Swings & Roundabouts

I read this old post in one of my favourite blogs and it brought back to my mind some incidents from my own past. Events that had completely unnerved me and left an indelible mark on me. Nothing really drastic that nonetheless have scarred me for life.

Some of the earliest instances date back to the time when I used to travel by bus and the ‘studs’ used to pass leery comments. Crude, obnoxious remarks that were not at all for the ears of a twelve-year old. And then there were the gropers who would pinch your bums and anything else they could get their grubby mitts on. Shouting for help never really worked as no one generally took a blind bit of notice. Plus there was the very real fear that they get caught because of you, they might come with the rest of their goondas and exact revenge on you on the morrow. Then there were those dhoti-clad ones who let their bits hang free and got their kicks by rubbing them against your behind. A hardening organ rubbing against you in a public transport is a very scary thing indeed.

I still can feel the panic rising in me as I remember this dark stranger who once followed me home from my computer class. He wouldn’t stop staring at me in the bus and got off at my stop. Never once flinched, kept steady pace with me and short of taking off like the wind, there was nothing I could do to shake him off. Even when I was afraid of leading him to my home, I couldn’t gather the courage to take a fake route and mislead him somehow. Ultimately, I dived into my friend’s block and hid on the stairs for a long, long time till it grew dark and I had to go home.

Then there were the countless times I was taunted and jeered at the LIC bus stop by the roadside romeos from Nandanam Arts College who haunt our college bus stops. The ‘men’ who used to get such pleasure from scaring young girls brainless that one even ran into oncoming traffic to escape their clutches.

When I look back, I cannot help but think my parents were rather naive – or blind. In a world full of perverts, they innocently trusted their daughter to travel everywhere by herself and come back home unscathed. Though it was I who insisted on travelling solo by train to Mumbai, I shudder now when I think of what harm I could have befallen me. Or the time when I went to Trivandrum for a friend’s wedding, without even letting her know I was coming as I wanted to surprise her.

My experiences, though thankfully not too serious, still made me rather jittery among men. They made me act out in rather funny ways one of the most memorable ones being this sudden hankering I developed for a big brother. Maybe it was the protectiveness I craved but I tried to fill the void by the only method I knew how by tying rakhi for couple of older guy friends.

At one point, I was rather suspicious of every male I came across even ones linked to me by family. I used to go out of my way to make sure I was never left by myself with any of them. I could also never make eye contact when talking with them and if one of them became genuinely friendly, it only made me suspicious. I even cut off all relations with S’s close friend because me playfully pinched my cheek once. I guess those events have disturbed me a lot more than I gave them credit for.

******************
The year 2007 in Brentwood dawned with news reports of two girls raped at midnight in different parts of the town. Since then, I have read numerous reports of girls being molested, both here and back in India. I am sure the men who did it are under the mistaken impression that it was a sign of their manhood, that they have brought a woman to her knees. How will we make them understand that it isn’t so – taking a woman by force and leaving a dirty footprint on her life is not macho, it is not something to be proud of. It is rather a shameful act; one so vile that no punishment is sufficient and no act possible to eradicate that event from the affected woman’s life. What will it take for a man to understand that it is the ultimate act of cowardice to scare and scar a woman so?

One of the biggest misconception among most men is that having a dick maketh a man. Well, it ain’t and the sooner the pervs of this world realise this, the better. A biological part does not make somebody a man. Scaring young girls and violating a person is most definitely not the mark of manhood and anyone who thinks otherwise is seriously deluded.

Now that I am a mum, I am even more worried about the sort of world I have brought my son into and how safe I can keep him. I so empathise with the blogger’s and her husband’s fears when strangers express a desire to take pictures of her little boy the world is not innocent anymore and it is a sad day for us when we have to view every single thing with suspicious eyes. But when the alternate is just way too horrible to contemplate, parents can be excused for wanting to wrap their children in cotton wool.

These fears are so real and prevalent in UK that we are banned from taking pictures of children in places like schools, in parties and other assorted gatherings. Most places have big notices saying ‘No cameras’ and you need special permission to take pictures even if you are having a party for your child in a public place. I couldn’t understand this before I became a mum; now I am happy whatever measures are there in place to prevent perverts from getting a picture of my son.

