Happy Happy New Year!

I am free of all prejudice and no I do not hate everyone equally. I let go of it all the anger, the rage, the feeling of helplessness and even the guilt. Tis gone amost miraculously. Yeayyyyyyy! A very Happy New Year people. We have surely come a long way from sitting with the autowallahs in the autostand and wailing about my lost file this day last year to today when I am sitting in office waiting for the damned watchman to come so that my colleaugue and I can leave. Byeeeeeee guys!

A lesson here, a lesson there

I haven’t written one of my customary long rambling posts for sometime now. Well change after change and I have been trying hard to stay afloat. Being stupid and impulsive also hasn’t helped the cause. As this year comes to an end I heave a sigh of relief. This is one year I am only too happy to say Good Bye to. I have even stopped visiting all your blogs and my sincere apologies for that. I cannot possibly put everything forward or even pour all my heart out cos in some ways this blog has become too public.
I have learnt lessons galore in this past year. I don’t even know where to begin. First and the biggest one would be about managing my finances better and not getting carried away with people who are financially irresponsible. I am still reeling under the pressure of paying debts off and believe me it doesn’t say much about your money management abilities and at 25 one is supposed to be a little more worldly wise than me.
Secondly I learnt that letting people walk over you and being silent about it doesn’t help anybody’s cause. You are left with nothing but utter frustration of unspoken and unvoiced grievances. They say one should always be honest about having unspoken feelings about love well I’ll say sometimes when you are livid for justifiable reasons you should take the ire out. I have even borne the brunt of it in the very recent past when I heard a lot of things I did not want to hear but I am glad they said what they said, I am glad they didn’t sugar coat their words.
I also learnt that we have to pay a price for all the misdoings and every wrong decision made and you don’t ever get away with anything cos your past surely catches up on you. I am struggling with my new job today cos think I had it rather easy the last time and maybe I took advantage of it and thus the present scenario wherein I cry every second day cos they have no belief in my abilities.
I learnt that changing cities was a blessing in disguise and the smartest decision I took in the longest time even if I crib and whine round the clock. I wouldn’t want it any other way.
I learnt that even if something feels right from inside it can be all wrong for you and the mistaken things can sometimes turn out to be perfectly fine.
I learnt that I should clearly be listening to the little voice in my head and paying no heed to it was disastrous.
I learnt that being the victim is way easier than being the wrong doer and making peace with myself is of supreme importance.
I learnt that strangely I can go on long after I thought I couldn’t.

Of Desi Girls and weddings!

The first song that comes to my mind is from the very recent past is from this wedding I just came back from. I could not resist blogging about it. Sigh!
I see RedHead on her wedding day being held aloft by her brothers while Nik tries to garland her and her brothers keep holding her higher and higher until Nik calls for his loyal band of followers and they hold him aloft too and they finally garland each other.
I see RedHead being made to stand in the middle as the entire coterie of family and friends dance all around her on “Desi Girl” pointing there fingers towards her and singing along “Whose the hottest girl in the world?” I remember the coy smile on her face and the laughter in her eyes even if I was a tad bit inebriated.
I recollect the exact moment when Nik came on stage and finally shook his leg on “Mehndi Laga Key Rakhna” and the expression in the bride’s eyes as she looked on in wonderment.
I see all of us getting flustered with our bad hair evenings and trying to perfect the art of making our faces up hahah!
I remember us friends being totally in awe of the show put on by the boy’s side on the Sangeet day thinking how the hell are we gonna perform with so many eyes upon us.
I remember the mauves, the greens, the pinks and the purples but the one colour that stands out the most is the rich and vibrant red.
I remember the tinkle of the glasses, the sound of laughter, the stolen cigarettes, the wine, the starry winter sky, the hushed whispers.
I see the bride’s sisters in law and her friends practice dancing on “Jaane kyun” and “Haule Haule” and trying to invent steps at the n’th hour.
I see RedHead bedecked in mehndi and the dark colour of the henna on everybody’s hands but mine cos I neva took leave saying I am gonna be attending a Big Fat Punjabbi Wedding of one of my closest friends.
I see the family rallying around their oh-so-precious RedHead making sure that this was a wedding to remember for years to come.
I see tears of happiness and blessings for the future as the bride and groom left.
I felt listless and empty thinking darn the wedding is over and we shall be going back to our ordinary lives.
I looked back on the first time they met years back as I saw both of them making eyes at one another.
I see them together today and realize that yeah sometimes one does have the happiest ending.

A Message

So I ain't going through a great time right now and I am gonna be off blogging until things settle down in my head and in my life. Na na no crisis situation but I need to make peace with some stuff thats all. Went for the loveliest wedding and a prettier bride there never was. You know those times in life when everything keeps going wrong one after the other and one does the stupidest of things and makes the wrong decisions. So thats what happening so I need to lie low, sit back and let things to ease up. And I have a message for some very precious people who read this and I just wanna say that there is more to me and I know you guys have every right to judge me. You mean the world to me and I'll miss ya but no emotional nonsense over here. You have lost respect for me and I respect your decision. I am trying to make peace in my head and believe you me I don't think highly of myself right now. So we do a detour and bye for now. But I'll be back cos times will change,so will life, people will change too and most importantly some part of me will change.

And we hit rick bottom the harder we try. All the happiness is sucked out. We cry and cry and cry. We haven't cried this much for years now. Friends have come and gone, fights and misunderstandings flit pass by, we have lost files and found them too, fallen in love and fallen out of it, shifted cities, jobs, lives and not once but time and time again, lost faith and found it back almost miraculously and more than anything we have lived through it all. Then why does this feel like the end of the world?I wanna be happy. I wanna get up each morning knowing that it is gonna be a good day and that I won't question my abilities some million times a day. I seem to be loosing belief in my own abilities and today I even asked my Mum if I was that bad a lawyer. I hateeeeee that, hate it from the deepest core of my heart. So i take a pledge that hell I am gonna make it, come anything. I am gonna play by your rules and be bloody good at it. I might stumble and fall but I am gonna get up again and try once more till I master it and I promise this to myself. I am not gonna be this crying, wimpering wuss whose eyes get filled up with tears at one harsh word. Times will change and someday we shall look back and laugh at this day and know that yes we made it through this and we can make it through anything.

Show Me That Wonders Can Be True

Today is one of the first days when work isn’t that hectic. I have some time to myself. I am supposed to be researching on the procedural issues on forming a company in godforsaken Armenia but I thought I’d blog cos I haven’t done so in a while except for my brief and morose post last week. Looking at my last couple of posts I don’t seem to be in a cheerful frame of mine. Sigh! Guess just one of those phases in life and for once it has nothing to do with the opposite sex heheh! What a relief? Maybe we are finally growing up in life, maybe we are actually learning to put past experiences to use. Or I don’t know maybe its because I was sick of feeling bad about myself and what was, what could have been and ranting and raving about the same thingie to my friends and trying to make myself believe something that never was.
The week that has passed by was tragic and we are still trying to come to terms to what happened in Bombay and the impact it’ll have on our country. I so hope that for once we learn, I so hope we don’t move on without a thought. I hope we aren’t indifferent like we have been in the past. We seem to forget so easily and this time we should not. This should be etched in our minds. We were glued on to the updates on the net in office and it was endless. An English team of lawyers who were at our office for a lunch meeting last Monday for a deal we are working together on got stuck in Taj on the fateful day. The poor old dears lasted 36 hours in that man made hell before the commandos rescued them. We heard the statement they made to BBC and my Boss had tears in his eyes as they described the pitiable state of the people in there and the helplessness that dominated every other feeling.
My life is relatively unexciting now from what it use to be. We have surely come a long long way. I know all of us do but the contrast just seems to be too stark. No more going over the top, no more extreme emotions, no more being choked with unspoken feelings, no more suppressed anger, no more sleep deprived existence. Also I don’t seem to be having too many interactions with new people. I don’t have time and all of us lead different lives. I know its never gonna be like before and tis silly to think it can be. But I had wanted a balanced life. I wish Fino was closer and I could just call her up and say “hey lets go for a drink”. This Friday I so wanted to go to some place where they play nice music and to just sit and head bang and sip my Bloody Mary.
I didn’t want this to be a “I so miss Delhi” post cos I don’t wanna go back to a lot of things and the way it was. But I miss having distractions in my life hahaha! Am I actually saying that? I remember sitting in the High Court canteen early in the morning after a particularly eventful house party that went on a tad bit too late and ended with me howling and running out of the car as the person called me and I refused to listen. I remember crying and crying in my drunken state and Batty Woman and Raddy trying to pacify me but to no avail as I looked at my crying reflection in the mirror and cried some more. I didn’t even know exactly what I was crying about. I am amazed at how I was able to make it to the court next morning hahaha!
I do like this me, this new me that is evolving out of the old one that has been left behind. I am more worldly wise now, I won’t get hurt half as easily now or rather I’ll not let myself get hurt. I am not gonna be walked upon and paid no heed to. I refuse to play second fiddle. But a teeny meeny part of me misses the recklessness and yes sometimes I do miss the insanity that was me.

