How to.........

Does anyone else feel the need to be witty, sarcastic and self deprecating while blogging? I do, most blogs which are successful have a certain flowing, natural level snark. Without which your blog is apparently doomed to some sort of virtual limbo (is a blog a blog, if no one reads it?).

And it’s not just blogs, this need to be witty is seeping down into our day to day lives, sundry conversations you might have with your dhobi also need to be funny, worthy of repeating for the hearing pleasure of the world at large, blog worthy in fact. The pressure to be witty and acerbic is on! How do you deal with it? If you’re anything like me, you can only think of something witty or biting long after the moment has passed, yet I am considered scary for the things I might say, allow me to let you in on my little secret.

It’s a look, you need to develop a look which combines pain, loathing and sympathy for the vermin (who should be) squirming before you, bite your lip, like you’re trying hard to control what you want to say (though you don’t know the exact words yet), sadly shake your head and turn away, It’s (will be) too horrible, too acerbic, too true! If you say what you want to say (when you actually figure it out) the poor person it’s directed at might not recover, with a heroic sigh refuse to say what you want to say. It works! Your reputation for witty verbal dexterity and scariness will shoot up. This isn’t enough of course, you need to back the look with actual lines or you might end up receiving more constipation medication than you have enemies to poison them with. This is done in two ways the first is rather simple, Hours later when you have thought of something appropriate. Refine it! Work on it, and then try and drop it into conversation casually, “I kept thinking that his head looked like a turnip..... but you know, I couldn’t say it.......anyway as I was saying to my dhobi the other day...”. The second is simpler, when you actually think of something witty on the spot, say it! (Everyone is given a break from their nobler impulses once in a while......)

Now if someone would please share their secret to bitchy blogging with me ...............

A New Shade of Green

I’m a museum tripping, fort viewing kinda girl. I like guides (the printed and the breathing), pamphlets, badly written ASI Boards and random pieces of trivia, this is best exemplified by observing my school trips to museums. I will for the sake of brevity (hah!) limit myself to one example, our class 8th trip to the arts and handicrafts museum in Delhi. While the rest of my 200 classmates and companions in their quest for learning and knowledge ran through the museum learning essential life skills such as social networking, physical feats of multitasking like walking talking and eating while dodging the random teacher or two and of course little snippets of actual fact – “I swear I saw them holding hands .....”, I went around trying to learn about the Ikat sarees of Orissa. Solitarily staring at the plastic reproduction of an authentic weaving handloom from the early 1990s, Fascinated by the moth eaten Puppets from Northern Rajasthan and cribbing to anyone who’d listen (mostly myself or the unfortunate teacher who had to trail me) that there wasn’t enough written up about the wonders of tribal peacock fans.

In London the storybook Cottages, the Lush greenery, the clean streets, the big shops and the spell binding stage shows all made me wonder and marvel, but none made me want to move to London. It was only as I wandered through the 13th museum and passed a gaggle of high school students being instructed on the colours in a painting that I realized that a delicate hue had begun to colour my countenance. The Instructor called it Fern Green, I call it museum envy green.

I don’t care for their Castles, we have our forts and they can keep their Princes, I prefer Farhan Akhtar, I don’t need clean public loos while I have my home and the Delhi metro will catch up with the London tube eventually. The promenade by the Thames is tempting but the cold and rainy weather means you can never enjoy it. Their Food is blah and bland after a while and so long as the Big Chill exists I won’t miss their cheesecake either. Who wants green everywhere when we have green, reds and browns and a whole rainbow of colours in our landscape and who wants picture perfect cows on Rolling Meadows when we have our sacred mud and dung caked cows on pot holed roads. If I move to London it will be for the museums. So that I can spend hours roaming those vast magnificent halls, reading every line, hanging onto every word of the nice lady on the audio guide. So that my kids can learn to draw stick figures and tear paper to make kites surrounded by the masters. So that I can learn everything I want to know about mummified cats in front of a genuine Mummified cat. The knowledge, the visuals, the atmosphere, the thrill (I am thrilled by museums, thank you very much) call to me, they beckon to me, come to London they whisper seductively in my head (stop feeling sorry for me, I have fun!). But I think I will wait for the day when these museums will come to India. Until then I will content myself by advising my kids to (like my friends) focus on life skills, physical dexterity and gossip when they visit Indian museums and petitioning The Arts and Craft Museum to correct their Ikat Saree label, Ikat Sarees come from Gujarat.