Dec 19, 2011

Sunshine

                               Painting by Dreama Tolle Perry


She went running from one end of the building to another. It was all a maze with every floor having at least 6 court rooms and the building having different wings. She couldn’t quiet remember which court room number was the case in or even which floor. She was running short of time as the Judges began their proceedings for the day, sharp at 10. The court rooms smelt of a curious mixture of old paper, that decaying smell that comes from the stacks and stacks of dusty files, piled one on top of the other and a clinical smell of the disinfectant that strips away every bit of the individual character of the rooms and brings them all to an equal level, much like a Court wherein the barriers and divides between the two parties are broken for just that short span of time before the Judge.

It was a cold winter morning in December and the court rooms were draughty with wind whistling in through the cracks of the window panes and one could see the city shrouded in fog. Winter was late this year and the predictable meteorological department had not been able to predict the sudden offset of winter. She still hadn’t found the correct court room because all the rooms looked identical in every floor. All she remembered of that particular court room that day had been the sunlight that had come flooding in through the west facing windows. That court room had been oddly devoid of any dampness and the Judge had seemed particularly vigorous and lively.

Just five minutes to go and there were 6 rooms left for her inspect and find out the correct court room or had she mistakenly missed it when she saw a shaft of sunlight being reflected on one shining wooden door. She ran inside through the half opened door and there it was, all brown and warm with polished wooden surfaces, the sunniest Court Room of all, in the dark and dingy District Court Complex.

Dec 13, 2011

The one in which it feels like 2006 and we watch some more television and crib some more.

By the looks of it, it seems that, this just might be the first December in 5 years that I don't mess up, rather  ***K UP royally. Wow! Or am I reacting a little too early. Hahah! I don't know. But for once I am not in the midst of some random romantic entanglement with one of those vague yet obnoxiously attractive("only to me") men. My status in life right now would be "Not looking for another romantic disaster. I need time to breathe pleaseeee!" Don't I say this everytime and every single time I get into something worse than the last time. Hmmmpphhh! When am I gonna get it right as in not try at all. I don't need to give everything a shot, okay not everything but even almost everything a shot. I need to sit around quietly doing my thing and not look for romance at all. How do you that? How does one stop hoping completely? That is never going to happen, the not hoping part.

Oh and I received useful advice from someone who earns his living doing something which is a glorified and a much fancier version of what I do or the kind of role he has is what I see myself doing ten years down the line. He agreed that I wouldn't want to be so very specialised with my knowledge at 28 but at the end of the day everybody needs to master some domain knowledge and that was what struck me. I am gonna keep this little piece of advice in my head.

My evenings are devoted solely to my new LED television. I watch 3 solid hours of television and the highlight being the one hour of Masterchef USA. Somewhere in the middle I manage to rustle up dinner and exercise but all of that is done with the television on. Reading has taken a backseat but I am sure it'll be back with a bang. It always has and always does. Oh and with the new tv and the new geyser I have spent almost all my salary so I actually have no option but to sit at home and watch TV and eat home cooked meals.

Batty and I watch the same television programs, she at her place at fancy Bandra(forever cribbing about I only have one room ya) and me in my empty, large apartment in akin-to-satellite-township so not fancy Dwarka, while talking on the phone and we talk about the same thing at least 3 days a week and it feels so 2006, just that we are like 5 years older now and we really need to grow up and move on but alas something will never change. The cities have changed from Chennai to Bombay and Delhi respectively but the singlehood blues have only taken on strange proportions now. Hahaha! But a large part of it is just spent laughing at ourselves and I genuinely feel that laughter cannot be that bad. :)

"Lonely is a freedom that breathes easy and weightless and lonely is healing if you make it. If you are happy in your head, then solitude is blessed and alone is okay."

Tanya Davis

Dec 5, 2011

And I am a fame whore.


                                Coutesy: http://www.popartmachine.com/

I was talking to an old college friend of mine last evening about the recent happenings in my life namely the deal that went awry. He listens to my whole story in detail and chuckles and says “After having known you for 10 years and having been witness to some of your shenanigans and heard the rest, this was the only one that was missing. This is like the cherry on the cake. “ I was like how can you say that? You think I like doing these things to myself or I like the fact that these things happen to me knowingly, unknowingly or voluntarily or involuntarily. No I don’t, at least not all the time. When I was younger and something/anything amusing would happen it would be one story to be told to the entire gang even if they were sitting across 7 oceans. I remember calling up P in London and keeping her up to date with stories of my misdeeds. This particular episode wasn’t that. It is not something I would add to my repertoire of stories fondly. I wasn’t getting cheap kicks even relating this incident. Emotionally it was exhausting even if I wasn’t exactly in love or anything remotely to being in love. It was just relief and whew when it was over.

I know when I am old and look back on my twenties,  it would be a youth well spent, chequered with the most bizarre and funniest happenings, but all my mistakes, well I am still embarrassed about some of them, the wrong judgments and all of that. There would be a couple of incidents I would want to go back and change and no they wouldn’t be the ones dealing with unrequited love or failed love affairs but the times when I made a terrible judgment or a stupid weak moment and so much was lost in the process. The only other thing I would obviously change would be to have my Father back in my life. The more I grow older, the more I miss the man. I didn’t think I would think about him every single day, not the fact that he passed away the way he did but just the simple truth that he isn’t there to laugh about something silly or that he isn’t available to just call and bug and crib about nonsensical things or even throw a tantrum. Even in my most weakest moment just before I made a terrible terrible fool of myself I have thought about him and missed him. The truth also is that after Dad’s passed away and if I am single I cannot handle more than 4 drinks in my system.

And I am not a fame whore. I like attention only from the closest people in my life. I know I have a colourful past but yeah it is just that. I am anything but complacent about it nor can I deny its existence. It is just there and always will be there.

Dec 2, 2011

Self Pity Is A Dead End Road


                                                    Painting by Mark Schwartz

You were gonna be in LA and I was going to Boston and we would’ve met up at New York. Hahaha!

Last night you told me you were tired of listening to the same thing I have said again and again over the course of the last 5 years and I agreed. On my thirtieth year I had better live up to that promise or else it’ll be one of those things I never ever did in spite of wanting it so badly, like my insides ache badly.

And yes for the last 5 years we have spent an enormous amount of time apologizing or feeling dejected for the people we are, we were or have turned out to be. No more. This is me. Take it or leave it. Yes I goof up sometimes, be it in my personal life, my relationships, at work and even if you don’t believe me but the goof ups ain’t always intentional. I am an idiot to have worn those goof ups on my sleeve but please point out another person who’ll accept the fact oh so readily that she can be wrong, frightfully wrong and acknowledge that it could’ve been done another way, a better way. Believe you me I try and I won’t become that changed person in a day. But I am getting there. I know I am. :)

Cheers to that.

This is something I read which expressed so articulately what I should tell myself when I am down and out.