I have filled little P’s head with dire tales of strangers and what they can do that he has equated a stranger to the most vile kind of monster a five year old can imagine. Then again, those that harm us and our precious children do not disguise themselves as strangers anymore, do they? Read the case of two-year old Casey Mullen, who was raped and strangled, in her own bed, by her own uncle. I am absolutely bereft of words.

I am sure my blogger pal and I aren’t alone in this fear of ours scores of parents must feel the same way and some of the blogs I have read on this subject just prove my belief. A whole generation of children are going to be molly coddled and cosseted by their parents who are fearful of the harms that could come to their child that the children are in very real fear of being too afraid to do anything carefree and fun. Never mind the fearful strangers robbing them of their childhood, we overprotective parents might just end up doing it by stifling them.

The question on my mind now is, where do we go from here? With morality on a steady decline, what is the path humanity is meant to take in order to save itself? How are we to keep our children and ourselves, safe?

Valentine Day’s just around the corner and I remember how it used to be when I was in college. There was this huge outlet of Archie’ s Gallery opposite my college in Chennai (Chinna ponnunga padippadhu Ethiraja…) and soon after the Christmas-New Year dhamaka finished, the store will get out its Val’s Day stuff. There’ll be red hearts hanging from the ceiling, syrupy love songs blaring out from the speakers and everywhere there used to be this profusion of stuffed toys, cards, cards and more cards.

It was very tough being single and unattached.

The past six years though, the season of ‘giving’ is the biggest date in the Christian calendar – Christmas. It took me a long time to figure out why the folks around me got into a tizz at the mention of th C-word; turkey, presents, trees, decoration, anything related to it used to drive them into a frenzy. My driving instructor told me proudly that he was so well prepared for the holiday season, he finished his presents-buying lark by Halloween. I was amazed at that. The whole concept of making a list of presents, the must-have toys for kids and the expensive thingummyjigs for spouses in favour all seemed a bit too excessive to me. There should be some actual joy in giving, surely?

The actual day, when it dawned, must seem really anti-climatic after all the hullabaloo but swapping presents must surely make up for it, I thought naively. But this year, one of my colleagues got a ‘present’ that made everything else pale in comparison. Her brother had got her a goat for Christmas – well, she didn’t really get it, it was given to some poor and deserving folk in a far-off land in her name. I was about to say ‘oh jolly good thought’ but catching sight of her expression, I swallowed the words. I realised then that there is more to this present giving than I had paid any attention to.

From what I can see, the guidelines generally are as follows:
1.If you are buying for a girl, the price tag is the last thing you must check out. The more flattering, the more eye-catching, the better. This especially holds true if you are the boyfriend or a newly married spouse. If, on the other hand, you’ve made your bones in your marriage, then you might get away with a lesser ‘wowie’ gift.
2.Paying attention is a good thing – and women generally drop an inordinate number of hints when a present giving occasion (Val’s day, anniversary of the first time you clapped your eyes on each other, birthdays, Saturday nights) comes near. ‘Ooh isn’t that bauble nice?’ and ‘does this suit me?’ are the statements that should stick out like beacons as they are generally good indicators.
3.If you have failed at step 2, then window shopping is a good option. Keep that plastic handy.
4. Every women loves a surprise – as long as it is of the good variety.
5.For guys, if you generally get stalled after getting stuff such as leather wallets, after shave, cologne (esp if BO is a big factor!), grooming kits (for the scruffier types), then activity gifts are a brilliant idea. Most men love that adrenaline rush and provided he isn’t scared of heights, a bunjee jumping voucher would be a fab idea. I got hubby a 30 min flying lesson voucher couple of years back – he still hasn’t managed to top that!
6. Most of all, always, always make sure the wife’s present is at least twice as expensive as the mother’s and three times as that of the sister’s. If you want to live, that is.
7. Lastly, though charity is a good thing, showing your philanthropist nature a la colleague’s big brother is not the way to win the game. Get a decent gift and give this rather nice gesture as an extra addition, if you want to save your skin and still be a persona grata.

Happy shopping!

I was reading this article about Reliance Fresh shops and the quality they offer. When I read about their rates, the first thing that came to my mind was what would happen to the regular kaikarikaran / sabziwala? They won’t be able to compete with such a venture, surely?

But on second thoughts, I realised that the door-to-door vendor’s market is safe as no one offers what he does. He turns up like clockwork, builds up a good rapport with his customers, chats them up and cajoles them to buy more than they intended and if you have a special do in your house, he could be relied on to bring you some extra special veg, at a special rate, of course! As no Reliance Fresh or any of their ilk could offer this, the vendor’s market is safe.

