Utopia

About new friendships and chinks in my armour

2012-01-19T12:48:00.001+05:30

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.

It reminded me of her

2012-01-13T17:53:00.000+05:30

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 !!!!

If you do leave

2012-01-04T16:24:00.003+05:30

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?

Bring it on 2012

2012-01-03T15:15:00.000+05:30

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.

Sunshine

2011-12-19T14:19:00.000+05:30

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.

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

2011-12-13T15:59:00.000+05:30

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

And I am a fame whore.

2011-12-05T13:50:00.004+05:30

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.

Self Pity Is A Dead End Road

2011-12-02T11:48:00.002+05:30

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.”

And what are you grateful for?

2011-11-25T16:30:00.000+05:30

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.

Love Someone Like You are 8

2011-11-23T17:02:00.003+05:30

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!

2011-11-20T22:35:00.000+05:30

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

28 going on 40

2011-11-18T15:37:00.000+05:30

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.

2011-11-17T12:15:00.000+05:30

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.

A deal that went awry

2011-11-10T13:29:00.000+05:30

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.

2011-11-03T09:01:00.000+05:30

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.

2011-10-28T14:17:00.002+05:30

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

I got published on The Rumpus. Yeayyyyyyyyy!

2011-10-18T14:48:00.001+05:30

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

And I miss you

2011-10-14T14:49:00.002+05:30

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.

I wish I had a wedding planner.

2011-10-11T16:20:00.000+05:30

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.

2011-09-05T14:21:00.000+05:30

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.

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

2011-08-29T12:47:00.002+05:30

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

2011-08-23T17:00:00.000+05:30

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

2011-08-05T16:13:00.003+05:30

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.

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

2011-07-27T15:41:00.004+05:30

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.

Shhhhhh, don't tell anybody....

2011-07-25T10:15:00.000+05:30

“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.

2011-07-20T15:05:00.000+05:30

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?

The last 2 weeks.

2011-07-14T11:18:00.002+05:30

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

All things food :-)

2011-06-30T18:06:00.005+05:30

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

I needed to write and so here I am.

2011-06-27T11:16:00.002+05:30

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.

The most beautiful people

2011-06-24T16:00:00.000+05:30

So true. :-)

Drifting

2011-06-22T14:56:00.002+05:30

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.

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

2011-06-17T15:46:00.001+05:30

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.

I need inspiration...

2011-06-13T17:08:00.002+05:30

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.”

This post is lacking a soul.

2011-06-09T13:57:00.002+05:30

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!

To my rapidly vanishing "Twenties"

2011-06-01T12:47:00.002+05:30

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

2011-06-01T12:36:00.002+05:30

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.

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

2011-05-25T12:24:00.005+05:30

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.

2011-05-25T12:07:00.003+05:30

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.

I am the Queen of Random posts

2011-05-19T12:27:00.002+05:30

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.

Sharing recipes and sharing laughter! :-)

2011-05-16T11:00:00.001+05:30

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.

A fun weekend, the two P....ma's and a horror flick :D

2011-05-09T14:14:00.003+05:30

I had a fun , fun weekend. La di dah di dah! I met up with two different P…..ma’s over the course of a day and a half. I am not divulging their names but the first letter and the last two letters of their names are the same. Hehehe! So Saturday evening Nutty and I were at Bennigan’s cos Batty’s brother made a plan and Nutty quickly decided I would be escorting her there and if I was so close to P….ma1’s place in GK2 then I had to ask her to drop in considering the fact I haven’t met up with her for 6 months. So there we were a merry bunch with R and his funny friends and the cherry on the cake being it was the karaoke night. Bennigan’s was full of karaoke regulars who meet up very often as I noticed the air of familiarity that everybody greeted each singer and how the crowd ooheed and aahhhed and cheered every singer on. We sat at the bar and munched on Fish Bites which were very bland if I may say so. But we also had the most amazing and lip smacking Bloody Marys I have had in a while and the last couple of weeks I have been going out pretty often and trying the same cocktail out in some 3 different places but the Bennigan’s Bloody Mary won hands down over the two Turquoise Cottages’ and Morrisson’s Bloody Mary. So a hands up for that. It was so spicy and chilly with just the right amount of lemon juice and the salt on the edges of the glass. I tried the Falafel platter later but the Humus was sooooooo tasteless and the Falafel was over fried and overdone. Yes I have had better Lebanese food before but I think one should visit the place on Saturday if not for anything but the happy cheery atmosphere and the loud music that is so needed on a Saturday evening. No this time I did not take a rick back at 1 at night because R being a gentleman assured that we were dropped home. Such nice gestures from a 20 year old was so refreshing. Of course being Batty’s kid brother I do have a soft spot for the child.

Last morning Nutty and I headed out to meet P….ma2 for lunch in this place called Gun Powder in Hauz Khas village. I have never been to Hauz Khas village before but P..ma2 lured me to it promising me the most amazing Andhra/Coorgi/Mangalorian Cuisine and who was I to say no to sample such delicious spicy fare. We reached Hauz Khas village way before and wasted some time at this tiny café called Bagel’s Café where we drank Iced Teas and ate a raisin cinnamon Bagel and took some random pictures. I loved the black and white photography on their wall and I am going to come back for their various cream cheese bagels very soon. Our table had been booked for 12:30 and the lanes and bylanes being all curvy and narrow it took some time to find our restaurant and what a surprise as the entry is soooooooo shady and tiny and one is greeted by this big balcony overlooking the lake and tables set out. I lurrrveeeed the food. We had Buff Fry and Pork Ribs and Pandhi Curry and Meen Curry and Malabari Parathas and Butter Milk and how much we spoke and spoke and gossiped about strange people in the restaurant and the strange people and not so strange people from college. Hahaha! P…ma2 is such a sweetheart. Nutty and I followed that up with a show of Haunted 3D at Vasant Kunj and we were scared out of our wits. I mean yes it’s a silly often told tale but I almost always enjoy scary flicks that centre around an old house in the hills and the spirit of a lovely maiden and the foreign returned hero trying to be her knight in shining armour and the evil spirit etc. Haha! I think the 3D effects was what did the trick as the spirit seemed to be in the same room as us movie watchers.

Monday morning and I am still a happy happy child. Ma’s coming day after from Calcutta and M tomorrow from Bangalore. It is gonna be a full house for a month. I like that. :-)

P.S: On second thoughts why for heaven's sake am I sounding like a part time food critic in this post? Hahaha!

Yesterday

2011-05-05T12:10:00.001+05:30

That the funniest conclusion me and F came to was there is a higher purpose as to why we have always lived so happily with little. That F and I have always been the Queens of the saddest phones in the market but for interim periods in the middle and that we can laugh about it even now.

That I actually, truly cut somebody out like snippety snippety snap and that is such a huge burden off my mind. That I didn’t even know I was carrying it around for the last couple of months. That it feels like Whewwwww is it actually over?

That work is taxing and I am running from pillar to post trying to reach an even ground and reach to a consensus and sometimes I feel it is an impossible, mammoth task. That by the end of it I’ll probably get no acknowledgment whatsoever. That it doesn’t bother me as much as it would have a couple of years back.

That I cooked some very bad chicken last evening while talking animatedly on the phone with an old old friend who touched some chord somewhere. That strangely I like the way my hands smell after chopping all that onion and garlic. That even this morning on my way to work I was smiling just thinking of our conversation when there had been nothing extraordinary about it.

That my sister made me cut my pretty pretty nails that I had recently acquired saying she won’t touch the food I make unless those nails are chopped off. Hmmmphhh! That my fingers feel funny and I keep looking at them thinking something is missing.

That I am writing utter nonsense but then what to do it is this urge to write. That I couldn’t think of anything else right now.

Just another chapter

2011-04-27T16:38:00.002+05:30

I believe “Booooo” is my favourite exclamation these days on all messengers though understandably so it never has the desired effect on my friends. Hahaha!

I am loaded with workyet when I find time alone with my thoughts I keep asking myself the bloody same questions. Sigh! I think at some level I am tired of myself and my predictable reactions to the same situations. Sometimes I feel that whewwww after coming such a long long way it still seems the same and makes me feel like life hasn’t moved an inch forward. I think as we grow older we like to believe we are evolving, life is evolving and we are more mature and we shall deal with situations differently in a more controlled manner. Well you know what that is utter rubbish cause I have seen some of us react the identical way we did years back to situations today. Hahaha!

What a revelation? To think I was trying to convince Fino today that I am dealing with certain circumstances in a different way for a change and she refused to believe me and why would she when my track record on the same is MISERABLE. I am a very bad judge of character where the men in my life have been concerned so much so that I have reached a point wherein if I am interested in a guy I have asked my close friends to remind me that there has to be something wrong in the man. I cannot possibly like somebody regular and nice. I only like men who either lose interest too soon or are just not interested in me or they screw my happiness. Giving them the benefit of doubt I am sure they probably don’t intend to but hell the result is almost always the same. It is a pattern isn’t it? . I think sometimes we just need to be alone.

Tinni was here last weekend and what a ball we had as we shopped till we dropped and wined and dined like Kings. Hehehe! The scariest thing happened on our way back from TC on Saturday evening. We guys were in a rick cos I was in my “saving money” mode though Madam had been so adamant we book a cab but I was hell bent on taking a rick back. We were followed from Vasant Kunj to the Domestic Airport by this bunch of guys in a car and they had the audacity to get off their car at a signal and threaten me saying “you either give me your phone number or we’ll keep following you.” I confess I was petrified and Tinni witnessed eve teasing at a completely different level that night. I mean in Kolkata, Pune, Chennai, Bangalore or even Bombay we haven’t been subjected to such treatment by lecherous men but Delhi men win hands down where crass, uncouth and appalling behavior towards women is concerned. What is it with this city that evokes such uncivilized reactions in men? I don’t get it. Anyways thankfully I got a brainwave and decided that we’ll head to the domestic airport and station ourselves next to the first cop and not move from there until those hooligans leave. I think airports make me feel oh so safe. Hahah! That is exactly what happened. They left as soon as we took a turn for the airport realizing they lost the game. We heaved a sigh of relief and took a cab home this time. Alls well that ends well. However I am not hopping on to any ricks late at night. Period.

Come May

2011-04-20T10:30:00.001+05:30

I have been wanting to write for the last couple of days but I am mostly tired by the time I actually get down to sitting peacefully in the corner of my sparsely furnished living room and invariably the next day blogging about something that seemed so bloggable last night doesn’t seem tempting enough.

