Of Food, Travel and TV

There is this thing called a lunchtime poll on the CNN news website which is a poll about people's eating habits and preferences. They'll ask you questions on things like how often you like to experiment by ordering something new and different at a restaurant.

So the other day, they had this poll on where you would like to travel to try out the local cuisine. They had a long list of options that covered almost every country whose cuisine I've ever heard anything interesting about. Except, perhaps Peru. So the leading choice of the users was, quite predictably, Italy, which I voted for. Next in line was France, and not too far behind, the second runner-up, was India.

Indian is actually a rather popular cuisine in a number of countries throughout the world, as I can tell by the number of non-Indian patrons at the good Indian restaurants here, and by the growing number of Indian cookery shows on the Food Network and the Cooking Channel. Now I've never actually seen these shows, because they air during time slots that are usually not convenient to me, but I have seen their recipes on the channels' websites and there are lots of good ideas there. They have this reality show where they hold a competition to choose "The Next Food Network Star" - someone who will have their own show on the Food Network - and this time, the winner was an Indian who is going to start another Indian cooking show soon.

Strange, then, that Indian television doesn't have an exclusive channel for food and cooking. There are so many different cuisines within the country, specific to various geographic regions, and people are increasingly open to trying out recipes from all across the country or even across the world that they haven't tried before. I've gathered a bunch of ideas from the Food Network shows and tried new ways of cooking pasta and doing new things with strawberries. If they had something like that in India, it would be something I would willingly watch. And I am someone who never really watched Indian television shows out of my own free will, I watched the Indian channels for the movies and the music videos, but I was mostly confined to Friends and The Big Bang Theory and Mr Bean as far as shows went.

Timeless Charm

Some things just seem to lose their charm over time. The TV shows you follow begin to fade in their appeal, the food you eat begins to taste bland. But some things live forever.

Sometimes I find myself getting bored of just about everything around me. How I Met Your Mother is becoming an unnecessarily long, stretched out story, and The Big Bang Theory's appeal, it seems, was only in the novelty of its theme, which is no longer new to me. There are times when I don't feel like shopping and I don't feel like watching movies.

And then, there are those things that come to the rescue. Like writing for pleasure, without worrying about what anyone is going to think of what you write. Having the time and opportunity to do exactly what you want to do. Reading a good book. Achieving something people thought you couldn't. Achieving something you thought you couldn't. Like when I finally got my rajma to taste just like my mom's. Doing something for someone else, and seeing them happy that you did. Some things are just made for that - making you and the people around you happy. They don't bring in money or food or fame, but they bring a renewed sense of self and achievement.

Advertising In America

One thing that really strikes me when I watch TV here is how people advertise their products and tell you that they are better than their competitors. In India, it's like, "Your favourite detergent can't remove this stain. But Tide can!" Here, it's like this: "People say Honda is America's most fuel efficient car. But the Chevy Malibu is more efficient than the Accord, the Chevy Cobalt does better than the comparable Civic, and model X (some SUV type car from Chevrolet whose name I can't remember) is more fuel efficient than the Honda CRV."

And that's only the beginning. These people insult the competition like anything. The insurance guys, the breakfast cereal guys, the soda guys, everybody. They come with actual figures that represent an actual product from a competitor. They're aggressive advertisers who know just what they're doing. It's a very different style of advertising from what I've been accustomed to. I'm not saying that either is better or worse than the other, but it certainly stands out.

The Big Bang Theory

There's this sitcom on CBS called The Big Bang Theory that I've been watching for a while now. I absolutely loved the first two seasons. I missed the last couple of episodes of the second season in the midst of the everything that was going on with the wedding and the move to the States, but they released the DVD recently and I rented it out from Netflix and caught up with what I'd missed. I watched it with my husband and he had an absolutely wonderful time too!

So the third season's season premiere was this Monday, and this time I actually had the opportunity to watch it on regular TV. But you know what? This episode didn't quite live up to the expectations set by its predecessors.

