I cleaned, hooked up with Jai, entertained my relatives, broke my spectacles after nearly tearing up my lenses, missed going out to meet Lavy, went out to book fair, bought some ‘unusual’ books. All this in the 2 days reserved for lazing and more lazing!!
Read on.
These afore mentioned activities either rarely occur individually or never happen at all.
First and foremost, I cleaned up the house. My parents nearly had heart attacks and my sister was struck dumb (ah..those few moments of peace) because of this, so I have decided to forego the opportunity to repeat this act again. Sacrifice for the family. That is my motto.
Why did I clean? Jai came over with her mom. Havent seen Jai in more than 2 years. I was so glad to receive her that I would have even gone on to the extent of cooking myself, but she wisely declined a potential health hazard, for I am all good intentions but I am no Yan (who can cook…remember the cheerful Chinese guy who used to chop things really fast?).
She had some great presents for me- a collector’s Library Edition of ‘Pride and Prejudice’
And the eternal favorites- chocolates!!
We talked like we’ve seen each other a lot, more about the current life and related topics. "Remember when we were…..” sort of reminiscences are usually associated with meeting friends made in school, a healthy dose of which serves to revive some pleasant moments, but if that is the sole sentence starter it means the people have out-grown each other and are just clinging to nostalgia. We, however, are still relevant to each other; we do interact regularly even though I am still India-bound. Jai Internet!!
Appa took me to their temp place of stay so we could talk some more. Which we did at length, and that is a nice experience.
Sunday dawned, I was looking forward to Lavy’s call as she landed in Chennai from the land of rasogullas on her way to her native to spend some days with her family. She called at noon and we made plans to meet in the evening. That plan was thwarted by the unfortunate tendency of my glasses to escape the confines of my spectacles frame which snapped a joint open. I was left blind. [my lens had been damaged the day before as the result of an accident concerning it falling on the ground ]
By the time my father got the errant spectacles corrected by the optician, she was well on her way to her home. Hopefully, I’ll get to meet her before she flies back to the land of gangully worshippers.
My vision was restored in time to make it to the book fair that evening. I enjoyed browsing the second hand pavement shops that thronged the outer boundaries of the fair grounds than the main exhibition itself mainly due to the variety, topics of interest and a point to consider – I could afford those.
Also, I stretched my boundaries by procuring, in good condition, A james bond novel [Gold Finger, I am sure it will be a novel experience] , 1984 [need anything be said? ], a collection of short stories picked by Alfred hitch cock [Sis’s pick, she seemed unhappy with that later], a self-help book [I’m ok, You’re OK. Really??] , the 3rd book of the Blade Runner series[I’ve only seen the movie and never knew of the books] and Ramana Maharishi’s very brief answers to “Who am I?”[that doesn’t come under fiction though].
The pavement book gods assured my sister of a ‘Prodigal Daughter’ in good condition in a few days time, so I think I will be going back there to uncover more treasures.
The weekend rounded off with watching ‘meet the fockers’- a really bad advice. You definitely don’t want to meet the burnses or the fockers. Ever.
Apoorv just gave me a very bright idea. Think I’ll just go with it.
Change is my middle name,
Rain
