Bottles anyone?

I’m seriously small town. I mean all the education at the primary level in the gulf countries aside I’m beyond small town. Why? Well you may as well ask that question. I just got back from a trip to the royal city of Lucknow. I entered the sanctum of the top floor to find my enigmatic boss in residence.

“Niki!” (Oh my god what does he want? Didn’t waste much time in letting me know.) “How was your trip?” (How was my trip? HOW WAS MY TRIP? Did the body snatchers walk off with Mr. Enigmatic while I was away? I mean just what is going on here? My boss never asks how my trip was. Never. Not even when I came back from a trip to Gurgaon having switched three buses and walked in looking like death warmed over.)

“By the way that trip to the resort that’s coming up? How do you plan to get to the station?” (Okay now this is freaky. If I quietly walk towards the door and back out slowly the body snatchers might not notice me.) “Because I’m going to have a lot of stuff and I’m planning to call a cab from the office for the same. I was thinking that I could pick you up.” (First things first. One Mr. enigmatic isn’t exactly all that bothered about my welfare. Two he wants something I can feel it in my bones, Three um, hello? There are office cabs at our beck and call?)

“How much stuff are you carrying sir? It’s a three day training programme right?” I blurted out before my caffeine deprived brain could kick in. “ Well three days is along time Niki. You should probably pack a few bottles yourself. There’s nothing much to do there anyway.”

Anyone sane would have said okay walked out. Not me. I said,” But sir doesn’t the Shatabdi provide individual bottles of water to all the passengers? Why do we need to carry more?”

Suffice it to say that I got funny looks from all the other mini enigmas for the rest of the day. Not to mention pathetic jokes involving baby food brands and milk bottles and the like.

For all the other slow brains like myself here are a few brands to jog your grey cells – Bagpiper, Haywards, Cobra, Fosters.

Cheers!

Sophie Kinsella - the way to jump in a puddle when life gives you a rainy day.

Sophie Kinsella is another writer that I find works like a charm when life gives you a rainy day. Her books are almost always written from a woman’s perspective and are seldom very serious in nature.

Although the plot line is fairly predictable usually consisting of madcap heroine who is relatively poor with fairly weird family manages to find her life taking a turn for the better usually because of the intercession of Mr. Right in the form of a successful financial wizard or businessperson who saves her from a lifetime of drudgery.

Part mills and Boon and part Barbara Cartland the books give you a taste of a slice of a modern day fairy tale that takes away from your worries for a few hours. Her books routinely make fun of business jargon and in her books successful women have a good life as opposed to a good career, a theme that has been explored rather fully by the lady herself in “The Undomestic Goddess.”

I love to read the books because of the way in which the sheer ingenuity of the heroine saves her every time with a liberal dose of help by the male protagonist. Although I’m a man, I manage to identify at some level with her heroines especially when they are surrounded by people who are all chattering away in business jargon and the girl of the book asks herself why she can’t understand a word that they are saying? I’ve felt like that quite a few times myself and I’m sure so have you. If you want a book that makes you feel that its okay to be a loser sometimes and that things do turn out right in the end, pick any of her books.

My personal favorite remains “The Undomestic Goddess” while “Can you keep a secret?” comes in at a close second. The Shopaholic series is a must for any one who feels that retail therapy is the way to go.

Do read it but then be prepared for similarities with Lauren Weisberger who seems to have lost her touch after “The Devil Wears Prada.”

Happy reading!

