What an idea Sirjee!

I opened the door this morning only to find my daily newspapers ruthlessly thrown on the floor by the equally rude newspaper boy who was supposed to place the bundle neatly between the iron rods of the safety door :-x. Nevertheless, this rude act followed by my act of collecting and rearranging the scattered pages of the marathi and english newspapers which were heavily loaded with the upcoming India-Pakistan's CWC 2011 Semi-final, did not dampen my mood of having my morning cuppa with the hot topic of the day. Well, all's well that ends well, they say. And so did my cuppa. Enjoyed the last sip reading the following statement:

'We'd like to share the ticket. Our hosts can watch one half of the game and we can watch the other. That would be in the best way to promote friendship between the two countries.' - Mr. Diep, Chairperson, Institute for Peace and Secular Studies, Lahore.

(Source: The Times of India, dated 30.03.2011)

vocab for the week 61

dangle before

to lure someone with something, to tempt someone by dangling a tempting object in front of them

eg. He dangled the money in front of Eric, hoping to make him change his mind.

source : thefreedictionary.com

Funny females and the Murine madness

My friend and I were at Vile Parle railway station last evening, desperately waiting for a train to Dadar. It was an interesting commuting crowd at the station - around 20 females undergoing the same restlessness like mine - a group of 4-5 giggling teenagers (how can one giggle about the arriving train that's 5 minutes late?!), a couple of fisher-women (i recognised their profession not by their attire but by the odour of the mumbai ducks! :( ), 20-something girls talking over the phone and suddenly bursting out their impatient anger on the poor listener on the other end.

Oh well, the train arrived exactly 5 minutes late and we all rushed in, filling up every inch of space in the corridor. No sooner did the ladies began searching for some more space on their left and right side, some kind lady (who was already in the train from a long time) immediately advised to avoid the left part of the compartment, which was empty, as a rat and some cockroaches were having fun over there. The giggling twosome girls screamed in real time on top of their voices as if they really had a murine encounter! This was followed by the fisher-women who almost entered the forbidden area of the compartment and squeezed into the corridor again with those awful fish-baskets, defying every unwritten law of human behaviour in public. Some enthusiastic girls raised their necks above the crowd to catch a glimpse of any cockroaches running here and there but they were dejected seeing oily female heads all around them! A couple of rebel-women, started blaming the railway authorities as if they themselves had placed the poor rat and the cockroaches in that compartment! These women cribbed till the sensitive issue of female harassment! Gosh! I was comfortably placed near the compartment's door, thanks to the crowd pushing me while boarding the train like an unwanted luggage to get rid of! 

The show went on for 15-20 minutes after which a part of this interesting crowd - some girls and those fisher-women, got off at Dadar station alongwith me. I walked all the way from the platform to the railway bridge, surrounded by them, thinking of the fact that all of them cribbed, shrieked and gave such a performance worthy to be blogged on! And all this happened due to the rat and the cockroaches which none of the Vile Parle commuters ever saw!