Now there's more than 50! More than 50 pick-me-uppers!

And Paul McCartney sang a song, I could (if I could) sing now...
"I'll get by with a little help from my friends.."

( I was wrong! Ringo Starr sang this - aptly corrected by Ravi. Thanks Ravi!)

So here they are - the more-than-fifty!
With contributions from Nishant, Roopal, Praveen, Baku, Naresh and Parveen!
Thanks guys! Much appreciated.
 Friends are definitely a great upper upper!

(I will not elaborate on these!. It's just what it is ..a list!)

50 quick pick-me-uppers

1.       Have a hair cut

2.       Read a book

3.       Reread a book you’ve like

4.       Buy a book

5.       Get a friend a gift

6.       Take a 30 minute holiday

7.       Plan a holiday

8.       Go for a massage

9.       Go for a spa appointment

10.   Indulge in chocolate

11.   Drink one glass of wine over one hour

12.   Go for a walk

13.   Look at the sky

14.   Observe a tree in detail

15.   Don’t speak for an hour

16.   Meditate for 20 minutes

17.   Start a new hobby

18.   Plan to start a new hobby

19.   Shop for something you’ll never use

20.   Revisit old photographs

21.   Revisit old memories

22.   Call a friend you’ve not spoken to in a long time

23.   Write a postcard to someone you don’t know

24.   Donate to a charity

25.   Connect with a neighbor

26.   Reconnect with a neighbor

27.   Watch a film alone

28.   Take a picture that tells a story

29.   Write a story that creates a picture

30.   Read an old poem you love

31.   Revisit a quote you love

32.   Go to a coffee shop alone.

33.   Tip a security guard an insane amount

34.   Ask the office janitor his name, write it down

35.   Find out which ice-cream the person sitting next to you likes

36.   Get your immediate neighbor their favourite ice-cream

37.   Read a book/story you loved as a child

38.   Count the number of trees around where you live or where you work

39.   Listen to a song you like. Listen to it again. And again.

40.   Rearrange the furniture in your room

41.   Revisit the lyrics of a song you like. Decipher them

42.    Indulge in colony gossip (Thanks Roopal!)

43.  Get the whole family together! The extended family but all blood relatives - Mama, Chacha, Bua... (Thanks again Roopal... this is scary but worth trying!)

44. Write a blog on how you feel (Thanks Nishant, after number 44, this should do you good!)

45. Music (Thanks Praveen. I suppose any kind of music. Whatever floats your boat, right? )

46. Retail therapy! I agree... nothing like shopping -even if it's just window shopping- to lift up those flagging spirits! (Thanks heaps Kamal. I'll even send you the bills!)

47 Corny pop songs from The 80s

48. Food, food, food

49. Shoes, shoes shoes (Thanks Baku, for all 47, 48 & 49 - my favourite! Am so off to DSW right now!)

50. Watch a funny flick like "my cousin vinny" or "angoor" or even AFV 

51. Forgive and connect , reach out to the friend you know needs you but is awkward to ask

52. Try on a lip colour like a deep red or fuschia pink (Parveen thanks so much for 50-52 - am sure Maybelline or Lancome will be happy to sponsor us on #52! Hahaha)

53. Getting acknowledged for little things

54. Being pampered for major accomplishments (after a significant time lapse of the said accomplishment)

55. Meeting an old friend that you can just hang around with

56. Drives - long peaceful drives - not sure how one can do that in Bombay any more, but we sure can do this here in Toronto.

57. Watching a good comedy (Thank you Naresh - all good... and yes peaceful drives in Mumbai are sometimes possible at 3 am on a good day!

So there you are... take your pick from my list or the contributed list.. and it isn't over yet... keep it coming!

Should I even say "Cheers"? I'm feeling better already! (See #44)

A post for posterity

Not all Facebook posts need to be 'shared'. But once in a while you do want a post for posterity!

And this one sure is one of them.

As it slips by my timeline and yours, I'd like to keep it here, on a cloud, for a long long time.

This appeared on my timeline.

To this my comment was "I wonder where they'll put me :("

To which I got the answer that is the mother of all answers. From none other than my daughter.

Niyati Bharucha (says):

Here are their options:
Classical: Because you are truly quite classic, and classy
House: Because you'd rather be at home than anywhere else
Heavy Metal: Because of all the awards you've won
Indie: Because you're Indian Rap: Because that's what you'd give someone, in verbal form, if they pissed you off
Here are genres they CAN'T EVER USE:
Chillout: I'm not even saying why
Dubstep: Because you'll fall right over it
Hip Hop: Because you can do the hip, but the problem lies in the hop!
Hardcore: Let's face it, you're too logical and practical to be mindlessly extreme when it comes to anything.
There you go. Your music-meets-words analysis. Please notice: there's a pun in every one.

Thanks Niyati. You do me proud.

That's it, folks.
I rest my case.

Music for the mind

A familiar song plays in the distance and instead of the words coming to my mind, what hovers large is the memory of a friend. And it’s not as if it’s a song that the friend and I have shared. It’s some random association with the friend. Sometimes it’s a word. A sentence. A tune. Sometimes even an accent.

For instance, for that friend in the UK, it’s a song that has a nasal twang. It’s not as if the song or the words have any significance. But every time I hear that song I think of this particular friend.