Delhi has been having very pleasant weather off late. Surprise, Surprise but it has been the coolest April in years. However I can feel the heat coming, can feel it in my bones, the long power cuts, the permanent furnace that the world turns into when all we want to do is to stick to the air conditioning. Such extreme weather and come summer the one topic that is going to dominate the rest is gonna be (note FB statuses) weather.

I read this beautiful book called Kartography by this Pakistani author called Kamila Shamsie. She captured the political turmoil in Pakistan in 1971 and the aftermath in the eighties so thoughtfully and sensitively. I was utterly transported to Karachi and after a long time I read a book I did not want to get over with. Sometimes, though as a child it was so much more often, but sometimes when I am reading a good book I don’t feel like coming out of my storybook world and Kartography was one such book. Maybe it a sign of being an escapist or maybe I just needed to distract myself. Also imagination can be such a powerful tool.

I saw the moon day before in the evening while I took a bike ride home from the Sector 6 market with Vik and the moon looked, round, bright with tinges of yellow almost like a ripe juicy orange waiting to be eaten. Hahah! I pointed it out to Vik who sadly did not see any beauty in it. Sigh! Why do I even bother these boys? R, J and I had spent an entire evening roaming around in the market, whacking the mosquitoes, having juice and gol gappas and talking about appraisals and thinking of ways and means to go to Bhatinda for R’s wedding. J wants to go by car and Vik insists on a train. I left it to them to make a decision as I am game for whatever they decide.

I haven’t been to Punjab in a while. I don’t count my one visit to Chandigarh for a day for an arbitration as a visit at all but of course there was Rad’s shaadi when we were in Chandi for 3 whole days for the Big Fat Punjabbi wedding. :D I spent two years in Punjab in this small town called Pathankot when I was 8. J’s is from Himachal and his town Nurpur is 2 hours away from Pathankot and most of the times when anyone asks him where are you from he just says Himachal so when I asked him exactly wherefrom and said I had been there he was pleasantly surprised. He was under the impression that them big city people would have never heard of his home town.

Come May and I am going to have lots of houseguests starting from my sister her crazy best friend Malvika and of course Mommy. Before that Tinni is staying over for 3 days this Good Friday weekend. Yeayyyyyy! I am sooooo excited as I am sorted till June. Hahah! I am a sucker for good company I tell you. But aren’t we all?

Mango Pudding and The Science of Being Single :-)

2011-04-11T23:49:00.001+05:30

I had Mango pudding and Vanilla icecream for dessert this afternoon with Pra. :-)

Met him after three years and he gifts me some chick lit called “The Science of Being Single” and no we did not choose it together for me but he happened to pick it up some 5 mins before I entered the mall. Do you think it’s a sign? Hahaha! C how many hours did I spend crying over him in various DTC buses 6 years back? Hahah!

I had a long conversation with a BFF today cos she lost someone very dear and someone she looked up to and admired and we were discussing how different people handle death, loss and grief. It hit me how lucky Nutty and I are to have had Ma around. Not for a single day after Baba’s death did she ever say why did this happen to us and the way she moved on with such a zest and passion for life that all we had to do was to blindly follow her footsteps and live our life to the fullest. I wish I could be half the person she is. My Mommy phenomenal.

I read this somewhere :-

" I believe with all my heart that cliches are true, that we are our own best friends and best company, and that if you're not right for yourself it's impossible to be right for anyone. You are so lucky to have you. Don't lose sight of that."

My Mum lives by this every single day of her life. :-)

Find time to smell the coffee maybe....

2011-04-07T18:05:00.002+05:30

I realize that over the course of the last one year a lot of my posts took shape this way as a consequence of me feeling dreadfully sleepy. As in I would suddenly find myself free of work one afternoon as a result of working like a maniac the whole morning and then the sleep monster comes visiting and trying to spread its tentacles on one more innocent bystander/ hapless human being and all one wants to do is to grip the monster by its shoulders and shake him till his teeth shatter and shoooooo the sleep away. I hate feeling sleepy in the afternoon if there isn’t any possibility of catching that much coveted afternoon nap. It is a luxury only reserved for Sundays and come to think of it even on Sundays I find myself doing household chores and the rare times I actually manage to take that long long nap I for all intents and purposes wake up all grumpy late evening. So afternoon naps and me are so not made for each other.

So here I was reviewing something unimportant and scanning through a couple of my favourite blogs trying to fight the sleep away. I tried, I tried but damn it the sleep made me feel soooooooo groggy. I kept putting that coffee off thinking I’ll wait until R comes back from site and we can grab a coffee together until I realized noooooo this “ I am gonna fall asleep on my desk and actually be caught napping very very soon ” cannot happen in reality. So I got up with a mission, took my wallet and walked till the GMR cafeteria and ordered a Latte for myself from the Coffee Day Express. I have finally learnt how to appreciate these small mercies now. Yeah I have. :-)

I bought myself a packet of Cream Cracker and helped myself to the Latte and a bite of my favourite biscuit. That first sip and I knew what I had been missing all day. Damn it I had gone the whole day without coffee since I ran out of the house early this morning at some god forsaken hour for some work in Ghaziabad. I happily munched away the biscuits and drank my entire cup of coffee all by myself sooooooo gladly. I don’t think I have ever ever enjoyed a cup of coffee this much ever before in my whole life. Now I know what that eternal optimist who coined the term “take time to smell the coffee” meant. :-) Reallyyy I felt so happy just to be alive and content enough to appreciate this small moment that I bought a packet of Oreos for the boys and the glee on their faces as I gave them the packet and the way they fought over each crumb left me with a smile on my face.

I am a free free bird :-)

2011-04-06T18:13:00.001+05:30

And I woke up one day in the morning and it was goneeeee. Like whooooossshhhhhhhhh gone just as I had thought it would. Just as it did each time when I least expected it. Just when I quit trying too hard for it to go and just when I actually, truly, really let it be.

I don't wanna see that face of yours beyond the forehead and that I really don't have an option but to catch a glimpse of every now and then. I don't need to find excuses or whatever reasons I used to look for. Hahahahah! I am a free bird finally.

Date a girl who reads.....

2011-04-02T11:22:00.007+05:30

I found this on a website (the link of which refuses to upload) and I really hope all of you book lovers read it especially my BFFs cos all of you are book worms and fantabulous women.

I know maybe it kinda a lil mushy and over the top but tis lauuullyyy nonetheless.

"Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes."

Rosemarie

PS: I have never read a Murakami ever but I have been advised to read Norwegian Wood by Saggy. :D

Dedicated to Shivi whose having a bad dayyyy! This is one for you especially cos tis soooooo you. Muahhhh!

To live now as we think human beings should live, in deﬁance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."

2011-03-31T14:40:00.000+05:30

Guess who was having a bad day after the last couple of weeks being all happay happay and joyous? So as I sat and watched the match alone last afternoon sorrow my old friend came visiting me again and all the good work of the last couple of weeks seemed to have been washed off. All my promises to keep myself happy each day, working towards that dream and living in the moment vanished and all that was left were these stupid silly tears and I didn't even know what exactly was bothering me or maybe I did. Nothing made me happy. Not even India beating Pakistan by 29 runs in a not so spectacular fashion when on ordinary day I would have been elated and brimming with joy.

I woke up despondent too though I confess I tricked myself into thinking all was good. I come to office and open my inbox only to receive a nasty e-mail from a senior from the head office whom I had been dealing with for a legal notice and I had been so understanding and cordial and how does he repay me? Well he turns around and puts the entire blame on my shoulders. I was taken aback more than anything. People trying to put each other down doesn't even appall me anymore. It is understandable. I am not even being pessimistic about this. Sometimes this is just the way it is. We live in a dog eats dog world I thought and went about my work with a mission.

Rav and I went for coffee and I was trying to act all is fine until he broached yesterday's topic and I erupted. I knew all along what was bothering me. I just needed someone to acknowledge it. When I see someone who is some 4 years younger to me at work hear me out so patiently when we ain't even good old friends from college but known each other for half a year maybe or not even that, I realise all is not always wrong with the world. Even on bad days someone does come around and make you smile or surprise you with their enthusiasm to get your work done like another colleague who got the information I needed in a couple of hours and left me dumbfounded. I was getting myself ready to hound him for the next couple of days and getting the info or our Counsel whose neck I have been breathing down turns around and sends me a message to "Relax and I'll take care of it." I know that all is not always fine with the world but I also know all isn't always bad with this world.

I sent a text to Rav saying "Thankuuu for listening to my gibberish. Someday when we are in different and happier places you and I are gonna be laughing at all this silliness." He says "So true. :-)"

So here goes this Howard Zinn quote I stole from Fino's blog which left me with a "things will fall into place" feeling even on a bad bad day.

"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacriﬁce, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places--and there are so many--where people have behaved magniﬁcently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an inﬁnite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in deﬁance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."
--Howard Zinn

What a marvellous reason to be able to get off from work early!

2011-03-30T12:40:00.001+05:30

Its D day today and all of us are looking at heading out of office to watch the mother of all matches with our buddies or within the comfortable confines of our homes. Honestly I can't wait to get out of office. What a marvellous reason to be able to get off work early! I don't even think any of us are taking any permission. It is just presumed that we definitely do not want to be watching this grand spectacle in this clinical white and grey environment. To think Mohali is almost as the crow flies. Sigh!

I finally got permission to activate my BB services on my new phone. I was actually asked to get permission from the Project Director. I was astonished like WTF! I am fickin' gonna be paying for it anyways and all this officialism for something as measly as BB services.

Abhi's boyfriend who is a die hard cricket buff shall be on the train throughout the entire period of the match just so that he can meet her tomorrow cos it happens to be some anniversary of their's. Wow I wouldn't have done that for any of the supposed ex loves of my life. Like NOOOOOOOOOOOOO WAYYY am I gonna be sitting in some rickety train while the match of a lifetime is taking place.

Okie my thinking is too clouded today with anything except the match. Abhi, J, Rav and I are gonna be taking a lift from this fool who has been making goopy eyes at me as long as I can remember. So this morning at the cafeteria over coffee I was thinking out aloud saying "How do we go home?" and cheeky J with that smirk on his face says "Why with Mr. Goopy Eyes? He offered all of us a lift last morning itself." and for once I agreed cos we really don't have an option the other being taking a metro which is super duper fast and fancy( The airport line) but today I don't wanna make even that much of an effort.

