A fat me

Back to work today after a lovely vacation. Ate lots and not surprisingly have put on oodles of weight and look like this -

OK, that's not entirely true. This image has been generated by the Fatbooth Application on the iPhone. A colleague has bought the iPhone recently and cannot stop playing with his new toy.

I must put this picture someplace where I can see it everyday to remind me of the consequences of over-eating and lack of exercise....

Last few minutes of my birthday....

So yet another birthday, yet another year and yet another beginning. Just another ten minutes to go before my birthday ends, as per the time zone in Germany. It has been a great birthday spent with my sister and brother-in-law and of course the good old husband. My sister's in-laws baked me a cake and they made up for the absence of my parents here. Photos will be added on soon.
I'm writing this post in a slightly intoxicated state so you must pardon the exagerrated sentiments, but this is a great moment to thank everyone for just being there. Ever since I have got Feedjit installed on my blog I know who visits it. Thank you to everyone for stopping by. Must admit that there have been moments when I thought I was the only person reading what I wrote. A special thank you to the person following my blog from Los Gatos, California. Thank you. I would love to know more about you. I am planning a visit to California in April and cannot wait for that vacation!

A silent killer is on the prowl

I leave for Germany day after tomorrow to attend my sister’s wedding there. I was in Germany last in July 2006 and had stayed for a couple of days in the beautiful city of Dresden with Lorna Lindner. Mrs. Lindner, as I called her, was my landlady in Mumbai. My dear friend Anu and I stayed in her spacious 1 BHK in Andheri East which we had rented from her. I was there from 2003 till I got married in 2006 and my friend Anu continues to stay there till today. Mrs. Lindner is a Manglorean, grown up in Mumbai and married to a German – Gerhardt Lindner. She was in Dresden, Germany for almost 20 years. She was in her early sixties and an extremely active lady with an excellent green thumb. She used to visit Mumbai every 2 years or so. As a landlady she was strict but also generous and our rent was always considerably lesser than prevailing rates in the expensive suburb of Andheri – a discount she had given us keeping in mind the fact that we were both single and fending for ourselves in Mumbai.

I wrote to Mrs. Lindner on Thursday to inform her about my trip to Germany. I wanted her phone number since I thought I’d catch up with her on phone since meeting her this time seemed difficult. The next day I got an email from her son Franz saying that his mother was in hospital, suffering from cancer and the doctors said that she would pass away in the next few days. He asked me to pray for her. The mail was so shocking and I was just about coming to terms with it when I got a call from Anu saying that Mrs. Lindner had died on Friday morning, maybe around the same time that I read the email from her son. I was in a daze for the next few hours thinking of the wonderful time Anu and I had with Mrs. Lindner when she visited us in Mumbai. We used to catch up almost every night, drink tea in our living room with us telling her about life in the media in Mumbai and her urging us to meet more people so that one day we would find someone to settle down with. The fact that both of us were unmarried was almost as much as a worry to her as it must have been for our respective parents. I remembered the time I spent with her in her cozy home in Dresden and how just less than a year ago Gerhardt and Franz had visited me in Dubai and I had sent a whole lot of stuff (mainly mangoes and marmite) for Mrs. Lindner.

She was in Mumbai earlier this year – from January to March and when she went back in April she learnt that she had stomach cancer. She lost her battle to cancer in just three months. What a shock it must have been to her family. Franz is only about 20 now. I am not looking forward to the phone call I will be making to Franz in the next week.

I am also alarmed at the number of people I know who have died of cancer recently. Just on the 20th of June I lost my uncle (father’s sister’s husband) to lung cancer. My aunt, his wife, died two years ago of stomach cancer. A neighbours’ boss’s wife is dying of cancer. Another friend lost her mother to cancer earlier this year.

No wonder Cancer is known as a silent killer.