Dec 10, 2012

Small things that give me great pleasure

I spent an entire weekend meeting up with friends. They were mostly old friends and one new friend. How happy I was amidst them! Friends make so much of a difference. Every day I get a little bit older and every day I realise how important it is to surround myself with friends. I won’t always have the good fortune to have all of them around and most of them come and go and some stay stuck to me despite the distance but whatever time we spent emanates happiness. I look back at the times and there is this feeling of comfort.


An old friend from school is getting married and she came down from London just a week before her wedding and all 5 of us met up together after some 10, 12 years for her Bachelorette on Saturday. I have met each of them individually separately over the years but never together since we all went our own way, studying in different places, living different lives and there we were gathering around one of us to celebrate Raka getting married and what a merry time we had. We were joined by the three of the husbands too later and the party only got better. The men in their lives had to make their presence felt. Haha!

Beginning today another one of my closest friends is getting married so basically I have two weddings to attend simultaneously. In the middle I went through this phase when I found weddings tiresome. I still find the dressing up part to be a tad bit annoying but when I think of meeting school friends again and again an entire week it is a small price to pay. Tinni is having a old fashioned Bengali wedding complete with aashirwad and the works. Raka is having a new age vedic ceremony followed by an after party. I am giving Tinni a coffee table that I have gone great lengths to get made. I so hope she likes it. Raka wanted us to donate money to a cancer charity as a wedding gift to her, a cause which is very close to her heart.

I saw Hotel Transylvania with K yesterday and loved it. We laughed and laughed at Dracula’s new protective daddy avatar. Later we were in Zara having a drink and talking aimlessly about how we dread Mondays and random holidays we plan to take this year. I enjoy hanging out with him and S. They make me laugh with their outlandish perspective of life and extreme sarcasm. Being in Cal has become easier since I met both of them. Wonder what is in store for me the coming year.

I have my phases of existential angst a little too often off late but I am gonna fight it tooth and nail. I refuse to give in to that inexplicable empty feeling. I promised myself I shall not whatever that might take.

Nov 8, 2012

You can tell yourself that you have already decided, that nothing now can stop you, but if that step backwards is so much safer than step forwards, what will hold you true to your path when the going gets tough? Sometimes, the right thing to do is to take that first irreversible step, the one after which you cannot go back. And now, for you, is one of those times.

Oct 29, 2012

I am missing the advent of winter in Delhi. I remember the hours spent curled up under my quilt with a book, feeling the warmth from the blower and watching episode after episode of Sex and the City and reading in shifts. I remember last winter rather vividly, the sudden welcome nip in the air in November and my stay in Dhaula Kuan, then December when the cold started spreading its icy fingers reaching into all those nooks and corners. I went for a holiday to Yercaud not before getting happily drunk on Christmas Eve with J. I remember lazing around on my aunt’s terrace in Chennai with Tinni. (They are leaving that house this month and how I’ll miss it cos I won’t have a place to stay in Chennai hereafter. ) I remember ushering in the New Year in Taj Coromaldel since we couldn’t find a better place to go and funny new year that was because ours began with a bang literally when I stepped on a chocolate bomb while talking on the phone on the morning of 1st January, 2012. That must have been sign enough.


So much happened this year and so much did not. Sigh! I was in Delhi 2 weeks back after 7 months and it didn’t feel like I ever left it. I wined and dined with M and chatted for hours and I realised how much I miss having her around my life on a regular basis. I hung out with Shivi too cos strangely she was in town around the same time. We walked around Khan Market reminiscing old days and hell we’ve had so much of history attached with this city. Then I tell myself well I have T now here in Cal and we make do with each other rather fabulously most times.

Next December where shall I be? If all goes as planned it’ll be a summery Christmas for me. Not before I take a leap of faith of course and this time it would actually mean exactly that. To say I am being unusally optimistic about this would be an understatement. Haha!


I am just gonna wait and watch to see how this unfolds.

 

“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


"They say that there are three kinds of people in the world. There are people who never learn one way or another anything; there are people who learn from their own mistakes, eventually and with great pain; and then there are the really wise people who learn from other people’s mistakes and spare themselves the suffering. And I’m in that middle category. I’m an empiricist. A lot of stuff I have to fail at spectacularly, in person, in order to understand it."