“I’m a socialist at heart, but when it comes to the actual, individual way we live our lives, I adhere to an entirely pull-oneself-up-by-one’s-bootstraps creed. Nobody’s going to do your life for you. You have to do it yourself, whether you’re rich or poor, out of money or raking it in, the beneficiary of ridiculous fortune or terrible injustice. And you have to do it no matter what is true. No matter what is hard. No matter what unjust, sad, sucky things have befallen you. Self-pity is a dead end road. You make the choice to drive down it. It’s up to you to decide to stay parked there or to turn around and drive out.”

Nov 25, 2011

And what are you grateful for?

I am grateful for a million things. I am grateful for every breath I take, each moment that I am alive and healthy . I am grateful for the unconditional love of my family, Mommy, Bonu, Aunt, Uncle and Great Aunt. I am grateful for the friends I have, the fun, the laughter shared when are together , the sheer joy of having been together through some of the best and worst years of our lives, the friends  who always stand by me through the self made disasters and who shake me up from my slumber.  I am grateful that for each fall I have had I could get up, shake the dust away and walk on.  I am grateful even for the inconsequential friendships at work because though they might not be playing a pivotal role in my life but during the lowest times they gave a semblance of sanity to my life.  I am grateful that I can sing along to songs happily on my way to work every morning. I am grateful that I am able to dream and work towards them without the burden of negativity that had encompassed my dreams some time back. I am oh so grateful that I can be happy on my own, for the peace and calm inside my head. I am grateful for the cheerfulness within me, for only 2 years back all I had inside me was bitterness and cynicism.  I am grateful that I can spend the half an hour after lunch just writing this and that after all of this I still love to write even if its gibberish.

Nov 23, 2011

Love Someone Like You are 8

 Inspired by Love Someone Like You Are 6 by Stephanie Georgopulos.

Love someone like you are 8. Go play in the part of the park that is right in front of his house every summer evening  or cycle right past his house time after time, just to get one glimpse of him, hoping he’ll come out and play with you. Share story books with him, borrow his Hardy Boys and lend him your Enid Blytons.  Bitch about how Nancy Drew Case Files are too grown up for the likes of both of you.
Love someone like you are 8 and make him confess his feelings for you on New Year’s eve in front of his younger brother who happens to be 7 years old. Taunt him all evening till he actually comes out with his childish love for you sharp at 12 at night.
Love someone like you are 9 and one winter night manage sneaking out of a party at the army mess to spend some time together away from the prying eyes of the elders and the other kids, when you ask him all bashfully yet seriously “So why do you love me?”  and he looks back at the bespectacled you with that boyish smile and says something as simple as “I suppose the liking part.” and melts your heart.
Love someone like you are 9 and have a water fight with him in his garden when he sprays water all over you and both of you are laughing and giggling and fighting over whose gonna take the hose from whom not realizing that both of you are dripping wet,  looking like a pair of bedraggled crows until his Father comes and instructs both of you to stop it.
Love someone like you are 9 when you accuse him of winking at the new girl in his school, jealous in your heart of hearts that both of you ain’t in the same school anymore and watch him defend himself saying he can’t believe that you think he did that.
Love someone like you are almost 10 and say Good Bye to him at the train station when he looks into your eyes and at your sad tear streaked face and consoles you saying “Don’t Worry we’ll meet again.” And you never meet him again.
Bump into him at 25 at a bar, where you are sitting with a bored look on your face, sipping a Bloody Mary, smoking a cigarette and thinking of ways and means to get out of the gathering and all of a sudden see that old familiar face, now grown up to be a handsome, dreamy eyed version of the boy you used to love at 8, 9 and 10.  Notice beside him, his fragile,  china doll of a girl friend who screams bohemian chic. Pretend you don’t recognize him and walk past by him, blowing smoke rings in the air, in defiance of all that you will never be.

Dedicated to GK  who was actually and truly the only Childhood Sweetheart I ever had. Because you won't remember any of these incidents. Because the first time we spoke after 18 years was on Skype and you called me by my real name and not my nick name. Because you apparently have no recollection of me now. Hahaha! What fun!

Nov 20, 2011

Just so you know I won't give it up no more. I promise I won't. :D

Nov 18, 2011

28 going on 40


                                          Image Courtesy:www.GJanisseArtist.com
I am not scared of 30. No I am not and that is also because I don’t really have an option. I can’t possibly be scared of turning 30 when it is scarcely 2 years away. Somehow 30 doesn’t sound as formidable a number as 40 does or am I over thinking and under estimating the power of 30 is it? Lemme see. How did I see myself at 30 back when I was 18. I can’t really remember and I am quite ashamed of the fact that at 18 I hadn’t envisioned what I might be at 30. It just shows how I didn’t know where exactly life was taking me and to the 28 year old now, the 18 year old me then should have been more motivated  about life. Damn it I do not want this to be the story still at 40. I have the next couple of years still to do what I wanna do. Make something worthwhile out of my life and at least some of those dreams should come true. Actually one of them should and I don’t wanna be chucking that one dream further and further away each time I meet some loser of the opposite sex.
At 40 I’ll have no excuses left and I wonder why but at 40 beginning life all over again and inspiring myself some more would be an arduous task. Now is the only time I have. After all these disasters, most of which have been self made, some which have been inflicted upon me and the rest being plain destiny one thing that stands out the most is that I needed something like this to happen for me to realize I don’t really care as much as I thought I did. It doesn’t matter to me that much. I am fine on my own inside my head.  I was such a nitwit all this while, all this fickin’ while.  How many difficult pictures have I tried to paint time after time and it has got only more difficult after each stroke of the paint brush until I give up and break the picture. All my energy, all that vitality was being spent in that one direction. God I can be so tiresome sometimes or most of the time.
I went for a jog last evening as I have been doing the last couple of days but yesterday I actually jogged a really long stretch. Living in the army cantt has its advantages and how I feel at home in this place. Haha! I am staying with family friends I met after 18 years.  I grew up surrounded by these people or my first decade on this earth was spent around these people.  They didn’t blink an eyelid before they asked me to stay with them as long as I wanted to and as long as I was comfortable.  I accepted the offer after my initial trepidation and I am so glad I did. Life has been so full of melodrama the last couple of years that I could write a book on it.  Sometimes it gets entirely too exciting and borderline melodramatic.  It must be me, has to be me who does this to herself time after time.  Some tranquility and serenity please.
 

Nov 17, 2011

Guess what I did! I almost burnt my thumb due to an overdose of the nail polish remover that was being used by me so that I could remove the then ugly dark green nail polish and paint my toes pretty silver. The skin came off in bits and pieces because this darned nail polish remover was so strong and the end result being I am unable to sign into the office fingerprint impression register and mark myself as present. Hmmphhhh! The damned machine refuses to accept the fact that this thumb belongs to me still. It might be burnt with new skin growing but it is still mine. Hmmphhh! Officially I have been absent for  4 days now.