If Wishes Were Horses

I know I chose this expectantly,willingly and more than anything with a sigh of relief but I so wish it wasn't this hard. I wish each day did not seem to pass by agonisingly, so slowly with me questioning myself all the time. I wish things fell into place and this wasn't all higgledy piggledy.I wish this wasn't only about work but it is so . I wish I had something to distract myself with but i don't. I wish I find my rhythm soon and settle down cos I hate this feeling of not belonging anywhere.

Didn't I know how to save a life?

This clearly is no time to be blogging at 12: 20 in the afternoon but hell I have some hundred something documents that I have to go through and I do not feel like doing such insipid work right now. So here I am having reduced my font size to a measly 8 and typing away to glory. The lengths we go to hahhaha! Oh and my Boss keeps getting these funny phone calls cos apparently his number use to be some BPO called Zingo BPO’S before and he is livid every time they call him up saying “ Is this Zingo BPO?” I don’t why but the three of us find it hard keeping our laughter at bay cos Zingo sounds a tad bit funny and this is a law firm at the end of the day and when he gets these phone calls right in the middle of a meeting with some client it is quite disconcerting for him. As of now we are sending a legal notice to Airtel to stop these annoying phone calls or we’ll sue them hahaha!
I have been spending a lot of time alone. I am dead tired by the end of the day and don’t have the strength in me to indulge in other activities but to get home, read for a bit and hit the sack. I haven’t slept so much in the longest time. In Delhi I use to be eternally sleep deprived and here I sleep a minimum of 8 hours but alas when I get up each morning it is almost like I partied till the wee hours of the morning and just got up. What’s with me? Sigh. Oh and I walk for miles altogether. I haven’t made use of my legs half so much in the recent years after having left Pune. Everytime I head to Offiice or back home after work I take a different route cos I want to be familiar with the lanes and bylanes and the houses are so pretty, like dolls houses and the roads are tree lined avenues. I love the weather and yes after Delhi the weather over here is soothing on the nerves.
I have been thinking a lot lately. Well that sounds silly but generally I have been introspecting and I have come to the conclusion that I guess I did run away from circumstances and the situation that had built itself over a course of almost two years. I mean I got the job and saw a way out of the self made disaster and misery. I know I made my life out there sound almost like one long party in this blog. If I want to look back and feel nostalgic it is so easy to think that it was one looooonnnggg party but that is not what it was all about. I am not in talking terms with a lot of people I have mentioned before on this blog. I miss them and I question myself sometimes wondering where did I go wrong. It must be me or was it them or just us?
They aren’t playing any role in my life today but there was a time when my life centred around them and I have to pinch myself to make myself believe that no they had been there, we did have the best of times, that it was real and not a dream. I have no regrets whatsoever. I am at peace over here cos the biggest sign being I am comfortable being alone except once in a while when I call up She and cry cos I had to watch a movie alone or when a certain Bananafish called and I burst into tears cos as usal I had 500 documents to review hahah! Thank you btw! And I am pissed with Hazel Eyes for not having called me this weekend. I am use to talking to you but I’ll never say so. Hmphhhhh! And I do wanna meet you even if I emphatically denied the same to Batty Woman saying you don’t make a difference cos in the strangest of ways you do. You know that and I knew that a long time back.

Sneak Blogging!

How the mighty have fallen? Sneak blogging hahah! Yeah this is a new term I am gonna coin as blogging from my new office is definitely as sneaky blogging can get. I don’t have a moment to breathe and I have been dying to blog the whole week but alas for work. Right now too I have a pile of documents to go through and some random agreement to draft but I put my foot down and decided noooo I really wanna pen my thoughts down. My first day of work wasn’t as horrible as I thought it would be, in fact it wasn’t horrible at all. My boss is quite the darling but a bloody hard task master and thankfully my colleagues too are quite amicable and not the vamps as I was dreading them to be. I won’t say I love my job and I love what I do cos I am oh so very at sea with finance as previously all I did for 2 years was infrastructure but I am learning, yes I am learning and I’ll get there.
Talk about sounding all sunshiny well it wasn’t so on Friday when I sat through this 4 hour meeting with a client and all the clauses on service tax and sales tax went over my head. By the end of it post meeting and pre lunch I was in tears as I ran out of office towards the cafeteria trying very hard to control those tears from falling as the canteen staff and the bystanders wondered what was wrong with this woman who was hiding her face and crying on the phone. I called up She and howled saying “ I don’t know anything and I left everything for this and I don’t even know what I have gotten myself into.” She is my eternal Feel Good About yourself factor as she said “ For Christ’s sake woman give yourself some more time. Its been only 5 days. 6 months down the line if you feel the same then we’ll talk about it. Come on we know you ain’t dumb.” I still don’t know if I am dumb or not cos I feel like I am the dumbest thing walkin on planet earth almost everyday.
So finally I was asked to remove the kajal that must’ve spread all over my face as a consequence of crying too much and hold my chin up. So I did and yeah I am trying and that’s what is important right! At least I hope so. I am trying to happy about my brand new pristine white apple notebook. It sure looks funky. Sigh! And I did go for one birthday party on Saturday, danced like a bar dancer in some chandni bar and I did get stone drunk and yes I met a cute boy too besides the hot gay men hahaha! Oh and the host of the party was a senior from college and she made me feel utterly at home even though we met almost 4 years later. The evening ended rather disastrously though as I became Miss Blabber Mouth and spoke entirely too much. I am so sorry Fino. Promise next time I am gonna shut up completely. I will not divulge stupid girly secrets to silly boys who pinch and poke and prod too much. Hehehe!
I had the worst hangover in over two months whole of Sunday morning and well into Sunday afternoon as I threw up every 15 minutes. Serves me right! So much so for saying “ Fino I don’t wanna overdo it. I wanna come back home and work on that agreement.” I shifted into my new place last evening. I quite like it especially the pwetty blue tiled wash room. And most importantly met up with my younger looney sister who blackmailed me into borrowing my laptop. She has chopped off her gorgeus mane for some some floosy of a hairstyle heheh! Anyways work beckons. Shall be back soon with funnier tales. On hindsight this post is quite a depressing one. Hmphhhhhh!

Cos I am Miss Brightside

Its 6:30 in the morning and I have been up since 5:15 cos I keep tossing and turning and can't seem to get any sleep. Maybe because this is gonna be the first day of my new job and I don't know why but till last morning it was fine until I started getting the jitters at night wondering how is this gonna turn out to be. I hope I can live it up, live up to my employers expectations, to my own and sort the financial mess out cos believe me right now very few people would wanna be in my shoes considering the state of my finances.I am scared of not being able to settle down and managing this with ease. I get a feeling I will but until I get there I ain't gonna be sure of any of this.I know I am gonna be judged and inspected be with with my work, my appearance, my attitude and just about everything and that is what makes me nervous maybe but I also know that I can handle all of it and it'll be fine with time. At this moment I am trying to convince myself more than anything that I'll be alright and this was the right step in the right direction as someone told me. We can't be sure of anything in life can we?

I was soooooo cranky yesterday. I saw " Life in a Metro" and cried puddles of teardrops hahaha! I don't even know what exactly was bothering me. The new job, not having all the old people around but I do have really close friends here too or I'd think of S and feel teeny meeny bit bad. Sigh! I saw some pictures of an engagement of these two juniors from college on Facebook last night and I swear to God it seemed soooooooooo alien cos they have their entire life planned out and as for me well I don't even know where I am gonna be two years from now forget about being sure about whom I wanna spend the rest of my life with.I thought I was but it was such a fleeting one sided phase and the lesser spoken about the better.

Oh I think I am feeling better already cos yeayyyyy Fino is up and she is surprised that I am awake way to early. I am listening to Mr. Brightside by The Killers and this is gonna be playing in my head all day I am sure. Wish me luck people cos I really need it and Good Morning!

I'm coming out of my cage
And I've been doing just fine
Gotta gotta be down
Because I want it all

Mar Jawaan.....

Mar jawaan, mar jawaan
Tere ishq pey, mar jawaan

Fallen in love with this song.