For those who are unfamiliar with this, the show is about a bunch of highly intelligent physicists who are in their element with Star Trek and Batman but at a complete loss when it comes to interacting with women or just being social with non-geniuses. But over the course of the show, they've gradually learnt about all that stuff from their female friend who lives across the hall. It kind of takes away the USP of the show. For me, at least. I mean, of course, it was the only way to go, but it kind of takes away the innocent charm of the whole thing.

Don't get me wrong. It's not hopelessly ruined for me. I just liked it better in its initial stages.

Oh, by the way, in case you missed the closing credits, the theme song is sung by a group who call themselves Barenaked Ladies. That's quite a name, I must say! It's a pretty interesting song. Check it out on youtube. This is the full version, not just the snippet that plays on the show.

Stereotypes II

While I'm talking about the media stereotyping people and concepts, I might as well put in a few words about stereotyping actors as well.

There was this TV show way back in 1990 that I used to watch sometimes. It was called Beverly Hills 90210. I watched a couple of episodes here and there back then, but I was definitely not old enough to make complete sense of it all at the time. I've recently been watching some episodes again. There was this one episode I came across in which Matthew Perry made a guest appearance. In case you're still wondering why the name does or does not ring a bell, that's Chandler Bing from Friends. The character he played was a high school senior with an overbearing father whom he despised. His father is a big shot who wants to hand everything to him on a platter. He doesn't like that at all, and he wants to be someone on his own. It drives him crazy to the point of attempted suicide.

I found the performance very unconvincing. Maybe it was actually so, but most likely it was because I had known this guy for years as the adorable character who makes sarcastic jokes and makes everybody laugh. He didn't really fit into such a dark role. Not in my mind, at least.

What would happen if Jim Carrey suddenly took on a completely serious film with little or no humour in it? Or if Morgan Freeman decided to appear in a goofball comedy? Maybe they would do really well in their new found roles. Or maybe the audience would just have a very hard time adjusting to the new ideas.

Dressing Up

Does anyone remember the episode of Friends where Monica goes to pick up Emily's wedding dress, and ends up trying it on herself, and then feels so good wearing it that she just doesn't want to take it off? Once Phoebe and Rachel see her, they join in as well. It was quite funny, seeing the three of them wearing wedding dresses and sitting on the couch in Monica's living room. But I couldn't really relate to the idea until I discovered for myself the psychological effects of just trying on a wedding dress. Now I know why these things cost so much. Because there are some things that come with them that you just cannot put a price tag on.

I'm sure a lot of people will distinctly remember the shade of pink that my blog originally was when I started it. It's approximately the same shade that distinctly dominates my trousseau. In spite of my intermittent conscious efforts to buy stuff in other colours. But you know, even my mom tells me that I look radiant when I wear that colour. So do a lot of friends. So there. Dark pink it is.

Just five weeks to go. The wait has its own magic, you know.

A Little Bit More From Friends

When I wrote about My Favourite Bits From Friends, it was pretty obvious to me that I would add to the list soon.

There's this episode where Phoebe and Joey tell the others that they go out with dinner once a month to discuss the rest of them. Once Joey cancels on Phoebe in favour of a date. She gives him an enlightening discourse on how girlfriends and boyfriends come and go, but what they share is forever. I think that those are words to live by.

A little later, the then love of Phoebe's life, David the scientist guy, shows up in the city. Now Phoebe cannot cancel on Joey because she gave him this long lecture on how you do not cancel on friends. But she rushes through dinner with him and runs off to see David. Obviously Joey finds out. The way Joey consoles her, the way he acts so considerate, so understanding, always makes my eyes misty.

There is another episode where Phoebe claims that she has written five books (I think it was five. It could also have been four or six.) and that she is writing another. She records everything Monica and Chandler say or do, and she calls her characters Marsha and Chester. At one point, Monica and Chandler need to refer to her account to help them resolve an argument. Phoebe demands that Chandler apologize for mocking her book earlier. At this point, he is wearing a pinkish sweater. He apologises, and tells her that she is the queen of everything. She says, "Thanks. So are you."

