That's one small step for man

Today I'm taking a giant leap. I'm going to upgrade my regular prepaid cellphone account to a billing system. My company pays Rs 800 towards my bill, so I figure it's a win-win situation.
I never even considered getting a bill before. It was always something 'rich people' did, not poor, underpaid students (like I used to be).
I remember when I got my first phone. I had been asking for one for a while, ever since I joined college in fact. These were the days when every Tom, Dick and Harry didn't have a phone, in fact only one of my friends did, and she earned quite a bit by being a dance instructor and a model. So on my 19th birthday, I begged, I pleaded, I whined my heart out, till I got a reluctant 'We'll see' from my parents.
On my birthday, I opened my usual gifts of books and music, trying to smile. Then my dad pulled out a box.
"What is it?" I asked, barely breathing.
"A clock," smiled my mum.
The tag on the gift wrapping said 'Happy birthday, 68780," and so I ripped off the wrapping. It was a glorious phone--- a Motorola Talkabout (they don't make that model anymore) in purple with a shiny black keypad. And glory be, it had a sim card all ready and waiting for me!
A year later, I upgraded to a Nokia 3310, which I still have and love. This one is easy to use and has an amazingly long battery life. My mom's company gave her a Nokia 2100 a week ago and I switched phones with her (hey, she doesn't really care what kind of phone she has, she can't even lock the keypad!). I've just composed the 'yellow submarine' ringtone and I'm happy. :)
This wasn't supposed to be a little paean to cellphones, but then you know how it is when you get carried away! What's your best cellphone memory? I'd love to hear about it.
Happy thought for the day: My favourite site is up and running after about a week of server maintenance. If you register, look out for me, I'm decemberschild.

Saturday I'm running wild...

I do a regular books column for the paper I work with. It's fun, mainly because it doesn't feel like work. I get to read a lot, and think a lot and by the end of the week, I manage to produce enough of a column to keep my editors happy.
Of course, this weekend, tired out, I took Saturday off. I was all prepared to curl up on the couch and read something "enriching". There are so many books on my shelves which I haven't touched. Instead I surrounded myself with gluts of childhood fiction. Enid Blyton and Beverly Cleary all as addictive as chip and dip. Plus those books had so many memories! Reading Ramona Forever brought back memories of being eight, and thinking the world was unfair.
Being an only child I was often lonely, and for solace used to crawl into the cupboard where the quilts were kept. I loved-- and still love-- the satiny feel of the underside of the quilt and I could sit there for hours (but NOT with the door closed!). I used to get teased a lot, by the neighbourhood children, before I became 'best friends' with the gang leader. She still is a close friend of mine today.
Then we moved to Trivandrum, a town down South, where we lived in a remote valley. Beautiful yes, but what price beauty when I had no company. There were two kids who lived next door-- Bipin and Bindya, and they were my only company, but they weren't much fun. They were the kind of people who kept toys in a display case. Honestly! Plus whenever I quarreled with them, Bindya would start bawling and Bipin would shake his head sorrowfully at me saying, "You are a bad girl." and walk away taking his sister with him.
Being an only child isn't easy. There are times in my life when I think back and go, "Oh I wish I had a brother or sister to share this with." But then, there's so much I wouldn't have. The trips abroad, the car, the unrivalled attention form my parents. So now I wouldn't change it for anything. Plus I learnt how to amuse myself, which is an invaluable talent I encourage you all to cultivate.
Game of the day: Hope your drawing skills are good!
And in a desperate attempt to improve my ratings I have added my site to Blogarama.

