An Anvi-able Vacation and Beyond

Foreword: It was that time of the year again: time for the week off from work to head home, in search of cooler climes and starry skies, what with the Hyderabad heat and dust. Only, this time, I got more than my money’s worth- a veritable bonanza!

The occasion was the birth of my niece, Anvi, born on the 19^th of March to my sister Vinati and brother-in-law Amit. Accordingly, I reached home to see their bundle of joy, bundled in a baby blanket. She was quite a sight, almost as good looking as I am and showed (rather early) signs of a similar ability at talking. Over all a great kid with an excellent future, what with a mama like me!

Since a lot of relatives and family friends came to pay their respects to Princess Anvi, I was at the receiving end of the rather limited set of questions that they ask. Namely, “How long have you been working?” (Close to four years) “Oh! So, any plans of getting married?” (None, unless Monica Bellucci is asking) “But you would at least have a girl in mind…” (Umm, heard of Groucho Marx? He once refused the membership of an exclusive club saying he didn’t want to belong to any club whose rules were lax enough to admit him. Likewise, I wouldn’t marry any female whose taste in men would permit her to marry me!) “Er..(simper, simper, stutter, stutter) strange…what then?” (Heard of the great Indian Arranged Marriage tradition? I think my parents will be able trick a poor, unsuspecting female into marrying me.) “But what if you aren’t compatible… what if it doesn’t work out the way it should?” (That will be sad, won’t it? But guess whose conscience it will be on!) At this point my interrogator generally gawked at me with an incredulous look on his/her face and trailed off, mumbling something about “all that work pressure getting to the poor souls” and I returned to the succulence of the chicken tikka on my plate.

Other than that (hell, including that) I had a pretty good time, thank you. Of course, this was more than a month and a half ago and since then I’ve been too bloody lazy to write a new post. A lot of concerned readers (I swear I’m not making this up!) have been worried about me and have made polite inquiries (“Is he dead? Did you see the body?”, “Are you sure the aliens abducted him? Can’t imagine why!”, and “Gored to death? Pity…I couldn’t see it.”) To them, I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude for taking the pains to continue visiting my blog and I am sorry that they have had to continue breathing.

Frankly, I’ve not had too many ideas about what to write. You will notice, dear reader, that is not exactly a rare scenario and I seem to go through most of my posts without saying too much of consequence. But not this time! A lack of concrete material has rattled me into not writing. What, then, does it mean for you? More importantly, what does it mean for me? Are my days as one of the world’s foremost bullshitter over? Have I finally decided to mend my ways and merge into the mainstream? Have I completely lost it? Has the phenomenal pool of my talent dried up? The answers, dear concerned reader, are available. So despair not and watch in wide-eyed wonder as I spell out the reason: its gas. I probably had too much of cheese over the past few weeks. But rejoice; now I’m back to eating healthy, fibre-rich food and am ready to spew out nonsense at the slightest provocation. Heck I’m ready to spew it out even without provocation. So watch out!

Damn, it feels good to be back...