Diwali, or is it?

Appalled at my inactivity, Lax, probably the only dedicated reader of this blog, sent me some food for thought to provoke me into writing. Some article about some ex employee of his Company. Yes, very much a "Your uncle who lives in Bombay is getting married on March 15th. Your Board exams are going to be held between the 10th to 20th of March. Write a letter to your Uncle explaining the difficulty and conveying your best wishes (20 marks)" effort, i realize.

But its the Diwali long weekend. My grandfather used to say that whatever you do on Diwali is reflective of what will be happening the whole year. Therefore you should follow the routine that you would want the next year to follow - so you get up early, have a bath, wear nice clothes, eat sweets... so that you end up sleep deprived and fat, but at least neat and clean. This is my standard Diwali story, and being "our" first Diwali I narrated this to the Boyfriend, whose reaction was: "Well, we should be having sex, then." Sigh. One could only hope. Instead he is hopping a flight to Bangalore, and I, well, am here.

Coming back to my Grandfather's theory, I suppose it was only poetic therefore that today morning was full of controversy. My Maid looked appalled when I opened the door in a visibly just out of bed state. I hadn't just gotten up, I was up since 5am, having been unable to go back to sleep after early morning bathroom, thanks to crackers being burst continuously.

"Haven't you gotten up? Haven't you done the pehili angol?"

Roughly translated, that means "first bath". When you smear yourself with Uptan and Oil and spend two hours in the bathroom trying to wash it off.

"Why?", I yawned. "Diwali is tomorrow, isn't it?"

"That's what even I thought. But everyone is doing it. Can't you hear the crackers?"

Why you need to burst crackers after having gotten up at the crack of dawn is beyond me. Maybe its out of spite, to wake up everyone else who decided that this part of the holiday is clearly a waste of time. As I lay awake in bed I recalled an article saying that anyone who bursts crackers after 1030PM can be fined upto 1 lakh for Noise Pollution. Isn't there a Starting Time for these legislations?

"We don't have holidays today", I said, walking back into the bedroom. "Tomorrow".

My neighbours are secretly miffed at my non participation in Diwali gallata. But that's about to change. A and I have decided to go for it. The building kids, who have been told by their parents to avoid us and sneer at us, will face a dilemma of sorts. A and I have decided to buy fireworks, and we have two advantages that the Building Kids do not:

1. (Relatively) Limitless Budgetary constraints.

2. No parental supervision.

Muahahaha.

Anyway, back to the task at hand:

"...about 30 minutes after the aircraft took off, Chandrashekar apparently fell asleep. “The girl realised that Chandrashekar’s head was resting on her shoulder. She however did not take it seriously thinking it was an accident and unintended,” Sidam said.However, after about 10 minutes, the complainant was shocked to realise that Chandrashekar was not asleep, but had unzipped his trousers and was trying to touch her."

The man in question, Sriram Chandrashekar, is said to be a 'software engineer from Bangalore' in the mid day story, however, Lax tells me that he is actually some IIM alumni who used to work for big Indian Group and now with big Software Company in the US. Still, he was flying Indigo.

But honestly, what a creep. What a creep.

Who does that? How long does it take to travel from Bangalore to Mumbai? 2 hours, tops? You think you can score in 2 hours, that too in a low cost carrier which doesn't provide water, let alone alcohol, which could have given you half a chance? And say you really were into the chick, instead of trying to get her into a comfort zone, you plonk yourself on her shoulder and start a 'hand party'? And you really don't expect to be noticed? What are they teaching at IIM nowadays?

Once on a bus from Bangalore to Goa, I was asleep and I felt something strange on my back. For a few minutes of drug induced confusion (I had taken a avomine for motion sickness-effective but it knocks you out) I couldn't figure what was happening, but when the feeling moved towards my underarm I figured exactly where this was coming from - from the crevice between my seat and that of my neighbour. I pulled the hand, whirled around, knelt on the seat and slapped the guy. My neighbour woke up, as did most other passengers, and watched in horror, slap after slap. No one knew what to do, and neither did I, so I kept the slaps going. After maybe 6 slaps my palm was burning and my head was whirring with the Avomine. By this time the Conductor was woken up, and the Villain of the piece was moved to the front of the bus and evicted at the first stop off the highway.

Not afraid to show my little might at happy go lucky molesters, in a bus from Girgaum once, I noticed a man's hand moving slyly towards the backside of a young girl who was standing right in front of me. As his hand moved to the point of no excuse (just about to slip into her back pocket), I rolled up my file and swatted his hand, much like one would do to a fly. More chaos, the girl turned around to see what was going on, other passengers had witnesses the whole scene, chants of "Ghar mein maa behen nahin hai kya", "Haramkhor", "Tujha mayyla" erupted as the guy was thrown off the bus. The Girl looked at me inquisitively.

"He was going to molest you, but I intercepted him"

"But he didn't touch me!", she protested.

"I know", I said, reassuringly, "He didn't, because I hit him before he did that"

"No, but he didn't touch me, really!". She glanced around at the other passengers nervously and then pinched the skin of her throat and shook her head from side to side. "Godpromise, I didn't feel anything!"

I wanted to say something, but she was about to cry. Luckily, my stop was just around the corner. Come to think of it, with air fares becoming so cheap, I guess its only natural that creeps would find new hunting grounds. And success would ensure membership of the esteemed 'mile high' club.

I wonder what my Grandfather would say if he saw me blogging about molesters on Diwali (if it is Diwali?). He'd probably blame it on my waking up late.

Hmm. I think I'm going back to sleep.