Less words to pass

Password. What an exciting word that used to be. As a 10 year old, I would think of Secret Seven and other Enid Blytons where the password was a magical word, allowing you entry to a world of secrets that your parents and elders couldnt gain access to. My cousins and I used to form secret societies for the sole purpose of having a password. It meant adventure, mystery and most of all, fun!

Fun. HA! At the age of 30, passwords have become a chore. A daily reminder of my failing memory and of the complexity of life today in an increasingly untrustworthy world. In a normal day, we need to know at least 7 different passwords:

to log in to the comp at work, and sometimes at home
to access work mail
to access personal mail
to social network
to read newspapers
to read blogs
to buy something online
even to just check one's account balance

Everything needs a password and like any game worth its name, its rules have become
codified. It cant be anything simple or obvious, like your mother's maiden name or the date when you paid the first installment on your housing loan. It cant be all letters or all numbers. It has to be of a certain length. You need to type it twice. Dont write it down anywhere. Dont use the same password for everything.

Banks go one step further. After making you perform mental calisthenics to arrive at an alphanumeric password that doesnt offend their finely tuned sense of what is fitting, you then have to change this password, that you laboured over, the first time you log in properly. So they can start the whole game all over again.
The fiends also ask you to remember some other answer to an inane question that will be asked, should you forget this work of art..er password. And of course, you need a fresh set of passwords to transact any business on the phone.

Phew. Is it any wonder that we all feel wretched and demoralised all the time.

Nature abhors an empty room

For as long as I can remember, I've never thought of my family as being particularly sociable. We visited relatives and friends and they in turn came home of course, but on the whole there was none of the people dropping in whenever they felt like or sharing of food or impromtu get-togethers that are fairly routine with other more closely knit families. And we wouldnt want to have it any other way.
But for the last two years, the guest bedroom has hardly had a week to itself. First it was the uncle who used our home as base camp while he plotted and schemed to get the courts to grant his daughter a divorce. That the daughter ran away a week after the divorce came through is another story. Then it was another relative with an infected foot who needed medical attention. On the rare occasion when both these uncles were in their own homes, another uncle who had some litigation going on about some longstanding water dispute would take their place.
Then the first uncle's son, who'd finished some generic degree (in Australia; so every night we had to endure conversations dealing with every aspect of 'The Austrialian Life') used our house as a sort of labour exchange, meticulously exploiting all of my Dad's contacts till after five months, he managed to land a job. It took him another month to actually move out to his own place. Then his father (the first uncle, are you keeping up?) breaks his collar bone and his wonderfully concerned son decides to bring him here to get the docs to take a look at him but does the uncle stay in his own son's house? Oh no. Why should he when he can stay with us! Even though my cook only recently had an operation and therefore needed all the rest she could get.
Then another aunt and uncle turn up and stay put till they find a tenent for their house. Now at long last, we are guest-less. But since there's no polite way of telling people to buzz off, we've decided to put it about that we're going to paint the whole house, redo the false ceiling, inject anti-termite chemicals and generally stir up such a whirling fury of dust and paint and white cement that our house will hopefully become invisible to the naked eye (the PC term is 'unaided'; how prissy). If only we lived in Harry Potter's world, we would be the first in line to make our house Unplottable.

So when my sister told me she's thinking of building a house, my only reaction was 'Invest in some virtual reality, 3D, CGI screen that makes your spare bedroom permanently resemble some building site, if you dont want to be inundated with relatives who casually invite themselves to long stays at your house. She had a simpler idea. Hide the door to the room behind a bookcase. Afterall most people wont go within 10 yards of books. How true.

On a day like today

Random things seen/done/heard today:

"I have never been bored in my life." So says the Good Doctor. Is that even possible? How? Its my default setting. I imagine it would require rigorous self-discipline to forbid boredom. To exile it to the no-think list. Her point is, she doesnt do nothing. If for some reason she has nothing to do, she immediately finds something interesting to do. All I can say is that that sounds exhausting. And to paraphrase REM 'Everybody gets bored'. Its part of the human condition (make that living condition: even my Golden Lion gets bored from time to time).

Mango rice. In all my 30 years I've never eaten it. Even once. Didnt even know it existed. Even worse. Shame on me.


The Pleasure-Seeking Doshi. One of the perks/hazards of having a work-free working day is that one's online trawls sometimes bring up unexpected objects of interest. You begin the day without the least notion that Welsh-Gujarathi dancing poets call Madras home and you end it by discovering that you're separated from them by just a couple of degrees. Apparently Poo and the Doshi's mother belong to the same 'Female of the Species Only' organisation and are therefore well acquainted. So thats two degrees of seperation. And they say the Universe is expanding.

Fishing Quiz Man. This is strictly speaking something I saw yesterday but who cares. My Dad bought a copy of Following Fish authored by this FQM. Its about his travels in India based on the theme of areas where fish and fishing are an important part of the fabric of the local culture. So thats Bengal, TN, Kerala, Goa Bombay etc. I read a couple of pages and it sounded rather promising. Tarot Seeker and I lost rather spectacularly to FQM's team at a movies and literature quiz but I remember meeting him at a Vikram Seth book reading actually. Maybe we'll come full circle and I'll pop into his book reading some day.

My Man Utd Preux Chevalier gave me a tip today about getting tickets for EPL games. Buy a season ticket for one of the lower-ranking, about-to-be-relegated clubs. Then you can watch the big teams when they come to play at the home games of the aforementioned clubs! Easy peasy.

Summer of 2010

white hot days

warm scented nights

the sound of wind rattling through the trees

leaves blown right into the house

the first tart and juicy spoonful of strawberry jam

the sweet cold shock of ice cream

the quick sharp stab of a mosquito

the incoherent chatter of children playing on the streets

the welcome and sudden shade of trees

the toe-curlingly salty smell of the sea

the drops of water that shiver off a wet dog

the graceful dance of white drapes in the breeze

the all-pervading sunshine

the never-ending stickiness


all make a case for compulsory summer holidays

Bird song

The birds are chattering away outside my office window. Or rather window wall, because thats what it is. We see tree pies and owls and crows and parrots and squirrels all the time. But yesterday, we saw a Brain Fever Bird. Which made me think of Vikram Seth at once. I have to admit I expected it to be something altogether more exotic-looking (such an evocative name!), but maybe thats just me.

Normally I dont much notice them, not being much of a birdwatcher, but they are making an absolute racket now. Or maybe its just that there's just me and the Poo in this room, quietly working our way through yet another doomed book. Pin drop silence, they used to call it in school. What a quaint expression. You dont hear it much these days.

Yesterday was the last day at Cygnet Noir for one of the 'pillars of the establishment'. He joined the company as a 19-year-old. Thats thirteen years that he's spent here! Almost half his life. When I joined here, the Head-girl said "I hope you'll be with us till you retire". I laughed when she said that. I still do. But sometimes I dimly see that its not an impossible thing. There is comfort in the familiar. Be it family, friends, workplace. Or perhaps thats just an illusion. Everything changes. All the time. Some we notice, some we dont. But nothing stays still.

Whats the point of all of this musing? I wish I knew.

Mad women

Having watched two complete seasons of Mad Men in less than a month, I now feel incomplete without a smoking cigarette in one hand and a tumbler of whisky in the other. (Apparently the actors smoke herbal cigarettes. Wonder if we get them here.)

Such is the power the TV and storytelling. You start feeling nostalgic for things you never knew in the first place.

The Fame Monster

Big news! The pal and I had made it to Glam-Sham after all! Yay!

Lookee! Lookee!
(in the What's On page)

Tra la!