An almost 100% merry Christmas

I am a Christmasy person. But its just another holiday, why are you making such a big deal out of one day? you ask. Here's what I love

1. Christmas shopping (go on, call me a girl),

2. putting up the Christmas star (minimum effort required) and decorating the tree (not really, its too effort intensive),

3. munching on sumptuous lunch (duck, chicken, pork, prawns) followed by the most amazing dessert ever made (Pandhal in Cochin is where you need to buy it from, if anyone from Pandhal is reading this do I get a free dessert for openly recommending your stuff?),

4. sweets to savour (chocolate balls, marzipans and a whole lot of others),

5. rich plum cake and a dash of good old fashioned family made wine (sinfully heavenly),

6. visiting relatives (who doesn’t love them)

7. Santa Claus

8. and much much more.

The only thing I worry about on Christmas is my phone. The thing is every year I end up getting sms's from a lot of unknown numbers wishing me a very merry Christmas. Since most of these messages have my name in them, the sender obviously knows me well enough to have sent me a sms on this wonderful day. I on the other hand don’t know the same person well enough to have his / her number stored on my phone. Which sort of leaves me in a fix as I ponder on how exactly to reply to these sms's. I usually send a unisex reply that does the trick in most cases that doesn’t encourage further sms contact. Sometimes people, God bless them, in the spirit of the holidays respond with further questions - so what’s happening / what big plans etc. Now since I don’t know who I am messaging I am conscious about the amount of information I divulge so I usually respond with eating n sleeping and say I’m just about to doze off (good conversation ender) even if it is 9 AM.

The only thing worse than this is the kind hearted souls who decide to do away with sms-ing and call me on Christmas instead not knowing that I do not have any clue who they are. I am terrible at identifying voices & the conversations I have are deliberately bland and lack in detail (don’t want to give out too much information, what if the sweet sounding unknown woman is a stalker?) & I usually end the short calls with "Hey someone from the U.S is calling me, might be from the office, Ill have to call you back". And proceed to store the numbers as Unknown Christmas 1, Unknown Christmas 2 etc: So every year I have Unknown Christmas n calling up & talking to me about life while I am blissfully unaware of who I am talking to. And since the same people have been calling me year after year I think its too late to ask them their names.

Next year I think Ill leave my phone switched off. That way the same people will have to resort to emailing me or pinging me on Facebook. At least then I'll know who they are. Which means I can call them the following Christmas and spread the holiday cheer. Which would add another point to my Why I love Christmas list. Which would make me even more Christmasy & make the day a perfect Christmas.

The low point of low waist jeans

They say fashion is constantly evolving, that what’s 'in' this season is a far cry from what was 'in' a few months back and that you need to keep changing with the times. I, for one, am not the most fashionable person around, primarily due to the fact that my fashion sense hovers perilously close to zero. What I do know is that low waist jeans have been 'in' in India for the last decade & a couple of recent incidents have made me pen down (misnomer really considering that I’m typing it out) a few thoughts on this perpetually 'cool' style statement.

Before I get to that, permit me a few minutes of nostalgia. Around 10 years ago when I first decided to try out low waist jeans it wasn’t because of an enhanced sense of dressing. It turned out that I was rather scrawny for my age & getting a pair of jeans to fit me was about as easy as topping my class in the annual exams. So I was left with jeans that would dangle somewhere below my waist line (held up by a belt) at the mythical NELWJP (Non Embarrassment Low Waist Jeans Point). Which is the exact point at which the jeans are low enough to pass off as low while not being in danger of falling off with the next gust of wind but succeeding in scandalizing your extended family by its lack of proximity to your waist line. Of course I never stepped out without a belt, wasn’t daring enough but I do know of a lot of people who did. Gutsy buggers. Nowadays they aren’t the rage anymore but it isn’t surprising to spot someone sporting the low waist look and carrying it off well.

What is surprising though is the fact that people still think that it is acceptable to walk around in low waist jeans that display more than a hint of their undergarments. We were at a movie hall recently when we spotted guys from a large group sitting in front of us moving out to grab some popcorn. All of them were flaunting their boxers (most in checks, i think one of them had Mickey Mouse if my brief (pardon the pun) glance serves my memory correctly). And the best part is that none of them bothered to make any attempt to pull up their pants which led to much grief and shock for the rest of the audience.

In fact, I was thinking I should approach these right wing extremists in our country (we do seem to have plenty of them) & use their money and / or muscle power to launch my automatic low waist jeans lifting contraption which is rather self explanatory. All you have to do is walk up behind a person who is unsuitably attired in low waist jeans and clip the device onto his jeans without him knowing it. Then from a safe distance using the remote control, select the intensity of the upward pull and watch as it pulls his pants up using the combined effort of its tiny twin motors. Please do remember that the motors are pretty strong so please do think twice before putting it on the highest intensity. Lets just say the consequences could be long lasting. In fact I could and should patent this device. I’m sure parents would lap it up. This could be my goose that lays golden eggs. Swiss banks, here I come!

Of course, defenders of all things fashionable will say you cant impinge on someone’s fundamental right to dress up the way he / she wants. Which I agree with as long as they don’t display their boxers to the entire world each time they decide to cross the room. They might say ..... you know what, forget it. It doesn’t really matter what they say.