Elizabeth Gilbert

Oct 17, 2012

The story of my life

The skeletons in your closet will come to bite you on your arse just when they need to be buried deeper inside. You’ll have to pay a price for every reckless act in the past.

Oct 6, 2012

Passion is not something you follow

"Every time our work becomes hard, we are pushed toward an existential crisis, centered on what for many is an obnoxiously unanswerable question: “Is this what I’m really meant to be doing?” This constant doubt generates anxiety and chronic job-hopping...........................

Passion is not something you follow. It’s something that will follow you as you put in the hard work to become valuable to the world."

Cal Newport

From So Good That They Can't Ignore You

Oct 4, 2012

Zumba you make me feel inadequate. :D

As if making an utter fool of myself in the first class wasn’t enough now I think I”ll have to practice those steps in advance at home so as to ensure I don’t look like a duck out of water. I am talking about zumba here and how my hands and legs do not coordinate with the music nor can I seem to follow the instructor or the girl doing it right in front of me. I felt so silly and I haven’t felt this foolish since November 2008 so you can imagine how bad this must be. Sigh! I felt graceless and refused to look at my image in the mirror. I never prided myself as being a dancer but I wasn’t ungraceful until last evening. At least I think I wasn’t.

Why did I think this was only gonna be an advanced form of aerobics? This zumba class I attend is actually only jhintaak Bollywood dance. These guys were dancing on "Mashallah" and "Tumhi Ho Bandhu" and the steps were right out of the actualy movie videos! One moment I was trying my bestest to follow the instructor's footwork and next moment I had this annoying sense of deja vu as I tried to move my waist and I thought "Wait a sec this is exactly what Katrina does in this song." Need I say anymore. In my defence I'll state that I love hindi music so I am guessing I'll pick up the steps eventually.

Sep 17, 2012

Of glass windows and strangers and evenings laced with green tea.

He had curly hair like Maggie noodles. She didn’t know how it would feel like if she ran her hands through them. She didn’t even remember the colour of his eyes though she was quite sure she had looked into them a time too many over the course of the evening. She could make him laugh and she liked the sound of his giggles. Even those rare times when they spoke on the phone she would wait expectantly to hear him giggle over some silly joke she cracked.

He was tall and thin and he reminded her of a beautiful stallion with gorgeous curly mane. There was this air about him that spoke of sensitivity and with traces of immense strength hidden underneath that veneer. He could be stubborn, insanely stubborn she thought. She hadn’t seen that side of him. She’d seen him open up to her slowly that evening as she tried to break down those walls he had built so carefully around him. Shy boy that he was and the brazen woman she could be. What a perfectly bizarre combination they could have been. He with his silent, dreamy ways and I don’t give a rat’s arse about anyone and I’ll do exactly what I feel like attitude and she a tad bit loud and outspoken and forever battling her way through life.

They came from different parts of the country and had been brought up differently with different experiences growing up. They accidentally bumped into each other one evening as she waited haplessly for a friend who never showed up. They'd worked at the same office for months without exchanging any hullo or hi. But when she saw him trying to hide from her at the coffee shop that day she was tickled. She knocked on the glass and gestured him to come out and he was compelled to do so and introduce himself sheepishly. From that moment on till today she still wonders what magic was at play that balmy, august evening. She remembers bits and pieces of their conversation, fragments of the song he sang, the expression on his face when she related her stories, how he said he didn’t like women who painted their nails and hers had been freshly painted red that afternoon. He told her conversations turned him on and she thought would these conversations qualify as such conversations and laughed secretly to herself. They played 20 questions and that is when he asked her if she was seeing someone. They asked each other the most ridiculous questions and drank well into the evening merrily until she had to go home. Would he drop her home she asked him and he said of course he would. He dropped her home in a big yellow taxi and she thought she’d never see him again. She kissed him on the cheek and walked off into the darkness off the night leaving him alone with his thoughts of the girl who pulled him out of his reverie as she drank green tea, made animated conversation and blew menthol smoke rings into his face.

Jul 23, 2012

I am happy today. Yeayyyy!


The first piece of news I heard this morning was from Shivi telling me about these two friends of mine, who were very dear to me once upon a time, got engaged after 5 years of courtship. I never ever thought A would  someday pop the question to R but he actually did. God bless them both.

