07/September/2005
Bangalore,
Hmmm.. so I have ‘moved on’ to particularly no where ..just one city to another. Am in a hotel till the time the stuff reaches from Delhi to here. And its soooo goddamn hard to kill time here. This is what the room is like.. well its like most of the hotel rooms a door to the wash room at the entrance and then a bed and TV facing each other… kind of suggesting that was the only thing to do in here! There are windows and the view outside is not such a ‘view’ really.. in the name of trees there are a few scraggy bushes and a dwarf palm tree ( yeah ..its practically dwarf.. it ends right where the window starts and the room is on the first floor… I mean Palm trees are supposed to be reeeely reeely tall..arent they?? Or maybe its still growing or something). And besides this ‘greenery’, there’s this ugly backside of some equally ugly building ( all air con vents and pipes sticking out.. you can see lights in some of the rooms after dark.. but its all basically very boring to look at!). Also, you can hear this really depressing chanting from some mosque ..mosque sounds ( whatever u call ‘em) are always very depressing..so are the shabads and kirtan sounds from ‘gurdwaras’. It makes you think that these ppl have nothing better to do in life than sing out these hymns or whatever..every day for no one in particular!!..how interesting can that be??. And the guests in the hotel are also quite boring..( where are all the noisy loud people when u really need them?) Sometimes, it all seems like a conspiracy to depress the hell out of me…. There was no cable for 14 hours the other day… arrgh…! I almost died..!
So, at times like these you realize how important work is .. and how work keeps you from all the bad things… u’ll see what I mean when I describe further how I fritter away my time.
Since the time I am alone..which is around noon till one in the night.. I turn into this real lazy monster.. I want my time to pass so I do all sorts of time consuming things… or u can call ‘em time wasting things like these:
Lazily make a cup of tea…( its suddenly very interesting to make tea.. u ponder each time u put sugar and cream.. and then wait for the water to boil.. and then pour and stir….. stirring is good … u can spend a lot of time doing that!)
Have a bath…. Lazy lazy bath… wont go into the nitty grittes of this one.. some things are better if left ti imagination!
Watch some movie…. Its amazing how patient u get with commercials when u are really really bored. I watched this movie called ‘intimate deceptions’ and there was nothing intimate or deceptive about it.. about three generations into prostitution and crap.. very crappy.. but I still watched… it’s the only way to keep oneself hooked.. a movie is sure shot formula to kill time for around 2 hours..! I dint really get much of this movie..just kept wondering thru out the movie how closely one of the actresses resembled our Aishwarya Rai… I so wanted to tell someone…like u want to when u want to confirm resemblances. .i don’t know if anyone else also feels the same!)
Read a book… again.. u read slowly so its actually good in a way… (otherwise I quite hop and skip words while reading which explains my bad vocabulary in spite of being fond of reading!! )
Well.. its okay to get bored sitting in a place but it can get really dangerous if u plan to take a trip outside.. when I say dangerous.. I also mean financially..!!
This is what all I did today… all in the name of killing time…:
Went to the cyber café just to check my mail for job offers… ended up chatting for an hour and 45 minutes!! Completely forgot about the job offer thingy!!
Then, had to go chk out curtains…so went to this plaza kind of thing called the ‘safina plaza’.. there was this really nice exhibition and sale for jute things… the kind of stuff the firangs will completely freak on..! I am not such a shopper but I just felt like buying ..it makes u look less stupid in a place.. basically just wanted to carry a bag in one hand with some stuff to look like a regular shopper..so I got 2 keychains and a small purse…. 2 things I haven’t bought in like 20 years!!