Nov 10, 2011

A deal that went awry


I am feeling extremely headachy these days. Every alternate day and I have these blinding headaches. Maybe it’s the stress of the last couple of months manifesting itself in this fashion that I am incapacitated all day.  Now that I look back there were so many little signs showing that this isn’t the way it is supposed to be and that constant feeling of tiredness and sleeplessness that refused to go away.
I want my normal, mundane ordinary life back. I want that carefully structured routine to be back in its place.  Yesterday after a longtime I was PMSing and I tell you it just felt so regular because to PMS and to feel moody and angry for no reason is ordinary and I haven’t had that luxury the last 4 months because there was always so much to be livid about and all my bad moods had a tangible reason to it which could be pointed out to the very crux of the matter.
I think I finally had a restful night’s sleep after Monday when everything including my gorgeus engagement ring was returned. It hit me that now I can refuse to take the calls and shall not be forced to entertain those familiar numbers. There was no reason left whatsoever anymore. Or else in Cal all of last week Mum and I would cringe every time the phone rang and an unfamiliar number or an all too familiar unwanted phone number flashed on our phone screens.  God I can be such a scaredy cat I tell you. I guess to cut away family ties has been as difficult as I thought it would be and in some aspects it has been surprisingly easy too.  There was nothing emotional about this, nothing at all.
I don't feel empty or hollow from inside that I probably have felt before nor do I miss anyone and I so don't look back at those times fondly or wistfully. To have spent so much time with  a bunch of people and not to blink an eyelid when its over,  well that does speak volumes. Its like a deal that went awry and you know what it was never meant to be a deal and that is what was twisted about this whole thing.

Nov 3, 2011

Thank you but no thank you. That is that. Oh and I didn't want my wings to be clipped. Maybe the realisation hit me too late besides the others that were staring back at me. I love my life too much you see. That was gonna be no life at all and not the way I see myself living it at the least. This has been such an eye opener. I came soooo close to losing it all. Narrow escape indeed.

Oct 28, 2011

All I wanna do is to curl up somewhere and sleep and sleep.

Oct 18, 2011

I got published on The Rumpus. Yeayyyyyyyyy!

http://therumpus.net/2011/10/priyanka-ghosh-the-last-book-i-loved-kartography/

I am feeling like soooo cooolllll only because it is The Rumpus. My favourite online magazine which is a platform for budding writers and established writers too. They publish writing only because it is good writing. :D

Oct 14, 2011

And I miss you

  A very dear friend of mine and I were talking about wedding preps when she mentioned how her Dad is going berserk planning the bash and how he isn’t leaving any stone unturned to ensure that he gives his daughter the wedding of a lifetime when I couldn’t help but think about Baba. I wonder how it would have been if he’d been alive now. All three of us wouldn’t have been chewing our nails as much as we are doing so now besides just having him around would have made a world of difference. The family still feels empty without him. We aren’t a whole unit anymore. This isn’t even about missing him just because I am getting married but the fact that I miss him at the strangest of times. I see pictures of families and see the loving Fathers and it hits me that Baba isn’t going to be there on one of the most important days of my life and all other important days for the rest of my life.
An Uncle  passed away recently, just a day after I landed in Cal and inadvertently I found myself at the burning ghats that evening and it brought back all the memories of the one and only time I had been there two years back to light Baba’s funeral pyre. I remember how much in control of the situation I was until the time came to light the pyre and that is when I couldn’t get myself to do the task until I forcefully closed my eyes and somebody made me light the pyre and I did it all with my eyes closed. I couldn’t bear saying goodbye to my Father in this fashion. None of us can when we lose our near and dear ones. And to think Life still goes on and on. There was happiness and life before and then there was death and a funeral and now there is gonna be a wedding and celebrations. It still feels hollow inside some corner of my heart without Baba like the evening I got engaged I asked one of our family friends Raj uncle, who was a very good friend of Baba, if Baba had been there how it would have been and he said that Baba would still be watching over me from somewhere up there and he is there in spirit. I hope he is.

Oct 11, 2011

I wish I had a wedding planner.

 'Why don't you leave the planning of our wedding to me?' by McCoy, Glenn and Gary
From Cartoonstock.com
Yes I did vanish. I think two months is a long long time not to blog at all. I have been following the blogs I do regularly just that there was too much happening on the personal front and I couldn’t devote time to blogging and I don’t want it to be like that at all. So here I am updating the blog.
Firstly I got engaged after a whirlwind of what I would like to call something akin to a romance and we are still trying to get a grip on the wedding preparations. There is sooooooooooo much of planning to do that managing everything at the same time gets sooo tedious.  And no I cannot afford one those creative and glamorous wedding planners but sometimes I do wish I could and us and our sets of parents did not get this harrowed. I was home for ten whole days but believe me not even a single day went by when I didn’t have some wedding related task to accomplish. I wish this was just about two people wanting to spend their life together and wooooossshhhhh you are spending your life together . Sigh! Indian weddings I tell you. I could write an entire post on how tiresome it gets with all the running around and managing a full time job and trying to coordinate two different sets of people living in two different cities. The charm wears off so easily only to resurface again when I am with him alone sitting in the car and we are listening to the music and I realize this is why we are doing all of this or when I got my first  glimpse of him as he walked into my house the evening of my engagement.  He’d worn a pristine white kurta with a beautiful green brocade shawl that was hanging casually on his shoulder and he’d done his hair in spikes and he couldn’t stop smiling and that is when I knew that I liked all of him including the fact that he kept joking even as I tried to slip the ring into his ring finger and he gave me his thumb instead.
First day at work today after almost two weeks and I am so happy to be back working. I am not good at sitting at home and doing nothing. I over think, I over analyse the situation and how? I do it so beautifully and it is such an art.  So that is that. Shall write a chirpier and a happier and a longer post soon. Wish me best of luck with the small details and pray that this wedding goes of smoothly without me ruffling too many feathers.

Sep 5, 2011

All it takes is that one peek into the possible future, one picture of far away lands, one hint of a different life  and I still wanna fly away. I don't wanna be bound down. Damn it.

Aug 29, 2011

Dear God could I have the excited and pepped up blogger in me back please?

I had unpleasant dreams all of last night. I shouldn’t have had them. I spent a lovely lovely evening with A who is down from Dubai with her husband D, good old M and the newest addition to my life T. We started off drinking at Beer Café and wound up finally at TC. It wasn’t one of those drunken nights but was one of those evenings when the food and drinks are in the perfectly right proportion, in harmony with the endless conversation. An evening well spent so I shouldn’t have had the nightmares I did.

Delhi has been so caught up with the entire Anna fever that this one topic has dominated all conversations and interactions at the coffee table, during dinner time, while on chai breaks, or even lunch breaks, office parties and almost everywhere. I seemed to have had a lot to say the last time in April but this time the drama has played itself out so vividly and almost everyone had something to say for it or against it. There were people on my Facebook list who were pro Anna and anti-Congress. There were people who thought what Anna and his team were doing was sheer arm twisting the Government and the entire movement, if I may call it so, was supposedly anti- democracy and beyond the framework of the Constitution. There was Arundhati Roy’s controversial article in The Hindu when she elucidated Why she wouldn’t wanna be Anna? Then there was the counter article and the deluge of comments that berated her for her stand. Trust Arundhati Roy to always, always be politically divisive. I have to give her credit for that. Team Anna and the Government seemed to have reached to a sort of temporary consensus right now. Let’s wait and watch how long this painfully achieved bonhomie lasts.

