Elvis's night out

Hurtling along at shattering speeds of eighty kilometers per hour,and no they wouldn’t shatter anything along the way,its just my jalopy kind of shudders at speeds above this divine threshold.

So shattering elvis’s(my ride) peace, yet taking care of my testy yet reliable drive,and my hosts warm spread which awaited we shuddered along,

As we turned up at the gate,grimy may I add,it had the protesting looks of a sullen piece left out in the rain rolled in mud in defiance kind of look,I had managed to clean his looking glass,but the rest of his Armour well still hid its shine behind the camouflage of brown dust.

So suspiciously eyeing Elvis the guard at the gate approached with his register in hand gingerly,trying to peer in to identify me.

I helpfully pulled down the window, and looked innocently as I could at his slim frame pouring all it had into that register trying to get elvis ‘s number yet avoid any contact with his being, like a compliable citizen I provided my details.And requested for the gates to open to accommodate me and my drive.the gates however remained firmly shut.

I tried the visitors parking card,which was reported to me full,making me feel like I was standing in a blockbuster movie line and the counter just shut in my face.Sigh!

Maybe it was full maybe it wasn’t so I sat awhile and beseechingly again looked at him made him my dearest relative’bhaiya’,usually a card that familiarizes the males in our society with supersonic speed,germinating in them a desire to come to your rescue.

Alas My ‘Bhaiya’ Card flopped ,maybe he had already germinated in his chivalirity,and gotten over with it in the face of over utilization of the term.whichever was the case he smilingly covered the refusal of space for elvis by pointing us in a direction that was just across the road.

My ‘abla naari’ card (defenseless woman),though delivered with a smile and the pointed fact that how will I walk across that great unsafe road alone at night when I do want to drive back,outside the safety of the gate?

A question which actually triggered his protective instincts.No,not enough to open the pearly gates for me,but to provide me manly shelter in my trek across the road at night.

So as we had forwarded ourselves to line the gate ,we smoothly(please note smoothly) peeled back,(hearing reassurances that were a space to fall vacant elvis would be first in they would call) and went sulkingly to stand behind an exceedingly ugly opel.Away from all the BMW’s parked inside the gate whom elvis would have done well to interact with.however now my stomach was leading me on.

Flowers in hand and again helpless where to go ‘abla naari’ question at the gate,I announced my arrival.

There are some men who brag and some men who brag some more.while popping into various groups and listening in on enlightening conversations,in some where the enlightened men were discussing the future trends of property and the next and more interesting group who were discussing Ferraris,Now for elvis’s sake I should know the latest in the field so we parked our feet in that group.in the we is included me and my lively glass.

The gentlemen who was lead bragger in the group happened to be one of my friend’s husband,and having been protestingly dragged to this party he had decided that tales about his latest acquisition(actually I do love that car) audi Q7 ,will light up fires of jealousy in all present quenching his desires, as he himself is always alchohol free.sealing his presence in jealousy,

But I do love trying to wrestle an invitation to drive it out of him,actually at the present stage I have been walled off at the’ may I sit in your car ?’stage.but there is still hope,in the bleak distant future.I grin at the mere thought of feeling the airconditioning blast and curving my hands on its steering.

I still love you Elvis all these commando drops in conversations are so I can drive you better.

The air circling in the group was being breathed in with a doze of how the audi found parking inside the pearly gates.(did I mention these people arrived almost as my Cinderella hour was up? so My ‘bhaiya’ had not delivered.)

There was an outraged cry by all present,actually it may just have been me,making up in volume for the rest of the group.

My chagrin was announced and allayed by tales of money shifting hands.

So not only had the smooth talker blinded my ‘bhaiyas’ with the scrubbed clean by servants at home exterior of his nameless audi,but they were also taped shut by the note that miraculously lined their hands,and automatically motioned them into opening the gates.I can just imagine a smart salute thrown in.I was officially upset that I decided to enroll my friends husband to escort me back,to elvis rather than depend on the money eating guards.

