Blogs

I saw red.

Red as in red light.

It stared at me unblinking. Obedient to a fault, I stopped my car. Conscious of the new rules for driving to save petrol, I switched my engine off.

A persistent honking was happening behind my car. Loud and insistent, as an impatient bus driver tried to make me move on with the sheer force of his blast.

I wondered quickly if I was blocking his way... to a right turn. I was not.

This afternoon, in a ladies' room. Two hot shot career girls are discussing their career moves, and I cannot but overhear, as I stand waiting my turn at the tap, the 'he saids' and 'she saids' and 'i saids.'

Girl one, in pink top and jeans, and very nice hair, turns on the tap. Full. The reaches for the apology of a soap solution that most loos have. The tap water flows full, as ordered.

The other girl, and i reach out almost at the same time to turn the tap off. The other girl, in black, plump and well oiled hair, manages to get to the tap first and turns off the water.

On Tuesday, giant bag of popcorn balanced on my lap, I watched Australia. The movie.

The popcorn was splendid, the movie, even better. In fact, though I love my popcorn, there were points in the movie when the constant traffic between hand and mouth came to a sudden halt as I was swept by what I was seeing.

The story itself is pretty simple, love, adventure, the underdog, (a beautiful Nichole Kidman and a very rugged High Jackman) scoring against the top dog… and a touch of aboriginal magic made for great viewing. But what stole the scene for me, was the backdrop of the scenes, the vast canvas of Australia itself.

Traffic laws must be brought up to date

As a driver who drives back every evening to Bhandup, I have learnt some survival tactics.

One is to keep calm, and not let myself get hit by road rage, which is a common danger when I see the impunity with which the rules of the road are bent.

I usually play soothing music so that I am not in a ‘let’s get there as fast as I can mood’, and ensure that the music is engrossing enough to ensure I do not let the delays stress me out.

I think someone said she was about 24 . Pretty, ‘very sweet’, ‘nice’, quite ‘new to the office’ were other words used to describe her.

I heard about her disappearance at a party. ‘We are so worried,’ one of the other invitees, a fellow journalist told me , “ she left office and has been missing for 5 hours now”.

Obviously this girl, a new recruit to the organisation, much liked by her colleagues, had left work on her two-wheeler. And clean disappeared.