Let go...

When I set out to meet Pinocchio last evening I had no idea that a couple of hours spent with an old old friend would be the answer to my self made agony the last couple of months. I had been bottling it all up since December. I had become a control freak and I refuse to let alcohol get the better of me cos of my past shenanigans. And of course life hasn’t made it any easier and I was always scared that if I get drunk it’ll all come out, all of it and I don’t want it to come out with complete strangers and my own people are scattered in different places. I actually could not remember the last time I got drunk and let my hair down and acted stupid. This year I haven’t had the luxury to let my hair down and let it go. I wanted to let it go, all of it but found it so difficult and I was loosing myself completely cos this sorrow was consuming almost everything good. I’d cry myself to office each day in the morning and I wouldn’t even know why my eyes filled with tears when apparently it should be over by now. I am supposed to be coping with this better than this. I did a bloody good job of putting on a brave front initially but after it was all over and the friends came and went and I was left to deal with it alone minus anything to look forward to I failed miserably to the point that my Mum had to sit down and speak to me telling me that I shouldn’t think that I am stuck over here and I can leave when I want to if I am not happy. I wasn’t happy. I was just plain miserable and God knows that I did try finding ways to distract myself until that one happy distraction became an obsession and it started hurting so bad. Of course I refused to let go. I wouldn’t let go and I wouldn’t budge an inch. I wanted it my way and sometimes its not your way, most times it isn’t your way and to accept what I had, for what its worth is taking time. But now I think I have started to accept the good. Yeah it has been really really difficult accepting the good cos you keep questioning it time and time again and I am petrified I’ll loose whatever I have now including my Mum, Sis, my job, my friends just like I lost my Dad and the life that was. We have this today and I am here now and I make the best of this cos living in my own make believe world isn’t as much of a respite and living in denial doesn’t help. Last night after my five large vodkas and a lot of quarreling with Pinocchio at the shady Oly Pub as I sat in the cab I made that fateful drunken dial to, hold your breath, we don’t call up ex-boyfriends or lovers on a drunk dial, we call up best friends in Helsinki hahah! Yeah I called up Fino and I babbled utter rubbish for half an hour. I know I have been bothering you too much these days for whatever reasons but at that time I didn’t think of anyone but you I wanted to talk to. Of course the call being interrupted also helped. Yeayyyy! I am so glad that at least someone proves me wrong time and time again. I know I have to let it be, all of it and hope that it turns out fine. I don’t know how and when I am gonna get out of here but I do know I shall someday when it is a different time and day.

Whatever will be, will be

I wanna run away, far far away from everything especially constant deadlines. Damn I am disinterested already and it has only been a month and a half. Is it normal or am I abnormal? I don’t feel like working for anyone and I am growing weary of being answerable all the time to people higher in the ladder. I don’t like wearing this crown of thorns and I didn’t even know what I was getting into. I so wish I could work at my own pace, do my own thing and the money could still keep coming in. That is a futile wish of mine and this is anything but an ideal world.
I saw someone’s birthday pictures the other day. A bunch of people I don’t know but all of them looked so sparkling and sprightly and I just plain envied them. Pictures can be very misleading they say but the happiness was just radiating through the screen. The bottom line being I don’t think I am fun anymore. When was the last time I even uploaded any pictures? I can’t even remember. Okie moving on to something jollier it was my burrrrdayyy last week and I officially entered the wrong side of 25 hahaha! I got sooooooo many calls/messages and I confess that I hadn’t expected soooooo many people to call me. :-) Of course social networking sites really help the cause. But hell I still felt special, exceedingly special.
I have been having a lot of imaginary conversations in my head these days. I’d be surprised if they actually come true. Though I try not to build the demons in my head but on bad days the demons overtake and surpass everything almost like the Death Eaters. On days like that however much I try to steer my thoughts away to a different direction I fail. Sometimes it’s like I don’t even know what is worrying me and where is this anxiety coming from. I don’t want to have made it all up in my head. That’s my biggest nightmare. I don’t wanna be wrong time and time again. I want it to be real, tangible and not a figment of my imagination. But I also realized what has to be will be and there is nothing I can do but wait and watch. It is the waiting that kills me. Sigh! I was born impatient. I just have let go I guess, yup just let it go.There is a certain peace that came when I let go. Whatever will be, will be. The future is not ours to see. :-)

Everybody is going to the party, dancing in the dessert and blowing up the sunshine...

I don’t seem to be able to put my thoughts and feelings across on a blog as eloquently I could in the past. It is also cos I don’t want it to be out there for the world or my tiny little world to read. Sometimes I am amazed at the amount of information on my personal life I have put up on the blog in the past especially the comings and goings of the objects of affection. Damn were they seasonal or not. I mean I could actually sit and write post after post on someone who just let me walk away. Is this how much we grow up in two years that you finally see something for exactly what it was worth? They keep coming and going, coming and going like ships sailing in the night my Mum said once and apparently if you are lucky someday someone while choose to stay on. No I don’t want this to be a “nobody loweeees me” post. Haven’t I written enough of those over the top looney looserish posts on loneliness and yada yada yada!
Work is good and I am happy. Yup I don’t cringe at all when I get up in the morning unlike my old workplace where Walrus use to keep us guessing how his frame of mind shall be and what shape it shall take by the time the day is over. Our Bosses let us be as long as the work is done. I think that is the best part of working here and that we are not constantly subjected to their bad moods and whims and fancies. Weekends are quite lackluster and unexciting as invariably we end up going to the same pub and its just three of us and the same old middle aged lecherous bastards or school boys. No you can’t even dream about striking up a conversation with any one of them and to think I’d even crib about the crowd in B’lore cos Calcutta officially has the saddest crowd. I don’t know where all the men went and honestly there isn’t even any eye candy. How I miss Delhi? Hmphhhh! I miss dressing up and going out and knowing I can come back whenever I want to be it drunk or sane or something in the middle.
I love living with my Mum but Dad is missed a lot. Saturdays were never insipid with him around as something or the other would turn up and all three of us would be out having a merry time. Yeah I miss him a lot cos sometimes I assume he is still there until it hits me no he isn’t and that he is gone forever. No more drunk dials from Dad each night narrating some ridiculous joke or making fun of Ma’s eccentricities. No more Dad calling me a lazy bum and urging me to go for a jog. No more reassurance that he is right there and I can reach out to him as and when I want to. I try to feel his presence sometimes when I am in a dilemma and I want him to show me the right way. I try to savour each day more so now cos I realize how sudden and unpredictable this life can be. But happiness is not how happiness use to be. It just doesn’t feel the same. Its hollow, empty and lifeless. But times have to change right. That bubbly feeling will be back someday. Life can’t be static and frozen in time forever. It will change and maybe it already is and I don’t realize it until the sunshine hits me on my face yet again. Alas sunshine I seek you now and forever and ever.

One day at a time, one day at a time....

"Hi, my name is Jerry and I'm an addict. I've been clean for 89 days. My mind is clearer, and... I think it's getting better. Every day, a little bit. But I wanna talk about this dream I keep having. It always starts with me stealing silverware. Then I go sell it to this guy who I used to know who owned a catering service. Then with the money, I go to this place where I used to buy my drug of choice, and... he's not around. So I go to other spots, right, but for some reason, no one is around. All of Seattle is dry, and then I get that feeling... the dread... and I panic. And I start running, and it's raining, and it gets dark. And then I'm in my old apartment, and I'm thrashing right through it, looking for something I might have stashed away. And I think I'm having a seizure. And then I find a balloon hidden in my suitcase. So there I am... with a bag of junk in one hand, and the money for my next fix in the other... and I feel at total, utter peace. And I wake up. One day at a time. One day at a time. One day at a time. One day at a time. Thank you."

Things We Lost In The Fire

Visions about...

'Do I sleep, do I dream, do I wonder and doubt? Is things what they seem, or is visions about?'"

And then there was the rain.......