The one that is getting affected by this new chain to hit the market in Chennai is Pazhamudircholai. For the non-Chennaivasis, Pazhamudircholai is the name of an exceptional fruit and veg store that held sway near Kasi Arcade in T Nagar for many years before spreading across the city. This store had the freshest of fruits and vegetables available all year and though they were on a slightly expensive side, they were a very welcome addition to the market place.

Once you set your eyes on their fat, juicy, glistening wares, you cannot walk away without getting your hands on at least a few tempting fruit or that rare veg. They do not employ any ‘buy one get one free’ gimmicks and rely purely on the quality of the items they sell. At the front of each store there is also a man selling fresh juices and he is normally surrounded by hundreds of maamis and aunties, vying with one another to get their hands on the day’s special. The fact that they do takeaways made this hugely popular and highly successful.

This chain of stores quickly built a name for themselves and if one outlet opened in your area, it generally meant that you can now shop for good quality fruit and veg in relative ease. No Food World or Nilgiris could do much to stand in the way of this store’s success – after all, no one went to Food World or Nilgiris to buy their fruit and veg now, did they?

But this new kid on the block, this Reliance Fresh, with its real cheap rates and marketing gimmicks, seems to be changing the status quo. The Reliance Fresh outlet in Ashok Nagar, for example, is right opposite the Pazhamudircholai one and has already stolen most of the latter’s client base. I, for one, am much saddened by this, as I really liked that store and am against the big name brand stores changing the face of the arena anyway. Though this turf war could mean that the public may be well be getting some really good deals (Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda vie with one another here in the UK to inundate us with coupons and other enticing offers) the sort of aggressiveness they display is a big turn off.

Other big disadvantage of having these big name stores coming everywhere is that pretty soon, the local colour will get wiped out. Every market place or mall will have the same group of stores – Reliance, Music World, Landmark, LifeStyle, etc and slowly, the variety and the abundance that exists now will slowly get replaced with this sort of corporate uniformity. In Britain, for example, every High Street boasts of a Body Shop, Marks & Spencer’s, Monsoon, Regis, Pizza Hut, Clarks and at least one Tesco or Sainsbury’s or Asda store. The smaller shops are slowly going out of business and high streets across the country are all beginning to look eerily the same. It is surreal how familiar a Brentwood High Street looks to a small town high street in Yorkshire.

With every facet of Indian life undergoing radical changes, it won’t be too long before we end up with a similar set of circumstances. Though with our population, the Nadar kadais will still have its patrons, I hope that the average Joe has a fighting chance against the big bad corporations. I sure hope so.

For a long while, India was famous for its brain drain – we used to read about the myriad ‘India Born’s’ who went on to become leading lights in their chosen field in their adopted countries. With the new IT boom, India is becoming the chosen destination of the First World countries to house their call centres and, in increasing number of cases, their development teams.

Now that the Western world is slowly getting convinced of the fact that we don’t travel to our workplaces on our elephants, have pet snakes, do the rope trick every night before dinner and sleep on nailed beds, a lot of them want to sample the country’s natural beauty. This is good news for us in terms of the revenue tourism would bring.

But the increase in our international profile also means that things that had so long remained in the dark now will be put under the global microscope. Lack of basic facilities in public areas, sloppy customer service, non-existence of emergency services and civic sense are things that every Indian knows and shrugs off – but these are the same things that are causing the well shaped Western brow to lift in alarm and/or derison.

Real estate in India is booming – land value has sky rocketed and there are malls and IT parks coming up everywhere. The picture that is being painted of the country is that of a prosperous nation on the brink of global leadership.News reports claim that the Indian economy would be much better than that of UK’s by 2015 and by 2030, China and India would be among the world’s greatest economic super powers, just behind USA. While this sounds fantastic, the reality might be a completely different thing. Political sociologist Amandeep Sandhu argues that “although it is often asserted that India’s democracy allows it to manage diversity, a greater threat to India’s growth can come from within. In the recent past, India has experienced or is experiencing conflict in Kashmir, Punjab, North East India, and it experiences regular urban communal riots between Hindus and Muslims.”

