Keep Sakes

The impossible

2012-01-23T19:49:00.000+05:30

In an ideal world, my house would be filled to brim with artifacts I did not need or understand. It would be filled with random works of art, piles and more piles of bags, shoes and more useless stuff.

In utopia, all channels would air interesting stuff everyday, and not harp on reruns or movies aired previously a thousand times already. Bloggers would write, and they would write interesting stuff, not mundane or abstract or poetry that would make Lord Byron turn in his grave.

In my dream, I would thin yet shapely, sharp cheekboned, yet full-lipped, possessor of straight yet voluminous hair which never ever got entangled. I would pick designer clothes off the rack, and would search for the smallest possible size, instead of the extra large that I in reality hunt for.

If possible, my life would be all that is the improbable, the impossible and the fantastic.

If only.

Memories

2011-12-06T16:18:00.002+05:30

Phir teri kahaani yaad aayi

Phir tera Fasaana yaad aaya.

Phir aaj hamari aankhon ko

ek khwaab puraana yaad aaya.

tune to kanara paa hi liya

uljhe hain toofano main hum

Aye jaan-e-wafa aaj hume

pichla woh zamaana yaad aaya.

Ananda Bhairavi

2011-11-03T21:41:00.002+05:30

she could'nt really put a finger on it.

The sense of helplessness. hopelessness.

The strains of the ananda bhairavi filtered up to where she was sitting.

It was a lovely sight, from where she was. she could see the city sprawling underneath her, in the night, the beautifully lit vehicles zipping by, the lights shimmering on the vast lake making it feel like there was nothing wrong in the world. the world looked serene, it looked beautiful, it looked almost blissful. From where she was, the cacophony of the traffic sounded like a murmur of a lullaby.
the strains of the music, were more pronounced, maybe because she wanted it to be so. Her ears strained to hear the music. sitting on her window sill, she hummed along to the tune.

It was a long time ago when she had learnt this raaga. she had loved this raaga as soon as she heard it. In all her years of music, this raaga was her personal signature, a perfect blend of happiness and sorrow - just like life.

She hummed along, missing a beat here and there - for it was a lifetime ago that she had learnt this tune... somewhere along, the dam that was carefully constructed began to reveal its cracks.

Jealousy? Anger? Repulsion? Revolt? Ennui? she knew not.

She opened the window to allow the music to enter fully. the chilly evening air rushed in along.. bringing with it the harsher sounds of the traffic, the sweet scent of the gulmohar.

The music was her love. This tune - her companion. her hair played with the wind, like an elegant swan in flight, her jump was almost perfect.

There would be no more helplessness now. No hopelessness either. No anger or digust or repulsion or hate, or even love.

Ananda Bhairavi

Ear worm of the day

2011-10-30T08:55:00.004+05:30

badi wafa se nibhayi tune,
hamari thodi si bewafaayi

kahin kisi roz yun bhi hota
hamari haalat tumhari hoti

Jo raat humne guzaari marke
woh raat tumne guzari hoti

hazar rahein mud ke dekhi
kahin se koi sada na aayi

tumhe ye zid thi ke hum bulaate
hume ye ummeed ki woh pukarein

hain naam abhi hoton pe lekin
awaaz main pad gayi daraarein

badi wafa se nibhayi tumne
hamari thodi si bewafayi

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqbC-KZNfRg

stalking.

2011-10-18T22:29:00.002+05:30

while most people move on. some people get stuck there. in that moment. in that emotion.
they would give anything to retain that. anything to maintain that sense of status quo.

Psychiatrists would tell you that these are your typical victims. People who move from one abusive relationship to another, people who stay in an abusive relationship despite it being abusive, people who would gladly make themselves a carpet for others to walk all over on. People who stalk their exes on various sites, people who kill themselves because one relationship went bad

But you know what? a little bit of them lives in all of us.

and then, there lives the opposite, who hurt because it gets them off. who walk all over that carpet, because they can, or maybe because they are a carpet for someone else to walk all over, who like abusing their relationships, because they know they will be clung on to. and it doesnt have to be physical. emotional abuse is abuse enough - and it helps get off much more. very much more.

we have the ying and the yang in us.

Me? I have more ying than yang. more yang than ying. more this than that, and sometimes, nothing at all.
For now. I am stalking some random person on a networking site. not that the person meant anything at all, just that this person stopped blogging. and I want to know why. I used to enjoy this person's blog you know?

So I sign off.
Yours stalkerly,
Online Stalker. :P

An Ice Cream Story

2011-10-12T11:19:00.003+05:30

Sirjee was a good man. he had a habit of helping people in distress. He was the go-to man for any problems that people faced. Sirjee was like a mini government. His good deeds had a humble beginning of having fought against the mafia in his locality. Once free from the mafia, he fought for equality for all in his apartment. He slowly started working for the good of everyone in the city.
It wont be really wrong to say that this good samaritan good get things done faster than any minister, and he never used any violence mind you.
He also taught at a school as a Physics teacher. All his students loved him and he loved all his students. His class always had the most attendance and was never missed.
One day, 3 of his best pupils were absent. Distraught over this development, he walked over to thier homes to see if everything was fine.
Alas!! It wasnt.
All the three had fallen ill. They had ice creams on the way back home, you see. This had given them a raging fever and a bad cough. Their parents were worried sick about these kids.

They missed classes for a month. Sirjee was restless. his best pupils were unwell. they would have exams in a few days, and even if they did make it to school during exams, they might not fare as well as they usually would have.
Their exams were crucial. If they fared badly, their college admissions would be affected. Their college admissions ruined, their chances of getting their dream jobs would be in jeopardy. Without a dream job, who knows what effect it would have on their psyche?
An entire future ruined due ice creams! Sirjee could not let this happen. These were childrens' futures at stake.
He met with a few parents and teachers who had a similar outlook to his. He decided that no ice creams should be sold anywhere near the school premises.
However, businessmen will stay businessmen. They shifted to elsewhere. Children could not resist the temptation, and followed the vendors to their new location.
Now it was a bigger issue. Children might get hurt walking to this new location which was at a considerable distance.
Sirjee suddenly had an idea. Why not get all ice creams banned across the nation?
The government laughed at him. The goverment was a balding, handle-bar mustachioed man who loved to laugh. The Government took his application read it, used it to wipe the bhajjiya oil off his hands, and summarily crumpled the paper and threw it into the dustbins.

"get rid of ice creams it seems, the old man has gone senile. has anyone ever gotten rid of such a tasty, and wonderful thing?"

The government could not stop laughing.
He went home in a huff. his wife had cooked bitter gourd for lunch. One look at the bitter gourd, and all his anger now turned towards the poor wife.
He stormed out of the house proclaiming that he would not eat ever. Not bitter gourd. No. First the government and the wife. Sirjee had had it now. The last straw it was.
News spread. like minded people who came to cajole him into eating saw the bitter gourd and decided that it would be better he not eat it.
Thus began his satyagraha the fast of a life time.
One by one, parents joined in.
Doctors who had gotten sick of treating children for tonsilitis and throat infections joined in.
Chewing Gum, candy and toffee makers to whom ice creams were a competition, joined in.
the message spread far and wide.
Everyone was joining. Not joining meant you were out of fashion.
Nosebook, Bharkat, Gaggle Minus the news was everywhere.
People who ate ice creams in the sly joined in.
Ice Cream makers joined in (secretly hoping to create an advertising with their presence)

The government was getting tired of people not eating any more. The Government's cook had run off to join the satyagraha no one cooked for the government any longer. The huge appetite of the government and the ensuing pangs of hunger made the government to pick up the oil stained application back from the dustbin, eat the few bits of bhajjiya sticking to that paper out of sheer hunger (it is said that the government contemplated eating the paper as well ... but thats a different story); and passed a law.

No more Ice Creams.

Today, when children fall ill, they tell sirjee that it was due to the rains or the wind, or the heat, or the bhoot that hangs upside down in the peepal tree outside the city.

As we pass by the city street today, Bharathjee's wife has unfortunately cooked bitter gourd. The government had laughed at Bharathjee's paunch. He wants laughter banned. Especially against obese people. They say, people are joining in. Noble thing. Satyagraha

(note: Cross posted on FB.
Social evils and ice cream arent the same, except if you are like yours truly who suffers from every ENT illness that has been discovered and is yet to be discovered.)

not a rant.

2011-10-03T15:43:00.003+05:30

motherhood, just brings out everything that is good and nice in you. You become more you. much you, muchness that makes you fall in love with yourself, that makes you wonder if you really had in you, or was it the tiny baby in your hand that has brought it to you?
9 months are spent not just giving birth. 9 months are also spent taking a renewed and a more muchness filled you.

here's hoping she gets well soon.

all about baggage.

2011-09-19T21:13:00.002+05:30

She had to choose. What would it be? At crossroads stood, and she already had a lot of baggage with her. Did she want another one? Unfortunately, whether she wanted it or not, she would end up with more. It was just a matter of deciding which would be more bearable, which would be less tears and blood, which baggage would be dearer?
At the end she chose. As should all of us.

Gucci it would be.

well. lots. but for now. enough. :-)

a moment

2011-09-13T13:40:00.003+05:30

Have been more than depressed lately; not many things are wrong, but each tiny thing matters.

the daughter is with my mom for the week. while her house resounds with laughter every time I call, my own house seems to have grown to 3 times its size, and silences boom in the empty spaces of the hollow that was once a home.
It is just the two of us now. Incomplete and lost. once a family, but now without her, incomplete. I think and i wonder how was life before her? Was it life before her?

She comes back on the weekend though, never have waited for anything more ardently. never have wanted anything more passionately.

*************
randomly clicked on a link that spoke of love and well, such things. Suddenly glad that the husband cant write. CANT WRITE. even to save his life. except maybe, Agreements and Legal documents. but that isnt writing.
For if he wrote, he would put in words a moment that we shared and it would no longer be a moment. it would be ... well, a random mass of words that was laid bare for everyone to read.
The moment, the look, the magic, the sorrow, the happiness - everything. Our love. would then be laid bare. It would no longer belong to us. it would then be assimilated by everyone who read it.

There is this ad. "platinum day of love". love does not need platinum. but yes. love needs that one moment. love needs me. it needs him.

Why is it, that it never ends?
This one moment of life.

In the cacophony of the world,
Why is it that this silence never ends
This one moment of silent life.

In the tangle of time,
Why is it that this moment never ends?
This one moment of 'alive' life.

life is but, a couple of flicks,
of your hair thrown back
but the moment lives on forever.

new post

2011-08-29T12:26:00.003+05:30

loads of stuff happening.

as i sip the coffee from the vending machine at office, i am hit by the knowledge (for the umpteenth time) that I hate coffee. I only hate "preparing" dip tea more, and hence the bitter liquid courses down my throat, helping me keep my eye lids open for just a little more time.

Research lands me on a blog, and I'm tempted to open mine to jot down a few words. In a feeble attempt to reassure myself of the readers of this blog, I check the invisible stat counter embed link. My pipe dreams of having readers gets flushed down the drain. However, there is hope, people randomly land at my page searching for phrases such as "vividh bharati" and "keepsakes", one funny phrase which sends the coffee hurtling at the keyboard via my nostrils is "naked mom".
Mom - that I am. Naked, well, not right now. I am at office you see.

There is a trigger that gets activated ...

like that whiff of that familiar cologne that dad used to wear, and all of a sudden you are that 5 year old again, hugging your dad and taking in the smells of his aftershave and sweat.

like that unexpected short-cut that leads you into a lane that looks "exactly" like the one you used to play with other urchins your age ... and that sense of anticipation and anxiety builds up ... if the "it" hasn't caught you at your hiding place for what seems like an eternity.

only, more unpleasant.

This word triggers an event that happened in the foggy past. I can hear two women asking me what it would "cost" to keep off their darling son/brother. I can hear one man standing by and allowing his sister to talk her mouth off about a girl's character she knew nothing of.

And it is unpleasant. More bitter than the bitter coffee that is now not just in my esophagus, but also in my nasal cavities.

Not that I am a vindictive person. Having done everything to bury the past in a place it won't resurface, this trigger acted like Brendan Fraser and his co-star in the Mummy

Moving on though, bitterness aside.

Have hurt back badly. very very badly. many many problems. many doctors. had some gynecological issues, the first specialist I saw did not even tell me what the problem was, and how bad it was. Instead, I was told it was insignificant, and was asked to wait a month to get it corrected.
The person who bears the pain knows the extent of it. So, a second opinion.

This time, a cousin.
More sympathetic, more tests, more pain.

Finally, gynec problems, eliminated.

Problem of the back - still persistent.

No clue on what is wrong. Hormone Tests, Orthopedic tests, neurological tests, scans and X-rays - everything is back normal. I'm a healthy overweight female.
Good.

Why cant I move a muscle then?

Why does the back hurt badly? Blame it on my weight. Blame it on me. You are the reason for your pain. Very philosophical indeed. Very very enlightening. Does Zilch for the pain though.

Ayurveda. Allopathy. Homeopathy, even the pathy spraying relispray did not help.

Grandaunt. A treasure trove of "evil eye" warding chants and has fingers like the great Dhanvantri himself. "it is a sprain" speaketh the grand aunt. and her fingers work magic. muscles once un-movable, now groan and grunt and fall in place.

Pain is bearable. no more moans and sighs at every movement. Bless the grand aunt.

Spent weekend traveling to the very picturesque and scenic Shivmogga and beyond to hulikal. truly one of those places that deserve to be called heaven on earth.
Unfortunately, the pathway to heaven is filled with bad roads and potholes that did nothing for the already bad backache.

totally tired and listless, and bitter by the triggered memory of a word, much blogging has been done, hoping to infuse some enthusiasm.

Most of the time

2011-08-16T17:41:00.001+05:30

Life teaches you lessons, that would be better unlearnt or unknown of.

c'est la vie.

Making Memories

2011-04-17T19:21:00.004+05:30

**senti post ahead - warning**

Remember when dad used to sing in the loo? Remember when mom used to recite her favorite hymns? Remember that sumptous meal that gran cooked up for every festival (especially the obbatu*?) Remember sleeping with grandad under a starry night listening to his stories? Remember when life was still all about kicking off your school shoes, wriggling out of your school uniform & getting into that comfortable bermudas and banian and running out to play ignoring mom's threats about broken legs?

Everytime that songs plays on DD rangoli, everytime you hear a remix of mom's hymns, everytime its that festival, everytime you manage to use the trivia that grandad told you when you were a kid, everytime you spend your weekend in front of the computer because ..."well, there isnt anything else to do - is there?", these memories creep up.

I hope my daughter makes up her memories - I try singing the same lullabies that dad used to sing (terribly offkey though), try and put on the same hymns on the mobile (I never memorised them), try cooking up something each festival (though it hopelessly remains unedible), and play silly games with her - trying to relive my life through her, trying to make some memories for her.

most of the times its fun, but yes, sometimes it hurts.

Life, as we knew it once

2011-04-12T15:26:00.003+05:30

has ended. Life as we knew it was the life where we

Spoke all night long on long distance calls - now we wake up to crying baby who has peed.

Knew all the movies that were to release each Friday - now we know which vaccine has to be administered when

Drank and ate everything under the sun - now, a mojito and a cosmopolitan is viewed with the same disgust we reserve for religious fundamentalists.

Worked 18 hours a day - now we are "on call" 24 hours a day - 20 of them with the baby

Never got constipated - now, we have no time to shit, we are always constipated

While I could go on and on, it suffices to say that things are never the same when life as you know it, ends once and for all.

what does it mean

2011-02-21T19:18:00.002+05:30

that Im reading this post by IHM, while eating breakfast - one that I woke him up for to get from my fav hotel because I was feeling hungry. He is getting the baby all readied up, so that I can read my newspaper?
Or
what does it mean

When I make home made pizzas for him because he hates the pizzas at the pizza joints. He decides to go on a "its a man thing" trip at 11:30 at night and ends up home only at 1:00 am and im up waiting for him to listen to his "man things" that he did.

It means.... we are now married for 2 whole years ;-) :P

Rant Reversed :P

2011-02-09T11:41:00.003+05:30

So, post all that ranting that happened in this space, and having scared away all the unmarried and single females, and evoking similar angry sentiments from all the married class, and as my mom says "always take just 10% of what a saas (MIL) tells of a bahu (DIL) or vice versa" having let enough steam out, it was decided that ranting alone will not help. People need to understand how difficult it is to clean up. Hence the hubby, (who Divesh was very kind enough to point out - I love the hubby) was enlisted to the ranks of the cleaning staff (which until then was a team of one - poor ole' moi). He worked for all of 3 hours, trying to clean out the grime stuck to the chimney grills and the fungus in the refridgerator and ended up with a variety of muscle aches and a foul mood.
Now, who's laughing ? A-ha A-ha (A la Monica)

Mwahahahahahahaha (A la Kroor Singh)

Bwahahahahaha ... snigger, sniff, gasp, Roll on the floor clutch stomach and Bwahahahahahaha (this is sheerly a unique style of yours truly)

A variety of "will not let this happen again" promises to self were made by the loving (as Divesh reminds me) hubby as he nursed his bruised ego and muscles.

Bwahahahahahahaha!!!

guess, its the end of rants for a while now.

- have hired a nanny who is good (touch wood) - dont put your evil eye/ kannu/ nazar and what not on my nanny. I deserve her. I do.

- have taken back my job from the guy who was doing it while I was busy birthing, nursing my baby and cleaning my home

- have finally got back my clean home not a thing out of place if I dont want it to be - hehehehe!

- have bought new Sony H55 and the Canon A430 now is relinquished to the brother

- have gifted self new external hard disk (500 GB) which my bro likes to call it my "second apartment"

pics to be up soon on picasa - email if you want a link.

:D

and, (wait for it) another Rant!!

2011-02-02T18:05:00.003+05:30

like Rants are anything new in this space!