The indefatigable Janet Evanovich

Janet Evanovich is amongst my favorite writers. She's right up there with Agatha Christie, Alexander McCall Smith and J. K. Rowling in my book. The lady writes in manner that is laughable, breezy and possibly a little in your face but funny at the end of the day.
All her books are pretty predictable. The heroine will come out a winner through a sheer combination of grit, luck and good fortune. She makes the Sex and the City women look like amateurs and Lauren Weisberger seems to be a heavy read once you've read Janet.
Her Stephanie Plum series is an ongoing slap dash combo of humor, mystery and the power of luck. Stephanie has pretty large doses of good luck to her credit. She blows up cars, garages, homes, discovers dead bodies, has a crazy grandma, does her level best to choose between two men but is unable to do so. Some people might call it chick lit but this is an entirely diffrent genre in itself.
I got the first of the series "One for the money" free with some other books that my Brother in Law bought me as a gift and since then there's been no looking back. Her latest offering in paper back "Lean Mean Thirteen" was my companion on a recent bus ride that lasted six hours. Needless to say the hours simply melted into oblivion as I savored the book.
The old dilemmas continue - Grandma is as crazy as ever, Stephanie's mum is still busy being the bran muffin, Stephanie can't decide between Joe and Carlos and her cars still get blown up regularly.
The new twist is that Lula is getting pretty serious about Tank, ( whose real name is Pierre ) and in a fit of hyperventilation lambasts Ranger which in any other circumstances would be suicidal but since the exchange takes place in a hospital, she lives. And its not because she receives medical attention.
Read it if you like your heroines sassy, your heroes studly and a plot where inspite of the unbelievable everything turns out okay in the end.
Happy Reading :)

Metrosexuals ahoy!

Coming from a small town the term Metrosexual was just that - a term I'd read in a newspaper article that defined many other kinds of sexual as well. I couldn't understand what all the fuss was about, especially since the whole getting your arms waxed was something that girls did because they didn't want to look masculine, or that was what we grew up thinking.

Our concept of good grooming was restricted to splashing on a liberal dose of aftershave after getting rid of the minor fungal growth that grew on the face and stubbornly refused to lend itself to anything resembling a beard.

I recently took up a job in a metropolis. Here I came face to face with the real meaning of the term and in a way that branded itself into my psyche.

Over the weekend I decided that it was time to get a hair cut ( Don't ask about why I decided to do so, just let it suffice that I come from a really small town.) I walked into the local saloon thinking that I'd be out in no time especially since I couldn't see any one in the waiting area. Was I wrong.

The first thing that confronted me as I sat down was a huge bank of mirrors that ran all the way round the store. The feeling you get when walk into a swanky gymnasium and find your horrendously out of shape body reflected a hundred times over comes pretty close to describing how I felt at that point of time but the surprises had just begun.

Once my eyes had adjusted themselves to the horrible glare that pervaded the room and I was able to focus better, I did a double take. Why? Because all the chairs were occupied by people with multicolored faces.

I took a deep breath to calm myself and slowly backed out. Surreptitiously I glanced at the Signboard. It read "Smart GENTS Parlor." Hmmmmm........So I was in the right place. I took another deep breath and walked in and sat down.

Pretty soon it was obvious that the multicolored faces in red and black headbands were all men. I mean women wouldn't talk loudly on the phone in guttural tones now would they?WOULD THEY???????????? Imagine if you can a row of plush red leather chairs. Now also imagine those same chairs occupied by grotesquely obese, pot bellied, old (40 + classifies as old in any city) men wearing uniformly disgusting fluorescent shorts and jarring T-Shirts with equally disgusting messages on them.

If you haven't thrown up yet, imagine the same guys with beauty gunk on their faces yakking away on their mobiles about their latest sexual conquest with their garl frand ( girl friend ). ( Hey! Get a barf bag will you!)

Any way, the next thing that happened was that another pot bellied old gent came in and sat down next to me. The man in question took a good look at me and then said,"Which facial did you go for?" Oblivious to the shock on my face he carried on," You see we have the same skin type and since you haven't got a glow from the facial you went in for I thought I'd ask you so that I could avoid that one and get one that would give me a glow....."

As if this wasn't enough I had to sit through the indignity of watching another pot belly walk in, strip off his T-shirt and yell, " I vant a full bawdy vaks, full bawdy." To which the attendant without batting an eyelid at the bear in human form standing there and said,"Yes saar, of kawrse, pleeze to remove short and lie on the table at backside."

Before the poor horribly strained waistband of the "short" could move an inch, I hightailed it out of there. I decided that watching men get facials was bad enough, I didn't need to see the full monty. I suppose the term metrosexual could be applied to those guys but I think I'm happy being my old retrosexual self after all.