Payment due date is approaching for..

I need to clear many bills.. Phone bill, electricity bill, Wi fi, there is also a letter from Indraprastha Gas Limited, another one from MTNL and of course the annual premium for the Kotak insurance and the date for LIC premium is fast approaching as well.

I am sure we are sailing in the same boat and this boat is preordained to drown, if we don’t make the payments on time.

Is your inbox also pounded with the reminder mails. Well, I receive a reminder mail for each of the items mentioned above. Such communication continues to infiltrate my inbox , days after the due date and it carries a certain message , on the lines ‘Please ignore, if already paid..’

Invariably, I cant ignore such reminders. I miss out on making one or the other payment timely and by the time, wisdom dawns upon my encephalon, I am charged a penalty.

Till date, I have never gazed at a bill and roared with gratitude. In the so many years of my existence on this blue planet,every bill has been looked at with contempt and suspicion, with razor sharp eyes trying to locate any discrepancy, or creating one where none exists.

Do you jump with joy when you receive the ‘bills’ of the world ? I am still to encounter that ‘joyful’ entity. Hence, in case you are overloaded with wealth, fixed assets, liquid assets, stipends, emoluments.. let me abscond with some of it.

That is because my new year’s determination is to protect my piggy bank from thullas and penalties ;)

Hottie and Cool dude !

I am back from the hils.. recharged, rejuvenated,revitalized,reawakened, rekindled, reinvigorated.. blah blah..

With no prior booking, most of our plans fell flat.. But that’s something we are used to, by now.. We are not the complaining lot , so merrily chose to go with the flow while reaffirming our determination to become more organized in this new year. A safari ride at Jim Corbett never saw the light of the day owing to the reasons above.

I prayed to the almighty and to Late Jim Corbett uncle (a famous hunter in the British Raj) in all earnestness. In today’s day and age, hunters will only be infamous and not otherwise.

Suddenly, Dinesh appeared and promised us a safari ride for the next day. We handed him some money and pushed a few kilometers ahead to Kausani. Gandhi ji was fond of this hill station and had called it the ‘Switzerland of India’.

Every evening, the sunset was a sight to behold. The snow clad Himalayan ranges turned their hue from orange to pink to grey and then white.

Interestingly, I met someone here. She is a girl, a nine year old to be precise, hails from Nainital and referred to the hot ball as ‘Hottie’. Each time she saw the sun going down, she would exclaim, ‘Bye Hottie’ ! The moon was the ‘cool dude’.

I have grown up believing that the ‘God’ of Sun is a male deity and Chanda mama , as the title suggests is also a much loved , beautiful man (if I may say so), with a few blemishes here and there..

But, according to Ronika, Sun is Hottie, which makes her a female, like myself .. Wow ! It feels nice to have another female deity (in addition to the 50,000 female deities in our country).

I hope, when Ronika grows up, she receives the same respect (if not more), as the 50,001 goddesses of our country.

By the way, missed seeing Hottie today.. It was cold and dark throughout.. yeah but the ‘cool dude’ is here..

P.S – Safari never happened. Dinesh disappeared with the money. I have his contact number, will stalk him till the end of this world !