Comedy of Errors

Oscar Wilde has very aptly quoted " Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative". May be we have taken this excerpt in right earnest and hence come up with exceptional and ingenious ways to do away with the humdrum that keeps sneaking in from time to time in our lives.

As i have narrated in my preceding posts, I have two room mates who share the residence. This arrangement has been there for the last few years and has worked perfectly fine without causing  any disquiet or anxiety. There is a tacit agreement with respect to our respective responsibilities which are taken care of more or less. This blog is about the "less" part of the aforesaid phrase.

It was in July that I was coerced into taking a leave by my office,  so spent  a quiet holiday in Delhi and was beginning to long for the pandemonium.  My whim was to be very soon awarded. July in Bangalore is a month of relentless rains, i managed to reach work albeit late and was completely drenched  when i left office for home. All i wanted at that hour was hot bath followed by a warm cup of coffee and then to snuggle into the bed with a book, but was forgetting that i had asked for ruckus and there was no reprieve now. This is what transpired.

I reached home, there was no power, nothing atypical in that, a very familiar scenario in Bangalore, however what was here deviant was that all of our neighbors had electricity, this called for some legwork and on inquiry it emerged that we had not paid the electricity bill and the lineman had disconnected our supply. Bill payments are my area of responsibility and in my absence apparently no one discharged it. The only recourse was to go out get the bill paid, find the line man get him to the home and reconnect, Easier said than done. Rain and I are anyways always daggers drawn, so it was foolish  to presume that it would abate, in fact it had now begun to pour with vengeance. Nevertheless i stepped out in the rain, the first task was to find where the BESCOM office was, some friendly neighbors explained the address, it could have well been in greek, i however noted whatever they said, the next Herculean task was to find a "tuktuk" that would take me to BESCOM in this rain. Bangalore auto drivers are notorious for their behavior( trust me when i say so they are worse than those in Chennai), painstakingly i found one, well he dropped me in the middle of nowhere and i found my way to the bescom office walking in 6 inches deep mud. I used the ATM machine there to pay the bill and was in the meanwhile joined by one of my room mates. By this time it was 1930 and no line man was then availble, as if this ordeal was not lavish enough, the local people there emphatically informed us that our area didn't come under their jurisdiction and gave another unintelligible address.

We had to undergo all of this vexation again but much to our wonderment, the lineman came with us and repaired the line.

Why do i write this blog today, i could have very well written it in July when this incident happened, or over the last two months when there was a genuine paucity of topics. It so happened that this month our supposed friendly neighbors failed to give us the electricity bill and as a consequence our line was disconnected yet again yesterday, this time however it was easier as we knew where to find the right people, and instead of the frowns we were exchanging sheepish grins.

We have now marked a date in all the months for the remaining year bill or no bill, i am optimistic it "might" work.

Gruß
Suyasha

The Devil's Advocate !

They say that she is your mirror that shines back at you with a world of possibilities, she is your witness, who sees you at your worst and best and loves you anyway. She is a partner in crime, a midnight companion one who knows when you are smiling in the dark. She is your teacher, your defense attorney, your personal press agent, even your shrink, and she is also sometimes the reason you wish you were an only child ! No reward for the correct answer there - she has to be your sister.

no truer words were ever spoken !

with this blog today i share with you a few reminiscences of my being (read survival) with my sister. I was the first born in my family and for two good years an only child. As every first born I was mollycoddled and indulged by my parents. This prerogative was however ephemeral, as i was to be presented with not one but TWO younger sisters. This is the ode to the elder one of the two.

I was too young to conjure up here the exact reaction on hearing the birth of my sister, but my parents never however fail to recount the memoirs of those formative years- I would stand up at the balcony of our house in Ajmer and would enumerate the plight of being an elder sister to all the animals: calves, dogs, puppies and the likes, ( though calves were a favorite)  the homo sapiens were way too occupied to listen to the rues of a two year old. This is "what my parents say" i said : " My younger sister cannot eat and drink, she cannot even speak cannot walk and talk and that is why she always stays close to my mom" I find it extremely difficult to envisage me saying anything like that but have no proof to invalidate that.

