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.

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."

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.