I sometimes wonder how our country could be a porous sponge.held up my money that seeps in from all angles,seeping into the system,clearing an individual path,forming a monetary core that is fragile susceptible to outside rain and yet inflatable like hay when dry and crackling,still inflammable.

The lining of our (pockets) core has become so intrinsic to the functioning and identity of our nation as whole that were it to be vacuumed and cleaned out it would leave a hollow space,and we may just implode or if we don’t ,then we leave ourselves vulnerable to some other kind of filling.

This is our identity,inflammable. And only a leap of faith for total transformation by all ‘bhaiyas’ and ‘behans’(sisters) together ,a desire for all to sit inside the pearly gates ,simultaneously would make a change possible otherwise if it isn’t synchronous we may all land in different places,leaving the fabric of our country irreparably torn.

But for a nation like our mini elephant to be synchronous, needs a common motivation,a spark of which was ignited by the AAM aadmi party,but a spark is not enough to launch a nation into action let alone reformatory action.especially an unstable spark that flickers.

Now what that spark would be I know not the last effective one that smouldered the nation was ‘azadi’

But political reasons aside, me and Elvis still on date were found on the poorer side of the capitalistic fence.

Maybe had I taken time out to clean Elvis,I wonder. But in my job list priority was an hour long bath followed by an equally important hour long beautifying rituals followed by a mad dash to the flower shop leaving precious little time other than clean his glasses.

So in my optimistic Avatar, as I cannot change the register holding guards mind with my wand,and I am definitely not changing elvis for the boasters q7(Ok maybe trade for a week I could be convinced to do)what I can wave magic into, is my schedule and find time to spruce up elvis’s act and hope for the best.

(I shall also in the mean time practice more emotionally moving dialogues that attack the mind and pierce the heart,If I'm to be a lone forager I’d better carry my deadliest skills in a soft glance of helplessness)

NATURAL TOX

There can be no eyes that are more penetrating or judgemental like when you’re under scrutiny sitting hot in the parent trap.

Their hexa status bespectacled by the rims that survey the world with squints without their glinting presence, is no hindrance in their x-ray vision that surveys in surprise their genetic product who has somehow toddled off into the world and is ungainly in their existence without their touch.

So begins the examination that led to the conclusion that I have acne due to stress.Stress a word that somehow my parents find  answers to all health issues,a magical diagnosis that doctors could well heed to.Your skin is dry,comes a wry observation as,or the dark circles around your eyes,become a scarring comment,that makes you run for lemon,if a cucumber has already not been placed on my eyes,i.e.

Which brings me to the point that I should introduce my famous parents of the previous para fame.they come as a team,father and mother diagnostics,function as a dual observatory but the healing is in the hands of my mother who in her recently developed google world,has added cinnamon and aloe vera to co exist with my child hood memories of trying to make faces under a mask of gramflour and yoghurt.The same mixture was first scrubbed on me to the musical score of a crow taking away all dirties ,which were addressed in my innocent childhood as ‘chee ,chee’.

Needless to say that my skin under such expert guidance and scrutiny bore no pimply fruits during my teenage years as my father put me on a only soap and oil diet.sans chemicals my vocal protests against demands for creams and nail polishes met with a firewall,but my skin gleamed.

If you practice a thing regularly for three weeks it becomes a habit,if you practice it over decades it pores into your genes,so making faces through gram flour still brings me joy,cracking eggs expertly removing the yolk lining my neck with a newspaper that is torn just so,to apply the mask in my hair,and protect my clothes is an expert application that I have mastered,still it makes me the most revolting thing on two feet within a thirty meter radius,but the joy in me while picking that egg,and the sight of me looking like one with my hair jammed together in a concentric crown of egg yolk cement may just put the neighbours running inside,but I get away, because though I may shy away from henna(having experimented with its colorful delights too though,how could I resist!)the whole country is pretty tolerant to egg heads courtesy seeing generations of hennaed mops.