It's interesting, you know. I have so many Phoebe-Joey moments on my list. And some Ross-Rachel moments. But I can't really think of a Monica-Chandler moment that really strikes a chord.

Indian Television And Advertising

The recent Airtel advertisement featuring Kareena Kapoor and Saif Ali Khan makes me want to scratch Kareena's eyes right out. Just like the vast majority of her movies. She is back to her overacting and her irritating ways, on the small screen as well as on the big screen.

This makes me think of all the lovely ads the folks at Airtel have come up with in the past. Remember the first few ads that featured the theme that A. R. Rahman composed for them? There was one which featured a lot of people of all sorts, and a large choir holding candles in their hands and lighting their candles from each others'. This was about the time they came up with the tag line Express Yourself. I used to love that one. And the more recent one with two boys playing with a ball at the border. The Madhavan-Vidya Balan series was completely adorable and romantic.

There's also a bunch of Coca Cola commercials that I used to like. The one where Aishwarya and Aamir met online, or the one where Aamir donned his tapori avatar, and I think also introduced the Thanda Matlab Coca Cola punchline. I liked lots of the Aamir Khan ads, actually. Each one featured him in a new look and a new role, just like each of his movies. Speaking of Aamir and Aishwarya, these two also did a Pepsi commercial together, which, I hear, was Aishwarya's first foray into modelling. That one had a pretty interesting story line to it, if I may say so about a TV commercial.

And then there's all the stuff Abhishek Bachchan has done for Idea. The best thing about these ads is that they are cute, and also carry a social message. Like the education for all campaign. Or the more recent democracy campaign. I must admit, some of the stuff Abhishek did for idea was a little weird and not too fitting for his persona, but some of it totally rocks.

And then there are some that date back to my childhood. Can I ever forget the adorable innocence of the I Love You Rasna commercials? Or some of the earliest Cadbury's Dairy Milk ads? Speaking of innocence, there was this Dhara commercial with a little boy who wanted to run away from home and then he was told that his mom had made jalebi at home. The innocent, cute expression with which he echoed "jalebi?" was just unbeatable. We don't get to see that kind of innocence these days. Kids seem to be growing up so much faster.

Okay, now that I watched these nice videos on YouTube, I've moved past the negative vibes emanating from the Kareena ad. Now I can sleep peacefully.

My Favourite Bits From Friends

I have lost count of how many times I've watched the entire series of Friends. I never get tired of it. There are some bits in particular that I really adore.

There's this bit in one of the earliest episodes. Rachel has given up everything, her family, the guy she was about to marry, her way of life. She has no job, no place to live, and she comes to stay with Monica. She really has nothing, but there's this conversation where Ross tells her that she's going to be fine, because she has a whole new life ahead of her. She has magic beans. Later, the credit card company guys call her to ask if she's fine, because there's been no recent activity on her card. She tells them that she's fine, because she has magic beans. I think we all have a few magic beans that we sometimes forget about. It would do us a lot of good to use them every so often.

There's the part where Phoebe is pregnant and is beginning to crave meat. Now she's basically a vegetarian, because she has strong concerns for innocent animals. But it seems that, at that point, that's all she can eat without throwing up. At this point, Joey does two things. One, he offers not to eat meat until Phoebe has the babies, so that no extra animals would have to die, and she would just be eating his animals. I found that really sweet. And he also told her that if she had to do something wrong, she should do it right. If she had to make a sandwich with meat, she should put lots of it and the right kinds to make a great sandwich. I really like that principle. It's what I abide by every time I make an exception on my diet. If I have to eat ice-cream, I will eat a generous helping of my favourite flavour. Not a rationed helping of the sugar free kind. Because if i am going to break my rules, I better have fun doing it. The first time I visited this little donut place near my office, when the guy asked me what flavour I wanted, I told him to give me whatever had the maximum amount of chocolate in it. Abhinav was pretty amused at that, but that's how it works for me.

