Wednesday, July 01, 2009

Of rains, dogs, tattoos and many more

The other day, S and I met for dinner when we were caught in the middle of a mad, windy downpour, as if even the heavens could not tolerate the fact that I had finally not exercised one of my excuses (as S puts it) and made it to the meeting.

I digress. We were caught in the middle of this downpour and it looked like my umbrella would be snatched away by the wind (I wanted to sound poetic and all that here but it turned out to be quite a common place sentence :( ). So, we sought shelter outside a shop – not just some kirana store or something, but a tattoo shop!!

From my excitement, you can well understand that it was my first time in such close contact with something as exotic as a tattoo shop. With little else to do except look at an old, tired dog trying to huddle on a mattress outside the shop, we started examining the display window.

Apologies, but I
must digress here to give some footage to the dog. I was, as usual, in my paranoid way, getting scared of the dog as I am of anything on four legs, when S gave me a real ‘look down upon’ look. To save my face, I tentatively suggested, “Yeah.. Shouldn’t be scared of this dog.. Looks really old and tired”, to which she promptly replied, “Uh! Don’t know how it gets tired without doing anything all through the day!” Have we moved beyond leading even ‘a dog’s life’, as the phrase goes, that we are jealous of dogs too?!

Getting back to talking about the display window, it was quite a peculiar one. There were rows and rows of insect models, in different shapes and sizes. We were wondering why one would display models of insects in a tattoo shop when I seized upon this extremely innovative idea that perhaps people liked tattooing these shapes on their bodies or why else would they be up there wasting display space in one of Mumbai’s most expensive areas.

If my manager heard that, she would say, “Isn’t that plain common sense? I don’t understand why you all even wonder about such things!”

I know I am digressing quite freely and frequently on this post, but, if you read the title again, you would realize that I did warn you about ‘many more’.

In order to give the display window some much deserved attention, let me get in to some more specifics. Rank number
1 went to bizarre insects in 3 – D shapes. S wondered why they should necessarily have been put in 3 – D, wouldn’t a 2 – D picture have sufficed. Rank number 2 was bagged by bikes. I guess that is also hot ‘tattooable’ property. Rank number 3 was taken by superhuman figures. When I say that, I am not referring to a SuperMan or a SpiderMan, for I guess kids are not amongst the target segments of tattoo shops. These figures were more HeMan level – large, monstrous and other synonyms of these two words.

The wind had died down by then, and having got bored of enough and more analyses of the tattoo shop’s display window, we left in search of better things to do.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

:)

Nice to see you blogging once again!
After all the slogging at work which is quite a pain!!

Madhurjya (Banjo) Banerjee said...

did you get the tattoo done?

Kavity said...

@ excitingjourney: Yeah, I was restraining myself from blogging last month 'cos I was coming up only with extremely cribby topics. In fact I even went to the extreme of cribbing on my comment thread in the previous post. Btw, way to go! You should start writing rhyming poems now! :)
@ Banjo: nopes.. we stopped with looking at the display window :)

Shreya said...

Kavity plz. I was looking down upon the dog and not upon you. We were properly pitiful at the dog's pathetic search for dry-mat space.
@Banjo - I shall get a tattoo soon. Maybe as has been suggested by a member of your species who knows me rather well - a 'U'on my back. 'Branded' for life ;)

Kavity said...

@ S: Comee on! Wasn't the first reaction one of jealousy before pity came in to our minds :D