Came back home after a long long time from mom's place (rant here) just to find the home not as much that. had to struggle hard to find one foot of clean space ... I mean what is it with people other than the wife/ D-I-L living when she isnt around? Is there a rule that the house must be dirtied? the cooking bench so sticky that the vessels are stuck to it? The bathroom so unclean that even rodents would think twice before entering? Every wardrobe smelly and every thing just out of its place, everything having a ~~fine powder of dust~~ a thick layer of sticky grime on it.
Wall paint barely recognizable, because they have been touched a dozen times with grimy hands, every door creaking, all taps have umpteen layers of deposit on them,most of them are leaking and all of them have dirt in their filters so the water doesnt flow easily. The tiles in the bathroom are black - would things get so dirty? I mean who the hell lived here? An elderly lady and a 30 something man - pray help me understand how did things manage to get so damn dirty. Even the ceiling is sticky, for chrissakes! What DID you guys do? JUST WHAT DID you do?

I step in with a 5 month old in here, and I dont have a single clean area to place the kid down; even the foams inside of the couch is dirty!

With a 5 month bawling howling kid in tow - the place is now 60% clean having used up umpteen cleaning agents all at once and having had acid burns on my palms, soles and almost every part of my body. All of this because they decided that keeping the house clean is "someone's" responsibility. Even when that someone is away giving birth and nursing a child. I mean just what is it? How could someone live in these conditions and still do nothing about it?

Granted we dont have household help, but one can always get hired help to clean the house, you dont need a member of the family to slog for this - do you? How hard is to pay some money and supervise them when they are working? Why is it difficult to live in a clean house?

When the house finally gets clean, you manage to say you missed someone, not because you missed them, but the order and the cleanliness that comes with that person, you missed me, because now your hand kerchiefs are where you like them to be, that shoe shine cloth is where it is easily accessible, you dont have to run to the store for every small thing, because someone has made a list and bought it from the grocery - you can now stop thinking about not having medicines or milk or curd or toothpaste or well, just any damn thing because there is this person who keeps tab on everything.
Did you ever think about how much time she spends cleaning, cooking, nursing, cleaning up the potty and manages to handle a full time 9 hour job in the meanwhile - oh wait, we forgot about the 3 hour travel to reach the 9 hour job destination - and about how much time it leaves for her to just sit down and enjoy a hot cup of tea? Well, Im sure you did not. So let me tell you - ZERO. she has no time to either make the tea or enjoy it. She is busy pampering the whole lot of you.

I hate being an Indian Wife.

Actually, I hate my family for convincing me to get married. Life was way better when I was single. Oh wait - then I had to hear about how my cousins much younger were getting married - "even if it is a love marriage, atleast she is tying the knot" and how other younger cousins were "set for marriage" instead of the scandalous "It seems she has a boyfriend", indirect barbs about "oh, so your friend is now on the family way. you know, things should happen at the right times" and the not so indirect - "you know I was 22 when I had you. It has been a whole 3 years past that age for you".
Why is marriage and clean home and children and husband and in-laws and a miserable life such a big deal in our society? WHY?

Yet another random post

2011-01-22T23:37:00.007+05:30

So, this is where we rant about (among other things) -

having to head back home.

We south Indians have this curious tradition of getting a girl to stay at her mom's place from the 7th month of her pregnancy until the baby she has delivered turns either 3 or 5 months. This practice must be outlawed.Banned. Set to fire.Banished. Made to stand under the hot raging sun of the Thar desert, and then cooled with Co2 ( a la Golden Eye) so that it smashes into a million (nay) zillion different pieces.
It is one thing to say you are getting married, and go live elsewhere. It is a totally different thing to experience the same bliss you used to have prior to marriage for 7 months, be extra pampered - because now, you are a "to-be" mother in addition to "ye ghar ke kaam to apne ghar main karne hi hain, ab aaraam karo" and then, one not-so-fine day head back home with the new born and its 35 suitcases worth of luggage back to the marital home. *sigh* no one to wipe the baby's potty but you, no one to soothe its cries or restrain you from stuffing it into an airtight container to stifle its constant bawling, no one to play with it, while you watch your fav movie.
The bloody tradition must be fed to dogs I say.
Whoever the hell invented it, was a sadist.
Here, you had a perfectly settled person, resigned to the fate that she should call the house she spent an eternity in, the "mom's place" and the house that she lives in for the last 1.5 years as "my home" and then she plucked from that resigned state of mind and left to wander around in paradise of the "mom's home" as happy as a monkey in a banana orchard, and just when she was this close (-><-) closer than that actually, to bliss and divine happiness, you throw her back at "my home" and expect her to be happy to be there and be contented to visit "mom's place" in the next era. Kill the bastard who said this, I tell you. Torture parlors - The bloody "package deals" that these effing beauty parlors have - they must be sent to concentration camps. While yours truly was packing umpteen small clothes into the blasted suitcases all grumbl-y and grinch-y foul mood , the mother decided she wants the moaning and groaning and i-will-not-go-home-i'll-hide-in-the-attic daughter out of her way so she can watch all the serials that the Kapoor duo produce/direct/conjure up; she suggests a visit to the beauty parlor.

Now. all that I wanted was to stop having my eyebrows look like this -

and look a little like this -

Was it just too much to ask? (its a rhetoric - don't bother answering that - not ever!!)

Here I go, hoping to take my mind of the impeding cleaning that the now-bachelor-pad, then a newly-purchased-house would have, and suddenly I'm bombarded with all these "packages" that will transform an ugly me, into a Cleopatra and will save me a princely sum of 500 rupees while doing so. Whatay favor I say!. Suddenly, my eyes have bags under them, they dark circles too. My chin is too dark and I have pigmentation. My hair is too limp and too straight. Oh my legs, they look like green peace would be overjoyed, if only the hair there were trees. Not just this, my eyelashes could be longer, my lips could be smaller, my nose could be smoother and I could be anyone but me.

And I could save 500 bucks in the meanwhile too!!

Whatay offer i say!

What about the other packages?

Well, they dont save as much you see. And the world wouldnt just spin right, if you took them.

What about just experiencing mimimum pain and getting the eyebrows plucked?

The silver surfer would no longer fall for Halle berry, and Galactcus will drain the earth of its life force.

The 500 rupee saving package it is!!

Yeaaa, you just saved the earth, and gave us a nice fat bonus too, you ugly bitch!

and I'm welcomed by the 3 charlies angels, who will be my "beauty assistants" for the day.
Wow!

Suddenly, my face freezes with all the ice water on it, and my hand is now burning with something searing hot poured on it. I cannot tell for sure if they want to take a mould of my hand for posterity, for I have something covering my eyes. So, while my body decides whether to shiver or suffer, the measures central tendency tell me that - on an average, Im gasp! okay!, suddenly I realise that it isnt a mould they want of my hand, they are in love with the skin on it.
Im sure some pale faced firang wants my skin for himself to appear tanned and healthy. they start pulling it out strip by strip. While I'm trying to come to terms with this fact, my eyes still under that wet gooey substance, which I'm hoping isnt flubber, my feet are pulled apart and attacked with sharp instruments, I'm being scraped and poked and tickled all at once at my feet. Maybe they want to be sure that Im not an imposter, posing to be me. Maybe they want my DNA to be sure.
Suddenly the cool ice leads to a warm blast of air on the face, barely allowing me to breathe, and Im reeling under the sudden temperature change trying to get adjusted to it, thanking the merciful Gods that finally the hand and the face can feel the same thing and commiserate with each other, that suddenly the hand is now subjected the ice cold treatment - again, on an average, Im fine.
Now, I understand the full import of what my Six Sigma trainer meant, when he explained this to us.

Well, I could go on and on about how I saved Rupees 500 (lets not talk about the Rs.5000 that was spent alright? comon, be postive and look at the savings)and got jabbed, poked, burnt, scraped, and a dozen other things in places mentionable and otherwise, but I will save you your 500 minutes by not telling you the fair and the dark details of it all (gory and kaali u moron).

Finally, if you have been brave enough to read until here, go further and leave a comment. i'll celebrate your bravery by replying back to your comment and eating a pastry with your name on the icing.

Mandatory decade ending post

2010-12-29T14:13:00.003+05:30

so, the blogosphere is sure full of posts where they reminscise of the decade bygone, personal milestones, political upheaveals and etc., and hence the mandatory-ness (is that even a word) of this post.

The decade has been pretty interesting. Some of them not-so- interesting, and some parts so darn interesting, that I wish they never happened.

So while I can talk about how Y2K began with me passing out of 12th and 2010 is ending with me becoming a mother, and amid these two years, how I broke a heart, got a job, witnessed the death of a grandparent, flunked CA Final, got promoted, discovered blogger & orkut, lost my dad to death,got promoted, did a management course at the IIM, got promoted, got to be a part of one of the biggest corporate mergers of the decade, fell in love, got promoted, made new friends, left some off, got promoted, got heart broken, got married, bought a house, tried making it a home, undertook the biggest loan of my life ever till date, got pregnant n a mom to a beautiful baby girl,

i'll prefer to hope that the next decade is happier than the last decade and yes, just as interesting, but with a few parts where I lose people to death skipped.

random poetry

2010-12-08T16:06:00.002+05:30

that doesnt quite rhyme, or hit the right note.

What makes you toss and turn Radha?
What makes you lay awake all night long?

The sounds of your anklets drown in your fears
The full moon shies away from your tears

The inky black sky, is not darker than the sorrow within
The stars are not brighter than your tears that flow within

What brings those tears out Radha?
What is it that your heart thinks is wrong?

somewhat similar to this

Frustration and restlessness remain, things keep getting more and more complicated, and we wish to be taken off to a place without memories, or responsibilities,or relationships, or days without work. *sigh*

The Bride

2010-11-27T16:52:00.001+05:30

the yellow sunflowers stand gazing at the sun, their back towards her, the lillies and lotuses stand still in the sweltering sun … wilting a little, battling the sun a little. the hot afternoon sun is high up on the sky and she stares at him from the cool confines of her room. like a picture painted, everything stands still, everything is silent. the hum of the air conditioner and the occasional drone of the dragon fly are all that can be heard to the outside world. Inside though, her heart beats like a thousand conch shells being blown all at the same time, the stifled sobs within rankle her breath, and it comes out in long sighs everytime she breathes. bedecked in bridal finery … she sits still. her legs have caked blood on them, her clothes have been discarded in a hurry, some are torn some are crumpled. she sits still, because every movement hurts, the bruises on her breasts and stomach have turned black and the scratch marks show on her arms. her mehandi cannot hide her shame. She sits alone on the bed, scared to make even the tiniest noise, scared to breathe even.
One man humiliated her soul and her love, one man humiliated her body and pride.

One would have already forgotten about her, and moved on in life, her name erased from his memory. He would have found another « soul mate » another « with you I dont need to try to be happy, I know I will » another « with you, life is, what it should be, I will not shirk my responsibilities with you » another « I trust you, you know me » another « I will talk to my mother about you » her love for him would be a forgotten moment, like that two rupee coin you forgot after you gave it into the grubby hands of a beggar with disgust on your face; A lifetime worth of love, erased in less than a week.

The other man, she does not know his definition of happiness. She does not know what he wants, what he needs or even who he is. He has broken her sense of self, killed her pride and humiliated her body. She cannot face the mirror with the smell of his breath on her. He has achieved whatever it was he wanted to. He has her, his constant mute companion, a rag doll whom he can brutually rape whenever he wants, and she will lay under him, thinking of when it will all end as he does what he wants to.

When she finally moves, nursing the bruises and stepping out of the puddle of blood that has oozed out of her insides, she realises that all this while, she wondered about life and its meaning, and today, existence is a burden.

Har mulaaqat ka anjaam kyon hain judaai
ab to har waqt yahi baat sataati hain hume
Zindagi ke har mod pe zillat kyon hain
subah ki halki dhoop bhi shaam kyon nazar aati hain hume

Identity

2010-11-16T13:29:00.007+05:30

**Rant Alert**

I dont know if saying things aloud makes me any lesser of anything I am, or if Im committing heresy by venting it out. For, isnt life for women supposed to begin with marriage and kids?
However, I havent been known for my love of the righteous or an affinity to do the right always; I have always been the black sheep everywhere ... and keeping up with that tradition, I vent out here, the one place where I can be bad and yet get ignored (I know, no readers :P)

Life is getting increasingly frustrating these days, and it is getting really difficult keeping it all canned in....

- Im this restless person who hates having time on her hands and nothing to do with it. I was working close to 12 hours a day even when my due date for delivery was just 2 weeks; so sitting at home twiddling thumbs for close to 3 months now is getting really on my nerves.

- I have no clue what to do post my maternity leave with the daughter. I would hate to leave her in a creche or a day care centre having heard all the gory stories about these places. At the same time, I cannot quit my job (too many commitments currently to do so) to take care of her. My mom despite staying in the same city, stays too far away for me to drop the kid and pick her up everyday & the kid is too small for me to wean her off breast milk and leave her at mom's.
Despite all the praises that I usually shower on my employers, I hate to say that those morons havent thought of a day care centre for their employees - that would keep their attrition rates low!

- I am so damn sleep deprived that Im craving for a good night's sleep. At times I have this really huge urge to just pack my lappie, my blackberry and my debit and credit cards and run. Just RUN. Away from all this madness of staying at home, waking up once every 90-120 mins to feed the daughter, stay awake all night with her, because her body doesnt have a decent clock yet, change diapers and listen to her howl all night long. I feel like my life is sand slipping away from my fingers and that there is nothing I can do about it. Am I a bad mom for thinking like this? Dammit, the guilt that this question brings with it, is far more burdensome than the sleep deprivation. I hate my husband and my family for encouraging me for having a child, and then I hate myself for thinking like this and this becomes like an endless vicious circle and I keep wallowing in so much self pity and anger and guilt and I totally understand now, why women have a post partum depression.... I feel like Im going insane at times - like standing at the middle of a cross road and just yelling my lungs out.

- After a month of marriage, I hadnt yet moved all my things to the hubby's place, and looking at the amount of changes my life underwent, and the lack of time to be me, I had made a conscious decision to not take my books along with me. People who know me, mostly know me as someone who cannot stay for long without books and so, this was like a big decision for me, and it saddend me to no extent.... I had somehow managed to convince myself on that one - and as the days went by, I saw myself have no time whatsoever to even go to the loo; though the longing to get back to books was always there, lack of time made it easy for me to convince myself. Now, that Im back at mom's place, looking at all those crates of books increases my post partum depression. I feel so lost without my books and feel like Ive lost a part of my identity by letting go of my reading habit.

- There is someone whom I hate with all my heart. This is that kind of hate that makes your dentist and your cardiologist happy, cos you are gnashing your teeth and making your arteries bulge with anger even at a mere mention of the name. This person, whom I really hope shrivels up and dies in his/her own vomit looks like he/she is going to be a permanent fixture in my life, someone I'll have to see day in and out, every waking minute of my life .... and Im getting suicidal by thought of this event happening in the near future.
I plan to cook something really delicious, spray a generous amount of rodent killer and serve it, either to this person I hate, if Im evil enough, or to myself if I chicken out from serving this person!!! Argh! I think my BP just shot up to a 300 just writing these lines! damn

- I feel like Im losing my identity, people would call it evolution and etc, but I just feel like Im losing it & I need out. I hadnt bargained for all this in my life. Im not happy with it. Can I get a refund for my life please?

I have this memoryof this movie(?) serial(?) that I once watched as a kid. It is one of those dialogues that kinda has stayed, though at that point in time, I had no comprehension of what was being said ... (wierd huh?)
There are these two sets of couples at a coffee shop (I think); and one of the men go -
"we used to have so much fun earlier" to which the other guy remarks "shaadi ke baad sab kuch khatam. koi life hi nahin" (Everything is over post marriage, there's no life now)
to which one of the women retorts
"Why is it that we women are taught that only after marriage, does life begin, we look at that event as life changing & life giving.... we give everything to it, and give up everything for it, including our identities, just to hear you guys say your life has ended post marriage".

I now empathise with both those genders, for I feel both right now.

**end of rant**

2010-11-11T21:53:00.005+05:30

Tagging myself from the niece's blog
This is the second book tag Im doing, but this should be good & hopefully motivating, because its been a while since I've been able to actually sit down with a book and enjoy reading it. It is fast turning into one of those "aunty thingies" - the ones where they would go "I was so & so in my youth, now its only family and children ... *long drawn sigh*"
Also, cos Im looking at all those books in the attic... while reading her post, and Im reminded of a promise I'd made to myself ... to build a bookshelf of an entire wall when I bought my house. Well, that hasnt worked out either.

Neways, here goes ...

