Blame the Ketchup Girl for this one

So you KG, you wanted a list of stuff that I want to do? However, as you know there is a gap between what Chhayanat wants and what Chhayanat gets. By the same logic, there's another gap between what KG wants and what KG gets. And which guy does exactly the opposite of what she is told? This guy! So may be not a list but something like a blob which may or may not look like my grocery reminders is due.

This is a bit different than the list of resolutions that get made every day and then get tossed around till the much elusive cleaning day comes and lo bingo! You know what happens to those. If you remember the famous poem by Dame Kobita Sinha - "Apoman er Jonyo Phire Asi", that is, "I Come Back for I Crave Your Insults" then you should know that at this point my biggest wish is to step down the sado-masochist ladder a notch and make it a little easier for myself. I wish to find better cuisine than fingernails coz I have been told to grow blubbers to survive the winter here. So may be one day I'd sit in a restaurant chair and pick up my fat overflowing from the seats onto the aisle to let the hot waitress pass but chances of that are pretty slim as of now. Econ guys talk a lot about counter-factuals. You could almost say that this wish has something to do with the fact that I am quite clueless should the said waitress pass by and there is nothing in the way to trip her up. I was also thinking that if I keep eating my nails and then may be a finger or two then is it possible to end up like that snake that was eating itself? I mean not all of these are really things that I want to do but I am writing in a stream of fucking consciousness kind of way and probably consciousness is big time fucked already. BTW, this snake and hogging talk reminded me that I want to get high on snoose and break one of my reader's boring "quasi-marriage" and rescue her from the extremely good-natured, heart-of-gold boyfriend on my next trip to California. So that kind of debauchery is what I wish for. Finally (as this should be wrapped up before I get further inebriated and start disclosing the stories of my weird affairs), you and I should set up a date for La Tomatina coz I can't think of taking a girl to anything but a tomato throwing fest if she calls herself The Ketchup Girl. So start packing and give me a shout when you're ready! In the meantime, I will continue to be Awesome.

Talking Talkies

It makes me mad when non-Indians watch the movies like City of Joy and think that Calcutta is only about poverty and oppression of poor and illiterates in the hands of people who are rich and baloneys like that. But something which I refuse to call a movie made me Squirm, Gnaw the remainder nails and cry out loud for heaven's sake, Get up and jump in white-hot rage in front of the computer, Remember the landlady and her warnings and come back and sit to watch, Rinse and Repeat. As it is, my gaydar has gone totally haywire after coming to Edmonton. People here simply have gone and fucked the gay dress-codes and stuff three times over. These days I pass women in the streets with coupla piercings in the lip and flat shoes and shorn hair and whatnots and every single time it takes me about three-quarters of a second to find the men tagging along. It's just so easy that I almost believed that Edmonton is after all a straight haven and then I met a bunch of ladies who I'd swear to have passed on as the straightest of them all and they are not! In any case, unless I see someone to be actually dancing to a Madonna number clad in rainbow silk underoos And I happen to be in possession of all my faculties, I refuse to believe that they are not the straightest ramrods around town. Okay enough venting. Now to more venting, actually.

If you ever come across a movie called When Kiran met Karen, my advice is to: a) Remember that a Cabbage is a Cabbage is a Punjabi, b) You have the right to be mildly but consciously racist if that saves your life, two hours and fucking peace of mind and hence c) Remind yourself why Punjabis are called "Cabbage" and ask d) Since when they became good at film-making and art in general, e) More so, since when they became experts to handle "lgbt-tinged" "desi-amru affair" "movies". Gosh I feel like putting every single word in quotes after spending those gut-wrenching two hours which almost gave me a brain aneurysm.  

Short story shorter: "famous" bollywood actress Kiran mouths uber brainless fucking answers to fuckitty-fucking shitty questions in a press-conference, loses her temper when someone asks (nice fella, I quite liked him) something about how come her suicide attempt failed or something in that vain, tells the press to go fuck their grandmothers, rushes out, starts arguing over a hailed cab with some random journalist woman named Karen and ultimately shares the ride, spends the night with her boyfriend in a west-end country house in NYC, boyfriend suggests an interview with the journalist woman who's supposedly well-known and leaves, interview leads to "a connection" between these women (sorry I can't help these quotes), Kiran cries after "sex", Karen leaves without saying bye (or Bi, suit yourself), boyfriend comes back, Kiran breaks up with him and leaves for hotel, much photo-burning and ring-throwing ensues, next morning newspaper headline says Bollywood Actress Busted with another Woman in Bed! Big Shensheshan!! Apparently journalist was hired by the BF to stage this whole thing to destroy Kiran's career which was coming between their immortal Luv! At this point I was choking. 

