Washing Instructions

Spin-drying instructions for a Haier semi-automatic (they still exist!) washing machine:

 

Please arrange the laundries evenly.

 

If spinning the uneven laundries it will arise vibration and the spin result is not good. Please stop spinning and arrange the laundriers (sic) evenly.

 

Don't touch the bin in the spinning tub before the tub pause, specially care about the children.

 

I must have read these lines quite a few times, and I keep finding something new to smile at. Priceless.

Sleuth for the Soul

Imagine you're on a thing made of battered strips of metal tacked together (they call it a bus, I don't), with seats with unsightly sweat-stained stuffing spilling out of them. It jolts up and down one of the endlessly stretching thinly tarred series of potholes (they like to call them roads, I don't) cut into barren fields; your book threatens to fly out the window, the jumping letters form aberrated patterns in front of your eyes, and you get into an irritable mood and finally decide to snap it shut.

But if you've been reading Agatha Christie (juvenile? I don't think so) over the weekend, you needn't languish of boredom on the twenty-minute trip to office. You never know when crime is around the corner, especially when you can feel it strongly in your bones. In any case, you should always be on your vigil. A horrid, inconsistent world, this is. Start with suspects. Remember all those lists good old Fatty and his devoted followers made out, crossing out people by and by as their innocence was proved? (I'd like a Mr. Goon in my story too, and I am tempted to think I wouldn't be hard-pressed to find one.)

My list of suspects gleaned from the people I came across on a morning when the possibility of an act of crime seemed promising:

The lady in the elevator - She was old, wearing shoes that indicated that she'd gone for a walk and a sleeveless bottle green sweater on her simple, drab outfit. She gave me a generous smile as I entered the elevator and struck up a conversation about the merits of the tenth floor and its misty views of far-flung areas, and how she disliked the fourth floor for its lack of vantage points. The fact that she was elderly, though, wasn't reason enough to let her off the hook - paraphrasing Lady Bracknell, age isn't quite a sign of respectability. I mean, think Warren Anderson.

The bilingual beauty - I'm not sure she was a beauty- but I'll give her the benefit of doubt (because when you're observing people clandestinely, you don't stare them in the face, even if you're an amateur). She had freshly shampooed, medium-length hair that she kept flicking back. She kept up a steady stream of Malayalam into her mobile phone, then switched effortlessly to Tamil. (I wasn't eavesdropping - she was loud.) Remember those polished Ludlum men who speak German, Russian, Polish and any other language they might need at a moment's notice?

The man with the stubble - Now he was the one I was really suspicious of. He punched something into his mobile phone, looked all around furtively, then called someone and spoke in hushed tones, giving the whole act a rather secretive nature. Something was definitely fishy.

Rip van Winkle - He slept through the bus ride, his head reclining on the seat, the grey roots of his thinning hair exposed as the black dye wore off. More likely to be the victim of the 'biscuit bandits' than the culprit? You never know.

The talk-till-we-drop sisters - They talked throughout the twenty minutes of the journey without a pause; you shouldn't ask me about the nature of the conversation- it isn't polite- and they weren't loud enough, either. But yes, the chatter could have been a screen, so I'm not excluding the seemingly innocent women from the list.

The girl in blue - She patted her watch into position with curiously abnormal care; she was poker-faced, glazed-eyed, had long hair. I know her rather well. I might be inclined to trust her a little more than the others.

Now, for the crime. It didn't happen. Premonition deceived me, the feeling in my bones just turned out to be a case of more rattling than usual on that rickety bus. The stars sure know how to thwart an adventuress in the making. A big, wintry damp squib.

Maybe I'll just go back to planning a Polynesian raft trip. I've added a few new stops to it.

On Being Earnest

Do I know what it is to be Earnest?

I'm afraid not. I couldn't. Not unless I were christened.