I am sorry if I have became the Queen of sad posts the last couple of months. But now I think I have had enough of feeling bad about myself and everything around me. My blog was not all about self pity always. When I first started blogging I think I was a much happier person. I had even tried my hand at fiction for a bit only to revert to writing about the happenings in my life. Sigh! Sometimes when I look back and read about all the drunken escapades and shenanigans and the fun I had in the process of trying to get out of the self made disasters it is so hard to believe that yes that too was me. Was that really me who did all of that? Hahah! Isn’t it weird watching yourself evolve as a person and grow up even if its post 25? 
And so there was this glorious rain and these women who don’t let me be sad for too long, who manage oh so beautifully to disperse all the negativity away. I have had so much fun amidst all the commotion and running around all thanks to my girl friends who came down despite the fact that its middle of the year and no holiday season. I love them for doing so cause they have made the last one month of my life so much more bearable and there was so much to look forward to despite the grief. So there was Batty who comes down right at the beginning and hangs around with me when all the formalities were being attended to. Be it running to the courts, the banks and the post offices she was there by our side. I was so sick of attending to the guests but she wouldn’t bat an eyelid as she served them time and time again and helped my Mum out. My family totally fell in love with her hahah! My younger sister is Batty’s biggest fan as they drove around town looking for shady corners to grab a breather in the middle of all the madness. Non-drivers like me weren’t a part of that ritual. Sigh!
We’d go back to her guest house each evening and I made her travel in autos, buses and all modes of transport but the tram heheh! She said Calcutta reminded her so much of Bombay where she had worked and lived a long long time back. I remembered a time when I wanted to make a life for myself in Bombay and look where I landed up everywhere but in Bombay hahah! Her last evening was when we got some time to ourselves and we went to Someplace Else and had a drink bracing ourselves for whatever was to come our way. We were drenched from head to toe, shivering as we felt really proud of our judicious sense to take a bus instead of a cab only to get caught in the first thundering rain of the season. We ran from under the flyover to the beginning of Park Street looking for a shade and finally just started laughing at ourselves for even trying to avoid the raindrops. We entered Park Hotel looking like a couple of bedraggled crows but with not a care in the world about our appearance. Yeah Batty we have chilled in Calcutta too now besides Pune, Bombay, Chennai, Delhi, Bangalore hehehe!
Then of course there was the celebrated Professor or Fino as we call her who dropped by on Saturday and I was jubilant just seeing her beaming face get out of the big yellow taxi hahah! I could spend quality time her cos it was only us now and the stream of relatives have stopped visiting us. Shikha had come down too so we had a girly time complete with Miss Lemony Pie. I think we landed up at “The Street” every day in the afternoon and those two couldn’t stop taking pictures of the city be it the trams or the Victoria Memorial and the black and white taxis. We went book shopping too as Shikha picked up books for each one of the booklovers. You should have seen the smile on Fino’s face who landed up with a double whammy. Then we met a very cute boy and his cartoonish friend with ringlets and goggle eyes who wouldn’t stop asking me questions until I was compelled to ask him to stop interviewing me hehe!
Fino, Miss Lemony Pie and I even went to Tangra (China Town) for lunch. I wanted her to have a taste of the my beloved Calcutta Chinese food. Though I think Fino only liked the thai soup as she kept sniffling and sneezing with some allergy that is so characteristic of her. A day earlier we had gone to the club for lunch with Ma. It was raining and we were sitting by the golf course just watching the rains and it was the prettiest sight. Fino and I did a round of New Market and after a very longtime I walked around lanes and bylanes in mild drizzle, munching the brownies from Nahoum’s ( Jewish Bakery) showing her the old hotels inhabited by seedy foreigners and drug peddlers. The mustiest bookstores were the biggest and the most exciting discovery of the day. Fino was fascinated by the piping hot scented tea being sold in the clay cups and we gorged on momos in a Tibetean eatery called Momo Plaza. We did Flury’s too as we had a chocolate truffle and tiramisu that tasted divine. Fino even saree shopped with Ma for a saree for her Mum. She settled for a black and white cotton and silk creation as she felt that would be the safest bet considering how choosy the mothers can be about sarees.
Ooops I so forgot to mention there was SMM too who came home visiting me and gifted me a lovely glass ganesha for luck and it did get me luck girl.I wish I could have spent more time with you but alas we were surrounded with people. But again atleast we met up.
So quite an eventful last one month I have had and I miss these whacky friends of mine who come down all the way from Bangalore and Delhi just to make sure I am fine.  I think I am quite alright and yeah I got a job too after all that cribbing and crying I finally landed up with one when I least expected it hahah! Here’s to a new beginning yet again.

A day in the life of a nameless, faceless, jobless individual!

She gets up each morning to her Mum urging her to have a cup of tea before she heads out to work. By 8 in the morning she is alone in that empty house that is filled with remnants of her Father’s bygone existence. Has it really been a month that he left them for his happy hunting grounds? She has her bowl of oats and milk and sits online looking for jobs here, there and everywhere. Its almost a routine now. She cannot get herself to read any books cos her mind isn’t at peace. She so hates not working, she so hates being the one whose isn’t moving on unlike the rest. She feels stuck in the most horrible time bubble and keeps waiting for it to burst. But it doesn’t, just doesn’t and by 11 she is in tears again, cursing her luck for having wrecked havoc in her life.
Na she cannot keep up with this so she gets out in the afternoon like she does almost each afternoon when she lands up in Park Street waiting for her girl friend to come meet her so that she could listen to her crib about the lack of eligible bachelors in the city or pre-empting the consequences of possible spinsterhood. For those couple of hours she tries to forget her jobless state and how much she misses how it use to be living before. Now it just seems like a bottomless pit of darkness that enshrouds everything. Happy thoughts have become alien cos sometimes she feels happiness has given up on her. She just wanted live the normal life, do the normal things the normal way. Life wasn’t supposed to be a movie all melodramatic where one looses everything but then it assumed this movie like quality that too a tearjerker. The hardest part was gonna be the comeback though.
She sits in the Oxford Bookstore everyday with a book in her hand listening to old Bengali songs being played in the background and realizes this city revels in nostalgia and times gone by and she had to be here of all the places now. She doesn’t like being home alone in the afternoon hence the trips to Park Street and the endless Metro rides to reach there. She likes travelling by the Metro in the afternoons because its quiet and somehow empty Metro stations always fascinated her, something about being alone in the heart of the earth and the tricks played by the sound of the wind . As a child she’d be enthralled by the colourful graffiti on the walls in the station done by unknown artists who had been commissioned to make the grey and sterile stations look alive.
She is on her way home in the crowded bus when she gets that call. Yeah well maybe there could be that one chance of the bubble bursting. The next day there is a sense of purpose in her. She has to go to the High Court to pick up a book This place hadn’t changed a bit in 6 years. Old Post Office Street is as old and grimy as ever and Emerald House is as green and ugly. Even the lawyers with their black cloaks and blazers look as excited as they use to. Back then when she was interning in one of the law firms even the sight of the sea of black and white irritated her cos she thought she’d never fit in and hell she always wondered where was all that enthusiasm coming from even in that horrible, rainy and moist weather.
Today it was different. She looked around with wonder in her eyes as she saw many running around from the High Court to the District Court or vice versa. Some Court Clerks were getting judgements and documents photo copied while most lawyers were heatedly arguing on some point of law or happily agreeing to each others points of view. Waaahh the Bengalis will never change she thought and smiled to herself. She found the bookshop and asked for Taxmann’s Corporate Laws Manual. She paid the bill and as she took it in her hand she got that thrill that was missing in her life for the last month and a half. She remembered the interviews that were disastrous, the house she left in a hurry, the packing done in 2 hours, coming home and that fateful day at the crematorium when everything changed. She saw her Mum’s smiling face and her sister’s tears when she was saying goodbye. Everything flashed past by and then she remembered how her Dad would call her up when he had a legal query and how she had finally begun to answer some of them before he fell sick. She felt this strange feeling of peace and strength as she opened the book. Oh how she missed it, all of it. She turned around and picked up that form for finally getting enrolled into the Bar. Ah well yeah she was finally one in that sea of black and white.