One of our biggest problems is that India’s accelerated growth is neither multi-dimentional nor is it well thought out. IT and manufacturing sectors are reaping the rewards of this boom whilst others such as farmers, artisans and the other regular folks are languishing in the wayside. Whilst throwing open our doors to international trades, we haven’t safeguarded our own homegrown industries that are now bearing the brunt of the government’s short-sightedness.

Our own police force has come under fire following the murders of Welsh charity worker Mike Blakey and Englishman Stephen Bennet within the span of two weeks. Their sloppy detective work, lack of professionalism and conduct has created waves here in the UK and are putting the country in a very bad light.

If our country is to really prosper, then a multi-dimentional overhaul is necessary. Our basic infrastructure needs to be vastly improved. Frequent power cuts, roads riddled with potholes, lack of emergency service facilities are not features of a successful economy, much less an emerging world superpower. Other industries such as the small scale industries, agriculture, tourism and other non-IT fields also need to be encouraged and their grown furthered. Ultimately, we need to slather a layer of professionalism over our good selves if we were to compete in the global market and emerge victorious.

All of this and more, needs to be done and needs to be done now. Otherwise, this boom will be more the bang with which our glorious future came crashing down.

I am tired of Jade. Tired of seeing her carefully school face showing remorse peering at me from every street corner. Tired of hearing her well rehearsed apologies ‘I am not a racist but I can understand why you would think so’. Her well oiled PR machine is working overtime to clean up her tarnished image and I, for one, am tired of being played like a banjo.

Jade is using the ‘tu queque’ argument someone accused me of, to excuse away her actions. She keeps saying what she did was wrong but is repeatedly pinning the blame for it on her upbringing, her social class, her parents and anything else she could think of.

Couple of other ‘interesting’ repercussions of the BB row are Danielle losing a £100,000 modelling contract and worse, being dumped by West Ham footballer Teddy Sheringham, the same man she slept with to win the Miss Great Britain crown last year. Of course, Danielle doesn’t know that she ins’t a WAG anymore. Jo, on the other hand, didn’t have much of a career to speak of since her S Club 7 days so doesn’t have much to lose and is carrying on as before.

Whilst I have had my fill of the Jade Baddy Saga, I feel Danielle and Jo, who have said more racist comments and have egged Jade on, deserve to take on the blame as well. It was Danielle who said ‘I thought you were going to punch her’ after Jade’s pronouncement ‘you are stuck up so far up your a**e that you can smell your own s**t’ and even said ‘your mother would be so proud of you’ and even called Shilpa a dog. Jo has generally been nasty and while I cannot remember what pearls of wisdom she dropped, she has been coming across as the type of person I would cross the road to avoid, purely for my own personal safety.

I was watching The Wright Stuff earlier on Channel 5 (young P’s down with chicken pox – hence am cooped up at home!) and today’s panellist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown said something that seemed real sensible to me. Jade was the ‘expert’ on the show today and after 30 minutes of ‘yes I can see how it will be construed as wrong, but I wasn’t the only one’ and many rueful shakes of her head, Yasmin adviced Jade to use the next three years to get a proper degree and…. well, we never heard what as Jade butted in, prattling about the same old stuff and made Yasmin gave up what she was trying to say. But I can see where she’s coming from: one of Jade’s biggest reasons for being such a bully is that she learnt those at her mother’s knee. Well, she’s in her mid-twenties now and cannot blame Mum for teaching her every wrong thing under the sun. It is time she learnt few good things on her own, especially with two young children to raise. Yasmin’s advice strikes me as an exceptionally sound one, as well as her view of it will take a long time for someone to change their views (the racist or the bullying sort) and will not take place in the span of three short days, as we are seeing in Jade’s case.

Education is the only way to open people’s minds to the world out there. Respecting others’ differences and not feeling threatened by them will only come with time. Britain today is as multi cultural as it gets, a fact that threatens many, many people. One of them decided to show their distaste by spitting in front of me as I was out for a walking with my little one and shouting ‘Go back home!’ Another one did his level best to push my husband on to the rail tracks by catching hold of his shirt fronts and yelling ‘You bl***y Paki!’ As more and more Asians come to the UK as skilled workers and as more and more jobs are being sent to the subcontinent, the ire of the locals who perceive us to have cheated them out of their jobs is on the rise.

