Dekho Dekho Dekhooooo an Evening in....

Two days in Paris have turned me into a massive snob- NO, it’s got nothing to do with the french- who were quite nice, by the way, and eveyone simply adored Pickwick (except for a few old fogies- the Gall! – Actually they are the Gauls, but still, The Gall!), its just that now I’m looking at everyone condescendingly, tsk-ing at their french and go about aggravatingly correcting their pronounciations! Yes, I used to go about aggravating correcting speech anyways, but I restricted myself to the english language (occasionally Hindi, when it came to Hubby- who still pronounces ‘Khar’ like a cross between an automobile and a Ludhianvi reminescing about home), but now it’s gone and spilled over to the french language as well. Not that I know French. Far from it. I wouldn’t know it if it jumped up and bit my behind. The only French I was familiar with (apart from the fries) was the high school vareity where all pronounciations had their heads bitten off and spat back in the face of the harassed teacher. So why have I suddenly turned expert? Simple… I have unlocked the key to ALL prononciations french. And I shall divulge this knowledge now. The key lies in Imagining that your mouth is full of marbles. Seven, if you want my opinion. Now try and read what is written, and voila! We have ze perfect accent. It also help if you mumble and speak as if you’re hiding in a closet and you don’t want the psycho with and axe on the other side of the door hearing you. The other things I picked up in Paris- the ability to appear supremly confident, even if you have a toilet seat hanging around your neck ( the way they beg for money here, you’d think they were doing you a favour by taking your money), bomb hoaxes exist in France as well (and this time Pickwick was no where close to the scene), red light districts can peacefully co-exist with places of worship outside of Kolkata, Piped music played on buses is still cheesy, even if it is in French and even a baby’s full-throated wail cannot take away the romance of a night cruise in the Seine. I shall now let you get on with ogling at the photos.

* photographs Courtesy Mr. Sensorcaine – you might know him better as the baa-lamb.

Juggler at the Flea market

Rainy day

night Cruise on The Seine

The light show every hour!

Le D'artagnan. Great Breakfasts.

Notre Dame de Paris

Inside the church

cheesy 'dils' exist even in Paris. :D

View from the first level at Eiffel
Seine from the second level

The monolith

L'Arc De Triomphe

More of L'arc

...and the Eiffle
A rainbow in Paris!

Le basilique du Sacre-Coeur (thanks Brad!)



also Sacre-coeur



and this one too.




Champs- Elysees

L'arc- ceiling details

Croeso i Arddunol Caerdydd

Cardiff Bay

The sculpture outside the Visitors' Centre

View From the Visitors' Centre

Cardiff Castle

The dragon- synonymous with all things 'Cardiff-ean'

The town crest

Cardiff Bay Visitors centre

Pickwick having fun at the millenium centre

Looking up from the castle well

Peahen decided to investigate the food scraps with her chicks

Fort entry

Duck swimming at the bay

Little Britain

Stonehenge. Stones. and nothing much else around for miles. Except wooly sheep.

Yes. So there are no 'Parag heart Simmi' s on the monuments

Richmond Park

Deer sighting at Richmond park

Sighting of a different kind of beast at our apartment

Inside Victoria Quarter, Leeds

Mural opposite the Market, Leeds

Corn Exchange, Leeds (lovingly restored, as the plaque puts it)

Leeds Skyline

Leeds Church

Great Expectations

Oftentimes in life, what you expect in life is very different from what you come to accept.
What you expected (WYE): (on hearing hubby has a very mobile career) Lots of fun travelling and new places to see
What you've accepted (WYA): The 'yay' factor wears a bit thin when no sooner have you finished unpacking the last box and settled down for a cup of tea, than hubby breezes in to announce that we've got to pack up coz we're moving again!

WYE: New Places - new friends, new hang-outs...
WYA: New Places- New maid servants to break in or *shudder* no maid servants to break in.

WYE: ooh... expecting! Darling baby movements in you belly
WYA: Ooh! someone needs to tell that baby to stop stomping on my bladder

WYE: Smart baby
WYA: Smart baby using his brains for destructive purposes

WYE: (judging by our sizes) Chubby baby
WYA: baby that won't sit still long enough to become chubby

WYE: Me playing with baby and being fit enough to keep up with him
WYA: Baby running circles around me.