I turned 28 this month. I was still getting over the Jim Corbett hangover so merely went out for dinner and drinks with M, S and T. Do I feel old or do I feel old? Sigh! I don’t feel like writing at all these days which is not a good sign at all. I want to be able to write forever and ever. Where has all the enthusiasm gone? This is so not me. This not feeling like writing me is not the me I love. I am not some professional writer but I do like to think of myself as an avid blogger. Dear God could I have the excited and pepped up blogger in me back please? :-) As someone once said only I can tell the stories I wanna tell.

Aug 23, 2011

Note to myself post my 28th birthday

What I could have possibly told myself 5 days before my 28th Birthday and what I realized after spending 5 days in the wilderness.


1) Do not, absolutely do not go to a hill station during monsoons for a weekend getaway even if it happens to be a Wildlife Park. You will be equipped to spend a weekend there but what will actually happen is that you’ll spend 5 days there and the last 2 days being wretched and miserable with your birthday knocking on the door and you so do not wanna turn 28 in the middle of a jungle resort and pouring rain, dwindling food supplies and clean clothes.

2) You will find the strangest of ways to keep yourself occupied with a bunch of people one would have never thought one would spend so much time with. You’ll play history quiz games at 6 in the morning because you would have exhausted your quota of ghost stories and sharing relationship blues or singlehood blues.

3) You’ll miss two very very important meetings which had to happen just when you get stuck in the resort all thanks to torrential rains, rising levels of the river waters and not to forget the landslides. When you'll explain the same to your Bosses in office it'll sound too melodramatic and filmy.You'll thank lord for the smart phone that was actually bought for a very different purpose.
4) You shall eat an enormous amount of food, an amount you haven’t eaten in the recent times and all due to the lack of any constructive activity except to stare out at the forests and keep looking at the skies waiting for the rain to stop and hoping that the sun shall come out.

5) You shall keep checking out the level of water in the Kosi river that flows just below the resort. Never has the rising level of water decided the course of your life but for these 3 days apparently it did.

6) Your belief in the need for physical exercise and activity will be reinstated. Yes you have been so correct about needing to exert yourself physically each and every day in some form or the other. Exercise does keep you happy.

7) You’ll finally cherish your daily, mundane and routine life. You’ll miss your almost empty flat in Dwarka to bits, you’ll miss the desi boys from office and their silly, lewd and loud, rustic jokes. You’ll so wanna get back to the clinical confines of your workplace.

8) You’ll pray to God for 2 hours incessantly as the car undertakes the perilous journey to carry you through,  mountainous rivers when a tractor will tow the car, flooded plains with waist high slushy water when you’ll pay passerby 300 rupees to push the car as they keep saying “doob jayegi gadiiiiiiiiii sahib.’

9)  You'll be tired, wet and hungry and shall probably never ever be so happy to be back in an Anna effected Delhi.

That by the end of it all you'll just be glad to be alive and living the life that you are living at least for now.

"The woods are lovely dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep."



Aug 5, 2011

Just another random update

                                Courtesy- www.dailypainters.com
Isn’t it strange how you get inspiration to write a post from the most inconsequential of things?  Another blog post for instance.  I was thinking if I miss writing ever. Yes I do but then again my work entails a lot of writing rather drafting seems to be a more apt term and yes it isn’t necessarily the kind of writing one had envisioned on doing but it is writing nonetheless.  I wouldn’t be me without my writing skills whatever they might be worth. I think professionally my biggest identity or my USP at least are my writing skills and man I know how insipid and dry and lifeless the writing I do at work is. Hahaha! But then again its business and my bread and butter. I had reviewed some document the other day and as usal the changes were in the track changes mode when a colleague remarked that I almost always prefer my language to be used and my instant reply being if I think something can be expressed in a more precise and logical way then I shall make the change accordingly. I am always looking to express myself better and honing my language skills. I so envy writers and bloggers who make magic with their words.  Sigh!  So one of my blogger pals is gonna study Cultural Reporting and Criticism at NYU. How cool is that! J What luxury to be able to get a degree in something as enticing as this I say! I would give an arm and a leg to do so and she said I could live vicariously through her. Heheh!
I haven’t exactly been active off late. The usal work, home, exercise, dinner, tv, read, phone, sleep and the same routine the next day.  There was no electricity for 48 hours straight this last weekend and I was miserable. I didn’t sleep whole of Sunday night and went to office all red eyed and sleepless only to come back home to a dark house again in the evening. I was in tears but realized I can’t sit around waiting for electricity to come because some transformer had burst and the electricity board officials were refusing to give any assurance on when it would be repaired. I promptly called up C who lives in Sector 6 asking her if I can stay over and she and Neel were more than happy to have me over. My excitement at having an air conditioned room all to myself for the whole night was palpable.  I had delicious Thai Green Curry for dinner the other day at G’s new place at Green Park. It is such a lovely, roomy apartment with lots of natural light and  splendid wooden interiors though it is yet to done up. We were meeting up after 6 months and it was really nice catching up  over Thai Curry and Swedish Cheese on toasted bread. I’d never had Swedish cheese before and G was wondering if I’d like it. I loved it.  I haven’t been cooking much this week as you can see I haven’t mentioned anything that I would have made recently. I did make some mushroom biriyani last week but for the rice not cooking properly. Hmmphhh! I was so disappointed because I got the flavours perfectly. Another day and another time I am guessing.

Jul 27, 2011

I can make you out by the pitter patter of your feet



It is dark, cloudy and gloomy outside. This is just the sort of weather which on a daily basis would depress me to no end but once in a blue moon when we get the luxury to experience the rain in all its glory, here in Delhi, we love it and embrace it. Yes I know how one litre of rain causes the city traffic to come to a halt and most of us working folks find it so tiresome driving back home in the evening or shuttling from Court to office and back becomes a gargantuan task in the middle of the day.  But what the hell, a rainy day is a rainy day, even if the only little part I get to enjoy of it is to take a sneak peak at the open parking lot set against the grey sky and to sniff at the smell of the coming rain in anticipation and hope that it quenches the parched souls.
I was in Dilli Haat on Monday afternoon because I was on my way  for an appointment and I also happened to be craving Pork Momos and fruit beer from the Meghalaya Tourism food stall. I must have spent half an hour at the most, hurrying up and eating and turning a blind eye to the all the zillion colourful stalls that were calling me, knowing that I have no time to stand and stare. But how I enjoyed those stolen 30 minutes from my busy, busy day because they so didn’t fit into the schedule yet I had made it a point fit it in somehow. I so wanted to take a look around at the bric bracs and the knic knacs but alas it was Monday afternoon and office hours.
Did I tell you the tale of the two lizards in my loo who only make an appearance in the mornings and miraculously vanish by the time I am back home at night, only to be welcomed by them again the morning? I hate lizards. I loathe them and there they are having found such a happy and cool sanctuary which is my loo. I feel it is raining lizards these days. The lift has an ugly, tiny one that promises to grow into a monster, complete with black spots all over it. You can imagine, how much of my time is spent shooing them away, for me to have noticed even their intricate body patterns.
Can you make out someone’s presence just by hearing their footsteps?  I know I can and I only realized it a couple of months back, and that too in this office, that my senses are tuned in this fashion. I can make you out by the pitter patter of your feet? How absurd is it! Last year I could make out R and A coming and standing behind me as I worked and they would be astonished how I never turn around yet I know it is them. Then it was Abhi with the skip in her footsteps and now it is J as he drags his feet along in an emotionless fashion.  In my mind’s eye I can make out my Mum’s footsteps walking down any corridor just by her slow dragging rhythm. I try to remember Bonu’s but somehow cannot seem to. I am sure if she walks past by me I can close my eyes and tell it is her.

