Simple complexities

It's been more than 20 days that I have been wanting to get a haircut done and everytime I call my salon, they say they are booked for the next two days. Even my dentist doesn't ask me for such heavy-duty prior intimation of my arrival! Anyways, since I can't decide what I what I would be doing 48 hours in advance I am not comfortable with the whole idea of getting prior appointments with a hair salon.

But then I told myself that it's my problem and the big, complex world of today revolves around appointments and meetings and blah. So, I gathered myself up and tried fixing myself up thrice but got tired of being turned down because they don't work to match my timings! What the fuck! I was just asking them to chop off a little bit of the hair that I thought was redundant! It's not going to take more than half an hour, is it? But there they are, just not interested! Isn't this their job?

So, I gave up on my salon and called up this other guy, who is also really good -- that's what JP old me. And the Other Guy also happens to be an extremely busy hairstylist and asked me to give a call the following week! A whole week before he can touch my hair! That's frustrating! I just want to have my hair cut, damn it!
But I tried being a little patient and called him up the following week, as per his instructions and he asked me to get an appointment at another branch for the weekend!

What the fuck?

What IS with these guys?

Colour, colour which colour?

There's this little girl whom I meet at my gym every day. Well almost every day. There are days when she doesn't wake up on time and there are days when I don't wake up on time. So let's say we meet about four days a week on an average.
Anyway, she might be about eight years old. She's skinny and around four-and-a-half feet tall. I heard her telling the instructor the other day that her mum thinks being four-and-a-half feet tall is terrible for an eight-year-old. And that's what brings her to the gym. So, while the rest of the women (it's an 'only ladies' gym. I think women in Dombs are still very conscious of working out in front of men) sweat it out to lose or add flab, little girl tries growing a few inches taller.
One of these days while I was trying to make sense of parents wanting their children to grow taller than what they can naturally be, little girl diverts my attention towards something I found even more irksome.
"Didi, main itni kaali kyun hoon?" she asks a gym instructor, who has a relatively lighter skin tone.
"Go and ask your parents, why are you asking me?" the gym instructor replies jokingly.
"My mom is very fair. Bahut gori hai. Main kyun aisi hoon?" girls asks.
Gym instructor tries ignoring her volley of questions by telling her that it's important to be tall. Far more important than being fair. She does a good job because little girl gets back to her grow-taller regimen.
Two days later, I hear little girl asking another instructor how to have fairer skin. And that's when it really begins bothering me. Bothering me enough to rob at least two minutes of sleep every night thinking about why little girl is so worried about her colour.
After two nights of thinking, my surmise is she has enough reasons to be fretting.
I am sure the rowdy thugs in her school might have named her kaali naagin or some equivalent of that. Her fair-skinned girl friends might be making her feel ugly. Her teachers might never have chosen her to play a Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty for the school's annual function. Her relatives might have suggested kapuzillion ways for her to grow a shade or two lighter -- drink more milk, try this fairness cream, no, that one's better etc. Her mother and, possibly, father might not be letting her play with other children for fear of little girl growing darker under the sun. Her playmates might be pointing fingers at her, laughing, gossiping and speculating why she can't play along with them -- she is a bad girl, she might have failed in her exams, blah, blah. While little girl might try watching TV to distract herself from the badgering, she would possibly only take notice of all the fair and good-looking women living beautiful lives behind the silver screen.
Phew. Tough life she has. And she is just eight.
Ufff

Mannat

This one is for one of my very close friends AD, who passed away last October. I am certain she still checks my blog and has a hearty laugh from up there.

A,
You know what I had to do today? Stand outside YOUR Shah Rukh's Mannat from 5 pm to 8 pm in the hope that either Sourav, Buchanan or he would come out to update us, the byte-hungry, demented, jobless media about the ongoing KKR controversy. You know what it is about, right? Yeah. So, there I was burning myself away in the heat and sweating myself away like a pig when I could have been chilling my ass in a pretty cool pool tournament. But such is life.
Anyway, all along I hoped for your SRK to come out to speak because then I could have told you how he looks, smiles, waves, speaks, walks in real life. But that was not to be. Forget Shah Rukh, not even his dog Hippo came out to greet us. We just stood there, saw the sun go down into the sea, saw his house light up and also saw Dada storm away to the airport from Mannat.
If you still carried a phone, I would have called you a hundred times to update you about all what happened and curse your King Khan for being so heartless to not even offer us water. I would have gone on for less than five minutes and then heard you go on for half an hour in his defence. But I couldn't do any of that.
Such, also, is life.