Thus here I am and I don't know how I shall be but I definitely shall be

So I am in this new city I shall be calling my abode for the next two years at least cos folks I refuse to shift bag and baggage anywhere in the near future unless ofcourse some brilliant offer pops out of nowhere in one of my dream cities ( read London, Paris, New York, Sydney etc hehe!) or even more unlikely if one ties the knot hahahah! I dream too much and yes I do know that. So like I mentioned earlier I refuse to shift cities and lives real soon cos I am sick of packing and by sick I mean SICK and I dread the idea of having to fit a 2 years of my life into a couple of bags, suitcases and cartons because it doesn’t seem to fit in and the baggage is always overflowing both literally and figuratively hahaha! Actually tis just the idea of packing that repulses me now since my last two days in Cal my Mum and I were at our wit’s end wondering how am I supposed to carry so much stuff in the flight and I ended up shelling out 2 and a half thousand bucks for excess baggage and darn it pinched me. That’s a mini fortune for parceling luggage. Don’t you think so and I ain’t some celebrity or the likes of it but I had so much to carry and I disposed off quite a bit as mum kept giving away my clothes to the needy. Like this cute blue sleeveless top I’d bought from one of those minuscule shops off Besant Nagar beach a couple of years back or these old pair of pajamas I picked up from Koregaon Park half a decade back. I did not want to part with them but Ma insisted that I do not need these pieces of clothing any longer.

“ You already have some 10 new pajamas you bought from Sarojini Nagar so why do you need this ghastly orange pair. And that blue top is too tiny for you. I’ll give it to the maid for her grand daughter."


“ But I lurveee those orange ones, they are sooooo comfy and that blue top isn’t too tiny Ma. I lost weight remember."

And my books. My heart bleeds thinking I left all of them at home.  Anyways did you guys notice the first signs of recession in the country? I read this entire article in The Times of India about how one could be a Recessionita. Eeeeyew how imaginative are the journos getting! I mean hell here half the world’s economies are crashing, the sensex keeps loosing 1000 points every second day( the bear sure is reigning), the Dow Jones is in such a pitiable state and in such trying times they come up with ridiculous terms like Recessionista( from Fashionista). Well the flights these days are almost like air buses. Seriously and I ain’t talking about Low Budget Airlines. Tis Kingfisher I was travelling by and it kept halting in between to pick up passengers from different cities. Everytime they did so they’d begin the prerecorded programmes right from start on those mini televisions and in the process I ended up watching the same episode of Friends 3 times and finally disgusted with all of it I just switched the television off. Thus I land in Bangalore at 10 in the morning and by 10:30 I am happily sitting in my cab half my way into the city and looking for a phone booth desperately cos I needed to call up Fino to figure where she and her sister resided. This is only my third visit here and its mighty ambitious of me not to have taken her address the night before. We went from shop to shop looking for an STD phone booth cos I do not like the idea of coin boxes. But my luck there was a massive power cut and not a single booth was operarting. Finally the cabbie says “ Maduummmm use my phone please. Ask your frand to call you back.” What an angel! I called up Fino and she says “ Where in the hell are you calling me up from? Your Mum is going ballistic wondering if you landed safe and sound.” When I told her tis was the cab driver she couldn’t believe it. I did find my way eventually and I was gleeful when I saw her building had a lift as I was really not looking forward to carrying and making Fino carry some 100 kgs of luggage to the fourth floor. So I enter her house, exchange hugs and greetings with Fino and her sister when they ask me “ You are cool with the idea of getting out for lunch!” I murmured a yes ofcourse I was. I mean trust my friends to be such sociable creatures. So after taking hurried shower we stepped out for lunch at this place called Miller’s where Fino’s cousin Queen Bee was there with her husband and a couple of friends. I met Queen Bee a couple of years back in Pune and then Bombay when Fino and I landed up at her doorstep after exams to party the nights away for a weekend. We’d had a gala time at Hawaain Shack and this karaoke place called Soul Fry and dining at Linking road or just walking by the beach. She was working for Foster’s then and she’d have crates and crates of this Apple Juice that Foster’s had come out with and I remember drinking bottles and bottles of the same instead of water cos we’d been given strict instructions that the apple juice had to be gotten over with hahaha! Anyways I keep digressing. Oh and I forgot to add I have chilled with Fino’s sister when I was working in Chennai. We’d meet up at Mocha or Anokhi on Chamiers Road ( I love that place in Chennai) for coffee and I’d sit and puff away cigarettes like some maniac and talk and talk. The first time I met her the first thought that came to my mind was darn whom does she remind me off until I realized “Duh she is Fino’s sister” hahah! And the last time I met her she had been kind enough to invite me for this family get together and I had been alcohol deprived for the longest time then and this was before my stint at Delhi. Well I’d gotten a bit too inebriated at that gathering and that was the first time I met Fino’s family and I was soooooooooo embarrassed the morning after. I remember how much I kept apologizing. Thank God such incidents are firmly embedded in the past now.
Well we went for lunch to Millers where those guys were already making merry eating and drinking away to glory. The three of us stuffed ourselves with bread cos the waiter took the longest time getting the starters and the bread was on the house. Seemed like we’d never had freshly baked bread before hahha! We were there till four and think we were one of the last people to leave. We’d had flavoured vodka and LII Tea pitchers and guess the whole party wanted more so we shifted to Queen Bee and her husband’s beautiful place at Fraser Town. They have the prettiest house complete with an awesome bar with a mindboggling array of alcohol and funky motorcycle shaped hanging lamps and not to forget a mask room displaying their collection of masks. Queen Bee made her version LII tea that was delicious and we saw Harold and Kumar :- Escape from Guantanamo Bay and kept the alcohol flowing till 11 at night I think. We’d keep hopping skipping and jumping from the terrace to the house back and forth. I haven’t met so many lawyers together for the longest time except for the High Court at Delhi and we had some of the most animated conversations about the most random people hahaha! Came back home after almost 12 hours of drinking at 12 at night and crashed so yes this was some welcome into Bangalore Hahahha! I have to go house hunting now so wish me luck. Sigh! Tis too much of an effort and a tedious task. Whatsay! See you in a bit! And Happy Diwali people!

Yes there surely is so much to talk about...

What should I begin with? Should I tell you about the harum scarum packing I did and managed sending back just about 20 kg of my luggage for almost 3 and a half thousand bucks and most of it was just winter clothing and books? Or should I tell about my night out at Morrisson with Akku when Batty Woman and I walked it from her place at 10 at night only to realize later that we shouldn’t be as impulsive? Or do I tell you about my first drunken dial to S and how stupid I felt next morning or I ‘d love to show you the wild pictures put up by Akku on Facebook that makes me look a tad bit smashed hahah!
Maybe I should tell you about the wistful feeling that overpowered all the excitement as I drove through the city one last time and the FM channels that insisted on playing “Tumse Hi” just to remind me that it isn’t all hunky dory leaving behind a life, that however much one tries to be optimistic about a new start it is only human to feel sad. Or maybe I should tell you about my farewell message to Raddy and the reply that never came or should it be about S’s “ I miss you too Pri” that kept resonating in my mind throughout the journey, especially that night on the train as I listened to random Tamil songs cos they don’t remind me of anybody.
I’d also like to tell you about She, Preema, the Economist and the ever present Batty Woman who came to drop me and how they insisted on singing “ Leaving On Jetplane “ at the top of their voices all the way to the station and ooooohhhhhhh people I have to thank Batty Woman and Economist for the J’adore perfume they gave me as a goodbye present. Me lurveeeessss it guys! Thankie! Oh She I am so sorry to have made you tie that overloaded suitcase with the nylon chord. I really am. Next time me promises that me shall get a new one or get this one repaired hahaha! I cannot forget She and I trying to refill Batty Woman’s bean bag with those fluffy cotton like thingies just cos I wanted to surprise her and voila’ she lands up at home just when we are about the begin the complicated procedure hahah!
I forgot to mention in the recent times I have met two of my fellow bloggers. The first one being Scribbler whose office was a stone’s throw away from my old one and can I please confess that me thinks that he has goblin ears and scraggy hair with twinkling eyes and makes interesting conversation. :D! Dude too bad I had to meet ya just two weeks before I left Delhi . I met Anansi too at Kasbah with She and yes we have seen each other all those years back in school and I remembered her much to her surprise. Was naice catching up with her finally after having been an avid follower of her blog for more than a year now and there is something mysterious about her. I can’t point out exactly what it is, but just the way she is.
I do wanna tell you all about the pujos that flashed past by over here and all I remember doing is sitting in various coffee shops with Fido Dido and chatting away nineteen to dozen or walking along the strangest of lanes and bylanes in South Calcutta with him or standing outside desolate old houses and smoking gudang garams while Fido Dido makes faces on how he detests their smell hahah! I am delighted that I am able to spend three whole weeks at home with Mum, watching movies together on World Movies, sleeping like there is no tomorrow, stuffing myself with homemade food or discussing how me of all the people has turned into a love pariah hahah! Yes there is a lot to talk about , there always is. Hmmm! Isn’t it!

