Today was one of my most annoying journeys on BART. To begin with, this “gentleman,” or so I thought, sits on the aisle seat of a full train, leaving the window seat next to his, empty. I spot the empty seat on my preliminary 180 degree retinal scan of the coach, wonder if it’s one of those seats with a inexplicable stain on it that nobody wants to test out and then walk up to do my seat inspection. It looked fine to me. So then, I do the “ I dare you” act. For BART rookies, this is the part where you stare with authority at the passenger (let’s call him Mr. X), don’t say a word, and watch him concede by moving over to the window seat reluctantly or getting up to let you in. I always like to give the person the benefit of the doubt and wonder for a second if he needs to get off in the next station or two. But Mr. X moves over to the window erasing any questions in my mind. I nestle myself comfortably into the seat cushion, get my wonderfully absorbing book out of my bag, and begin to read.

A few minutes into the reading and I hear a very familiar clinking tone emanating from Mr. X. I have heard that clinking tone from seats behind me for a long time now on BART and did recognize the sound to be that of a nail cutter but always dismissed the idea of someone actually preening their nails on a train! I try not to look and focus on my paragraph when the missile launch starts. The calcium missiles land on my book, my jacket and my hair! Oh my God! I get up, dust myself and give Mr. X the “what the ****” look. He returns a poker face with no apology and progresses in his “manic-ural” procedure to a nail file. Still standing, I look around, exchange glances with a standing passenger whose empathizing look I appreciate, and make a judgment call- I either respect my disgust, continue to stand next to an empty seat and spend the next thirty plus minutes spewing disgusted looks at Mr. X. Or, I could continue to sit, read my book and spew disgusted looks at Mr. X, say every five minutes. He was down to the filing process anyway; there might be no flying missile concerns anymore. I decide to go with option B. Mr. X gets done with the filing and puts the cutter into his pocket. I heave a sigh of relief, audible by design and try to focus once more on my book.

Five minutes into my book and I feel a jab in my waist. I nearly jump up and look at Mr. X. He’s obviously bored with no more nails to boomerang and decides to put both his hands into his pockets and sit akimbo, jabbing his elbows in my waist in the process. I decided the dense Mr. X needed more than a glare this time around and mouth, “excuse me” audibly and point to his stick-out elbow bothering me. He responds amicably, pulls his elbow away from my waist and starts plowing through his bag looking for something. Aah, the MP3 player makes its appearance and I hope he’ll be occupied enough to stop vexing my nerves soon. I continue to read on. Five more peaceful minutes and I hear him singing “raaka” or whatever else it was every 10 seconds very rhythmically. I quit; I can’t read anymore. I look out of the window; my station is next. I decide to add to those annoying people who get up a good few seconds sooner than required and start “excusing” people as they tunnel their way through the crowd to the train door. It’s not even 8:30 AM yet and I have a story to tell.

Life has been interesting the last couple of weeks. I have formally learnt to knit! I remember watching the speed with which my grandmother would click those needles around several years ago. While I click away my pretty purple needles on the train ride back home, I recall that soporific drone that I napped to during those warm summer afternoons in India- the click of my grandmother’s boring-grey knitting needles alternating with one rotation of the noisy-three-bladed aluminum fan set to “speed 2.” My grand mother would chant her knit mantra, "under, over, loop through and out comes the stitch,” in an effort to teach me. I got the mantra right for sure, "under, over, loop though, out comes the stitch,” only, out came no stitch when I chanted it! I chanted it over and over again and tried hard but somehow that silly stitch evaded me. I remember that afternoon of exasperation (and please believe me when I say that I can remember things) and the subsequent “I hate this stupid knitting thing” that I yelled and stomped out with.


This new initiation into the cozy wooly world came from my dearest brother, whose insatiable appetite for learning just about anything that he chances by, still amazes me by the way… I'm close to two feet into a scarf for Horseshoe that I hope to get done in a week or two, just in time for some winter-day excursions planned out for the coming weeks. The other part of the knitting exercise I'm looking forward to is a race with my mother who knits in the English style which definitely takes longer than the Continental style I've learnt. I have carried along the burden of being called a quitter way too long when I gave up on this skill as a tween. Strike back was way over due. All credit due to Horseshoe for this day though- he would look at the jumbled stitches, hopping around in disarray and say, "it looks good, keep going, keep going." I feel good now but to think I nearly gave up again last week after the fifth disastrous row that looked nothing like the pattern I was trying to create and with both wrists hurting like hell. I woke up a few mornings ago trying to recall random flashes from my dream- I'm getting mugged; Horseshoe is yelling at me to run; I’m not running coz I think I'm staring at the pattern on the mugger’s woolen hat counting how many knit and purls make up a row!!

Effing Shitake mushrooms screwed me up again. I can't even sniff them now without being violently ill the next day. It's even more unfunny when you've just paid an arm and a leg for it too.

Catherine Tate was wise, I think (Thx, Ebo!):

Saw the 60's heist movie Gambit recently. I have a thing for these 50's - 60's thrillers now - it all started with Topkapi, and The Man Who Knew too Much . I feel there is a certain dignity and gloss to movies from this period. Plus, if they are indeed filmed on location,  you get to see cities as they were before Starbucks took over the world...

Has the professional Bollywood villain suffered a unnoticed, lonely death? I can't seem to think of a single exclusive villain in Bollywood since Amrish Puri died. 