Lets smoke it all away

I don’t crave for smokes anymore. Weird isn’t it when at one time all I wanted was to be able to have that one smoke after work in the evening and I was perfectly content. I never was much of a chain smoker actually and I started smoking really late at 22 and I am almost 26 now. So 4 years of smoking almost continuously but not in profuse amounts and I could go weeks without smoking every time I headed home. But of course there have been those evenings when one puffed cigarette after cigarette with drinks loosing count and ignoring that tiny voice in my head that always knew and still knows how my lungs loose a little bit of life with every drag I take. But last couple of months I think I took a conscious decision to steer my mind away from craving for a smoke after work, or in the morning and even while drinking. I think secretly I was so glad when the smoking ban was implemented though publicly I have cursed the authorities for doing so time and time again but I have cut down on a lot of smoking because of the ban and I confess I am too lazy to be haunting the smoking rooms time and time again or to stand outside a club on a rainy, freezing evening and puff away at my smoke. I take the easy way out and don’t smoke at all if I need to be making so much of an effort for that one cigarette. I use to suffer from asthma as a teenager and for years I carried an inhaler in my bag just incase I needed it. Honestly smoking actually increases my breathlessness and decreases my capacity to run long stretches on the tread mill and I hate the stench of stale smoke when people come back to the confines of an air conditioned office after a smoke. I can make out chronic chain smokers by their dark lips, bad teeth and nicotine stained fingers. I can pin point those television news anchors who smoke too much cos their teeth scream tobacco abuse and it shows even in front of the camera. . Hypocrite ain’t I?
Why am I discussing smoking and the various disadvantages that tag along with it today? Well it was father’s day yesterday and my Dad won’t be around for the first time in almost 26 years cos he passed away from lung cancer exactly two weeks back. I know its genetic predisposition, destiny and a host of other factors some known and some unknown but the truth also being that it was the chain smoking in his hay days that might have triggered the cancer. As a child I remember being asked to run errands by my Mum and also to pick up a pack of cigarettes for my Dad. They have had incessant arguments of quitting the stick but somehow Dad would make excuses and smoke one a day or half a day. My Dad loved his alcohol but he never had a paunch or a beer belly. In fact he had abs cos he jogged some 9 kms every morning even at 57. I know there are stories of people smoking a pack at 70 and still being all hale and hearty well my Dad was a decorated officer (an infantry officer mind you) of the Indian Army for 32 years and the fittest 57 year old I have seen by far and all it took was 6 months of cancer and he is no more.
I don’t even wanna get into how the last 6 months have been as we saw our lives being turned upside down and all the happiness being sucked out of it. Everything we believed in was systematically shred to pieces. But like they say time is the best healer and as the days are passing by and the intensity of losing him lessens I can be more objective about this and I realize that this was the way it was supposed to be. Like Ma said its been 2 weeks now and then it’ll be a month, and gradually a year and years will pass by. We’ll move on like we are moving on but it still breaks my heart thinking he might have been around if not for the misdiagnosis and if he’d been a little more careful and paid more heed to the advice on quitting the cigarettes years back. Everybody who smokes doesn’t necessarily die of lung cancer but a lot of them do and my Father did. I am scared for myself sometimes and I know I should quit really soon. I wonder when I’ll have the will power enough to do so and till that day I’ll keep fighting this battle of restricting myself to one smoke a week or half a smoke with a drink on a weekend.

Big Girls Don't Cry

Thats what they say. Maybe they do cry sometimes like I have done so. I have cried buckets and buckets and now it seems none of the tears are left inside of me. We do become numb eventually however cliche it sounds. I wanna thank all who have been around the last 6 months walking every step along with me or some who walked a part of it but walked with me nonetheless. And people I am really apologetic for sounding like an emotional fool but maybe sometimes we have to be allowed the luxury to indulge in our stoopid, nonsensical emotions.

Batty and Fino: For being the rocks that they always have been. Guys what would I have done without you? Be it my personal failures or the adversities of life you have been there. Need I say anything more. Be it the dreams or the self made disasters you guys stood by me and I love you for that.

Red Head and Akku: You might not have been there in person but were always there in spirit and I know that. Red Head I know there were so many times you and I wanted to talk but we just did not know what to say to each other. That time at your wedding was one of the loveliest times I had and I'll always cherish those memories and I am so glad I could make it and spend sometime with you. Akku we have been living in different countries for 5 years now but it doesn't seem so cos you are always around in one way or the other. Sorry for not being able to make it for your shaadi. You know how unexpected all of that was.

Miss Touch Me Not( who doesn't read my blog) and She: Guys I really appreciate the effort made by both of you to come down and see me in Bangalore. I love both of you lots and lots despite everything really even if I seem distant and indifferent now.

Sagy: My roomie, my cooking buddy, my fellow social worker we have to, have to go to Africa and work there sometime much to Rishi's horror hahaha! Those 4 months with you were so idyllic and perfect and I could not have asked for better roomies than you and hottie Richa. :-)

Shikha: Darn I had to take your blogger name sorry but you wouldn't have figured it was you. I know we haven't spent half as much time like we probably have with the rest of our friends. Thank you for having been walked that length be it just giggling with me about our perennially single status or advising me on my career and helping me out with it. That evening in Firangi Paani well I haven't had so much fun minus alcohol for a longtime. Lots of love and luck to be coming your way I am sure.

Jinu: For being the bestest blogger buddy anybody could have ever asked for. Twinnie we shall definitely meet again. I know I left my life there all of a sudden but you know how everything fell apart. You and I have a long long way to go and those exams have to be aced. Thanku for being with me through the times of the cherry blossoms. I had so much fun in that Tattoo Parlour woman. :D

Meggy: For being that most inspiring colleague, friend and a whole lot more. Girl we'll definitely make it and we shall be sitting across the table from Walrus and negotiating the deal on our terms. You wait and watch.

Economist and Motu Boy: I miss you both lots and wish you guys were around. I wanna spend a lot more time with you, Batty, and Finoo and the entire mad bunch together.

Finally my Daddy for being the strongest and bravest Daddy. I know I was never the quintessential Daddy's little girl but I couldn't have asked for anybody but you as my father. You shall be missed immensely. I know you are looking over us from up there and I can see that drink in your hand and goofy smile on your face and can almost hear your laughter.

You could be my someone

I wish we were built to function as single entities, independent units who don't crave human touch as often we do. Sometimes I think that feeling of so near yet so far is maddening. I can see you, hear you, almost touch you and I'd like to know you and so would you but I know we never will. I don't wanna be meeting the likes of you any longer. I don't wanna be meeting the kinds with whom I can instantly relate to, have so much fun with during the course of a couple of hours but realise I can't have more for whatever reasons. Yes I really wish I could be custom made to operate as a single unit who can survive completely on her own. I can see the loneliness sometimes. Its amazing how many of them are out there. I am scared they shall be able to see through my veil too. Yes wouldn't it be so much easier if that very need of wanting to be with someone was erased?

"Alone, all alone nobody, but nobody can make it out here all alone."

Maya Angelou

All thats left has gone away

I never thought I'd say this but I am so gonna miss this quaint lil lawyer's office with its traditional wooden interiors and leather upholstery. I am gonna miss the sunny rooms and the fully stocked kitchen and the patch of small garden where we got out to answer our phone calls. We were even getting an aquarium each and were gonna choose our own fishes. I am gonna miss the books soooo much and I loved the funky book cases Walrus and the Preety Maid had designed. You name the book and they'd order it for us. I know most law firms function the same way but I ain't gonna be working in one very soon and maybe thats why I am feeling a teeny meeny bit nostalgic leaving all of this behind. I also realise that one tends to romanticise the past and sometimes we completely overlook the bad times. But the bad times for what it was worth over here have taught me lessons to last me a lifetime. I would have never ever learned the intricacies of researching or drafting if I hadn't worked over here and being a lawyer these two are the intrinsic skills required to succeed in this field wherever I go and whatever legal work I am involved in. I discovered that I am good at researching and I know I can find out those sections and a particular statute faster than my colleague and Boss. I so love this MacBook and even the thought of working on the Dell is giving me jitters. Hmphhhhh! I am gonna buy an Apple as soon as I save enough money.

If I want I guess I can make these 7 months sound like the worse time of my professional life but I choose not to do that. We take away something from every experience in life however brief or long it would be and I am carrying back a treasure trove of skills with me that shall come in handy tomorrow. And also that will to survive and the urge to prove them wrong. I know someday I am gonna be sitting across the table with Walrus proud of what I achieved in life and to think I probably took that first real step towards my dreams because he didn't have faith in me. :-) Its not that I don't have my bad days when I lament over the state of my life both professional and personal. Just yesterday I was speaking to my Aunt and I was choked with emotion wondering yet again why us, why me? I put the music on loud so that my roomie could not hear me and I howled my heart out cos thats exactly how far my dreams seemed to be and the road ahead isn't gonna be easy.

I know I'll have to work harder than others at that particular exam. Someone said I'll breeze through it but I know I won't. I know I'll feel dejected now and again and sometimes shall be on the brink of giving up. But I always pray that I don't loose that end in sight and this is just the means to an end. There isn't gonna be any space or room to be doing what I want to in my own sweet time for a longtime now. I am not going back to a happy home and things have taken a complete turnaround. But they say life also gives back to us all that it takes away. So last morning while I listened to Kelly Clarkson's " My Life Would Suck Without You" and shed some tears I told myself exactly how life would compensate for its unfairness. I keep waiting for that one sign that it shall become better. I keep praying and longing to see that miracle.