And we are off!

So I am off, as my Facebook status says the same and I bid adieu to Delhi today after a year and a half of ranting and raving about the city, the people, and most importantly my life here. I'll be back soon in a month's time and you'll see my life unravel once again, a little hesitantly at first, a tad bit apprehensive maybe but it would be the same old me and my shenanigans hahah! So Utopia takes leave for a short time. See ya on the other side of this spectrum. Muahhhh! Goodbyeeeeeee!

A Leaf From The Book of Fates

They say that just before you die your whole life flashes past by you in a moment. I wonder if that’s what happened to Santosh, the 9 year old boy who ran with the ill fated bag that ended his short life and caused mayhem yet again in this city that is already scarred with wounds that are scarcely two weeks old. I can’t imagine how it is to be actually to be affected by these blasts except that when I read about this child running behind the misdoers with the very weapon of his own death it was heartbreaking. Is this how God had decided his end would be like? Or did he choose it for himself some other lifetime? Last evening while walking through Green Park Market Batty Woman and I decided that in his next lifetime this little boy will get all the happiness and riches of the world to make up for the life he has been deprived of in the most cruel manner. I couldn’t find any other way to justify the killing of this innocent little boy and the innocent victims of these blasts. We tried reasoning about the greater cause the so called messengers keep talking about. Apparently this punishment for being non believers, for living the unholy life we live.

And no we are not more civilised or humane and that I see disparity everywhere and that members of my community have given a cold shoulder to the Muslims and we cannot deny that but then who is to be blamed for it? I read this article in the newspaper about a professor who had to shift her house from Gulmohur Park to Jamia Nagar cos she taught in Jamia Islamia University. A torturous 10 month old house hunt proved to be futile as no land lord was willing to rent out the house to her and those who agreed to it would get out of the deal on the pretext of some excuse or the other the most ridiculous of them being that they only wanted vegetarian tenants. She was a muslim and there was precious little she could say to an explanation of such kind. Finally she had to move into Jamia Nagar that has a population of 98 % muslims and even then the basic amenities in the area are below average and there is a marked difference between the state of the roads and administration there and its neighbouring localities. The Muslim locality is shabbier, crowded, has this forlorn look while New Friends Colony relatively newer and bigger.

Now tell me if this is what one is subjected to after having being a loyal and proud citizen of the country after having spent 5 decades in the country then what would come about in a child who has been born and brought in such an environment and seen the difference in treatment since he attained consciousness. I don’t believe that this is a recent happening, these feelings haven’t cropped up all of a sudden after 9/11. I feel they have always co existed and we choose to be blind to it living in happy oblivion in our own almost make believe worlds. We can’t ever pin point exactly what went wrong but clearly we have gone wrong, all of us belonging to different religions and communities, all these teachings are erroneous somewhere cos all of us are bleeding. Wonder where such hatred came into us that we don’t think twice about killing our own kith and kin.

I read about the lynching about the CEO by the factory workers of his own company, I hear about Khairlanji killings where a whole family is wiped out because they belonged to the Backward Castes and dared to dream about a better life. I read about incidents in Pakistan where women are stoned to death cos they dared to commit adultery, or women being sentenced to rape cos their younger brother stole apples from the village headman’s house. I see reports on TV about couples in Israel and Palestine being murdered by their families cos they dared to fall in love with each other belonging to different religions. I wonder what is this world I am born in. I wonder about the Book of Fates and what it has written in it. They say we make our own destiny but now I am increasingly believing that no maybe we don’t, its all in the stars, in the cursed or blessed Book of Fates. How else could one be having the happiest moment of their lives while others are being shredded into bits not very far away. Here someone is planning their lavish wedding while there a young bride to be is blown away, never to be seen again, the henna in her hands still dark orange from the festivities of the evening before. A husband goes out to buy vegetables from the vendor in the neighbourhood market and never returns home. Your daughter is going out with your grandchildren for a walk down the road and you don’t even know that when she hugs you before leaving is the last time you’ll ever see her alive.

It is fate, isn’t it? It was their fate. They never wrote it themselves and I am not writing my own fate either , nor is God. Its is one of us who is writing my fate and I am terrified cos I am not infallible, how can he be so? I am at his mercy and there is nothing I can do. One of these days someone will decide to play god with my life just like he did with the others and this time it’ll be you or me that’ll be the victim. What then?

Of first impressions and friendships

Did I ever tell you about the first time I met She? She was in a lime yellow salwar kameez and her long hair tied in a plait along with Motu Boy as they came to greet the First Yearites or rather just to get a feeler on how the Freshers were. They came and asked us questions like “ so how many people from Delhi in this class?” and a couple of hands went up and when Motu very loudly asked in Bengali “ And many people from Kolkata?” the majority put up their hands. Sigh! That first day in college the places where one came from and the schools one studied in were so significant. When I look around and note the number of friends I am surrounded with and still close to after having gone through our very own ups and downs as friends over the years it hits me that darn we have come such a long long way. My first impression of She was darn this senior is really friendly and sounds righteous too, the kinds who'd disapprove of the likes of me. Besides she seemed to carry the “ I am from Delhi” tag and I couldn’t ever relate to the city centric identity until I came to know her from very close quarters and now I know exactly from where it came from.

Motu and I come from the same city but I wouldn’t have been too friendly with a senior because he was still from La Martiniere and in the school circle they were considered to be the biggest snobs more so cos we also considered ourselves to be snoots of the highest order and I was pleasantly surprised to meet a guy who was so down to earth and who did not have Martinian written all over him. Though yes he’d still tease me incessantly declaring how his school is the best one and make fun of mine even today.

I wouldn’t have been friends with Fino and Red Head too if I hadn’t shed my initial inhibitions about only sticking with those first week pals in college. And they always seemed to be way cooler, you know the “these girls are different” feeling that one gets. ;-) Red Head and Fido Dido carried the “Doon” and “ Sanawar” placards respectively besides having “We are from BOARDING SCHOOL and so we have seen more of the world and so we are way cooler than you ” written all over them heheheh! Fino never had any of these tags, or did she? Miss Balanced maybe. Later when I became firm friends with Red Head and Fino we’d laugh on what we thought the other was and how it turned out to be eventually.

I was “Miss I am lost little girl” and on my forehead in big bold letters was written “I am so much in love with Fido Dido” or after a couple of months it changed to “People I am heartbroken” . Bloody rubbish. I so revelled in self pity. Nobody would have wanted to hang around with me then considering the fact that half my time was spent moping around and shedding buckets and buckets of tears.

I never speak about Miss Touch Me Not . I remember her sitting on the railing of her terrace as the rest of the clan practiced for the Adam and Eve dance. She seemed untouchable, distant. The kinds who’d freeze in an instance if rubbed the wrong way. I use to be terrified of even carrying on a conversation with her lest I angered her. How times change. Now I am always one of the first people she confides in.

I think of Akku and I remember how appealing and vivacious she was when she came to Red Head’s place and giggled over everything and anything. She’d gotten me the prettiest bouquet of pink flowers on my birthday. On our second meeting we were dancing on the Boom soundtrack all day and by evening we were head banging at Thousand Oaks. We sealed the deal that day way back then and somehow have always kept in touch constantly without fail.

Fido Dido as I mentioned before was the public school types and everytime you passed by him or he crossed you one would hear DOSCO DOSCO DOSCO! Heheh! I remember the first day of class and how each one of us had gotten up introducing ourselves and when his turn came he gets up and says in the haughtiest manner that he is from Doon School. I thought well I really don’t like snooty guys from Doon who act as if the rest of us from day schools are inferior, only to fall for him and to start seeing him a week later. Almost a decade down the line Fido Dido and I are friends, true friends and it does seem unbelievable sometimes.

I met Batty Woman for the first time the last day of exams in our First Year of Law School. Everyone was elated and relieved that it was over Law of Contracts being the last paper. I hadn’t bothered studying for it cos I hated the very sight of that book. I knew I was gonna flunk this paper and had to give it again. I was grumpy and down in the dumps. Red Head followed me to my house cos she knew I’d been crying and compelled me to come out partying with her and Fino and a couple of Fino’s friends from her hostel. Batty Woman was one of them. I was so disgruntled that evening and the sight of happy people who gave their Contracts exam properly wasn’t helping my cause. Batty Woman was excited and giggly and on hind sight sweetly jumpy and danced moving her head and her long black hair in a rhythmic pace just as she does now. I sat and made faces at all of them all evening as they got tipsy turvy. Hahahah!A year later we bonded over one silly movie after the other and have always managed to find each other despite having shifted courses, jobs and cities.

