Someday I'll wish upon a star
And wake up where the clouds are far behind me.

Where troubles melt like lemon drops
High above the chimney tops
That's where you'll find me.

Somewhere over the rainbow
Bluebirds fly
And the dreams that you dare to..
Why can't I?

(Somewhere over the Rainbow - Norah Jones)

Always A Tape Girl

I am recently hooked on to Gotye’s music. Can’t stop listening to him since the weekend. It’s what has kept me going through the drilling week. The man is seriously talented. He’s different, which makes his music so very interesting. And he’s a great musician, a great songwriter, and an average singer all at once. I have also seen some of his interviews and he comes across as a very intelligent person, who really understands music and is genuinely passionate about it. And…ahem…not too bad looking either ;)

I sound like I have a mini-crush on this guy but I swear that’s not true…I do confess though that I have a crush on his music. People may be faking their image but music is real, and it’s out there for you to interpret it your own way. I do admire his talent. Only a thinking musician can come up with stuff like this.  

Which takes me to what I came here to write about. I knew the ‘Somebody’ song since it’s been such a big hit. But the rest of his music I discovered on Youtube. And it occurred to me how the music was worth buying the album for. You know, I don’t have any albums now. Whenever I need to listen to some music, I just go to the internet. Youtube has all you need. But good music deserves a better way to be heard. Or atleast that’s the way I felt after listening to this music.

I remember my teen years …those were the days of the tape or ‘cassette’ players. The CD was in its infancy in India. I had a huge tape collection back then. Even though the tapes were so inconvenient (can’t believe we had the time back then to actually rewind/forward the tape till we got to the actual song we needed to listen to), we still used them and were quite content with them. My parents had a huge collection too. We always had music playing in our house on the weekends during the day.

Back then, if a guy had a crush on you, he would give you a tape-mix…it usually had the aerosmiths and the bon jovis on it. He would put in all this effort to record each song meticulously on the tape. Yeah, I had added a few mix-tapes to my collection too.

This one time in the very early days of the start of my engineering course…there was this guy who was carrying a portable cd player with him, and was showing it off to all the girls (including me). I had hated how he was so proud of it, and I remember thinking to myself, how I would always remain a tape-girl. J

Just One Of Those Days

Yesterday I had a bad hair day. If you are a woman, you would know how catastrophic that can be. For the rest of you, let me try and break this down.

A bad hair day is when, for no apparent reason, your own hair turns against you and refuses to cooperate. I still haven’t figured out why my hair would turn against me this way, I thought we were on the same team. It’s probably because like in most partnerships that last long years, I take it for granted, devoting not more than two minutes of my morning styling it, or refusing to hold it neatly in a band so it’s not all over my face. Or maybe my hair has its own version of PMS, which gives it the ‘Nobody loves me anymore’ feel once every few weeks.

Whatever the reason, yesterday was one of those days. And over the years women have learnt, that whatever you do, do not underestimate a bad hair day. This is one of the days that can steal your sparkle. It can strip you of your confidence, take away the swag from your walk, the glint from your eye, the chuckle from your laugh. In short, it affects everything you do. So obviously, over the years, women have also built in arsenal to help us deal with such days. What did you think we were doing growing up?

There’s loads and loads of products – ones that clean, but then they leave the hair dry…so ones that condition, but leave the hair thin and lifeless….so ones that volumize, but leave the hair frizzy…so ones that de-frizz, but then leave the hair dry…. And so on.

I have opted out of the craziness of products personally (I had just 2 minutes for my hair, remember??) The options I was left with were to either ignore the problem altogether (or atleast pretend to), or style my hair in such a way that it would be least conspicuous to everyone. I opted for the first one, and prayed that no one would notice. I kept a low profile all day at work and out, and tried to believe that I was invisible to everyone.

Sometimes this is not enough though. Some bad hair days call for desperate measures. If keeping a low profile is not your style, or just not enough, it may be necessary to get out the big guns – that is, announce yourself loud and clear. Be so attractive in every other way, that no one has the time to notice your hair looks bad. Compensate for lost battles by trying to win the war. Personally I have never had to bring out my big guns yet, and I don’t know if I ever will. But you never know what a bad hair day can make a woman do!