Being different always makes us fair game and this is true none more so than in our own country, which is as widely diverse as it can get. State, language, religion, social / economic strata – we have innumerable things seperating us from another. Try to imagine the case of a Madrasi amongst a group of Hindi speaking Bombay or Delhi folk. Attire and accent are just two of the things that are causes for mirth. My telugu neighbour still speaks to me like I were from a planet many light years away rather than from a nearby state when she speaks of the ‘customs and traditions of Nellore’ (my husband is Telugu while I am Tamil). Couple of my tam-bram friends changed their minds about me in a hurry once they heard of my own mixed parentage.

While I do not rue the loss of their so-called friendship, I rue our own penchant to divide ourself so neatly. Even after paying with our own freedom for celebrating our differences hasn’t stopped us from going back to doing the same. What is needed for us to look at one another as just people, instead of ‘Jain, rich, gujju’ or ‘Hindu, Tamil, padayachi’? When will we stop judging one another? Isn’t it high time we changed our outlook for the better?

What do you do when you are bored and are randomly surfing the net? Search for your favourite TV shows, play some games, Stumble upon something? Well, why don’t you log on to <”http://www.freerice.com/”>Free Rice</a>, exercise your brain and donate some desperately needed Third World rice in the bargain?

All you need to do are practice your vocabulary skills. For every question you get right, the organisation behind this effort donates 20 grains of rice. It used to be 10 but just a few days back, the count was doubled to 20 grains per correct answer. As you answer the questions correctly, the level becomes tougher. Every time you chose a wrong answer, you go down a level and get a question in that level. You can play as long as you want. But a piece of warning: it’s addictive!

This site was begun on October 7, 2007 with 830 grains won on the first day. Yesterday a whopping 235,092,740 grains were won, bringing the total upto a mind boggling 5,541,225,910 – and counting!

So how does this work?

The grains you win are donated to the United Nations World Food Programme, the world’s largest food aid agency, who work with thousands of organisations to reach this staple to the starving masses. You could also take it a step further and donate desperately needed cash. other vital items. Won’t these make a better Christmas gift that a party gag?

While on the subject of alternate, humanitarian Christmas gifts, visit the Good Gifts site to learn how you can donate a cycle to poor children in India, donate books and things to open a library in Africa, modernize a hut in Rwanda – or you could even give someone the incomparable gift of sight. Other organisations like Oxfam have a special section named Oxfam Unwrapped, that gives one suggestions like building a bog, donating tools for farming, condoms and even the ultimate Christmas ‘takeaway’ – school dinners for 100 children at a paltry sum of just 6 pounds.

How cool is that? To be able to make a difference in someone’s life at the touch of a button. There’s no bigger high than knowing you have just made some nameless, faceless stranger happy by feeding them; knowing that one hundred poor children will have a full tummy this Christmas because you spared some change. My little boy just gave me the 6 quid from his money box. If he can, you sure can.

Go on, make a difference.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: charity, christmas, gifts

In the past few weeks, quite a few people have written something about my hometown be it their brush with the humidity and the pollution or how diametrically opposite it is to the North Indian cities, such as Delhi. Reading about these have made me quite home sick for my lovely city and I thought I shall put pen to paper and write about what makes me love it so.

Chennai, or Madras as it was known then and familiar to me today, has always been the perfect amalgamation of the old and the new. It is a city, where the kancheevaram sarees and old maamis live hand-in-hand with the Mocha coffee swigging, tank topped teeny-bopper. It is a city where the December Music Season is the highlight of the year’s cultural calender. But it is also the city where multi-stored malls and ginormous technology parks are coming up at an alarming pace. Kapaleeshwarar Temple still holds sway while Dublin continues to rock the party, come Saturday night.

The old and the new have meshed together so well that one barely leaves a dent on another. The Geetha cafes and Saravana Bhavan clientele still continue going about their daily toils, the latest opening of Baristas notwithstanding. Pizza Hut still has a mile long seating queue outside its premises most evenings and the latest branch of Madurai Idli Kadai just a little over a mile away doesn’t put any pro-Italianos off their stride.

It is also a city of crazy traffic and diabolical drivers. Having a countdown at the traffic lights seems to have made these speed demons crazier than before, what with all the revving that happens even when the timer has a good 20 seconds to go! Latest model Honda Civics aside, the potholes the latest bout of rains have gifted to the repaved roads will give your bones a workout no Shiatsu massage ever will.

It is also the city where the humidity hits you like a wet blanket the minute you set foot in. The sweat running in rivulets, combining with the dust and grime will make you look rather like an Indian brave by the end of the day. If you are not used to it, it may well make you weep!