WYE: Me being super mom- having a neat house, clean baby and super chef, while I dazzle colleages at work with my keen business acumen
WYA: You won't die from eating slightly charred meals, you can work you way around the mess, and babies will become filthy exacly 4 .8 seconds after you've bathed them. And work? you think I have time for work after all this???

WYE: Blogs. Will read all blogs, post like there's no tomorrow, leave scintillating comments on others posts.
WYA: there's just barely enought time to publish in a post, without even bothering to run a spell check on it, before baby tries for the umpteenth time to burn the house down.

WYE: a good end to the post
WYA: To end is good enough.

Who's loss is it anyways?

While my house was being turned upside down by the packers (actually, it was the first time I saw some of the stuff that I though had vanished into a black hole – including the missing sock of a pair- which I’d promptly thrown away the other leg of. So I was still a missing a sock in a pair), Mother-in-law (the brave soul) offered to baby-sit Pickwick.
Now if you’re wondering what packers were doing at the house- well, apparently hubby was once again bitten by the one-year-itch and had the look of wanderlust in his eyes. (No. no, you dirty minds wanderlust!!!) So we’re upping and moving.
But I digress (what’s new?). Back to the glee on hearing MIL will take Pickwick off my hands for a bit. Hmm… so what can I do that I haven’t been able to do for ages? And there’s no contest! I gleefully switch on the telly! (Again, dear readers, wanderlust. Also, with packers there? You MUST be joking!). So, I look forward to watch Oprah generously hand out mansions to her studio audience uninterrupted.
The packers sensing I was going to fight tooth and nail before I handed over the remote packed everything else around before warily approaching the telly. I was outnumbered six-to-one and gave up the remote with some reluctance. With a sigh I picked up the day’s papers and the first thing I read (My eyes just glaze over anything to do with the world Cup. So my mind automatically skips those sections of the newspapers and in effect I’m left with just 3.2 pages of newsprint to choose from) is some gloriously delusional article written by some socialite who cribs coz she has to travel from town to Lower Parel for work- which she claims isn’t in real Mumbai at all.(What’s she doing on my planet??)
I disgustedly toss the paper aside and with nothing else to browse thru’,I pick up my unfinished copy of Kiran Desai’s Much hyped, much awarded, much praised ‘Inheritance of Loss’. Now call me old fashioned, but I like stories to have an end. At least do the decent thing by pretending to have an end.
Half-way thru’ this book I realized that this book had no such intensions. For all practical purposes, this book was like an Indian soap- spectacular visuals, opulent sets and no end in sight. Skip a couple of episodes, and you wouldn’t have missed a thing!
What’s also annoying is that most of the characters in the book are the sort who let things happen to them. Well, if you’re going to write a book about people who let things happen to them, at least let interesting things happen to them. If everyday things that happened to you and me made for an interesting read, every diary ever written would be a darned bestseller! There’s a reason the book is categorized under fiction, I just desperately wish the author would realize that! Even an Adoor Gopalakrishnan movie has some pretensions of conclusion for crying our loud! And NO, a ‘My salaams’ page at the end of the book does NOT classify as a suitable end.
Just so you can partake in my righteous indignation, I’m penning this post that has no point to make and has NO end. HA!
PS: Please be warned- All the hate mail I will be receiving for this post is liable to be printed, quoted verabatim, rediculed and twisted beyond recognition and pointed and laughed at.

London on a Student Budget

Images of London- when you have no Budget to speak of, and not nearly enough days...

Tower Bridge. One of the most photographed places in London

The tower of London. Infamous for its numerous executions.

The Big Ben- by twilight

The new London Bridge

The Thames- in all it's fury. Not a patch on the Bhramaputra, but intimidating all the same.

Westminister skyline

A Dali Sculpture.

The London eye. AKA a mother of a Ferris Wheel.

Buckingham Palace.

Deer. Richmond Park.

Nice, eh?

Rainy streets.

A break in the weather

another view of the eye. Notice the chopper circling it.

Trafalgar Square. We caught the beginnings of a Protest.

Nice Brit Pub near Trafalgar

Typically Rainy Afternoon...

... And then the sun peeks out.