Jul 25, 2011

Shhhhhh, don't tell anybody....

“There are few things more riveting than watching people gossip …………….which, we all know, is exactly the same wherever you are. Who’s sleeping with who, who isn’t sleeping with who, who knows about and who doesn’t, shhhhhh, don’t tell anybody what I’m about tell you, I’m only telling you…”
Peter Orner
Hahahha! Gossiping is sooooooo universal.

Jul 20, 2011

Starting to work on a Subcontract close out. I am feeling a teeny meeny bit sentimental about  it. Wowwww!!!! We are actually starting to close shop. Where to now once all the strings are tied?

Jul 14, 2011

The last 2 weeks.

The "Dear Sugar "Poster from therumpus.net
What have I been up to the last two weeks or so? For one thing there was lots of work and the weekends which are a whirlwind affair replete with office and classes. Sundays aren’t Sundays anymore but then I wouldn’t want it any other way. Though what one has to keep an eye out for is only gonna come the second time around I feel. I just don’t seem to do things correctly the first time around ever ever. My life is a perfect example of trying, falling, getting up, stumbling and finally walking. Hahaha! But it has been quite the ride I must say.


I also seem to fill in lots of cooking whenever I get the time and a lot of bad pictures that I want to improve on. Last night I made the yummiest meat ball curry and sat happily eating it with rice and watched “The Girl WithThe Dragon Tattoo” with English subtitles. My idea of Lisbeth Salander was a somewhat younger, elfish looking character. The Swedish actress, Noomi Rapace did a fabulous job with her interpretation of such a complex character like Lisbeth but I always imagined Lisbeth to be a bit more vulnerable than what they made her out to be in the movie. And Mikael Blomkvist was supposed to be more blonde and more handsome and Erika was sexier in the book. Hahah! Can’t wait for the Hollywood version with Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara as Michael and Lisbeth.

Besides that I have been hanging out with M and G once in a while in DGC and I dig, absolutely dig the grilled fish there. I had it two consecutive times the last two weeks and G was like "Don’t you wanna try something new?” I declined. Heehaww! Not to forget the Caramel Custard. Sigh! Oh and I did full drama last week on J’s birthday as he dilly dallied on how and with whom to celebrate. I was so exasperated with people coming up with their own conditions about where to celebrate and why not to celebrate at my place that at 6 in the evening I walked out quietly thinking they can do what they want, with whomsoever they want but I am out of this circus. For once I was wrong and I wasn’t allowed to walk away and was made to come back from CP after many many pleas and I am happy that I was wrong. J had a fun birthday with people who are genuinely fond of him.

Day before yesterday we had a pillow fight at Vik’s place. I was on the phone with M and J chucked that hugeee pillow on my face and that was it and I wasn’t gonna be taking that lying down. Was sooooo much fun and laughter though last morning I couldn’t move my neck. I am off to Bangalore tomorrow for the weekend. Yeayyyy! I get to meet Fino, Saggy, Cowww and the rest. Can’t hardly wait. :D

Jun 30, 2011

All things food :-)

                                     
                                         Courtesy: http://www.artandcritique.com/

I finally created a new blog for my experiments with food as I have slowly and steadily grown to realise that food interests me immensely and that I devote quite a lot of time reading about food and my last couple of posts contained a proportinate amount of  food writing in general, be it food being cooked in my own kitchen or in some restaurant, cafe or in someone's house. I am also quite fascinated by food photography and hope to be able to take my first baby steps this evening. I am excited like a little girl who gets her first dolls house and cannot wait to start playing with it. I am gonna try making Deviled Eggs tonight. Let's see how the photographs turn out. Shall be uploading them in my other blog soon. Roll the drumssss and here you go Spicy Deviled Eggs that I am calling it.

Dearest "New My Very Own Food Blog",

I hope I can keep up to the true spirit of food writing which is to love all things food and to be able present  all things food in a delicious and spectacular way. This is my humble and modest attempt to be a part of this food blogging world that is filled with such talented food writers, food bloggers, food photographers and food stylists. There are many, many food bloggers who have inspired me enough with their wonderful writing and fabulous photography. I have no idea how long I shall last and how far we shall travel but here is wishing  me best of luck with you, that is my endeavour at food blogging. :-) Yeayyyyyyyyy!!!!

Love,
Utopia

Jun 27, 2011

I needed to write and so here I am.


Does this happen to you ever that you are overwrought with this urgent need to write? That all you want to do is to put those words on paper and see them take shape. They might amount to precious little but you are anxious to put your thoughts out there and see them in the form of words, in some ways so tangible yet intangible and fleeting. It happened to me right now in the middle of this working Monday and so I left everything and started typing this incoherent piece that it shall ultimately turn out to be.

I’ve been happy lately or maybe it is just being content. I guess it is the feeling which comes when one knows that I am finally doing something I have been wanting to do for sooooo long and even if I don’t quite reach there I’ll somehow find my way. Damn it but now I realize, how important it is to listen to that little voice in my head that had been saying this like a mantra for years and years. Sometimes even if we want something so bad we just sit around twiddling our thumbs doing nothing at all. Why do we do that?

I am also the happiest when I am the busy. I think most of us human being are programmed that way. The weekends when I am lethargic and don’t feel like getting out of my bed on Sundays are the Sundays that I am my most dissatisfied self. The Sundays I wake up early and complete all my household chores are the Sundays I am my merriest self.

I went for my weekly vegetable shopping this Friday evening as I happened to get out of work early. Most weekdays buying groceries or anything after work is so taxing but surprisingly I was very eager that day. It took just half an hour and for a change I didn’t crib to myself about having to bring everything, all alone upstairs. The one time I almost always am convinced that I do wanna get married is when I am out vegetable and grocery shopping cos the loads are always so heavy and it is so unfair having to carry it all by myself. Yes then I’ll have someone to share this task with me. Silly me.

I replayed a particular scene in my head the way I wanted to, the same Friday evening again and again and made my peace with someone. Have you ever done that? To make peace with a certain person who in reality will never bother to do so and I’ll never get the apology or the poetic justice I think I deserve so I play it out in my mind over and over again in the fashion I would have wanted things to unfold and strangely peace prevailed. My make believe peace but peace nonetheless. Closure at last.