Favorite childhood book? I must say "Sindbad the Sailor" - It was this book I won as a prize and I really loved that book. Thats my earliest memory of a book.
What are you reading right now? Google. (When I can smuggle it under my pillow - under strict orders - no TV/ Books or Computer for 3 months post partum)
Bad book habit? Having to finish a book once I begin it, no matter what. Even if it means taking it to the loo with me to read, or smuggling it in a conference at office.
Do you have an e-reader? Yep, so If I cant really smuggle the book in at office, you know now, what I'm doing staring intently at my lappie
Do you prefer to read one book at a time or several at once?That depends on the books and my greediness factor at that point of time. But of late, it is so difficult to even read one at a time!
Have your reading habits changed since starting a blog? No.
Least favorite book you read this year (so far)?The Bougainvillea House (not this year though - this tops in the "so far" list!)
Favorite book you’ve read this year? 'The Brutual Art'
How often do you read out of your comfort zone? Never really, its very rare when I try stuff like that
What is your reading comfort zone?Fiction mostly, Political non fiction, Horror books actually!
Can you read on the bus? That is a straight No, unfortunately, my migraine acts up.
Favorite place to read? On that couch, leaning on my teddy, in that "so-bad-for-the whole-body-but-damn-comfy" position
What is your policy on book lending?Never lend anything.
Do you ever dog-ear books?Nope. and I loathe people who do so, from the very bottom of my heart.
Do you ever write in the margins of your books? Never.
Not even with text books? Nope, until I got access to post its, I wld write on a piece of paper, and clip it on to the book.
What is your favorite language to read in?English it is, Mate!
What makes you love a book?Well, the story, the language, and the intensity the writer has, when he delivers his thoughts into a book.
What will inspire you to recommend a book?Well, Im always inspired, I just dont have the right mix of the above!
Favorite genre? Fiction - mostly gory horror! does that mean im a sadist or some such thing?
Genre you rarely read (but wish you did?) – Autobiographies/ biographies
Favorite biography?Vivekananda by Romain Rolland
Have you ever read a self-help book?I think I read Who moved my cheese... does Paulo Coelho's The Fifth Mountain count?
Most inspirational book you’ve read this year (fiction or non-fiction)? Google is pretty good as of now, like some stuff there actually!
Favorite reading snack?Favorite? What do you mean by that? Any Junk is good, as long as it isnt sweet or oily or drippy ....
Name a case in which hype ruined your reading experience – God of Small things
How often do you agree with critics about a book?I dont really read the critics... so I wldnt know, I like a book, I like it - to hell with what the rest of the world thinks.
How do you feel about giving bad/negative reviews? I dont mind. like I said, I like a book, I like it, I dont like it - I'm gonna say so!
If you could read in a foreign language, which language would you chose?French, Ive taken a couple of basic courses, but though I would love to read in that language, my grasp is too rudimentary to make any sense.
Most intimidating book you’ve ever read? Central Excise Duty Act.
Most intimidating book you’re too nervous to begin?Lord of the Rings. Havent seen the movies, havent seen the books, dont want to read them; there's also another book thats buried in one of my book crates, something about the Hitler's regime ....
Favorite Poet?Gulzar, Rabindranath Tagore
Favorite fictional character?Howard Roark ...enough said.
Favorite fictional villain?Rastapopulous (I hope ive spelt that right)
Books I’m most likely to bring on vacation? Racy thrillers ....
The longest I’ve gone without reading – Almost an year ... and this is after marriage!
Name a book that you could/would not finish- An Equal Music
What distracts you easily when you’re reading? Nothing actually! Im one of those people who will stay up late or, try and hold back body refuses to finish the book!
Favorite film adaptation of a novel? Gone with the Wind
Most disappointing film adaptation? Arent almost all of them? I hate it when books are made into movies ....
The most money I’ve ever spent in the bookstore at one time? I always end up spending a minimum of 3000 and above in a book store!
How often do you skim a book before reading it? Almost always!
What would cause you to stop reading a book half-way through? Excessive romance.
Do you like to keep your books organized? Yep, just that Im not getting around to doing it!
Do you prefer to keep books or give them away once you’ve read them? I never ever give away books - the only exception being my class notes and text books.
Are there any books you’ve been avoiding? None really! - actually if you come to think of it - I am avoiding The White Tiger!
Name a book that made you angry- The Scavenger's Son.
A book you didn’t expect to like but did? Shantaram.
A book that you expected to like but didn’t? The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
Favorite guilt-free, pleasure reading? hmm ... cant think of 'one' such genre actually.

So, there you go! Whew!

Tag urselves!

Can you

2010-11-11T18:25:00.001+05:30

have your cake and eat it also?

Ashes

2010-11-04T09:02:00.002+05:30

He was on the ventilator, the sons had given up hope. Daughters-in-law grumbled about the extra work they had to do. Daughters had spent all their energy crying and had gone back to tending for their husbands, after all a husband is more important than an almost dead father.

Doctors felt checking on him was another waste of time.

She was the only person who lived for him. There were people who had lived off him , lived with him, lived along with, but she lived for him, for he was her life. He had been her life for the past 50 years and 50 years can be a long time... half a century ... 5 decades... 50X365 days, 50X innumerable moments. She was him and he was her. It was partly her who was breathing in that ventilator, if not for her, who knows maybe he may be long dead now. She had been his wife for so long, now she was his mother,her umbilical cord of love holding him onto earth.

But now she knew she had to let him go. She knew he begged her to let go. I cant take it any more he said ... no not exactly him, for he was comatose. He could not talk.... his mind did, and her heart listened. She inturn begged him to be strong ..to live ... I will breathe for you.. dont let go, not now, not never. She took him through his life again, through her mind's eye and his through his faint heartbeat,

She took him back to the day when they had first seen each other.... An orthodox brahmin family looking out for a groom. She was all of 16, he was 24, she was shy, he anxious, she trembled with coyness, he shivered with anticipation. She was a Jasmine, white and pure, he was a Hibiscus, proud and strong.

She took him to their early years of life .... her wonderful cooking which he always loved, his strong arms which almost crushed her, her shy smile that would melt him, his infectious laugh at her naivety. He saw the birth of their first son ... "like you" she had said .... he felt again the pang of sorrow he had felt when the child died early.

She did not want him to muse there, she quickly moved him to the happy years of the children's growing up years .... He smiled at the minor tiffs they had.. she laughed at his surprise when his elder son began using his shaving blade on the sly.

He reminsced on the experience of their first movie together, she joyed over his promotion. He looked back sadly at the year he retired, she cried over the cruel fate of old age that had made them dependents on the whims and fancies of their children.

"You still look beautiful" he said " Just like the day when we were married" . "Why then do you want to go away?" she shook her head sadly.

She knew she wanted to be with him, he knew he wanted her with him, if only they could be together...she was sure the parting would kill her, she could never stay without him, for wasn't she, a part of him? How could the part survive without the whole?

The ashes were emptied into the Ganges, and the priest finally declared the funeral rites over. The sons and the daughters walked back from the swelling river, and wheeled their paralyzed mother back to their car ... they now had to decide who would take care of her, each had their own lives you see, who would sacrifice their wholesome life, to take care of an invalid?

mommy blog

2010-10-28T10:05:00.000+05:30

head to medhanmommy.blogspot.com for the blog.

insert title here (or) things to know when u have a baby

2010-10-21T10:44:00.004+05:30

While everyone writes about the vacations they had, or the miserable days at work or heartbreak, all I can think of writing now, is how sleepy I am, post partum.

Things you must know if you want to have a baby.

1. Babies Cry. When they are hugry, when they are uncomfortable, when they are sleepy, when they are awake, Babies Cry. Always.

2. Babies need to be fed. Once in 2 hours, doesnt matter whether you are awake or asleep. they need to be fed, and if they are not, they cry. BABIES CRY

3. Babies cannot flush. One must change diapers, once in everyn 15 mins, if one is lucky, else once every 10 mins. Else, BABIES CRY

4. Babies decide that crying, feeding and pooing are the most interesting things to do, and decide to do it in an unending loop which lasts 15 mins. So its a constant cry, feed, poo, cry, feed poo cycle, like a circular reference or a GOTO or an endless if then else loop.

And, did I tell you? Babies cry. Omygosh, they cry.

And, finally, the last and the most important thing to know when you are having a baby ....
somewhere in that endless loop, and that psuedo crying and feeding and pooing, you get a gurgle and a smile for your exhausting efforts. And its all worth it.
that is what you need to know when you are having a baby.

PS - if there are any readers out there, I plan to begin a mommy blog in a few days, waddaya think? good idea?

Out of Hibernation

2010-10-14T14:57:00.002+05:30

Literally.

Date: October 14th 2008
Place: Who knows?
Time: Who Cares?

Date: October 14th 2010
Place: Next to the baby
Time: Feeding time/ Nappy time/ Sleepy time (all in a 15 min loop).

No. No Jokes. Too exhausted for that. Head to FB for pics.

Post #155

2010-09-06T21:35:00.003+05:30

A few days more. By the end of the week, there will be irrevocable changes in lifestyle, thinking, monetary policies, personal finances and temper levels.

No Clue what one should feel .... still yet to be convinced that this huge tummy here isnt a result of eating everything in sight but rather because of a living being inside of it. Maybe one will believe it, when one actually holds the living being in hand.

Meanwhile, I read about her recent loss and feel a real twinge in the tummy. Not quite the same it is, losing a fetus of 3 months in the womb, and losing a kid of 18 years. But everytime I see bro, I realise that she was a year younger than bro here... I dont think twice before I shout at bro, ridicule him, play foul in carroms with him, kick him in the ass or watch cartoons with him, there is no way I can imagine life without bro, as much as I hated him until he was of a decent age (did I mention I hate kids?). My bro is also my son. Emotionally that is, and having lost a baby & being pregnant with another, it hurts to see that the smiling photo up there is that of someone whom no one will see ever again.

Letting go of the last shred of independence in life. Tell me. How am I supposed to feel?

Where We vent against everything in general

2010-07-19T19:30:00.003+05:30

and, do a tag in the process too.

The cousin tagged us to do a sins against gender steretypes tag. So, here we go -

1) I hate dupattas.
I know - they are supposed to hide "shame" (laaj bachana translated there for you) and such highly moral things, but I dont mind showing my boobs to the world under a salwar kameez. I hardly wear any other garment - my overflowing reserves of fat do not allow me to wear anything other than a salwar or a tent - but we digress. I feel the damn flimsy garment has no particular job/ task at hand, except to feel getting caught under the wheels of your office chair, falling off into that bucket of water that is kept under the water cooler, getting stuck at someone's laptop/ desk, or just plain irritate.

2) I know all of maybe 10 colours, thanks to that arts & crafts teacher who taught primary and secondary colors.
I cannot understand magenta and fuschia and leaf green and bottle green and wat not. My aunts discussed my "onion pink" wedding saree, and I hate to wear the damn expensive thing till date, because somehow, I think of that saree and my brain simulates the smell of onions. Blech!

3) I cannot stand kids.
I see women/ girls go "awwww chooo chweeettt" or "cutu babyyyeee" and I go - please dont get that thing near me. I hate it Hate it HATE IT when they bloody damn cry. I feel like pressing the mute button (if only they came with that). I know, im gonna be a mom in like a month, and I dont know how im gonna manage. I already have this pact with mom, that she takes care of the baby, given that I stay out of her hair.

4) I drool over cars.
And I can recognize car makes by the way their front grill is built, or their tail lights are built - each brancd/ company has this signature you see, and if you know cars, it is very easy to spot them.

5) I hate jewellery, cannot differentiate between textures of material and I hate people who have nothing to discuss stuff other than this.

6) I use, understand and enjoy words that women usually cringe from. i would not mind calling a guy a BC/ MC or even a chutiya. I understand and use KLPD and GMD very often in my dialogue. The F word figures in every second statement. Does it make me less of a bharatiya naari?

7)I dont mind watching "Mr Mehta and Mrs Singh" at the theatre, though the story and the film was flimsy, and could have been better

8) I dont think facial hair needs to be get rid off. I rarely do get rid of it. who decided a woman has to go through all the effin shit of getting pinched (thats what it feels when you get ur eyebrows plucked); or getting bitten by a thousand ants all at the same time (try waxing) is the only way someone can look beautiful?

9) I dont understand make up. I dont understand why the eye needs to be painted many times over with the same colored products. or why the lips have to undergo all those coats of several products to come up with that "perfect pout" - I would rather chew a paan, instant color and happiness ;-)

10)I dont mind scratching when it itches. Agreed it shouldnt - hygiene and all. but what happens, when a mosquito has bitten you, and you have a red welt, just near ur calf? I scratch. my happiness is more important to me, that someone's sense of propriety.

That done. More venting to happen. In some time.

(* - if you are still wondering, how an owl fits in, translate from rashtriya bhasha :P)

this is titled - "The pregnancy diaries"

2010-06-25T18:44:00.002+05:30

Or "the one in which we humiliate ourselves for a whole 9 months"

you know you are pregnant when

- you give up wearing M sized clothes shaped like mini tents to wear XXXL sized clothes which essentially shapeless tents

- you begin wearing shoes 2 sizes bigger, with baby straps (floaters, essentially), because "Just in case, the feet swell"

- you take 3 mins to bend down and double the time to come back up, because you are carrying a good 5 kgs around your belly.

- you begin to walk like a pengiun, or maybe a dolphin, if it could

- you eat 5 Star dipped in Milkmaid, and just a few months ago, you wouldnt be caught dead with as much as an extra tea spoon of sugar

- you eat at early morning, and then early-mid morning, mid morning, late-mid-morning, early noon, noon, ,late noon, early evening, and then some more, and well, you get the point, and still manage to say "Im hungry"

- you are encouraged to put on weight. (though i must agree, I love this part)

- you arent allowed to play TT or go out with the team for a trek, or eat all the stuff you wanna eat, or down that singapore sling

but you know you are working when

- despite morning sickeness, and dizziness and hunger and mood swings - you take a day off and end up emailing the team about pending stuff.

Sigh.

-

something to doodle about.

2010-06-07T19:30:00.003+05:30

Inspired a little bit from here and a little bit from that thing we call life.

a little offkey, but bear with it.

What wrought the distance? who was wrong? what went wrong? all that were left were questions. I think, after a relation ship ends, all that remains are questions. Questions that have answers, questions that do not need answers, and questions that cannot have questions. unasked questions and unintended questions.
They both ended up with that legacy of questions.

I seemed like a simple everyday fight. Something that they would sulk about, and then, one of them would feign a minor illness, a random cough or an exxagerrated limp, and then all would be fine again.

This began as a small insignificant detail in the huge canvas of thier life; but then, details make the picture, in the details lies the devil.
It took a innoucous piece of message to pull them apart.

A small message that reached as they lay in each other's arms, whispering sweet nothings into each other's ears... the stars struggled to twinkle what with all the cloudy weather those days, and the moon was barely visible... that was okay by them, the muted light lit up their passion for each other well enough. And then there it was. A jarring note, a mobile was picked up and a message was read.
One turned to the partner and mumbled "spam". the passion was lost, the whisper ceased and the clouds opened up to rain.

Was it the lie, was it the presumed infidelity? It was never known.

Today they stand facing each other, as each fights over the custody of their children. The children ripped apart by a message, the children who should now decide if the moustached father who tickles them as he kisses them is better than the smothering mother whose plump arms shield them from the world's bullies.

The person sending the message sat in the audience watching and not knowing it was the message that caused it. Not the lie, not the presumed infidelity, not the pain of being lied to, not the guilt of lying when there was no need to, not the righteous anger or the justifying whine, not the accusation or the counter accusation. It was just a message. A few words and a broken relationship.

How does that sound?

Whining matters

2010-06-04T12:55:00.004+05:30

There is this episode of Scrubs where Kelso, who's recently retires says this about his retirement plans:

"we plan to tour the wine country"
"of course, anywhere Im with her, it is whine country"

*sigh*

I miss my friends. I miss the useless banter and the worthless talk we had once. With everyone getting married and "settled" and moving out of each other's lives; I miss them dearly.

I miss R a lot. He used to be my 4 AM friend. A rare guy with a combo of IQ, EQ and adequate adult jokes. Then, he got married. His blog is protected, the number of friends on his FB have drastically reduced, my Gtalk escapades have dwindled to a big fat zero. and I miss him.

when you trust people completely, even a stupid small "untruth" might throw you into a huge hole of depression. Though it might be something like "it wasnt me" when its just the two of you, and a silent fart and its smell fills the room.

I miss moping around at home, getting scolded by mom about not moving my lazy ass to get things done at home. I hate having to cook, clean, sweep and mop and do all the conventional "grihalakshmi" tasks. (in case you are wondering about domestic help - im not someone who likes strangers peeping into what I ate yesterday or wondering why the sheets in the bedroom are all crumpled up - I HAVE to have my house to myself.)

I miss having my bro pull my leg and say something really stupid for everything I said/ did. Now he's all grown up and like -"how are you doing sis? feeling fine? take care. Hows the baby doing". I miss pulling each other's hair out, and sitting on each other to decide who gets the remote. Finally one of us getting hurt and the other getting yelled at by mom and dad.

I miss dad. As days go by without him, the pain of him not being around only increases. I miss his really annoying, stupid antics using which he made us laugh. His songs off key and his really made up lyrics that made absolutely no sense.

I miss me. I really do. I miss the person I used to be. I hate the person I am now. Though I understand the inevitability of change and transition, I cannot come to terms with it.

I miss eating / not eating stuff without people telling me whats good or whats not. I miss papayas the most. My dear poor negative calorie fruit.

Okay, I thought I missed whining, and might just suck at it, after so long. I realise that I can whine with the same amount of gusto, and as I write, the more I feel the need to whine. So, until the next whine, crib and sob.

of gruesome TV soaps and gruff gynecs

2010-05-24T13:10:00.004+05:30

Team went out for a trip to Coorg this weekend.
Feeling all left out for not being able to go. Feeling guilty for feeling left out. Supposed to have all the "mottherly" feelings, and not supposed to feel bad about not doing stuff.
What's better? Feeling left out or feeling guilty?

Almost got hospitalised watching Anu Malik sing and dance at the sets of Indian Idol, that and Sunidhi's antics as he danced. A few more seconds of that clip and I would be in an asylum getting treated for permanent brain damage. Sunidhi reminded me of all the transgender stereotypes in B rated movies.

Had some friends over the other day, and the friend's wife insisted I watch a dance show on Zee. I had to give up my episode of Monk for her whatever those dance shows are called these days. All I watched was a couple of kids who (to me) were having spasms of epilepsy. The judges got up to applaud and call it the dance of the century and give them "wings". Instantenously reminding me of when I used to ask my chemist for Whisper.... (pause) "with wings".
I have no clue what makes the parents send kids to such shows ... and I used to think I had a hard time being a child, when my gran would not let me read Enid Blyton, and made me re-do my homework instead.

Went to the Gynec over the weekend. Im reminded of my school days when my school princi would stare down at me through her thick rimmed glasses, leaving me squirming and fidgeting and feeling sorry for my existence.
My gynec doesnt wear the thick rimmed glasses, but lying down next to the scan machine while she frowns and scowls as she checks if everything is alright in-uetro makes me feel like a gawky preteen all over again.
One of the reasons, why I depend on websites and random newsletters to tell me whats happening to my body, but when the body screams out in pains and aches in places that never existed earlier, there is only so much solace that a website can offer.
What is it about these "well known" or "capable" doctors that leave no room for some humane conversation?
I do understand that talking about vaginas and uteruses all day long probably doesnt do much for their foul mood... but hey! this is special to me, it happens to be probably the only time I will go through this in my lifetime, and if I do happen to want to know more than just a gruff "everything is fine, the EDD stays, next appointment is 3 weeks later", I cannot be blamed. It is my body and body thats taking shape inside of me that we are talking about. I am paying you for your expertise, experience and TIME! If I have a nagging pain somewhere, it might be a "normal pregnancy mild discomfort" or a "ah - just some braxton hicks contractions" to you but it is PAIN to me ... hullo! my bloated stomach aches. Dont tell me what you call it, tell me how you can relieve me of it!

more later. cheers for now.