There was this episode where Phoebe made a list of things she wanted to do before she was thirty one. One of those things was to have the perfect kiss. Everybody was in the coffee house, and Phoebe wanted to go home and be by herself. Joey told everyone that he'd walk her home. He went out on the street and asked her to close her eyes. And he gave her enough reason to cross that item off her list. I think that was one of the sweetest moments ever on the show.

Towards the end of the series, there was a conversation between Ross and Rachel where they were talking about Rachel going to Paris. She told him that she was scared, but it was good scared. Like when-she-first-moved-to-New-York scared. Or like when-she-found-out-she-was-going-to-have-Emma scared. A lot of good things in life scare us, don't they? New beginnings are scary, but we need to distinguish between good scared and just plain terrified.

Okay, I guess this is a long enough list for now. But it is certainly not exhaustive. I will definitely add to this in the future.

Random Afterthoughts

A mixed bag of afterthoughts I had on a few recent posts.

A Thousand Splendid Suns: A Review And My Afterthoughts: I owe this book a lot. This is the book that helped me rediscover the joy of reading. I did read Lajja before this, and it was a pretty good book, but it was not powerful enough to get me addicted. Now I need a new book to read within an hour or so of finishing one. I think that this is a significant stepping stone on the path to my ultimate dream.

Feeling Safe: A lot of people have told me that I am not a very "girly" kind of girl. No matter how far that may be true, no matter how independent I may consider myself to be, there are some things that are the same for all girls across the city. It's pretty unfortunate, but quite true.

Maa Da Laadla Exits Indian Idol: You know, in the earlier rounds of the show, I used to get some amount of sadistic pleasure when Mohit got fewer votes than the rest, and was on the verge of being eliminated, had the judges not brought him back through a special wild card entry. I was wishing for him to leave the show, so that my mom would stop watching it and we could watch something else and also, we would all eat our dinner at a more reasonable hour on Fridays. But as the show progressed, I grew to like his singing, to appreciate his talent and to see the improvement with every successive round. I felt genuinely sad, and I thought it was grossly unjustified that he had to leave so soon. He had it in him to be the first or second runner up, and if it were left entirely to the judges, he would have been. Well, that's quite enough for me. No more of that show for me. Otherwise every episode will have me writing a post about the injustice.

Happy Birthday, Akash: I also miss having a known, friendly face in the diagonally adjacent cubicle, as opposed to seeing some random guy sitting there!

Maa Da Laadla Exits Indian Idol

After months of my mom (well, initially my mom, and eventually the entire family) being hooked to Indian Idol, her student, who was a participant on the show, was eliminated today. Like I mentioned in the earlier post, I'd become emotionally attached to the show and the participants. There were two participants whom I was particularly attached to. One was the aforementioned guy, Mohit Lalwani, who used to be my mom's student, and the other is my namesake, Bhavya Pandit, who, I think, is undoubtedly the best singer amongst the girls, and among the best three... well, best two, now that Mohit is out. These two have, for long, been the judges' favourites on the show as well, and have been brought back on to the show by the judges when the audience voted them out. And this evening, it was between the two of them. One of them had to go. All the judges were pretty appalled. And I was beginning to feel a little like I do when I watch the sad parts in a good movie or TV show. Both of them sang really well in the last round. Both have consistently been singing beautifully, and improving their performances with each successive round. There were at least four others whom the judges (and I) regarded as more likely candidates for going home after this round. But those contestants did not. Mohit did.

Every time somebody leaves the show, at least one of the judges says a few consoling words about this not being the end of the world and how real talent would eventually be recognized. Today all of them did. And it was quite evident that they were not saying it just for the sake of saying it. They really felt that this guy is talented and does not deserve to leave so soon. Javed Akhtar reassured him that they would meet again, in some recording room, to record a song together. It was all pretty touching. And even I cried a little, the way I do when I watch a movie end in a sad way. I tend to control myself in this regard when my parents are around, as I did today as well.