So here's to the Indian team. May you play splendid cricket and give the men in green a run for their money literally and figuratively. ;-)

“Winning isn't everything...it's the only thing.”

Vincent Van Gogh

What a random post!

2011-03-28T10:34:00.003+05:30

Its Monday morning and to think I drank 10 glasses of wine last night. Well no that is an exaggerated figure and I drank 8 glasses I am guessing. Sigh! Smarty pants that I am I woke up early in the morning with the beginnings of what would have been a horrific headachy hangover. So guess what I did? I exercised it all away. Hahah! I jogged for 30 odd minutes and woahhhh my headache vanished. Well almost and I am in a state wherein I am capable of completing all my pending work. I am sooooooo thankful or else one entire day gone waste nursing a hangover and making faces trying to look busy in office. Though I had perfected the art of doing so last year sometime. How I hate being unproductive!

So last evening we had a merry time at DGC drinking lots of white wine and the party moved to Capri Italy in Defence Colony where we had more white wine and lots of Siciliana pizza and spinach and mushroom cannelloni. It was M, a friend of hers and I and what a merry time we had. I am surprised how we form these preconceived notions about people and how they break that first impression which most of us try to hold on to until proven wrong. This friend let us call him N made M and I laugh till our sides split and we had so many similar stories to swap that at one point M was like no Pri it’s my turn now to relate my account of those sheer torturous meetings with all these wedding portal men. I think I can write an entire post on all our cumulative experiences meeting these shaadi.com men as M and I call them. Hahaha!

And damn it what is with these drunk dials? But to my defense I am much much better off than before. I remember the scolding Rad had given me in Pune saying”What is with these drunk dials Pri? That is sooooooo Cosmooo(as in Cosmopolitan the magazine. Rad feels I have been reading too much of those hence the usage of acronyms like LBD for Little Black Dress which Finooo and she kept tripping on.) and completely ridiculous.” So I am a good girl now and I only make drunk dials to my best frand Batty or J. Batty drunken texts me too at 4 in the morning from some Channel V party she will be at and when I get cute yet strange texts like “Drunk. Drunk. Drunk.” I laughed out aloud when I read it later. Batty said “please it is better than texting you know who”. I nodded in agreement.

With J I give myself just that much liberty that I can call him only when inebriated. :-) I feel I have the right to. He knows that these are the liberties I take with only him now. I know he won’t hold it against me or keep it in his mind and over analyse it and think there is more to it. There is nothing more to it. Oh and Batty and I got BlackBerrys and I know we are probably the last people in the world who got them but so much excitement I say. Heheh! We can’t stop discussing the features and exchanging notes trying to figure it out. :-) Here is to a happayyyy week ahead. On second thoughts what a random post. :-)

A fabulous piece of news, Calcutta Chronicles and an alarming fight... Heheh!

2011-03-21T21:33:00.003+05:30

Hullo I do have stories to tell. Lots and lots. I have had a great day beginning with a piece of fabulous news from Finooo who got through Harvard for her PhD and all of us cannot stop stomping our feet out of happiness along with her. Heheh! I have my shopping chronicles to write about and oh what an eventful afternoon it has been with my Mum and Nutty. I think they can be the most amazing people to shop with and the most nightmarish simultaneously. How can I ever put down on paper the horrific fight those two had over a pair of shoes?

Yes that measly pair of shoes was what they fought over and all because Mum thought Nutty bought one for the price of two while I bought two pairs for a lesser amount. There were fireworks in New Market as Nutty walked away with a huff and a puff in one direction and Mum walked off in another and I did not know whom to run after and whom to console or whom to side up with and finally ended up scolding both of them for creating such a scene.

All our fights were forgotten once we entered Chamba Lamba as I bought a pair of delicate silver anklets for myself and ear rings for Mum and a nose stud for Nutty. Now anyone who grew up in Calcutta in the 90s will know the Tibetean Curio shop called Chamba Lamba where we spent many an afternoon during school days buying numerous beautiful things all silver and the oohhs and aahhhs as they took out their gorgeus trinkets for us school girls to drool over. Strangely Chamba Lamba still has that effect on me and I am transferred back into that veritable fairy land everytime I visit it.

We hopped over from Chamba Lamba to Nahoum's and feasted on Brownies and their divine chicken patties. As a rule the health conscious me avoids such oily and sinful treats but today was an exception since coming home has become such a rare occasion albeit a joyous one each time. :-) After that the three of us headed to the stinkiest and oldest part of New Market cos Ma wanted to pick up chicken for her biriyani and we stood around making faces as the shop owner went about beheading the poor chicken with such clinical precision. Came back home all tired and happy with my goodies.I can't wait to wear my chappals, and kurtas and my trinkets.

Last evening Nutty and I met up with Tinni at the Bridge in Park and these two could not stop chattering and gossiping. My God they have some capacity and yes so do I. Hehehe! My Great Aunt whisked up the most delectable prawn curry for Sunday lunch and its called Chingri Machher Malai Curry in Bengali and I wish I could have done justice to it. Why, oh why do I have to be genetically predisposed towards putting on weight? ;-) I even went for the longest run and felt happy and healthy.

On days like these I feel yes Baba is looking over us. :-)

I need a new recipe for chicken curry.... :-)

2011-03-16T18:14:00.003+05:30

I cannot seem to stop laughing today like laugh laugh till my sides hurt laugh or laugh till I have to crouch and sit down on the cafeteria floor laugh. Laughing on such absurd things like the atrocious language used in a poorly drafted letter or some silly little incident that happened eeons ago but we are reminiscing the same and the laughter just came gushing out of me sputtering out refusing to stop.

I am going home this weekend after a long long time after having waged a battle with my Mum the past weekend for wanting to go on a mini holiday at this prized destination that I have been dying to visit as long as I can remember. Mum with her iron will did not budge an inch so that holiday was bid adieu to. Hmmmmphhhhhh! I am holding it against her so to make up she is indulging me and buying me a new LCD television set. Yeayyyyyy! Though that still doesn’t compensate for exotic holiday that I missed.

Have called the mad Abhi home for dinner and I have promised myself that she shall be fed 700 gms of chicken while I make do with the remaining 300 gms. Though I wanna try some new recipe this time. My Cook Sister did not answer her phone to give me fresh ideas on how to spice up the chicken. So I am thinking. Still thinking. :-)

When I get a chance to sit it out silently or talk, I talk. :D

2011-03-13T22:12:00.005+05:30

The Kings's Speech brought tears to my eyes. Each of us have our own battles to fight and sometimes the battle might be with yourself while giving a televised speech in front of the nation that is looking at you to be a symbol of hope and courage as a war is declared or it might be something as minute as taking part in a college debate wherein all you wanna do is to run away because you are terrified of facing the audience consisting of your contemporaries in law college. I have had a stutter as long as I can remember and it was Fino's idea that I take part in this debate to get rid of my trauma of public speaking and encouraged me all the way and did so without fail every year making sure I mooted when I wanted to do anything and everything but face my worst fears. I don't remember much of that day and I don't even remember what I was debating on but I do remember that the only face I looked at in the audience was Finoooo's and I do remember that all too familiar and dreaded feeling of breathlessness overpowering me as I started reading that speech out aloud. I didn't do magnificently at all in that debate but I learnt one lesson that day which has stayed with me and always shall and and that is when I do get a chance to sit it out silently or talk, I talk. Yup I talk.

P.S : A lot of people now don't recognise this speech impediment of mine and are surprised if I tell them that I am afflicted with the same. I say I have perfected the art of disguising it. Hahahah! Though yes it someways it still is a battle with myself.

2011-03-10T23:12:00.001+05:30

“Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.”

Shel Silverstein

A little bit of hooker and a little bit of God

2011-03-07T10:16:00.001+05:30

And then there are days when I am Super Duper ("Wo")Man doing a million things at the same time. Hahah!

I cook, I clean, I work out, I do the dishes, I socialise with two different sets of people, I tidy up the house and even find time for my beauty treatments that includes a pedicure and a home made face pack and lots of castor oil on that head of mine.

I made chicken in white sauce with mushrooms last evening and it was my first time and yes it is a very very easy to make dish and it turned out surprisingly well. :-) Sister could not stop oohiing and aahhing over it saying it runs in our genes and we are all born fabulous cooks. :D

So since I am a very quote person and it is International Woman's Day tomorrow here comes my contribution to the occasion albeit a very saucy one. ;-)

“There's a little bit of hooker in every woman. A little bit of hooker and a little bit of God.”

Sarah Miles

You have suffered enough and warred with yourself it's time that you won...

2011-03-06T00:39:00.005+05:30

I realised today:-

1. I love being in charge especially at work. Damn it I have actually evolved into such a Leo. Its such a far cry from the days when I would slip into the shadows far far away from the limelight. The stars are definitely way stronger than I thought they were.

2. Its great fun meeting fellow bloggers. I met up with A and I really didn't feel like we had met up for the first time as we chatted and exchanged stories over brownies and Chocolate Fantasies. Of course it does help if one has been reading her blog for almost 4 years now and that we seem to be going through a similar crisis in life. ;-) The pitfalls of being 27 going on 28 I tell you.

3. I am so happay for this friend of mine. Sigh! Maybe, just maybe we were right all those years back in believing what we had believed so staunchly.

4. I miss "Mr.You Got Me At Hullo". If you read this ever will you know that this is "you" I am talking about?

Can you imagine the feeling of liberation?

2011-03-03T11:50:00.001+05:30

I tried very hard not to blog first thing in the morning but I failed. Here I am blogging at 10: 20 on a Thursday morning after having resisted doing so for an hour and a half. I have managed to reply to my high priority e-mails so the feeling of guilt isn’t wrecking me as of now. Heheh! I haven’t been having a very exciting life off late. Sigh! Not that my life is like a movie or anything close to it but my personal life does seem to be right out of some chick lit novel every once in a while in fact in recent times it just seemed to be uncannily similar to some melodramatic and over the top chick lit paperback until I was made to sit down and understand that this isn’t anybody’s idea of normal. So here I am having gotten all free, some part of it is voluntary and some part by default and yeah strangely it is such a relief in some ways.