Though Tamil is the language of the state and the DMK fervour had made sure that there is a bit of ziddi in speaking the language, the people are not averse to learning a new language. Proof of this would be the hugely popular language programmes run by the Alliance Francaise and Max Muller Bhavan, which teach French and German, respectively. But this trait is not to be found solely amongst the younger generation. My old vegetable vendor used to speak in highly fractured but extremely serviceable Hindi to one of my neighbours, who had moved to Chennai from Bombay a few years back. Though the lady had been a resident of the city for about 3 years then, she hadn’t picked up a word of the local language while the wizened vendor knew enough to sell her bhindi and baingan on demand!

Chennai, the city, is split into many zones, depending on its population. Accordlingly, in Sowkarpet, you will find Sindhis and Marwaris whilst in Parrys Corner,you will find lot more Telugus than Tamils. (Aside: Though the Sindhis and Marwaris have settled in the city and generations of their families have been calling Chennai home, none of them could speak a word of Tamil amongst them. This was a highly irritating factor during my college days. )
Eastern Madras is full of the brahmins whilst the South has folks connected to tinsel-town.

Though the city is now expanding in all directions at break neck speed and once shunned areas such as Velachery and Virugambakkam are now extremely sought after, the old demarkations still exist. The new perimeters haven’t erased the old they have simply, in typical Chennai fashion, become a part of the fabric.

It is also the city where education is supreme. Every year, during admission time, you will find anxious mums and dads queuing outside the city’s top schools, just to get an application form. The streets will be bereft of children come evening, as they will all be busy at the abacus classes, trying to master that ancient art, before taking off to the Bharatnatyam or singing classes. It is the same city where John Britto and Swingers dance schools flourish, helping wannabe Prabhu Devas turn their dreams into reality.

This is also the city where NIFT sits comfortably next to Co-Optex showroom. The city where the latest fashion trend is a saree with a pocket for one’s cell phone. The city where heels come with butti patterns to match the pallus. The city where hipsters jeans are worn with a zari top. This is the city where the paati’s Annamacharya keertans jostle for space with grand daughter’s James Blunt.

That is the magic of my city a city where the roads are full of potholes, the traffic snarls legendary, the water problem one of epic proportions, where sabhas are as important as the multiplexes but one in which a person can go for a spot of masala dosa and milkshake at mdnight, on the way back from a disco or a pizza and fresh juice for high tea, before joining the pattu saree maamis at Music Academy for a K J Yesudas kutcheri. A city where aalaapana and Air Nikes exist comfortably.

This is Madras, nalla Madras. We are like this only, saar!

Maami, Maami, Golu vecha sundal,
Illatti kindal!

I remember getting dressed in my pattu pavadai (silk skirts) and walking up and down our streets with my group of friends during Navrathri. Our job was to go to every house that had kept a golu, stand outside their gates and recite the above-mentioned chant. It normally resulted in the lady of the house coming out with a grin and inviting us in for that Navrathri staple. If the oldies of the house were present, then we were urged to earn the sundal by singing a song dedicated to Goddess Lakshmi, usually to their own peril.

After the resultant cacophony, we were given the thamboolam, with some steaming sundal wrapped in old newspaper. Objective accomplished, we used to rush out with the booty, devour it on the way, discuss the merits of that sundal with respect to the previous house’s efforts and then go to the next house. By the time we finished the street, it was usually dinnertime and we would all be feeling slightly sick. But that never stopped us repeating it the next day and the next, till Vijayadasami.

Why am I prattling about Navrathri and sundal now? Well, last night, when I was walking home from work, I came across many a wicked witch and evil magician walking the streets, armed with broomsticks and wands. The Jack O’ Lanterns gleamed evilly on some doorsteps and the dark creatures were on the prowl. It was Halloween after all, and pretty soon, the ubiquitous ‘trick or treat’ filled the air.

‘Treats’ in the form of teeth rotters like gooey marshmallows, toffee apples and other assorted sticky sweeties that children so love were dispersed at every house. Most of these ‘monsters’ were too little to figure out what the ‘trick’ part of the threat entailed. One tubby skeleton was really confused when I asked him what trick he had in store for me and looked ready to burst in tears as he thought he wasn’t going to get a fistful of chocolates for his trouble.