J begins his MBA today. I managed to catch him just before he entered the academic block to complete the admission and registration formalities. I am so excited just thinking about him beginning a new chapter in his life. After all those years(4 to be precise) of questioning his own choices, month after month just slogging it out on site(the most thankless job on earth is that of an engineer on a construction site) and periods when nothing made any sense and everything was just plain uninspiring he actually managed to break away and howww! I am so proud of him.

Bonu is having a ball in Leh. Not a couple of days but two whole weeks. Her friend’s Dad is commanding a Brigade there so these two girls get treated like royalty. She keeps sending me pictures on whatsapp as and when she can and it is breathtakingly gorgeus. I think I am a bit jealous. ;) Anyways she has promised to get me gifts. I presume that shall constitute my birthday gift since I complete 29 years on this darned earth in a little less than a month. We are a strange family I must say. Three of us go for holidays separately with our own batch of friends and family.

Jul 18, 2012

Disco Autos and Fatigue

I am tired and tired and tired. Gawdddd! This is exhausting.


I keep running through the check lists and To Do Lists in my head even when jogging in the evening.

Psychooo meeee.

Last to last weekend was such a fun, frothy one with sister, her friends, and my pal T. We partied with Mad P and his crazy bunch and I can say this without blinking an eyelid that P was the only normal, sane one out of his lot. This is the same P who would irritate me to no ends with his daft like crazy antics 5 years back. [But we have had some great times at TC, the older one in the Qutub Institutional area when it used to be there in the basement and not the revamped loud, bright, filled with smoke version that reopened 2 years back.] In Cal we only do sidey Roxy and boring Someplace Else and wannabe UG.

But the highlight of this evening was returning home at 1 at night from Azad Hind to my place in a disco auto with three young twenty something year olds out of which 2 of them were in teeny meeny shorts. It was hilarious as M and my sister sat on two sides of the auto guy, T, S and I sat at the back, as he drove from one end of the city to the other in an auto that was flashing disco lights and chammiyan music. I was transported back to Bombay a couple of years back when I was exactly as old as these girls travelling in those flashy autos with Himesh Reshammiyan singing in his nasal voice “Aashiq Banayaaaaa, Aaaaaaashiqqq Banayaaaa Aaapneyyyyy”. But doing this here was a different story. In Cal you sit in covered Big Yellow Taxis and autos are not meant for single passengers especially those who are skimpily dressed. Hahah!

To digress I have come across some very unpleasant characters at work recently and I realise I would have crossed paths with such people eventually anywhere I worked or maybe I would have met them much earlier but I guess it just left a bad taste in my mouth. I try completing the task with minimal contact with them but it isn’t always that easy and sometimes you can’t help but step on some toes and God help you if they are the wrong toes which most often than not are.

Jul 4, 2012

I read this here and loved the article and the quote below.

"Those of us that are nomads will already know that in the end there are a few little things or a few chosen ones that will be “home” for us wherever we are. And some of us are even lucky enough to have those people follow us, and then home can be anywhere at all."

Jul 2, 2012

You know you are losing it when you are about to chuck your phone into the waste paper basket, already filled with half a cup of vending machine coffee that you didn’t bother to have and were callous enough to throw into it. Sigh!

Jun 26, 2012

That what I don't like doing the mostest, I am referring to the blah boring things at work, well those are what I always have to do on high priority basis whether I like it or not.

Point being I have learnt even if I don't like doing some particular task or some really monotonous work or reviewing so and so documents I have to finish them off first always in order to enjoy what I like to do.

Wish someone told me this like 5 years earlier. Hmmmmphhh! Better late than never though.

Jun 18, 2012

All we can do is to reboot...

My desktop crashed this morning and I have been anticipating this for some time now. It had been showing these tell-tale signs and I wouldn’t pay too much heed until it just refused to start today and I was like there you go just as I had expected it.

What if this happened to life too? Imagine not being able to wake up one day and you just knew this was coming. I shudder to imagine that. Wow such positively morbid thoughts on a Monday morning I say. But I couldn’t help but have these thoughts cos someone I never knew but saw almost every day at work passed away all of a sudden Saturday night.

It felt so strange. I hadn’t even exchanged a single word with the man but I saw him every day standing in my queue for lunch or at the coffee vending machine and he always acknowledged me with a smile. I walk into office this morning and there is this small group huddled around close to my work station discussing in hushed tones how one heart attack and he is gone. No trace at all. The futility of it all.