This post would be incomplete without mentioning SMM. I have known her since we were 12 years old. We use to travel by the same school bus and lived in the same defence colony. She was a gangly specy pre teenager and I was the plump specy pre teenager. I thought she was the outspoken kinds and I was the quiet types. Yes but we did ogle at the cute guys in the colony together.;-) However we were acquaintances more than friends. We’d play together in the evenings once in a while but we lead different lives with different sets of friends. We weren’t in touch for a couple of years which is so predictable both of us coming from Defence backgrounds but landed up in the same college. 5 years spent there in the same city in vicinity of each other and we must have exchanged a couple of sentences until we bumped into each other in Delhi rather we bumped into each other’s blogs and here we are. I can smugly say that without our blogging we wouldn’t have been thick friends. Don’t you think so Sup? :D

First impressions aren’t necessarily the last ones and I have ended up befriending or being befriended by the last people I ever thought I People whom I have stumbled upon just by chance and struck close ties with and it never ceases to amaze me that the lengths we’d go to keep these ties secure, time and distance barriers are bypassed with ease, misunderstandings and fights pale in comparison to the wondrous times shared with these friends of mine. By the end of it none of this made any difference as we learnt how to look beyond the superficialities and as you scratch the surface you realise we are way more similar than different. Similar things make us happy, we go through the same trials and tribulations in different ways and hell we can relate to each other even after all these years of having chosen different paths and we'd still be this one bunch of shiny happy people like we were and still are.

It’s easy when you don’t try
Going on first impressions
You’ve seen me at my worst
And it won’t be the last time I’m down there
Read me like a book
That’s fallen down between your knees
I want you to know I feel completely at ease.

And I get lost every now and then ...

We got lost the other night. Batty Woman and I, we were on our way back from Mr. Eccentric’s engagement from the Airforce Station at Dhaula Kuan. I had thought I wouldn’t go for it cos it was gonna be a close family affair and I was surprised that he insisted I come just when I made up my mind that maybe I should give it a rain check what with the rain gods deciding to be overtly gracious and Dhaula Kuan seeming to be too far. But when he said “ No girl, this isn’t done. You have to come. You could get somebody along.” I changed my mind and who would possibly come with me but Batty Woman? We are almost inseparable and tis gonna be quite odd not having someone to do everything with you all the time. It was almost 6 in the evening when we realised we have an engagement to attend at 7:30 and we realised we don’t have suitable attire for it. I mean yeah I have some 30 pairs of salwar kameezes but thats all office wear and come to think of it in the recent years I haven’t been attending too many nuptials and I am not a Punjaabi whose wardrobe is perennially well equipped to handle weddings and the likes of it. I mean we do know how famous Punjabbi weddings are and the pomp and splendour that have come to be synonymous with it. After a lot of mixing and matching we settled down for pretty kurtas and jeans and I know it sounds so ill suited for the occasion but one has to realise that it was pouring buckets that evening and we had to drive down half the way across the city. We found our way to the Airforce Station all thanks to Funny Boy who directed us all the way from South Ex to Dhaula Kuan. We reached the venue only to be told by Mr. Eccentric hadn’t reached as yet and he had also specified that nobody I knew would be there. We smoked a cigarette in the car, spoke on the phone to Red Head for a bit until we decided to take the final plunge thinking how the hell does it matter, we are gonna go in and help ourselves to a drink and some food. Thats exactly what we did. We ate Veg Canapes, tikkas, chilly chicken and other delicious starters. Batty Woman couldn’t have enough of those tiny canapés filled with some stuffing made of baby corn and mushrooms. We gorged on the snacks and after the initial hesitation of not wanting to be the only women seen at the bar we shed all our inhibitions and asked for drinks from the bartender one after the other. There were so many of my clan around. I whispered to Batty Woman that if and when I do get married you’d find similar extended family for my wedding too. I could hear them talk in my mother tongue and I’d keep my mouth shut not wanting them to realise our origins are the same. Me thinks Batty Woman was secretly planning her own wedding to the Giant but she’d never agree to the same.

I did get a teeny meeny bit tipsy but it was evident only to Batty Woman cos we lost our way back home and had to call up Funny Boy again and she gave it off to me saying if not fro my drunkenness we would have been back home earlier cos I was supposed to know the way. So I come back home and as customary of me I don’t talk. When I am pissed I don’t talk. I am silent. Thats me. I can keep on being cordial as if everything is the way it should be yet be cold and people who know me well would figure there is something wrong with me. I know I probably shouldn’t have had as many drinks as I did but I’d thought the way back home wouldn’t be as much of a puzzle it turned out to be. We had a teeny meeny tiff when Batty Woman tried to talk to me and I said we’ll be fine tomorrow in the morning but then I so love her for wanting to talk this out cos I am not too good at sorting things out verbally. I always hope that things fall into place and many a times they don’t, they just don’t. Sometimes I do question if I gave up too easily with certain people in my life, if I should have been persuasive and spoken things out aloud. It is not that I don’t voice my concerns at all. I do try to talk it straight but sometimes I think it is so useless. Anyways we had a tearful reunion in her loo and next day in the morning we were so embarrassed at ourselves, to have reacted as melodramatically as we did. Sigh! I am embarrassed even writing about it right now. Think we just need an excuse to shed some tears.

I was sulking for the silliest of reasons last week sometime and I heard just what I needed to hear when someone said “ You are gonna be sitting around, looking for answers even when you are 55 years old cos you’ll never hear what you wanna hear. It has been one whole year now P, face it ___ neva loved you and that is the truth. Nobody will live up to his picture in your mind and you’ll keep comparing every man to him. There isn’t gonna be someone identical like him but there will be somebody different.” That was so true. I am merry and chirpy for days altogether until one hint of S in a conversation or some friend will bump into him somewhere and call me up and relate the conversation to me and there I am back again, down in the dumps. Wish I wasn’t a love sick looney hehehe! We had this “what if” conversation last evening while gallivanting through M Block market and Batty Woman and I tried to imagine what life would have been if we hadn’t taken the decisions we chose to take. We would have been in different places leading different lives and it struck us that damn no we love where we are today and wouldn’t want it any other way.Besides right now I like the way my life is shaping out, I like the bend in the road though I have no idea what is it gonna be right around the corner. It is gonna be a lot of fun, yup I am sure it is.

We'll meet someday far away...

Just so you know, there's a space that only you can fill.
Just so you know that I loved you then, I guess I always will.

To be or not to be

She had been planning it for months now. The exact moment when it would all end. The play would have an ending never seen or heard before. The last scene when the female protagonist consumes the vial of poison, well that would be the last time they saw her on this stage called life. The plan was executed like clockwork .The curtains fell and arose a minute later for the credits. A tiny little hitch in the plan. As the audience arose floored by her brilliant performance she chose to be alive to hear the thunderous roar of clapping. You have the choice to be or not to be. She chose to be.

A Mish Mash of Thoughts

I woke up with the mother of all headaches this morning because in my sleep induced state I had banged my head on the bathroom door. I have been a little cranky and have been worrying myself to bits wondering how am I gonna managing in the new city with just one month’s salary in my kitty as of now. Sigh! I wish I had a huge bank balance and did not have to borrow from my folks for the deposit. Every now and then I realise that I have this huge credit card bill to be paid and a million other expenses to be borne and after the initial euphoria of a new job has faded away all I am left with is a list of expenses that shall be looming larger than life very soon. But I also tell myself that no there are lessons to be learnt from these and that I won’t ever be in such a situation again and I am gonna pay all the bills off and be debt free in the near future. I have a vague idea on how I am gonna be going about this but I wonder how this no drinking and no socialising plan will eventually be implemented. Also cos it has to and there is no way out of this unless I take sabbatical from socialising for a couple of months. 

Friday night I went over to Supriya and Arjun’s place and what a lovely evening it was complete with good company, delicious food and drama too in the form of a storm that lashed out in the middle of the night and resulted in a power cut for the rest of the night. Sup and I had happily gone off to sleep in her bedroom while poor Arjun ( after spending almost half an hour in the rain trying to clean up the terrace so that it wouldn’t leak) had been sent down cos he insisted on reading. We came down like two lost kids an hour later whining about the electricity and that we wanna sleep in the living room too cos the bedroom was a furnace hehehe!

