Overhauling a Vintage item

We have a conversation starter at home now.  A rare one at it. Its right there on the coffee table as a center piece and none misses it. I take every opportunity to tell anyone who is willing to listen, or otherwise, about how it came to be.

During our recent trip to J’s tharavad in a pristine village called Vellarvally, Kerala, J chanced upon some household items that he had seen and used as a child, stashed away  in a storeroom, where they keep all and sundry. 

Overcome by nostalgia or whatever the emotion was, he brought some of them to Chennai. I was surprised and a bit annoyed, initially,  at the junk,  that found way to our home, simply to add to the clutter. Looking at it, I thought it was made of iron, but J disagreed vehemently. But then a sudden brainwave asked me why not get it polished and use it as a show-piece at home. 

I am going to be done with the suspense of what it is and here is a picture of what J brought home which I thought was a piece of trash.

Cut to the chase, the Vintage Iron box, after an extensive lacquer polishing, looks like this now.  Yep.   

Doesn’t it look as if it is just out of Jeweler's shop rather than from an attic? Apparently, it is made of brass as J kept saying.

Joe’s brother-in-law who recently visited us could not believe it was the same coal iron box he must have seen at the tharavad many years ago.

As though I have given it a new lease of life, which otherwise would never have seen the light of a day. Every astonished look makes me feel proud about salvaging junk (at least what I thought it was) into a piece of treasure.

All Agog!

There is no sweeter pleasure than to surprise someone you immensely like by giving them a surprise when they least expect it.

And that exactly is the purpose of this post.

So who is that I am trying to stun?  That you will figure out as you read on.

Gils is my blog friend from my virtual world. 

And No.  He is not the one I am trying to  astonish. 

But I have to introduce him in this post to you all to set the context.  He is a perseverant blogger with 1034 posts ( as of now) to his credit.  He is a voracious reader and writes about a whole bunch of stuff, like book and movie reviews, poems, short stories, plays (yes, that included), about IT his bread winning field and puts up a lot of his perspectives about life in general.   What I love about his posts are the pun and clean humor.

There is a new addition to the topics and that happens to be his junior and its amazing to see the world through Gils’ juniors’ eyes. 

Recently I was reading one of his posts about Junior being adamant about a green toy train and he was not convinced about any other coloured train.  After many attempts in many elite places, they finally found one in a pavement shop and he settled only when he got what he had in mind.

I still haven’t reached the person whom I am trying to surprise.   Context setting is still on. No wonder one of my dear ones told me, I am not known for coherence.  He really said that to me, amidst a fight. Now I know, why!

There was a comment on that post that said, If it were me, I would have asked for Ferrari 488 Spider. 

While at Ferrari World, Abu Dhabi, during our recent trip, I dragged J into their retail space which had an impressive collection of branded products and memorabilia and pestered the store guys to show me the scale model of Ferrari 488 Spider and here is the picture of my Magnum Opus surprise for you RAMESH! :-)

Post script :

1.  Ramesh, I didn't buy that for you because, they didn't have a red colored one.

2.  Gils, I couldn't find that post on your blog anymore, though I searched for it in your blog.

Dubai Diaries

Joe and I have been married for 24 years 14 days and 8 hours ( give or take ), as of today.

The year was 1995, January 30^th, and it happens to be Martyrs day. 

Celebrating Anniversaries ( whatever they maybe) helps us to get back from the daily grind, look back and relive some of the past. Wish I had started a tradition of some kind, which we had followed religiously over these 24 years, but since I haven’t, every year it has been different.

But I do take some effort in surprising J with some strange, but unique gifts and most times I have caught him off-guard.

The ones that I could recollect now are a set of tablas,  he knows classical music and played the tabla in his younger days. First time visitors to our house, usually notice it and J feels, I take the trouble of finding unique gifts as a means of fishing for compliments.  One of the years it was a Bosch toolkit, which he hugged around and kept looking at, romantically, for atleast a couple of days.  Even today, he refuses to let anyone else handle it.  😊

The ground work for a gift is usually done much ahead, the cues picked up from unexpected conversations and its feels good to astonish him once in a while. One of the years I got him a rosary made of Rudhraksha seeds which is a topic of conversation in many of our family parties, as he wears them on grand occasions.

As we advance into the marriage, it’s really difficult to keep up the standard of surprises, as you run out of choices.  There’s no way out other than growing up into the armor that you have created.

He does try his part too, given the fact that surprising a woman is not as easy as it is for me.

This year, it was him who came up with a proposal of holidaying in Dubai, and asked me to work out the schedule, which I did.  I had plans for the anniversary and kept it a secret till the last week.

And guess what?  I booked a Helicopter ride around Dubai.  He was thrilled to bits.     

Dubai Police Academy, with whom we were booked, had elaborate and stringent procedures – being at the venue an hour in advance, security checks at multiple points, a session on how to embark and disembark, stuff that you can carry and what you cannot, what you can and cant touch , ID cards, earphones, security check again, someone to put on the complex seat belts, life jackets, etc., etc.,. 

And until we get on the heli, we would never know the seating arrangements as the seating is based on the weight of individual passengers and they would distribute us accordingly  to balance out the weight. 

While we were clicking away pictures, amidst the rhythmic wop – wop sound of helicopters that was landing and taking off, I was praying with a smile, that J gets to sit in front along with the Pilot.   Paired  with us were an Arab couple, the man heavily set and almost burly and a petite wife. 

My prayers were answered, J got to sit with the Pilot and had a beaming smile.  

I sat smugly next to the Arab guy, knowing I managed to surprise Joe, yet again.

P.S : I have been telling Joe, I wanted a picture with an Arab guy and you see, my wish was fulfilled too.

Joe getting strapped - and that's how beaming that he can get.

That's a snapshot of us - 24th year together.