No I don't get any answers at all ever. The funniest is when people crib about the nonsensical things in life and I am amazed that those things stand nowhere in my life any longer and just 6 months back all I did was to complain about the very same things. I can't relate to that thinking any more and it just seems to be a luxury now. I realise I have grown older in my head and the change is glaring to me although unless you know me really well you'd never figure. It is still me though, the older frivolous me is probably hidden somewhere in the nooks and crannies in some dusty corner of my mind. I don't know if she'll get a chance to come out in the near future but I can live with that. All I want is that other life I yearn to have. I know I will, yes I know I will.
“ You have to believe in yourself, that's the secret. Even when I was in the orphanage, when I was roaming the street trying to find enough to eat, even then I thought of myself as the greatest actor in the world. I had to feel the exuberance that comes from utter confidence in yourself. Without it, you go down to defeat. ”

Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977)
comic actor, filmmaker, writer

Nobody said this was easy....

It took 25 whole years for real life to come knocking at my door and now I can't wait for it to get over and for the rest of my life to begin. Why am I talking in riddles? Today while making dinner (methi chicken) I realised that cooking is one of those rare things that comes easy to me. I have forgotten how the word "easy" use to sound like or how it feels when it isn't too difficult and everything falls into place miraculously. Yes I have been on one of those pensive moods. But so would you be if you get up on a Monday morning realising well I don't need to go for work any longer and that I have actually given my resignation letter but why am I still feeling guilty for sitting at home for a legitimate reason? Thats what the last 8 months or so have done to me and I can't even sit at home for a day without work and not feel guilty.

Why do I have to pack up time and time again and start from scratch? So this is the price I have to pay for the life I lead before and all my past shenanigans. I don't drink at all these days and its hard to imagine a me that drank copious amounts for the longest time. Jinu and I went to Hard Rock Cafe on Saturday and had 2 glasses of fresh lime soda and spoke and spoke as if the world was about to come to an end and this was the last time we were meeting. Now who goes to Hard Rock on a summer afternoon and drinks fresh lime sodas instead of guzzling a beer except for the likes of me and Jinu hahaha! There is always so so much to discuss and so much to dream, to plan, to hope and the castles in the air we build are too enticing to resist. I am gonna miss her a lot when I leave. Hmphhhh!

Seems like I have to be making the right friends just before biding adieu to this city. I made another really good friend in a space of a few weeks and I have known her forever and both of us are amazed that we never chilled before despite knowing the whole world in common. We share a love for food and we meet every weekend and try out a restaurant and a new cuisine each time. Its such good fun discussing work, love and life over a plate of tamarind chicken or dum pukht biriyani. Something very very comforting about thai red curry cos the last 3 consecutive weekends I have been having that for sunday lunch.

Batty and I have yet again charted the course of our whole "new"life out (sans lecherous, eccentric, slavedriverish employers) right from the degree, to the new country, the job, the boy to her wedding, to the new house in California and vacations to be taken together with our better halfs and the dogs and even the jokes on my better half. Yes we are definitely suffering from an insanity that comes from talking late hours on a Sunday night knowing there isn't any office to go to on a monday morning.

Yes the nightly conversations are surely gonna be missed and so is the switch from the Brit English to native tongue and back to Brit English. Its so darn easy getting use to having people around. They seem to come and go and this wretched life doesn't keep an account. Or does it?

I turn my head and go away.....

"The phoenix hope, can wing her way through the desert skies, and still defying fortune's spite; revive from ashes and rise.”

Miguel Cervantes

And thats why I got a tattoo of a phoenix when I did get one. There is so much I wanna say and so much of this has been left unsaid.I wish I could write exactly what I feel. I wish I could produce the riders just as they are on paper, the loopholes, the jagged edges that need to be evened out. But this is a blog at the end of the day and not my personal diary where I could possibly put my heart out. I wanna tell him that I could have been as good as you wanted me to be with time. I know I could have but life and circumstances had made up their mind way before. I had wanted so much and I got so little. I hate such unfinished chapters and parting in such a hurry. But we'll meet again and it'll be a different day.
This post is also for someone else whose having to quit a job she loves for the most uncomfortable of reasons. You remember the day you took this picture of my tattoo. We were so excited about meeting up on the pretext of your work in Bangalore. We liked the way life was shaping out however bumpy the road seemed to be. We never thought that this is how the journey would end. You do know that you and I will find our own little niche someday. We'll be happy, doing what we love and without compromising on your dignity and my self confidence.

One day.....

"One day, not today, not tomorrow, not this season, probably not next season either but one day, you and I are gonna wake up and suddenly we're gonna be like every other team in every other sport where winning is everything and nothing else matters. And when that day comes, well thats, thats when we'll honor them."

['We Are Marshall']

Romeo save me, I've been feeling so alone...

And the song just stuck to my head so much so that I played it a million times until I have been forbidden to play it again. Romeo never does come to save you though. Take it from me even if you hit rock bottom and think it cannot get worse it gets worse and nothing but yourself and your spirit can make you get up and start from scratch all over again. Would you want that one person to save you from the demons and shield you every step of the way? I wouldn't and I don't know about you. Sometimes though when I get glimpses of peoples lives I realise yes some of them have had it a little easier than the rest but life is a great leveller and I truly believe that. We more often than not choose our own lives and I chose this and everything that comes along with it. Well almost. I can't blame others for my fears, my inadequacies, my failures and I am standing where I am right now for I let my fear of failure play havoc in my life and now that the worst has happened I seem to be almost uneffected. Its not that I don't care. Yes I do, ofcourse I do but I cared too much, I tried too much, gave too much and sometimes the trick lies in being a tad bit indifferrent and exiting gracefully knowing nothing more could have been done and you couldn't have done it any differently. This wasn't meant to be ever. This was only how long this journey was supposed to be.

Besides I feel unless this decision had been thrust on me I would have never ever chosen to opt out of this situation. I guess I don't really have the option but to go for it now. :-) I kept pushing it back year by year but now I won't wait too long. There is a time for everything, every bloody thing. Sometimes I feel damn is this how it was supposed to be? Then why the hell was I trying to fight against the wind? If something was right here in my backyard why wasn't I aware of its existence? Eeerie this is, all of it. :-) So where has it come from and where was it all this while and why the appearance now and why does it feel so familiar? Not the scary familar but the comfortable familiar, not the you gimme the creeps familar but the warm familar. No this isn't gonna save me cos no one but me saves myself but yes it might lead me to a different road and a new direction and I like the sound of that.

