8 by 52 or is it?

Of late, I have had a feeling that my blog name may well end up being redundant. I don't feel I belong to this world.
8 * 52 seems to restrict me to a strangely incestuous world of mediocre people where everybody knows everybody, is married to somebody but is seeing somebody else and where anybody who is half-way decent is a nobody.
I think I have seen enough in my three years as a journalist and I feel an urgent need to move on, before life passes me by.
There used to be this restaurant in CP (it still exists I think) called 'Don't Pass Me By', tucked away behind one of those buildings which stand between Shivaji Stadium and Janpath. It used to sell Chinese. I had passed it by several times as a college student. One day as I was wrapping up some work in CP (which consisted of my friend Ninon augmenting her collection of MBs), we passed the place again. This time, we couldn't pass it by. We went in and had chowmein - she had chicken and since I used to be vegetarian back then, I had veg chow. For a neat sum of Rs 30, both of us had a sumptuous Chinese meal.
A good six years later, that place seems to haunt me each day as I head to office, still debating with myself whether I should give up my job as a reasonably well-established journo and pursue further studies or just continue here (It's the brand, people will tell you, the name sells, how can you just give it up?). Gradually, however, I am beginning to feel life will pass me by if I continue and suddenly, one day I will be 35 and still running after peons of pompous bureaucrats, begging them for an appointment. Will I want to do it at 35 or 45 or 55? Will I have the stamina, the energy or the drive to do so ? I don't think so. My enthusiasm seems to be flagging already and whatever little English language skills I have, seem to be getting eroded with each passing day.
The daily grind of churning out something newsworthy also seems to be taking its toll.
And so, I have decided that I need a break. And that it's time I gift myself one.
So, it's bye-bye to the world of 8 * 52, at least for now. Will I make a comeback? I don't know. Will I actually be able to go ahead and sever my ties with what has been my world for more than three years now? Frankly, I don't know that either.
What I know is that I want to get back to a normal life, where I can get up at an earthly hour, leave office well before a time when there are only dogs on the streets, stop commuting all over the city so much so that autowallahs now give me special discounts, switch off my cell phone, at least during the night and not take official calls at 2 am.
I want to have an off on a Sunday and I want to enjoy my life. That's not too much to ask for, is it?

Of falling hair and canine nomenclature

I went to a haircare expert yesterday. A friend had recommended her to me, telling me in great detail about her tonics and hair packs. And in my mind that led to the creation of an image of this diva with Rapunzel-like hair, running a hair-spa in the posh environs of Safdarjung Enclave.
I finally reached there and my impressions were shattered. My entry was marked by great whoops of joy from a 60-something woman with completely unmanageable curly hair. Apparently all the women in her family are as tall as yours truly. The accent was as Bihari as it gets. She repeatedly said chau instead of che or six. She also kept on referring to her servant as baua, which is Bihari for a kid of the male kind. Her teeth were paan-stained. If there were any doubt in mind, half-an-hour later, it was removed with madame telling me that she hails from Darbhanga. Her husband from some other sleepy village closeby. Btw, he wasn't present because he was away in Sitamarhi.
As I sat there with my hair looking as if an oil-slick hit it, a dog arrived out of nowhere. Now, I have a morbid fear of canines and I immediately raised my legs onto the sofa. And heard Bihari aunty say, "Cookie, nooooo...'' Apparently, she has another one called Dan.
And that set me thinking. Why is that most pet dogs in India have such anglicised names? Is keeping a pet still looked upon as a privilege of the upper middle class and therefore it has to have an angrezi name?
Or is it coz of the umpteen Bollywood movies with dogs called everything from Johnny to Tuffy? Or is it because calling them Om, Virk and Hari instead of Tom, Dick and Harry is just not the same thing?
My thoughts took me back in time to Ranchi. The year was 1990. My mom's cousin had arrived there in 1989 and they used to live near our place. Their landlords, the Prasads, used to live on the ground floor while my uncle used to live on the first floor. In 1990, they decided to keep a dog and the name given to it was Rocky. Raaaaaaaki, Prasad aunty would sing.
As a child, of course, I hadn't quite internalised the concept of all dogs must have English names or that several English names are looked upon as exclusively canine.
So one day, sitting at a neighbour's place, I turned to my parents and told them that I didn't like my name. And that I would really like it if they renamed me Tommytikki. I thought that was a really cool name (In my defence, I have to say I was only four). All the adults present there, naturally, thought otherwise.
Anyway, after a long, rambling and a pretty-much meaningless post throughout which I have been thinking really hard, I have finally managed to recall one pet dog with an Indian name.
It was the last dog my neighbour's got. It was called Chuk-chuk and I think that made it sound cuter than all the Tommys I have known in a quarter of a century of my existence.