PS: I found this poem in the morning and it left me disturbed. It was so Sylvia Plathish.

Jun 24, 2011

Jun 22, 2011

Drifting


In House Legal “Boring” Counsel. I suddenly thought of adding “boring” to the entire term last morning sometime amidst piles of work. Bleargggghhhh! I am thoroughly bored substantial part of the week and the weekends pass away like the blink of an eyelid and woooosssh it is Monday again. That feeling of life being perennially Monday is so agonizing. I need a change rather I want a change. I am tired of seeing the same people at office day after day. I so know that once I get that change I’ll miss these people but even then. I am tired of it all. The city, the people, mundane life. I wonder how we manage to spend years and years doing the same thing and living the same lives. I remember that feeling of being trapped sometime in Pune in my second year there. There were more than 3 years ahead but hell I couldn’t wait for it to get over. Once college got over I couldn’t wait to start working and once I started working I couldn’t wait to get a fancier job or study some more. The longest time I have spent in a city is Kolkata which would be 8 years of my life and then Pune which was 5 whole growing up years as I danced my way from teens to my twenties and then its been a large helping of Delhi, a touch of Chennai , a dash of Bangalore and Kolkata sprinkled here and there. Kolkata will always be sprinkled here and there. :-) What is bothering me right now in this entire concoction is the overly generous helpings of Delhi. I am done with this place now.

When does that feeling of “I want my roots here to this place” set in? How do you realize this is the city that you want to have a house in, raise kids and live a life in? Maybe because I don’t have all these bindings of a relationship hence I do not feel rooted to any place at all. Home is Kolkata and that is that. But with other cities I have mostly have either a very detached relationship or a love hate relationship like Delhi now. I was very very detached with Pune. I probably spent the better part of my young adulthood there but the only reason I ever go back there is cos a very dear friend of mind stays there. I never feel passionate about living in any city like some people swear by the places they live in. Is it a sign of my restlessness of finding that one place I know I can see myself live the rest of my life and even if its alone I would be able to dwell in it perfectly content alone. Yeah I need to find that place soon, in the next couple of years. I pray I do so.

Jun 17, 2011

A dinner party and the curious case of the knock on my door....


I finally managed to cook up a storm in my kitchen last evening. Yeayyyyyy! The mission being feeding 5 hungry boys and time given was two hours inclusive of the time spent buying the chicken, the cheese, the mushroom, babycorn and a bottle of white wine. So I made pasta in white sauce which was accompanied by store bought garlic bread.( I can’t wait to learn how to bake bread). I came home quite irritated with the boys to have left me to do all the cooking on my own but again this isn’t new. They have always invited themselves over without any hesitation and I always presume the role of the Official Chef and me feels its more like a crown of thorns now. Sigh! But honestly I was amazed at my own multitasking and organizing skills as I started off my assignment with single minded determination doing the chopping and peeling while simultaneously boiling the penne . By the time the penne was done, I drained the water and laid it to dry tossing some refined oil on it so that it doesn’t stick and become messy. I finished washing and chopping the mushrooms, baby corn , half a kilo of onions, two tomatoes and peeling the garlic which was the most irritating bit. I made the pasta first because I wasn’t so confident about it as much as chicken curry that one can make with my eyes closed. Instead of making the traditional white sauce with flour and butter as the base I used milk and heaps of cheese and that was the perfect alternative as the pasta turned out divine and the boys were raving about it even this morning in office. The Chicken Curry didn’t have that many takers since half of them were vegetarian and the ones who were non-veg had already stuffed themselves with pasta and gotten completely wasted on alcohol.

We were listening to such sideyyyyy songs by somebody called Sharry Mann and the song was called Chandigarh da chaska. Heard this unknown song by Mohit Chauhan called Mai Ne Meriye which was more like a folk song when he reminisces his home in Himachal and he went on and on about Kasauli and Shimla. J and R were tripping on these songs until Vik put his foot down saying he wanted to listen to Sayonnee and there I was changing the music and having my wine from the wine bottle directly. I was doing this after almost 4 years. I mean drinking wine right out of a wine bottle and refusing to share my wine. The boys found it so funny that I wouldn’t even part with a single drop of wine. They were dying to make some random cocktails out of beer, wine and whiskey but I wouldn’t budge. They owed it to me after all the cooking I had done. I was so content just to sip the wine and feel the wine bottle in my hand , listen to music and watch them create funny chaos and crack shady jokes. I didn’t do much at all after my marathon cooking session. Even the feeling of tiredness was a sweet one, as if all that toiling was worth it.

The party ended at 12:30 when some strange sound was heard and it was as if someone had knocked on my door and there was no one in reality. There was silence in the room for 10 seconds and then the debating began if all of us heard the knock or not. Me in my inebriated state said it happens all the time and I am pretty used to it. They were stunned. These idiots left within 20 minutes flat, running away like headless chickens cos they got sooo scared. Hahahaha! This morning they kept trying to sell the idea of changing houses to me saying my place is haunted and how can I stay there alone and how real the knock was and how convinced they are that there was a presence that night. I do not believe and I don’t even want to think along those lines. How sad! Hahaha!

Behind every man now alive stand 30 ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living.

ARTHUR C. CLARKE, 2001: A Space Odyssey



PS: I slept with my lamp on last night all thanks to these stupid bums who have planted the seeds of an imaginary ghost in my head.

Jun 13, 2011

I need inspiration...

                                Courtesy- Flickr
Just because I have a tattoo on my back and I am a dunce in Math doesn’t mean I am a Fashion Designer you stupid stupid boy!

No offence to Fashion Designers but I am anything but the artsy, creative kinds. Don’t I wish but alas I never was so for someone to pass such a statement in a supercilious tone sounded more like an insult to me. He definitely wasn’t the types who’d understand fashion and appreciate its nuances. He was plain and simple ignoramus. Bleddy pissing off.

I don’t feel like cooking at all these days. I try to motivate myself to cook but I just couldn’t get down to making anything all of Sunday when I sat at home reading and catching on my sleep. Why am I going through this “I don’t like no cooking phase.” That is so not me. Guess it is just easier to cook when there are people around. Maybe what appeals more to me is the idea of feeding people rather than feeding myself.

Over the course of three weekends I have realized that the only kind of Math I can do is plain and simple addition, subtraction, division and multiplication. I am not programmed in my head for Mathematics. My head was and still is only wired for humanities and social sciences. I am glad I figured that out more than a decade back. Now to get over with the Math. Sigh!

I made a new friend or at least I hope I did. She is 22 and a budding Mathematician and we get along really well despite more than half a decade separating us. Talking to her is so refreshing and different as opposed to the stale office talks or the jibes one gets to hear every once in a while. I love listening to her future plans and her dreams. Takes my mind in a different direction and for those couple of hours I feel I am a part of a younger, different and a vibrant world.

There you go. Another random post. I don’t have anything substantial to say. Life is randomness personified at its best right now. Hahah! I need inspiration yet again.