Stranger Stranger Lover of Unreachable Heights

And now it was evening.
And Almitra the seeress said, "Blessed be this day and this place and your spirit that has spoken."
And he answered, Was it I who spoke? Was I not also a listener?
Then he descended the steps of the Temple and all the people followed him. And he reached his ship and stood upon the deck.
And facing the people again, he raised his voice and said:
People of Orphalese, the wind bids me leave you.
Less hasty am I than the wind, yet I must go.
We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us.
Even while the earth sleeps we travel.
We are the seeds of the tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart that we are given to the wind and are scattered.
Brief were my days among you, and briefer still the words I have spoken.
But should my voice fade in your ears, and my love vanish in your memory, then I will come again,
And with a richer heart and lips more yielding to the spirit will I speak.
Yea, I shall return with the tide,
And though death may hide me, and the greater silence enfold me, yet again will I seek your understanding.
And not in vain will I seek.
If aught I have said is truth, that truth shall reveal itself in a clearer voice, and in words more kin to your thoughts.
I go with the wind, people of Orphalese, but not down into emptiness;
And if this day is not a fulfilment of your needs and my love, then let it be a promise till another day. Know therefore, that from the greater silence I shall return.
The mist that drifts away at dawn, leaving but dew in the fields, shall rise and gather into a cloud and then fall down in rain.
And not unlike the mist have I been.
In the stillness of the night I have walked in your streets, and my spirit has entered your houses,
And your heart-beats were in my heart, and your breath was upon my face, and I knew you all.
Ay, I knew your joy and your pain, and in your sleep your dreams were my dreams.
And oftentimes I was among you a lake among the mountains.
I mirrored the summits in you and the bending slopes, and even the passing flocks of your thoughts and your desires.
And to my silence came the laughter of your children in streams, and the longing of your youths in rivers.
And when they reached my depth the streams and the rivers ceased not yet to sing.
But sweeter still than laughter and greater than longing came to me.
It was boundless in you;
The vast man in whom you are all but cells and sinews;
He in whose chant all your singing is but a soundless throbbing.
It is in the vast man that you are vast,
And in beholding him that I beheld you and loved you.
For what distances can love reach that are not in that vast sphere?
What visions, what expectations and what presumptions can outsoar that flight?
Like a giant oak tree covered with apple blossoms is the vast man in you.
His mind binds you to the earth, his fragrance lifts you into space, and in his durability you are deathless.
You have been told that, even like a chain, you are as weak as your weakest link.
This is but half the truth. You are also as strong as your strongest link.
To measure you by your smallest deed is to reckon the power of ocean by the frailty of its foam.
To judge you by your failures is to cast blame upon the seasons for their inconsistency.
Ay, you are like an ocean,
And though heavy-grounded ships await the tide upon your shores, yet, even like an ocean, you cannot hasten your tides.
And like the seasons you are also,
And though in your winter you deny your spring,
Yet spring, reposing within you, smiles in her drowsiness and is not offended.
Think not I say these things in order that you may say the one to the other, "He praised us well. He saw but the good in us."
I only speak to you in words of that which you yourselves know in thought.
And what is word knowledge but a shadow of wordless knowledge?
Your thoughts and my words are waves from a sealed memory that keeps records of our yesterdays,
And of the ancient days when the earth knew not us nor herself,
And of nights when earth was upwrought with confusion,
Wise men have come to you to give you of their wisdom. I came to take of your wisdom:
And behold I have found that which is greater than wisdom.
It is a flame spirit in you ever gathering more of itself,
While you, heedless of its expansion, bewail the withering of your days.
It is life in quest of life in bodies that fear the grave.
There are no graves here.
These mountains and plains are a cradle and a stepping-stone.
Whenever you pass by the field where you have laid your ancestors look well thereupon, and you shall see yourselves and your children dancing hand in hand.
Verily you often make merry without knowing.
Others have come to you to whom for golden promises made unto your faith you have given but riches and power and glory.
Less than a promise have I given, and yet more generous have you been to me.
You have given me deeper thirsting after life.
Surely there is no greater gift to a man than that which turns all his aims into parching lips and all life into a fountain.
And in this lies my honour and my reward, -
That whenever I come to the fountain to drink I find the living water itself thirsty;
And it drinks me while I drink it.
Some of you have deemed me proud and over-shy to receive gifts.
To proud indeed am I to receive wages, but not gifts.
And though I have eaten berries among the hill when you would have had me sit at your board,
And slept in the portico of the temple where you would gladly have sheltered me,
Yet was it not your loving mindfulness of my days and my nights that made food sweet to my mouth and girdled my sleep with visions?
For this I bless you most:
You give much and know not that you give at all.
Verily the kindness that gazes upon itself in a mirror turns to stone,
And a good deed that calls itself by tender names becomes the parent to a curse.
And some of you have called me aloof, and drunk with my own aloneness,
And you have said, "He holds council with the trees of the forest, but not with men.
He sits alone on hill-tops and looks down upon our city."
True it is that I have climbed the hills and walked in remote places.
How could I have seen you save from a great height or a great distance?
How can one be indeed near unless he be far?
And others among you called unto me, not in words, and they said,
Stranger, stranger, lover of unreachable heights, why dwell you among the summits where eagles build their nests?
Why seek you the unattainable?
What storms would you trap in your net,
And what vaporous birds do you hunt in the sky?
Come and be one of us.
Descend and appease your hunger with our bread and quench your thirst with our wine."
In the solitude of their souls they said these things;
But were their solitude deeper they would have known that I sought but the secret of your joy and your pain,
And I hunted only your larger selves that walk the sky.
But the hunter was also the hunted:
For many of my arrows left my bow only to seek my own breast.
And the flier was also the creeper;
For when my wings were spread in the sun their shadow upon the earth was a turtle.
And I the believer was also the doubter;
For often have I put my finger in my own wound that I might have the greater belief in you and the greater knowledge of you.
And it is with this belief and this knowledge that I say,
You are not enclosed within your bodies, nor confined to houses or fields.
That which is you dwells above the mountain and roves with the wind.
It is not a thing that crawls into the sun for warmth or digs holes into darkness for safety,
But a thing free, a spirit that envelops the earth and moves in the ether.
If this be vague words, then seek not to clear them.
Vague and nebulous is the beginning of all things, but not their end,
And I fain would have you remember me as a beginning.
Life, and all that lives, is conceived in the mist and not in the crystal.
And who knows but a crystal is mist in decay?
This would I have you remember in remembering me:
That which seems most feeble and bewildered in you is the strongest and most determined.
Is it not your breath that has erected and hardened the structure of your bones?
And is it not a dream which none of you remember having dreamt that building your city and fashioned all there is in it?
Could you but see the tides of that breath you would cease to see all else,
And if you could hear the whispering of the dream you would hear no other sound.
But you do not see, nor do you hear, and it is well.
The veil that clouds your eyes shall be lifted by the hands that wove it,
And the clay that fills your ears shall be pierced by those fingers that kneaded it.
And you shall see
And you shall hear.
Yet you shall not deplore having known blindness, nor regret having been deaf.
For in that day you shall know the hidden purposes in all things,
And you shall bless darkness as you would bless light.
After saying these things he looked about him, and he saw the pilot of his ship standing by the helm and gazing now at the full sails and now at the distance.
And he said:
Patient, over-patient, is the captain of my ship.
The wind blows, and restless are the sails;
Even the rudder begs direction;
Yet quietly my captain awaits my silence.
And these my mariners, who have heard the choir of the greater sea, they too have heard me patiently.
Now they shall wait no longer.
I am ready.
The stream has reached the sea, and once more the great mother holds her son against her breast.
Fare you well, people of Orphalese.
This day has ended.
It is closing upon us even as the water-lily upon its own tomorrow.
What was given us here we shall keep,
And if it suffices not, then again must we come together and together stretch our hands unto the giver.
Forget not that I shall come back to you.
A little while, and my longing shall gather dust and foam for another body.
A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me.
Farewell to you and the youth I have spent with you.
It was but yesterday we met in a dream.
You have sung to me in my aloneness, and I of your longings have built a tower in the sky.
But now our sleep has fled and our dream is over, and it is no longer dawn.
The noontide is upon us and our half waking has turned to fuller day, and we must part.
If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more, we shall speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song.
And if our hands should meet in another dream, we shall build another tower in the sky.
So saying he made a signal to the seamen, and straightaway they weighed anchor and cast the ship loose from its moorings, and they moved eastward.
And a cry came from the people as from a single heart, and it rose the dusk and was carried out over the sea like a great trumpeting.
Only Almitra was silent, gazing after the ship until it had vanished into the mist.
And when all the people were dispersed she still stood alone upon the sea-wall, remembering in her heart his saying,
A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me.

Khalil Gibran ( Originally called "The Farewell")

Hope

While cribbing about the fact that I shall have to give up my MacBook Jinu told me that someday I am gonna have the money to buy hundreds and hundreds of MacBooks.
While cribbing about how bad I was feeling about the current situation Fino said "This was a good experience, but something you forced yourself to like and get used to. Maybe you will effortlessly fall into place in some other set up- making life a lot easier for you."
Mom says " Don't let anybody take away your dreams from you."
And I say that I wanna remember this day forever and forever. Today's one of my lowest days. But someday far far away I am gonna look back to this day as the day when I took that first step.

"Never let go of hope. One day you will see that it all has finally come together. What you have always wished for has finally come to be. You will look back and laugh at what has passed and you will ask yourself... 'How did I get through all of that?”

I needed inspiration and not just another negotiation.

I can probably think of a thousand different reasons stating why I'll never get there and how impossible it seems right now.I can stop thinking about it like I hadn't thought about it for such a long time. No I don't want just this, no this isn't enough. I want more, lots more. To think it was some silly song and a certain Coach in Indiana inspiring me and to think that the person who inspired me doesn't even know so hahaha! Sometimes when you get that one glimpse of somebody else's life and you are so tempted to venture out again cos it looks so happy. Maybe it'll never be just like you had imagined but close to it I guess. That would be enough. Yes that would surely be enough.The bottom line being sometimes the most outlandish things inspire us and for me that happened during the wee hours of the morning last week. :-)

When you get a choice to sit it out or dance, I hope you dance :-)!