For instance in a very long time I don’t keep checking my phone every 30 seconds and don’t get excited every time it rings hoping to see some name flashing or a text from the same name saying hullo in the morning or good night at night. I don’t wait with bated breath as my inbox opens each morning hoping to see a Facebook message from someone or an intimation on how so and so likes some five year old picture of mine. And I haven’t even deactivated my Facebook account like I did each time with a failed (“love”) affair looming in the background or unfriended the same people associated with the failed affairs like I have made a habit off. Hahahah! Can you imagine the feeling of liberation? I think initially it was just this big big void but I have started to fill it up with small things, little things that shall hopefully manifest into meaningful things someday in the near future and even if they don’t I am alright with it.

On the other hand I have these three huge pimples on my face and I am trying so desperately hard with every homemade remedy possible. Last week I actually made some orange peel pack at home, as in I beat fresh orange peels into a pulp and applied to my face. All this at 10 at night mind you but alas the face became even paler making the three pimples look even more prominent. I bought three different face washes and two scrubs from Khan Market hoping they shall have some effect but to no avail. Every time I look into the mirror all I see is these three mountains staring at me. Hmmmmphhhhh!

Oh and I became a fan of Masterchef US though everyone says its cos I never caught an episode of Masterchef Australia . I am guessing they are correct but then I couldn’t stop myself from cheering Whitney Miller the 22 year old from down south Mississippi as she churned out dish after dish some great and some not so great and not to forget her signature desserts that definitely played such a big role getting her so far and beating a hundred other amateur cooks , winning 250,000 dollars and a cook book contract. :-)

I gotta head back. Work beckons. Sigh! :-)

“It isn't what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about.”

Dale Carnegie

With the brush we merely tint, while the imagination alone produces colour.

2011-02-24T16:59:00.000+05:30

I am feeling like James Bond today. Hahaha! So proud of my time management skills.

Plan to cook Butter Chicken with Nutty in the evening. I should remember to pick up cream.

I am wearing sea green beads with my green kurta. I picked up the most colourful beads from Either Or in Pune this time but somehow cannot find something to wear it with. Think I shall buy something just to match it with the pretty beads.

I wanna finish writing something I have been sitting around with for two whole days though I am so apprehensive about it. I am not confident of my writing skills right now. Hmmmmphhhh!

I spent a rainy rainy Sunday with Megha that included a scrumptious Chinese lunch, book shopping and ended it with coffee at her place while we happily FB stalked people we know in common or even those we don't know in common. How I enjoy FB stalking people with Shivi and Megha. Hehehe!

Don't fall for pretty strangers and the promises they hold..

2011-02-22T22:46:00.001+05:30

I fell in love with this cover of Romeo and Juliet by The Killers. :-)

Sometimes voices remain just voices.....

2011-02-19T16:53:00.001+05:30

Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes... the ones who see things differently -- they're not fond of rules... You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things... they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.

Steve Jobs

How I love his quotes! :D

Apni bhi koi uljhan ko door karkey dikha do humko....

2011-02-16T11:29:00.003+05:30

:-) Seriously after all the talks I have had with my BFFs and some really good friends over the past one week and a half (in various different parts of the country) if I can finally see sense I shall have to thank the following :-

1) Finooooo: What would I ever do without you in my times of mindboggling confusion ? Even the fact that you sat me down in that coffee shop called Aromas ( man did it stink or did it not stink. hahaha! ) in FC Road and made me tell you exactly what I had in my mind and how exactly I planned to go about it and that you have never ever given me such a strong piece of your mind when you broke down every myth I had in my mind. Think I was almost in tears but I guess I needed this. Sigh! Now I am not gonna talk just act. I don't know how far I shall get but somewhere I shall get for sure. Oh and we finally figured the name of that Doors song after so many years. Yeayyyyyyyyy! "Touch Me Baby". : D

2) Rad: Mother hen you were like those couple of days and oh so understanding. I miss your constant questioning and I can't thank you enough for the long talk you, me and Finooo had that day in the balcony. I lauuuu your house. Think I told you that enough number of times. I wanna see more of you and Nik. :-) Not to forget Nik for the constant supply of brownies and goodies and the music in the car he plays which I'll always remember.

3) Saggy: The more I say the lesser it seems. You don't read my blog ever but one Sunday spent with you was enough to realise what I miss the most about living in Bangalore. My Counsellor who almost always gets my sanity, my eccentricities and my wild streak.

4) Hazel Eyes: For patting my head so many times that night in the balcony as I sat lost in my wine induced haze and ranted and raved about life and its unfairness and cos you think I have a good vocabulary. I knew I did but it feels good coming from you psycho. On a more serious note you have always been around and help me out when I least expect it though I know I suck at keeping in touch and despite the funny history we have had we are friends. :-)

5) P: For coming up with the most outrageous suggestion over chat on gtalk one Saturday afternoon. ;-) Though it does seem elusive right now but I think I finally saw something for what it is worth. Heheheh! This one's for girly, tipsy times I look forward to spending with you. ;-)

This is what happens....

2011-02-08T16:07:00.002+05:30

This is what happens when you go back to a part of the world that was home once upon a time.
You meet old old friends, get all happy and giggly.
You can't wait to exchange notes and spill it all out.
One gets drunk over Bloody Marys, B52s and strange beer shots.
The sister is pronounced to be a mini version of me.
The jokes are so familiar, the kinds you wish someone cracked more often.
It doesn't feel alien like the city one lives in.
Warm, welcoming and fuzzy inside.
Holding hands and wondering next morning.
Ah well remnants of some old emotions, the last bit.
Picture after picture taken.
Dropping Mini Me at the airport while we bicker.
A voice I heard early that morning and thinking if it was real after all.
A three hour long journey that ended with yummy Thai Lunch at Malacca Spice.
A newly done up beautiful and gorgeus house, with the prettiest knick knacks, that has R's signature style in every nook and cranny.
An evening spent with R and P with lots of conversations, laughter, some tears when one realises maybe I needed just this.
That voice once again.
Fitting into each other's lives or all this is gonna amount to are fragments of conversations?
Curiosity, confusion, some peace and last of all maybe HOPE.

Aaya karo ji kadi saddi gali bhul ke vi.... :-)

2011-02-05T08:05:00.001+05:30

Can't enough of this song. I wonder why.

Stars shining far away

2011-01-25T15:41:00.003+05:30

So your sense of self worth shall come from a degree then ultimately. Is that how you think?

I don't know. How else is it supposed to come in the present circumstances pray tell me? I don't wanna lose sight of my goals yet again in the pursuit of stars shining far away. I never seem to be able to reach to them anyways. But if that point ever does come in the near future can I have them both that degree and personal happiness the way I want it.

2011-01-24T15:35:00.000+05:30

I don't wanna be anything other than what I have been trying to be lately. :-)

I love straying away from the sidewalks

2011-01-22T17:22:00.000+05:30

Its Saturday evening and shockingly I am not dying to get out of office. It has been a relatively lazy day with me lunching at Asian 7 with Rishi and hurrying back to office but not before we checked out this 70% sale at Mango. I tried out this pretty dress that looked very Bohemian but alas I need to lose 5 kgs before the dress falls properly on me. My weight issues will never cease to bother me.

The office is getting empty day by day. I wonder how long am I gonna be here. Its been one whole year at this Project and I am getting that itch to move out once again. But where to next should be the question? I so wanna fly fly fly and then come right back home. Meeting Shivi in the evening. At least I won't be doing my usal "sitting at home on a Saturday night and watching a movie" thingy.

People at work are so fake and wierd. I always maintained my distance with them cos I never really looked for a social life at work. Some of them are jealous for the strangest of reasons and it has nothing to do with work related competition. And some just turn plain insensitive overnight and the reality being they'll never come around however much you wait for them to come around. No one is coming around this time.

On my knees

2011-01-17T15:57:00.002+05:30

The last ten days have been a period of introspection and retrospection. There was good news, long awaited happy news and some bad news again. But I guess the bad news was all about how I take it and process it in my head. I went through the familiar pangs of this can’t be happening and I do not deserve this to this is what was meant to happen to Okie so what did I get out of this experience to yes I can get over with this and finally it was all in my head. I realized that sometimes sorting my life out or getting clarity is not as easy as let me start working out and everything else will fall into place. I know it sounds incredibly silly but the last couple of years I equated exercise to feeling good about myself and the first step towards getting my life back on track. Sadly this time working out seems to have lost that old magic. So introspection is working. I went wrong with a couple of things in the middle. Actually to put it simply I went very very wrong in my thinking and to go back a couple of years and rectify that is such an effort and it cannot be superficial rectification. Will it sound cliché if I say I think I am finding myself all over again? Oh my God I sound so much like Miss Eat Pray Love on the road to self discovery. And to think this has nothing to do with my weight but the forever present I need to find my true calling once and for all.

I was miserable initially but it is getting better each day. Each day that yuck feeling that I get early in the morning is weakening. Maybe one of these days when I wake up it’ll actually be gone. It was always like that for me when I was going through a testing time and I felt as low as I did for a period of time until one fine day I woke up to a different morning. Winters can be so trying. 2 years back it was Dad and last year it was some other issue and this year I think this is gonna be self discovery and believing in myself. That is gonna be toughest part.

2011-01-12T15:56:00.000+05:30

It just feels like a bottomless pit of despair right now. Uffffff I am over and done with this now and this very moment. Enough is enough!!!!

And just like magic it was 2007 again....

2011-01-03T10:26:00.002+05:30

My first post this year. Happy Happy New Year to all. Since I had one entire week of sun, sand and the sea I was a happy child indeed until I landed back in Delhi on 31st night at 11 pm. Yes can you imagine that I spent the beginning of this year on a cab way back home. That sinking feeling returned again as soon as I got out of the airport. Hmmmphhhhh! Need I say anything more. I don’t wanna go on and on about the same thing. This year Shivi and I have decided we wanna have different conversations cos we are mighty tired of having to talk about the similar things for almost a decade or so. Gawd are you listening? Take the hint for once pliss. Hehehe! 1st January was spent in bed entirely or I mean almost cos I was too lazy to get out and it was too cold and windy. In the evening when I finally got down to taking a long walk and buying my weekly groceries some loser on a bike tried to snatch my bag away and thankfully could not the bag being a huge leather one. Yesterday I was out for lunch with a friend of mine and we had yummy lunch in Big Chill at Khan Market and followed that up with a two hour chat at Barista with me speaking non-stop. Sometimes I just feel like talking and talking and yesterday was one of those days.

