BENGALURU: It’s been a dif ferent kind of week for me. The BB (Bangalore Blues) seem to have hit me hard. I went through the whole Buddhist chanting and positive affirmation route but nothing seemed to help. I even turned to my two favourite loves, reading and music and they too, didn’t really do anything. I took very few calls and made even fewer, because I didn’t want to get into that perfidious state of mind. I was studiously avoiding the fake and touching base with the ‘real’.
Then it hit me like a thunderbolt! I was being just as treacherous, duplicitous deceitful and disloyal as the next average fake! My policy has always been ‘live and let live’ and I rarely get confrontational until my buttons are pressed. As I get older (and hopefully wiser), I steer clear of dinner-debates and ‘over cocktail’ run-ins because the arguments never end!
The inebriated always try to make a point, invariably at the same time! The joker in the pack, who thinks s/he is very funny, then proceeds to make outlandish and irrelevant interjections which only serve to raise the temperature of the dining-table donnybrook! When things reach a crescendo, heads spin in my direction while I try to nonchalantly finish the morsel on my plate.
Immediately I feel under-pressure to respond, retort or rebuff. The feeling is like, “You are a woman with so many words in your mouth. So respond already!’’ My beady eyes espy friends who are expectantly looking for me to take a stance. I swallow hard, process the information and valiantly try to ‘respond’ rather than to simply ‘react’. But if I am the one who has started the ruckus then the ‘Zen-act’ is forgotten while I dive in with both feet! I do that less and less nowadays.
I have matured enough to pick which battles I want to fight. I’m glad to see things getting back to normal with a bang. The spate of exhibitions and pop-ups run their course unabated while we are having the ‘starred’ chefs also ‘popping’ up and giving us a dekko into their cuisine. A well-curated dinner with the ‘discreetly’ affluent, in a magical surrounding is always welcome.
Since these dinners are paid for or, ‘a strictly by-invitation scenario’, the ‘entitled’ are excluded. Since my ‘non-Zen’ type feeling continued unabated, the only way to pick-me-up was to go to an impeccably curated afternoon soiree at the Estee Lauder outlet and browse through a myriad of beauty products after a span of two years. Since it is a well-heeled and upmarket product, the turnout of ‘well-heeled’ women was a sight for sore eyes.
It is truly amazing how deftly used skin-care and make-up can make a woman feel and look like a million bucks. Delicately munched on hors d’oeuvres and discreetly passed around jasmine tea only made us feel bien-cuidado! The long-standing dinner meet-up with Manjul Gupta and Madhu Natraj at the latter’s lovely home was long overdue.
The evening meandered over warm conversations and warmer friendships as we sipped on Madhu’s superlative cocktails. Sufi music played in the background, while we laughed, cried and reminisced over our rich lives, past, present and future. Sometimes the universe reminds us how ‘Zen’ blessed we are. I was….