Well my whining and lamenting had some progressive results. In my sister I got an ardent and an earnest companion and advocate ( hence the defense attorney in Bold). She would repeat the last word of everything i would say, clap on seeing me on stage at the annual day, give up eating curd and the likes and may be it was this abiding attempt of hers that i had to moderate,  yield and accept her as my younger sister.She has not given it up yet, though only the articulation has somewhat changed. What di does is right and fit to be followed !!! Come on where do you get such sisters in the 21st century !

She might rant and storm about what i am going to write next, but rest assured every word of it is true. Over the years we have been  very mainstream conventional sisters: went in different lines of work, had different dispositions and opinions, she grew up to be a very intelligent, independent person but the sister in her has continued to be the champion of my causes and an inadvertent follower of it too. Here goes the example: I write a blog and she has off late started to write one too, here the link if you have doubts.
:http://ameanderingamazon.blogspot.com/
she would come up with all sorts of veneers against this, but trust me i know better :P


I can site more  examples here but frankly speaking who would like to antagonize a God sent gift like her !


Liebe Grüße
Suyasha

Tag der Deutsche Einheit - 20th Anniversay of the Day of German Unity

This blog was hardly supposed to be a chronological account of my anxieties and  adversities but since they seem to be all magnetically drawn to me, its hard to escape and disregard them.

The Day of German Unity ( this year it was celebrated on the 6th of October 2010 ) also made no allowances in that direction. The Day had its share of disruptions but inadvertently ended on quite a pleasant note. Here is a bit by bit account of the same.

The concept of RSVP is for all practical purposes totally antediluvian  to Bangaloreans, we had sent out almost five hundred invitations and from the other missions' paradigm we were expecting close to 200 - 250 guests. By the 1st of October we had received only 20 RSVPs and this was inclusive the in-house acceptances of the invitations. We were in a very precarious situation now, and as all desperate times call for desperate measures we started calling up all the guests on our invite list to confirm their presence. Amusingly 80% of them replied in affirmative.

Concurrently another brouhaha was in the offing. The Diplomatic missions' disposition is  not very unique from the common man's, even they vie with each other as to who attended who's party especially on their National Days. As a matter of principle the bureaucratic community doesn't attend these events ( uniquely in Bangalore). The ceremonial invitations are however sent, and though they acknowledge it in principle its not followed in practice, therefore it was quite a pleasant surprise to our Consul General when the Chief Secretary and the Governor both sent their written acceptances. So far so good, we sent them the written program of the day, where the German Anthem was to be  played before the Indian National Anthem ( as against the Indian protocol but accepted in many other countries on National days), naturally the ADC objected, and insisted that the Indian should be played before the German one. It took the drawing of a leaf from the book of the Embassy in Delhi to put an end to the protocol dilemma, that Indian National Anthem would be played before the German one.

We were just getting to be slightly sanguine about the whole event on the morning of 6th October 2010 when there was a political imbroglio in the state of Karnataka, which became worse as the evening fell and blighted all our hopes :(.  The roads leading to Vidhana Soudha and Raj Bhavan were totally choked, ironically our reception was at the Taj West End Hotel which is apparently at the heart of this commotion. Incessant rains only added to our woes. I was myself stuck in the traffic for exasperating 90 mins and reached after the arrival of all the "dignitaries" As one of the hosts and as " mistress of the ceremony" I was expected to be on time and was sure to be reprimanded for being late. ( i was miraculously forgiven).

There was however one mortification left to be faced. When the Chief Secretary commenced his speech the guests were palavering uninterrupted. From a group of guests who belong to the top most echelons of the corporate world and boast to come from a very refined and well bred society the behavior was self derogatory and belittling, especially when they need all sorts of favors from the Government for their industries. This embarrassment lasted for about 20 mins after which our Chief guests left and the buffet was declared open.

Not everything was bleak and grim as painted by me so far, the food was simply superb and quite a few comments flowed in for the same. The guests were in good attendance in spite of the traffic snarls. My two friends had also joined me for the very evening and together we all had a good time.Irrespective of all the stumbling blocks it somehow turned out to be one of the finest evenings i have spent in Bangalore.

Liebe Grüße
Suyasha

PS: Now for those who attended the party and also happen to read the blog, kindly note: you have to read between the lines here and comment accordingly. I have dropped a couple of hints here and there. Iff your train of thought is still boarding its station or you are going to bestow on me some irrelevant tangents please refrain and kindly check with me before posting :)