But the best part of the day was meeting Aben and the gang after more than 3 years. I have been in Delhi for a year and I haven’t met up with my old gang even once cos I never felt like it after the stupid fall out R and I had. We finally met up for a drink since Aben was in town. Wow it seemed just like old times with Aben, R, Atin and Ateet. I felt nothing had changed. It was a pleasant feeling when I realized that yes R and I can probably hang out again without bearing massive grudges against each other. Same old R ordering an LIIT and me with my fascination for Baileys and Aben complaining about how cold the draught beer was. We shared a hookah and reminisced old times. Atin welcomed me with his huge Atinish bear hug and Ateet as usal was like where the hell have you been woman and why don’t we see you more often. My reply of I live in a village and its kinda difficult getting out and coming to the city was met with laughter and we understand look. For a couple of hours in my head I went back to being what I used to be. Not that I can ever be a part of that happy family feeling again but it was lovely meeting them and just like magic it was 2007 again.

I bought nuuuu shoesss!!!!!!!!!

2010-12-26T22:33:00.001+05:30

I bought new red crocs and I lauuu them. Please to be sharing the excitement with me. I am proudly walking around in them all over. Heheheh!

The Best Laid Plans

2010-12-24T16:36:00.000+05:30

And I would have had a white Christmas instead of the sunny one I am having right now. How life changes? The only constant seems to be the change. The best laid plans indeed went awry.

I love winter. I do.

2010-12-13T15:49:00.002+05:30

I love winter. I do. I am loving the cold weather even if one has to wake up to freezing mornings which are so sunshiny with the cold nibbling away at us at every given opportunity. I lauuuu the warm water baths, the steamy mirrors when I can’t barely see my own reflection, my furry pink knitted socks, toasting my feet in front of my miniature blower, cuddling up inside my purple quilt and my peach blanket. I bought this gorgeously fruity banana shampoo the other day. I don’t know how appealing that sounds but my hair sure smells all yummy. Last night I even enjoyed the feel of the biting cold wind on my face as I hitched a ride on a cycle rickshaw back home. I was wrapped up of course in the warmest and woolliest red shawl but the wind continued to whistle in my ears. Wow I am all about smells and colours all of a sudden.

Dooriyan Bhi Hai Zaroori

2010-12-05T11:24:00.002+05:30

Its Sunday morning and I am snuggled under my quilt with the heater at a comfortable distance perched on top of a new polka dotted pink stool I picked up the other day at a flea market. Not that pink polka dots go with the décor of my room that I tried keeping to an earthy orange and bright yellow but it sure goes with me and my love for most things pink. I saw Bride Wars and The Ugly Truth back to back last evening. Wow that definitely elucidates my social life on a Saturday night. Sigh! Sometimes like for an hour last evening I was actually feeling a little low thinking why, why do I have to do the “sitting at home alone and watching tv” routine every once in a while on Saturday nights these days but the other option being hanging out with people one doesn’t like to rub shoulders with more than once in 2 weeks. I much prefer my own company. Thank you.

I had a fabulous fabulous Saturday evening two weeks back with Fino, her sister Bratty and the B. Fino and I met up after a year and a half and it happened to be her birthday too. We couldn’t stop talking all afternoon and later at night we were at the B’s place for drinks and a scrumptious Bengali dinner. The drinks were flowing and so was the conversation. I must say his daughter is an adorable little thing and to think her Daddy is B. We have come a long way indeed from our being perennially stoned days in college. I wonder how many rounds of shots we had at TC that night, the drive back home being a complete blur. Of course I do recollect hazily the drunk dials made and Red Head trying to console me. (Damn I miss my friends. Like old old friends.) However what I do remember very clearly is getting up next morning at 6 and trying to wake Fino up. What followed was a whirlwind as we realized the cab guy had come at 4:45 and tried calling me up for half an hour and I continued was to cancel the call in my alcohol induced sleep. I don’t know how they managed reaching the airport and catching the flight on time but they did. Fino left her phone behind in the mad scurry and I had to courier it to her. Fino and I couldn’t stop laughing about how Bratty blamed B for having gotten us so drunk that they almost missed their flight. Thank god for small mercies like living close to the airport.

Work has been pretty decent all thanks to a couple of new people I have said hullo hi to in office or rather old people who I have gotten to know. However the urge to get out is stronger every day. Met up with M and Gandalf at the DGC day before. Was naice catching up with them over wine and I stuffed myself with these delicious mushrooms not to forget my eternal favourite fish fingers with lots of mayonnaise. Gandalf’s jokes just get more and more funny dirty everytime. He is incorrigible. Now I can even predict a joke coming up and he can look through my “lost little girl not knowing what is happening around her” act. Damn it! Hehehe! It is supposed to work more than that.

I saw Harry Potter last Saturday and loved it. I got someone an unexpected a gift the other day and yeah unexpected it actually was. Isn’t it nice when someone gets you an surprise gift? I can’t remember the last time I got one. Even flowers would do actually. Sigh! Sigh! Oh and I have been off Facebook for almost 2 weeks now. What a relief? Or maybe its just a phase. It was just too much frivolous information to process and right now I need to process other stuff in my head.

2010-12-04T18:03:00.002+05:30

“When I look into the future, it's so bright it burns my eyes.”

Oprah Winfrey

Slut

2010-12-03T14:25:00.000+05:30

I found this on urbandictionary.com. I couldn't stop laughing.

Slut:
a woman with the morals of a man. Hahahahahahahahah!

2010-12-01T16:58:00.000+05:30

Wow Julian Assange's life right now will put a James Bond flick to shame. The Interpol has just issued an arrest warrant against him and he is wanted by the majority of the European Governments not to forget the red faced United States government and his home country Australia for having released top secret, highly confidential information to the world at large. Hahahaha! I wonder how many more secrets is Wikileaks gonna expose. Remember our very own Tarun Tejpal from Tehelka. Though this is on a much grander scale. Guess whose gonna have the last laugh ?

Issie Blow

2010-11-30T09:50:00.000+05:30

I hadn’t ever heard of Isabella Blow until I chanced upon her name being mentioned in the same breath as Coco Chanel’s in a blog. Now who hasn’t heard of Coco Chanel but I was equally intrigued with Isabella Blow’s life after doing a google search on her. She was the one who discovered the late designer Alexander Mcqueen and the famous super model Sophie Dahl. Issie as she was affectionately known as, bought Alexander Mcqueen’s entire graduation collection in 1992 for 3000 pounds which she paid off in installments of 100 pounds a week. She worked tirelessly promoting his work in the fashion circuit only to be left behind by him when he shifted to Paris to work for Gucci. She was known for her quirky sense of style especially the élan with which she carried off unusual hats. However towards the end of her life she suffered from severe depression and tried to kill herself numerous times until she finally succeeded doing so by injecting herself with weed killer.

2010-11-27T09:35:00.001+05:30

Sometimes the best thing you can do is to speak the truth and pray that the other person understands.The easiest thing in the world would have been to go about it the round about way. I did not do that. I suck at playing games and putting up appearances where people who are close to me are concerned. I might come across as the kinds who cannot be rude or cannot say a no on the face but if something does not feel right I know how and when to get my message across. Even if this is the oh so wrong time but I did what I thought was right and what I think is fair.

Finally...

2010-11-23T17:40:00.003+05:30

Three years after I did not get down to taking part in the then Hutch Delhi Half Marathon 2007 I finally ran in the Airtel Delhi Half Marathon 2010.Yeayyyyy!

Dear P

2010-11-17T12:22:00.003+05:30

I got this in my mail box today first thing in the morning. :-) It is so amazing when such unlikely people believe in you.

P,

Sending you the recommendations that I filled up for RC, this is so that you have a goal and dream that it can be done.
Remember every task has pitfalls and requires a challenge which one has to own self. Hard work, single minded focus, resoluteness, investment of time and emotions, dispassionate hard work, etc are required. Most of the people fail because they think the path to achievement is drudgery, people only succeed when they start enjoying the journey of going through the effort as motions of life and suddenly they find that success is at their doorstep.
Do your resolute best without attachments and results shall follow in one way or the other, Lord Krishna’s sermon in Gita is what needs to be followed – at least in my case I have reached wherever I am with with this solitary philosophy.
Aim for the stars and put in your best, you’ll realize that success, happiness and satisfaction are waiting to be your best companions in life.

Best Wishes
SS

I'll rise

2010-11-16T16:00:00.001+05:30

And you cannot put me down. No you can’t and you won’t be able to keep me down. I’ll never lose my sunshine. I’ll rise again and again and again.

Of sea and memories.

2010-11-04T11:19:00.001+05:30

I am not going for that holiday I was supposed to go for today. It struck me last morning as I lay in bed and the alarm rang itself to a frenzy that my Manager will surely have a fit approving this holiday and that technically I have taken a holiday every month since June even if the first two were only for 3 days. I mean 3 working days. Hehehe! So no to Himachal and I am feeling a lil miserable. I mean I was so looking forward to my sojourn to the hills. I haven’t been to the hills since errrmmmmmmm 2005 and that was Kodaikanal. I realize I am a sea person. I love the sea. I think having lived in a hill station ( see Gangtok) as a child for two whole years some of the charm associated with hills and mountains has shorn off. I am the happiest child near water. Not that I am any water baby but I much prefer the spray of waves on my face and the salty after taste and the expanse of the wide wide ocean that stretches into eternity. Have you noticed how the sea looks different everywhere? In Chennai it can be this inkish blue in hot summer afternoons, in Pondicherry it was a sky blue that March evening, in Bombay it was grey and dark one morning in July as it rained incessantly, in Orissa that long ago summer day it was an azure blue, in Goa it was a delightful greyish greenish this August and in Pattaya it looked emerald green.

Everytime I think of Gopalpur on sea and Orissa I think of Dad. Guess I shall always associate those holidays with Dad and our long road trip that summer. All I can remember are endless roads, the pristine white deserted beaches, the prawn curry we had in that roadside dhaba and Baba in his customary black shorts, starched white t shirt and his cap. We were travelling in a white non ac ambassador off the coast of Orissa and it was the height of summers and strangely I don’t remember feeling uncomfortably hot. I was a little short of my 15th birthday. Little did I know Baba won’t be around 11 years later. I think sometimes we have a tendency to keep going back to our old memories. Guess it is human to do so. Everything associated with Dad has this novelty now. I am human after all. I am gonna miss him for the rest of my life.

