I is back.

You thought you'd keep me away from my blog for long? Huh!

I spent an entire evening wallowing like a buffalo in waves of self pity. Then I made a fabulous dinner and the husband smiled at me and I felt happy again.

The next day I was back at work and telling myself not to waste another evening like that. Because that is just stupid and imagine how much work I would have got done instead of watching television like a retard.

So anyway, I is back. And working again. :P to moping around.

Crash and learn

Cannot describe the pain and the shock of having something you created thrown back in your face because it was no good.

Not going to talk for a while now. Major rethink about life and chosen route coming up.

Huh!

These days, I'm counting the days of the week as per the husband's weekly off.

These days I'm beginning to think I've outsmarted my sleep deficit.

These days I'm writing a lot and reading much more. That makes me really happy.

These days I'm nursing a husband who's a bit unwell.

These days I'm not cooking too much. That's not good.

These days I've started checking my e-mail thrice a day. I used to do it once in two days.

These days I'm not going anywhere and there are accusations of me trying to be exclusive and all. Whatever.

These days I try and be patient but man, it's hard.

These days I try to be more useful but that's harder than anything else.

These days I find I've blanked out most of this year from my head. That way, I'm a bit fuzzy on details but at least I'm less grumpy.

Me Ice Maiden. You?

The husband has been bugging the life out of me since Friday. Absolutely. He's been badgering me about how ill he feels (in direct proportion to how ill the rest of the city and Pune are with the swine flu yadda yadda) and how there is a strange pain that seems to be on a stroll on his insides. "First it goes up my right leg," the husband shows, pointing to the offending appendage, as if I confused it with an ear or something. "Then it comes to my tummy. Then it goes down my other leg."

I preserved my calm and ranted only once to nobody in particular. Didn't even lock him in the loo, honest. Am a good girl and a great wife.

Then this morning he wakes up flushed and looking a bit ill and sneezing all over the place like nobody's business. He tells me he was briefly up at 4 am because he couldn't breathe, then quickly said it was probably the mosquito coil on seeing the look on my face. After the sneezes, he said his throat was all tickly (dude, if it tickles, laugh.) and that he felt a fever coming on. And for the first time in my life I stopped being the skeptic and decided to get him some medication.

Mind you, I could have gone "Fuck! FUCK!" with the thought that the swine flu was in my house. But no. I is Ice Maiden.

So we got ayurvedic medicines for both of us, took our doses twice a day as prescribed and he's back to being a bouncing baby. As for me, I cleaned out the house thoroughly and disinfected it and am just resting my butt after an evening of making the home germ-free.

So what did you do all day?

HeeheeheeHEE!

I have looked at the e-mail for fifteen whole minutes just to gloat.

Even if nothing transpires, at least I will have the satisfaction of knowing that I sparked off some interest. Now if only I hadn't been so hasty about the other matter.

Hmm. (goes back to gloating over e-mail.)

Detached at last

Sometimes I come out from writing and am amazed at another world going on out there, without me. Sometimes I catch up, other times I simply let the world go on.

There is nothing more important than losing oneself in work. There is nothing more fulfilling. Nothing more lonely.

And yet, I chose this life. I chose to stay away. And I will. Just until the world starts moving again and I decide to catch up.

THIS is why I drift

After a long, really long time, I did a story that made me think and learn.

I knew something like sperm banks exist, somewhere in the world and that men go there to give 'samples' in plastic containers that are coded and tagged and the man goes out with money in his pocket. I'd also heard that to aid ejaculation, the clinic in question supplies donors and depositors with dirty magazines or lets them watch porn and hangs pictures of nude women on the walls.

What I didn't know was that beneath the seeming flippancy of it all, sperm collection and preservation is a tricky business. Dilip Patil is doing it well at Mulund, and he says he gets about 8 to 10 donors every day. That's a big number for any city in India, not just Mumbai. And is the remuneration the only reason? Not so, says Patil. "For a collegian, yes, Rs 500 per sample is good enough to watch a movie and have a pizza. But we have the vice president of a shipping company who is an approved donor with us, and surely the money is not an incentive for him."

Patil says that most come with the idea of helping an unknown couple, somewhere in the city or beyond, conceive using their sperms after hopeful trying and medicine fails. "It gives them a real kick to know that their sample will help somebody have a child," says Patil, adding that he discourages those looking only for money. "If you're not dedicated to donating for a good cause regularly, we don't want you on board," is Patil's reasoning.

8 to 10 every day? That's great. That's very good. Know more here.

Left and Right for the Centre

Don't know about you, but it seems to me that the Congress doesn't much fancy its own chances this election.

Either that, or the party is looking to dent the Opposition's morale by dropping hints of getting the BJP-led NDA's allies on board. So Rahul Gandhi says "there is a possibility" of getting the JD(U) on board, though Nitish Kumar has thwarted any such overtures with a curt "No thanks." A third possibility is that the Congress can see a near-rout or a close call happening, so being assured of more people joining the party (I mean that figuratively) will make it easier to calculate post-poll equations.