Hopping Mad #1

2010-05-19T17:24:00.002+05:30

One thing that gets my goat ...

Advertising a course as "Advanced Training on XYZ" and let bumbling amateurs to join.
The guys expecting "Advanced" are made to re learn the alphabet.

The trainer refusing to teach a common platform, when he knows the specific platform on his course cirricula is irrelevant to the batch attending his training.

2 whole days of doing nothing, except for writing Select * from over and over again

Post Number 145

2010-05-06T16:32:00.003+05:30

Extremely sleepy and bored at office.

Eyes are watering due to the sheer effort of keeping them open.

Listening to this song .

Nothing else to write about.

Just read this post , and thought, that used to be my blog once - I mean not the url and the writing, but the tone. Now, there is no emotion.

No need or want
No anger or sorrow
No looking forward to tomorrow.

Is it happiness? I hope so. *yawn*. I really need something to wake me up. Tears are flowing freely now. the eyes have reached the limit of staying open. I think I should paint my eyelids or something so that people think Im awake. *yawn*

I know Im not making an iota of sense. Im wiping my tears off the cheeks, and hoping the dampness will keep me awake for just a few more mins. The dress Im wearing is making me cranky. Just too much embroidery. I think I should just resign and spend a month sleeping. Can work for the rest of my life later.

Salty Lives

2010-04-20T11:26:00.003+05:30

Everything I touch becomes more salty. The food I cook is salty these days, even the glass of water I offer to another is salty. The pure sweetness of the water is corrupted by my saltiness.

The few people who can rid me of my helpless saltiness, are in the past. Only, if I owned a time machine now.

The Distance

2010-04-10T19:32:00.000+05:30

Two people could not be farther apart, even if they stood at the two ends of the earth, as much as they were. Physical distances don’t matter, physical distances never matter, it is the emotional distance that counts – and they were light years apart.
In a small 1200 sqft space, existed a distance of a lifetime.

Whose mistake was it? No one knew. Was it hers? Was it his? Was it the families’ – who brought them together? Questions did not matter anymore, what mattered was the distance they held between them. A throbbing, pulsating, alive and electrifying distance grew and subsisted between them.

She could not lose her independent streak, he could not bear to see the streak. She could not bear domination, and all he had was a long precedence of male chauvinism to guide him. She had loved before, and could not forget her love, he had never loved before, and thus did not know the meaning of “together”. She was an expert at reading between the lines, and he was prone to writing only what he wanted.

She wore yet another mask for him, and his reality was too stark. He would never understand what she left unsaid, and she did not care to interpret his words. Their cultural differences stood as an abyss and neither wanted a bridge between them. They came together when the bodies wanted to, and that can hardly be called crossing the distance.

some random stuff

2010-03-30T16:49:00.000+05:30

Finally getting to read Shantaram. For some reason, I don’t really respect the book – no matter how well written it is. I mean, its written by a friggin convict. How the eff can it be respected? But I'm reading it nevertheless. One never lets go of a well written book.

The whole episode of Nithyananda leaves one nauseated. Not the sex part of it… definitely not that. The sleaze part of it. The fact that he proclaimed himself a “guru” – which, anyone with the remote knowledge of the Hindu shastras would declaim. No one can proclaim themselves a Guru. They are given that position after a long and stringent hurdle race. The fact that someone decided to have a sting operation and decided to equate it with “Hinduism”. What about the pedophile Fathers of the Holy Church – how is that not equated with “Christianity”? Not to denounce a particular religion, but, if want to call a spade, a spade, call it in all cases. Also, the part that made a consensual bedroom act, into a porn clip that was downloaded and watched on youtube, maybe a million times.

Watching emotional atyachar on UTV Bindaas these days. Was talking to mom, and we all agreed on how easy it has become these days to “fall in love”. During a particularly lazy afternoon, when mom and yours truly watched the beautiful “chaudavin ka chand”, one couldn’t help but wonder, the heroes of yesteryears had it so tough for themselves, they had to sing, praise the girl to the ends of the earth, pine and grieve for her every moment she did not occupy screen space, and finally when she got married to someone richer fatter and more villainous, they had to sing the “bidaai” song to send her off happily, and then waste themselves to death.
Men of today, just need a funky bike/ car, a couple tickets to the PVR Gold Class, a few expensive Archies gifts and lots of sleaze words – i.e. until, someone else comes along with a funkier car.
But as bro points out, the yesteryears did not involve money. For guys who are constantly broke (read bro), the yesteryears sound much better. Mom couldn’t stop lolling.

Currently enjoying a particularly slow day at office, after an interesting but stressful few weeks – watching CID. Sony TV must be renamed as CID TV. The amount of time they air the show! Like dad used to say “if only you had spent as much time studying” Lols

Pondering on several other things …

Koschen the stomach faces currently

2010-02-26T13:37:00.002+05:30

Is there any way you can feel hungry and pukish at the same time,

Is there any possible means, that you are barely done eating, and your esophagus shows it the wrong way out, and while in the process you are hungry again?

Seems like, there is a point in life when this happens.

No wonder mothers have expectations on their children, Goddammit, every mother has a right to expect her kid to be a scientist at NASA or innovating Microsoft Part 2.

Assorted Rants.

2010-02-08T13:09:00.002+05:30

And no, no excuses or apologies for not being around on the blog scene. If there is anyone reading other than those anons who have sent me 12 comments about where I can get good loans/ porn etc, I have done you a favor by not writing. You were free from my wickedness for so long.

So, back to my assorted rants.

- Buying a house is more pain in lots of places than you can imagine. And if you think that its an exhilarating joy that you get at the end of it, you are wrong. All you get is a deep sense of relief that now you no longer need to put up with brokers and agents and builders and government officials and masons and carpenters and tile layers and , well you get the point.

- Shifting to a new house is much more places that tend to give you a lesson in anatomy. Cramps and pulls and strings and sprains and aches and what not leave you wallowing in pain and your doctor laughing to the nearest bank. Ouch.

- Buying a news paper which according to you is a rag, is a drag. Well I made that up. But TOI is most annoying and shitty piece of toilet paper I have ever seen. No scratch that. It isn’t good enough to even be a toilet paper. And now with their hypocritical, circulation increasing tactic of Aman ki Asha, I hate it even more. Come to think of it, if Karan Johar or Farah Khan had thought of this title, we would be watching a 3 hour drivel of SRK + (put any heroine’s name here) supposed love story where they

a) Run away and get married (shedding oceans of tears through out) or
b) Get imprisoned and stay mute until another heroine decides to take up some screen time or
c) Get married and then realize Men are from Mars and Women from Venus and end up making you nauseous about marriage and aftermath or
d) Die a slow 3 hour death of some unheard disease, and kill our brains in the meantime too.

Karan would have named it Kamaan ki Kanksha.

Seriously though. Face the fact. Our “friendly” neighbours aren’t friendly, and we could without them as neighbours. We don’t need a mushy syrup where some really out of work/ jobless/ hankering for more fame than they deserve/ I'm just doing this, because it increases my star value celebrities to team up and talk about Aman and his Asha.

Agreed war isn’t the answer. Terrorism or hypocritical bus services or newspaper adverts, isn’t too.

Well, enough about this rant. Lets move on.

- SRK, I thought was getting Gayer as he got old. Now I realize, he is not just getting more gay by the day, but also more mentally deranged. He and his bunch of retards who decided to talk out against the IPL decision. Now, I'm not a big fan of IPL, but I know one thing. You don’t call enemies to your party, definitely not those who sponsor terrorism in your country and who strike at the roots of your communal harmony and economic prosperity. Look at the number of travel advisories that have been issued due to terrorism.
- Sadly, the people talking out against SRK, are as half ass crazy as him too. Like the devil and the deep sea, it is a catch 22 situation. You cannot negate one without appearing to side with the other.

And now, Back to some near the home base rants –

- Birthing a baby isn’t all that rainbows and butterflies like they say it is. Agreed it is the joy of motherhood and blah blah blah and some more blah. Those Blahs will only make sense to me, if you undergo cramps in your stomach and constipation and back aches and nausea and dizziness and bitter taste in the mouth and hormonal changes and itches all over your body and a permanent PMSey mood. That list excludes the assorted medicines including those that you have to stick up your **** .
Being hungry and throwing up the minute you see food is a worse curse than poverty and not being able to get food to eat.

Looking back at all that I have typed, Looks like I have set up ample reasons to get myself killed, I have managed to anger the newswallahs, actors and celebrities, political parties and blissfully content mothers, and all in one single post.

Wow.

Looks like I haven’t lost touch with doing dangerous stuff ;-).

2009-12-03T20:14:00.000+05:30

Life teaches you many things. Grief, is just one of them. It leaves you seeking for answers, it leaves you screaming out for them, suffocating you with its questions unanswered, wringing your existence with its roller coaster twists and turns gaping for air, and just as you think you have just managed to breathe a lungful of air, drowning you in vaccum that you cannot even exhale that air that you have just taken in.
Is it a good thing or is it bad? One knows not, all one knows is, that thus is life, and it gives you, but one opportunity, to willfully end it. But to end it thus would mean allowing life to triumph over you, gloat about its victory and tell its peers that you could not bear life, and hence have chosen the more mundane and dead, death.

The loss of a dear one, is always unbearable, the loss of a progeny, is unspeakable. It is grief, when your present becomes past, what is it, when future becomes past? It is anger when someone who is a part of life, ceases to be, what is it when someone who is a part of self ceases to be?

Did one just call death mundane and dead? One was never more wrong in my statements. Death is not mundane, death is living, pulsating, it is the ever spreading octopus which with its poisonous tentacles, taints the essence of the living, shrivels it up and leaves nothing but the husk.

The husk, which needs a D&C.

an ... eff this moment

2009-09-16T13:51:00.000+05:30

something is wrong within, something churns with emotions that cant be identified or named.

or maybe it is all the acidity of not having eaten breakfast.

Miss mom dearly, miss dad even more. Miss people from another lifetime, a forgotten era, a previous birth
and we hate ourselves for it - me and a million other people who reside in my head.

Curiosity kills the cat. curiosity leaves you aching for more, even if it is, about an entity you dont even know.
curiosity, is painful.

strange lives

2009-09-10T19:12:00.000+05:30

Marriage is more difficult than it looks.

Just when we were settling in the married life, hubby decided to take a long tour, and we came back to the mom's place. (Look at the irony here - you were born with these people, you learnt to go goo-gaa here, learnt to walk, became an individual, held their name for a quarter of a century, took them for granted, laughed when they were happy, expected them to cry when you werent - and suddenly, instead of my home, it becomes "mom's place" dont we just hate that?) and now, when the hubby returns, we get back... and miss mom and home SO darn much, that despite the home being just a stone's throw away, it brings tears to our eyes.

Life is such.

In other news,

life is as dull and boring as ever, work occupies.

hubby got choclates (just when everyone was telling me, Ive lost weight, darn it!)

took one last chance at bachelorhood when the hubby was away, went out, attempted to get drunk (well, if you arent drunk after 2 neats and 5 cocktails - when its your first time with so much alcohol, you have attempted to get drunk - yes) met up with old friends (I mean they arent 90 year olds, they are just friends for a long time now).

body aches, head aches. too much of work. need to get a life.

In still other news,

trying to get a friend married. as he verry polietly puts it, stop being such a P**p while, Im trying to get him his soul mate. so much for true friendship and gratitude and all that ... eff it to Pluto yeah, go ahead, fling it.

attempting to read Shantaram. I think I'll finish it when my kids graduate. I am managing a stellar "one line a day".

Lisa Ray is diagnosed with cancer, and the hubby is upset. Hello! what happened to patnivrata husbands these days! I tell ya, God doesnt really bother about Customer Satisfaction anymore!

And, yeah go ahead call me a pervert, send me hate mail and all that ... but seriously - I must be sick to even think of this - but those of you who do visit me, know I am not known for my virtues and "I love mankind, I am a miss goody two shoes" nature - and I know when you read the line below - you will smirk internally too, snort to snub a laugh and go - chee wat ye pervert she is no?

Hero (to villian) - kameene, main tujhe maarke, tujhe antim sanskar ka bhi sukh nahin doonga, teri body cheel kauwon ko khilaaonga

Villian - go ahead, Im a parsi :P

Okay, I am a bad girl, shut up, wipe that smirk off ur face and run along.

Be good too.

a pithy excuse for a post after 2 months. :P Chow!

2009-08-24T11:10:00.000+05:30

Random.ransom.handsome.gruesome.whatever.bored.board.curd.whatever.Irritated.frustrated.flustered.blistered.whatever.

It hurts. Always. Memories. Would have been good to be an amnesiac. Ghajini?
Good memories, happy memories, smelly memories, sweet tasting, sugary syrupy memories – they all hurt. Always hurt.

Memories of places, of cobblestones, of peeling paint of narrow by lanes, of street corners overflowing with garbage cans, of familiar scents, wispy faint smell of aging books, of cologne and shaving cream, of chest hair and the sweaty smell of the arms on the hair, of sickly sweet cough drops and of damp dark places, of deep seated pain, of the stinking stench of broken hearts, of late nights and cold draughts, of colors and emotions, the vermillion of marriage, the red of unending hate, the sickly pale jaundiced yellow of stale salty tears shed over undeserving love, the dirty moss filled green of jealousy, the damp dark black of dejection and humiliation, they always hurt. The brown scabs of healing wounds, the orange hues of a new dawn, the white re-whitewashed life, the memories left behind, the memories taken along, the memories being formed, the memories being destroyed.

It hurts. Always. Memories.

In other news – caught up with a couple of friends, that was really overdue, Anu really. Thanks. Jab We Met. Missed Anu, missed komal. Missed so many misses and misters. Miss Mr. Hubby Dearest tons. (waise, miss Mr. seems so funny no?). bored actually. Nostalgia catches up, cant wait for the future to unfold though.

Random Rant of The Day (RRTD)

2009-07-03T17:43:00.000+05:30

RRTD - 1

Imagine a song that your dad used to sing. Imagine that song to represent a time in your childhood. You have never seen the song on screen, you have heard it forever. you have it in your MP3, you have it on your PC, you sing it to suit the 'emotion' in your life. you idolise the singer, fall in love with his songs, flirt with his voice and sing him in your head.

One day, youtube happens. Curiosity takes over an overwhelming urge that possesses your very soul to SEE the song. S-E-E it ... you watch Rajesh Khanna sing it.

I rest my case.

why get married and etcetra

2009-06-29T12:18:00.005+05:30

I understand now, when you ponder over life's larger issues, and think of your existential meanings and question life's thoeries

(which basically means -
- you are on your mom's nerves forever
- you are forever moping around either because a) you have too much of work during weekdays, leaving you no time for HBO, Star Movies and World Movies or b) you have too much time on weekends and you are bored, because the above mentioned channels are NOT playing a single DECENT movie
- you begin to get several books that have fancy names and use the sentence - "what's the use anyways, everyone is gonna end up in the deep abyss for ever after"
- term your irritated, and short tempered self as a person having a 'quarter life crisis'
- work for more than 17 hours a day and run away during weekends to your friend's pads)

Why your family says "its time for marriage" and gets you married to the man of your life.

Purely because (and hold your breath ...)

A - they can get you off their back

B - you will have abso-fuckin-lutely NO time for anything in life let alone ask questions and ponder over theories. (believe me when I say that - Im constipated for the last two days, cos I din have time to go to the loo when the urge took over)

Brilliant-fuckin-geniuses these moms and grand moms are ... and then they enjoy every moment of your really hurried and harried married life with a chuckle and a statement that usually is a variant of "do it now, remember those days when you refused to work at home? now try refusing!)

*sigh*

In other news -

- Its been two months since I blogged. Yeah yeah I know. no need to send me wreathes assuming that Im dead

- MJ is dead - until he was alive, I never thought twice about the man. The moment I got to know he's dead, there's a deep sadness within. RIP MJ

- Im learning how to drive a car. I already have an LL, and soon, with a DL, I shall be India's savior, I shall rid it of its excess population

- Hubby goes to vides for a couple of months tomorrow, *sigh* lazy days, here I come; weepy days - here I come too, because I already miss him as I pack for him... boohoo

- Watched Bridewars amid snores, hubby fell asleep in the midst you see, moi thinks its a damn good movie - if you are bored to death on a sunday afternoon and your friends cancelled that "get together" you had planned all week long, and you have nothing else to do. Damn good movie to watch then.

- Bought a new phone. The old un's display started to look like that chequered lungi that my dad had bought in a sudden fit of admiration towards Mehmood.
- The damn phone was under warranty for an year. the damn thing broke down, 10 days after the warranty expired and thus the subject of my phones is of great mirth to the family (well, of the phones Ive had, I've lost 1, one met its demise when it fell off the 3rd floor, one refused to work after just 13 months, and now this.)
- So now I have a Samsung Touch Phone. Everyone keeps asking me 'Next is What' clutching their stomachs and rolling on the floor laughing. Sheesh!

- Finished 6 years in my current company. I feel so old already. I need a new job. Do let me know if you have one.

More later. Bye for now. Over and out.

Embittered

2009-04-29T11:51:00.001+05:30

Have you heard the story of the princess?

They got her the sweets from Bengal, Maple syrup from Canada, Manna and dew and magical potions brewed in the land of England, jaggery brewed out of the finest sugarcanes, rock sugar made by the druids of the ancient, they ordered for the ancient Egyptian recipes, the recipes that sweetened and loosened the tongue of the most hardened criminal, they got her dew, freshly formed at the crack of dawn, they got her honey straight from the bee hives of Africa… every conceivable sweet under the earth was ordered to be prepared with great care and given to her, fruits and nuts, and caramel and pudding … she tasted them all, and spat them out.