I was alone this weekend at Batty Woman’s place cos she left for her Happy Hunting Grounds leaving me as the caretaker of her house and it was bliss. I slept lots and lots. Think I am making up for over a year of sleep depravity. I saw a couple of movies which even a few of months back I wouldn’t have had the patience to sit through. I saw this Spanish movie called “ The Hidden” and it was supposedly a thriller but turned out to be more of a romantic drama and I wasn’t impressed at all. Not that I am an authority on European Cinema but I think we could definitely have done a better job of it considering the plot was quite intriguing. This other movie I quite liked was a French romantic comedy called “ Priceless” and it was such a charming take on gold diggers. I wouldn’t be surprised if they make a Hindi remake knowing Bollywood’s penchant of borrowing ideas a little too often.

I also read this delightful book called “ The Joy Luck Club”. It was a birthday gift, along with the Compulsive Confessor’s “ You Are Here” . I finished You Are Here in 2 hours. It wasn’t any different from the Chick Lit being dished out by the American and English authors except for the fact that it was based in Delhi and I would squeal when she mentioned TC or any other well known joint in the city. Am I being too harsh? Cos I have been a fan of her writing skills and she does have a way of making her life sound oh so exciting or in short she does have a way with words and I have to give her credit for that.

Oh and I have to mention our shopping escapade at Sarojini Nagar the other day. It was Batty Woman, Erin and I and Erin being a foreigner the shop keepers tend to quote higher prices but she is a smart one. She’d make Batty Woman and I pick up stuff for her instead of haggling with the shopkeepers herself. I don’t know why but both these women love rummaging through heaps and heaps of clothes and get a magical thrill when they find something pretty and buyable like the purple chequed shorts or the fuchsia top. They hopped, skipped and jumped from one pile to the other until they came across this one shopkeeper who was selling his wares for 20 bucks. I couldn’t believe my ears. I too started looking over cos 20 bucks is absurd right. Jokingly I said “ What if I bargain with the shopkeeper and ask him to sell it for 10 bucks instead?” Erin says “ P__please I’ll pay you 10 bucks extra. Don’t haggle with this poor man.”I was kidding as you would expect and burst into a fit a giggles.

A passing thought but sometimes when I am alone crossing the road at night, or listening to some inane punjabbi song on my phone in the rickshaw on the way to office, or just driving around with She in her car and listening to "Ajeeb Dastaan Hai Yeh”,I can’t believe it that I am actually going away. That I won’t be around to see this city change its colours as October dances into November, that I actually shifted out of the home I shared with Raddy and we’ll never live together again, that I did not wish S today despite knowing tis his birthday and we would have been the bestest friends for a whole year today if he had still been in my life. Somehow I can’t get myself to believe that this is it, the end of this kaleidoscopic journey.

These are some of my much loved quotes

SMM tagged me and this time I look forward to doing this tag since I have to list out 5 of my favouritest quotes and for starters I am a very quote person and a sucker for quotes. I cannot confine myself to 5 only and I take the liberty of posting as many I like hehehe! So here it goes.

“ This too shall pass.”
The Bible

Originally from the Bible but I heard it on “ My Best Friend’s Wedding” when Julia Roberts is feeling dismal about the way she acted and the room service guy at the hotel tells her that his grandma always told him that “ This too shall pass.” I don’t know why this line stuck on in my head but it has and when life seems unbearable and I hit rock bottom I remind myself the same.

We wait all these years to find someone who understands us, I thought, someone who accepts us as we are, someone with a wizard's power to melt stone to sunlight, who can bring us happiness in spite of trials, who can face our dragons in the night, who can transform us into the soul we choose to be. Just yesterday I found that magical someone is the face we see in the mirror: It's us and our homemade masks .All these years and at last we met. Imagine that...."
Richard Bach
I could relate to it at 18 and can relate to it at 25. It made me feel that I should stop looking around for that elusive knight in shining armour and I need nobody but myself.

The thornbird pays its life for that one song
and the whole world stills to listen
and God, in His heaven~smiles.
As its best was bought only at the cost of great pain.
Driven to the thorn, with no knowledge of the dying to come.
But when we press the thorn to our breast,
We know........
We understand.....
And still......we do it.
Thorn Birds
Ahaan we all do it again and again and we know what the consequences can be but then do we ever learn? Naaaaa!

Sometimes you have to do what you don't like to get to where you want to be.
Tori Amos
I can swear by this and I have believed in this to get where I want to and I am still getting there.

“If they keep crashing stuff into the moon, the moon's gonna get pissed off, and the tides'll change, and all the women'll start PMS-ing together. Then you guys are going to fucking regret it.”
Tori Amos
Oh this was plain funny. I love to spout this quote every now and then to my guy friends and see their reaction. :D

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

Mark Twain
I don’t ever wanna look back and have regrets about not living life to the fullest, and not taking the chances. I don’t wanna be stuck in that make believe plastic bubble or my comfort zone as I like to call it. When the need arises I wanna be able to get out and start afresh.

The ultimate inspiration is the deadline.
Nolan Bushnell
You bet it is heheh!

It was but yesterday we met in a dream. You have sung to me in my aloneness, and I of your longings have built a tower in the sky. But now our sleep has fled and our dream is over, and it is no longer dawn. The noontide is upon us and our half waking has turned to fuller day, and we must part. If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more, we shall speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song. And if our hands should meet in another dream, we shall build another tower in the sky.
Khalil Gibran
Reminds me of S. Though I’ll never get to build my tower in the sky with him.


How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd
Alexander Pope
Note spotless mind. Sigh! If only.

"My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods. Time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees - my love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath - a source of little visible delight, but necessary."
WUTHERING HEIGHTS
Emily Bronte’s epic. These lines could well summarise the underlying feelings in the book.

“ Tell me what you love and I shall tell you who you are.”

I don’t know who said this but I remember reading this in a blog whose owner detests me now. Hmphhhh! That would be GW btw!

So that’s that. I have a 50 page word document containing quotes I like so I could truly go on and on. Don’t let me bore you. What about telling me some of your quotes? I’d love to know the quotes that inspired you. So do drop in a line. Adios!

Dilli Meri Jaan...

So I am off. Yet again. Another journey comes to an end. A journey that began one chilly winter night in Morri with an acquaintance who went on to become a flatmate, a drinking buddy, a partner in crime and most importantly a friend who traversed a part of this journey with me. I remember how sceptical yet happy I had been when I came to Delhi. I had no illusions about how it was gonna be and having lived alone since 18 I knew I could handle most situations. But yeah I definitely did not know that this was what there was in store for me. Strangely it is only when you look back you realise how different reality is from the picture conjured up in your mind. You think this is gonna be a particular way but it turns out fundamentally differently. You chalk out a plan and want things to work out accordingly but things have a way to work out themselves. Otherwise how could I explain the comings and goings of people in my life and the funny course it took? How could I ever explain how desperate I had been for a change in job and looking around for over a year proved to be futile until I gave it up and said enough is enough and I am gonna apply for a Masters and that’s precisely the reason why I went to Pune, to sort out the documentation needed for applying for an LLM. But the bigger picture was slightly different. So here I am with a new job and a brand new city that I quite like coupled with Finooooo and my wicked younger sister and I am sure this is gonna be a heady combination.
What do I say goodbye to? I say goodbye to Delhi, the city I wasn’t born in, or grew up in, the city I never went to college in and except for an internship and two of my closest friends from college, the city with which I had no association with. I landed up in Delhi quite unexpectedly almost two years back and to be honest I haven’t felt out of place even a moment over here. I fell in love with it that one winter month I spent here over 3 years back and I continue to do so. It is not home cos home will always be Cal, can only ever be Cal. I wouldn’t have as poignant recollections attached to it like I do with Pune but I do have the most colourful tapestry of memories painted in my mind whenever the word Dilli will come up. I do know that I found a part of my self identity in this city and I wouldn’t be me without having spent some of the formative years of my twenties in this city.
I can’t possibly write about Delhi like a native Dilliwallah but I know that the most alluring quality of Delhi for me was the bouncy feeling it gave me every time, each time I came back. How happy I’d get when the cab would take me back to GK 2 through India Gate and the pang of envy I’d feel when we’d cross the High Court. How longingly I’d look at IIHC and the promises Khan Market always held. Morrisson became a second home after the initial disappointment of Turquoise Cottage shutting down faded away. I’d become such a South Delhi girl and I cribbed about travelling to Gurgaon or even CP saying “ Dude why can’t we meet at Def Col. Why CP? Tis too far.” Midnight drives from the Savirtri flyover to the airport, getting lost at the Noida toll road with barely any fuel in the car and praying to God that it lasts till the next petrol pump , the car breaking down on Lodhi road at 12 at night and putting the car windows up and chatting nineteen to dozen forgetting to keep a check on time as we waited for the mechanic to come. Those farmhouse parties at Chhatarpur where one could get totally talli on Patiala pegs and countless colourful shooters and flirt shamelessly with your forgotten crush knowing fully well this is not becoming with the sober and sedate image you have created but also knowing that worst comes to worst you will be taken care of cos there are countless people keeping an eye out for you. This is the place I learnt how to party till weee hours in the morning and still make it to office by 9 but what I also learnt was that living this lifestyle could also mean the death of my professional life and so I chose to lead a more peaceful existence. This is also the city where I met my almost mirror image, had the sweetest and the most bitter time of my life. But I had to let go cos sometimes that’s the best one can do for oneself. Evenings spent around the bonfire, winter time and the heater we carried from room to room as we changed our location. Meals at Pandara road, shopping at Sarojini and Janpath, M, Block Market, Kasbah, Cafe Fair Child, Cafe Turtle and Big Chill.
I could go on and on and on. Delhi is my comfort zone and I am quite surprised myself that I am ready to leave it and move ahead well aware that I leave behind a life I cannot come back to. I am being so clinical about this decision without a fear in my mind. But isn’t it always like this. We embrace something new with an inkling of what it can be like or maybe not even that. We move on and we don’t look back with any regrets. We don’t have that luxury. We’ll face whatever adversity comes our way and we will make our way through cos this is the beginning yet again.