Well I have been so wanting to post last one week and everyday I had ideas for a different post but I guess there is a right time and place for almost everything including blogging so here I am Saturday evening sitting in my room with a cup of coffee in this cute chicky Mug ( She gave me) and listening to Lee Ann Womack's music on my Dell Notebook while I am typing this post out in a frenzy on my MacBook :-). There is so much one could write but lets start out with the essentials. Firstly I met the cutest and the bubbliest blogger chick last weekend at Hard Rock Cafe for a drink and lemme tell ya Jinu has the chubbiest cheeks and can talk nineteen a dozen and put me to shame. I always thought I talk non-stop when I am in the mood to chatter but Jinu beats me hollow and its lovely listening to her recount her tales cos they are frighteningly similar to mine. She is as henpecked as me and as silly and goofy and I think I found a kindred soul. :D We had so much to talk about and not even for an instant did I feel that this is the first time I am meeting her. Felt that I'd known her forever. I am sure she shall be mentioned more so in the future on my blog.
So Jinu and I have been tripping on this New York Time article on Helen Gurley Brown who was the editor of Cosmopolitan magazine for 40 long years. The article was aptly titled " Bad Girls Go Everywhere" after her biography of the same name chronicling her life and rise to fame from small town Arkansas in the first quarter of the Twentieth century to the plush offices of Cosmopolitan in NYC. We have promised ourselves that we are gonna buy a copy each to inspire ourselves cos we are definitely not the Good Girl variety heading to heaven hehehe! And have you guys ever heard of Anita Loos? She is the one who coined the term " Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" and that is actually the name of her book that was considered to be quite unique in those days when published in the fifties. I'd had only seen the romantic comedy starring Marilyn Monroe but never heard of the script writer and the brain behind the idea.
Our Law Firm formally shifted its office on Thursday and Meggy and I were kept on our toes packing up the heavy books, the stationery, the printer and even the paper shredder. Walrus was also doing his bit ofcourse as we made multiple trips to his car and Meggy car. The transporter guy never turned up and there we were with two overstuffed cars. We had a dozen cardboxes full of office files and one of the boxes looked exactly like a coffin and the size was perfect for Meggy as I suggested maybe we could pack her complete with the bubble wrapping and send her across with the luggage too heheh! Oh and Sags parents were in town too last weekend and lemme declare them to be the coolest parents of all times. Aunty is adorable and looks like a tiny pixie and more like Sags sister and one has to literally pull her away from the kitchen cos she just cannot help but keep cleaning up all the time. Uncle is such fun and we were bumming cigarettes off him. They took us to Koshy's for dinner Monday night and it was merry making all the way.
Since I have gone and on with my cooking escapades I have to mention my exploits in the kitchen haahha! So I cook almost everyday now and I am loving it. Be it helping Saggy out with the dinner last Saturday and making Zuccinis with olives and lemon rind and baked potatoes with basil and rosemary or the ordinary " Usal" ( Sprouts actually and I never knew they could be so yummy). Richa is sick of Sags and me trying out recipe after recipe saying " You guys really make me feel so inept" heheh! So last nigth I officially called Fino home for dinner thinking she is gonna be the first of my friends who is gonna sample my cooking. I was quite nervous in the morning cribbing about it to Sags saying what if I made mess of it. We guys went to Namdharis and Food World in Indiranagar to buy the ingredients for lunch cos HE was coming home and for my dinner ofcourse. Sags ended up picking up rotten mutton and I went out of the house thinking i am gonna pick up the chicken and mince meat both from SPAR ( Bangaloreans would know SPAR. The meat counter is to die for:-).) I bumped into HE under the house and he offered to gimme a ride. I sat on a bike after the longest time and I don't know if he was was riding against the wind or with the wind but I loved the feel of it on my face as it snarled and whispered at the same time as if telling me that times will change :-). HE, Sags and I full chilled in the afternoon and come evening I got down to the task and made roast chicken stuffed with mushrooms, herbs and walnuts with jacket potatoes with sage and onions. Apparently it tasted divine.( Yes I take credit for it ;-) ) We drank wine and there were strawberries in cream for dessert. And I haven't entered the kitchen today heheeh!
Hmmm so guess I am doing good, yes I am. I completed 6 months here. Can you believe it? 6 months of Bangalore, 6 months of Walrus and the Preety Maid and we have come a long way indeed. Yeayyyyyyy!
“We dance for laughter, we dance for tears, we dance for madness, we dance for fears, we dance for hopes, we dance for screams, we are the dancers, we create the dreams.”

Still Round The Corner There May Wait, A New Road Or A Secret Gate

It has been one long week since the last time I blogged and nothing seems to have changed except for ebb of thoughts that keep changing their flow from here to there and everywhere. The last weekend passed away swiftly and I remember the two bottles of wine, the rosemary and garlic chicken made by Sags and me and the funny conversation we had while Richa who was equally tipsy sat in one corner of the living room just laughing at our antics. Sags is a fabulous cook and she so inspires me to try my culinary skills out and I love the fancy glossy cook books she has and I so look forward to flipping through them cos they have a little bit of history written behind each recipe and its ever so intriguing. We even have pots of herbs in our huge veranda be it oregano, thyme, rosemary and basil and its turning out to be a veritable kitchen garden. Oh and I love thyme in my omlette and may I suggest the same to you. :-)

My eyebrows were growing at breakneck speed and my face looked right out of some ghastly tv serial so last evening I went to this shady parlour called Hi Tech Faces. Yes aren't you flinching too but beggars cannot be choosers cos I am too lazy to get out of the house during the weekends and weekdays one clearly has too much work. I met up with Nik the other day for dinner there wasn't a single restaurant open in the whole of Indiranagar all thanks to elections ofcourse and by the end of the evening we had sat on 5 autos. Plus he insisted that he knows the cool places here unlike me who tries to act cool and fails miserably heheh! So last evening Richa and I were at the Barista at Leela Palace waiting for a place to have our coffees when I suggested we took a round of the fancy, overpriced and tempting shops until they beckoned us. Now that was clearly a bad idea as I ended picking up a perfume. And I am quite excited about smelling all green tea lotusish. These days the tiniest of things make me happy. Maybe cos the bigger things are eluding me.

Last Night Batty and I had the most whackiest of conversations on how we'll never ever get what we want when we want and we are obviously gonna land up in places we never expected to and why cities matter so much to us. In the middle of debating and contemplating on the diametrics of cities, people and our lives we ended up talking about volunteer work in Africa or the Middle East, Baghdad and even Kabul and how we would die to work in such places doing humanitarian work. Quite a few secrets were spilled out especially how both of us would like to be oh so famous someday the right way and how it would be to be working in Baghdad and we would be one of those women who wanted to make a difference and who left their cushioned jobs in MNC's cos we wanted a purpose in life and then in the process landed up in Iraq. In Iraq too we'd crib and whine but we'll be happy and then how it would be to get kidnapped by one of those psycho terrorist outfits and then we would make a heroic escape and be all over news and there would be Facebook campaigns like the one for Roxanna Saberi and this one would say "Free the erstwhile Lawyer and Documentary Film Maker". Sigh! To think we had to come back to our ordinary lives what with me having to draft an agreement for an insipid pharma device and Batty having to edit some uninspiring documentary film. No heroes definitely but two dreamy and foolish 25 year olds who clearly imagine too much.

“'What do you fear my lady?'
'A cage. To stay behind bars until use and old age accept them and all chance of valor has gone beyond beyond recall or desire.'”
J.R.R Tolkiens

Wanderlust!