You know, the funny thing is, that men are completely unaware of this ‘bad hair day’ phenomenon in women. It is a concept that is unfathomable to them (which is surprising, considering they are as likely to have bad hair days too). A woman could have a classic case of a bad hair day, and the men around her wouldn’t know the difference. I would be totally relieved to know that no one found out about my big secret, but hey, I would also feel bad – what?? No one even noticed?! 

Yeah, we are funny that way…..

The trees are budding, the birds are back, and the sun shines with all its might. And this is just March! Uncanny, not that I’m complaining….

It’s amazing how just a few days of warmth can initiate new life, transform the overall mood, throw love into the air, and make people like me get back to their writing.

Like Bertie Wooster puts it in the ‘The Inimitable Jeeves’ (Wodehouse):

“I don’t know if you know that sort of feeling you get on these days, when the sky’s a light blue, with cotton-wool clouds, and there’s a bit of breeze blowing from the west? Kind of uplifting feeling. Romantic, if you know what I mean. I’m not much of a ladies’ man, but on this particular morning it seemed to me that what I really wanted was some charming girl to buzz up and ask me to save her from assassins or something.”

Honestly, Honesty??

Honesty is the best policy – or so we were told by our parents and school teachers when we were kids. All grown up, I’m not so sure any more.  The world would be totally chaotic if you ask me, if we all were suddenly stricken with the deadly honestovirus.

In fact, it is not even possible to be completely honest in these times, if it even were at any time before this. How would we save our jobs by telling our boss he totally sucks? Diplomacy, when tactfully used, replaces honesty as the most valuable virtue to possess these days. Diplomacy has its limitations too, though. When overused it would just become manipulation, which I think is where we would start showing the tiny devil horns and fangs when we check ourselves out in the elevator glass.

It tickles me to wonder how complete honesty could play total havoc in my life when even used in a tiny little measure with, …my voicemail recording, for instance. What would I really want to say on my voicemail message, as opposed to what I have said now?:) Read along…

Diplomatic (actual) message: Hi, this is ____. I am not able to take your call right now, please leave your name blah blah and I will call you back as soon as I can.

Totally Honest (imaginary) message: I am obviously doing something more important than talking to you right now, and am either avoiding your call, or couldn't care less to keep my phone close to me. If you are someone from my offshore work team and are calling me in the middle of the night to get some technical solution from me which you could have easily found from a simple Google search, please press the little red button on your phone. If you are a creditor calling to remind me about an upcoming payment you want me to make, please call again to remind me everyday till I almost miss my deadline. If you are a pretentious friend, calling me to check on my life, while only wanting to talk about how great yours is, please don’t ever call again. If you are my boss, …damn, I’ll have to take this one. 

A new year. New beginnings, ambitions, resolutions, expectations. I wonder what milestone 2012 will bring.

I hope the new year is as soothing as the winter sun, and as pleasant as the summer breeze. Here’s wishing everyone out there a very Happy New Year! 

Sideways

Why does alcohol produce such a subliminal effect?

3 glasses of red wine are most often sufficient to put you right into the mood for some wa-wa-whoom sex, the catch here being who it is with seems to be the least of your wasted avatar’s concerns. Or it could make you yearn for someone that your conscious self was quite certain it had gotten over. (Really?? But this was the person before the last.) Worse yet, it could make you feel completely in love with someone that was merely a friend 4 drinks back. It could either give you the king-of-the-world elation, or throw you right into the dark dungeons of loneliness. The most common and perhaps safest effect is that you feel everyone around you is your best friend forever.   

It’s amazing how a mere liquid can intensify the mind’s ability to feel by leaps and bounds. Sometimes I wonder who the real person is: the controlled and clear-headed pre-drinks mind, or the high and hyperbolic post-drinks one. And then I go on to wonder how clear-headed we really are even if we are not down with alcohol. Is this also not some milder form of being high?

Whatever the case may be, alcohol is known to be the catalyst to some stupidest and wildest decisions in a person’s life. Red wine is known to be especially notorious ;) Mere grapes ….