Hair cut dilemma

I am proud to proclaim my newly conceived theory- “Beware, beauticians hate curly hair, they will chop it all off”.

Let me elaborate:

My new job requires me to look my very best. I need to look mature, posh, sophisticated and well dressed when in reality I’m a complete nutcrack, wacky and crazy. Anyway, I can manage to fake maturity. But to look posh and sophisticated is a tad difficult when you have frizzy, restless hair. My hair hardly stays quiet and even after combing and brushing my unruly locks; it gets back to being crazy.

You now might throw me the idea of permanently straightening my hair. The idea is active on my cards but I keep pushing it aside only because it is a wallet rip-off activity. Hair bonding is like threading your eyebrows. Once you start, you cannot afford to stop. The same goes for the hair. Just as much as you cannot walk around with eyebrows growing like jungle grass, neither can you imagine strutting around with a head looking like a used mop.

So taking all these reasons into consideration, I decided to go in for a haircut. Now if you take my case and put in a haircut, it’s a scary proposition. Neither do I have thick locks to chop off nor do I have choices of hairstyles to go for. A fringe is out of the question, thanks to my forehead. Am I complaining? Not really. I’m quite proud of it all. But still, I want to look different.

So here I am in a beauty parlor in Mumbai. You wont believe me, but its Karishma Kapoor sitting across me getting her nails and hair done. Ok, maybe it’s a little hard to recognize her sans makeup, but I’m so sure its her. I try hard not to stare, so I throw casual ‘long’ stares. Yup, it’s her all right. But what is she doing here in a normal middle class parlor?? Who cares, I just saw Karishma Kapoor!!! Tra la la la…!!

Sorry for that small diversion. Back to my hair. Where was I? Ahh yes. So here I am, waiting for my turn. The lady who would eventually make me or break me, enter. I carefully explain, in English, that I wanted a different look but I wanted my hair length maintained. She replies back in Hindi. Uh oh…trouble!! Language barrier can create problems and I knew I was doomed. Nevertheless, I repeated my request (in English!!) and she confirmed saying she’d do what I wanted.

With a small prayer under my breath, she began. She showed me the length of how much she’d cut and I gave the green signal. Snip snip snip went the scissors. My curls and I bid adieu to each other. I had to remove my glasses for obvious reasons. As such, I could not observe the proceedings. I waited, with abated breath, trying to make something out of the blurred vision of my hair in the mirror in front of me. Snip snip it went. Soon it was the blowdryer unfrizzying out my locks. I love getting my hair blowdried. It keeps my hair looking neat. The lady put her finishing touches to my last strand of hair. I quickly grab my glasses and put it on with all anticipation and eagerness. I look at the mirror and “AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHHH…”

The scissor-wielding lady chopped most of my hair and left just one strand of hair the length it was in the beginning. All in the name of a ‘Step Cut’ and wanting to satisfy the customer’s wants. Now my hair hardly stays put. I can’t tie a ponytail due to the simple fact that there is not much hair for a ponytail, neither can I leave it ‘down’ because there is nothing to let down and if I do, it resembles Einstein’s rocking hair-do.

There go my attempts at looking posh and sophisticated. With how I look now, I doubt getting married soon. My next step might be to get a complete makeover. Gulp…another risky mind numbing proposition!!

The Ladies Coupe

A mountain trek, an afternoon on a scintillating Seychelles beach, a lazy boat ride down Kerala’s backwaters, a mind exhilarating bungee jump- these are different experiences one need to live out, at least once in their years on earth. I too agree. I mean, one day I would love to muster all my courage and go bungee jumping. But the one thing a person definitely needs to go through is to travel by the ladies compartment in the Mumbai train.

The word ‘lady’ conjures up different adjectives like gentle, beautiful, tender, honest, kind and the list can go on. Unfortunately such adjectives are flung out of the window when you encounter with the Mumbai train ladies. They are hooligans, cut throat competitors for a train seat, highly fluent in Marathi insults and its other regional dialects, and (unfortunately for people like me) blessed with amazonic strength.