Political analysts say that low voter turnouts in three phases of voting conducted in the country thus far may actually go against the Congress' wishes. Either that, or the Congress will romp home with a majority vote (which would not be such a bad thing; when was the last time we had a majority government?). In Maharashtra, the Shiv Sena-BJP combine is already telling itself that they're getting more seats than their Opposition, and people in the know tend to agree. Yet, this is Indian politics and though it is a game of numbers, it is not pure math.

Rahul is doing well to announce that his party is keeping its options open. That is actually a way to keep your detractors both wondering and working harder still. It also lets fringe players know they have a space to go to after the polls. What I want to know is how the Congress hopes to quickly sew together new alliances in such a small space of time when its old ones crumbled and crashed without the party having even the slightest hint of the state of affairs to come. For all its Grand Old Party yadda yadda, you'd think the Congress was smarter than that.

My middle finger to your apathy

I would ordinarily be thrilled to be proved right this soon and in such a spectacular manner, but this is the election we're talking about and my being right doesn't change one basic fact - the Indian voter SUCKS.

My earlier post reminded you that for all the online activism, we were about to witness a 'traditional' election - with all its pre-poll bribing, booth capturing, small queues in the affluent areas of Mumbai and long queues in the slums, et al. Unfortunately, and this is new for me, I was bang on target when I said that NO PART of your Jaago Res and Vote Indias would really work.

Testimony to this statement are some headlines from across the nation and the world: DNA says that 57% did not come out to vote in Mumbai, the Khaleej Times tells you that 30 villages in Gujarat gave the polls a mass boycott, and Bloomberg blames the heat wave on low voter turnout.

Would it surprise you to know that Mumbai's slums, which form the bulk of the vote for any election, actually voted lesser this time and that compared to other times, more voters came to polling booths from the city's buildings? This is an interesting phenomenon, considering that the actual picture is always the other way around. Does this mean that our politics has finally disenchanted the enthusiastic slum voter?

That is not to say that the middle classes of the country are enchanted by politics. Anywhere in the country in the first three phases of polling, voter turnouts have not exceeded 47 per cent. Democracy, anyone?

Is it just me or does anybody else realise that as a country, we are disenchanted with our politics because we are disconnected with it? Why does anybody, leave alone a host of civic activism campaigns and multimedia advertisements, need to exhort the average Indian to get out there and vote? Why did some educated people not know when Mumbai went to the polls a full 24 hours before polling began? Of what use was a sustained media effort to cover the elections two months in advance, if post-poll headlines would only talk about mass boycotts and heat waves?

Let's not blame the weather or disillusionment for low turnouts. And let's not get off so easily by using fancy terms like 'voter apathy'. To be apathetic, you must know what you're apathetic about. Not voting because you didn't know who to vote for says not as much about your candidates as it does about your own ignorance. We know everything about the Big B in America and his dog Bo, but we don't even know which party Sanjay Nirupam belongs to and have no compunctions in asking who the heck is Nitin Gadkari.

Your indifference has made this country what it is today. And don't let me hear you complain when you go down with it.

What are we paying them for?

The Election Commission of India (ECI) has got to be the most useless body functioning this election. It does not verify candidates' affidavits, sits pretty doing nothing when lapses in affidavits are pointed out, gives idiotic responses like "the EC is not empowered to take legal action" (against said wrong affidavits) and is not legally entrusted with a single tool to take action against erring politicians.

In short, all it is empowered to do, is issue notices, thereby adding to the pile of junk paperwork that is churned out in this country daily. Much like a mother 'admonishing' her child with, "Please don't do that again," when said child has murdered a classmate and set fire to his house, thereby slaying the entire family.

What's more, the EC is shameless enough to admit that it has no statutory powers to do anything. What a bunch of self-important jokers these guys must be.

I spoke with R Ramakrishna, the BJP's media contact for their election cell; he has written to the EC asking for action against Lalu Prasad. Even he knows the EC will sit on its ass and do no more than - what else? - pass a stricture. "Any time you write to the EC, it amounts to a mere registering of protest over a matter. You are certain that the EC will do nothing about it and the case will die there. If you want anything to happen, you have to go through your own PR channels and tap the media to highlight the issue.

Useless, that's what the EC is. Oh, but it does remember to take suo moto cognisance of certain people like Varun Gandhi. That is fair, but what after issuing a notice? How shameful that the EC has no right to 'suggest' that a candidate like Varun Gandhi should not be a candidate in the first place. Since it cannot offer suggestions to parties, parties can pretty much do what they want and tell the EC to go to hell. Which they do.

This is why the BJP went to the EC against Lalu. Not that it matters. Because the EC is useless, anyway.