To think I was creating a big fuss over cutting both my legs last afternoon while shaving and I persuaded my sister to take me to Army Hospital for a tetanus and the attendants actually laughed at me saying “Madam kuch nahin hoga. Koi zaroorat nahin tetanus ki.” But I persisted and they had to give me one. Hypochondriac me and that eternal conundrum called Life.

I went for a holiday to gorgeus Bhutan with two of my friends. The less I say is better. The pictures say it all. There was peace, peace, peace all over. Now one just has to just slog it away for a while before I have enough money to take another break. If only everything was this simple like work and holidays and work some more and holidays. :p

" After all computers crash and people die. The best we can do is to breathe and reboot."

May 14, 2012

And all I want is to paint my nails and smoke a GG!

There is so much I wanna write and so much I don’t. I want to rant and rave about the heat which is plain melting me. I tell you one of these days if you find a puddle of water where I use to be just don’t be aghast because that would have been me that has melted. The AC in this office works just fine but today I had to use the table fan too that has thankfully been provided. I stood up from my chair sheepishly wanting to take stock of the situation and keep a watchful eye out for any other table fans being used and  ta da I am not the only one. Every single table fan is on.


I had a mediocre week though it was Mommy’s birthday on Wednesday, reason being the house was full of people and none of them were party revellers and suddenly I just wanted to be on my own. I wanted to sit quietly far from the madding crowd, in one corner of a cold cold room and paint my nails and smoke a Gudang Garam. I did all of that Friday evening minus a cigarette of course. Yes I haven’t had one in a while. This time I am not going to write about it, this time it is just quiet determination hopefully.

I saw Vicky Donor on Saturday evening and as expected I lauuedd it. I loved Ayushmann Khurana’s interpretation of the middle class 'punju' boy from Lajpat Nagar. That character pulled quite a few of my heartstrings but alas I knew he would. With the characteristic stubble and shock of thick hair and that punjabbi twang and typical Delhi lingo he could have been any of those guys one saw all over the place in the capital.

So there are a couple of trips I am looking forward to in the next one month and then come July it’ll be another task that I have to accomplish. Office is blah some days and some days tis' tolerable. I made one friend and we mostly bond on all things girly. Eeeeksss imagine this is me too. Hahah! But hell who cares as long as I find a partner in crime during the lunch breaks to snoop out and window shop and pick up bric bracs.

Missing happens every once in a while followed by long conversations with S when we try to convince ourselves nothing coming out of this something and guess what I am still not giving up.

May 4, 2012

The "FUCK YOU" Fund

Borrowed from Serendipity's post . I loved this thought.


"When you begin work, save up enough money to build a "FUCK YOU" fund. A years worth of pay. So that if ever, in your working life someone asks you to compromise on your principles, or go against your ethics you are not bound by the argument of 'I have a wife and Kids, I don't have a choice". We sent a lot of students from this institution, good people just like y'all to place called Enron. Today, they're all unemployable."


Yes we all need that "FUCK YOU" or "I DON'T GIVE A RAT'S ARSE ABOUT YOUR JOB ANYMORE" fund sometime or the other in life. :p :p



Apr 30, 2012

Happiness is....

Happiness is wearing the most bizarrely colourful jutis on a Monday morning.


Happiness is watching the funniest bong movie in Priya cinema  surrounded by Bengalis from every corner of the city and the laughter you share with them at the bhoot related jokes.

Happiness is the luke warm water shower after a work out on an exhausting working day.

Happiness is going to Azad Hind Dhaba after years with Mommy and one of my BFFs and enjoying the scrumptious chicken bharta and keema dal tadka.

Happiness is when your eye doctor tells you that despite having such high myopia your eyes haven’t been this healthy ever.

Happiness is making a small mistake at work and killing yourself over it and thinking and contemplating what to do for hours until you manage to blurt it out to your Immediate Senior who actually says it is alright and this world isn’t gonna crash down if you did so.

Happiness is knowing that yeayyyy you are off on May Day and it is bang right in the middle of the week.

Happiness is also meeting old old friends after years and reminiscing old times and exchanging notes on what to look forward to but then happiness has always been that and shall be but to be reminded of that is such a pleasure.