Come Walk With Me Down The Memory Lane

Last Night I dreamt we were back to where it all began. That Red Head had long black curly hair, piercings all over and her irrepressible sense of humour was intact( she was yet to meet the cute boy) , Fido Dido was still the tall thin beanpole of the distant guy I fell in love with and Fino her usal confident self the one who would make a difference , while She was one of those friendly seniors who’d help you out and show you around as you entered this new world and an even more bewildering city. I saw Motu as he was when I first met him and the darling he had been and continues to be 7 years down the line. I saw Miss Touch Me Not as reserved and icy she seemed to be back then and can still be today. I saw Goldilocks, the simple girl she had been, minus her designer airs and not the Miss Bling Bling and diet control freak she has turned out to be. I saw myself all shy, naive, eager to please and a little apprehensive, not quite sure of myself and wondering where had I landed up amongst this mixed bag. There were others too, those we lost on the way, who never walked the entire length and didn’t play that important a role in my life. But these few people did and in some ways continue to do so.

Why the sudden nostalgia? The reason being I was in Pune for a week and it opened floodgates of memories. When I left Pune two years back I didn’t wanna come back to the city ever again and this time when I visited it I couldn’t have been more happier. I was running away and needed time off on my own, do what I want to, when I want to, not be bogged down by social commitments, not having to share my space with people, not worry about the bills, the groceries and yada yada yada and I got all of that and much more. I got to spend time with Red Head after such a long time and tis was lovely. Miss Touch Me not , Red Head and I spent hours and hours reminiscing old days, our infamous episode with the cops, living together with a psychotic flat mate, me making Miss Touch Me Not take me to the loos of 5 Star hotels just to take a dump at the most unearthly hours cos we had no water at home, watching the silliest of movies with Red Head at Rahul ( which btw is so jazzed up and has been redone and doesn’t look like the derelict old theatre it was) and Cute Boy( her fiancé now) would drop us to the theatre and pick us up after the show was over as he wanted to have nothing to do with movies like “ Padmashree Lalu Prasad Yadav” . Yes Yes there was a movie like that a couple of years back. Red Head and I got seats in the stalls and we laughed and laughed to the utter astonishment of the locals and we were the only two girls in the hall .
Once Fino, Red Head and I had gone to see Munnabhai and that one scene when Sanjay Dutt is asked to dissect this starved and emancipated body and I couldn’t stop giggling at the body cos I found it so funny and I laughed out of my wits until both of them got suitably annoyed and walked out of the movie. Another time we guys went for some college fest where Salman Khan was to be the guest of honour. We waited all evening patiently as they kept saying “ Sallu aaya rey”. In retrospect how could we do so? Salman came and went and all Red Head and I had done was to express amusement at the reactions of the star struck girls as they screamed and oohed and aahed. Salman wasn’t half as interesting as his fans were. Sigh!

I digress time and again. Nostalgia can be oh so very tempting. This trip was quite a whirl wind affair cos we were there for a specific purpose. I needed to collect some documents from college. The whole day would be spent running from pillar to post in college trying to get my work done. The evenings would be spent with Red Head and Nik as both of us waited for them to come home we’d chill at home, playing cards, checking out pictures, reading my blog, and exchanging notes about life and how it has been treating us. We even saw “Grudge” as I convinced them saying it is one of the scariest movies I have ever seen. We’d joblessly sit around watching Big Boss as Red Head made such a big fuss on how she wanted to save Sanjay Nirupam and not Raja from elimination and how hard she tried messaging but failed to do so and in exasperation said “ Sorry Sanjay I could not save you”. We had lunch at Zaffran which is the prettiest open air restaurant I have ever been too and serves an amazing buffet for lunch on weekdays. It was windy and beautiful as we gorged on delicious food and an even yummier dessert of chocolate mousse that Nik ordered. The day we landed we had been taken out for lunch by Miss Bling Bling to Malakka Spice and I adored the casual and laidback ambience of the place and the spicy Thai Curry, the brown rice and the Khau Suay which was surprisingly cooked in a fundamentally different way from the way it is in Delhi. I should also mention Post 91 another joint where we had a lazy Saturday Lunch. The Irish Stew was mouth watering and the desserts were to die for.

We wined and dined and I shopped quite a bit as we women went a little berserk at Body Shop cos there was a sale on. I bought the sweetest smelling Chymara Eau De Toillette and the Moonflower body lotion. ( Naiceee) . Oh and not to forget I bought books and books from Odyssey and Crossword and I have 7 books waiting to be read. Nah 5 now as I read 2 on the train itself. I simply lurveee the Apple Martinis we had at High Spirits and the cutesy trinkets, beads and hair bands they were handing out cos the theme was retro. We checked out the boutiques at Koregaon Park that had some appealing stuff from Thailand and each one of us picked up something that we wore the same night to High.

All in all I had a lovely time. On the way back we drove down to Bombay and took the Rajdhani back and I was feeling Pune Sick. Lord I haven’t felt Pune sick for years now. What’s with us meandering, running away, trying to form different and newer ties but ending up strengthening older ones? What’s with us not realising that we’ll never share the same bond again with other people? Yeah maybe sometimes what you want is right where you left it.

And something did happen to me as I happily made other plans :-)

And what have we been up to lately? Lots and lots. Not quite as exciting as I would like to make it sound but tis been good. Weekend wasn’t so great although for a change I had two whole days off and not just the odd Sunday. But the maid didn’t turn up and all of Saturday was spent looking for ways and means to make the house look a little respectable and not like the pig sty it had started resembling. Batty Woman hadn’t been well and so I stayed over at her place. We watched a lot of TV, mainly Travel and Living, ate yummy sambar, chawal and poppadum as she moaned and wailed about what was wrong with her and how she thinks she is dying. She had this terrible cold and Giant called her at 3 in the morning and hearing her croak like a toad wanted her to sing “Smelly Cat” for him heheh! Quirky isn’t he?
I have been having the strangest of dreams lately of certain people getting married and even the idea of it did not appeal to me. I am unsure though why it did. I got up 4:30 in the morning messaging saying “ I had the funniest of dreams and you were in it. Strange.” Yes I did get a call back saying “ Stop having wierd dreams about me. :-)” Batty Woman just looked on at the TV as the expression on my face brightened up and said “ I am not saying anything.”
I am looking forward to certain things. Actually just waiting and watching and hoping things fall into place. Maybe then I would have that new start I have been wanting for the longest time. There I was so sure about how life was gonna turn up for me and there went all my plans woossshh as if someone just waved a wand and opened the Pandora’s Box of endless possibilities. She called me a nomad the other day cos I don’t seem to want to settle down in one place. But I feel I am not ready to strike roots at a particular place as yet. Thus here I am, if you happen to get a glimpse of me anywhere you’d notice the spring in my step and the song on my lips and yes I hope to be on a high.

Mostly we gushed about them together and forgot about them together!