Why do I have to sound oh so sentimental all of a sudden? Sigh! I was speaking to two old friends last night. One was the Economist and the other was Hazel Eyes whom I haven’t kept in touch with regularly after I left Bangalore. I was so happy when I heard Hazel Eyes got the job he did though he said he is being made to work like a dog but I believe Consultants have to work like a dog in their first project. So last night after keeping the phone I was reminiscing old times, Bangalore times, old Delhi times. Darn it has been so long but some days I still wanna go back to Bangalore and live that life fully and not leave everything half the way like I did. I hate these chapters that don’t have a proper ending. Or maybe that was the only ending that was supposed to be.

That was yesterday. This is all I have today and this is what I have to make do with. Good Byeeee people. Happy Diwali to all of you. :D

2010-10-29T10:13:00.001+05:30

“I don't understand how a woman can leave the house without fixing herself up a little - if only out of politeness. And then, you never know, maybe that's the day she has a date with destiny. And it's best to be as pretty as possible for destiny.”

Coco Chanel

At least half of it actually happened

2010-10-05T10:59:00.001+05:30

I haven’t been blogging lately as often as I’d like to. I have wanted to many a time but couldn’t get down to posting as usal. Plus to make matters worse my TV conked off and not to forget my beloved laptop just wouldn’t switch itself on. Okie yes it isn’t exactly the newest gadget doing the rounds that one can be proud of but it still is my first laptop that has been around for a while and since the time I was that different me that I miss sometimes. I tried, I tried to switch it on and failed every time except for one Sunday when magically it worked for some 12 hours and one had the chattiest Skype session with Akku and the longest Skype date later in the evening. Made me realise how Skype is one of those few good things in life that are almost free if one doesn’t count the internet bill. So I thought yes of course even my laptop is angry with me just like I thought F was which incidentally F wasn’t and I got quite the dose as I was told how I always presume the worst. Now can anybody blame me for that? Hmmmphhhhhhh!

So the last weekend being an extended one and a lonely one I was at home half of it just reading and reading. How much could I read? Well I read some 2 and a half books until I gave up thinking enough is enough you should just get out of the house. I was fooling around with Anjali all of Saturday evening trying to distract myself to a point that I wouldn’t think and wouldn’t worry and I succeeded only to wake up with that yucky feeling Sunday morning. That feeling that something is gonna go wrong, that edgy feeling and I knew misery needed company or one would definitely go mad. Being miserable and by yourself isn’t anybody’s idea of a great weekend and thankfully Batty was in town and by 11 in the morning I was at her place . We spoke and we spoke as it turned out she’d been stressed out at work like three fourths of the world seems to be these days. We all seem to be suffering from existential angst that seems to be the largest common factor of our generation. I pulled her out to watch Anjana Anjani and in the middle of all of that she looks at me sarcastically and says “Of course we of all the people have to watch this crappy movie about two lunatics wanting to die.” Anyways after sitting through 'Priyanka and Ranbir’s melodramatic attempts at wanting to die but somehow landing up living happily ever after, complete with a a baby' we headed to GK 2 cos I had to meet an old friend and we needed coffee. We spent an hour catching up with Preema. Damn I suck at keeping in touch and GK 2 is just too far from where I stay. Sorry for that. To think I spent two years living there happily thinking Dwarka was a small town and Gurgaon a village. Guess who frequents Gurgaon like never before and lives in Dwarka now? This is what happens when at 23 you pass statements like I can only live in South Delhi. At 27 you land up where I landed up. Moral of the story being don’t ever pass such stupid sweeping statements. You never know where life might take you or rather which part of Delhi life might take you.

Somethings never change though. I went to TC after 5 months and it still felt like old and familiar and Batty loved it cos I knew she would. Have been wanting to take her there ever since she shifted to Bombay and I know she has way more of a social life in Bombay that I have here in Delhi and she goes out way way more than I do. But then again I guess I don’t choose not to go out but it is the lack of company and a lot of other factors that culminate into me not having a social life. But hell I am not here forever and life changes for the better hopefully. Sunday night though after having two Bloody Marys and 4 shots I was tipsy after a long long time when I got the news and a hurried phone call made by me later my high wasn’t high anymore it was just plain low. Guess who went home and would have used the pizza coupons you sent us but for my stupidity. Anyways the coupons are still there and we’ll use it soon. :-)

Yesterday the me who came to office had an old laptop that wasn’t working and a TV that didn’t have sound coming out of its speakers but the me who went to sleep last night had a TV that had been repaired for all of 150 bucks and a laptop that had been handed over to a pair of able hands for servicing. Yeayyyyyyyyyy! Dear God do I sound like a child clapping my hands in glee over something so small? Yes I do. :D

Quote of the moment: “There has been much tragedy in my life; at least half of it actually happened.” ;-)

Mark Twain

Disclaimer: My blog titles needn't necessarily be related to the content of my post. Most of the times the title would be my state of mind.

2010-10-04T10:03:00.000+05:30

And I say a little prayer for you........

When did we become like this?

2010-09-09T18:06:00.002+05:30

So guess what I have two goals set out in my head and they don’t seem as improbable as they would have seemed even a couple of years back. Yeah I have two of these goals. One of which have to be worked on right away while the other would depend on a number of factors. Gawd I have been so lost for the longest time. I wonder why confusion has reigned supreme always. Is it normal? I still am confused mind you but maybe the vision is clearing up. Okie enough of this warped mind of mine.

Moving on to the fun things I have done lately. I went on a holiday to Thailand with one of my closest bffs and had such a joyous time exploring the lanes and bylanes, eating in those pretty restaurants by the beach, shopping and yes cheap shopping and walking around experiencing the sights and smells of the country. I’ll remember our last evening as both of us went for a long walk late at night on Walking Street trying to freeze all our memories as none of us were carrying a camera and came across this Syrian sand artist who created the most gorgeus art. M sat on the pavement a little ahead smoking a cigarette lost in her own world humming to the music coming from a night club while giving the curious passersby that hands off I am only enjoying my smoke look . I on the other hand was making conversation with this guy from Syria as he used sand to make this striking picture for me on the insides of a glass bottle. He said he travels to a different country each year selling his beautiful wares. In hindsight I hope the person to whom I am gifting the picture to appreciates it cos I have such happy memories of the picture being crafted.

Anyways I am back in Delhi and I am not taking any holidays very soon except for Pujas next month. Yeayyy I get to go home and be with Mum and Sis. I am so looking forward to that. Or else it has just been the ordinary life of work and home interspersed with gym and meeting up with friends once in a while. I have turned into quite the recluse and I know that I really need to be getting out and meeting some new people so surprise surprise this Saturday I am going to Supriya’s place cos its her husband Arjun’s birthday and they sent out the cutest invite and I couldn’t resist saying a yes to it. Wow I am actually not gonna be sitting at home on a Saturday night eating a boring dinner and watching that boring Saturday night movie. When did we become like this?

Batty and I were talking about how we used to be such happy happy shiny people a couple of years back until real life happened. I mean we are still happy and all of that but that pure unadulterated happiness has deluded us or maybe we think it has. And when I do have my bad days they are so bad that I just wanna be swallowed inside the earth and only wanna come out when I feel alright. But I also realize that it is all about living it through and the bad days or the bad times do pass away. The sun does come out or so we hope. After all we live in hope as someone very dear to me told me one time.

Death Is Nothing At All

2010-08-31T11:51:00.002+05:30

Death is nothing at all.
I have only slipped away to the next room.
I am I and you are you.
Whatever we were to each other,
That, we still are.

Call me by my old familiar name.
Speak to me in the easy way
which you always used.
Put no difference into your tone.
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.

Laugh as we always laughed
at the little jokes we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me. Pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word
that it always was.
Let it be spoken without effect.
Without the trace of a shadow on it.

Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same that it ever was.
There is absolute unbroken continuity.
Why should I be out of mind
because I am out of sight?

I am but waiting for you.
For an interval.
Somewhere. Very near.
Just around the corner.
All is well.

Henry Scott Holland

Dedicated to Baba on his 61st birthday. This is the second year that you haven't been around but needless to say you were the first thing on my mind this morning yet again as I opened my eyes to a world without you.

For all that is now, all that was then and all that never was...

2010-08-24T11:25:00.001+05:30

I have been wanting to blog for some time now but the urge comes at the strangest of times. Say in the middle of an all important meeting and we are amidst debating on a very valid point and I get this need to capture my thoughts of this very moment into a post. Of course it doesn’t happen and this moment passes me by. Or I am sitting in Sarvana Bhawan with my Boss and a Senior Manager and over a cup of filter coffee and a plateful of delicious steamed idlis we’ll discuss everything right from work to the sordid state of the Commonwealth Games or something as mundane as Contract Management or how grueling NDA had been to my Senior Manager when he joined it at the age of 16. Guess I am so fond of him because he is an ex-Army Officer and a true blue fauji. There is something so comforting about meeting some of these army men. They remind me so much of Baba. I am totally at ease and he has this silent faith in me which is a little surprising considering the fact that I haven’t been around for a longtime. Yes I am capable and all of that but I’d like to think that it also stems from the fact that I am an army brat and he feels an affinity because I know where he comes from and the feeling is mutual. So as I was saying just as people want to freeze moments into a picture I want to be able to capture my thoughts into specific posts at that exact point of time but alas it really doesn’t happen. The examples and incidents I gave earlier were so much more than what I described them in not so many words above. Moving on to other things. My roomie is being oh so stingy. I am so irritated. She is being tightfisted about ear buds and its pissing me to no end. I mean come on they are just ear buds. Hmmmmphhhhh!

Oh and it was my birthday last week and I was surprised at the number of wishes.  I had even removed my birth date from my Facebook profile but then even if one person remembers and wishes you on your wall then it starts appearing on everybody’s mini feed and the game is up. Mona and I were out that evening though it poured and I almost thought that our plans would fall apart but she convinced me to book a cab and get out early in order to avoid the traffic. There we were four of us with bottles of wine and lots of yummy food. I drank a little too much wine and not to forget the bottle of champagne. As I do every birthday I loved the importance given to me on that one day of the year when I am the centre of attraction or at least I like to think so. Hehehe! By the time we headed home both of us were a wee bit tipsy and happy. Needless to say I had a slight hangover next morning and first half of the morning was spent nursing it and looking all gloomy and morose in office. I also got flowers, lots and lots and a cake and chocolates. Made my day yeayyyyyyy! The next two days were spent taking people from work out for dinners and lunches. I had a heavy and delightful Indian dinner with two of my work colleagues and an amazing Andhra lunch at Andhra Bhawan with a different bunch. I love there spicy, hot Andhra food and we gorged on the mutton and the prawn curry besides the usal fare of sambar and various chutneys and accompanying vegetables with unpronounceable names. (Sorry for that.)