The following points will help throw more light to what I’m trying to convey:

1. The Mumbai ladies’ coupe is the best place to lose weight. Forget about all those subscriptions to VLCC, Fitness One, or Talwalkers. Just step into the ultra modern ladies’ compartment and you get squashed to the figure 5 you have always dreamed of. All your flabs disappear as you try (!) to edge your way in. You achieve the firm arms by holding onto the compartment bars for dear life and your legs and feet, well, bad news- you might not find them in the stampede. Lucky if you do.
2. Are you running late in the morning and you need to get your shirt/kurta ironed AND you need to catch the train??? Not to worry. Don’t bother about the creased unironed clothes. Just run for the train and get into the specially reserved space for ladies. Within few minutes of pushing and mashing and compressing, you will emerge onto your destination platform, all neatly ironed out and perfect.
3. A pleasure note for all the lesbians out there- girls, its all boobs and butts here in the ladies coupe!!! My heartfelt condolences for the males as they do not, or rather, probably will not get to enjoy such an event.
4. If a lady does not get to jump out onto her desired station, the chances of her not letting the other commuters to get onto their stations are highly probable. She will most likely bless you with some marathi abuses, you would be so overwhelmed enough to miss your own station.
5. Mumbai is a huge city so you will have to keep yourself entertained. Many a lady can be seen equipped with headfones stuck in their ears. If you don’t own a portable radio or I-pod, not to worry. There are many shoulders to fall sleep on. A sure shot solution to your most wanted power naps.
6. The best way to get out of the train is to simply SCREAM! The way that these ladies shriek is almost akin to how the people screamed in the sinking Titanic (as per the movie).
7. A word of caution to people who are as blind as me- please wear your contact lenses. You never know when your spectacles will be pushed off your face. Don’t even imagine bending down to search for them. You are close to committing suicide in the midst of all those stomping feet and stilleto heels.

This is just a nutshell of what I have really gone through. Watch out for my up coming bestseller- ‘The Adventures of a Fraud Mallu in Mumbai’.

Blog update

I never realized I would have readers to my blog and needless to say, I am encouraged to write more. Well, it’s pretty obvious with the time gap that I was not able to blog, primarily due to many reasons, the main one being my training for my new job. As I type this down in my quarters in Mumbai, I can say that I am recovering from my brief stint in depression (the previous blogs are evidence to this fact!!). With all confidence, I can proudly proclaim that Wacko Crazy Bless is back with a bang…She’s still hurting all right, but the pain has died down and its only the scabs that she’s scratching at. My mom says that’s the sign of healing. You can’t really refute moms’ opinions! So here goes… a cornucopia of madness!

Shock

She wants to cry
but tears refuse to fall
She wants to scream
but her throat stays numb
She wants to run away
but her legs are riveted to one spot
She wants to reach out
but her hands remain by her side

Nothing happens
She only stands
Stiff
Numb
Horrified
Hurt
Shocked

He leaves
Not a glance behind his shoulder
He doesnt see the lone tear
making its path down her cheek
He doesnt hear her heartbeat
pounding loud enough to crack glass
He walks away
on his own path
his own road
which was once theirs

Nothing happens
She only stands
Stiff
Numb
Horrified
Hurt
Shocked

It burns..

Love..its sweet when u first taste it.. Johnny Cash aptly put in..falling in love is like jumping into a ring of fire. I jumped alrite. It is warm and comforting. But things went wrong. And when they do, you get thrown out of the furnace and I was pretty much thrown out from it and man, am I burnt quite a bit.

It hurts, bloody hurts...im still hurting from all d burn wounds...i dunno wen n who will tend to these wounds with some cooling balms of true love...True love??well, that's going to be another topic to talk abt..

Johnny Cash lyrics : Song of Fire

And it makes a fiery ring
Bound by wild desire
I fell in to a ring of fire...

I fell in to a burning ring of fire
I went down,down,down
And the flames went higher.
And it burns,burns,burns
The ring of fire
The ring of fire.

The taste of love is sweet
When hearts like our's meet
I fell for you like a child
Oh, but the fire went wild..

I fell in to a burning ring of fire.....etc

Eternal love

Often I have heard people say, "How good God is! We prayed that it would not rain for our church picnic, and look at the lovely weather!'" Yes, God is good when He sends good weather. But God was also good when He allowed my sister, Betsie, to starve to death before my eyes in a German concentration camp. I remember one occasion when I was very discouraged there. Everything around us was dark, and there was darkness in my heart. I remember telling Betsie that I thought God had forgotten us. "No, Corrie," said Betsie, "He has not forgotten us. Remember His Word: 'For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His steadfast love toward those who fear Him.'" Corrie concludes, "There is an ocean of God's love available--there is plenty for everyone. May God grant you never to doubt that victorious love--whatever the circumstances." - Corrie Ten Boom.