Dog days

Last night, I spent a long time looking at other people's blogs. I'm beginning to do this quite a bit these days. I'm just trying to unravel the mystery behind what makes people want to write, and also looking for ideas for my own blog.
I stumbled across another blog from New Delhi, which was nice to see. I keep finding Asian blogs, sure, but not so many Indian ones.
Anyway, since I have almost nothing to report, let me tell you about my dogs.
I have two dogs, but till very recently I only had one. Her name is Cookie and she's what my friend calls a 'cocker scandal'. Ha, ha, very funny and all that. She's actually a cross between the sweetest tempered spaniel I have ever met and the meanest mongrel I have ever met. So she's like the little girl in the poem: "When she's good, she's very, very good and when she's bad, she's horrid!" A couple of months ago, Cookie took it upon herself to lose her virginity and there followed long orgies in the park with perhaps the scruffiest mongrels in the entire world. The result were two puppies (originally she had five but I think she squashed three of them). One was a black male, who was best when left alone to his own devices. He didn't like being cuddled much, possibly because Cookie had sat on him as well and he was a little squashed. Because this made him waddle, I called him Turtle. The other was a hyperactive blonde female who always has her nose in everything and tormented her poor brother no end.
I made a bid to keep Turtle but my mom's friends wanted a puppy and they took a liking to him. Well, my mom's friend did. Her 16 year old son eyed the blonde one longingly as she chewed his shoelaces.
So we were left with Gemma, as I decided to call her. My parents put up a protest to her "foreign" name after I had gotten used to calling her Gemma and so her name was changed with much debate to Gudiya, which means 'doll' in Hindi and which is also an affectionate diminutive in most households for the baby girls.
Gudiya this morning chewed up my brand new pair of Osho slippers. Osho slippers for those who don't know are lovely straw flip-flops with velvet straps which always look elegant and are bloody comfortable. They are called Osho slippers because they are sold in the Osho World shop, named after a guru called Osho. If you manage to find a pair, I recommend them strongly!
Lyric Of The Day: This one is my all time 'lets-bitch-about-men' fave! Happy singing.

In which I avoid my parent's friends

I re-read yesterdays post and was struck with how supercilious I sound. Surely, that half-whining, half-condescending tone isn't mine? I think that when you write like this... when you contain a whole day of your life in justa couple of paragraphs, you're left wiht somehting like a photograph. It will capture the strongest emotion you feel, but only that-- pixellated distilled images which aren't entirely you. So there's none of the joy I felt at being out in the middle of the week, the sudden tiredness at the end of the evening when sharp throbs of pain made their presence felt at the backs of my legs. And there's none of what I felt, what I can't even describe as I looked at my old college friends who I was hanging out with. How do you describe looking at the past and the present together?
I did a google search for best blogs yesterday, trying to come up with inspiration to make this one more readable. I got stuck on this one Life In LA. Forgive me if it goes to some random date in November, becaue I started reading the archives and haven't been able to stop. Some people make blogs such a work of art, it makes me quite ashamed of my own 'timepass' effort.
In between work yesterday I also googled a whole lot of possible options for my blog to come out in a search. No such luck.I'm bound to anonymity, it looks like, whether happy or unhappy.
I went for a booklaunch lat night, for Hari Kunzru's new book Transmission. Surreptiously after it was over I snuck into a corner and lit a cigarette. All my parent's friends (my parents are very into the 'literary' circle in Delhi) came up to me at just that moment to say hello. I tried to pretend I didn't notice the long spirals of smoke coming form my right hand and as soon as they left I galloped into another corner. Who do I meet there but some old college professors! I knwo I'm not in college anymore, and I could possibly smoke in fornt of them, but out of many years instinct I stuck my cigarette behind my back and talked to them. By the time I was done smiling and saying, "Yes ma'am" my smoke wa smore or less over and when I turned to find myself fcae to face with yet another friend of my moms, I dropped it and trod on it casually.
What an evening!
Link of the day: This one is fun for Harry Potter fans, like me!

