Sunday blues!

My threshold of getting bored is alarmingly going down these days. It is worrying almost. So although I desperately look forward to weekends, I dread them equally. There better be a plan in place for the weekend or on Friday evenings I very much feel the same dread as most people feel on Sunday evenings – (see, I told you – this is worrying).

The plus side of this is that somehow I have managed to make a zillion new friends in the past few months. The only 2-3 people I knew outside work have introduced me to several other people they know and so my ‘social circle’ has expanded beyond belief (and frankly, to an extent beyond what I can manage). But, I am not complaining. Just yesterday I met 2 new people through 2 people I knew. Not only got to have some awesome food but a crash-course in Bengali language was also free.

Anyway, it is always better than sitting at home and doing mundane things- like today.

A synopsis:
On all ‘plan-free’ days, I make it a point to wake up as late as I can to shave off some boring hours of the rotten dreadful day, but then, as my luck always evades me, I am almost up and startlingly fresh as early as 8 am (this is seldom so on a day I really need to be startlingly fresh at 8 so I am perky fresh for a meeting at 9 am). Anyway, today was one of the lucky days (thanks to the lousy throat ache I had all night). Just as I had meant to I slept till 11:30 and barely managed to drag myself out of the bed but immediately felt great at this accomplishment.
Another reason I hate not having a plan is having to look at the house and therefore having to clean it. I wish I was one of those “carefree” people who could live in a dump at the excuse of being single.

So I picked up a rag and dusted and then when I am dusting, there is this uncontrollable urge to throw out so many things that are just lying there and not doing anything except demand cleaning every week – for example, my guitar. But I of course cannot – that being the only possession that adds some ‘cool factor’ to my otherwise dull room. So, I cursed my way through some dusting and cleaning.
The idiot box, as it is rightly called, is slowly becoming of one those things I want to throw out. I switched on the television twice and then almost immediately switched it off. It is getting unbearable – from news channels to sports (not that I really see any sports) – there are just commercials with bits of entertainment thrown in.

So, the next best thing is cooking – so I got to that – but I have to muster a lot of enthusiasm to cook when I am cooking only for myself. But this was also an excuse to get rid of so many things I stock up the kitchen with as if I can shop only once in a year. This led to the next thing, which consumes a lot of my ‘free time’- calling up Mom. My parents talk a lot. It is exhausting mentally and lately physically too because my ear starts to get all red and the handset gets all hot etc. I think the pain in my right shoulder lately can be attributed to this. But yes, why it led to calling mum was to ask the recipe – which was hurriedly told in 5 minutes and the rest 40 minutes was telling me to plan a trip soon to Delhi and to whether I am taking my calcium supplements and how I should not come back alone after it gets dark. All of which I replied to in the form of ‘white lies’ otherwise there are endless arguments.

Then comes the toughest part of the day – warding off sleep after the heavy meal. Sleeping on a Sunday afternoon is a strict no-no in my world because then in the night sleep evades me till 3 am in the morning and Monday mornings are more of a bitch than they already are.

So, I began to read a book – not the brightest of ideas to ward off sleep but then it consumes the least energy. After a few pages and heavy eyelids I thought – what the fuck – will take a nap. So, I snoozed off for hardly 30 minutes but woke up feeling like– a friend had put it very aptly- “life is over”. With this ‘life-is-over’ feeling I trudged around for a bit being careful not to go near the balcony lest I jump from there. And almost like a reflex to boredom – started to tidy up - stowed away the trash bin, cleaned up the ash-tray, put away the old newspapers sort of tidying up.
Then, cooked a very “haphazard dinner” – what is that, you may ask? It is when you start out to make something very exotic and turns out to be the worst cooking experiment ever!
The end result was that I had to eat three slices of toasted bread with “bhujiya” - so much for an exotic cooking experiment.
Then, I read the book and realised I just did the whole cycle again – you know the wake up-tidy up-cook- -eat-read cycle.

So, I am breaking this boredom curse by writing this blog.

It is almost 9 pm. I think I should call up folks and bring on some sleep.

How cheap!

Was reading Bill Bryson (Notes from a big country) and came across this

"My father, one of the history's greatest cheapskates, was of the view point that there was no point in spending money on..well on anything really..."

and quite sheepishly, but I admit, it instantly brought flashback like memories from my own childhood.

Just that in the aforementioned sentence, I need to replace the word "father" with "mother".

My father, in fact, has been forced (very unsuccessfully) into being a cheapskate by my mother all of these 34 years they have been married. In a sense that when Papa went grocery shopping and bought even one thing other than that on the shopping list, my mother would throw a fit.

"What will WE do with Tabasco sauce????"

"Now, was there a need for wasting 50 rupees on this? Do you know what all could be bought in those 50 Rupees?”

These were questions that she did not really want answers to, but clearly Papa would not take the hint and tell her what all we could make with the Tabasco sauce and other things he could get in those 50 rupees. So, then it became sort of violent and very disturbing. Mostly, I would feel like going back to the shop and return “the absolutely useless thing” on my father's behalf and if possible get an apology letter from the shopkeeper to be so brash as to sell something so inane as Tabasco to my poor little gullible Papa.

In addition to being a painfully stringent "housemaker", mum being an obsessive lover of her own cooking did not help at all. This pretty much meant she had to compare the food of ALL restaurants in the world to her own food, after which she eventually declared"

a) the restaurant food was just not good enough - too spicy/ too bland/too cold/too stale..

b) it was certainly not worth the money “the scoundrels were charging”.

As if this was not enough to make the rest of us feel bad to choke on our food, this also was followed by her favourite question:

'Do you know in 500 rupees what all I can cook at home?'

My sister and I just rolled our eyes and Papa, as usual, tried to answer her. (Papa!)

And similarly, we would not go to the movies because - yes, you guessed it right - in the price of the tickets, we could watch 3 movies on the VCR. Also, according to her, for the price of one bucket of popcorn she could make 'pakoras' at home for the entire neighbourhood!

And so, home-made/cheap things were always a part and parcel of our lives, second hand books, home-stitched clothes even at weddings and parties – which reminds me - how I wore a frilly-frockish looking red home stitched skirt for the farewell of Class X – when all other girls in my class were dressed in sexy sarees and flowy things! it was more like a class 2 birthday party dress. It did not get better even in class XII – I wore something I had borrowed - that too my sister's friend, I think.

So, when we were kids, most of our lives have revolved around the question

"Do we know what humble homemade mundane things can be done with money that people waste on luxuries (such as tabasco and popcorn)?'

But strangely, the point of all this is not how embarrassing this is to recount or how unfortunate this was – instead, I look back and thank her for putting a lot of “money sense” into our heads.

We turned out to be reasonable ‘savers’ and not shopaholics. We learnt to cook all sorts of lovely food. And we still turn around the label to check the price on everything and weigh in our heads “Do we know what else we could buy in that money that would not seem like a waste”.

So, thank you, Mom – a very annoying childhood can sometimes lead to a financially stable adulthood.