“The things that one most wants to do are the things that are probably most worth doing.”

Jun 9, 2011

This post is lacking a soul.

                               Painting-Rip Van Winkle Sunset by Jamie

Does smoking one lone cigarette in 2 months make me a smoker? Hmmmm why do non-smokers or had been smokers always point out how so and so night I was seen smoking so technically I am still a smoker. Bull shiteee! I smoke once in a couple of months and no I am not even fighting any urge to smoke and it isn’t a battle any more so bugger off. Period. Just because you dare not have one thinking you’ll get that urge again doesn’t mean since I had a smoke some happy night out with friends I am a regular smoker. Actually maybe in my head I never was much of a smoker. There I confessed.

The weather has been so moody off late. You have two oppressively hot days when all of us are melting and sticking our asses to the Air Conditioner and the third day like magic appears the cool cool breeze and voila one day in the morning while sitting in the bus stop all I can feel is the wind on my face. My last two FB statuses have been about the wind actually.

I read this and found it so inspiring. Just what I needed to hear and guess who sent me the link? You almost always manage inspiring me. Guess you always will.

My house feels so empty without my Mum and Sister. I do not like at all. Thank God for tiring weekends and 6 day weeks. Delhi has just lost all its charms for me at least. I have stumbled upon a couple of new blogs and fabulous writers all in their own right. All this reading really makes my day. What would I do in a world without blogs namely historical, travel and food blogs? Hahaha! I shudder to imagine.

I did chalk out a long long post in my head but alas look how spartan this post looks. Something is missing. There seems to be no soul to this post. Hmmmpppphhhh!

Jun 1, 2011

To my rapidly vanishing "Twenties"

Now I think I realize what Daphne Du Maurier meant when the Protagonist at the end of the book says rather wistfully I’ll Never Be Young Again. I found this poem while browsing some site last evening. I fell in love with it right at the first line though the very essence of it only came to me after two, three readings. I took a print out home and made my Mum read it. Every once in a while I find some poem which appeals to me or touches a chord somewhere and this one did as I approach the end of my twenties in a little over two years. Okay yes two years is a long time but even then I feel somehow me and a some of us were happier people a couple of years back. The World was going to be our oyster. I say it still will be but that joyous feeling seems to be absent. Now the realities somehow bite me more. Happiness as a state of mind has to be maintained and worked at. Such is life. Some myths have been shattered, dreams broken into fragments but trying to be rebuilt again. That passion and zeal almost vanished in the middle. We were silly, wild and happy 23,24 year olds and we thought the world was at our feet and we shall conquer it all. The follies of youth I tell you. To be 23 again. Sigh! Here’s to my rapidly vanishing “twenties” and maybe Cheers to the approaching "Thirties". Hope you maybe as interesting and in some ways a little less harsh.

To My Twenties

How lucky that I ran into you



When everything was possible


For my legs and arms, and with hope in my heart


And so happy to see any woman—


O woman! O my twentieth year!


Basking in you, you


Oasis from both growing and decay


Fantastic unheard of nine- or ten-year oasis


A palm tree, hey! And then another


And another—and water!


I’m still very impressed by you. Whither,


Midst falling decades, have you gone? Oh in what lucky fellow,


Unsure of himself, upset, and unemployable


For the moment in any case, do you live now?


From my window I drop a nickel


By mistake. With


You I race down to get it


But I find there on


The street instead, a good friend,


X— N—, who says to me


Kenneth do you have a minute?


And I say yes! I am in my twenties!


I have plenty of time! In you I marry,


In you I first go to France; I make my best friends


In you, and a few enemies. I


Write a lot and am living all the time


And thinking about living. I loved to frequent you


After my teens and before my thirties.


You three together in a bar


I always preferred you because you were midmost


Most lustrous apparently strongest


Although now that I look back on you


What part have you played?


You never, ever, were stingy.


What you gave me you gave whole


But as for telling


Me how best to use it


You weren’t a genius at that.


Twenties, my soul


Is yours for the asking


You know that, if you ever come back.

Kenneth Koch
You have to find your own peace. You can’t let all this noise get to you.  All this is temporary. Even this feeling of upheaval is temporary. Don’t let this cloud your senses or your mind. This isn’t it and it was never going to be it. You are more than all this brouhaha. This doesn’t define you.  You are more, way more. You are not about to lose your identity with this. This is just a momentary state of mind and time like tide will change like it always has.

May 25, 2011

Of purple lips, sandy hair, Gulmohur blossoms and the sea

Goa was excitement and lots of fun and full of Gulmohur trees in full bloom. Gulmohur blossoms against the blue sky is a sight I have cherished since childhood and Goa this time around was just that.  I took a gazillion pictures that only we will remember fondly. After dusty and hot Delhi, sultry and sweaty Goa was like a soothing balm on our souls. We visited pristine white churches and an old Portuguese House built in 1756 that incidentally belonged to a Portuguese Advocate (Wow!) and was inhabited by him, his wife and their 4 kids. His law degree was from Lisbon and was framed and hung lovingly on the ancient wall that had turned yellow with time. By the time my Mum had progressed to seeing temples Nutty and I put our foot down and asked the folks to proceed. We happily sat outside the temples clicking pictures of each other against the background of shady pav bhaji joints with swarms of tourists. Our tolerance level of the heat, dust and grime has increased considerably I must say as I do not remember feeling irritated at all. I was enjoying the sticky mess my clothes were and the salt on my lips and the feeling of sand in my hair.


Souza Lobo was delicious and the whole family announced my choice to be the perfect one. How we enjoyed the Royal Goan Prawn Fry and the Kingfish Curry Rice and the Prawn Masala Rice. The spicy Pork Sorpatel with only a slight hint of sweetness was devoured by Nutty along with the Cheese Nan. The Aunt and the Mother were instantly debating on how to make it at home. The desserts were divine. I have never tasted such creamy Caramel Custard before and the helping was huge. The Tiramisu was wonderfully bitter.

The beaches, what can I possibly say about the sea and sand. They were in perfect harmony with the waves. I love the sea. The sea will never cease to amaze me. I marvel at its beauty time after time. Like Lee Ann Womack said "I still feet small as I stand beside the ocean." Nutty and I climbed down every cliff we could and made merry in the beaches as we waded in the sea water and jumped from rock to rock and each time without fail I nearly lost my chappals. Some hapless local boy would swim into the water and get it for me as I looked on squealing that there go my pink chappals that Mona bought me from Goa  last year. Our lips were purple after eating jamuns sprinkled with salt that were being sold in paper bags by the local women in those tiny stalls on the winding and curvy paths leading to the beach. They were velvety soft and had melted slightly in the sun that made it even more luscious. We bought insanely coloured harem pants and a funny Goa magnets for my refrigerator. We would be talking in Bengali trying to figure what price should we quote and of course the shop keeper had to be Bengali and he would understand exactly what we did not want him to understand.

