Today started off particularly frustrating! My dear friend Venman decided to bombard my paraplegic self with several YouTube links to these excerpts from 'So You Think You Can Dance'. Now I know he meant nothing of it, we share YouTube links in daily conversation (happening, aren't we?). But to watch those men and women glide across the floor and gyrate and shimmy and shake and all that... was torture!

Don't get me wrong, I love to watch dances. And I love to dance! If it weren't for the risk of being carted off by the men in white coats, I'd choose to dance down the streets rather than walk. Rather, that's precisely why it was torture.

This back injury [see previous post] has kept me from dancing for over a month and a half now. And as I watched the contestants strut their stuff, taunting me with their swishy skirts and anglicized jhatkas and matkas, I couldn't take it anymore! I wanted to dance. I needed to dance!

And so I raised myself out of the comfy haven that is my sofa, swapped my bunny slippers (cut it out with the snickering) for my glittery ballerina shoes, and turned up the music. Loud!

I started by learning to moonwalk (courtesy tutorial videos on YouTube. Hooray, YouTube!). Turns out I'm a fast learner. Within about 20min I was moonwalking about the house to fetch my juice, doing little moonwalk circles, the works!

But there's really only so much one can moonwalk to satiate your inner Ginger Rogers/Rakhi Sawant/Catherine Zeta-Jones/Shakira/whomever you choose to dance like. So off went the ballerinas, on came the steel-heeled stilettos (and my back brace). The song was switched to 'Jazz Machine', and I just let go. And how!

I shimmied, I shook, I twirled, I kicked, I gyrated... like I hadn't done in far too long. I'm not going to compare myself to the SYTYCD contestants, I'm not anywhere near that good. But who cares? I was having the time of my life!

The tracks kept changing. Hispanic, Arabic, Bollywood, disco, jazz, Bhangra... It was psychotically brilliant!

By the time I was done, my pulse was racing, I had broken into a sweat, and I was short of breath. It was the most amazingly orgasmic feeling in the world!

And yes, I needed to pop a painkiller right away and then lie down. But it was worth it! Thanks VenMan! ;)

Today I celebrate(?) a month-and-a-half of being incapacitated. Long story short: autorickshaws and Mumbai's potholes in the monsoons; together, they're a surefire recipe for an injured back.

The worst part about an injury of this sort, is that it gives you a lot of "alone" time. You're pretty much confined to your bed, barely permitted to even move about the house to fix your meals, you can't step out to meet friends... The first few days would've almost been a welcome relief, if it weren't for the pain. After all, people in the metropolis long for such sabbaticals from work and other activities. 'Me' time is something we all want and need, but rarely ever find.

But that's the catch. It's alright for a few days. Much longer than that, and you start to feel the itch. Metropolitan people aren't used to sitting still for long, or not meeting people. To deprive them of their hectic schedules is akin to torture!

First, the unbearable boredom. Where you park yourself on the couch and watch every soap opera, movie, talk show, commercial... even the reruns! Trust me, there's really only so many times you can watch The Holiday, regardless of Jude Law (or Cameron Diaz, depending on which side of the fence you are). I began to speak with a British accent after the 15th time. To make matters worse, since there was nobody else around, I was speaking to myself in a British accent!

Then it starts sliding. Nobody's available to talk on the phone, you run out of food the one night you really don't want pizza...

I can't go on, this is just too ugly. And my upper lip's getting all stiff again.

Bollocks!

Oh my Lord, I've awakened from the dead! Well, feels like it anyway, when I look at the date I last posted.

A dear friend of mine chided me recently, telling me I ought to write more often, for "fans" like her. Well, fair enough. I'm a huge fan of hers too, in more ways than one. [Yes, Princess, I'm talking about you :) ]

A long time ago (17 years, to be precise), in a land far far away (it's actually not all that far away, but I love a little poetic license now and then), is where and when I first encountered the princess. Ours wasn't the type of meeting that legends are made of, but I've often found that the greatest stories... journeys... friendships, all start remarkably unobtrusively. Back then we were just two little girls in our frilly pink frocks, trotting about the merry-go-rounds. Turns out we weren't even very close (so she tells me, I must confess to having the worst memory regarding most of my childhood). And as was commonplace with our people, we never got to know each other too well either. My journey took me to distant lands, leaving behind friends and memories alike.

Many, many moons later, when technology opened magical portals of communication across the globe, is when the real magic started. Along came a message one day, from a name that tickled my memory, yet stopped short of ringing a bell. I knew the name, I thought. Yet couldn't find a face to connect to it, nor memories to associate with it. I admit, extremely regretfully, that it took a lot of help from common friends for me to finally realize that I had received a scroll from none other than the little princess I once played with, so many years ago.

Murphy's Law rang true yet again, and in stark contrast to my sketchy memories of her, she remembered events and details with astounding clarity (including the fact that my mother used to load my lips with Vaseline!). Lucky for me though, she never grudged me my amnesia (bless her!).

But the real surprise was yet to come.