I may not be orangy but patriotic to the core and as the nation does so does me,with variation. im not alone in my desire for natural cures,I have placed mine directly onto my parents feet,as I inadequately tried to explain my conditioning before.

But my experiments are sometimes to the extremes,

socially speaking banana is a fruit for the skin that works inside out best,but if you were to test the adhesive skills of banana I could probably write you a PHD,one day I decided in a way to benefit my skin I should probably apply a layer all over my body and then scrape it off,idea simple on the paper of my mind but execution got sticky,literally.

But I slip sometimes safe in the fact that I'm incharge of an obedient ward,being my skin,

But the bespectacled lookers don’t miss a hairline crack so recently noted was the dryness of my skin and the acne that surrounds it.

It was surprising when eruptions emerged victorious at last, after years of suppression,seeing me become  best friends with lacto calamine,I was also at this stage flooded by my parents and friends fueled respectively by their hereditary knowledge at the solution that lies behind,I shed off the medical pills and lotions suggestions , having a tendency to naturally avoid anything artificial.

Usually in my kitchen everything edible has by now found a way onto my face tomatoes,potatoes,rose water,aloe vera measured in kilograms( I draw a line at eating it though,but to admit I'm secretly willing to try it too)and of course the faithful gram flour.

And now in this crisis I drew on my ever present faithful ingredients.

In all this one cure stood out the seller was a very coaxing and believable saleswoman,she is the same age,(which makes her more believable somehow)she had all the right words I have never had it all my life and even the odd  one would vanish in the face of her pasty cure and most convincing of all its easy to make.deal sealed. ingredients : juice of ginger mint and tulsi leaves.Im on the job pronto.

But as is the slip between the cup and the lip,as is me in motivation from the desire to the actual ingredient lid.

I reduced them to two because of lack of sourcing and then finally one due to sheer laziness at plucking so what remained was ginger.

.

Do you know in me Is also a desire for instant results,so I apply it to my skin ,and have to curb my want to run to the mirror,just to see if any benefit has transpired in a nano second,I control the urge under my adult veneer, though I do walk extremely close by one as I go on my travels later to the land of kitchen or washroom I figure out a mirror in each path.bowing to my child within.

All hands on deck,I applied the paste .what I wasn’t prepared was for the seeping in of the ginger leaving a burning blaze in its wake. My skin was on fire and as I sat in front of the tele trying to wish it away.

My mind hypnotically turning the thought,it will go away,its only natural,no side effects,but these thoughts are along with a niggle of , 'Is it?maybe the other ingredients were the scale balancers',and ' I shouldn't do the one woman army decisions of removing ingredients at will.'

In my eagerness for results I had not even googled whether it was good for the skin or not.I had just believed the advertiser and marched on to the mortar and pestle.

I mean it was all good for tea,I love grinding the ginger and getting the juices to soak into the water along with the tea.but skin I wasn’t really sure so sitting there with a burning face I realized I may have been a tiny bit hasty.

When the ginger did get propped up on my google screen eventually,it was a validatory vision.

And when I read the affirming word my heart did a little jig,it was like life long applications had suddenly seen the light of technological approval.they were in cyberspace floating like a fact amongst the million others but it was there,my fact.and it was correct.

So I went to the fridge and pulled out some more and applied

As i wrap this up ,Im still not the glowing beauty but  a faithful follower still.

 By the time I write again I will be drowned by drinking water,caked in bananas chlorophylled by tulsi,fumigated by turmeric,baked in a steam room ,crushed under tomatoes and burnt by ginger.

Are you listening mumma?Im a hopeless convert,by choice and conditioning.You can rest your x-ray machine I have turned into a self diagnosed naturo-path lab assistant.

Till my next post,may the egg smell I write with leave you with my gooseberry oil,smearing forever by its stingy fruity smell and singeing your memory by my signature‘natural ‘goodness. Even google says so.