The inevitable has happened. I miss Minoo, the cat more than I miss Vipul, the husband.

Maybe it's simply because Vipul is home and therefore difficult to miss. Or maybe it is a sort of forbidden fruit syndrome: Vipul is ghar ki Murgi, living with me while Minoo belongs to someone else. Either way, the point is that my cat-sitting is over, she has been reclaimed and taken to her original home, and I'm musing over her idiosyncracies in my head.

It is strange to no longer be woken up by her vociferous mewing in the morning. Once Vipul's alarm had broken her sleep, Minoo ensured the we got up as well. Mostly she accomplished this by short bark-like meows, and sometimes through cajoling licks of her sandpapery tongue over my face. Either way, she started the day with the misconception that she was a dog and made my day start like a Nescafe coffee ad.

Of course, the rest of the day was as unlike a coffee ad as can be, coz it was as full of sleeping and lazing as can be. I have never done as much of nothing as I did in the past six weeks. Initially I'd thought that having a cat might inspire me to write out more stuff, but as is now clear, her yawns were far too influential to get anything at all done.

Still, I did get one thing accomplished, and that's a good load of snaps. I've pasted some on my blog before, and here's the final tranche:

Tagging along

Quicksilver has tagged me into a confessionary, so here goes:

I am thinking about...
... loopholes in my sugar-free diet. So far, it is clear that strawberry ice-cream counts as a serving of fruit

I said...
... "coochie poochie", "shweetie paee" and other nonsensical gibberish for the first time in my life last month. After years of holding baby-talk in contempt, I somehow succumbed during one-on-one quality time with my new cat.

I want to...
... stop this baby-talk before I let it slip in public and embarrass myself

I wish...
... humans had never evolved beyond apes

I hear...
... all sorts of gossip while pretending not to listen

I wonder...
... if people know I'm listening coz I've never caught anyone bitching about me red-handed

I regret...
... being a super-mean ice-queen to the first guy I had a crush on

I am...
... a wannabe atheist. What keeps me from becoming a full-fledged atheist is that I'm so angry with God, which by implication means I think he is there somewhere for me to be angry at.

I dance...
... sexily with women only

I sing...
... better after a few drinks

I cry...
... at the darndest moments. I bawled throughout My Fair Lady when I saw it the first time because I felt fo sorry for Audrey Hepburn, the flower-girl!

I am not always...
... the dictator my friends make me out to be

I make with my hand...
... really awful Sangria

I write...
... very corny poems on an anonymous blog

I confuse...
... directions like a prototype for stereotypical man-woman books

I need...
... more optimism, more creativity, more frequent partying, more toned-up abs, more happeninng life,... In short, I need to be 20 years old again :)

I tag...
... Amy, J, and N. Let's hear you spill some secrets!

I knew Indian organisations were thinking global like never before. But I guess I hadn't really reckoned just how much till I saw this in my newspaper today:
a medical college in Bijapur (???who's ever heard of such a place outside of a Bollywood movie!!) advertising to potential students in Hong Kong!




Nope, I wasn't reading some small-time paper targeted at the Indian minority abroad, but HK/China's mainstream english newspaper, South China Morning Post. Of course, knowing what pre-coffee mornings can be, for a few seconds after I saw the ad even I did wonder whether I'd lost my bearings and was actually sitting over damn old TOI.

Now I can well imagine what inspired this secluded place in Karnataka to want NRIs on its rolls, but what on earth makes them expect a response? Having never heard their name till date, I doubt their NRI hostel on Sholapur Road is filled chockablock. But hell, no business house affiliation (which a good number of small little medical schools across the counrty are) would waste money like this without reason. Any ideas?

The good thing about having women guests at home is that I get good excuses and great company to dress up with.

The bad part is that when we ask around how we look, we get standard replies. And I'm not talking about the universal "nice" and "no you don't look fat, you're just fine" statements.

"That bag is too Shabby" says my husband of almost every bag I pick up. Everything's either too shabby, or too frayed, or too old, or too used, or some such thing.

Is this, I imagine out loud, what he's going to tell me when I develop crow's feet, and laugh lines, and frown burrows, and patchy baldness after using my body another twenty years?

To which I'm told: Of course not! Those stand for character. They represent the life you've lived, the sorrows you've been through, the moments you've grown from... they're going to be souveniers that we'll treasure. (Ok so my husband didn't exactly say that, but Oprah probably did)

To which my point is that: if a shabby face is beautiful because of the life that lies behind it, then why not a frayed bag or a braised car or holed shoes? Why can't my man look beyond my Shabby Bag, and discover its amazing elegance and worldly-wisdom? And why can't he appreciate my dad's car's unrepaired dents and be impressed by its Houdini-like escapes? Why doesn't he go gaga over the WWF-ness of our chipped glass decoration pieces, and laugh at my clumsiness that they represent?

And while he's at it, any chance that he also expand his vocab beyond "nice" and "fine"???

update....

Last couple of weeks I was absent from the blogosphere for a very noble cause. I was busy helping the Hong Kong retail sector improve its performance. My sister, here on a visit from India, and I, did all we could to ensure that the shopping festival was a success. Visiting malls, eating out, buying stuff that looks good on mannequins today and will hopefully fit us by next summer, etc etc. It has been hectic, but now she's gone, and I'm back, and we're both broke.

Meanwhile, Minoo instead is alive and kicking, even if a tad forgetful. She talks via barks, and licks our feet, and sleeps on her back at times, and thus has clearly lost her identity along with the owner. But luckily she hasn't forgotten how to use the litter box, so I cannot complain!