But the older ones preferred the tricks to the treats. More than a month beforehand, the Council had put up notices in shops, tersely warning the shopkeepers not to sell flour and eggs to ‘suspicious looking teenagers’. To me, all teenagers look shifty-eyed at the best of times; how does one weed the ‘regular’ ones from those buying Halloween gunk? Seemed like the local teens agreed with me as some unfortunate souls got their windscreens covered in eggs, despite of the warnings.

Despite the hype and the hungama surrounding the whole Halloween thing, to me, it lacked the magic of our old Navrathri days. We dressed up in our finery and got yummy (healthy!) sundal from most houses. Belting out Carnatic music songs that bore no resemblance to the original in various sruthis was pure enjoyment. Though pain flit across several of our audiences faces, I am sure they enjoyed it too.

But the tiny terrors banging on the doors, creating a din outside definitely seemed to be having the time of their lives. Though they had the parents’ nightmare, sugar rush, to contend with at the end of the day, the accompanying adults seemed to be enjoying themselves as well. Jack O’ Lanterns flickered away and the loo rolls wafted madly in the autumn gust.

Maybe it is just I, getting jaded and old before my time. Trick or treat, anyone?

Oct 22, 2006, Sao Palo will remain forever etched in every Ferrari fan’s memory as the venue for one of the greatest F1 races ever. There was no shortage of drama and whoever had tuned in or turned up in person at the venue had more than their money’s worth.

I hate to admit but I was nervous as hell – Mikey had qualified at P 10 and Alonso was in P4. Though I wasn’t too worried about Mikey’s starting position, I was doubtful the upstart would oblige and crash his car. Anyways, I wanted Michael to win the race and the championship proper – not by default.

So I sat through ITV’s pre-race waffle and by the time the klaxon sounded, my nerves had got the better of me and I beat a hasty retreat to the kitchen, to watch the race from farther afield. I am really nervous about watching my favourite men play – Sachin always goes out on a duck if I sit cheering him on; on one memorable occasion, Mikey’s car blew up in the last few laps at Suzuka and that sod Hakkinen walked away with the championship.

On lap 10 of the Grand Prix though, my world crashed about my ears as Mikey’s car threw a wobbly and swerved all over the place. Moments later, we could see why – his right rear tyre had had a blowout, thanks to the debris left over from Rosberg’s car. Mikey drove like a demon with the punctured tyre to get back into the pits and get a new set. He rejoined the race at P19 and from then on, it was pure drama.

Once it was clear that there was no way Mikey could win either the championship or the race, he just stepped up a couple of gears and drove one of the best races of his career. He continually set up fastest lap times, overtook every car that came in his way and showed us what we are going to be missing in the years to come. He blistered down the tracks, made some brilliant moves overtaking and just shone! It was like being part of a masterclass in F1 racing. His manoever, when he overtook Kimi with just 4 laps to go, was a thing of sheer beauty.

Schumacher did not win the race; he certainly did not win the championship; hell, he did not even finish on the podium. But he emerged a winner on race day. He drove such a brilliant race that the camera hardly registered Massa’s laps, save for a few glimpses every now and then.

He sure made quite a lot of enemies over the years but no one could deny that he is one of the best drivers ever. He definitely would go down in the history books as one of the greatest drivers we have ever seen. Alonso might go on to win more championships, Kimi might set the tracks on fire, Button might just prove to be the best British driver bar none but no one can ever replace Michael Schumacher. Formula 1 has lost one of its brightest suns and it is going to be a whole lot darker without Schumey around.

I hate to admit it but I was a teensy-weensy bit scared. The scrawny guy in the corner looked mildly menacing. The blonde at the table looked in control while the Oriental lady a few feet away looked positively territorial.

I was petrified.

I have never seen the inside of a Laundromat before. I have walked past it a million times as it was a few doors down from my workplace but never ventured inside. I was, after all, the smug owner of a working washing machine, with a dryer, I might add. I could do my laundry from the comfort of my own home, at my own sweet time. And I did so for five long years till the day my pipes got blocked with some mysterious substance and the water from my washing machine came flooding into the kitchen.

To say it caused panic in my heart is like saying the tsunami was a wee wave. What if the water seeped through my floorboards and into my neighbour’s ceiling? What if it got soaked right through and fell on their heads? I would never be able to sell this place and make a whopping profit!

S put on his ‘man of the house’ hat and peered down the pipes as if he could unblock it with his laser vision. When that didn’t work, he emptied the steaming contents of the kettle down it. Well, that didn’t help one jot as the water stayed put – only now I had a sink full of water to deal with, as well!