I wanna go on a holiday to Ulan Bator. Ask me what place is it? Tis the capital of Mongolia and I have sat for half an hour checking out pictures of Mongolia and reading up on where to go stay, what to do, what to eat, the places to visit, the drop dead gorgeus scenery. I really wanna go. I wanna see the shamans and witness a shamanic ritual. Sigh! If only one had the monies. I even found out the price of the tickets and it only costs 70,000 something for a round trip. In college I use to want to visit Tibet and I still do. Maybe cos I spent 2 years in Gangtok as a child and went to school with Lepchas( people of Tibetean Buddhist origins). One of them was called Dorji and use to be my favouritest friend to play with after school. They made the most amazing momos and thuppa and I got a taste for their food at the age of 6 and I still die for momos any city, every city I go to.
I was thinking about the number of houses I have lived in the 25 years of my life and gosh the number baffled me too. Can you imagine that I have inhabited 22 houses? So I sat and counted how many cities, how many houses and 12 of those are all thanks to Dad and the Indian army starting from Dehradun, Jodhpur, Gangtok, Pathankot( small town in the north of Punjab) and Calcutta. Then there were 6 different abodes for the 5 years spent in Pune. Oh my God some of them I dread to imagine. After college a place in Chennai, one in Delhi ( I miss, I miss the house) and two in Bangalore. Yes 22 houses I could have called home. I wonder how many more am I gonna have and how many more places am I gonna visit. But I have always been India bound. I wanna get out and visit Russia, Mongolia, Tibet, Turkey ( Sigh!! Istanbul), Mexico, Peru and the whole wide world. I envy globe trotters really! I have only ever been an India Trotter. Hmphhhhh!
I never grew up in that one house you can call home where you spent most of your childhood and I always envied people who had that cos for me it was such a luxury and we shifted every two years the first 10 years of my life and I hated it. Now in retrospect I realise that the very essence of this gypsy like existence was instilled in me since the time I was born and I actually start getting an itch to get out a particular city after a particular time period. As a child we had a truckload of boxes and trunks whereever we went and those were used as makeshift dewans and tables, carefully concealed under drapes ofcourse. The tin trunks use to have my Dad's name engraved on them in white saying Col XYZ , _____ regiment, shifting from ____ to _____. Even the sight of them would disturb me cos it meant a new school, making new friends and catching up with school work.
Last week when I was home and Mum sent me to Fort William to the pay the bill at the Club everything made me upset cos it reminded me of Dad and the life he gave us. I passed the Golf Course and it reminded me of the days he'd be off playing golf at 3 in the afternoon and come back at 5: 30 all sweaty, happy and high on life. I see the huge fauji trucks and I remember my whole school life when I went to school in them and how embarassed I'd be when I got a little older cos they looked like mobile zoos complete with the cage and us monkeys inside.
Yup this wanderlust too is my father's legacy...
And even if you were in some prison, the walls of which let none of the sounds of the world come to your senses - would you not then still have your childhood, that precious, kingly possession, that treasure-house of memories?

Picture Perfect Life

Sometimes you close your eyes and see the picture perfect life it could have been. The images conjured in my mind seem to be unreal. Fragments of memories keep coming back and its all so disjointed. I wanted it to be a train and not different bits and pieces as it has turned out to be. I wonder if I grew up to be the person I thought I would. Is this how I saw my life 10 years back? This walking, talking, laughing, perfectly functional wreck that I have become. Wow sometimes I hate everything and everybody around me. I envy people and I keep asking why the hell? When am I gonna be able to make peace with this and accept it as destiny? Most of the times I convince myself but again one phone call or one cry for help and one sob and its destroyed all the make believe peace goes up in the air. I am back to where it began and its as hopeless as ever.
I wanna be able to crib about silly and stupid things like I always have done and like the others do. I wanna be worried about why so and so did not message me and why isn’t XYZ not calling me up. I don’t wanna get upset all over again about work but I am cos someone said “I won’t deny that you have to work very very hard to catch up.” I know she didn’t mean it that way but it hurt and it amazes me that this thing at work will bother me always. I don’t wanna hear the tiny voice that says “ Oh God I don’t wanna be in her shoes. I am so lucky that its not me.” But I hear it silently every now and then. I keep consoling myself saying someday life is gonna make it all up to us but what if it never does and I keep leading this ordinary life the way I have all this while the mediocre and average way. I have begun to hate those two words cos apparently I am not even that.
I don’t know whats bothering me more the assumptions about me or the circumstances I am in. Both I guess cos I desperately want something to work out, anything to work out. I wanna see light at the end of this tunnel and this one wasn’t made by me at all. I had nothing to do with its creation but it has encompassed everything I believed in, shaken my faith. I can’t seem to reconcile myself with the stark contrasts. Honestly I have tried and failed but I promise myself that someday its all gonna be very very different, good different, better different, happy different. Someday we are not gonna be passed over cos we ain’t good enough. We’ll be good enough, way better than good enough, yes we will.
“Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up.”

With A Little Bit Of Help From My Woodwork Angels

I got up in the evening with the most rotten mood after my afternoon nap. I was angry with the world for a variety of reasons and primarily cos our prayers don’t seem to be working, cos my Dad needed an oxygen mask last nite, cos maybe I finally found something I can grow to love, be good at with time and I’ll have to take a break from because of circumstances. I have lived the last 8 years of my life skimming over everything, be it law school where I took it easy for almost all of the five years or my two years in Delhi whereby all I did was to have fun, drink too much( much too much for my own good), party, chill out with my friends and not give my best at work. I haven’t been true to the substantial things, the priorities for so long that it became a way of life for me. Somewhere deep down I always knew that I cannot continue in this fashion and hence the move out of Delhi. I wanted to be the best I could be and I know that I had fooled myself for too long. Nothing in life is free and yes all the fun has come at a cost and I am having to pay for every second of not making an effort at work before and I have struggled and continue to struggle here in this law firm but amidst this constant maze of questions I am getting answers. I have questioned myself every single day at work over here for the last 6 months wondering darn am I ever gonna be standing anywhere amidst people who are so good at what they do and know so much more than I ever have. The only thing I had going for me was the fact that I wanted to do well and I was sick of being a nobody, despised myself for having let myself become a shadow of what I could have been. But if you want something that badly and go for it even if you stumble every step of the way, make an utter fool of yourself in the process but you still get up, laugh and carry on cos this is gonna be one long journey and you just started, a tad bit too late maybe but tis never too late to go after your dreams and dreams change.
So there I was a couple of hours back fuming, snapping at my sister, furious after a phone conversation with my mother who insisted I was lazy and I should be able to cook instead of making do with take aways and instant food all the time. I walked out of the house to get milk for the coffee my roomie Richa was making for us and ended up buying eggs, onion, garlic, tomatoes and some potatoes thinking maybe I should try my hand at cooking and I can’t be that bad as they think I am or as I think I am. I come back home with the supplies and Richa goes “Wow you gonna be cooking.” I said sheepishly “Yes I am. Hope it doesn’t turn out to be bad, hope its edible.” I started with the chopping, cutting and boiling of the ingredients and doing just that exhausted me but not to be discouraged I carried on. In the middle when the mixie wasn’t working and I couldn’t figure how to make the onion, garlic, tomatoe paste I almost gave up looking at the mess the kitchen was. Whatever task I do and if it is a hard one there is always this one moment when everything seems to be falling apart and I think hell this isn’t gonna work out. But with time I have realized if I stick around and persist that moment passes and I do complete what I started out doing not in the spectacular fashion like in the movies but not half as bad either. I did finish making the egg curry and rice with a little bit of help from Richa and useful tips from Sags and my Mum. In the process while she fried the masala for me and I ground the ginger we exchanged stories about her Grandmum, my Dad, our families and I came to the conclusion that no I do wanna be there for my Mum and Dad now and if I don’t take that break now I’ll have life long regrets. The Egg Curry smelt yum, tasted fine and they liked it and there is a little bit left that I have to put back in the refrigerator. I wish I’d tried cooking before, I wish I hadn’t had preconceived notions about what I am good at and can be good at. But I am learning now that I can be good at what I truly want with a little bit of help from my woodwork angels be at Meggy at work or Richa at home with the cooking. Woodwork angels are those who materialize out of nowhere, almost the woodwork when you need someone the most. Thus Meggy has been mine at work for 6 months now and Richa was one today in the kitchen. :-)

The rule and not the exception... :-)