Apr 7, 2012

"Broken things have been on my mind as the year lurches to an end, because so much broke and broke down this year in my life, and in the lives of the people I love. Lives broke, hearts broke, health broke, minds broke. On the first Sunday of Advent our preacher, Veronica, said that this is life’s nature, that lives and hearts get broken, those of people we love, those of people we’ll never meet. She said the world sometimes feels like the waiting room of the emergency ward, and that we, who are more or less OK for now, need to take the tenderest possible care of the more wounded people in the waiting room, until the healer comes. You sit with people, she said, you bring them juice and graham crackers. And then she went on vacation."


Hmmmm


Mar 28, 2012

The meals just get "FISH"ier and "FISH"ier....

The meals get “FISH”ier and “fish”ier each day. Hehe! I am not complaining about food at all. In Calcutta if one is a foodie there is very little one can grumble about. Though I miss M dreadfully.  Two years of hanging out at least twice a week and going for all those holi-holidays that we did and suddenly it is just phone calls that feel so inadequate.  The last month or so she was home almost every day. How can I not mention J? Yet again phone calls are just toooo impersonal when for an entire year and half  it was just calling each other from one cubicle to the other and the chai breaks and the chaat breaks in the canteen and J’s constant agony that the boys cannot be seen hanging out with me all the time. Haha! I never gave a flying fuck.  I argued with them, I threw tantrums, I fought, I cried, I would grumble every second day  but then we would forget all our tiny little grievances against each other and  make up ever so fast and we were a happy family once again. We came to work together, we got out of work together, took the Metro home together, spent at least half an hour in the market doing absolutely nothing but eating gol gappas and momos every day  and now there are these empty  taxi rides back home when it is just me looking out at the sunset sky. What I don’t miss is coming back home to an empty house! Mommy is ever present with the mad maids who are forever in some squabble or the other with a dash of my sister whose home during weekends with her mad bunch. Home is noisy but I also remember a time when it was noisier with Dad around. When I think of that then life does seem a little more silent now. But we won’t dwell on that. We shall dwell on happier things. Cheers to that.

Mar 22, 2012

And I am leaving most of it unsaid

 The last one week passed away in a wine induced daze and meetings and meetings at work. I had this zen state of mind on and I didn’t cry and I still haven’t but for that lump in my throat when I hear old voices on the phone.  Where did the last two years vanish? How I cribbed, complained and hated that place and work and people when I first came. I remember that cold freezing winter morning in January when I tried to make out the outline of the office building in dense fog and bang opposite was an empty, half built, ugly, gigantic structure waiting to be completed and what stands as the T3 Terminal now and my first feeling was that of revulsion and  the thought that nooooooooooooooo what am I doing over here. Sigh! Well to say the least but the last 2 years or so have made me realise  what I should be doing in future.  Rest I am just leaving unsaid, most of it actually. Hoping to be pleasantly surprised in the future if God and Destiny is kind enough that is.

Mar 13, 2012

Is it you?

And I wake up every day at 3:30 in the morning and the days you are not there sleeping peacefully above on the bed, I cannot get back to sleep.  I either read a book for the next 2 hours or I just toss and turn and ghost walk around the whole house waiting impatiently for the sun to rise. The days you are there I look at your sleeping face for a few minutes and then go back to my angst ridden sleep.  I wonder why leaving this time is bothering me more than it did the last time. Is it you?

Mar 7, 2012

Don't let it be clubbed into dank submission


This one is called The Laughing Heart by Charles Bukowski. I like very very much. Maybe it is also just the state of my mind. Two of those lines were used for the Levi's Curve advertisement.

Mar 5, 2012

And we turn the page once more


Last night as I cleaned up my living room after a particularly lively evening complete with three bottles of wine, lots of pasta from Big Chill and lovely company consisting of A, Nan and M, I looked around at my pink and purple curtains bought so thoughtfully and lovingly from Lajpat Nagar that sunny winter afternoon, I looked at my cute lil pair of jute chairs and my adorable coffee table and the pink and purple rug from Mother Earth and the pink and purple matching coasters, I looked at the scented candles that were meant to be used for a different purpose altogether and I promised myself someday not far far away I will have an apartment, my very own, even if right now packing up everything is tugging at my heart strings more than I ever thought it would. I am such a creature of habit and I don’t like being uprooted. Damn it.