Phony-land

It's Wednesday morning where I am, and I'm at work. I'm trying to re-hydrate my de-hydrated self with cold coffee. I'm quite proud of my cold coffee. It's hard to make without a blender, and only powdered milk, but mine is a work of art, even if I do say so myself!
The reason I'm dehydrated is because I may have overdone it a little last night. You see, K. (my boyfriend) and I were invited for the opening of a new nightclub. Now we're normally a 'go-to-a-quiet-place-with-a-few-friends kind of couple, but we thought it had been a while since we had done the whole 'social' scene and so we went.
The place was packed! There was hardly any room to breathe. I was wearing my flatmates Britney Spears type hat, you know the kind that looks like a beret with a brim, and mercifully my hair was ironed so I reveled in my new persona, acting just like the rest of the girls with 'armpit' bags and manicured nails. Not to mention the designer labels. Now, I'm considered quite attractive, I'm quite skinny with a decent enough body, in my social circle but I usually dress down-- baggy jeans, a tight fitting but somewhat faded t-shirt, you know. But I decided to 'dress' last night. It was sorta gratifying to have so many people check you out, though whether they were looking at me or my hat, I'm not sure. I even met an old crush who told me I was "looking good". I just love it when that happens, don't you?
But by the end of it, I got tired of the fakeness. I pulled my hat over my eyes and said, "This is my people-shooting hat", (From Catcher In The Rye) and only K got what I was referring to.
So we left.

Summer colds

Don't summer colds suck? It's just such a nasty feeling to have your body feeling hot to the point of sweaty outside and inside you're shivering. It's raining in Delhi, which means half the time the humid hits you in great waves as soon as you step outdoors. And you have not known humidity till you've lived in India. The air is so thick, breathing is an effort. My hair, which is the thick and frizzy variety goes ballitsic and the only way to look presentable is to tie it up firmly into a knot at the base of my scalp. It's the kind of weather where your clothes are always wet with sweat and your hands are always sticky.
Of course, there are brief respites. It does rain and then it's excellent. The wind seems to kiss you as it whistles past, you feel like a total cruiser in your car, with the music on high to embarrassingly enough 'Milkshake'. (I cannot get enough of this song! There's something so profound in the lyrics-- My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard, they like it better than yours, damn right it's better than yours, I could teach you but I'd have to charge--- what does it mean??? But the tune is so catchy I don't really care.)
Anyhoo, as I was saying about the rain. It's nice and all, but it means a change in season and with all the temperatures going in and out, what with walking from an office the temperature of a fridge to the car where I never have enough money to have enough fuel to put on the A/C. So then by the time I reach home I'm all hot and sweaty anyway. And these days, since my flatmate is away I've moved back in with my parents, where my bedroom does have an A/C, so ergo... frozen me with frozen sinus glands which then unfreeze painfully.
What's the weather like where you are?

An explanation

First off, this was not what I was supposed to do. I am technically supposed to be working, but it's one of those days when all my work finished early and here I sit at 6 pm, trying desperately to look like I'm working... I'm a journalist, so typing is a good thing!
Okay, on to the explanations:
1) Time for a brief life-history. I'll make it very brief so you won't get bored, God knows I do reading about other people's aunts and uncles and second cousins. As of now, I'm 22, I'm a journalist like I said before and I work in a tabloid! I live, work, love in New Delhi, the capital of India. I'm single (ie I'm not married) but I have a beautiful boyfriend. Oh, and I'm also a woman. But don't worry about these details. If you keep reading (and I sincerely hope you do!) I will reintroduce myself and the people in my life.
2) The title of my blog: If you've read Franny And Zooey by JD Salinger, you'll know there's a part where Seymour tells Zooey to 'shine his shoes for the fat lady.' Of course, Zooey later goes on to compare the Fat Lady to Jesus Christ, plus there's the whole Fat Lady in Harry Potter thing. Therefore, this blog is dedicated to my 'fat lady'--- the reader who logs in to see what I've added and who wonders what I'm doing today. Fat Lady, if you're reading this today, hi! welcome! Hope you're having a good day. (I just want to add, the fat lady is a metaphor only. It's not meant as a slur against any kind of body type. You could be my fat lady even if you're skinny and beautiful!)
Later, y'all.