Everything, everything tastes bitter, she said, as bitter as bile, as bitter as gourd, as bitter as treason, as bitter as hate.

Everything, tastes bitter, she said.

A dedication

2009-04-07T15:56:00.000+05:30

You were never in any of my plans. You never existed a year ago to me. My life was all about me and my family and my career and my friends and my boyfriends and my studies and my …. Oh well, my life was just a big fat MY.

I don’t think I liked you so much when I met you. I don’t think I ever thought of waking up to see your calm serene face as it sleeps every morning. I don’t think I ever thought of putting your name behind mine and thinking of, how would it sound.

I never imagined waking up to your kisses, I never imagined about setting 5 alarms ringing just so that I wake up in time for you to get ready, I never imagined unrequited love in my life, for, did I not think that all love is conditional?

I never was a family person. I used to hate cooking and cleaning and waking up early and respecting a bunch of people I’d never met earlier, and adhering to rules and regulations and asking for opinions before I did a thing, I never thought I could ever be so selfless or loving or caring or tender.

I never thought I would ever pray HIM for someone’s longevity. I never thought I would ever get out of my infatuation for jerks, I never thought I could live a life with one single man by my side forever.

I was never a traditional person; I did not like the marks of a woman, the black beads, the flowers, the sari, the jewellery.

I never thought I could give up my habits, my late night forages with my books, my quirky love for mushrooms, my tendency to remain un-bathed over a weekend, the dislike of cleanliness.

I never thought you would accept my friends, friends I had flirted with, friends I still flirt with, friends who call up at midnight, friends who have issues with pre-marital pregnancy, friends who get drunk and call me their girl even after I’m married, friends who call me when they have issues with their in-laws, friends who call because, they had nothing else to do, friends who call because they are in trouble, friends who forward their resumes, friends with whom I share intimate details, friends who butt in to give their opinions.

I never thought my brother could take someone’s side apart from my own, I never thought my brother could trust someone other than me, and do so, without me fearing for his trust; I never thought someone would call my mom as mother other than her own kids.

Even now, when I write of you, I write about myself. Unseen, unheard, you crept up into my life, and now I find flowers in the vase everyday, I see a smile wake me up with a kiss everyday, I see that I am, who I am now, all pretences are shed, I see someone can love my bad breath and my fat butt and my dirty ragged pajamas. I see us being a family now, I see the MY being replaced by you and your, and we and our, I see that my “I hate kids” is slowly transforming into “I want to have kids”, I see how it feels when you have someone to wipe your tears, rather either you having to wipe them, or having someone who will bring tears to your eyes.

Though you say it every morning, and you say it every night, and I know you mean it even when you say it and even when you don’t, for, your actions speak louder than words, for if isn’t love, what is it, when you call up once every half an hour to make sure I'm fine, when I’m chumming, when you sit through a really bad movie with a grin on your face & trying not to fall asleep, just because I'm so totally in love with the lead actor, when you try to pluck mint leaves for a gravy though you could not differentiate the stalk from the leaf, just so that I get work done sooner and have time to sit down and enjoy my tea, when you tiptoe into the room to allow me those few extra minutes of sleep, when you hold my hand and give me a kiss just so that I simmer down my famous ill tempered anger, when you listen to my irrational ranting about everything that’s wrong in the world, when you, with an amused smile, listen to my really strong and twisted opinions of so many things in life, when you ask me to sit down, and do the cleaning yourself on a weekend, because in your words “you need to take a break too”, when you patiently hear out my woes with my past ‘Ex’es, when you, along with me, have pani puri for dinner, though you MUST have rice to feel like you’ve eaten a meal… you don’t have to tell me that you love me, I know you do.

For a life gone by, I have but one regret; I came by your house, for more an a year, every single day, passed by it, waited in the cab for colleagues to get in, sometimes, got down from my cab and leaned on your gate. Could you, not, in one of all those days that made up that year, come out and fall in love with me? Why did you not meet me earlier? Why did you make me wade through all the wrong people in the world before we met?
Why did you not, bring out the best in me, earlier, like you do now? Why did you not make me feel a woman, all those days when I was a tomboy leaning over your gate, like you do now? Why did you not come by sooner, so that I understand what it means to say “I love you” and mean it and what it means to hear “I love you” and know that it is more than just a statement, that it is a promise, a commitment, a lifetime, a sense of togetherness, something that says that I will forgo my happiness to see you happy.

Dedicated to the one and only – hubby dearest

(to those who felt the post was too mushy, damn you. I am getting mushy these days, it’s the age and the marriage catching up … but don’t you worry you heartless readers, a really funny post is on its way … hmm, the mail man is late, where’s the post? (that was a PJ … laugh if you can) )

Chronicles of a Wedded Life

2009-03-19T19:06:00.001+05:30

Right, so the longest disappearing act ever?

*smiles*

Its been a month that Ive been married for today. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it was today that Aishwarya Rai and the wife of the guy sitting across my workstation along with half the female population on the earth heaved a collective sigh last month, not to mention the guys in the facilities department of my company who had a touch time cleaning up all that drool. I am told that the day when we had water scarcity, all this water was used to ..err… lets leave the gross details out, shall we? Curiously, today is Thursday the 19th, the same day and date as last month. Whatay miracle don’t you think so?

Days have flown by so fast, that the Airbus 380 hides its face in shame. It just seems like yesterday, when my mother appraised me with tear filled eyes,

When I said “No Mamma no, I hate tears” with the enthusiasm of a certain actor who has degraded himself to playing roles in soft porn movies, I did not know, that I had spoken too soon, because, she wiped off her tears in a hurry, lest I think she is suffering and refuse to go, and said,
“arre, pagli, ye to khushi ke aansoo hain, ab ghar main kachra karne wala koi nahin hain na” (Oh you insane, these are the tears of joy, the house shall be spotlessly clean from tomorrow)

I turned to my brother in a sudden emotional movement, and pulled him away from all those drooling girls he was impressing with the 8grand Sherwani that I bought him in a rush of brotherly affection. He turned towards me and very gravely gave me a look, that probably could have inspired the Dev Sahab’s Phoolon ka taaron ka song. If only, he had stopped at that, why O why did he have to open his mouth and say
“so, sister, don’t you dare take all those DVDs away, I'm keeping the computer, the Mp3 player, the DVD collection, the uber cool mobile that you have (you can take my Nokia 1100 instead), the parker pen and …..” he would have gone on, if not for the interference of a particularly cute looking girl in Pink who told him his sherwani looked cute. My 8 Grand you scheming fox of a brother, I grunted as he coolly turned his back to me.

Ever since, my hubby has been seen hunting for part time jobs, he says he cannot afford to have me at home with his current level of income. We didn’t go on a honey moon, because I fell in love with a certain MAC store in namma bengaluru and decided to spend a forty odd thousand there. Currently, as I blog, my hubby’s painting letters on a cardboard, which reads “will sell wife for money”.

On a serious note though, they say time flies when you are happy, and drags on forever when you are morose. So, it should be proof enough when I say, that me and the hubby dearest got up today morning, and exclaimed – Its been a month already? I fluttered my eyelids and told him that it seemed more like a couple of days rather than a month, and coyly smiled at him (with an expression that begged for a “yes dearest, and in celebration I shall get you a DeBeers diamond necklace) but instead he stared back at me in horror, pulled out his hair (which I don’t think is a good idea … I don’t really like bald guys you know) and sucked his thumb and sulked to him mom “Do I really need to spend the rest of my life with her? Is’nt a month worth of punishment bad enough already?”
I am, of course but kidding, he didn’t suck his thumb, he just covered his face and sobbed uncontrollably

So, there. That’s the first month of married life for you. Oh, by the way, I almost forgot, I have started cooking at our home. The hubby’s family doctor is overjoyed. And you won’t get a single word out of me, on this subject. Period.

I have also started shopping for groceries, and I'm told Big Bazaar officials spoke to CNN the other day, and they were heard remarking “recession? What recession? We are not undergoing any recession, in fact, our sales have tripled over the last one month. We are seeing a huge spending on items that are totally unnecessary for household use … the credit card of one Mr. Hubby dearest is the most utilized. I am sure he has gotten a few lakh as his salary increment, else no fool would spend as much in one month.

In other news, I am yet to get fully adjusted to the new home and all, and am yet to get used to saying “my husband” or saying “Mrs. Justso” when someone asks for my name, I need to remember to wear all the sindoor and the gajra and keep my pallu intact and all that stuff, but its kinda fun.

Cant say I don’t miss being single though. All that flirting, oogling and line maaroing is all in the past. All that giggling over the mysteries of the S word is all gone, I feel all grown up, and adult, where talking of sasuraal genda phool and bachon ki planning isn’t something that aunties do, and asking “what did u cook for breakfast” doesn’t elicit a “chee, who cooks dude” but instead is a conversation starter. So many dreams crushed in the wheels of life, so many newer dreams taking root in the path of life.

how does a title matter?

2009-02-10T13:08:00.002+05:30

Its been so so long since Ive written on this space, and I was so about to write all crappy stuff like - you guys should actually be commemorating me – for letting you live in peace for so long and not torturing you guys to my random aimless pieces of words.

But after a dedication of his blog post to me( it was a shared dedication, like those saamoohik shaadiyan … you know, all those people together getting married on the same day, the mangal sutras being given away by some big fat, dark, ass scratching, leching-at-the-brides-to-be samaaj sevak… comon haven’t u seen saamohik shaadiyan on DD news(bachpan main)? It was that types of a dedication, but a dedication nevertheless) and then a blog award by none other than (who else?) Bulshee again … mere dil main likhne ki iccha jag uthi. (that sounds really weird .. iccha jaag uthi? Acha! kal raat kab soyi thi, itni der se uth rahi hain ab?)

Don’t you dare comment on how low my PJ skills have fallen… it is an occupational hazard. R, my dear friend who gets married a couple of months after I do, has seen his PJ quotient do a bungee jump… he is yet waiting for it to bounce back, and I have a distinct feeling that it has been eaten up by a big fat crocodile on its way down. A moment of silence for his PJ quotient please, though the usage of “quotient” as a measure always makes me wonder what the dividend and the divisor are … but then, im not known for my intellectually stimulating thoughts, am I?

Though I know you are all very excited to know how the marriage preps are underway, let me spare you the gory (and the kaali and the naarangi) details of the horrors of when I went saree shopping or footwear shopping (Ive gone color blind looking at the colors there) ; and move onto a most interesting topic that Ive evaded for a long time now.

Now, Im the master procrastinator, who loves to put off things until the last minute, but better late than never, isn’t it?

So here’s the tiresome (err…) threesome tag that the supergal hath tagged me with. So, while Bulshee’s blog award requires me to write 10 truths about myself, moi pense, that the long list of threes will outnumber the required tens. :)

I get to write random truths about myself, and if those truths aren’t exciting enough, I get to make up excitingly false random truths about myself, but all in threes :D

3 Joys
- mujik
- masti and
- Joy Mukherjee*

3 Fears
- Losing my freedom (which I will lose on the 19th of this month – yea yea just 10 more days to go)
- Hieghts
-shopping (to which I have been subjected to, continuously over the past 2 months)

3 Goals

- To have no goals (the irony, yeah)
- To not watch Goal (despite the sexy John Abraham)
- To have an extra marital with Abhishek Bachchan

3 Random Ssurprising Facts:
- Loos NEED to be clean, else, im not giving up my excreta (does a same pinch to Wsw)
- I think passing under a railway bridge when a train is passing up there is good luck
- Im regarded as extremely shy and reserved by my relatives

3 Current Obsessions:
- Songs of Delhi 6
- Emoshonal Atyachar
- My lappie (though this is an eternal obsession)

3 People Who Make me Laugh
- My 5 year old cousin
- Russel Peters
- the guy who writes those hilarious dialogues/ poems for Roshesh in Sarabhai Vs Sarabhai

3 Things I hate
- Fights
- Attitude (esp., the “Im always right” attitude & the “pity me” attitude and the … oh I can go on)
- Judgmental Bastards

3 Things I don’t understand
(huh, only 3? Bahut naainsaafi hain)
- Why October 2008 ended up the way it did
- Why is cricket given so much of importance in apna des
- why I put on so much of weight despite not eating a damn thing.

3 Things Im doing right now
- Blogging (duh-uh)
- listening to mujik
- waiting for 9PM, so that I can pack up.

3 Things I can do
- Be silent for days together (irony – im a chatterbox)
- Hate people so much to wish that the Japs nuke them
- Do Nothing (I know, the irony)

3 Things I cant do
- Be a hypocrite
- Forgive people easily
- Fall out of love easily

3 Things I think you Should Listen To

- Delhi 6 – the title song. Awesomeness
- Raag AnandBhairavi … esp when you are about to get married
- Boxer by Simon and Garfunkel

3 Things you should never Listen to

- himesh singing “tan tana na na tandoori nights” (scratch that, make it, Himesh singing ANYTHING)
- the definition of beauty that involves the words slim and fair and blah
- people saying “trust me” or “you know me”

3 Absolute Favorite Foods

- Shake Shake Fries of Mc Ds (sadly that’s stopped now)
- Bhindi fry
- Scalding hot mirchi ke bhajjiye :D

3 Things I would like to Learn

- understand a woman’s mind (I know … me being a woman and all, but still)
- understand what would make my hubby do all the ghar ka kaam (evil moi)
- to act like a chammak challo

3 beverages I drink regularly

- paani paani re
- diet coke (kahin to calorie count karen :P )
- Tea

3 Shows I watched as a Kid

- Nukkad
- Mahabharath
- He-Man

(* Joy Mukherjee - supposedly an actor - dad had pointed out to some random orange and yellow clad guy of a 1970s movie & said - joy mukherjee, and hence his existence was prooved)

PS - some pirablem with blogger on this network, so wont be able to put up bulshee's bootiphool award, will do so later

whiny post

2009-01-23T14:11:00.001+05:30

whine, sob, sniff, snivel.

---------------------
EDIT

reason to whine diminished ... have a post dedicated to moi ... check this post by bulshee

A whole new chapter

2008-12-22T00:05:00.002+05:30

Sometimes the simple pleasures in life, creep up to you and catch you so unawares that you stand there, speechless.

Unable to emote or utter a word, unable to think and unable to even realise that something humoungously big has hit you.

At the end of the day, it is just one simple word of the English Language. 8 random letters put together ....

just a word?
yes
no
yes
no
yes
no
yes
no
yes
no
yes
no
yes
no
yes
no
yes
no
yes
no
yes
no
yes
no
a moment,
a touch,
a promise,
a look,
an awkward pause,
a word,
a few words,
a blush,
a smile,
a tear,
an understanding,
some trust
some security
some silence
some laughter
two people
two families
two dreams
two lives

a word?
yes
no
yes
no
yes
no
yes
no
yes
no
yes
no
yes
no
yes
no
yes
no

hang on

2008-12-19T18:58:00.002+05:30

I know I know Ive left this only space that I can call truly mine, hanging in the webs (teehee - such a PJ no?) but hang in there guys, life's a roller coaster presently. Will update you on every millisecond of my life that happened after the last post. (too boring? okay - I will give you hazy wispy sketchy outlines filled with dark humor and sarcasm of the above mentioned time period)

until then, think about the poor gurkhas who have it tough in the job market - what with all the competition from out of work investment bankers hunting for a job that gives them money.

being back

2008-09-23T17:59:00.005+05:30

When was the last time I wrote on this blog? well, not very long ago. And no one missed me while I was away - so whats the ruckus all about anyways?

So, what do you want me to say? That I was travelling to exotic locations and post pictures of them? Or that I was busy in the concluding talks of multi billion dollar deals? Or that I got married and am already pregnant with quintuplets nows?
None of that has happenend. None of that will ever happen. I have a boring desk job. I travel the same 20 kilometeres day in and out - get stuck in similar sounding traffic (everyone honks; everyone shouts; who cares) every single day; look at the same applications on the desktop; dial the same BT Meet Me number.
So in the above routine the only "different" thing that happens is the conference call entry code that I punch. Im sure you would not want to know the standard deviation of all the various numbers I punch in , to get into a call where you have people from different countries speaking the same language but sounding so damn different that at the end of the call you feel like you've just heard PV Narasimha Rao sleepily mutter in all the 18 languages he knew.
And while I struggle to keep my eyelids open, I learn to empathise with our former minister HD Deve Gowda at all the UN summits he attended.

But seriously - I would have loved to have been this marketing executive who writes about sausages made from pig's blood or this really funny lady who makes even mundane stuff sound fun or keep abreast of all the politics and sports events and rant about unsuspecting victims to my rage. But since I do nothing even remotely resembling any of the above, I just shut my crap hole and continue doing what I do best - attending conference calls.
So well, having shattered all the myths about me leading a meaningful existence over the past couple of months, lets move on to more mundane aspects of life ...

The blog was off for a brief period of time (NO VIP Frenchie jokes there please); due to inexplicable reasons, but since none of you noticed - why the heck am I explaining anyways?
My cluttered up personal life has just become a little un-cluttered. What with an astrologer (may Lord make sure all his grandchildren get into the IIMs - not the Shillong IIM though) blaming my family and not me for me not getting married :D
My professional life which earlier consisted of reading Dilbert and the above linked blogs has just decided to compensate to the fact the my personal life is uncluttered and has become messy beyond all imagination. Yes. Im busy. (wow! I've always wanted to say that atleast once in my lifetime :D)
Im taking a vacation next month. I know "Im busy" and "Im taking a vacation" dont really deserve bullet points one below the other; but you must understand that Im a person who used to live on company charity and am now made to work. I need to rejuevenate(right ishpelling?) myself ... Ive effectively worked for a full two hours the whole of last one month.
Marriage is a distant word now-a-days. Not that the family isnt trying, but I guess they ran out of stock of all the eligible bachelors out there. So *sigh of relief* for that.
Saying "Investment Banking" is like being the Emperor with the new clothes. And I work for a company that has a lot to do with Investment Banking. (sheesh I said that word now. Did my clothes just dissappear?). Now is So not a time to be associated with that IB word.

So there. now you are as up-to-date on my life as much as the viewers of Big Boss2 are about Jane Goody's health situation.