I had the nicest weekend. Ironical now that I am about to leave J and I spend all the time in the world together. I had never thought I could be an easy person to be with too. I do give someone space, I don’t expect you to call me all the time, if you don’t message back or don’t take my call it doesn’t mean anything but just that. It is still you and me. I’ll throw my occasional tantrum and you will put up with it. I am not that person someone painted me to be. I still question the last couple of months. Is it that easy to cut me off from your life? Apparently it is.

So anyways I am putting away all these things and the memories are to be stored away in some dusty corner of my mind. I have to do this, get out of my comfort zone so that I can get to be where I want to be someday soon. The easiest thing in the world would have been to stick around but I chose not to. It is time to move on yet again.

"For every stoplight I didn't make
Every chance I did or I didn't take
All the nights I went too far
All the boys that broke my heart
All the doors that I had to close
All the things I knew but I didn't know
Thank God for all I missed
'Cause it will lead me there to this"


Mar 1, 2012

Waiting For My Real Life To Begin

There you go. I do wake up happier and lighter each day. I knew I would eventually but it would happen this soon has been such a welcome surprise. The first few days were almost like I was choking, couldn’t breathe, then came the waiting part in Bombay and for the first time in my life I did not poke, prod or beg. I just sat around at Batty’s place, ate lots of yummy food in various joints in Bandra, drank a gallon of Sangria, I am ashamed to say but smoked copious amounts and spent oodles of time with Shivi and Cow. Cow and I had the yummiest Khow Suey at Lemon Grass and how I loved the Pork Sorpotel at Café Goa. There was that evening spent at WTF and damn it alcohol is so freaking cheap there. Shivi and I were all dolled up, just the two of us, sitting in one corner and sipping our drinks while I had a mini heart attack with the sighting of every clean shaven bald head until ironically we bumped into a bunch of bald guys and the evening turned out to be pure fun and one which I shall remember for a long long time to come.

Closure came to me finally on my last day in Bombay that okay its gone, over. I packed my bags and quietly left the city and this time I had the fondest memories despite the circumstances that I actually came in. Back in Delhi life has been just a continuous trail of get togethers, drinking, one night of partying and there have been dinners and drinks in Khan Market almost 4 days a week. I was also wanting to fill up empty space and being around with people does help. To top it all this transfer has happened and I’ll be home for some 6 months. My second Delhi Chapter comes to an end in another 2 weeks. This time I think the future will pan out differently. It has never seemed this clear before. Well shall give it my best shot and then all I can do is to sit back and see how it turns out to be.

"Don't you understand I already have a plan. I am waiting for my real life to begin."

Feb 13, 2012

Each prayer accepted, each wish resigned

Confusion reigns supreme. Nothing seems to be falling into place. Sigh! All I ever wanted was peace of mind and some sanity. I always look at work for sanity and it always has given me sanity but this time I can’t even depend on work. It is creating even more mayhem and I am stuck in the middle of crossfire. Rest there is precious little I can do. How do I detach myself from all of this?

Early mornings are the worst. I wake up with that empty empty feeling at dawn and cannot go back to sleep and all my demons come to haunt me. Last night though I thought that waking up happy, light and sunshiny cannot be that far away, it will happen in the not so distant future, however down in the dumps I am feeling now.

There are patches when I forget stuff but that is only when I am involved in an even bigger battle at work. So I really don’t know where to look for solace. All said and done I have seen worse times. But you know what it hurts so bad only cos I thought I had come so close to tranquility in my head and it is all broken into fragments now.

Its all up and down and up and down and how I crave for human company and how I abhor human company at the same time. I reach these highs and lows in every conversation with a close friend when I have moments when I am like when will this stupid hollow feeling go and then I have these brilliant patches when I feel I am oh so strong and I can handle anything. But the latter just doesn’t last and the former comes back and in a battle between the two, despair seems to have the upper hand now.

Feb 11, 2012

How do you solve a problem like me?


How to listen to music on your head phones so much so that you are addicted to it and only becos you are trying to distract yourself from something else?

How to mess up something perfectly good in a space of one day?

How to realize that sometimes, most times there ain’t no second chances?

How to be forced into distraction thanks to day long meetings?

How to distract yourself on a lazy Saturday afternoon at work by writing a blog post?

How to realize that the more gung ho your professional life gets the more in shambles your love life is?

How not to stop looking at ficking bbm 24/7?

How to sign out of bbm without deleting the application?

