Crackle!
When you’re unable to keep your monthly appointment with the woman who rids you of “unwanted facial hair”, you know, you have no time for yourself. None, whatsoever. So, I really am going to whack the next person who gives me a lecture on health and exercise and discipline. As for the bar of chocolate on my desk, well, I’ve had a tough week, and I need some comfort food, y’know, to calm my frazzled soul.
So, we’re gaining weight. We are in Mumbai on work. We are trying to juggle it all – work, events, ridiculous clients, even more ridiculous colleagues, more work, reviews, queries, questions, people pleading for help with things completely beyond anyone’s control and friends who visit only for a week. How is one supposed to give time to family and find time for a relationship in the middle of utter chaos? I have no clue. But we are trying. And when I am depressed and have no idea why, and when I feel the self esteem plummeting for I no longer feel in control of the situation, and when every day is just another task to be ticked off the To Do list, I will be allowed to consume this bar of chocolate, with no guilt. None.
Each piece, each bite of this chocolate bar is heavenly, and I apologise to no one. It melts in my mouth, it makes rice crispies crunch and butterscotch has never been so kind………. I am so so so sad, I can’t even write a worthy ode to chocolate! Well, let’s quote from the packaging – “Cadbury’s Crackle – Milk Chocolate with Nut Butterscotch and Rice Crispies” and coffee! Lots and lots of coffee.
Calcutta bound.
The why and how of it.
The Bubs [the boy] and the Rash [the girl] met through common friends. They started out as friends and as all modern love stories go, they fell in love. The love was expected to cross the Marwari [the boy's family] and Sikh [the girl's family] borders. While we all awaited the Bubs’ family verdict, we never expected the Rash’s army lineage to pose any threats. As all good stories go, we were wrong and the unexpected turned out to be central plot. The Bubs’ family welcomed the gori Sardarni: Rash, with open arms and the Rash’s army parents threatened to murder the to-be-groom or worse, disown their daughter: priorities, people! We were prepared for an elopement, we were ready to be witnesses at a court wedding or to visit the Iskon temple to help our friends tie the knot.
As I’m hurrying through this story, let me tell you, there was screaming and threats and shouting and more threats. There were discussions and planning and it was all turning out to be quite the Bollywood movie, when suddenly, the bride-to-be’s parents relented under the guidance of the bride’s Grandmother (this part, I personally loved). So, instead of all the drama, the energies were focused on how to pull off a wedding in two remotely located cities in under a month’s time. We were expected at Calcutta, while some friends visited Bareilly for a beautiful day wedding at the Gurdwara. Needless to say, we were asked to get our behinds to Calcutta.
Calcutta bound.
New Delhi Railway Station
As I’m always running late, Sir K, scared the bejeezus out of me, and told me to leave my house by 2:00 pm for a 4:30 pm train. I reached the station one and a half hours before departure time, alone. He, of course, was running late, working on something that needed to go out that very hour. So, I roamed around the station, bought a cheap notebook with a golden cover. I then hunted for coffee. I then hunted for water. I then hunted for a place to sit. When I couldn’t find any place to rest my posterior or keep my handbag or books (purchased at the station), I found newspaper, kept my suitcase on it and perched atop my own luggage, and started writing in my very tacky notebook. I tried to ignore the stench, the smell of Indian Railway stations. Yes, they smell. It’s because we have the second largest population in the world. The railways are Government run and cheap. Put two and two together and you get every unhygienic idiot travelling by train. The signs requesting passengers not to spit, spill or litter are paid heed to by people like me, who do not spit or spill or litter, anyway. The rest of the world carries on. I sent out a prayer to my favourite disinfectant, Dettol, and ignored it all and waited. I read Armies of Hanuman for a while. I ignored the families staring without blinking at me and attacked the train when it arrived on the platform.
The train: Sealdah Rajdhani
It was a garish reddish-orange in colour and crawled up the platform. People from all directions attacked it to check their names on the Seating Chart. They then tried to hog luggage space and the ones with the upper berths [the upper bunk so to say] sat themselves on the lower berths with their chins quivering and heads held high, ready to read out the rule: everyone shares the lower berths/ bunks till its time to switch off the lights and sleep.