Strange, isn't it, how strongly you can feel for people you've never met, whom you do not know, or even for fictional characters in books or movies?

New Year Traditions

I don't make New Year's resolutions. I make my resolutions on any random day during the course of the year, when I feel like it, because that is when I actually put my mind to them and act upon them seriously.

But I do have some little New Year traditions, just like my little Christmas traditions.

Remember the days of Doordarshan, some twenty years ago, when they would put together an interesting, entertaining, variety show in which the likes of Jaspal Bhatti would make us make our way merrily into the new year? In those days, the entire family would curl up in front of the TV with a quilt and watch whatever was going on.

And then, out of nowhere, we grew up, began to find it rather boring to sit at home and watch TV with the family. I think the last time we did that, we watched an A. R. Rahman concert. After that, we preferred to be out, partying with friends.

And somewhere along the line, being with the family began to appeal to me once again. I go out with friends all the time. I also go out by myself. But I rarely, if at all, go out with my family any more. So I prefer spending occasions like birthdays, my parents' anniversary, Diwali, and New Year's, with the family. Because when I think about it, it's not too often that I actually make time to be with them. Sometimes, because of erratic work schedules, I don't talk to my brother for days together. Because it just doesn't happen that both of us are at home and are awake. Even if we are, at the end of a long day at work, all I want to do is eat, take a bath, and go to sleep. Sometimes, life passes us by so fast that we miss what really matters.

Have a great year, everyone.

Of Reality Shows And Reality

I have never been into reality shows. Well, except AXN's Who Dares Wins, years ago. And a couple of episodes of David Blaine: Street Magic. There's this huge number of them burgeoning left, right and centre and I generally cannot stand the incessant amount of overly dramatic acts that they put up, just to keep their audience hooked.

But you know what their USP is? They create enough emotional drama to cause even people like me, who actually think that it's all humbug, to be emotionally involved with the show. As I have recently come to discover.

These days, my mom is completely hooked on to Indian Idol because one of the contestants used to be her student. (No, she does not teach music. Never did. She taught him English, just like a million other students and two of her own kids.) Now, since there's not much else I feel like doing around the house in the evenings, two evenings a week, I end up plopping down in front of the TV with her, and often with the rest of the family as well. And guess what? I cheer when one of the contestants I like sings well. I feel disgusted when one of those I don't like doesn't sing well. I feel even more disgusted when the audience votes for him, in spite of his totally off-key performance. People seem to vote for contestants based on their region, their gender, or other such irrelevant factors. It really puts me off. And then, one of the more deserving contestants has to be eliminated. Only twice did I watch these episodes where they announce which one of the contestants was not going to go to the next round. On both occasions, I felt that the girl did not perform all that well in the immediately preceding round, but has been doing really well, persistently, and there were others who did a lot worse than her in that particular round, and she did not deserve to be eliminated. Oh, and if you noticed, I used the pronouns in the feminine gender, because the audience seems to like throwing out the girls. In today's show, the hosts were talking about how it has always been so at Indian Idol. The audience has never voted strongly enough in favour of the girls.

Okay, I don't want to digress and launch into a feminist discourse over here. All I really wanted to say was that I wish reality shows were more real. Like Who Dares Wins used to be. That they showed things just as they are, without adding superfluous elements of drama, emotion, and suspense. Don't we get enough of all that stuff from our movies? And oh, from Ekta Kapoor?

'Tis The Season To Be Jolly

I don't really celebrate Christmas. Neither do any of my close friends. (Interestingly, I am in touch with quite a few of my friends from college, but none of them are Christians, in spite of the fact that I went to a Christian College.) But I like the general feeling, the atmosphere, the aura it creates. I like the spirit of giving that is associated with this day. I like the festive look that a lot of places acquire at this time of the year.

When we were really little kids, my mom used to tell us stories about Santa Claus and we used to believe them. We used to deck up little, artificial trees and hang up stockings, which our mom and dad would fill up with stuff in the middle of the night. Our mamaji who lives in the US got us a huge Christmas stocking each. One with lots of room for gifts and a little loop to conveniently hang it up by. Boy, did we get a lot of use out of those!