Then there’s a CD I bought on one of my memorable holidays. As soon the first notes of the first song play I am transported there… my mind is on a holiday… Happy days!

And of course who does not associate at least one Hindi movie song with a friend. Years ago in school, my friend and I were given a task by her mother: to take her younger brother for a popular Hindi movie running full houses at that time. Pseudo-intellectuals that we were at that time, we decided that since we did not want to watch the movie but it was mandatory, we’d have our fun by singing the chorus in the songs aloud. That we embarrassed little brother was one thing, but somehow the song stuck in my head and being one of those eternally hit songs of the Hindi filmdom, every time I hear the strains of that song being played I think of my friend and her brother.

Then there is this song which reminds me of my son. Funny story there. I heard it on a cd he had recorded for himself and played in the car while I was driving. I asked him to record it for me too. He stubbornly refused. Why? I asked. The reason was somewhat logical in its eccentricity. He said that he and I were not supposed to like the same music, because then where was the generation gap! Well, really! (I now call it the Generation Gap song!)

I once wrote about a song that I heard similarly on my car CD player. My daughter was so proud I actually wrote about an alternative rock song that it gave her bragging rights in her peer group. Her friends looked at me with renewed interest and greater respect and bemoaned the fact that their mothers would not even think of hearing that song. I smiled. That song, you are right, is now inextricably linked to my daughter.

And so it goes on. One never knows when a new association will crop up. And then, song, note, tune, language, accent, meaning… all get inextricably entwined with memories, feelings, people – still around and long gone. And even when the last note of the song dies down and I can’t hear it anymore, that music continues playing on the chords of my mind.
Isn’t music as much for the heart as it is for the mind?

Understanding metal

Strange isn’t it? Here I am talking about quakes and there I am on Saturday at a rock concert! Great Indian Rock. Is it called a concert? (I have to keep up with new terminology!) Gig? Yes, it’s a gig. (I may be wrong in which case one of the die-hard death metal fans will correct me.)
So getting back to the show. I had a reason to be there. But didn’t want to stand out like a sore thumb. I upped the average age of the audience manifold simply by entering that place!

For those dinos who’ve not been to a metal show before, hang on. Clear instructions follow.
Try and look young.
Wear a black T shirt and blue jeans. That’s the non-conformist way to dress. The beauty is everyone, but everyone, dresses like that. (Must be a sign of teenage rebellion, but I’m not complaining)
As soon as you get there start jerking your head. It’s called head banging… (Against an imaginary wall, I suppose, but no one told me that).
And don’t, for heaven’s sake, display your ignorance by going close to the mosh pit. (What’s that? I’ll come to that later!)
The show was good. The part of it that I watched (Bhayanak Maut) was very good. It was good for two clear reasons. Maybe three. One, I knew all those up on stage. Second, I could even go backstage and see them up close and personal without my distance glasses. Brownie points there. And third, these guys ‘commanded’ a huge audience. There was some kind of palpable elation from the time they went on stage. That’s even before they said their first four-letter word or banged out the first note. That’s some standing!

The ‘rock-on’ sign held high, the band went on to belt out ‘metal’ to a high quality ‘moshing’ audience.
Now about the mosh pit. Once again, for the Neanderthals, it’s that area near the stage where the most avid fans hang out. Only here they don’t hang out… they really hang by a thread. I can’t refer to them as anything but ‘beings’.

Heads jerk back and forth in a frenzy. Sometimes a head spins… whipping long locks of hair in a circle. Then the head-banging, hair-spinning being begins to move in a somewhat random fashion. Backwards. Forwards. Sideways. The attitude is the same as what Brooke Shields had proclaimed about her Calvin Klein jeans way back in the eighties, “Nothing comes between me and my Calvin Kleins”. Here is the metal being. Nothing, he believes, nothing can come between him and his enjoyment of this genre of music. But to my logical mind there lies the problem. Because there are several other beings there thinking the same thing. And they clash. These black-metal-band-T-shirt-blue-jean-clad beings with long hair and necks that risk whiplash injury any moment, clash-crash-bang into each other. As soon as their favourite band goes upstage, the mosh pit comes alive. Hands rise up in the air with the rock on sign. And the activity if it can legitimately be called that begins.

That evening, the mosh pit was somewhat subdued when we entered. Almost not there. And then, as the band went on stage, all hell broke loose. The mosh pit came alive. Grew in size and stature. Threw up a huge cloud of dust. Conscientious moshers saw to it that they grimly fed the cloud right through the entire thirty minutes that the band played. “Don’t let the dust settle on this” our parents often advise. These guys were not giving up now. Wow, I think watching from a safe distance, who said the youth was rebellious and didn’t listen to the older generation.

But back to the show. I stood there wondering what kept these guys going. My maternal instinct worried about bodily harm coming to the moshers. Somewhere the self-proclaimed psychologist in me told me that it was good they were working out their pent-up aggression. What’s a fractured arm or two in the pursuit of mental stability through death metal?

But what, really, what about the music brought these guys here, time after time. I looked at my feet and they were tapping. Wrong move, I realized. It wasn’t quite the thing to do. Several decibels later and well after both my ears were ringing (is that why it’s called metal?) the band bowed off stage against requests for more. We left too. And as I drove back home in silence I realized what I had missed. This was not music you danced to, or music you tapped your feet to. This was music you listened to in your head, with your head. I shuddered with the realization. Quake time folks!