Saturday, September 27, 2008

Looking Sleepy Dude!

Monday mornings and that's the first thing I hear as I walk in to my team bay area. Reach the cafeteria, and more on the same lines follow...Turns out this is becoming a refrain every working day of the week! "Looking sleepy!" "Hello, are you sleepwalking?" "Did you sleep in the cab?" followed by "...Your eyes look half-closed!"

Why should it matter???

Maybe it's supposed to be a north Indian greeting on the lines of "My, you look tired today!" People don't realize it's as rude as telling someone they are looking fat!

Last time I heard "Looking sleepy!" I retorted, "My! And you look astonished!" Laughter.
I said, "I think it's racist to tell a person of Asian stock that they look sleepy just because they have smaller eyes. How would you like it if I told you that you look astonished all the time because your eyes are so big/wide?" That person got the point.

1 down. How many more to go?

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Grammar agony

How do you like "everybody have done this" ?
@@?? Everybody have??!!***??

And how do you like, "I complete an year at my workplace today" or "My daughter is an year old"? An year??? Looks like someone mistook year for ear...hilarious! Next time don't be surprised if someone says "my an-year-old daughter has a ear-ache"!!!

Monday, September 8, 2008

Mosaic...



Copped NS's idea of creating a mosaic...

1. let the pilgrims and indians live together in peace and harmony, 2. Feeling spicy..., 3. bless, 4. Like the Sphinx, 5. i can taste summer! a.k.a. childhood summer! a.k.a. childhood reminiscence! a.k.a. those were the good times!, 6. The Trifid Nebula, 7. just pretty, 8. Meeting the pregnant princess of the forest, 9. Meitei Traditional Dress

Nostalgia

This picture is from Ningngol Chakkouba last year: sometime in November it was. The festival itself is a lot like Bhai Dooj celebrated in north India. In the Manipuri version, married daughters are invited for a grand luncheon and showered with gifts. Post lunch, they bask in the afternoon sun, have paan, and catch up with their moms and aunts. Children have a gala time of course...

I miss the days I used to go to my Grandmother's place with Mama. Now that I am no longer a kid, I don't feel like tagging along when she visits her maternal home and I would really prefer to stay at home to meet my paternal aunts and cousins. Still, those were the days...Papa would drop us brothers and sisters there on his green scooter. It was a Lamby (or Lambretta) and really huge and noisy...I being the eldest used to ride pillion while my brother would stand in front. We'd take a lot of fruit and snacks with us for our Grandmother...except that she'd usually distribute them among all her grandchildren rather than having them herself. We'd get to meet and play with our cousins whom we don't meet otherwise, so it used to be a lot of fun. Post lunch, when they distributed gifts to Mama and her sisters, all of us cousins too would get a "dokhina" of INR 10.00 (a lot of money to a 5 year old in the 80s) from all the uncles. The fact that my mom had a lot of male cousins ensured that we at least got INR 30.00 each. And then we'd splurge on Parle Poppins candy...and greeting cards for Christmas...what fun. Sigh. Life was so simple then....