Train journeys are quite boring. They are never-ending, they restrict movement, they put you too close to annoying people, etc. I only enjoy reading and sleeping in trains (both help me escape the annoying people). But if you’re travelling with Sir K, you have to play games! Hangaroo, Deal No Deal, etc, which in all honesty are lots of fun, cause I win! So, I continued to win while we finished courses of insipid tomato soup with rock hard bread sticks; followed by amazingly bad tasting chicken and vegetables and something they tried to pass off as pasta. It was horrid and I pecked at it. Sir K on the other hand felt that we were on “The Amazing Race” and consuming everything provided to us as “food” was part of the “challenge”! So, he ate. And ate and ATE. He even finished my breakfast the next morning because I was too sleepy to care (!).
The train in typical Bong/ Bengali fashion smelled of Talcum Powder and Boroline and Fish/ Egg curry. It was quite something, everywhere I could hear Bangla or Banglacised English being rattled off. They were discussing the current state of the Railways and the Government. They went on and on about how the Government was wrong but not entirely at fault for we as active citizens [or Railway customers] need to exercise our right and provide our feedback. Ah, the letters they wanted to write, the feedback they wanted to give, the glory of standing up for the rights of the Indian citizens/ rail customers for them was equivalent to that of their proud freedom fighter ancestors… If I wasn’t so jaded and hadn’t studied at a predominantly Bengali school, I would have felt the excitement too. The excitement of the Brown Sahibs! The embers of righteous indignation at not being served well in your own country, when your own Mamta is the Railway Minister! Ah! I love the Bongs. They take everything even remotely important to them so seriously. Their food, their sweets, their petitions and complaint letters, their music and dance and their fresh fish – it is all just very entertaining. It was during the train journey that I realised how much fun the Bongs are. By the time the train rolled on to the Sealdah Railway Station, Kolkata, I was very excited. Seriously.
***
Coming up next: Calcutta: time warped and lovely.
I’ve been around, I swear.
Alright then, it’s been over a month, well over a month, since a post or even a semblance of an update post. And here I am, trying to salvage the situation, yet again. To elaborate on where I’ve been and what I’ve been up to would take a while, but to put it simply, I’ve been up to some serious damage control. Seriously. Seriously! Quick update, coming your way, if you’re still around *wide-eyed hopeful hapless*
- There was a client servicing event, a residential client servicing event, which witnessed a surge in client acceptance a week before the event. Ordinarily, it is not that tough to manage. Ordinarily, the entire city is not under the control of psycho wedding aunties with their industrialist husbands’ bank balances backing them up. I had to beg three star properties to help. Beg. I swear.
- Lack of sleep, for more than a month. I think I proclaimed eternal love for my bed the day after the event was over.
- Bills, never-ending, all-consuming bills. And an accounts department that can give the Raj a run for its money. Red Tape, baby, RED.
- 4 properties i.e. 4 hotels. 10-12 cars. 160+ people. An utterly useless event management team. Luckily, the boss and the friend-colleague were around to help ensure Sirop’s sanity.
- Shifting house. Yes, shifting house.
- A wedding. A friend marrying another friend in the land of mishthi, while the house was shifting in the land of fog and freeze.
- Copious amounts of coffee and cigarettes.
- Inability to consume alcohol for the fear of collapsing in the middle of it all.
That and then more events, more work and New Year’s eve and the complete disregard for what they refer to as one’s social life.
That’s what I’ve been up to, do tell where all you gorgeous people have been. I will profess my love for Calcutta soon. Happy New Year 2010 everyone! Or “Twenty Ten”? ;)
We are stuck.
We are stuck. So stuck. Unbelievably, irrevocably, hopelessly stuck. In this job. In this city. In this godforsaken prestigious event crap. In this never-ending, on repeat playing of the-shit-has-hit-fan scenario. We are so sick and tired and stuck of it all.
Alive. Surviving. Heh.
Also, is it just me or is the idea of booking every possible hotel and car in a city for a fuckin’ month to celebrate one’s daughter’s wedding is completely psycho? It is. Isn’t it?
Yes, the conference is in the same city. Yes, we are over-booked and DYING here. Does anyone own a hotel in the city of lakes? Let ME know. Thankyouverymuch.