When we were a little older, we'd figured out that there was no Santa, but it was fun to pretend that we still believed in him and hang up our stockings anyway.

For quite a few years now, it's been a tradition for me to sit down in front of the TV and watch a few Christmas Specials. Cartoon Network used to air quite a few of them, and I remember spending six or seven hours watching a whole bunch of them back to back on three or four different Christmas Days. I especially loved it when they aired How The Grinch Stole Christmas!. (The animated version. Somehow I never managed to catch the other one, in which Jim Carrey plays the Grinch.) Or A Garfield Christmas Special. And when one of the movie channels air something nice like Jingle All The Way, I make it a point to catch that too. And, of course, when Pogo aired Shrek The Halls, I was quite delighted to find out that there was a Shrek Holiday Special as well.

I must also mention one more significant thing that I love about this holiday. Christmas cake. It's always lovely. (Unless it is full of raisins.) And it's a nice change from the other cakes that are creamy, heavy, and much sweeter.

Merry Christmas, everyone. Spread the good cheer around.

My Best Friends' Wedding

Okay, this one is not about my favourite (and most frequently referred to in blog posts) movie. Notice the position of the apostrophe.

Two of my dearest, closest friends are marrying each other on the 23rd of this month. I'll save my original, heartfelt musings until a little closer to or just after the wedding, but right now, guys, I'll quote from Friends: the speech that Rachel makes when she and Phoebe are contending for the position of maid of honour at Monica's wedding.

"I've known them separately and I've known them together and... and to know them as a couple is to know that you are truly in the presence of love."

Love you guys. Wish you two a beautiful life together.

Tough Decision

Remember the part in Friends where Emily told Ross that, if he wanted their marriage to work, he would have to stop hanging out with Rachel? Now Rachel was his ex, but she was also one of his best friends. I don't know why I just felt like writing about this. What would you do if you were faced with a situation where the supposed love of your life asked you to choose between himself or herself and your best friend of the opposite sex?

Well, you know, it's not that easy to find love. If you've found it once, you may never find it again. So it may be a huge mistake to let go.

On the other hand, how can you let go of your best friend? The one who's seen you through all your ups and downs, all your bad days, your success, your failure, who's seen you tumble, fall, and get up again, who's been there by your side through thick and thin?

I think I would do what Ross eventually did. Because asking me to make a choice like this would mean that the guy I am in love with does not trust me. And well, I think that a relationship that has no love can be worked upon, but one devoid of trust will most certainly fail. If this person is asking me to give up my best friend today, who knows how many other friends, colleagues, maybe even relatives, he will want me to stop talking to later? It would, undoubtedly, be a very difficult decision to take, but, if you think about it objectively, this kind of love isn't really love at all. Because I think that, when you really love someone, you give them space to spread their wings, to fly as high and as far as they can, and to be just who they were meant to be.

My Favourite Feel-Good Factors

I know the title phrase of this post is slightly odd, but I like it that way. There are a few feel-good factors in my life that always cheer me up when I am feeling blue. The day I am feeling low and one of these fails to lift my spirits, I will know that it is time to consult a clinical psychologist. Here are some of them:

• Writing about whatever it is that is bothering me. Sometimes I write about the exact problem, at other times I like to express it in slightly vague terms in a poetic way.
• Listening to a song that reminds me of an incident or a friend whom I like to be reminded of.
• Spending money on myself. Not necessarily lots of it, even twenty bucks well spent can sometimes make all the difference.
• Costa Coffee's chocolate chip muffins.
• Watching an episode of Friends or The Big Bang Theory or Mr Bean.

What Women Don't Want From Men

Some people thought I would soon write a "more dangerous sequel" to What Women Need From Men. This is not exactly that, but somewhere on those lines. Last week I saw the much-awaited first episode of Season 2 of The Big Bang Theory. The general theme of this series revolves around four highly qualified Physicists who are total geeks and totally clueless on how to talk to women. Three of them can never talk to women without mentioning Schrödinger's Cat or the Doppler Effect, and one of them simply cannot talk to women.