As he went to root out the plunger and Mr Muscle’s magic concoction, I loaded an Ikea blue bag with the dirty clothes and made my way to the laundromat. The minute I opened the door and stepped in, it was like I had gone behind the laundry world’s version of the Iron Curtain. There seemed to be some sort of code to this place and I didn’t have a clue what it was. Wrenching the door open, loading the machine, putting some coins in and getting it started, I found later, were the easy bits.

Not wanting to waste the hour it would take for the machine to chomp the dirt out of our clothes, I headed home to check on the progress being made. (And what a mistake that turned out to be!) By then, hubby dear had discovered that Mr Muscle was no match for our pipes and gone onto another stronger product, which promised to burst through the clog and make the pipe’s insides look like brand-spanking-new.

Leaving him to his cartload of pipe-clearing products, I went back to the Laundromat, only to learn that these machines took a lot less time to do the washing than my one at home. While I was listening to the relative merits of Cillit Bang vs Mr Muscle, my wash cycle had ended and some one had emptied my sodden clothes into a basket and collared my machine.

Worse, two of the four tumble dryers sported ‘Out of Order’ signs. So I had to queue behind either a blonde with four bin bags full of dirty clothes and a dangerous looking individual with a bulging tote bag or a tough looking Chinese lady, who looked like she had a never-ending supply of clothes. I decided to go for the Chinese (fellow continent-woman and all that!) and thereby, made my second error of the day.

What I had assumed to be four bin bags full of dirty clothes, turned out to be four bin bags full of clean clothes. Even as I stood slack jawed, the blonde tipped out bag afte bag onto a table and neatly folded the clothes into her humungous hamper. She varied this routine by opening the dryer every once in a while, taking her family’s smalls out and folding them into a different basket. By this time, the Chinese lady was joined by her husband and son, who went to a machine each, emptied their loads onto baskets and joined Mum. Mum then proceeded to open the door of her dryer, tipped the contents of the two baskets inside and put about half a million quid worth of coins in. As I stood there gaping like a fish, the timer went up and up, finally stopping at 85 minutes.

Eighty-five bloody minutes, on top of the twenty I have already put in! Someone’s having a laugh and it certainly wasn’t me!

I decided to put my years of Chennai living to good use (if you have stood outside your house, waiting for the water tank to come and dispense water, you would know what I am talking about!) and join the party. Tugging and shoving in turns, I moved my bag of clothes so it stood directly in front of the dryer. Kin or not, I was not budging for anyone anymore! I casually flipped my book open, lounged against the wall and maintained my position.

While I was deeply engrossed in the antics of Malachi, Gideon and Rebecca, the blonde finished her job and the bachelor with the tote bag dumped his load in, waited around for 20 minutes and cleared the way for the quick-footed brunette who had stood behind him! All the while, I waited like a lemon for my machine to finish drying all the wet clothes in China.

There was mild panic when the machine was still half-way through and Mum pushed my bag rudely out of the way. Even as I was wondering what I would do if she chucked in more clothes, she calmly took some of the dried ones and wandered away, while I breathed out a sigh of relief.

After a mind-numbing, mammoth hour and a half, the machine finally did its job and Mum slowly started emptying its contents into her bags. I stood behind her, hiding the machine and trying to look as menacing as I could armed with a paperback and a sack full of wet clothes. Mum took off, thankfully and I heaved my stuff in, praying the machine won’t give up its ghost now that it was my turn. That would have been really the limit!

I nabbed the chair vacated by Mum, plonked it in front of my dryer and continued with my book. Soon enough, the deed was done and a call to the landline ensured the plumber downed tools and doffed the chauffeur’s hat, carting me and my clean, fresh-smelling clothes home.

I arrived to see the kitchen in chaos – there were bottles of bleach, assorted chemical products and even a bottle of vinegar, some salt and soda bicard on the floor (well, we do watch How Clean Is Your House?) and assorted bits of pipes. S had finally thrown in the towel and started thumbing through the Yellow Pages for a plumber. Of course, no self-respecting plumber would come immediately and the only one whose diary wasn’t booked till the next century offered to come in during the following weekend.

Even as S spluttered down the phone, I went back to my book without a care in the world. After all, I could do my washing at the laundromat down the road. I am not scared; I’m not a virgin anymore – I am a pro!