Come to think of it, I can hardly remember a handful of movies that have had a purely villainous character in recent times. The brother-in-law in Jodhaa Akbar was a pure villain, and Om Shanti Om had a Arjun Rampal as the baddy. But Arjun Rampal is not an exclusive professional baddy, so to speak. 

It's not like the good old days, where a good pro villian could actually taint a perfectly good name for generations -know anyone under 40 named Pran?

Just discovered Catherine Tate and the Aga Saga woman - from the UK.

Finally! Tabbed Putty sessions made possible! Thank you, mRemote!

Text messaging, or "txt msging" (get with it!) has officially gone mainstream. Once solely confined to those with thin enough fingers to type on a slippery phone key pad (i.e. the very young), it has now become the official media for the announcement naming Barack Obama's VP nominee.
Technology, thou hast arrived.
Dear Reader, if you have fat fingers, get new ones, or be left behind.

PS. I have thin fingers.

My mother-in-law and aunt-in-law
they came to visit together
Vaat they thoght of Bay Area
God vonly knows my brother

We took them to San Fran City,
Fed them at the House of Nanking
"Nanna irku, cheynai, katrikai" they said
but thought the mushrooms quite unbecoming

"Asho paruh eppdi irkuh"
they said about the crooked Lombard
And seeing the ups and downs
hoped that nothing happened untoward

"So many Chinese!" said the mom-in-law
And "Chinatown aakum" said I
she took a look around and appeared
to think "Vallakaaara ve illai"

Aunt-in-law had some acidity
She drank gallons of methi water
And on cue, she said "You know,
I think I have to pee after"

Many aaf their relations dropped in,
cousin-brothers and cousin-sisters
what a noise it was, what a racket
pity my eardrums, ladies and misters

I think they had some fun
by many impressions and accounts
but said fun was seemed to have had
by varying degrees and amounts

I hope you enjoyed this and
will not respond with vulgar invective
I am just trying to provide artistic verisimilitude
to a bald and unconvincing narrative

In other news, a fiery comment war between the sexes has broken out over at WSJ blogs, where a female blogger quotes a female tech-VP as saying that females write friendlier code. Linky.
Well duh! Of course they do. And they are much cuter too.
But seriously, men probably want their jobs more. I know a few guys that write obfuscatory(?) code so that no one else can maintain it -which sometimes means job security for life...

And in the latest alliterative disaster of our times, there was a Fire at a Fremont Foam Factory. Yes indeed, a Foam Factory in Fremont went up in Flames.

Two continents, seven cities, six flights, four trains and two buses. Oh, and a ferry. Not to mention miles on cars and on foot. A vacation is commonly meant to rest body and mind, but ours rested the mind while quite taxing our bodies. A whole month seems just a blur now - flashes of conversations, visuals burned into the memory, aches and pains in muscles that you still can feel if you try.

That Bangalore has changed in three years is a given. Whether it has changed in a way I approve of, I don't yet know. I grew up in a sleepy town, but longed for first-world style glitz, glamour and wealth. Now that it has the glitz, glamour and wealth (without the infrastructure), I'm not sure I like it. People have changed - with success comes confidence, and then goes humility... Notwithstanding, the weather is still the best thing about Bangalore - a fact made painfully obvious on mini-trips to Madras, Bombay and Tirupati, where we probably lost about 30% of bodily fluid in 4 days. I loved Bombay - if only we could take Bangalore's weather and drop it on Bombay...

UK, we thoroughly enjoyed - though D said that London was like any other European city, I thought it did have a certain quirkiness mixed with gravitas that was very likeable. Traces of the lost glory of the British Empire were much in evidence - very interesting to an Indian. Oxford seemed straight out of Harry Potter, not to mention saale-saab, who's suddenly started to look a bit like HP as well. And it's ooold... it came as a bit of a shock to me to realize that the building I was standing in was being built when Genghiz Khan was around. And Windsor Castle is a stately pile to be sure, containing loot from all over the world. Seeing Tipu Sultan's sword and coat-of-arms twanged some long-lost nationalistic nerve somewhere...
The Thames seemed to be everywhere we went, i.e., we went only to places where the Thames is. It was full of swans and tried to use an alias in Oxford (the "Isis"), which we saw through in no time...

Breakfast menu: Orange Juice, bagels with cream cheese, cereal, coffee and giraffe saliva, served straight from the Giraffe's mouth.
For a while now, I have considered doing away with the cliched European or Caribbean beach vacations and fancied visiting a continent I haven't "explored" yet- Africa. This would mean a jungle vacation in Kenya for instance. Being one with nature, sitting on a tree perch observing zebras and giraffes and lions... Sounds like the perfect African vacation.

A predicament of sorts: To geese or not to geese? Bay area parks are at a philosophical cross-roads - whether to addle eggs or not addle eggs. There are too many Canada geese in our parks, and they honk, and poop, and cause the swimmer's itch. So, to get rid of them, you addle their eggs, i.e., you dip them eggs in oil and fool them dumb geese into trying to hatch them.
Sounds simple enough? Not really, there seem to be pro-life arguments for the geese as well...

My vote is to addle away - as an avid enjoyer of local parks, I don't appreciate having to look where I step all the time, and I think there are enough geese to provide atmosphere already...

Of Ma'am and Mammaries...
One of the most entertaining travel-travails I've read...