We even went water biking in our black and white dresses and what a fright I got. I think I can be a scaredy cat in the water and all Nutty did was to laugh at me being so frightened. I looked like a bedraggled crow by the time we got off. The River Cruise was more of a circus with the strangest people and a cacophony of sounds . Punjabbi music followed me to Panjim too and sadi galli was played in full blast even here. We were more intent on clicking a few more pictures and capturing whatever beauty we could in the frame so that on some summer afternoon when I am down and out and the loo is howling outside eating away at my soul I can look at this picture of the blue blue sea and imagine what it was to be standing at the beach with the spray of waves on my face and the whisper of the sea breeze in my ears and a Gulmohur blossom that I picked up on the sea shore in my hand.

What happens when you realize “us” was the only chance of a story you would ever have? As I walked out last night, happy, giggling, 3 drinks down and as you looked on at me wondering if this was true and you finally realized I was actually  choosing not to spend an evening in close proximity with you.  That even after you asked me to stay back for some more time I walked away.  

May 19, 2011

I am the Queen of Random posts


Okie so this is gonna be another one of those random, random posts. Am I turning into the Queen of Random posts ? Maybe I am but wtf this is my blog. Heheh!

You know I got the craziest urge the other while on my way to office in the morning sitting in our blue and white bus with blue velvet cushions and no air conditioning as we zipped along the dusty Kapashera highway and as I changed the music on my mp3 player which is perenially on shuffle from one song to the other I came upon Shakira’s Waka Waka the Spanish version. I fell in love with Waka Waka last year just before the soccer World Cup and have been wanting to sing it in some karaoke place but somehow do not have the courage to do so thinking what if I make an utter fool of myself? Anyways so this summer morning I had a lot of things running through my mind including how I need to pick up a foreign language for a certain reason and then I got this idea on how I would love, just love to be able to sing Waka Waka in Spanish so why not learn Spanish once I get a test out of the way. So there you go someday I dream of being able to sing Waka Waka in Spanish at some Karaoke place and sing it convincingly and to be able to get the pronunciation and diction right besides Shakira’s seductive and sensuous lilt. That is something one can probably work on but imagine being able to sing Waka Waka in Spanish. Sigh!

I found a particular online magazine which professes to be anti-pop culture. I feel pop culture is a very generic term so I couldn’t quite understand exactly how it is against popular culture but nevertheless the bookish me found a treasure trove of articles in this site. I particularly liked this article that was meant as a graduation speech for a class of English Creative Writing pass outs. I loved one paragraph :-

“You don’t have to get a job that makes others feel comfortable about what they perceive as your success. You don’t have to explain what you plan to do with your life. You don’t have to justify your education by demonstrating its financial rewards. You don’t have to maintain an impeccable credit score. Anyone who expects you to do any of those things has no sense of history or economics or science or the arts. You have to pay your own electric bill. You have to be kind. You have to give it all you got. You have to find people who love you truly and love them back with the same truth.


But that’s all.”

Some of my friends would so agree to this as I remember our conversations about people our age earning mindboggling pay cheques and the sheer materialism doing rounds on social networking sites read FB statuses. Initially I told myself okie maybe this is just about grapes are sour but when I delved deeper into it I realized no grapes are not sour but it is the public display that is atrocious. Someone on my FB list shifted out of her older home to a bigger better place and even before they shifted in she’d put up a picture of the huge balcony which is obviously such a luxury in Bombay and titled is as plain “BALCONY”. What followed was a line of comments and questions like so is this place bought or is it on rent. Like really do we need to know that just be happy looking at the pictures no?

Another one of my favouritest websites these days is this one. Yeayyyyy they have such treats for the food bloglover every single day and pictures are another different world altogether.

Oh and the funniest thing ever happened day before as I got a call from this shop called Vero Moda from where I had picked up a pair of jeans a month back and filled up some voucher for a lucky draw and surprise surprise I won the lucky draw and the prize being a lunch date with VJ Rannvijay of MTV. The lunch date I never went for because of bad PMS. Hahaha! I think this lunch date came a decade too late. So not excited one is at 27 going on 28 about supposedly hot MTV VJ.

I think I should be off to Goa this weekend unless something important at work comes up. I hope I do. I haven’t seen the sea for such a long long time. Good bye for now.

May 16, 2011

Sharing recipes and sharing laughter! :-)


I have fallen in love with this Travel and Food blog and last couple of days I just cannot have enough of these posts and the fabulous photography, mainly food photography. I love reading food blogs, a habit I seem to have developed the last one year or so when I first stumbled upon Nupur’s One Hot Stove and then Meeta’s What’s For Lunch Honey? I love the homely touch in Nupur’s blog and she is great with Indian Vegetarian Fare and Meeta continues to amaze me with her photography skills and the sheer variety of recipes right from salads to main course to desserts. Not to forget the Bong Mom’s Cook Book with her take on traditional Bengali cuisine. I adore the tiny vignettes of personal stories these bloggers weave into their blog posts. It is amazing how these women sitting in different corners of the globe manage to balance their diverse little worlds with the work front, household chores and kids and yet they find the time to post recipes regularly with the most gorgeous pictures. I guess these are just a few of the food blogs out of the thousands present on the internet today but they are a part of a generational change as food bloggers have brought about a veritable revolution in the industry as celebrated food bloggers have grown to exercise an influence on the tastes and palate of the foodie public. Most of them started out with their blogs as a hobby and for some of the passionate and lucky ones with time this hobby changed into a full time job. Wow! I don’t know about you but every time I am looking for a new recipe I always look for it on the internet and invariably some food blog would have some tried , tested and enjoyed recipe and of course I give it my own touch but these recipes never disappoint me.

We went bowling this Saturday and we had such a merry time but for my little thumb that was almost dead and swollen and painful after three rounds of bowling. There was M and two of her friends S and K and of course me. We caught the last show of Ragini MMS after that and I was so not impressed with the explicit scenes but the ghost of the old maharashtrian lady chanting “mah chudail nahin” did give me the creeps as I shrieked my lungs out but the majority of people in the hall were laughing and I asked S why is everybody laughing and am I the only one scared which was actually the truth.  M walked out after half an hour cause she hates horror flicks and I felt like such an idiot to have forgotten so. Hmmmmphhhh! My house is full of people now as Nutty and her friend M create quite the ruckus and add Ma in who loves the constant twenty something banter between the two as they burst into giggles every one and a half minutes and we wouldn’t even know what they find so funny in the most ordinary situations. To be 23 again and to be able to laugh at anything and everything again. But to be very honest us friends do manage to do that every time we meet up like Fino, Bratty, B and I in Delhi this November. That was the craziest night ever and whenever we reminisce that night and how irritated Bratty got with B for getting all of us sooooooooo drunk that they almost missed their flight the next morning , we fall of our respective chairs and beds in Bangalore and Delhi or that drunk night at WTF and China House in Bombay and all of us together after so long and the next morning on our way to Pune, Rad, Nik, Fino and I went on and on about the funny incidents the night before that all our plans of taking a much needed nap were forgotten. How much Tinni and I laugh every time we think of those sidey boys following our auto (but then at that time we were sooooooo scared). Nothing like sharing laughter with friends and family I say.