Turns out the little princess I once knew was on a conquering spree. Since the last time I had met her, she had made herself a household name in the entertainment industry, and it was only getting better. TV shows, movies, awards... it was all happening. And the irony of it all is, I had to hear of it from friends. Never from her. Not once did she blow the royal trumpet about all that she has achieved, or all that she is clearly capable of doing.

And you would expect a media darling to be rather deficient in the cerebral region, right? Wrong again. The princess juggled her career and her academics better than the court jester with his plates... and topped her university! And it wasn't just textbook smarts. She's arguably one of the smartest women I have the privilege of knowing, and our multiple conversations on the most inane topics have cemented her position.

But the real icing on the cake... This smart, beautiful, successful young woman is a remarkable friend. It has been barely over a year since I received that fateful scroll, and already she's one of my dearest and closest allies. She's high on my list of In-Case-of-Emergency contacts, and a true 4 a.m. friend. And we haven't seen each other since we were 7 years old! She's been my shoulder to cry on, and my guardian angel, and a partner-in-crime.

She doesn't need to be, with the fame that she's achieved. It would've been a smooth move to leave all us lesser mortals behind while she made her way into the limelight. I've seen it happen. And I've seen her fan club websites. There's no dearth of people who would be only too glad to "make fraandsheep" with her. ;) Yet she understood one of the most basic dogmata of life - "You'll never get where you're going, if you forget where you're coming from". I don't know whether she made that decision consciously or not, but I know this... All of us who know and love her, still know her as the girl we grew up with (excluding myself, for as I explained earlier, I was denied the opportunity to actually grow up with her). She's not a star when she's with us. Not even close. She's as mortal and insane as the rest of us, and believe me, that's a tall order!

She says she's a fan of my writing. I'm humbled. For I am a fan of her determination, her ambition, her intelligence, her personality... I could go on.

But beyond being another in her long list of fans, I'm her friend. And I say that with the utmost pride.

Although I cannot name her for sake of anonymity, I dedicate this post to the absolutely amazing girl whom I call "Princess". And to friendship.

Jesus, are you reading this??

It really is the little things that brighten up your day. Like seeing this signage outside Afghan Church on my way home after a particularly long and harrowing day at work.

I guess even the messengers of God make typos now and then... :)

The city of Mumbai never fails to surprise me! Today was proof enough of that :)

It was like every other day... until it was time for me to head back home after a particularly tiring day at work. Hailed a rickshaw, and proceeded towards the railway station. So far, it's been like every other day.

Then we get caught in one of Andheri's infamous traffic jams... Again, nothing eyebrow-raising there.

Then I hear a cellphone ring. A hip and happening MP3 ringtone, blasting through the rickshaw. I instinctively reach for my phone... only to realise that I don't have that particular ringtone on my cell, so it couldn't possibly be my phone that was ringing. Yet, it sounded like it was coming from within the rickshaw I was in. I looked around, assuming the previous passenger had left their phone behind as was trying to locate it.

That's when the driver reached into his pocket and whipped out a spanking new MotoRazrV3i! He nonchalantly flipped it open and spoke, in perfect English, "I'm driving right now, I'll call you back in a bit"!

At this point, I'm sure my jaw dropped because he seemed to notice my astonishment in the rearview mirror. Glancing back at me, he smiled amusedly and explained, "This is just a day job, I work at a call centre". Sure enough, he had the signature accented English of the city's fast-growing BPO culture.

We continued forth to the railway station, and when I thanked him, instead of the usual "Haan, theek hai" I'm used to getting from most drivers, this guy replied "No problem ma'am, my pleasure", smiled and waved before driving off and disappearing into Andheri traffic.

Like I said... Mumbai never fails to surprise me! :)

Not much has happened since my last post. I've switched jobs, turned a year older, switched boyfriends (twice!)... you haven't missed much.

The monsoons are back in Mumbai, and suddenly this devil-may-care city has gone paranoid after all that happened last year around the same time. So the moment the rain seems even a tad more vivacious than a drizzle, there's pandemonium! It's upsetting to see a city such as this one seem so vulnerable, yet at the same time it can be rather amusing to watch people in frenzied panic, whipping out cellphones to call their spouses, nannies, in-laws, dog-walkers and maalis to make sure everyone's safe and sound... Only to blush a fierce crimson when the drizzle fades and the sun pops out tauntingly.

With the change in weather, however, comes a myriad of bugs in the air. Viral fever, jaundice, the works! I lucked out with just a common cold, albeit a nasty one. Wasn't quite as lucky last year when I contracted jaundice and ended up looking like one of the Simpsons! Yellow is so not my color!!

Another point I might as well make here, is that I'm a bit of an odd-one-out in society, mainly because I detest the rains. So while all my friends whooped with glee and charged out of the house to enjoy getting soaked to the skin during the first showers, I stayed indoors calling them lunatics. They refer to me in a similar fashion for just the opposite reason. They can't begin to imagine how anyone could hate the rains, whereas it beats me how anyone possibly couldn't!

And yet, I'm the one who catches a cold! Not they, who came home sodden to the bone, but I, who stayed home warm and dry.

In Murphy, we trust!