Lets get down to meaningful work now. Ive been tagged ages ago and I have promised all of these people who'd tagged me that I WOULD do their tag. Im not about to let them down.(let them take the elevator instead*)
* - if you didnt get that joke, forget it, it is pathetic, even by the standard of a PJ.

So Dharmabum, Di and Madam Superwoman, pliss to have patience, your tags shall be done once Im back from vacation (or maybe sooner - while im attending a conf call - who knows ;-) )

PS - I know this is heresy - coming from an ABjr fan; but did you also feel that the man looks positively ugly in the trailors of Drona? or is it just me and my change of attitude now that he is married and shows no signs of divorce?

Musiquely yours

2008-07-30T12:23:00.005+05:30

I realise Im long due on the number of tags I need to do. And I plod through them in the FIFO manner.
Taru tagged me long back on this; have always thought of getting down to do this, but laziness always overtakes me on the path to meaningful blogging :D
Anyways, here goes.
'The' moment:
याद है मुझको मेरी उम्र की पहली वो घड़ी
तेरी आँखों से कोई जाम पिया था मैंने
मेरे रग रग में कोई बरक सी लहराई थी
जब तेरे मरमरी हाथों को छुआ था

Wine, Women and Song:
इन्तेहाँ हो गई इन्तेज़ार की
आईना कुछ ख़बर, मेरे यार की

The tiny-winy corner of your heart
थोडी सी ज़मीन, थोड़ा आसमान
तिनकों का बस एक आशियाँ
माँगा हैं तुमसे, वो ज्यादा तो नहीं हैं
देने को तो जान दे दे , वादा तो नहीं हैं
कोई तेरे वादों पे जीता हैं यहाँ

Moving on
खाली हैं शाम आई हैं
खाली हाथ जायेगी, आज भी न आया कोई
खाली लौट जायेगी, खाली हाथ शाम आई हें

Dreams unlimited
देखो मेंने देखा हें ये एक सपना
फूलों के शहर मैं हो घर अपना

Anything for you, ma'am
जिंदगी मैं जो कहीं और मैं खो जाऊँगा
तुमसे मिलने के लिए लौट कर फिर आऊंगा
ए मेरी जान- ऐ- वफ़ा देखना राहें मेरी

Life is a sinusoid...
हजारों ख्वाहिशें ऐसी, की हर ख्वाहिश पे दम निकले
बहुत निकले, मेरे अरमान लेकिन फिर भी कम निकाले

It happened to me...
तुम से मिलके ऐसा लगा तुम से मिलके
अरमान हुए पूरे दिल के आय मेरी जान- ऐ- वफ़ा

It's all your fault!!
दिल की बात न पूछो, दिल तो आता रहेगा
दिल बहकाता रहा हैं, दिल बहकाता रहेगा
तुमने दिल को कुछ समझाया होता

Drunken Revelry
हुज़ूर इस कदर भी न इतराके चलिए
खुले आम आँचल न लहरा के चलिए

Flickr of hope
अल्लाह के बन्दे हंसदे,
जो भी हो कल फिर आएगा

Pensieve
क्या ख़बर, क्या पता,
क्या खुशी हैं, ग़म हैं क्या

Never let me go
तू जहाँ जहाँ चलेगा,
मेरा साया साथ होगा

Happiness is within
मैं आप ही अपनी प्रेमिका
मैं आप ही अपनी सहेली

Winds of change
And I'm gonna miss you like a child misses their blanket
But I've gotta get a move on with my life
It's time to be a big girl now
And big girls don't cry

Far from the madding crowds
कहीं दूर जब दिन ढल जाए,
सांझ की दुल्हन बदन चुराए
चुपके से आए

Screw it.
सेज नहीं चिता सही,
जो भी मिले सोना होगा
न कोई तेरा, न कोई मेरा,
फिर किस की याद आई

Tagged:
Sakshi,
Dhivya (passing on the toothache again you see)
Sidin
Sanjeev - The "Daddy cool"

Blast in Bangalore

2008-07-25T14:48:00.009+05:30

A blast in Bangalore! I mean how can we have a blast here?

Already we have no electricity, no petrol, no diesel, no infrastucture, no pavements to drive on (yeah, we drive on pavements, for the lack of space elsewhere), no rains, no metro , not even a proper name to call the city - "bangalore? bengalooru? bengaluroo? what??"... and now, of all things, we have a blast??? Isnt the city already on its way to ruin by itself that one H-A-D to put in a blast into this concotion as well ?

moi is in a state of denial, and indignation. Tres angry for the blast.

Called up family; no one near the blast site. *whew*; no friends currently in bengalooru so, no immediate shok sabhas to attend.

Updates later.

Edit1 - http://www.ibnlive.com/news/three-blasts-rock-bangalore-one-killed/69540-3.html Edit2 - its 7 blasts! all at very busy areas; while people at office try to make sure loved ones are safe; the mobile phone lines are all jammed. Here's the link2 which gives a video of what happened. http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/videopod/default.aspx?id=0 and this link talks of the 7 blasts -

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/7_blasts_rock_Bangalore_2_dead_20_wounded/articleshow/3279730.cms

SMSes and emails pour in hoping Im alright, to everyone reading the blog, I am okay, and hope everyone of you out there is okay.

Incase anyone wants to get in touch with someone in Blore and make sure that they are alright, just put in a comment here with their email/ phone number and I shall try and reach them and post a comment back here stating if they are alright.

Edit 3: Traffic jam rules *sheesh* people try and keep off those places now.

It was a low intensity blast with gelatin sticks being used. but since it was highly populated - lot of injuries I guess.

@ anons - if you dont understand the language used or the meaning of the sentences written, *shrugs* keep your ideas to yourself. thanks.

Edit 4 : latest news says one very near to one of our office campuses!!!! Whoa! another one is slated to go off is the rumor around. I shall put up updates as and when I get it. hang in there guys. Take care everyone.

Edit 5: I sent my team home - better safe than sorry... aint it? for the others, please go home, and please please and for chrissakes please follow traffic rules, I understand its a major jam and chaos out there, but please maintain sanity, calm and traffic rules. Office transport has been suspended and GOK when I can reach home ...

Edit 6: 9 Bombs in 8 places! Wont this stop at all! :-O

Placeholder

2008-07-14T17:43:00.006+05:30

Prologue:
after a very frustrating end of week, today has been a bitter-sweet day for me. Ironically, today is the one day when I want to talk of it aloud and share it with those dearest to me, but for a variety of reasons, cannot.
I want this to be recorded now - 5:48 PM on 14th of July 2008 - just so that when I tear my hair out about this decision at a later point of time, I can read and remember how beautiful today has been for me.
So, if today has been so beautiful (until now that is) why would I tear my hair out about today at a later point of time - is that what I hear you ask? Excellent Koschen.
~~ ~~ ~~
You see, there was this day when I stepped into the corridors of what you call - An MNC. A girl who lived in small towns all her life (Ahemdabad and Bangalore were small towns then) , to whom the most posh interior was that of the hospital who's statutary audit she was asked to do. Who had never ever, despite having lived in Bangalore for 5 years earlier, stepped into MG/ Brigade road - who was embarrassed to see low waist jeans and tank top Tees on reed thin girls. It was this wide eyed girl who stepped into the "big-bad" world of corporate culture. Nothing that she had read in company law or financial management had ever braced her for the opulence and the glitter of the actual companies.
A good 18 months later, she found herself being one among them - yet at a respectful distance. She knew who she was, and she knew that in order to live through the office, she would have to morph into someone she was not. thus two distinct personalties shaped up. 18 months later, the want to do something bigger and better landed her in front of a phone from which a strangely Indo-American accent was spoken. Being the naive girl she was at heart, she laughed out loud when the interviewer asked her what P.U.C. was thus almost ruining every chance at stepping up the rung, albeit a very small step.
It was this man, who had interviewed her, met her in a foriegn land some months later, where she had very naively (she was a dumbo then) worn salwar kameez while it was common place to be seen in a bikini. From that day onwards he and she have been inseparable - cold and distant in their own ways, yet, admire each other for their abilities, joke occasionally about him being more photogenic than he is in person, and her utter lack of directional abilities, his choice of shirts and her obsessive disgust of any meat on her plate, his need for cigarettes and alchohol and her distaste and loathing to both.
He was her boss and her most favorite boss at that, in turn she was someone whom he could count on, forever for any report at any time of the day. One day, he moved to the enemy territory. She no longer reported to him. Though they still worked together, she missed him sorely. But him not being her boss meant no longer to make sense of one word emails sent in the middle of the night, no more reporting to someone sitting far away in the amreeka, she had moved up a rung too, occupied the place where he was until a few days back. When they spoke now, it was professional, and he referred to a different set of people as "my team". It was exciting, as much as it was heart breaking. He afterall was the boss she had always liked. She, in the meanwhile, built her own team, she had her team - her "kids" - to think of. She loved her team and tried to be as good a boss as he was to her. She had learnt a lot from him.

Today, she decided that she will reject another position, an oppurtunity to manage twice the people she had earlier, to move in with him. She will be quitting a team in which she has worked for almost 4 years, to join him. He trusts her with his work and that is what is important to her, the designation does not matter, nor does it matter that it will extremely huge amount of work, she doesnt think of how hard the transition would be. All she thinks of, is working with her fav boss again. And she loves it.

Yet, someday, when he sends her a one liner/ one word as the subject of the email with the body itself blank, she will tear her hair out trying to decipher what it is, that he intends to say, or whether he even meant that email to her, she will regret today.
That is when I want her to come back and read this email, for she likes what she has chosen, and it has been her choice to do this.

:-)

Update: After days and weeks of frustration, my "daddy" likes his new position too. Hip hip hurray to him :-) ... we were all so concerned about you "daddy", hope you always smile the way you do today.

The Several People

2008-07-11T14:44:00.004+05:30

all of us has more than person within themselves, dont we? the person who sits upright at class - the no nonsense geek is one, the giggly drunk friend is one, the motherly affectionate friend is one, the selfish, destructive, self centered bitch is one, the dutiful daughter, the corporate junkie, I could list on and on.
I wonder, do the lines blur ever? Does the dutiful daughter scream out loud "for fuck's sake" to her family? or does the tom-boy friend ever admit that she likes Notting Hill and has watched it over 15 times already and every single time she watches, she sheds a couple of tears - for relations that are, for relations that were, and for relations that will never be.

I wonder sometimes, why the lines ever dont blur at all - why the calm exterior of "im strong and can take care of life" while the insides churn with so much unsaid pain? Why are the walls so water-tight? Afterall, it IS the same me, isnt it? why is it that "one" person longs to cry out and sob, while the other takes charge of the external world?

Is it a defence mechanism? Is it to "show" that the person is not what she feels? that the dutiful daughter must hold the family's temper, the affectionate friend must not allow the friends to know she is sad lest she ruins their evening, that the tomboy perched on the ledge can never have tears ... I dont know why.

What does the cool dudette achieve by showing off that nothing affects her? What does the dutiful daughter achieve by saying "its okay, nothing's wrong"? What is it that the always childish friend achieves by not saying out loud the pain that she feels? What does the tom boy get, if she cant talk about all that's wrong to her "best-friend"? Whom does she try to decieve? Is the deception intentional? Is it deception at all?
When you play all these roles together, what are you? a puppet? a person? an actor?
----Update----
Is it because; the realisation exists that be it pain, happiness, anger or disgust, all the emotions are but momentary and unnecessary to existence?
Is it because making each identity porus will lead the eventual death of all the identities? Acceptance of the fact that one likes Notting Hill will lead to the eventual death of the tom-boy, wearing emotions on the sleeve will spell the end of the hard nosed corporate employee? It is the love of each identity in itself that strengthens the abyss between them?
Maybe, may not be.
Anyways, doodling doesnt need a reason.
Di- thy tag shall be done.

well,

2008-07-03T18:23:00.003+05:30

When you are at your nadir - people who bother to commiserate, and do so genuinely
When you are at your pinnacle - people who bother to rejoice, and do so without malice
are people whom you should never let go. They are probably the only ones who will mourn when you no longer walk the face of earth.

Take it from me - a person who, as a friend reminded, from today is on the wrong ~~side~~ part of twenties.

The Speech

2008-06-17T13:05:00.002+05:30

That JK Rowling gave to the guys in Harvard. Read the full text here

but me being me, will only copy paste stuff that I find interesting.

I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called 'real life', I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.

"Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me. "
I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. .....
Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticized only by fools.

What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected;.....

Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.
(emphasis, mine)

'haappyyyy tooooo'

2008-06-05T14:28:00.006+05:30

Make someone happy,
Make just one someone happy;
Make just one heart the heart you sing to.
One smile that cheers you,
One face that lights when it nears you,
One girl you're ev'rything to.

Fame if you win it,
Comes and goes in a minute.
Where's the real stuff in life to cling to?
Love is the answer,
Someone to love is the answer.
Once you've found her, build your world around her.

Make someone happy,
Make just one someone happy,
And you will be happy, too.

Was looking for this song since a couple of days. Finally *sigh* got it. Love this song. So much so much so much :D
and a biggggg Thank you to Taru for directing me to the website that had this song, and to Sakshi for trying her best to get it for me.

(PS - in such a contented mood with this song playing on loop on the comp, that we see no reason to rant over the spate of bad and angry days we have been having. we'll just reserve anger for later, shall we? right now, we'll be happyyy tooooo)

------EDIT-------
Office Humor

The "wtf (look amazed) smile, break into a big grin and then rotfl" moment of the day

An email exchange reads thus -

From xxx@yyy.com
To aaa@yyy.com, bbb@yyy.com, ccc@yyy.com
CC zzz@yyy.com

Justso - the measurement is not as impotent as the methodology that is used to get there.
We need to get the process right and blah blah blah.....

-XXX

A colleague points out how well the second line fits the first - "is not as impotent as..." and then "we need to get the process right...."
LMAO!
---------------------------
The "look at us, we are cool wannabes" moment of the day

Scene - outside a hep mall of the city; we are trying to cross the road, and we have a few pyts standing next to us as though they are posing for a fashion magazine.

C - He did not answer the question asked, just blabbered around for 20 minutes with no comprehension of what he was blabbering

P - Completely true, I agree. He had no idea of the ramifications or the strategic importance of the answers he was giving in a large forum that he was adressing.

The girls - horrified at the language used. they have never heard anything beyond two syllables and this sounds like greek and latin to them.

Me - yeah, he was just trying to beat around the bush.

P - Hey!waaatttt??? major pervert you are heh, beating and bush and all - laugh , snort laugh.

Me - hey waaattt daaa, you are a major pervert, laugh grunt, snort laugh (with "we are so cool heh" expressions)

The girls - *disgusted* and decide not to cross the road, instead walk down elsewhere

We - *duh? they just dont get our coolness daaaa* look

:D

PS - Yes in a very very goodddd mood today :D (touch wood)
PPS - Thanks to Taru for her Post Script :) *hugs*

The Times

2008-05-22T19:11:00.005+05:30

so, we are back again. we of the corporate world, we of the MNC. we of the abused lot who get to work 14 hours a day on stuff they label "integration".

we who used to post two posts a day on topics such as how our company believes in Charity; not plead excuse of being too busy. Busy as a Bee if you would like it.

However, in truth, we have not been writing because we have a writer's block. Now, it is all very well for you to ask "huh, writer? I dont see one here!" and raise eyebrows sarcastically, but this is our blog and when we proclaim our high and mighty ass to belong to a writer, you better nod your head vigorously and agree to it. Else, well, GET LOST.

So, where were we? Ahh, yes, the Writer's block.

Having run out of words that would put a booker prize winner to shame and cause a pulitzer winner to commit suicide, we hide behind the curtain that says "im busy".

(Random Sidenote: in one of the mindless promos of Saawariya, Omang Kumar (is that what that monkey is named? - random sidenote within a random sidenote - Omang Kumar is the same monkey who designed the sets for Ramayan (the TV serial) as well. End of nested loop :D) the set designer says that bhansali liked the Monalisa curtain so much that, so, that he actually put a song in, around it, remember that semi nude Gay son of Rishi Kapoor frolicking around with a curtain?)

(for those who read the side note, and wondered if I had lost it; hello!!! logic, analysis, reasoning. My sidenote relates to a curtain, and my last sentence before the sidenote spoke about a curtain)

well, okay, My main idea though, was to write an earth shattering post revealing about my secret crush on Abhishek Bachchan, but well, I decided I will tell you about how much I work these days.

Like, the other day,

-> when I uploaded a graph instead of my snap on Gtalk, and actually admired the damn thing for being so neat and having all the RCA and stuff around it. (by now, Im sure you are sure that I created that graph).

You dont believe it? Here's the snap to prove it.

-> when I got "a little something" from Haldirams to munch on, and kept it on my desk, forgot about it, and finally when I did see it again, a good 12 hours later, instead of reaching out to the packet, just put the mouse into my mouth. Edible mouses? Next is what? (for dumbos who didnt get that - its the catch line of samsung, with Aamir trying to eat the phone (?)in a particular ad.

-> when I "said Hello, MNC, Just So from the Quality team speaking" when someone rang me up on my mobile phone

-> when I stood in the middle of the room, trying to find my diary (yes, its lost. AGAIN. yes) and wondering where the Fcuk is Ctrl F in the room.

-> when I did a CtrlC at my system, walked over to the team mate's system and did a Ctrl V and looked flabbergasted (whoa thats a huge word) when the phrase copied in my system didnt show up on his!

-> when I said "I'll check my schedule" when she asked me to call the painters and ask them to move their 'coloured' asses to work faster

-> when I checked my attendance sheet online and found that the minimum time spent in office in the last one month has been 10 hours 30 minutes (excluding the commute of course)

so, in case anyone is wondering why the hell is the post named " The Times" it is because, having become such a zombie workaholic, woh din door nahin, when I'll be on the cover of Times. :D

ABCD EFG...

