pleased by the appearance of the champagne their reaction was rather more subdued. My cousin's wife doesnt drink actually, but she's way too nice to be a spoilsport so she manfully gulped her portion down. My nephew had just one glass and then said his alcohol tolerance was rather low so he didnt want more. Only my cousin had a second glass and even he said he preferred something sweeter. If it werent for the champagne I'd have felt rather flat.
There is something to be said for the West and its general gushiness and appreciation of the efforts taken by hosts. It may be exagerrated but it definitely makes one feel gratified. Guess this is just a cultural thing. Why is it so difficult for me to understand my own culture?

The Lord and the giggling schoolgirls

I never thought I would ever witness a scene where a 60+ gentleman reduced whole gaggles of schoolgirls into giggling wrecks. But Lord Archer managed this somewhat questionable feat. But I'm getting ahead of my story (probably because as the man himself would say I've not been blessed with god-given storytelling talent. I can play the violin though.)
Last saturday evening found me at the Nungambakkam branch of Landmark (incidentally my favourite branch; my 'local' in fact) for the Jeffrey Archer signing session. Otherwise titled 'How I Made Millions Writing Mostly Pot-boiler Paperbacks and Hope to Make Some More in New Emerging Markets Like India'. But I shouldnt be mean. Lord Archer was punctual, witty, entertaining and more than a little smug. There must have been about 150 people all told at Landmark that day and from the minute he entered, he has us eating out of the palm of his hand. He spoke about why he took up writing (financial difficulties), how he slowly learned about the way publishing works (his latest book went through 17 drafts), the trouble he had promoting his book in America, how he writes (his day seems to be a time-and-motion study, alternating between two hours of work and two hours of play), his fabulous homes in Cambridgeshire. London and Majorca and his latest discovery - RK Narayan. Now to those schoolgirls. The audience strangely enough seemed to be composed almost entirely of school/college students and older (60+) people. Hardly anyone my age. And for some reason these schoolgirls seemed to find him adorable. He would hardly finish a sentence before a chorus of 'so cute!' assailed my ears. Maybe this is their compensation for lack of rock concerts and other such entertainments in Madras. Anyway, after the talk there was a Q&A session, which produced astonishing gems like 'Your characters are so well drawn. Where do you get the inspiration for them?' and 'Have you ever based any of your characters on Indian politicians?'. There's no accounting for people's though processes.
After this, Lord Archer asked us to form an orderly 'sensible' queue and approach him with the title page of the book open (so as to save him time). I didnt feel up to braving the schoolgirls, so I quietly slipped away to find a cool corner (the airconditioning in Landmark being unable to deal with the adulatory throng).
My sister says 'Prisoner of Birth' is quite good. So maybe those 17 drafts and 1000 hours did pay off for Jeffrey Archer after all.

Does Landmark want to be a departmental store?

Yesterday, I paid a visit to the Landmark at Spencer's. Now this is my lease favourite branch of Landmark - I've always thought it somehow tacky and tasteless. But thats now the least of its problems. It more warehouse than shop. Enter on the ground floor and you're greeted by an avalanche of luggage, leather bags tucked tightly in next to one another, and a sea of files, notebooks, pens, pencil cases and other stationery-related products. All part of the Back-to-School campaign no doubt. I gave the entire floor a once-over and headed straight to the first floor. To more chaos. The poor books, supposedly the raison d'etre of Landmark have been shunted to about a quarter of the total floor space and told very strictly not to wander about making a nuisance of themselves. The rest of the floor is devoted to jewellery (the salesman yells 'Do you want diamonds, madam?'), perfumes/cosmetics, music, DVDs, glass items, other electrical consumer goods, tableware, bathroom accessories, bed linen and god knows whatever else I didnt venture to bump into (literally). Clearly, a re-think is required to bring some order to this chaos and make shopping pleasurable again.
Or maybe I really should give serious thought to my bookstore idea. Looks like there is a gap in the market after all.