Frankly, everything said and done, whoever it was that thought that the woman casting for Kiran was fit to be called a "famous bollywood actress" had their eyes dipped in a bucket of shitload. I like my women pretty and don't give me duds, thank you. Why, I am better-looking than her which should tell you actually! On second thought, you guys better watch the movie. Why should I suffer alone?

P. S. : The director/cabbage has dedicated the atrocity to her mother. I don't know if she has been duly disowned after that. 

On old TVs and other serious shit

Alright! So how do you guys spend your weekends? Don't think I am a nerd but I spent the rest of yesterday after the match curling up in my bed, watching videos on how to use a chef's knife properly and in general a lot of videos on knives. Why? Because I heart good knives and also my surrogate parents were out having fun with fussball and what-nots and that obviously meant that I had to hold back my long-distance shenanigans for some time. Now my surrogate mother is obviously something special coz she is three months older than me and the fact that she has taken up being my surrogate mother makes me the closest case to Immaculate Conception. Or, is it the Anunciation? In any case the point is that she is generally full of grace, divine or otherwise. At least I used to think so, till last night. 

You guys remember those box-televisions that came with four legs and looked like cabinets - in one of which a poet-couple used to store their undies when the TV itself ceased to work? As it turns out, my surrogate mother once had one such TV fall on her head. (As an aside , this reminded me of a close friend of mine who once had a Godrej lock fall on her head which made her miss one session of weekly debaucheries with us but let that story be told some other time).  Also they used to have a fridge the door of which had to be tied with coir rope.  It may or may not be the reason that she sometimes acts weird around appliances. On the other hand, I grew up with having a TV in our place that used to go mute every three minutes and then someone would have to mildly knock on its sides, slap and then progressively hit it all over to get back any sound. Initially this hit-man used to be me but then watching TV became such a strenuous physical exercise that I quit. This probably explains why TV still holds no charm for me but this post is not about that. 

After my hours-long training on what constitutes a good knife and what is junk, I went on to video-chat with my surrogate mother and informed that most of her knives are junk and the one that she uses most can or should be ideally used for slicing bread only. At this point she suddenly went batshit-crazy and threatened to cut off certain vital organs (if I had one of those stuff that starts with an N and rhymes with the Korean for asshole, remember? I knew it's unforgettable!!!) with that said bread knife!!!! I mean how much more kinky a "divine grace" can get I ask you! It was hysteric.. and then I realized that Surrogate Mother has the initials S.M. Reminds you of something or I am the most kinky psycho around here who's about to get her nonexistent dick cut off with a bread knife? Huh?!

Rabbitty Tale

Sorry about the silence. Were you guys waiting for a post anyway? Alright I don't really want to know the answer to that. I am at this moment extremely happy which is making me excited like I could stay up all night on one hand and also relieved like I could curl up and go to sleep this minute on the other. After nine days, I have the wi-fi working in my place and this means no more lugging the laptop down two kilometers to Remedy to stay connected. I am a lazy bum and I do dragon boating and go to the gym twice a week and I hope you don't ask anything more from a house-cat. Also did I mention how DIVINE it feels to be online laying on bed?!

I know I should post some pictures here because Edmonton is at its best these days and the river valley is simply looking gorgeous. Again my house-catty self was preventing me from going out and taking pics. So to pretend that I am better than myself, I went out and met a dog named Coconut and a bunny with a personality disorder (let's just call her Chandrakanta) which behaved and/or looked like a headmistress in my junior high school. I was having a blast from the past when it (or, she) kept looking at me like this as if I was playing in the sand even after recess forgetting my hair-band, shoelaces and manners and was begging for a detention:

But then she started to fidget and nibble grass and scratching her ears with her paws- all kinds of rabbitty stuff that headmistresses won't or shouldn't do in front of students who anyway fail to see the seriousness that headmistress-dom is all about. At this point I lost interest, said HAAARRRRR and she ran for life. I wish I could do that when I was in junior high. 

Happy Canada Day

Yesterday after posting I got out of Remedy with a decent intention of going home and realized that thousands of people were walking past me towards the river as if in a zombie walk. Only there were no zombies. It was fireworks time for Canada Day! I had spent the July 4th last year in Ormond Beach and saw fireworks that went on for an hour but we were then fooling around in an almost empty beach and the thing was happening in a distance.  But yesterday was a horse of a completely different color. I was at the top of the bridge across the Saskatchewan River and they were booming and bursting right in front, so close that you could reach out and touch one as they kept bursting into lights. Quite nice. After that I walked all the way home with people all around cheering, hooting ,begging for small change and smoke and lolling around in parking lots completely drunk and it felt like the Pujo-crowd in Kolkata. A grad student went home, looked out on Whyte and all those people from her fifth-floor window, ate milk-cereal and dalmut and went to sleep after finishing Bill Bryson's The Lost Continent.