How to dream of a phone less world when I could just chuck this silly smart phone away?

How to realize that all those who love you, also love the impulsive, hyper you and you needn’t change so much?

How to realize that it should be take it or leave it?

How did I realise that I don't feel half as empty as much as I used to before when I was younger, even till 8, 9 months back?

I have answers to some of those questions and some I don't. :)

Guess what I am growing up. Indeed I am. Yeayyyyy!



Feb 3, 2012

How moody is too moody?


I wanna cook excitedly again. I think I kinda did so 2 days back when Saggy was in town and we did a continental take on chicken when we lovingly marinated it in red wine, mustard, soya sauce and garlic. It was more like a pot roast actually with mushrooms and baby corn and it went splendidly with plain brown bread. How I love cooking with her! And how could I ever forget that she literally taught me how to cook and made me fall in love with it too when I needed to find a suitable distraction in life. Though cooking and I have this love hate relationship and I go through phases when I just don’t feel like lifting a finger in the kitchen and phases when I am pushed to cook and I come up to the occasion and rustle up something surprisingly good in a jiffy. Gawd why am I sooooooooo moody with so many things in my life like reading for instance or even television. I’ll go through this reading copiously phases when I’ll read on my way to work in the Metro, on my way back home from work, read before falling off to sleep and then there are phases like now when I have unfinished books strewn all over my house. They are all half read and quarter read. I wanna finish all of those.

My love for television is extremely new found. I mean I was never ever a TV addict but movie addict I was yes in my early twenties. My money used to go bust watching every movie in town and even if I didn’t have money for food, I sure could gather my pennies for that one last movie ticket. I never watched sitcoms voraciously like soooooo many people I know swear by them. I saw Desperate Housewives for a bit and all the seasons of Friends cos the whole universe watched Friends. But besides that hmmmmm maybe CSI sometimes and when I was way younger in another century and a different age, I used to religiously watch Moonlighting, Remington Steele, Picket Fences, The X-Files and Beverly Hills 90210. I never saw “Lost” and I haven’t seen a single episode of “How I met Your Mother” and can you beat that? Hahaha! I am so willfully oblivious of them and couldn’t care less unless I stumbled upon them and something caught my fancy like Criminal Minds or Bones. I realize I like crime based shows, totally dig them so I indulge in Fox Crime every once in a while but my favouritest channel remains TLC. How I look forward to watching Donna Hay cook up her so called simple exotic meals and even watch a bunch of idiotic blondes trying to look cute and sexy while exploring new places in Get Out. And I so enjoy Man Vs Food. Every time I am left in awe of Adam Richman and his giant appetite.

But the one and only thing I never get bored stiff with and never go through a love hate phase with would be writing. Strange this is. I never realized it until now.

Jan 19, 2012

About new friendships and chinks in my armour


Guess who’s got a nagging headache due to an overdose of wine last night and there was no need to finish that bottle all by myself long after the boys had left. I really don’t require even the semblance of a hangover today when there is so much to strike off my To Do List.

Why is it that people always always find that one chink in your armour or rather why do they look for chinks and cracks in your armour? For instance my house is perfectly clean and everything is in order or so I like to think. I am quite the cleanliness freak but no not in the OCD way but I like my surroundings to be clean and things to be in their rightful place as much as possible considering the fact that I am not at home all day. However I haven’t found the time to clean my fans which frankly look not so clean and I am quite ashamed of it. But this winter has been freezing cold and I work 6 days a week and I manage to do all the dusting on Sundays but the fans seem to be a gargantuan task. Hmmphhhh! I don’t wanna spend the substantial part of the only day of the week that I get to myself ,being all dirty and dusty. So the boys came home last night and trust them to point a finger at the fans saying “ Kya haalat bana key rakha hai pankhon ka!” I was like “Uffff not a word is said about how pretty my living room looks with the pink and purple curtains or the pink and purple rug and the cane chairs and the coffee table. But of course you have to find fault with the fans.“

I actually made a new friend at work and she happens to be 6 years younger to me. Though she is younger to my sister yet in my head I treat her as an almost equal. I guess that has something to do with us working at the same place. NS is one of the prettiest women I have ever known. She looks like a different version of Nargis Fakhri and she is so oblivious of her beauty and that is the most appealing part about it. I guess we are never too late to make new friends however much we believe that our school friends and college friends will be the ones who’d remain by our side forever but somehow along the way you meet like minded people and wooosssh that one connect and you never look back. Like Saggy and Megha for instance. I feel I have known Saggy for decades and with Megha time just comes to a standstill and we are transported back to Bangalore, fooling around at work and gossiping about Walrus. It seems only yesterday we met when it has actually been almost 4 years. Even age isn’t a barrier to friendship and NS makes me realize that every day when we sneak into the cafeteria for coffee breaks or the longer and more delicious and aromatic tomato soup breaks. Those are definitely the best bits of my days this winter.

