Small things that give me great pleasure

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


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

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

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

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

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

Swinging by the moon

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


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

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


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

 

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

Mark Twain

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

Elizabeth Gilbert

The story of my life

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

Passion is not something you follow

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

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

Cal Newport

From So Good That They Can't Ignore You

Zumba you make me feel inadequate. :D

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am happy today. Yeayyyy!


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

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

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

Disco Autos and Fatigue

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


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

Psychooo meeee.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All we can do is to reboot...

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

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

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

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

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

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

Holiday :)

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

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


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

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

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

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

The "FUCK YOU" Fund

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

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

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

Happiness is....

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Hmmmm