Oscar Wilde's marvellously confusing play caught my fancy when I read an abridged version of it in school. It had been conveniently removed from the syllabus as our hallowed, haloed batch entered Class 10, to be replaced by a play about an android with a Bengali-sounding name and an apocalypse and some such thing; even somebody besotted with science fiction would have been bored to tears by it. It was the perfect foil to the other play we had to study, A Christmas Carol, one of the most delectable stories ever written.

We complained to our English teacher, and she broke the news of the delightful story of Earnest having been relegated in favour of this more contemporary (or futuristic) piece of 'sci-fi'. We begged a copy of the previous year's textbook off her and settled down one afternoon (skipping some dud class we were supposed to attend) to a comfortable perusal of The Importance of Being Earnest.

We took on roles to read it out loud. Cecily Cardew fell to my lot- pretty, dumb, romantic Cecily. I have a history of ending up with not the brightest characters. When we read Robin Hood, I was Friar Tuck- we weren't so particular about the gender of the character- and reading some other play in class in middle school, I was the character who invariable guessed the identity of a criminal wrong. And there is no resemblance whatsoever to reality. I am quite observant, really.

Reading the complete version of The Importance of Being Earnest brought that pleasant winter afternoon back to my mind. I remember how confusing the play had seemed then, how we had to stop and discuss Jack and Algernon's foibles to make sense of what they were really up to, to figure out who Gwendolen and Cecily were really in love with. I'd completely forgotten the story, eight long years having elapsed since, and the revelation towards the end did come as a surprise.

Laced with wit and sarcasm for Victorian hypocrisy, the play entertains with its sharp repartees and clever plots. Rediscovering it is definitely one of the better things I've done this week.

Devoured by mundanity, you try to revamp your life- find a new cloak of simplicity- and it becomes beautiful once again.

They won't let me forget Singapore. I miss Clarke Quay - the Turkish ice-cream man's tricks, the huge swings that sent people screaming for dear life as they went high up into the air and gave the queasy, grounded people sprained necks, Haagen-Dazs ice-cream (rum-raisin: heavenly), the pub that wasn't a hospital, the quaint buildings with quainter windows, the fountains, the honeymooners, the smoke, the noise, the psychedelic colours - doesn't really matter that we were the only people drinking Sprite there. You didn't have to be a heady party-goer to enjoy Clarke Quay.

What wouldn't I give for just one more week in Singapore!

Not Uri Geller - this is what a certain pebble-like vada did to my spoon at the food court.

The day starts off normally- everything is as it should be, your dress is ironed to perfection, your flat footwear (extremely important if the person in question is the kind who totters even at the mere mention of the word 'heels') fits comfortably. You breakfast with your ex-roommate, drink horrid coffee, read The Guardian blogs, meet some more friends. You are plentifully supplied with candy and literature.

So why should the day suddenly go awry?

Treat it as a rhetorical question- or try to answer it. I don't know myself what happens on those simple, bright, clear days when things are as ordinary as can be, and suddenly, an invisible cloud casts its shadow, a malevolent eye throws a furtive glance at the happy, at-peace-with-itself world and slinks away. There is no visible, practical reason, yet the future suddenly stretches out in front of you, endless and lacking promise. Hopes shrivel away, dreams laugh in your face as they flit by, their turn at deception done.

I live in anticipation of the future. I spend every moment working for a future that I do not know of; am I, in the process, forgetting to live the present? Whether my distant dreams of people unknown and shores unseen will ever come to fruition, I have no idea about; what really should matter to me now is to realise what lives and breathes around me, into me, and gives me the life that I have. To identify the presence that consecrates and beautifies every single day, to give it credence and take joy in the simple things that I come across. A little word of compliment, exaggerated though it might be, lifts my spirits- why should I doubt its sincerity, when it does the giver and the recipient no harm?

Simple is beautiful. I may not be able to keep the clouds at bay. They always loom low on the horizon, threatening to take your life over. Hope, though, is always round the corner.