If you get any closer

It’s a clear day. It’s sunny and a bit windy. It isn’t so warm but very bright. I finished booking my flight tickets for a trip to my native city next month. So now, I am happy, and broke. Travel isn’t a low-cost affair ever!

I am on the Internet discovering palindromes- sentences (or words) which read the same forward as they do backward- surely, you would know about them; I knew about them too but I didn’t know they were called palindromes. Anyway, here’s one for you: Madam, I’m Adam. Read it backwards. It reads exactly the same. Fun? Good, here’s one more then: Was it a car or a cat I saw? And one more: Never odd or even. The last one: A Toyota’s a Toyota!

The last one reminds me that I have got to buy a Toyota some day. Meanwhile, the one car that I own badly needs a wash. It has accumulated so many layers of dirt that one could create on it a reverse graffiti (that’s a new English word I learned, and I finally used it, but more about that later).

One of my friends came back from a trip to Malaysia last week and presented me a sign, like the ones placed in the back window of an automobile with ‘Baby on Board’ message on it, except that this one has got nothing to do with a baby (and definitely sounds more
grown-up); this one reads, in somewhat smaller fonts: If you get any closer you will have to marry me! A brilliant one, I thought, and quite a bold one at that. I am not very brave but I suppose I am going to put it up anyway (that’s one reason I am getting my car washed so that an unclean car doesn’t put anyone off who is considering coming close and… you don’t think I am serious, do you?).

I am very watchful of and I enjoy reading such smart signs and bumper stickers on the rears of other vehicles. One read: I may be slow but I’m ahead of you. Another one read: Drink coffee and drive. Yet another one, on the rear of a small car, read: My other car is a BMW. I probably will share some more as I recollect- my memory isn’t the same it used to be.

It surely isn’t. I had nearly forgotten to wish a friend whose birthday was earlier this week. In the middle of the day when I very, very unexpectedly logged in to check my personal emails, a reminder from Facebook luckily caught my attention. I got together the others (who too had forgotten about it), made a call, very enthusiastically and authentically conveyed our birthday wishes, not in the least making it evident how relieved we were to have not completely missed it! I think we did a good job. But now that I have confessed it here, I hope my friend doesn’t read this post!

Now, let me get back to reverse graffiti. Reverse graffiti, as a word, has been around for only a few years or so, and is a way of creating temporary images on the walls or other surfaces by removing dirt from the surface, often by removing the dirt with the fingertip. For example, someone may write on a dirty vehicle “wash me” or “I hate my owner”. Beware! Another word I learned which too is of somewhat recent origin is retail therapy. Retail therapy is particularly the shopping one does while being in a depression (or while being in a not very good mood), with the sole purpose of feeling better. If you just received your increment and are disappointed with it, you could go for a retail therapy. That would be quite paradoxical though! My favourite among all the newer words I learned is muffin top. The spilling over of the bulge of flesh above low-waisted trousers or skirts is now called a muffin top. It has got a lot to do with the shape of a muffin, of course. If you have a muffin top and have not been able to go for your early morning run, try wearing long T-shirts to hide them!

That last paragraph virtually seemed like an English lesson. But good we did quickly get over it. By the way, if you are really looking for a bold message for your bumper sticker, I recollect one more: Mother-in-law in Trunk.

Plum cakes

If I wasn’t doing what I am doing, I would be in a distant country, in an unknown town, in front of a classroom full of students, teaching! If you were in my class, you would consider me a loveable teacher- I am usually kind, and patient, prepared and punctual, and I wouldn’t overburden you with loads of homework (I didn’t enjoy them myself when in school, and always struggled to complete them). I would consider you loveable too if you weren’t too outrageous- the kind that hates school, hides in the cupboards or jumps out of the windows to escape! I get slightly nervous while dealing with outrageous people but that’s another story.

I might even be a lighthouse keeper. And from the top, like from a Gold Class seat, I would watch the furthest stretch of the sea on a clear morning. I would watch the sun rise and set. I would watch the ships fade into the horizon, and others appear from nowhere in their rush to head back to the shore. I would watch the sky, on a starry night, lit up like a chandelier of a billion lights, so close above!

Or I might even run a bookstore café with heaps of books, old and new, where you could read sitting out in the courtyard, while I offer you some great coffee, and some croissants, and plum cakes.

But why am I wondering about such things? Good question.

It’s a Saturday. I slept for long, and didn’t wake up bleary-eyed like other days. I don’t have to go to work. I will step out for lunch later- that means I don’t have to cook. So I am relaxed, and a bit lazy, seated and wondering.  And when I am wondering, there’s mostly no pattern, or logic, or boundaries. Fair enough!

I will write a bit more about plum cakes now because I love plum cakes. They remind me of Christmas, and I suppose they smell and taste more delicious when it gets so festive all around. I remember last December when I ate an awful lot of plum cakes for a fortnight or so. I ate them possibly from every cubicle at work, bought them at the cafés, picked them up from the supermarkets, and anyone who sort of wanted to return a favour or buy me a gift,  I asked them for plum cakes! They were so insanely delicious. They made me so happy. They made me so generous too (I thanked everyone who gave me plum cakes). I loved them!

There isn't anything else coming to my mind at the moment. So, that’s it. And it’s quite inappropriate, and it indeed seems like getting carried away, but I am still naming this post: plum cakes.