Farm Fresh!

There are a zillion almost-beens this post could have been about. I finally almost lost my boring-as-a-checked-shirt job. My under-grads almost turned in their assignments on time. Zohan almost got potty trained. Sammy almost decided he would never have a third drink again. And then something actually happened. FarmVille became a phenomenon. Half of my friends list on Facebook was playing it, obsessing about it, running their lives along superberry cycles, filling up my homepage and their profiles with completely avoidable FV data, running intensive farms, and I’m fairly sure, dreaming about the damned application or having nightmares about withering crops.

So, the world had changed and the axis was now the bizzarely unreal, addictive, FarmVille. Now, no moral high ground here. I’ve been as obsessive as the worst of the lot. Have woken up to harvest, plough and plant. Have stayed up all obscene hours. Have shamelessly harangued friends for gifts and neighbor requests. Have let my social life go to the dogs-or, to be exact- to the one dog in my life. Have slept with the red of superberries burnt onto my retina. But I do think the worst is finally over. No more 4-hour cycles…or maybe, a little bit of cheating and a few blackberries sneaked in..just a few. No more mindless competition with Sammy boy, no more late dinners because ploughing up a 20x20 farm takes forever. And no more guilt for being half an hour late in tending to that batch of blueberries. Hola! Liberation!

But even while I cut that umbilical cord and let my farm recede into the background of my consciousness, here’s a list of my favourite FarmVille moments. After all, every meaningful relationship deserves a loving obit.

#1- Sunday morning, break of dawn in the Sharma-Das household at about 9:30 am and Sammy boy wakes up, blinks thrice, and, get this-gets out of bed-to take care of the carrots he planted last evening! And FV’s just accomplished what two years of consistent nagging couldn’t.

#2- VD, super busy dad of three-month old Annie, makes a frantic call asking to be sent either a goat or a date tree for him to get that all-important “Gifted, Not Spoilt” Blue Ribbon.

#3- My third-year under-grad class, full of FV freaks, has run out of excuses for why I should let them off early and suggests, “Why don’t you go down to the staff room and grow something on your farm?” Needless to say, I considered.

#4- Vishesh joins FV and I get to call him UNCLE yet again!

#5- Katty, beloved narcissistic friend, keeps continually criticizing the application and keeps continually sending me cows. Long live the eternal contradiction of the female mind!

#6- Anupama’s little princess discovers her virtual playground in my farm. Here’s a three year old who’s for sure going to head the new generation of net nerds.

#7- Manjit actually uses the word “Communist” for something he is doing! No reasons necessary.

And now, the carrots are ready, the tomatoes have been waiting for almost an hour, level 32 beckons, and I really must go! Catch you guys at the new Greenhouse.

Gregory and Me

I have a problem with Phillipa Gregory. I like her. I like her narrative sense. I love how she uses a historical context and makes it unbelievably contemporary. I love how her characters are real, flawed, complex people. But I hate how she never keeps that promise she makes in that seductive, snaring first chapter.

The Other Boleyn Girl, The Constant Princess, The Queen's Fool, The Virgin's Lover and The Other Queen have all been engaging and engrossing. So has the Wideacre trilogy. I loved the proto-feminism of Wideacre but the novel left me immensely disturbed. So did Meridon. If there was ever a contest for moral stand-taking I'd lose by the largest margin. But what Gregory's heroines do is beyond my comprehension. The self-centred heroine of Gregory's Wideacre is not a throwback to the manipulative Scarlett of Gone with the Wind but an extreme representation of a warped desire to claim what she sees as her right. It doesn't make sense. Not to me, at least. I read on in morbid fascination. She gives us the fantastic Meridon who remains but a pale shadow of her alter ego, her granma, the enigmatic Beatrice. The Other Queen recreates the same sense of enigma. It's impossible to see Mary develop into a fully fleshed character and not fall in love with her. And yet, she disappoints.

This almost-rant comes about because I've just finished reading Fallen Skies. Lily Valence begins as a precursor of the flower-child of the 1960s. She's sweet, unspoilt, radiant and promising. There are all the makings of the rebel there. and yet she conforms to the role of the victim. She remains passive and becomes vacuously boring. So does Charlie. Stephen's a brilliant sketch but gets overstretched in his inane acts of violence. The novel also suffers everytime a 'miracle' takes place- when Rory starts speaking, when Coventry gives up his silence. Speech as the only medium of self-articulation becomes limiting. The flavour of the 1920's, so effectively begun, falls flat. The 'minor' characters come in with a lot of promise and then fade into the background.Poor Charlie gets the shortest shrift of all. If only the canvas had been a little more organized, the novel would make a much better read.

And I come back to how I love Gregory and can't wait to read The White Queen but I do so hope the beginning will sustain and the middle will be as interesting as the absolutely dazzling start that Gregory always and always gives to her novels.

Still Searching

I was lost when you last saw me
The sky had ruptured
The clouds were coloured with ugly ire.
Sallow rain punctuated the wind's consistent wail.
A darkness had descended
Inside or outside
Where was my point of reference?
The arms of my compass?
Was what you called me my name?
An intimacy or defining a distance?
Or just a filler for that studied indifference?
I didn't know then
I can't pretend to know now.
But has it been so long already?
Or has that apathy you guarded so jealously
Finally seeped into me too?
A creepy kind of osmosis.
And even now I keep looking
Searching
Searching
For that one word
That one familiar face
Maybe a voice
Anything to clear the cobwebs,
To recognize that reflection.
I do not know
If she who stares back so resolutely
Is me.