I also happened to meet up with Fido, George and S at Morrisson for drinks after a long long time. I met up with S after two whole years. My last meeting with him had been at Morrisson 2 years back when I left Delhi and it was pure deja’ vu. This old friend of ours saw the two of us together and had that quizzical look on his face cos we hadn’t been seen together there since 2007 when we used to be there some 3 days of the week, him grooving to the music and me singing along first and head banging later once the music got a little heavier and the drinks got me high. S was just as friendly as he had been when I first met him in Delhi all those years back but the difference being that this time I wasn’t gonna fall for that bait. But yeah was so much fun meeting up with the trio and it felt like nothing had changed though Fido and I have had life altering circumstances. And life went on for me and for S and I didn’t miss him as much as I had thought I would when I first left Delhi. Maybe we build up things way bigger than what they actually are in our head. We feel we’ll never meet newer people who’ll make us feel the way we had before. Of course no one makes you feel the exact same way but you do feel just that the feelings are different cos the person is different. One does fall out of love or whatever that was and when you meet the person again you feel nothing, nothing at all but just a little wistful maybe for all that was then and all that never was.

The War Was Kissed Goodbye

2010-08-14T13:07:00.004+05:30

65 years on and they are yet to establish the identity of the sailor and the nurse in this classic photograph that went on to define the expression of joy of a nation at its moment of greatest triumph. The day the Japanese surrender in World War II was announced, a sailor grabbed a nurse in the middle of Times Square, bent her back and kissed her. This iconic photograph stands by the memory of the joy and relief that swept across America signalling the beginning of an era and most importantly end of the terrible War that claimed millions of lives.

I could really use a wish right now.

2010-08-08T20:24:00.006+05:30

What is with you, me and airports? Yeah too many hullos and goodbyes in airports. But seeing that beaming face of yours was worth it. And yes I love spikes. Keep it that way.

I was at the new terminal today for close to two hours and yes it is big, bright, new and swanky. I was told that it bears some resemblance to Heathrow. I wouldn't know since I haven't ever stepped out of the country and somehow saddi colourful Dilli seems to be far cry from distant, cold and grey London even if the new airport might have been modelled partly on the Heathrow and that wouldn't be surprising at all.

I have had a relatively quiet weekend but for dinner at Def Col with Mona and a couple of friends on Thursday night. I met a bunch of new people, well almost and one of them turned out to be a senior from college and an ex-colleaugue cos he was working in the same organisation I happen to be working in. Mona and I didn't touch a drop of alcohol after our over dose in Goa the week before while the other two kept ordering one whiskey after another and they for the life of them couldn't figure out how we were so chirpy and full of life sans any alcohol and finally came to the conclusion that these two women are plain high on life. Hahahha!

I picked up this book called Darlingji by Kishwar Desai and it is the love story of Nargis and Sunil Dutt and is checkered with such interesting historical filmy anecdotes. She weaves history of the times so effortlessly within the storyline which is essentially Nargis and Sunil Dutt's story.

Six months is a long long time or at least it seems so right now. But maybe it won't be as long as I think it is gonna be. This life of mine will never cease to surprise. There is sooooooo much to be done. This is just the beginning me thinks. Do you think so too?

Oohhh yeah my butt is big!!!!!!

2010-08-07T11:50:00.004+05:30

I had to, had to put this one up. This is Nike's latest advertisement promoting their new range of butt enhancing shoes. For all you women out there with BIG assets. This one is for us. :-)

Goa

2010-08-04T16:29:00.002+05:30

Goa was fun, fun and fun. I wanted to write an entire post on it. Those 3 days passed by like the blink of an eyelid and woah I was back in dusty Dilli and back to my everyday ordinary life. Though I brought back with me memories of the green grassy lands, the smell of wet earth, flowery dresses, pink beads, the salty sea, tables laden with the most scrumptious food, alcohol induced conversations so typical of us girls, endless bike rides in the rain, my transparent raincoat with sunflowers all over, walking all alone on the moon lit beach happily humming to some song and knowing that my friends are sitting close by and I can return to them anytime I want to. There couldn’t have been a better place to run away to but Goa.

What is it with empty houses that it repulses me?

2010-08-04T16:17:00.004+05:30

Batty left this morning at 8 for her flight and I am left yet again with an almost empty house and an empty room. What is with empty houses that it repulses me? I mean I am all for my space and living on my own and doing my own thing but no I do not necessarily like coming back home with nobody to greet me. Every time any of my friends and family visit I am oh so happy cos when I come back home in the evening their presence will somehow drain all the tiredness and the possible negativity of a work day away. A couple of years back I remember going through my customary boy troubles and picking up Paulo Coelho’s The Zahir on a whim hoping to find some answers there. His writings then still had some of the magic of the The Alchemist and hadn’t become repetitive and as saturated and commercial as they have become today . There was this one particular paragraph on being alone I remember reading. It said something along the lines of how at the end of the day nobody likes being alone and so many of us make our peace with it but given a choice we wouldn’t wanna be walking along this pathway of life all on your own. We humans are born to share, give, take and we thrive on interaction. Loneliness can drive us to insanity and the sooner we realize it the better.

And yet the feeling that surfaced was one of oppressive, distressing loneliness – not having someone with whom I could share the city, the walk, the things I’d like to say...there is nothing worse than the feeling that no one cares whether we exist or not, that no one is interested in what we have to say about life, and that the world can continue turning without our awkward presence.

And I'll never be satisfied until there is nothing left that I haven't tried."

2010-07-25T11:04:00.004+05:30

“Do you know what you are getting into before you make snap decisions like that?”

“Its worked with me 27 years of my life. I mean almost.”

“Sounds fair but hear me out. This time it is gonna be slightly different.”

Years later when I look back that one evening and one conversation we had in my room in the lamp light, you on my bed and me on my orange chattai, will be the one memory that stands out in the many hundreds of memories I have of you.

Moving on to more happy things. Supriya and I went a teeny meeny bit berserk yesterday as she encouraged me to shop till I drop for Goa. I began rather innocently wanting to pick up a pair of shorts from the sale and landed up with a complete alternate wardrobe for Goa. Sigh! I can’t wait to wear all that colourful clothing. Tee hee! Such excitement I say.

I began last week rather tearfully with my usal melodrama and ended it on a cheerful note shopping with Sup. That was just what the doctor ordered cos my mid-week blues threatened to overcome all the possible happiness. We spoke and spoke and even if we meet once in 6 months and don’t talk on the phone at all but for the g talk sessions once in a while, it is so easy to talk to her as one can say of close friends. I didn’t feel like going back to my empty house and to my thoughts on a Saturday evening so I stayed out till 10:30. By the time I got back I was filled to the brim with glee over my newly acquired clothes and the usal thrill over my new bath gel, shampoo, face scrub etc. Gawddd how I love such simple pleasures.

Guess what I picked up the other day? A pedestal fan. Yes my ceiling fan is good for nothing and having the AC on all the time is proving to be a lil expensive on my pockets especially in this rainy season as many a time you don’t need the AC at all but for my useless ceiling fan. So here I am with a brand new white pedestal fan that works beautifully and transports me to my very own windy land. I carried it on a cycle rickshaw all the way from Sector 12 to Sector 7 where I live much to the amusement of the passersby.

As I type all of this down I realize I have had no profound realization off late that I would like to share or nothing funny to relate. I am just babbling for nothing. There was one heart rending conversation that shall play on my mind forever but then that is all. I am actually living one day to the other not planning at all. Wowwww! When did this happen?

Love The Way You Lie

2010-07-20T20:08:00.003+05:30

Dearest Habit,

I was at home today, all of today. I sat at home all day doing nothing but reading my Charlie Parker mystery by John Connolly. Speaking of which I am a sucker for this guy’s writing. Has anyone ever tried reading his thrillers? He is Irish American I believe but his descriptions transport me effortlessly to snow covered misty Brooklyn on a gloomy evening or the dark and smelly alleys of not a so alluring New York. Okie I seem to be digressing cos originally this was supposed to be addressed to Habit. Maybe you Habit need to be forgotten completely now.

Now Habit has lived past the expiry date one way or the other. So time to say goodbye darling. I know Habit thinks I cannot seem to do this but I can do it with a little bit off brainwashing. I am mighty good at it. You don’t know how well I’ll do it and manage convincing myself that I’ll never be able to be at the same point ever again.Batty thinks if I could quit smoking I can quit Habit too. So I guess I shall.

Dearest darling adorable Habit who always wants everything at his own convenience. One year of having Habit around I actually cannot imagine a Habit less existence. Habit who in the recent times has always been around for me in one way or the other and to think I am kicking Habit away literally. I think it is the idea which shall be missed more or the feeling of the life that could have been. That perfect picture that you made up in your mind of how you saw yourself living that life. I blew that picture out of proportion with reality in my head. Ah well if I could say goodbye to my dreams of working/studying where I wanted to for the longest time then I can turn my back to this too.

Damn I waited for so so long. I was more than patient thinking it has to fall into place someday. I even got glimpses of it bubbling somewhere underneath. I walked down other paths only to come back to this one until the other day it hit me that I can keep walking down this path and there won’t ever be an end to this. Can you make a mistake and miss your fate? I wonder. I’ll keep wondering always I guess. Hell.

Love,

Me

"So many roads. So many detours. So many choices. So many mistakes.”

Sarah Jessica Parker

My Sins Against Gender Stereotypes

2010-07-14T12:17:00.004+05:30

Paroma tagged me on this one and I had to, had to do this one.

If you are a woman,
Have you ever wanted something that is considered ‘manly’ ? Like a basketball, a cell phone, a dog, a camera or a new laptop? A new car or motor bike? Ever wanted to be a pilot? A doctor or not a nurse? And the manliest want of them all – The remote!
As a kid did you enjoy playing with a bat and a ball?
There was a time when books were considered ‘manly’, women authors had to pretend to be men – would you say books are still rather manly – women should want to embroider and crochet?