Jan 13, 2012

It reminded me of her

Last morning as I washed my hair amidst the icy chill that has crept in everywhere through every little nook and cranny and is omnipresent and that first moment when I lathered the shampoo on to my hair and that faint whiff of smell that comes from my hair which is effectively just the smell of my hair. All of us have our smells which we are familiar with and however many shampoos, bath gels and lotions you might use and change, each one of us have that one unique smell of human skin and hair which is essentially only you. Well last morning my hair didn’t smell like my hair at all and that first whiff smelt like someone else’s. It wasn’t me. It was the smell of my sister’s hair and my hair smelt exactly how her hair smells like and I know so, what with all the hugging, kissing and fighting we have done over the years, I so know how her thick plait of freshly washed hair smells like as I have tugged it playfully millions of times or and how many times have I kissed that huge careless pile of tresses that she makes when she isn’t in the mood to fuss around.  I was strangely happy because it reminded me of her. It reminded me of her dark flashy eyes. It reminded me of her dimpled smile that both of us share.  How beautifully bizarre is that one frozen nippy winter morning the smell of my hair  reminded me of her !!!!

Jan 4, 2012

If you do leave

             Painting-Branches of an Almond Tree in Blossom by Vincent Van Gogh
 I asked myself am I doing all of this just for you. I am doing up my house bit by bit, day by day, weekend by weekend, spending hours conjuring up the exact shade of orangish yellow that the curtains should be and wondering where can I get the best deal with the lamp shades, checking up flee stores for that perfect coffee table and how I wanted only the warmest colours for the rug in the living room. I wanted a mirror too. The prettiest mirror for my mirror less bedroom. Was I about to do all of this just for you? Am I gonna decorate the only two  rooms that I use in my large apartment, in anticipation of your coming visit and if things fall apart am I gonna look around at all these vibrant colours surrounding me and these mint fresh new things that’ll fill up the empty spaces in my house and feel it was all in vain? Can new things fill up the empty spaces in your heart and when people leave do the spaces only become more vast?  Am I gonna land up with a whole new bunch of bric bracs but an even emptier space inside my heart if you do leave?

Jan 3, 2012

Bring it on 2012


How do you envisage your 2012 to be? There were these super positive status messages doing rounds on FB those couple of days and most read something like “2011 you were legendary, 2012 you better be fabulous too.” Hahah! What fun as the world seems filled up with such happy people even if it is just for that one measly, paltry day. I had an incredibly sarcastic one put up but anyone who knows me could have probably seen the bubble of happiness waiting to come out, lurking behind the mockery I made of my year gone by. I couldn’t help but end 2011 on an increasingly happier note.

I spent a lovely 3 days at Yercaud with family. It was all sunshine, blue blue skies, the chilly wind of the hills and lots of walking and taking pretty pictures and enjoying that one odd drink every evening with my Uncle and in the company of my Mommy and Aunt. Chennai was stormy, rainy and dark for the better part of my last 4days there. That didn’t deter me from meeting old friends at Chamiers. The city doesn’t seem to change and it somehow manages to retain that charm despite the hustle and the bustle around. Tinni was in town too and we ushered in the New Year’s together with her cousin. We did the usal coffee at Chamiers and Amethyst. I missed Shivi since my fondest memories of the city are attached with her and our madness together. We couldn’t make it to Zara for a drink because it was opening its gates only at 6:30 that day and Tinni and I arrived half an hour early with zero patience in our systems.

I have very little idea on how 2012 is gonna turn out to be. But hope lies eternal and for once I am not gonna talk about goals and milestones to be achieved. As long as the year is interspersed with generous sprinklings of holidays and time spent with my loved ones and favouritest people, we’ll deal with the rest there and then. Bring it on 2012. I am ready.