There is a god who lives (part 2)

Now that we got our belongings, what happens next?? Aunty called out asking if any windows could be opened. How? The left hand side windows were below our feet and the windows on the right side were over our heads and jammed shut. I guess its by pure instinct that we started climbing over the fallen berths. Clinging onto my luggage and holding onto the bed sheet to keep me from suffocating, I slowly tried to crawl my way out. It was difficult maintaining my balance, considering the fact that both my hands were occupied. Seeing this, aunty hurriedly instructed me to throw away the bed sheet. I thought “if I do that, how am I gonna breathe through this smoke and dust? God if u really want me out of this alive, help me breathe.”

What seemed an eternity of crawling and climbing over seats, feeling fans in iron wrought encasings and groping around in the dim light, we were guided by this deep, baritoned voice that was full of confidence. All I remember was a bright torch light and this deep voice that kept encouraging the passengers “its ok, u all are all right, just be calm and climb out”. I’ll never know, to this day, who that man was.

I next realize a hole a few metres away from where I was. I could see lights flashing in. For a minute I thought it was some TV station that got to the accident scene and the humour in me quipped up, “look good,Bless…give a nice grimace…you might be on TV.” Well, so much for my silly fanstasy in the midst of the commotion. The lights came from the torches of the rescue teams and police. I was about to crawl out of this hole torn into the vestibule when a man stopped me. He had a huge plank in his hand and was trying to lift it up. He wanted to create a makeshift bridge for people to slide across to the hole and get outside. I was delirious and said something about my luggage. The man instructed me to throw it out and that someone would keep it safe. So I hurled my box out blindly. On my knees, I bent down to take the other side of the plank and lifted it. What was written on the plank shocked me. It bore the words “BATHROOM”. Yes, it turned out to be the door and the impact of the train tore it off its hinges. With the plank up as a makeshift bridge, and a small graze on m little finger, I slid across to the opening in the vestibule and breathed in fresh air. My luggage was handed back to me and I waited for shobana aunty to get out safe. Its only when we got out that we realized what happened. 5 of the train’s compartments had derailed, and the compartment that I was in, toppled. The pantry had caught fire which explains all the smoke. People were calling out to each other and there were tears of happiness to see each other safe. But my friends were in other compartments and they still did not know if aunty n I were alive. I was not reachable, as I’d lost my phone.

Aunty and I waited for sometime when suddenly a man called out our names. We hollered back and he said in tamil that there was a family looking for us. We knew it was Ajai and his family. He took us to the other side of the train. We couldn’t find them at all. We asked the man to look for them again. I borrowed a phone from a stranger. Luckily aunty had her phone book in her bag. I called up Jessy aunty, Ajai’s mom. Hearing my voice over the phone, she went hysterical and she could not speak. I talked to Riba, one of Ajai’s cousins and she told us how we could get to where they were waiting.

Carrying both mine and aunty’s luggages (she wasn’t feeling well) and balancing myself on the huge stones that line the train tracks, we inched our way forward. We met up with Ajai’s family. Hugs, tears and smiles of joy were exchanged. That was when I heard Ajai’s side of the story. He apparently got out of the train as soon as it stopped. When he saw my compartment toppled onto its side and smoke billowing everywhere, all he could picture was my burnt charred body. He ran back to his family in the other compartment, hysterical and delirious in shock. He and his family moved to a safer spot outside the train. Ajai went back to the accident area. Apparently there were some jawans and he enquired about aunty and me. The jawan instructed groups of people to call out my name, each group returning with the answer, “there is no such person here”. Almost losing heart, Ajai suddenly got a call from his cousin that I was indeed alive.

Thinking we’d never travel by train again, we found ourselves hopping from two trains to get back to Chennai. On our way back, we had to pass by the accident site again. By then it was daylight and we could see the entire thing. The train stopped for surviving passengers and I took it as an opportunity to take pictures from my camera.

We reached Chennai at 12.30pm, 6 hours delayed from our original arrival time. The impact of the accident hit me only when I saw the accident on the local TV news. That was when I broke down and realized that THERE IS A GOD WHO LIVES AND LOVES.!!