If you are a man,
Have you ever wanted something that only women are supposed to want – like bags, shoes, clothes, creams, perfumes, babies, flowers? A peaceful home and a happy family? Have you ever been afraid of the dark or of insects?
As a kid did you ever want to play ‘teacher-teacher’, cooking or did you like playing with a doll? Have you ever enjoyed cooking? Bought something in pink? Loved chocolates?
My possible sins:-
1) I was the quintessential tomboy as a child and could climb any tree, every tree. I think I spent a better part of my years between the ages of 5 and 10 on trees. I even made sure all the elders around me spent a better part dissuading me not to try another one of those trees or persuading me to come down with my timid companions who would have been tempted to achieve the same feat only to reach the top and realize they are terrified while I felt I was on top of the world. I loved heights. I think I still do. I remember climbing the tank of our 12th floor building with my sister and there was no railing whatsoever and I got such a high just lying down looking at the sky or staring down at the ground from the enormous height. I felt giddy with excitement.

2) My legs are scarred for life as a result of running through a glass door. Okie I was all of 12 and we were playing hide and seek and I got some 57 stitches on my right leg and my name was etched in the history of the Army Club for being the only girl to have ran through the fibre glass door. From thereon they had a red sign painted on the door and put flower pots in front of them to prevent such accidents.

3) I have carried a my very own small size almirah from the first floor to the ground floor on to a van all by myself with a little help from the driver of course. I don’t wait around for people to come and help me with my luggage ever. I think I am quite strong. Hehehe! Think Pune did that to me. The constant shuffling of houses all those years really helped.

4) I did hate playing with dolls as a child. I much preferred running around, driving my neighbours up the wall, ringing their bells and running away, climbing roofs, walls, exploring, being out of the house constantly. I hated sitting around in one place playing "Houses". I had some 10 Barbie dolls whose hair I chopped off out of boredom. I had toy trains and cars that Dad got me and I loved playing with them.

4) I somehow don’t think that reading books can even be related to gender stereo types you are either a book worm or you are not one. I have always been one and most of my women friends love reading just as much as I do if not more though our tastes might vary but we are always recommending books to each other.

Come to think of it the term the term Gender Stereotype is losing its significance as times change. I mean there would be a very fine line or maybe the lines are blurred. No more is it about you are supposed to do something a particular way just cause you are a girl/woman. I have realized being girly has its own benefits. I actually fell in love with cooking when I never expected myself to be the sorts who’d be able to whip up a meal but now I can and thank god for that. I do get some strange sense of pleasure knowing the kitchen is clean, the loos are sparkling, my cupboard is tip top and everything is in its rightful place. I am a cleanliness freak and I don’t just do it cos I have to do it but cos I like everything around me in order. I wasn’t born like this but over the years I have become like this. Neatness and orderliness has helped me. So yeah at times I can be as girly as girly can get and at times I can be oh so reckless and refuse to pay heed to traditions. Guess it is about best of both the worlds. It is about being independent, doing your own thing, managing everything. So yes I do it my way.

“So go ahead. Fall down. The world looks different from the ground.

2010-07-02T15:44:00.007+05:30

There are these two Aussies chatting nineteen to dozen behind my back and man are they loud or not? On most days they have a smile to give me and always stop by my work station to say hi asking me how tis going. I cannot say the same about our Indian Bosses. Most of them don’t even smile unless they know you and they never, almost never make eye contact or maybe it is just me that they don’t like making eye contact with. Sigh! On my way back from a meeting today I was told that I might be posted over here for 5 years and I couldn’t believe my ears. Nooooooo I cannot imagine being in Delhi for so long. I can’t imagine being in any place for so long right now. I feel jumpy and impatient after sometime. I know I am the first person to crib about packing and moving and I hate the physical process entirely too much but yeah settling in, figuring my way out and find my own rhythm in a new city is good fun. Yeah our generation is way more mobile than our folks were. So many of us have lived in suitcases and continue moving cities, countries, continents, looking for greener pastures, always ready to make that switch and trying something new. I like that. I haven’t been able to do it the way I would have liked to though. But then we don’t always get what we want in life.

Today in the middle of a meeting amidst all that talk about what our future strategy should be I realized I need to slow down a little more. Slowing down is helping me and it has helped me immensely in the last couple of months. It has given me interesting insights on the sort of person I am and helped me calm down. For me being calm was the key and still is and shall continue to be. As long as I can remember I have been running behind all sorts of wrong things. Way too many unwanted, not needed thoughts in my head. My mind has been perpetually filled with these thoughts and I am always thinking. I wish I could go blank every now and then relieve my mind and give it a break but my mind refuses to take a holiday for even a nano second. I am never blank. So a couple of months back I found this picture of a post it on thingsweforget.blogspot.com which said “Slow down and the things you are chasing will catch up with you.” and it totally inspired me. This was so written for the likes of me.

I have been a teeny meeny bit confused lately. I finally saw through some of it. I know I did the right thing. Why does my conscience have to be larger than life? It is so so irritating sometimes when black and white are starkly different from one another and all you want is a grey just so you don’t have to make any choices. I found my grey and to think in my head it was a white before. Wow how the mighty have fallen or rather how the illusions were shattered. I don’t play it safe all the time. No I seldom play it safe. I’ll never learn. Hahaha!

Something I have realised the last couple of months. I don't envy as much anymore.I mean hardly. I am only human and I am allowed some of it. But it is so much better than before. Thank God for that. I don't want things that I know I cannot get right now. I was speaking to an old friend of mine the other day after a long time. I knew him when I was twenty two, foolish and with impossible dreams in my eyes. Strange how you forget your dreams or how they get lost somewhere in the dusty alleys and back waters of life but someone you loved once upon a time didn't forget the dreamy you. He said something to the effect that everytime he goes to a bookstore he hopes that someday I'll surprise him when he sees my name staring back at him, sitting on one of those book shelves. (I never give myself or my writing that much credit. I was embarassed when he said so.)He said he hoped someday I get to live the life of my dreams where I always wanted to. Ah well. We grow up.

“Breathe. Let go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure.”

Oprah Winfrey

I may never grow up, I may never give in.

2010-06-18T13:29:00.002+05:30

Last evening M, Gandalf and I went to Aqua for dinner and drinks. I was in Aqua after 2 years and man how much we have changed since then or rather how much has life changed since then. The last time I was looking forward to my stint in Bangalore and a new world seemed to have opened up for me while now I only care to look one day ahead and max to max a week and if I dare to be too ambitious maybe a month.

First things first though. So we sat by the pool side with our feet dipped in the ankle length water and drank delicious cocktails with outlandish names that I have never heard of before like Strawberry Sea Breeze that tasted a tad bit too sweet and was guzzled down by Gandalf while I insisted on having his chocolate flavoured vodka one with nuts and a hint of Baileys. Oh that reminds me the other day I had this Baileys based cocktail called White Russian and I was surprised that I hadn’t tried it before given my love for anything Baileys. There was a time a couple of years back when Aben had managed securing a bottle of Baileys from some admirer of hers and both of us would sneakily have it in her room while the others would be out since we refused to share it the beer drinkers or the vodka and lime cordial lovers who didn’t understand our craving for liqueurs.

God this is turning out to be a post devoted solely to cocktails it seems. Nooooo that wasn’t the point of blogging today. I am leaving for home in another 15 minutes and I’d thought since I won’t have access to the internet for a week and would be dying to pen my thoughts down I could put up a post as a sort of good bye post. I mean hardly goodbye but even then I am so used to posting at least once a week.  I am gonna be home after 6 months and it doesn’t feel so cos the last 6 months have seriously flown past by. I remember my first day in office over here and my dismay for having landed myself in yet another situation where I have to make do with whatever I am getting. I was partly in shock as I looked around at all the building material, cranes, debris, equipments and not to forget the half built airport and amidst all of that out of nowhere appeared this huge office and woooo hooo what on earth was a lawyer supposed to do over here?

Ah well we’ve come a long way indeed. My first thought had been how in the hell are they gonna be finishing all of this in 6 months and man they have almost done it. Quite the feat I must say but for the disputes that are waiting to take shape and culminate into full fledged battle grounds and that is where I came in. Maybe I am actually finding my way around. Not bad I say. Not bad at all.

Damn I sound so self obsessed sometimes. I know I do. Sigh!

Just what there is, which is after all so much.

2010-06-08T16:30:00.012+05:30

So I had a relatively quiet weekend with Meggy as we caught up after 6 months. Well she just shifted to Delhi and both of us couldn’t believe the fact that it is not Bangalore but Delhi that we are hanging out in and we actually have two solid jobs and we don’t work for the same slave master anymore. Though I wonder how astonished the slave master would be if by any freak of chance Meggy and I ever bumped into him. I really wanna bump into him someday. I am sure when the time is right I will.

We guys had dinner with another friend at this Italian place called Capri Italy in Defence Colony . I can swear by their thin crust pizzas since I am there almost every week all thanks to M. It is our favourite haunt be it on the rare cool evenings or even the warmer nights because it has this tiny balcony where one can squeeze in and look at the stars while feasting on the yummy bruschetta and gulping down gallons of fresh lime soda and waiting for the bigger treat to come by. Of course it helps that one can smoke outside though M gets exasperated that I don’t smoke anymore saying more often than not she misses smoking with me. Wow now that is definitely a first. :-)

Sunday morning was spent gossiping and Facebook stalking which is muchly missed since the one person I enjoy doing it with the mostest is Batty. Later we were just in time to grab some lunch at DT Promenade and catch the 3:30 show of Shutter Island that quite spooked both of us out. I’d thought it would be one of those run of the mill thrillers until I remembered no Martin Scorcese doesn’t make such cinema and yes it did live up to his reputation. I bought the prettiest lamp from Fab India for my room and yesterday I picked up another smaller one from this store called Mother Earth in CP not to forget the orange and gold chattai that gives my room this orangy and sunshiny glow in the evenings combined with the light of both the lamps. Next on the list is curtains. Sigh!

Oh and I am reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and it struck me that Red Head has had a dragon tattoo on her back for years now. Right! :-) I have a phoenix which is relatively new and Mum saw the cover of the book and exclaimed “Oh my God she has one on her back almost like yours. Though yours is prettier.” :-) Hahaha!

Just when I learn how to let things be and move on and try turning the page things come boomeranging back at me. The one who reaches the finishing line first wins. Done deal okie! Yup done deal. No more confusion at all. :-) Yeayyyyyyyy!

“Why did I allow myself to be bored ever in the past and to compensate for it got high or drunk or rages or all the tricks people have because they want anything but serene understanding of just what there is, which is after all so much.”

Jack Kerouac