Good Things in Life

Really speaking, this post was long pending and I just kept procrastinating it (I hope I have made right usage of that college dictionary word!!) for no reasons. So today I thought enough is enough, as all it takes is opening up a blank MS word document and typing in a few random letters thereby crystallizing your thoughts into writing. Simple, isn’t it? I wish I had the same level of determination all the time as I do at this moment at least when it comes to writing!!

So what this post is all about? In one word, it’s about the good times!! Well, I am not really a marketing agent for Kingfisher (‘Good times’ is their ad line as I could remember). I just thought I should pen down everything and anything I like to do/experience, things which give us a kind of feel good factor so to speak. Initially I thought I would set out a few rules and guidelines around how I would describe them but then I thought going by rules is really not me. So all I am going to do here is randomly list out such ‘Good times’ activities and post them as a blog. A note of caution/disclaimer – not all of the below is necessarily ‘Good’ as what I deem ‘Good’ may be categorized differently by different species.
So let’s get started without wasting any more keystrokes!!

1) The first one to top my list is sleeping through the weekend!! How I want to just not get up on a Saturday morning, then laze around the whole morning only to go back into being of non existence or shall I say a prolonged siesta around afternoon and then again remain snoozy through the evening. The late night movie puts the final stamp on the super slumber Saturday which I wish would duplicate itself through Sunday!! Well, this routine may sound a wishful thinking now but it actually used to be a weekend ritual for me in my pre marital days (this pre marital thing rhymes so much with something else but let’s not get there!!). Post marriage, I declare hereby that I am too happy if I get even the nominal eight hours sleep(mind you, one of the readers of this piece of writing is my better half, so have to be politically correct). As an antithesis to the above mentioned fantasy, I have discovered that a woman sleeping through the weekend is a non sequitur.

2) The scent of a woman – this is a Hollywood movie with a power packed performance by the legendary Al Pacino. But I am really not referring to the literal meaning of the opening phrase here (as otherwise I would be labeled a philanderer which anyways I am!!). So what I really am referring here is the various smells or rather fragrances which we come across routinely in our daily life but don’t care much really. To start with (which may sound a cliché), the smell of the earth as soon as the first rains hit the soil tops my list. Very close to this one comes the aroma of hot or rather garmagaram Pakoras which your mom prepares on a rainy monsoon evening with the cool breeze hitting all over your face followed of course by a hot cup of ilaychi tea. Those were the days!! Another one which comes to my mind instantly is the smell of fresh hot Pizza from your next door neighbor when you are just passing by their door. This smell is more enticing than when you are actually relishing the same Pizza all by yourself. As they say, the grass is always greener on the other side of fence. Continuing the list is the smell of laundry cleaned clothes when you inhale the clean scent of the laundry detergent through the fabric. Another endearing smell is the smell of a baby when you hold them close to you. It’s so peculiar of them and makes you love them even more. If you buy any new book, just open it randomly and immerse your nose through its virgin pages and you will be reminded of your good old childhood days when you used to attend school and used to write with a pencil on those brand new notebooks.

3) A few ‘Good things’ which I can capture in short sentences –
a. A hot bath after a hectic and tiring day
b. Getting a mail from a long forgotten friend.
c. Watching your favourite TV program on a reclining chair with remote in one hand and a can of chilled coke in the other (that’s a luxury after marriage)!!
d. Watching the value of share you had bought last week going up rapidly.
e. Writing a good blog post
f. Attending office on Fridays in anticipation of a relaxing weekend ahead
g. e-Shopping and more so researching for a product on the net you want to buy.
h. Browsing through the net for latest in newly launched softwares/ freewares
i. Reading newspaper early in the morning with a hot cup of tea by your side. As they say, news is that instrument which keeps half the earth’s population amused with other half’s miseries!!
j. Holding your wife or girlfriend’s hand (Please note that both are mutually exclusive and there are no prices guessing which one feels sweeter ;-). This particular ‘good thing’ point was written by me with a gun pointed to my temple by you know who).
k. Cleaning up my camera/laptop (or any hi-end electronic gadget for that matter) on a lazy weekend with no one to bother in between.
l. Learning a new and interesting word and its etymology. Do you know that the word Camera derives from the hindi word ‘Kamra’ which simply means an ordinary living room.
m. Reading quotes/proverbs/one liners which are subtle, witty and are double edged in their meaning.
n. Chilled butter milk or better still Chaach on a hot summer noon.
o. Getting the popup ‘You have a new mail’ on your laptop.
p. Sharing your achievements with your best friends. They are the ones who are witnessed to all the ups and downs of your life and hence would have a better understanding of what it took you to reach this milestone.
q. Watching republic day parade and taking great pride in watching those state of the art weapons which can take on any biggie in the world!!
r. Cracking a puzzle which could not be cracked by many ‘intelligent’ species.
s. Watering plants in a garden. This is something I never did after my childhood days when we used to have a garden of our own no matter if the garden contained only wild flowers and plants.
t. Clicking a great photograph with my digicam.
u. Driving a sun roof car on a freeway on a sunny day. In India, you can get a sun roof car, you can even get a perfect sunny day. But freeway – the word itself hasn’t found a place in local dictionary!!
v. Having an animated discussion with close group of your friends/acquaintances.
w. Watching a science documentary on Nat Geo and realizing how close we the earthlings are to near extinction. The narrator of the documentary is about to reveal how we can escape the apocalypse when all of a sudden I see Tulsi’ face on the screen caught in a very tensed situation making you realize that the ‘near extinction’ problem is a naught/zilch when you are already facing such mammoth issues as saas bahu!! By the way, no prices guessing who changed the channel while saving the mankind from near extinction!!
x. Watching a nail biting Cricket match wherein India is heading for a possible win.
y. Watching interesting TV commercials. Their chief USP is conveying a thousand things in a slot of 30 seconds. This to me is the height of contemporary art. I mean look at the Amul India ads, the legendary pepsi/Coke ads or the classic Nirma ad. They all have left an indelible mark on me, no matter if I ever used their products or not.
z. Googling anything about which you want to enhance your knowledge.
aa. Reading a good interesting book while lying on that cosy sofa.
bb. Watching standup comedy shows especially from the Western television. The dark humour portrayed by them is absolutely the height of imagination while indulging in semantics jugglery.
cc. Having Daal tadka/Dal fry and steam rice in my favourite restaurant.
dd. Nilgiri trees. These trees had been a part of my childhood days defining an epoch period involving initial years of my life and would be difficult to forget for the lifetime.
ee. Getting my first credit card which was from Standard Chartered bank.
ff. Tickling yourself with anything soft such as a piece of fur or a peacock feather.

Many more of these ‘good things’ which could be thought off and I would keep updating this post with them as and when they occur to me.