Went around looking for things and stopped at a stall selling aroma cosmetic things..i generally walk past all beauty product shops/stalls …(feel its very vain ....anyway..) . I guess I stopped there coz she told me that I don’t really need any skin crème coz my skin was perfect .. all I needed was maybe just a sun block (which is actually all I ever use ).. so that was a lil flattering and I stopped (yes.. thats also vain..however...!). The lady just shoved her pamphlet of all sorts aroma oils and crèmes in my hand.(.it also had ‘bet wetting oil’ holy moly!! I know what that meant but that could have been written a lil differently..eewww!) I must have looked at her in kind of disbelief coz the next thing she did was she showed me some newspaper cuttings about her products with her picture..( which must have been very very long ago… coz she looked younger ..or maybe she was really really photogenic!!) So I stood there reading the pamphlets and the news articles… ( I think I must be the only person who did that!) and that got her really interested and she just rattled on with her product list. Anyway, ppl started to gather around the stall and that’s when I got really uncomfortable.. its like people thinking ‘is she mad.. is she really going to buy those things??’. Guess what? She had actually convinced me to buy a sun block.. but I am so sorry.. she lost it at the last moment.. she really got desperate to sell it off and said ‘ I think u have lil ‘pigmentation’ on your cheeks… u know cheap products can do that.. would u like to see it ..i have a hand mirror’….. … that’s was it… highly embarrassing … felt like telling her.. 'NO I dont want to see my pigmentation in front of fifteen people and ….. fuck your mirror.. and fuck your cream.. !' I instead left with a polite ‘no thanks’! However, it was good because I spent a good 15 minutes there…. and also dint buy anything…!
But instead.. bought ‘chooran’ and supaari’…. Cant believe it?? I mean I don’t even eat chooran and supari…!!
Looked around and bargained for all sort of things that I was not planning to buy like jewellery and carpets and furniture..!
Finally, saw a curtain shop … and I learnt that there are 2 kinds of curtains ‘window curtains’ and ‘door curtains’, which was very interesting.. I thought there’s a standard curtain and u just cut the length according to the requirements..Anyway, the guy who was showing around …was more like a boy … so the conversation I had with him went something like this:
Me: How much is this window curtain?
Boy: one pipty maydum
Me: whats the measurement?
Boy: maydum, 6 peet by 4 peet.
Me: and this one?
Boy: this is daurr curtain maydum.. 7.5 peet by 5.5 peet…
Me: and the price ?
Boy: two pipty maydum
Me: and this ?
Boy: this is the bindow curtain
Me: how much?
Boy: one pipty maydum
Me: what is the measurement?
Boy: maydum, 6 peet by 4 peet.
Me: and this one?
Boy: this is door curtain maydum.
Me: how much?
Boy: two pipty maydum
Me: what is the measurement?
Boy: 7.5 peet by 5.5 peet
Me: and this one?
Boy ( seemingly irritated now): it is a bindow curtain
Me: oh. How..
Boy: twopipty
( he dropped the ‘maydum’ )
….and so I kept altering between a door and window curtains and changed the order of questions.. I wasalmost having a good time annoying the guy.. !! Sadistic pleasures ! Had to leave coz he started attended the prospective buyers instead of pests like me!
Decided to get into a book shop before i bought somthing stupid again… bought ‘one hundred years of solitude’ (please note how the title almost fits the situation!!)
Then I had nothing to do but to walk really really slowly back to my hotel. people who know me will know that for me, it’s a very painful thing to walk really slow coz my normal speed of walking is faster than most of the ppl! Or so I have been told on various occasions by various ppl!!
Then, I happened to see an ATM and thought ‘… wow… some more time can be killed here for sure…’ so I stopped by and waited in the queue… for the first time I was grateful for the queue!! Man….. what boredom can do to u??
Once inside.. I checked my balance… got a mini statement… withdrew 1000 bucks in 2 transcations of 500 bucks each!! .. then stood there for some more time.. putting in the cash in my purse and looking the transaction slip… pretending to calculate something..! Was beginning to look suspicious..so I left and walked real real slow to the hotel and I was back in the room at 6:30..(waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!) Only 2.5 hours spent out of 12 fucking hours!!
I was about to light up a cigarette, thought i jot this thing down first…and ladies and gentlemen..It is my pleasure to announce that its almost 8:30 by god’s grace :D!
Maybe now will watch some TV and then order food. Hmmm..another good activity to kill time.. Food..!
Till next time!
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