Ghazia-BAD!

The creation of this note has been caused by the fusion of 2 things, like most other creations in this world, only that in this case, it is the fact that an extremely tired me has no energy to talk on the phone for the next 2 hours that I will be on this cab from Ghaziabad to Delhi Airport, and the non-availability of either Facebook or any normal book for that matter, on this god forsaken road. The music selection of my cab driver is very much on expected lines, with yesteryear absolute classics like Pardesi Pardesi jaana nahi, Poocho zaraa poocho, Tum to teher pardesi, Choora ke dhil mera and the like, Kumar Sanu’s jewels that adorned the glorious period of Hindi film music through the 90s before ARR ruined it for them.

Anyway, the objective of this blog is to immortalize my current feelings on the reasonably unique official work that I was paid to do, earlier today. Statistically speaking, I am almost certain I would truly be 1 in a million when it comes to this particular feat of mine. But before we get to that, let’s also immortalize the place where I stayed over the past 2 days – a completely “not recommended” hotel called City Garden, in Ghaziabad. Of course, I wasn’t expecting it to be the Leela Palace, but you would typically expect that the AC would work in a room called the Executive AC room. Or that the tap in the bathroom would spew out some water and not clean air. Or that they would have what their menu called the “City Garden Breakfast”, which was quite the rare combination of corn flakes, coffee and a boiled egg. Of course, I wasn’t even asking for luxuries like a bottle of water in the room or 24 hr power supply et al. Never mind, 1.5K room, so easy goes.

Am fighting all my elaborate blogging instincts to keep this to only as long as the Facebook generation can digest, but what the heck, I have some time on me now, so let me be.

Post my elaborate substitute for the out-of-stock City Garden breakfast, I walked down to the training room. It is not often that you walk into a room, and all the 100 odd folks in that room stand up. When that happened today morning, I nonchalantly and humbly waved them down, with that look of shock and surprise that is supposed to say “You guys are all elder to me, why do you feel a need to stand up when I walk in? Please sit down, O respected comrades”, while I could hear a mix of Yejamaan kaaladi Manneduthu and Hey, Vaaraan da.. Ivan veeran dheeran sooran dhaan da playing secretly in my mind.

Starting my training session, I started off mustering up all my Hindi, with “Aaj hum kiske baare mein baat karne wale hain, pata hai?”, to which I got looks that conveyed the highest levels of interest I have had a group of 100 women ever show in me. Not wanting to hold the suspense any longer, I had to let it out: Whisper Ultra ke baare mein!

80 out of the 100 heads dropped, staring with keen intent at the floor. The other 20 heads turned to look at each other and giggle. My head – in that brief moment – looked up at the heavens to utter a silent prayer. 6 hours to go.

As I started off educating reasonably well-informed women in their twenties with “Whisper kab use karti hai log?”, to which I got one sincere response from what appeared to be an old hand who was surprised that a grown up lad like me did not seem to know this basic life truth, a bubble above my head took me into a brief flashback:

July 2004. National University of Singapore. Girish Kalyanaraman, M.S Computer Science. Somewhere, I could see a godly figure looking down, with a hint of a wry laugh.

Cut back to real life, and the 100 clamoring women who were not very keen to listen to the knowledge about menstruation that this 28-yr old boy was about to impart to them. How I did manage to, and escape from that room unhurt, will remain a memory I would keep to myself I guess.

Life does take one down strange roads, eh?

Till next time, Have a happy period!