Tall tales

So while I fight a very bad cold and some pregnancy-related issues, I can't help but falling over aghast (in my mind) as I read things like I did this morning. About some seriously psychotic alien in Spain who has found a way to increase height without putting you in heels or slim-fit, pin striped suits. I don't know if this was a pre-April fool's day hoax but it had me picturing all kinds of things.

For those who may not be able to get to the link, this is about some lunatic who decided that short men needed help. So what he does is cut open your scalp on one side and adds two inches (!!!) to your head so that you look taller! I constantly marvel at plastic surgeons and the things they come up with to meddle with our humble lives. But this one beats all of them, in my book. Breast/penis/jaw enhancement I can safely shrug off saying, for some people it's never big enough.

But to let someone cut open your skull for no other reason than to be just two inches taller seems bizarre to me. I mean, have they never seen The Coneheads? That's what they're going to look like, no? And what if someone bops them on the nut one day? Then what? Huh huh?? Suddenly, their one-inch shorter girlfriend/boyfriend is going to be a very unhappy bunny. Let's hope their personality makes up for it.

*****

In my book, it's official. Being pregnant has absolutely no negative effect on your general charisma. Or if I were less generous to myself, being pregnant has no effect on men and their ogling. At six months and showing nicely in floral maternity dresses, I still get checked out, chatted up and hit on. Maybe they just think I am really fat. Maybe the world actually likes fat people. Maybe, just maybe, they didn't have sex education in school and they don't know how a girl gets pregnant. Maybe they just think it's a phase like pimples and blond highlights.

*****

If and when I write that book I've promising myself I'll write, I will be sure to thank my esteemed paper for entertainment unlimited. From swashbuckling politicking and juvenile grudges to surreal things like a colleague signing a Kannada film and quitting being a journalist. I am just cringing at the thought of the person who has to interview her for the very paper she worked for! I ask you, how many of us have the fortune to have worked with 'the next big thing'?? God bless her tight jeans and make up.

And for those interested, our baby's coming on very nicely. There are hitches but I think they are only scares -- nothing to worry too much about. I am just worried that I won't think it's cute when it actually arrives. Or it'll have just one testicle or have knock knees or something. You know, I see myself with this big belly, feel the baby moving and for the life of me I can't transport myself into mommy role. I mean whoever thought after all the noise about wanting a baby, I was just going to feel totally unmommy like.

I still want my whisky (six months no alcohol -- beat that, little girls) I still want to travel alone, I still want to move back to Bombay and put myself through the grind and the local trains. I still want lots of unmommy like things. But that doesn't mean at all that I am unhappy! Au contraire, dear reader. I find myself blessed. And I find myself looking forward to the experience of -- as a blast from the past put it -- getting on with it and moving to a slightly more responsible stage in life. Besides, it's always wonderful to know that at least in some ways, if not all, the baby's going to be like M.

And oh, I am also worried that I'll be terribly disappointed if it is going to be a boy and not a girl. I have the perfect name for a little girl -- she will be named after her great grandma who passed away November last year. My grandmother, the person I love the most in this world and the one who taught me life can be so simple only if we let it be, just by the way she lived and smiled.

Boy name suggestions anyone? Conditions -- sanskrit, not so common, means something other than sun or moon or sky or geographic nonsense like that.

*****

I'll leave you with a poem. Let me know what you think.


Freelancing

I

I bring nothing.
I come empty-handed, again
Hoping you won't turn me away from your door.

You look at me hard this year
And I know that the city and its cigarettes
Have given me grooves in my cheeks
Lines on my forehead
And in my palms.
You think that might mean a new Fate?

Meanwhile,
I come empty-handed, hoping you'll take me in till
I decide to leave you because you know
That's the only way I'll stay.
I wonder, why you let me in.
Today, yesterday and before that.

You don't ask where I've been
You let me steal your money
Petrol, music, food, white cotton shirt.
I tell you I'll give it all back someday
You smile and tell me
Someday came and went by; you can now buy
Your own cotton shirts.

II

This time you bring a girl home
And introduce me as a friend in transit.
I smile and like the dimples in your girlfriend's cheeks.


And when she smiles back I can smell right away
That this too I can take away from you.
I head back to the room you've given me
I can't see the floor because a thousand apologies
For the World sit like rain-dust on it.
I hate stepping on paper -- it used to be sin

When we were in school -- but you've made me lazy
By never looking in on me, in my room.
So I step on those thousand crumpled sorries,
That will never reach you or anyone, to get out of the window
Because when I leave here in this rain tonight
Without leaving you a thank-you note

I'll have swept myself clean of your home
Your carefully dropped nonchalant generosity,
Of your dimpled stealable girlfriends and your laptop time;
Till it rains again and I need a hand,
Someone to take me in, trusting eyes to lie to,
A car, a night of sex-for-old-times'-sake,
And fresh cotton shirts to sleep in.

April 1, 2008.