A week's tale

Hola, amigos!

The past week has been hectic. Moreover, it has been full. I shouldn't really be complaining, because it was a good week. It started with a Monday, which was usual. Monday's are all well, except that they jump out at you when you least expect them. Nevertheless, I managed to catch hold of it when it did, and got my ailing computer monitor repaired. I left the monitor at Pooh corner, and it was back to work on Tuesday. Tuesday's are wonderfully slow, but they begin with 8 a.m. meetings. After that meeting, I got the working bug. So I worked, all day.

You might be thinking that this is just some boring ordinary week, but you haven't seen anything until you have seen the Wednesday. Wednesday is, as of this week, Spanish class day. I went to class with Y. Now I can say, "Yo hablo Español." But just a little bit. Since everything in Spanish has a gender, `problem' it seems is male so `El Problema.' This seemed to prove it conclusively for Y that her Assamese fiancé would just increase problems in her life when she marries him later this year. But that doesn't seem to deter her from writing really long emails to him every now and then. The article in Spanish follows the noun in gender and quantity. So if it is a group of girls, you say "Las chicas." However, even if one male dares enter the group, the article takes the masculine form. One student had the cheek to remark, "Males must have higher priority, always." Oooh! If looks could have killed, the cute Spanish teach would have murdered him right then! Some people never learn.

Happy Thursday. That was just Pooh's way of saying he wanted a little something that day. So along came the letter. From a friend, from far far away. Being a bear of very less brain, he got it to me to read. Long words are a bit taxing on the brain, but the brown paper letter said things which made Pooh so happy that he forgot about his 15 jars of honey for a while. He is still struggling with words like fantalistic and expotition while writing back. I think I'll have to help him tonight, before he hurts himself doing it.

A had come down with a fever, and a tiff with the boss, so he took the day off. I had dinner plans with him; instead, I got to go with Y. Now Y is someone who can talk and eat almost as much as I can (in fact she can talk far more), so dinner with her is fun. A couple of plain naans and some kadai chicken later, and loads of chitchat, I walked her back to her place. Then I went back to work again.

I had been trying to finish a movie for the past few days. I was watching it in parts on the computer. "To Kill a Mocking Bird" is a wonderful book. It is a lovely movie as well. If Maycomb County had survived to this day, I am sure Scout Finch would have given many a sleepless nights to all the desperate housewives on Wisteria Lane. All that innocence trapped in black and white, made me spend a couple of hours on the roof of the office, gazing at the stars. It was sweaty, and a lot of mosquitoes, but there was a distinguished whiff of my childhood in the slight breeze that was blowing that night. I finally went to bed at 3a.m. Which was real stupid of me, because Friday had another 8 a.m. meeting. Obviously, I slept. Thankfully, my boss is not as bad as N's. He was thrown out of the room for dozing off in front of the boss.

Friday meant the trip home. So, I boarded the bus. Midway home, the chap selling toffees and other eatables boarded the bus. I bought a couple of packets of machhli wali toffees from him. These are fish-shaped toffees which have a sweet-spicy taste to them. It's a cousin of the jhaal-tok-mishti variety found on the Kolkata locals. They hard-boiled, and dark purple and have to be eaten accompanied with loud slurrrpy noises. My purchase, seemed to trigger a whole lot of sales for the chap. Feeling quite happy, I reached home in an hour and a half.

Today is Janmashtami, the birthday of Krishna. I remember when I was a kid; we used to recreate the scene of his escape, on the night of his birth, from prison, on a basket carried by his father, through the raging Yamuna in torrential rain. We made all that out of wet clay, building small figurines and mountains and prisons and rivers. It used to be a lot of fun, and lots of activity whole day. I was wandering around aimlessly on the neighbourhood streets, wondering if they still did that kind of thing, when a small kid called me and offered prasad from her puja. I saw she had made her very own Mathura in the porch of her house. I wondered how different was she from Scout Finch? Probably she would also see good in every Boo Radley, when she finally got to see them. Does "Te amo" sound any less enchanting, when said in Spanish? Do I sound decidedly clichéd? So what!

Well that was my week. I am going to the Delhi Book Fair tomorrow. I have been saving up for it *grin* Mmmmm... Books. New books at that. So until we meet again, adios amigos!