2008-05-07T12:14:00.003+05:30

Theek hain, one month is a long time to return back to your space on the cyber world. Good thing that the web doesn’t catch cobwebs, I’m too lazy to clean. What with the shifting from the ground floor to the first floor, choosing colors for my room and the house, lugging luggage around, cooking for ‘will they be my?’ in-laws, working on the intergration of MNC (My new company – you see –My company (MC) merged with New Company (NC) to form My New Company (MNC) the month has been biji-biji. (hint about MNC – you are looking at a company which has given back to the shareholders in the form of dividends etc, the amount equivalent to the entire market capitalization of British Airways; and is counted among the top 25 brands of the world). And because life is too complicated, and suddenly too personal to be put up on a blog, I shall complete a tag.
Adarsh Tags me on an ABC tag. Now, who would want to know the ABCs of Justso? Anyways, here goes.
A - Available?
If you are a Brahmin, earn more than 12 lakh per annum, and can bear my nagging mom, yes Im available. :P If you arent a brahmin but qualify otherwise, we can elope. For the rest, I have a boyfriend - Abhishek Bachchan.
B - Best Friend
My teddy
C - Cake or Pie
Cake - yum
D - Drink of Choice
Tea de do bhaiyya; esp the tea that is sold for 2 rupees at those cigarette and tea shops. Awesome!
E – Essential thing(s) used every day
Deodrant – else India wont need any bio weapons. It will be enough when I raise my arms. :P
F – Favourite Colour
Though unashamedly, ive gone in for a girly pink for my room, I love the greys, browns and blacks. Proof: half my room is grey, only the other half is the *ugh* girly pink :D
G – Gummy Bears or Gummy Worms
Gummy bears Yeaaa! Remember that cartoon? “gummy beary gummy beary gummy beary juice” :D
H – Hometown
Bangalore. And im sick and tired of this city. Period.
I – Indulgence
Books.
J – January or February
Niether.
K – Kids and Names
Ahh, there were the days when dreaming about future children and their weird names seemed romantic. Not anymore. I don’t have the time. And I hate kids.
L – Life
?
M – Marriage
??
N – Number of siblings
One very very taaallllll bro whom I love to bits :D
O –Oranges or Apples
Orangesssssssssssssssssss ; remember those bachpan ke days when you squirted the juice in the orange peel in someone’s eyes or when you squeezed out all the juice from the peel and did some stupid stuff with the ruler and it would get those cobweb kinda strings to, the fact that the scale would then get useless with all that orange peel juice was so convienently ignored until mom pulled your ears for wasting yet another scale?
P – Phobia
Hieghts. Damn, there are days Im scared to even look out of a first floor balcony. I get this pins and needles sensation in the soles of my feet. I always hang on to someone’s shirt sleeves for dear life when Im standing at the balcony
Q – Quote
The last I checked, DLF was trading at 662.5 rupees at the BSE.
R - Reason to Smile
none. I'll smile on doomsday.
S – Season
Translates as Mausam – it was a nice movie. Some awesome songs. “dil dhoondta hain phir wahi pursat ke raat din” as a matter of fact, Im listening to it right now.
T – Tag people
Tag yourselves. Noone I tag, ever completes the damn tag.
U – Unknown fact about me
Im an alien from the planet Zorggwba
V – Vegetable you do not like
All of them except for aalu and bhindi :D
W – Worst Habit
We aliens don’t have worst habits. We are the epitome of the word ‘perfect’.
X-rays you have had.
X-Rays you’ve ‘had’? Im not yet that desperate :P otherwise – Ive had X – rays of my left hand, left leg, skull, teeth ,right foot TAKEN.
Y – Your favourite food
Doosron ka bheja :P
Z – Zodiac
CANCER – door rahiyo mujhse Mwahahahahaha

PS - Ive been bombarded with "whom do you support" for that silly reality TV gimmick they call "manu aur ranjan ka baap" let me tell you, No it is not Bret Lee in looking very Priety in pink, but the ICL's Lahore Badshahs. Yes, you read that right. Those bumbling fools who have Inzy for a Cap'n and Moin Khan for a coach (The coach is younger than the cap'n by the way). The same bunch of eleven people who would look more at home in a Geriatric (did I spell that right?) ward. Seeing them scampering in the opposite direction of the ball makes better watching that Tom and Jerry on Cartoon Network. Just ping me the next time my fav team plays and I shall watch them with popcorn at hand and a pillow at an arms length so that when I ROTFL, I wont get hurt :P

post 121

2008-03-12T06:37:00.002+05:30

had to write this down.

Now a days moi morks from 6AM to 8PM; go home and there's something to do until 12AM. which means moi has only one great ambition in her life these days - to be able to sleep.
moi thinks it is nirvana. to be so numb to not know anything, but sleep.

"nidra samadhi sthithi"

(for those who understood the above line as much as @#$@#!$!@#; the sentence equates sleep to samadhi - a state of trance/ awakening of subconscious)

Moi is also growing up,realised that moi can do away with the teddy that she is used to clutching hard to her bosom while sleeping. Woke up on three consecutive mornings to find her favorite pillow which hugs her while sleeping has been flung across the room, not just dropped off the bed, mind you, literally flung across the room. what dreams moi was having when she did that, she doesnt know. The first time in all the years moi can remember.

anyways, just when moi decided that she had attained nirvana, on her walk back from after having breakfast with her cute colleague, she happened to see the IIMB bus pull up at the cross road awaiting a green signal. She looked up casually, to notice someone she knew!!! he waved out at her and smiled; that made her day.
She knew she could work the whole day without a complaint.

PS - retiring for a small hiatus. will be back in a couple of days? weeks? months? *shrugs*
and oh, wish me luck. please. (for what? moi will tell you, if your wishes help)

....

2008-03-10T13:39:00.000+05:30

The fight is intense, the sounds of the maces being hurtled towards each other is deafening, even to those sitting at least a good kilometer or two away. The spectators sit still scared to even breathe; the bulging biceps are filled with the power of rage and anger. The lungs breathe in the contaminated air of enmity. The raw emotions that the fighters exude is electric, the air crackles with their rivalry; every clang of the maces touching each other seems to spurt sparks. At one point the maces break into smithereens unable to bear the anger anymore; and with a deafening roar the fighters rush towards each other to fight each other bare handed; movements are lightning like, one tries to get the other, while the other tries to evade the blow and hit the former back; the bodies are slick with blood and sweat, the overpowering smell hitting every living being in the forest and stunning them with an extreme sense of fear and foreboding.

Unknown and silent, there sits a man well hidden by the foliage. He has in his hands a bow and an arrow. The bowstring is taut with the arrow; his thumb touches his lips; his eyes have the look of a hunter tracking his prey down. His elbow strictly perpendicular to his head, he crouches on the limb of a tree. He is watching and waiting. He has identified the fighter whom he shall murder in cold blood. He just needs a fraction moment to release his arrow which will pierce the heart of the enemy. He is an expert marksman; he has been learning to use the bow and arrow even before he learnt the use of words. Sweat trickles down his brow; but his concentration does not waver. He can too, feel the electricity, smell the odor that has formed by the mingling of the sweat and blood of the fighters, he can hear his heart thumping in his chest; it sounds louder than battle conches. What thoughts run through the mind of this assassin will never be known; outwardly he is calm and immobile – until that is, the moment when he let goes of the arrow. As it swishes through the foliage, the fighters fail to notice it; but the fated fighter has a momentary foreboding, he turns; almost awaiting the arrow; he is surprised too, angry at being cheated out of a good fight … but death doesn’t give him the luxury of time. As the arrow pierces his heart and exits his body, he falls down, his adversary who was trying to knock him down, finds his fist punch air instead of the jaw; the sheer force of his own punch which does not meet its intended target makes him stumble, and he almost falls on his brother. The brother who now lay in his own blood and spittle, gasping for life; he has now wet himself; body’s involuntary reaction … he takes one look at his brother and his assassin who is now walking towards him. There is a moment of extreme clarity, and then, there is darkness.

the fighters are Vaali and Sugreeva, the assassin, Rama.

Belief: If Rama and Sugreeva fought for truth and honesty, righteousness and dharma; no matter how powerful Vaali ever was, no matter how many boons he had, he should have been accorded a death that was honourable.

Killing in the battlefield is completely different from murdering someone.

Question: Is there anything called “truth and honesty” or “dharma and righteousness”? I am not so sure anymore.

Tagging Time

2008-02-12T15:14:00.000+05:30

as is my tendency .... hit the publish button when I shouldnt have

My apologies. Somethings arent meant for a public forum.

So, now she is back to regular insanity.

Now, for the long pending tag. (the one that Taru did not tag us with; and Amlan Nanda honored us with :P)

A book that made you laugh:

The Central Excise Duty Text Book.
No seriously, it did make me laugh out loud. God help me if I could make sense of one sentence in that book. It did make me laugh.

A book that made you cry:

Arundhati Roy's God of Small things. Now, I know several really good reviews have been written about Ms Roy; but at the cost of causing displeasure to my Mallu readers (assuming I have an audience that is :P) I must say she was the most morbid writers Ivee read of all times (oh make an exception there for this book. If ever there was a Koshchen that would be asked if a book made me throw up; it would be Kalpana Swaminathan's Bougainvillea House). Meandering back to Miss Roy, the book made me cry tears of blood for having wasted my precious money on buying the accursed book

A book that scared you:

Has to be Ghosts Of Sleath especially when it is read at 12 mid night, especially when bro is away at an NCC camp and mom's at her mom's place. Especially when you are scared of cockroaches, and a sneaky cockroach sneaks up your big toe. The book can be scary - yes.

A book that disgusted you:

After deep thought and scary music and the nail biting tension that you would have felt if you were sitting in the hotseat with Amithabh Bachchan while he said "sure, pakka, lock kar diya jaaye" when you had answered Option D- Lallu Prasad Yadav to the question which is greater of the two - The GDP of Uganda or the personal wealth of Lallu Prasad Yadav or the measurement in centimeters of Ms JayaLalithaa's waist.
I think the title of the most disgusting book ever has to be taken by yes! yes! none other than ...... *drum rolls* ...... anticipation .......*more drum rolls* ..... a long break which advertises V-day balloons (starring AB Sr) and how to dump a dummy 101 book (again starring AB Sr) ..... back to the show, a quick recap ... and just as you are about to hit the X button on the top right hand corner of this window ... we give the WINNER , ladies and Gentlemen - the winner of the most disgusting book award has beaten the Excise Duty text book, the Bougainvillea house, 48, the tenth standard Physics guide, Ramprasad Bihari's a guide to fodder scam ... and stands proudly today - the book is ... you could have never guessed it ... it is, SERVICES MARKETING.

Whew! that was one tense moment. Dont you think so? Finally, the dark horse wins. NDTV, Aaj Tak and the 45678953 other "the best" news channels, run to cover this mega event - with news flashes and re-runs and expert opinions.

moving on,

A book you loved in elementary school: Kabuliwallah. Loved it. totally. It also introduced me to the राग आनंद भैरवी a raag I love till date.

A book you loved in middle school or junior high school: Archies, Asterix and Obelix, and Hardy Boys (neva likes Nancy Drew - umm-mm neva). But what really takes the cake is the Three Investigators. Completely adored Jupiter Jones guy; always wanted to be like him. Ive achieved one part atleast - the golu- molu part :P

A book you loved in high school: Wuthering Hieghts. Loved it. Absolutely. yeah go on, roll your eyes, call me a romantic. But I loved it. Completely. Oh and I loved the Great Train Robbery too. Awesomest book I say!

A book you loved in college: The moonstone. (the what you may ask; but do many know that after Edgar Allen Poe, it was Wilkie Collins who made the genre of detective / investigative stories the fad? It is alleged that Wilkie Collins wrote the Moon stone and the Lady in the white while under the influence of opium? Little wonder then, that opium plays a major role in the Moonstone.

A book that challenged your identity: Many if I may say. Tuesdays with Morrie, The Gita, The Fifth mountain, the Scavenger's Son, Vivekananda's biography, Good to Great, Built to Last. and the list goes on.

A series that you love: The Three Investigators. Wins Hands down. Along with Tintin, Archies, Asterix and Obelix :D (yup, Im a comic junkie)

Your favorite science fiction book: The Throne of Saturn by Allen Drowry. One book (whose name Ive convienently forgotten) which talks about cloning and the bizzare side effects of it. (an age whenh babies are made to order)

Your favorite fantasy: Hmm Fantasy? err... as in what? okay - favorite Fantasy is to be able to make sense of the Customs Act.

Your favorite mystery: Moonstone. Again. It is far fetched, it is impossible and it is foolish, but I like it.

Your favorite biography: The Great Indian Novel. No one tells the story of India like this book does. I was in peals of laughter when Shashi Tharoor talks of Indira Duryodhani :P

Your favorite "coming of age" book: Tuesdays with Morrie

Your favorite classic: aaarrrggghhh! cant believe I forgot the name ... its that book which got made into a movie also that one - Pip and Gwneth Paltrow and ... argh! wait, lemme google for it.

Aaah , it is Great Expectations :D

Your favorite romance book: The Indian Income Tax Act. No seriously. I love the way how the sections and the chapters romance each other.
Otherwise, to mere mortals who do not understand the allure that Tax holds, it has to be The August Moon ; its a collection of poems written by Gulzar.
If you still cant get it, then get your brain cells around this book - Geetanjali by Tagore.

And So I pass on the torch of the Tag to

Sakshi (she'll come up with books on cellular biology or whatever animals she kills in that lab of hers; but will make nice reading :D )
Raj ( I miss the days when we used to go to Crossword together pal .... for ole' times sakes)
Tapan (though Im sure this man is well read, the main reason why his name comes up here, is because Raj has been tagged. I'll have to listen to a thousand "Im happy for you"s while I whine about pure and rare friendship)
Nasia (Nasia rebel against your manager - write a blog post)
Adarsh (I feel that his tastes in books will be zara hatke... would love to know how hatke)
Anurag (wanna see wat an IIMA student reads :D ... and maybe learn something from that list too)

And, anyone else who would like to do this tag is free to do so.

So there.
And yeah. No morose posts. No none at all.

A typically proper insane post on its way. Pliss to wait for it.

Why because

2008-02-05T13:48:00.000+05:30

So, though my reader- base (whom am I kidding? Reader-base? More like a legend – always heard of, never seen of) ... does not wonder why am I missing in action for the past one week; I shall become shameless and indulge in washing the dirty linen on the blog . Does any one have Surf? No? Tide? Yes? Thank you.

The last one week has been horrendous to say the least. Like how the audience watching Saawariya felt ... like how it felt to be the stockholder of a blue chip company when the market went on a free fall; like how it felt to be a Patriot’s fan during this years Super Bowl. Like how it felt to be an employee of TCS when it cut the variable pay.

Yes. It was something like that, only much much more magnified. Like looking at the still shuddering leg of a dead cockroach under a microscope and watching the movement of the fine body hair the leg possesses; yes – that magnified.

So, as I was saying – the week has been horrendous. And now you know how horrendous.
Why? I hear you ask. (“you”? What a joke – we’ve already established that the reader-base of this blog is a legend)

Anyways, shameless that I am ...

Why because (and this was a ‘in’ phrase when I was at school – those 4th to 6th grade engilpis – yessir it was .. everything used to be “aye, why yaaa?” “aiiyyoo why because; you know ...”
So when you had questions like –
“aye why yaa not talking since yesterday to me yaaa?”
“aiyyoo why because you stoled my rubber no?”

“why did you not do your homework you @#$!@#$@!$!@... show me your hand, outstretched..” (the sounds of the steel scale(ruler) hitting our delicate knuckles still resonates the school building... like the haunted last cry of a dying pigeon shot midair) (poetic no? all that pigeon and all?)
“Miss , miss why because miss .... my rubber miss, he stoled miss”)

So there now, you know the story of the “why because” and you know from where our dear Aamir Khan got his story.

Anyways, getting back

The week has been horrendous.
Why?
Why because ... *sigh* it was horrendous.

Also, a lass named Taru did not tag us in her blog.

Also, another lass thinks she has me figured out as she reads my blog; sends me a horrendously (yes i love the word) long email with her assumptions of what is wrong with me. I did not know I held a Paris Hiltonian celebrity status in my blog ...

Also another lad thinks he is in undying love with me ... in his words – “I have a job, I look more handsome than you, I have my own car. Why cant we go around together?”
Well, the lad now has his own cell. No, not Nokia 6610i; I meant his cell room in the Bangalore police station.

Also, too much of work at the aaphis!

Also, ear infection, throat infection, cold, cough, rhinitis and sinusitis. There, that list has everything except Aids and Cancer me thinks.
My doctor bought a new Mercedes Benz. His kids now watch movies only in the Gold Class of PVR Cinemas.

PS
I know I have Wonne tag to complete by Amlan Nanda; I shall I shall I shall.

PPS
I yam leaving for Antartica (for the wones who dont know, it is my country) ; packing bags for my annual visit ... V-day is close by you see.

boringly yours

2008-01-25T14:30:00.000+05:30

suddenly my mood whispers in my ear.

it isnt feeling too well. the combination of no-dinner last night, no breakfast and a possible no lunch isnt helping my mood too much.

bad day until now, feel that "no one likes me anymore" thingy again ... tried talking to a colleague, but he's too biji-biji.
tried calling a couple of friends, but I think they are biji-biji too - their phones went

"ring, rrriiiinngg, The person you have called is busy, please try again later" and then,
"we dont need no education ... we dont need no educa.... the person you have called has not replied, please try again later"

I should be looking at my excel sheet right now, but the flash game embedded in the sheet doesnt look all too alluring after playing it for a cumulative of twenty three housand four hundred and sixty seven hours and forty nine minutes and fifty eight seconds.

*sigh*

abort blog post.

Edit 1 : (almost 2 hours after the original post was written)
had lunch with Pramod, he's getting more and more sober by the day ... work *sigh* can wear down the best of the lot.
walked down for a bye-bye meeting with one of the firangs presently visiting the office; got amreekan lollipops as a good bye gift ... sitting in front of my computer sucking on a green gob (tastes like how ravalgon orange candy (remember the ones we used to get for 25 ps) would taste if someone forgot to put in the sugar in it); looking considerably foolish. there's a brown gob inside this green gob; hope its edible. My stomach already aches.
Mood still feels like a silkworm in boiling water.