Yup Fino and I always had a thing for similar kind of men. Invariably I’d end up liking the men she liked. The men would range from 28 year old, guitar playing, confused , engineering drop outs to slightly eccentric, bloody well read, confused and eloquent contemporaries in college to the quintessential confused boy next door. They all had one thing in common the predominant state of confusion that reigned supreme in their minds. Yes now in retrospect I recognize the confused trait in all of them. But to give them their due credit all these men, boys or lets just call them members of the opposite sex were sooo much fun. We have had the funnest times with them. Be it researching for the moot court with the eccentric lawyer when we’d invariably end up taking coffee breaks together and Fino and MR. Eccentric would be arguing on the nuances of the case and me trying to grasp all that I could to try reaching a level closer to them to meeting Boy Next Door in the middle of the night in a deserted lane and chatting non stop not realising one doesn’t make a half an hour long stop over at such an unearthly hour to staying up all night with strange guitar playing boy and singing songs the very first night we met him when everybody else we knew had hit the sack. We were foolish young girls acting on our crushes and not a worry in the world that we liked the same men almost always. Not that we did anything about them ever except for going out for drives, getting stoned or just hanging around in college or at oaks drinking away merrily. The infatuations came and flitted past by with a regularity and we were happy.
I remember telling Fino “ Nothing can ever go wrong between us.” But it did and guess it had to someday. For once she fell in love with somebody unintentionally and incidentally I had been nursing a broken heart for the same idiotic beanpole for the longest time. I remember that day vividly when both of us had tears in our eyes at the NCC canteen . She had finally figured that I knew something was not right. We were crying for the same man and this time we felt it from deep down inside. It wasn’t some silly laughable crush. Things weren’t quite right for 6 months as I tried to get over the one man I should have at 18 and not wait for so long to do so. I handled things hap hazardly and didn’t know whom to talk to cos the one person to whom I could talk to about everything , all my heartaches , my goof ups, my goals, my dreams, my aspirations was the reason why I was hurting so much. It was nobody’s fault but a twist in the plot none of us expected. We kept out of each other’s path for some time until I was fine with it. Yes I found another object for my affection and life was la di da’ again and we were back to where we had left off. We had never thought we would but there we were that rainy evening sitting in Barista as I told her about Frankenstein and how Fido Dido did not matter to me anymore and this was the only way I could have ever gotten over him.
Fino has influenced me in Law School in countless ways and I can’t even begin to thank her. She was the one who urged me to take part in my very first debate and said “ No you can do it. You are taking part. No two ways about this.” So there I was stuck in the auditorium and as they closed the doors the sinking feeling in my heart told me “ Ah well you are truly stuck. You have to, have to go ahead with the speech or else you’ll let yourself down and her belief in you down.” So I went ahead and I didn’t do as badly as I thought I would and Fino went on to win the debate with finesse and they mentioned fine performance in ‘The Indian Express” the next day. . She managed cajoling me to come for Mood Indigo when we had the most cheapest and magical of holidays in Bombay. She knew I loved singing just as much as she did but hadn’t had the courage to express it so I got a chance to sing at the Antakshari. I remember that stoned night when I wanted to go for a walk on the field and she was the only one who indulged me and both of us jumped over the ditch walked a mile just so that I could look at the stars while sitting on the grassy field. I recollect songs being sung at the top of our voices, Fino playing the guitar to the best of her ability and Red Head and I begged and pleaded her to Play “Last Kiss” once more. Every year unfailingly I would get a job in a call centre to earn some extra money and every year with clinical precision she’d convince me into quitting it to take part in the moot courts. She‘d attend my every hearing even if I’d be dying from inside cos she was in the audience and what she thought of me mattered to me the most. She was my friend, philosopher and guide. When she got through London School of Economics for her Master’s in the final year of college with a scholarship I was one of the first people she called and I remember both of us running gleefully to embrace one another cos I knew how important this was for her. I met her before she went off to London. I was about to start working in Chennai and we bid adieu. I’d always known she had the passion and zeal in her that I seldom saw in people. Now she is a lecturer at a law school, think she is the youngest lecturer in college and one could easily mistake her for a student if not for her attire and stern ways hehehe! She can still make me see reason when I am bewildered and we still express amusement at what we use to be. The greatest phenomenon being we can laugh at ourselves and the absurdities that defined our friendship then and continues to define our friendship now. Yes Fino we'll always have our moonlit nights, your guitar and you and me singing.

Thank You Boss! I knew I sinned!

Ah well there are a multitude of things to be done and I have actually been waiting for this for a long long time. I remember my first day of work and those nagging doubts in my mind that I am not supposed to be here and that I probably made the wrong decision. I have questioned myself incessantly during the course of the last two years. But I didn’t find the answers I was looking for. On the contrary I discovered a part of myself that I didn’t know existed. I realised that self loathe will take me nowhere. It’ll only worsen the situation. I had been so callous last year. I would forget dates of matters to be coming up at court, I would not maintain records like I should have, I would not update the status of cases and I would not attend the hearings in court up until my boss reminded me. To sum it all up I was a poor employee. I am ashamed to say so but that is what I was. I was living in self denial. I thought I don’t wanna be giving my whole and soul into something that I don’t love. I remember arguing with my Mother about leaving this job and how she always asked me to hang in there. I’d scream and shout and bang the phone down expecting her to understand that I hated it and why should I compromise on something I cannot even relate to.
This isn’t about finding something you love. No I am sure all of us know how important it is to be doing something you love. But sometimes maybe we have to do something we don’t like in order to get somewhere we want to. I learnt it the hard way but I did. But I did change my opinion rather reluctantly as it dawned upon me that there are lessons to be learnt from the last places you ever thought you would learn. I took tiny steps at first but I did start doing a decent job and it has been a journey of self revelation. My self esteem use to be at an all time low cos I did not seem to be getting anything right for the longest time. I wouldn’t have been happy any other way than to give my best. I am so glad I realised that. I thank the people who had the patience to bear with me. Yeah I thank my Boss. I know he’ll never read this and I wouldn’t want him to read this harum scarum blog of mine but Thank You!
Thank You for putting up with my slip shoddy work last year. Thank You for not giving it off to me when I almost lost that file. Thank You for saving my face when the easiest thing in the world would have been to spill the beans and burst the bubble. Thank You for the understanding the sort of worker I am and making sure that the work delegated to me would be over weeks before. Thank You for the unsolicited advise you gave me every now and then. Thank You for teaching me the importance of detailed research and the significance of the To Do lists. Thank You for giving me the responsibilities that you did cos hither to that I had never believed in myself. I still question myself every now and then but I also know that now I am capable of handling so much more. I recollect filling up my self appraisal form and telling Boss that I know I shouldn’t expect anything in the annual salary hike that takes place every July.
I hadn’t expected anything until the morning I landed up at work and there was mayhem everywhere as everybody tried opening the HR portal that had the individual mails stating the bonus and the hike based on the past financial year and there it was those higgledy piggledy figures that roughly told me that I’d got a decent bonus and hell I got an awesome hike. Yeayyyyyyyy! Now I have the resources to make that long pending trip to Pune for the transcripts and recommendation letters from college. I would even be able to pay off a substantial part of my credit card bill that had been weighing me down for the longest time. Paying for the applications do not seem to be an uphill task as they did even a month back. I could even squeeze in a tiny holiday to Mcleudgunj sometime in September. These little things would definitely make my life easier, give me something to smile about and these lessons learnt the hard way are the ones that ultimately make the difference between what I was, what I am today and what I can be tomorrow.
That's what learning is, after all; not whether we lose the game, but how we lose and how we've changed because of it and what we take away from it that we never had before, to apply to other games. Losing, in a curious way, is winning.

Sulk sulk ! Hmphhhhh!

I wonder where I went wrong. I am the one who goes wrong all the time. And apparently blaming myself is a fault to. You think I should be responsible for my own actions. Whatever made you think otherwise? You said you don't try too hard well I try and I am glad I do. If I didn't try I wouldn't know what it is and would have been left with a bunch of "could have beens" and "what ifs". You are happy with whatever comes your way but sometimes I want more than what comes my way. Thats only human to. I detest silly and stoopid arguments and most of all I hate the silence.Tis so easy for you to say you don't wanna talk cos you don't wanna fight since it disturbs you. So we have these periods of silence when I have to act like you don't exist until you are alright with the idea of talking to me again. It didn't bother me half as much before but now it does and I know you'll go about doing your own thing until you feel like it.
I wish I was like that. I wish it was like before when I didn't care. It didn't matter if you didn't call me for months and months. I was happy in my own make believe world. There were other things that were more important to me, other people who effected me more. I don't even know exactly when I changed my mind, but I did. I don't want these misunderstandings to come in between us especially if someone is sitting thousands of miles away and one can do precious little. I hate not talking to you. I miss you, I really do.