Here's what I wanted to say here. Even if we women are engineers or scientists ourselves, we don't want men to behave like total geeks all the time. We like it if the men in the house are qualified enough to fix all the electronic equipment in the house whenever it needs fixing, because that saves us a lot of time and money. (In this context, you may want to revisit what I wrote about my brother in Life With A Geek.) But we do not like it if they explain to us how all that equipment works. We most certainly do not like it if they explain that sort of stuff to us just because they feel like it. Hey, we know you know all that stuff, we like the fact that you do, but that is just the kind of knowledge that we don't like you sharing with us.

Life With A Geek

I have a theory. Younger brothers were sent to Earth basically to irritate elder sisters. Proof of this resides in the room next to mine.

I have only one sibling. I call him Brain. For those of you who did not watch the animated series 'Pinky and the Brain' on Cartoon Network, Brain happens to be a devilishly evil laboratory rat who constantly keeps coming up with new and brilliant plans to take over the world. That's what Nikhil is like - extremely brilliant and completely devilish!

I thought people should know that it's fun living with a geek - and it's useful too. You don't have to go too far if your cellphone or laptop or other such electronic device needs fixing. You are also constantly made aware of all the latest trends in technology whether you like it or not. As a little kid, in the day and age when not too many people knew what a computer was, I was given a free home tutorial on all I could ever need to know about the Internet. He knows everything you’ll ever want to know about any kind of technology. And a lot that you’ll never want to know. The most credible thing about it is that it’s all self taught.

You are also made to feel at ease with stuff like Star Wars, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The X Files and so on. You are introduced to stuff like The Big Bang Theory and Junkyard Wars which you would never explore on your own. People like David Duchovny and Harrison Ford seem to be natural additions to your list of favourite actors, right up there with Richard Gere and Matthew McConaughey. On Rakshabandhan, it seems perfectly natural to put together a handmade rakhi that looks like an alien, faintly reminiscent of something previously seen on TV in The X Files. You are constantly questioned on when you will get married and move out of the house, so that your room may be transformed into something that resembles Dexter's Laboratory. I'm actually quite curious about that possibility. I'll come back after a couple of weeks of my wedding (when and if it does eventually happen) to see the extent to which this idea was actually implemented. Given the current state of his own room, cluttered with all sorts of wires and screwdrivers and resistors and capacitors and soldering irons, I can expect the laboratory to actually materialize.

Disclaimer: Some of this is ripped from the testimonial I wrote for my brother on orkut.

Shopaholism Revisited

There's this e-mail that has done the rounds any number of times, which talks about the differences between men and women. One of the things it says is that a man will pay two bucks for an item worth one buck that he needs. A woman, on the other hand, will pay one buck for a something worth two that she doesn't need, but it's on sale.

Well, that's not exactly what we do. What we do is, we plan a shopping trip when we hear that there's a sale on at our favourite store. Then we go through all the sale items and don't find anything we like. Eventually we pick something that's really nice, but it's not on sale. We don't pay a rupee for a two rupee item. We pay the two rupees. Now we don't need this two rupee item either. It's just that we came out here to shop. And shop we will. Because it makes us feel good. Makes us feel nice and pretty. And that's really important in our world, you know.

Those who've seen How I Met Your Mother will recall how Lily, one of the female protagonists on the show, accumulates an insane amount of credit card debt by shopping for designer clothes and shoes every time she's upset about something. That's a slightly extreme version of what we all do. Today I bought some stuff that I'd actually been eyeing for a while but deemed too expensive. Today I got it at half price. Now because it was half price, I bought a little more than what I needed. And that, my dear readers, made me feel awesome.

By the way, interesting little write up on Wikipedia about the more extreme form of compulsive shopping. Did you know it's called oniomania? I didn't. Quite possibly, Alok did, going by his comment on my earlier blog entry on this subject.