Ok, I am forgetful... Have been, for as far as I can remember. No wonder my mother always imagined up a horribly turmoiled future for me, in which I forgot to take the right exams for the right subjects on the right days, forgot to turn up at my own wedding, lost my kids in a mall, besides losing all my precious belongings at least once in my lifetime.

Fortunately I grew up to the age of 27, with a somewhat clean-ish record -- So far I have lost only one pair of sunglasses -- I left them in a cab; one wristwatch and one (empty) wallet -- in a local train, though I suspect it got stolen when I was fast asleep almost throughout the journey. Oh ok, and one day I walked out of a restaurant forgetting to pay. Noone stopped me, since it was this huge place and the cash counter was on the opposite end of the entrance, so noone noticed. Of course I went back to pay, an hour later when I realised! Yes it was embarassing but thankfully the staff there knew me very well, since I was a regular. One of their most favourite and trusted regulars, actually. Ook, fine, it was embarassing.

It's not like I don't remember to pick up my stuff, (viz.) my wallet, handbag, a book/magazine or two etc... It's just that I forget to remember quickly, before the others notice. I can say my ex spoilt me in that regard -- by picking up all the stuff I left behind. My father indulged this vice in me a bit too by always telling my best friend to remind me to do the task-in-question that I was supposed to remember to do, when she came to pick me up on her way to school. My mother and sister knew best how to handle this side of me -- they gave me pointed, exasperated looks not more than thrice before I was getting up to go somewhere else. And this knowledge was passed on and enthusiastically picked up by a couple of my friends. So as long as I was in safe company it did not matter...

It's not that I'm glorifying the tendency -- but then noone has hated me for it too... And then it has been a useful excuse to have -- like when the gossipy-grapevine-queen (GGQ) of the office who people were a bit scared to offend, clawed on to me to find out more about what the friend who sat at the next workstation had to say about about something that the friend would never tell the GGQ, I had a ready tool to wriggle out of the situation and shut her up. I just had to say the magic words -- "I forgot," and it was more or less believable. In case it was a query about the exact amount of pay hike someone else got, the response would be, "I forgot to ask." Case file closed in seconds.

Actually, it was a trick I learnt from one of those classmates who I sat next to in school for a couple of months. Somehow she never liked telling me what was written on the note our common friend just scribbled and sent her a few minutes back, or what she and the neighbouring girl were sniggering about. I was far from being a pesky kid but at that time I genuinely believed they were my friends. So whenever I asked her, "What were you two laughing about?," she put on this strangely calm smile, followed by a sincere look on her face when she replied, "I'll tell you later..". Which she never got around to because by the time it was lunch recess, she had conveniently "forgotten" about it. :-D That was my first lesson in how I could use my reputation.

Then of course it comes in handy when my kid sister comes up with things she remembers me saying or doing in childhood. Like when I, then an 8-year-old, high on some crazy imagination fuelled by Enid Blyton books in those days, was convinced that the Britishers might have buried some treasure in the desolate wood area in the colony or else why would we keep finding strange coins when we played hide 'n seek there, and convinced 10 other kids to carry on a 5-day digging up exercise that needed all of our parents to cajole us out of. That the activity extended to my house garden later and that the parents of other kids thought my parents were just trying to make other kids work in our garden for some soil mixing or some such, is something I'm very grudgingly disclosing, seeking comfort in my anonymity...

Anyway to date I have feigned amnesia with expertise when such topics come up. Yeah, there have been cool advantages of having the reputation too. But now is different. Like a couple of days back I opened the main door to my house with my keys and left them in the door lock. They remained there from Saturday noon to Sunday night and were noticed when we got out of the house in a huff after I stopped searching for my key set. And the door, which is passed by at least 6 people in a day, does not even have a deadbolt :-(( N, who usually throws a fit at these mishaps, gave me a cold look and did not even shake his head in disdain that's typical of only him. Me is feeling super bad until now. :-( And me really wants to change... Any memory loss pills to recommend?

East or West...
A couple of weeks back, I realised that people are still the same, however faraway they are geographically. And this thought struck me when I was watching replays of American Idol - yep, the show that inspired our desi version -- Indian Idol. I, among many others I know of, had reached a conclusion after Indian Idol 1, that the show was less about talent and all about regionalism. What mattered was which state the contestant hailed from -- and the extent of telecom penetration in that state. The more sms-happy the people in the contestant's home state, the better the chances of winning for him or her.

The second time around, Sony Entertainment Television, did manage to salvage things a bit by eliminating people from big metros and avoiding to pitch contestants from the same city in the final rounds but hey, who won? The boy from Mumbai, right? Back home, one of the editors I knew used to be hooked on to American Idol and used to even tune into the live telecasts on Star on late nights. She abhored the desi version of course but did watch enough of it to criticise the regional factor that according to her the show was hinged on. I did not watch enough of American Idol then, to agree or disagree. Then there was a couple I knew who kept pooh-poohing Indian Idol to be such a "vernac" show. Being north Indians, they could not believe that talented singers like Amit Sana got voted out because all the Maharashtrians they knew in Mumbai voted for Mumbaiites like Rahul Vaidya and Abhijeet Sawant. They of course, did not think that the famous crooning milkman -- I forget his name but he was a Jat from Haryana, an average singer but made it to the semi-finals by getting more votes from his home state -- did not deserve to be sailing ahead. Anyway, they even voted for Amit Sana once every day and lamented loudly for days about Shiv Sena being the driving force behind Indian Idol and that fair competition can exist only in a country like America.

Cut to now... This time around when I watched the final shows of American Idol 2006, it all came back to me. I was left shaking my head in disbelief. If we blame Indians to be partial to language and community, don't think Americans are not far behind! American Idol 2006 final generated an unprecedented 63.4 million votes -- more than any Presidential election in American history has -- deciding which of the two finalists Taylor Hicks and Katharine McPhee was to win. While Taylor is a southerner from Birhimgham, Mc Phee comes from Sherman Oaks, California. Both were equally talented but even before the finals were over -- the interviews had made the verdict shine clear and true. Even some of the celebrities, who hail from the South, when asked who their American Idol would be, were blatant about voting for Hicks because he was a southerner too. How's that for the theory of regionalism?

Yo hoo! I am a blogger now. And that, if you know me is a great achievement... after months of procrastination, egged on by my virtually happening friend jaygee, here I am finally!
SmartCookie, a.k.a Me, is currently balancing new identities and old, having travelled halfway accross the planet, away from the unofficial capital of India (no offense intended, Delhiites) to the offficial capital of the United States.
And this blog is about all the thoughts I don't dare to voice out (being the smart cookie I am)... Partly due to the lack of listeners and partly because I feel too sheepish about writing diaries now, which by the way was an old childhood fetish. Then, thoughts, as many of you would agree, have an uncanny way of acquiring clarity in print (figuratively). So hello one and all, here goes!