I came back home on Sunday afternoon to a musty room with dust settled on almost everything I own and it did not feel like home. It still doesn’t however hard I try. I was dreading work on Monday morning and yes recession has hit us hard too and the clients seem to be barely trickling in. I was given work nonetheless and had to draft some agreement and as expected I took it too easy. I did anything and everything but draft the agreement and as a result of my excessive laziness I was up at the break of dawn today finishing it. I almost lost my cool an hour into it when I realised it isn’t as simple as I thought it was and was almost ready to give up but I guess this workplace has taught me one thing and that is never ever to give up on an agreement even if it’s the worst possible one. You carry on drafting slowly, reading and re reading, deleting and adding. Everytime I read it I found something missing or something not fitting in and I kept adding till the last moment even 5 minutes before submitting it at 11:30. It wasn’t the perfect one though. I wonder when I’d be able to draft a perfect agreement. ☺
Last week as we drove down from Haridwar to Dehradun I saw some of the loveliest scenery I have seen in the recent times (after my Jim Corbett trip last year and that already feels like a lifetime back). Yeah this was the same part of the country too and I love the trees, just endless rows and rows of trees and forest area. The eucalyptus, the pine, the fir trees with the purple bourgavillea made the prettiest picture postcard view. Though my frame of mind could not be equated to that beauty around me. But then hell tis never gonna be picture postcard perfect. Anyways I plan to come back next year for the Kumbh Mela and Batty has agreed to accompany me. It should be fun and intriguing and we should be able to take some interesting pictures.
Monday evening Meggy and I went over to Featherlite to choose chairs for ourselves for the new office. In the space of an hour and a half we tried out every single chair, couch and sofa in the shop and we had opinion on every item they had on display including the cute work stations, the coffee tables and the sexy bar stools. Now the problem being both of us found fundamentally different chairs comfortable and we cannot possibly have dissimilar chairs and had to reach to a consensus. But Meggy being 5ft and I being 5 inches taller than her we were not agreeing on any one chair. The ones I liked were too high for her and the ones she approved off were too low for me or she liked mesh while I liked leather. We were politely but firmly asked to leave the shop at 8:30 and the look of relief on the sales guy was to die for hahah! We still haven’t got our chairs ;-)!
There was Biriyani for lunch today in the Cafeteria and as usal Meggy and I passed comments on the people from the neighbouring office looking at them enviously as they always seem to be such happy carefree people. We on the other hand look perennially harrowed and tired, the types who clearly don’t have a life besides this law firm. Oh and last night Miss Lemony Pie and I came to the conclusion that we single women actually only ever talk about the exception and not the rule. ( Has anyone seen “ He’s just not that into you”) Me thinks Batty Woman’s story is an exception and point being I am probably not gonna be the exception so I should quit wanting what is unattainable. But I still don’t wanna and despite everything I still hope and maybe I always will thinking it could be just around the corner waiting for me. :-)

“Girls are taught a lot of stuff growing up. If a guy punches you he likes you. Never try to trim your own bangs and someday you will meet a wonderful guy and get your very own happy ending. Every movie we see, Every story we're told implores us to wait for it, the third act twist, the unexpected declaration of love, the exception to the rule. But sometimes we're so focused on finding our happy ending we don't learn how to read the signs. How to tell from the ones who want us and the ones who don't, the ones who will stay and the ones who will leave. And maybe a happy ending doesn't include a guy, maybe... it's you, on your own, picking up the pieces and starting over, freeing yourself up for something better in the future. Maybe the happy ending is... just... moving on. Or maybe the happy ending is this, knowing after all the unreturned phone calls, broken-hearts, through the blunders and misread signals, through all the pain and embarrassment you never gave up hope."

Gigi [He's Just Not That Into You]

And someday I'll chase them again.....

Yeah I have been away for a while but I guess its expected considering the fact that we lead the lives we lead.This one week will see me traverse 3 cities (Delhi, Bangalore, Kolkata) and 2 small towns (Haridwar and Dehradun). I have loads and loads of memories atatched to Dehradun as I spent a part of my childhood there. I was 4 then I think as we use to live right next to Doon School. I had the most ridiculous haircut which in the mid 80's use to be known as the "katori cut" as in literally meaning that your hair would be cut in the shape of a round bowl. I looked like quite the clown and to top it all there was some serial killer on the prowl in Dehradun in those days and he had a taste for little girls so I had been strictly intructed by my folks especially my Dad that if anybody asks my name I am to say my name was Pappu. Well I took to the game like a fish in water and very soon started acting my part so well that I would not respond to my real name except for Pappu and I had convinced myself in my head that I was a little boy until my Mum whacked me one day reminding me who I actually was and what my real name was hahahha!
I know I shouldn't be writing such inane anecdotes but I don't seem to want to write anything else. Someone told me the other day that I have to be strong and a little indifferent to whats happening around me or else even when this time passes and life changes I'll be stuck in this time capsule having lost the real me forever. Sometimes I feel maybe I'll never be able to have a fun time without worrying or feeling guilty that I shouldn't. Life surely has the strangest ways of teaching us lessons I say. I know I have to be making plans very soon but selfish that I am something which bothers me a lot is taking this break from my job and I'll be missing out on work and a learning for sometime. But times change, atleast I hope they do and my dreams will remain with me intact and hopefully someday I'll chase them again. Till then I'll do my duty cos this is the least I can do and I owe them this much and so much more.

The boy with the gruffiest voice

That time nothing made me happier than an e-mail from him with an account of exactly what he has been upto and how much he misses me. I haven't exchanged such frequent and long e-mails ever again in my life despite the internet being so much more accessible now. Those were the days when one had to pay 30 bucks for an hour of surfing the net but I'd check my mail without fail just to receive one of his long, chirpy, intense yet sunshiny e-mails. I remember his gruffy voice and how everytime he called Dad would think a really old guy is calling me up when in reality it was a 17 year old calling a looney 18 year old and trying to put some sense into her head while she swayed to and fro from sanity to insanity. I remember his obsession with the guitar and he idolised Joe Satriani. I loved, I loved talking to him and the feeling was mutual and no this isn't any love story or anything even remotely close to that. Just an episode I was reminded off today after years cos I dreamt of him last night. In hindsight I feel we could have been really good friends if not for the stupidities of youth and the quirks and eccentricities that come along with it.
By the end of it he vanished just as suddenly as he had made an appearance and the melodramatic me deleted those lovely e-mails he sent me in a fit on anger. I want those e-mails back, I really do. Infact I tried retrieving them a couple of years back but to no avail cos technology has its limitations too since the account shut down 7 years back. We never got in touch again except for an odd e-mail I sent him and he replied back saying he had been thinking about me but again that was that. Sometimes I did wonder how he was, how was law school coming along for him because one did not have social networking sites in the earlier part of this decade. But since he had hurt my already damaged ego I would have never made an effort to renew our association. Apparently he'd come down to my college once for some moot court and asked about me but my luck I was back home then. I was excited just knowing so he does remember me.
Finally when I did bump into him I completely looked through him as he stared at me. It was the High Court in Delhi a year and a half back as I was chatting with S and we walked past by each other and he looked at me while I put on a fabulous act of not recognising him and continued my conversation with S. I knew it was him the instant I saw him but I wanted to have the upper hand for once and thus the elaborate act. I got some perverse pleasure out of it as he almost had that surprised expression on his face. He never came forward to say Hi to me but I know he kept looking back.
I believe he still plays the guitar like a dream and still is quite the dreamer he use to be at 17. I heard he lost his father almost 2 years back and that was one time when I wanted to say something but there was nothing to say. I have no idea why you were in my dreams last night but when I got up this morning I did know that I wanna say " Hi Gruffy Voice! How are you Dude? Longtime! Hope you are doing good. Thought I'd drop in a word." But I never shall.

Its 9 at night and I am in office trying to finish something along with Meggy. No big deal i know since most people I know work just as hard if not more. But today was one of those blearghhhh days maybe cos She and Miss Touch Me Not left and i couldn't spend enough time with them and also cos I am PMSing real badly and to top it all there isn't any water at home. Also cos I feel ugly and fat and not me at all. I've had a real fun time last 2 days with these 2 friends of mine but I do not feel like replicating it on Blogger as yet cos I wouldn't be able to do justice to it. I've even shopped lots and lots but why do I feel the way I do? Oh and I sorted stuff out in my head too and it is such a load off my chest.
I've stopped wearing kajal cos I got the nastiest sty in my eyes and I look like this pale imitation of the older me which maybe I am. I saw such happy snaps on Facebook and wanted to be as happy as her but I cannot. I am turning into a social recluse but not to worry because I feel it is just a phase. At least I hope it is. Last night I had homemade Irish Cream at someone's place and it was divine and very potent.I drank lots of wine too but like She says I can have two bottles of wine all my myself and not bat an eyelid. I ain't half that cool anymore. I got high on 3 drinks on Saturday with my roomies and She and Miss Touch Me Not. She got me the prettiest bedcovers and I am very excited and dying to use them.
Nutty bugged me all weekend and we fought quite a bit, much to the amusement of everyone around. They find it hilarious and they would considering the fact that we fight like cats and dogs on the stupidest of issues. I am tired, really tired and I just wanna sleep and not worry, wanna be able to hope for something good to happen, look forward to something or have plain fun without reality biting me and reminding me of the real picture.