Edit2 - that brown goo inside the green gob is choclate - the cadburys 5 star types of choclate. ravalgon with cadburys. Ugh! I think im going to throw up.

another rant

2008-01-22T18:34:00.000+05:30

well, blogging wasnt really in my agenda today.. but today's events kinda made me change my mind.
You see I HAD let go of my steam somewhere.

I read Sakshi's blog about parents influencing kids, left a comment and moved on, very ignorant of the fact that this particular post was the way my day was about to turn to....

I mean how dumb should one be to blindly follow the parents' wishes?
I agree parents play an important AND a major role in your life, I accept that you wouldnt be where you are without your parents, that you ~~LOVE~~ LOVE your parents, that to you parents are the version of God, and your mom is one of those "because God couldnt be everywhere, he made mothers" I agree I agree I agree.
I goddamnit agree to every single arguement. For Chrissakes, I have parents and like 99.9% of the population on the earth love them to no end. I have a brother whom I treat like a son (esp after dad passed away - always called the kid as bacha, never bro); so I understand how the parents feel about their offspring (okay not 100% know, but atleast you know - know)

BUT

Why the F should you not let your parents see your goddamn side of the coin? why the heck should you leave someoneelse stranded in the bloody middle of nowhere just because you love your parents (like no other homosapien who's walked the earth ever did is it?)
you may go screw yourself in your ass and like I care.
I get all pissed off when you get some poor unsuspecting soul involved, decide that you are the Shahrukh in Devdas and she is Aishwarya, or you decide that you are Hrithik Roshan of Kaho na Pyaar hain and she is some equally disgusting lead actress ... and in your delusion, bunk classes; walk in dark bylanes that only killers frequent, run around trees, engrave your names on their trunks (leaving the poor tree with a little less bark and wishing it could bite - okay PJ- forget it) , promise each other stuff like I shall never let go of you even if the sensex crashes another 4000 points; and look deeply into each other's eyes and sigh and say - "you are the most beautiful creature on earth" though you are secretly imagining her to be Catherine Zeta Jones.
There you get my goat. When you do all that, I want you to enact that scene where the hero/ heroine says "par papa mujhe sirf Rahul/ Gopi/ tom/ his dick/ harry se hi pyaar hain, main usi se shaadi karoongi" and when the bald headed amrish puri styled papa says "ek phooti kaudi nahin milegi", walk into the room, pick up all your MAC cosmetics, all your Ritu Beri dresses and all the matching Tanishq and De Beers accessories in your plush suitcase and heave your bosoms and march out of the house, leaving your dad sobbing for having lost more than 90% of his hard earned money and the guy jumping up in glee (MAC Ive heard sells at a profit even in the seconds/ Garage sale) and mouthing "mujhe sirf aapki beti ki zaroorat hain, uske daulat ki nahin" while eyeing that Nakshtra pendant she's wearing.

On a more serious note - I mean what the heck is the issue ? if you really thought something that you did is wrong, did you not have the brains to realise that in the very beginning?
if you are convinced what you are doing IS correct, then why not let those two people see that you want to make your own decisions in your life?
So, they will be angry? The parents will disown you? Throw you out of the house?
Come on, if I let the few parents I have seen be an example ... I agree they might react emotionally/ violently but after all parents are people who have given you their entire life, they have had dreamt about you long before you were born, all their life has been centered around seeing you happy, making adjustments, compromising on their happinessess, just to make sure you have everything you need.

I fail to see why any sane and rational parents will not sober down if they see their children happy with the partners they have chosen.
As managers, most of us convince people about their careers, about their salaries, about their pay packets and sometimes, when the team member has personal issues and approaches us with those, we venture out to give advice even about that.

I fail to see why, if we can convince a set of people who are only related to us due to a transaction called employment, we cannot convince a set of people to whom we are the centre of the universe?

I also fail to see why someone would give up without trying to do any of this. was it because the relation was a joke? I mean you invested so much of time, effort, money, emotions and yourself into this relation just to play a practical prank? Dude, then that was one pathetic practical joke you pulled out of your hat there.
If it wasnt a joke, why the hell arent you trying to make things happen? you are talking about three things here - you, her/him and the damn relation which has so much of investment locked into it (pardon my business jargon - but *shrugs*) ... you have no right to destroy something that took two people to create; more so no right to leave someone in a state of a nervous wreck - just think of how it would have been if it was the other way round? if the person whom you are dumping actually dumped you? would it still be a joke for you?

Dammit, I could go on and on, but it would just be a waste of my time and effort, and as it is Im kinda running out of steam and have an email to attend to now.

but if you are wondering why all this rant on a topic I usually steer clear of,
it is because, we literally had to PULL and I mean PULL a colleague out of a suicidal mode, just because the girl he liked decided the relation was "not worth" giving a try.
I mean after 4 years of going around with each other .... I shocked to hear that statement, in 4 years, you even fall in love with a pet you have; with a damn animal and this guy is the most doting, loving affectionate and completely selflessly in love boyfriend Ive ever seen.
If I had a guy who showered me with atleast 10% of how much love this guy has for his girl, I would lose all this extra weight that I have incorporated into my personality. No seriously, dont laugh, I would. I would lose the extra 100 kgs I have. I would even go in for a plastic surgery to look like his favorite heroine. No, I would. Seriously.

His lacklustre eyes and his dull statement of "You wont even see me tomorrow" amid tears... havent left me yet. The man was broken, believe me, b-r-o-k-e-n.
I shudder to think of such a day in my life (or wait - have I already gone through it? yeah I have - the day I refused to listen to dad - I was broken; rather, my leg was - in an accident)

hindi option

2008-01-18T16:30:00.000+05:30

तुमने जो घाव दिए हैं,
वह दिल के दाघ इस कदर नासूर बने हें
कि मेरी मोहब्बत भी बद्दुआ सी लगती हें

err.. story?

2008-01-17T19:16:00.000+05:30

they sat there laughing at yet another silly joke. amid the milling crowds, as though their laughter was like the church bells ringing.. suddenly she fell silent; a tear making its way down her cheek ... he held out a napkin; concerned for her. he did not know what sorrow it was, that flowed as a solitary tear from her eye; and he didnt dare ask.

As she walked back, holding her jacket close to her bosom for warmth; she smiled; it was a nice evening. He was a good man. Immediately she thought of him. she wanted to tell him about today's evening, she wanted to share every minute she had spent with him, with him.

he lay sprawled on his bed. she was a nice girl, he hadnt noticed the clock strike 11 when he was with her, it was as though time just .... vanished.... what was it that they had spoken about? nothing; just a few trivial matters, a few jokes and what else; he could not remember anything at all, except that it had felt right to be there; with her, to laugh and smile, to tell her about himself, his life and to extend his hand when hers trembled, to wipe her tear off
and then he thought of her, he wondered if she would like her

she waited for him all day. She loved him more than anything else in her life. heck! she loved him more than she loved herself. Something was amiss these days though, he was never there when she needed him and Lord knew she needed him ever so badly now. a couple of tears made their way from her eyes, she tried to squeeze them back into her eyes, but they seemed determined to flow out. She took out her phone and called him. Her only comfort was that he was around. she had begun to spend more and more time with him. every moment she spent with him, made her ache all the more for him; she wanted him to know everything... every moment in her life, she wanted to tell him that she belonged to him utterly and completely. So lost she was in her thoughts, that she did not notice him coming. he held out his hand to her.

They walked down the beach, hand in hand, squatting in the wet sand; feeling the salty waves lick their toes before they went back on their unending journey back to the other shore. Her eyes kept straying at the road which he used to take. He kept thinking of how she hated sea shores.

As she bent her head on his shoulder, he was jolted into the present. held her softly and wondered - is it wrong to love?
as she she sat there, her head on his shoulders, she wondered if he would ever know of her love for him and if she would ever lean on him this way for support... is it wrong to love? was the thought on her mind.

BTW - Sakshi says men dont call because they dont want to. I second that opinion. completely.

random ramblings

2008-01-16T12:55:00.000+05:30

Something has happened, something that has unlocked all that I tried to keep so carefully swept under the carpet. There are somethings that you can change, and there are things that you need to live with. and then, there are things that you can niether change, nor live with - such issues get swept under the carpet. Occasionally when someone tries to dust that carpet out, the dust gives you a big time allergy.

Im reeling under that allergy for a couple of days now; amplified by the fact that this is the time when I have violent mood swings, it may be an episode existing entirely only in my figments of imagination and not beyond. *sigh*

A bitter taste pervades the mouth permanently; a feeling of nausea is not entirely absent. Feel a general aversion to food. (on second thoughts I think - that its good for me; atleast some weightloss eh?) a pallor of gloom also pervades along with the bitter taste, I can see the cynical pessimism creeping up again; something I have fought against for sometime now. the worst thing being, I actually feel like giving into it ... makes life easier it seems. Optimism can be very burdensome at times. By writing this crap, Im breaking a promise made to myself; that self pity shall not exceed a couple of lines at the most on the blog.

okay, but it isnt like the days are all morose and sad; on the contrary- they are filled up with people and places and jokes and laughter; but you know there is this .... sigh .... no you dont know. I dont want you to know. I mean what crap? I like watched atleast 4 movies in the last three days, watched Taare Zameen Par and decided that I'd gotten myself into worse fixes than that kid there; got lots more scolded than him ... nothing too great in it. Also, given the fact that not all children ARE understood; so he was, you can say, the luckier of the lot. Watever - as though I give a horses ass to it. Watched Nehle Pe Dehla ; doesnt it like take the word worst to another dimension completely? okay well, it isnt as bad as those mindless flicks by Karan Johar. okay. Shopped a lot; got poorer by several thousand rupees, shopped with girls (ugh in hindsight - believe me; shopping with girls can be an excercise - I mean - what kind of a fool should you be to stare at one damn thing for a complete 30 minutes and go
"bhaiyya isme thoda sa light shade, yahi wale embroidery main, pure silk main, kuch kam paison main, milega?"
and when the poor haggled shopkeeper manages to pull it out with an expression that would have made Archimedes' expression of Eureka pale in stare at it for another 45 minutes checking every minute detail, turn around and exclaim to yours truly that
"arre, aise wala to mere paas pahle se hi hain, chalo, us wale shop main dekhte hain" with the gait of Mallika Sherawat when she's asked to shed her clothes for camera.
I mean you goddamn looked at twenty three thousand found hundred and forty five shops to exclaim this???
So you see, it isnt all morose and sad, have been wandering off until the wee hours of the night with random friends who dont have to face a mom when they meander into their rooms at 2 AM in the night. But then, my mom's okay these days, I guess she's given up on me, completely.
but, inspite of it all, you know ... there is this ... aah, well you dont. you wont know and I wont tell you anything. because I suspect its all in here (taps head) a figment of my imagination.

And, moving on, let me narrate a story.

Actually, on second thoughts, let me not. Not because I dont have one, I actually have one; but its too - well, complicated. you know relationships and all, affinities and all, speech and silence and much more. you wont understand. I dont want you to.

right now, do this - switch off the lights of your room, close the windows, draw the curtains, sprawl back on your bed, close your eyes, let your body go loose limbed, feel each part of your body - no not by touch; I mean mentally feel the presence of your limbs ... think of your thoughts, feel your heart, hear it beating; feel the tears come out from the corners of your closed eyes, feel that faint smile on your lips ... feel yourself... feel one with yourself, with your body, your mind, your heart and your ego. let go, walk into sub conciousness, let sleep overcome you.
Fall in love with me; fall in love with yourself.

2008-01-15T12:35:00.000+05:30

a dream rekindled, the thirst re-awakened.
the road is stony and we have no shoes on, bleeding and blistered soles shall get us there.

lets see how far we go this time; me and my dream.

my thoughts

2008-01-14T11:50:00.000+05:30

walked up to buy a new diary; after a lot of thought and asking the guy to crawl into nooks and crammys and picking up the "right" kind of diary; realised; really did not want to. DD has been with me for nine years now. cannot think of replacing DD. so does that mean; when the couple of pages left over are filled in there will be nothing else? right now; not sure, dont know.
right now, need to just write in DD; but scared, that precious paper will be used up for rambling.

the classes at the iimb are coming to an end; feb 9th will be the last class. feel sad about it. very sad. the course began at a time when there was nothing else to look forward to; during the year; there were times when the only reason the week would pulled through was for the classes in the weekend. the mad frenzy to complete assignments in the middle of umpteen other things will sorely be missed.the course and the insti have instilled ... lets say a new zest for life; a new dimension to it.. sigh.

in an extremely cranky mood today; legs hurt like ..ouch! they hurt, thats all. mood swing time now. the stomach hurts too.. so does the back and the waist; aah, not one living cell in the body that doesnt. the esophagus has decided to run in reverse gear; all the digestive juices come up; instead of the food going in;
every small and insignificant thing will look like mt everest the next few days. every time one doesnt smile wide enough, it will mean resentment and artificiality, everytime my fone isnt picked up; it will mean hate and negligence ... the next few days will go slow, very very s..l..o..w..; pms is an expert in making a woman a scheming bitch.

come to think of it, why do men treat women like some parasite or something? every independent self respecting woman who stands straight and calls an ace an ace is from the andromeda galaxy; and every female who snivells and sniffles and cries out loud and faints at the drop of a hat is a fine example of the "weaker sex" and men shall rush out to protect the 'lady'. a "woman" has to cry and make her emotions known; she has to find the shoulder of a man to run to ... sigh. its going to take another trip round the universe to transform this one into a lady.
damn, got milk on my hair, will need to clean it up now. shit!

look up and see the morning sun, bright red and warm
look out in the garden, and see the flowers and the bees swarm
and, then , as I read a book, half asleep, and the wind rustles the pages
the sun, the book, the wind , the bees, the moment, all of them, sweet images
I wish, I could, send them all to you, untouched and pure

curl up in the night, the teddy company
toss and turn; held in throes of a nightmare
blood and gore, death and disease play the symphony
the toy, the sleep, the dream, the nightmare, all of them, unspoken fears
I wish, I could, my head on your shoulder, with you share

alone and quiet, comptemplating and musing
hearing my heart beat, thinking of you, falling in love
the muse, the love, the solitude, all of them belong to you
I wish, I could, in a moment of silence, tell you all
of how much I love you

Autistic wishes

2008-01-08T19:43:00.000+05:30

And then there are times when I wish truly genuinely and completely that I was autistic.

Completely unable to emote anything remotely human; especially that descpicable, disgusting emotion there - yes, that one - the one that slouches there in the corner ready to take you down with a malicious grin on its lips, leaving you helpless and cornered to do anything else at all.

JD

2008-01-02T15:55:00.000+05:30

meanwhile,

realised, the company does not have a job- description for the post I hold right now.

asked : if I dont have a JD, should I work really?

got the answer : if you dont have a JD, should you have a job, really?

Got back to whatever insignificant work that was, that I was doing on excel. Sigh.

Edit:

(I just had to put it here)

How a mallu pronounces "Fantastic"

The Fan should be pronounced as fun - as in I had fun getting drunk; but drag the u in the fun a li'l, like I had f-u-n drinking,
else try just "aa" as the "aas" described below.

the "as" in (fantastic) as a brit guy would pronounce arse; except without the r sound of course,
but if thats too difficult for you to imagine, - as "aas" as in " jab se abhishek bachchan ki shaadi hui hain, jeene ki aas hi nahin hain"
the "tic" as in "stick" - as in I would love to beat up Ranbir Kapoor with a think long stick.
(you may keep the "s" sound in the stick, it will merge with your a(r)se anyways :P

How a northie pronounces comfortable

say this -> you know that furniture you borrowed last month? yes, I have come for table.
now just say 'come for table. '

and there you go - comfortable - come for table :P

How a Gult (telguite) pronounces Curd/ Board (basically anything that ends with a rd)

say Cur and then say road.
now say curroad quickly .. try and make the 'o' as short as possible.

now for Board .. say bo, now say red. now say bo-red (not bored mind you. the hyphen has a significance) or just pronounce it as borad.

:P
There, the lesson for the day - taught.

ME

2007-12-28T14:31:00.000+05:30

An assignment requires me to write "who am I"

I borrow a few words to describe myself...

Sri bhagawan uvacha

I am the Supersoul, O Arjuna, seated in the hearts of all living entities. I am the beginning, the middle and the end of all beings. Of the Âdityas I am Vishnu, of lights I am the radiant sun, ....and among the stars I am the moon
Of the Vedas I am the Sama Veda; of the senses I am the mind...
Of all the Rudras I am Lord S'iva...
Of the great sages I am Bhrigu; of words I am the transcendental om...... and of immovable things I am the Himalayas....and among men I am the monarch...
....of all the regulators I am also Yama, the controller of death.....of what rules I am the Time
...Of purifiers I am the wind, of the Kshatriyas I am Rama, of fishes I am the shark, and of flowing rivers I am the Ganges...
Of all creations I am the beginning and the end and also the middle, O Arjuna.
Of all sciences I am the spiritual science of the self, and among logicians I am the conclusive truth....
Of the means of suppression I am the clout, I am the morality of those who seek victory, the silence I am of all secrets, and of the wise I am the knowledge

Of whatever that of all the beings may exist I am the source, O Arjuna; nothing of the moving and unmoving exists without Me.

today's info

2007-12-26T12:21:00.000+05:30

read in the ET that most people try and google up about themselves.
Tried it today.

I wasnt expecting too much, for online, Im Arpz and never Arpana, also because Im not someone who needs to be kept track of by Google. *sarcastic sigh*

Nevertheless, I tried out Arpana in the google bar and one link that came up , apart from Arpana Caur and the organisation Arpana, was someone's show of affection to a certain "Arpana". *smiles*, chalo, I hope she knows about it and is happy for it.

Also got this - http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/arpana

Cheers.

Christmas

2007-12-23T22:47:00.000+05:30

They say miracles happen around this time.
Even the grinch got his miracle.

BTW, orkut, Hi-5 and Gazzag profiles - deleted.

(PS - Raj, I told you I can do it. Ive just begun. The next in line is you know what.)

(PS2 - met up with a friend. Im still wondering how can naive people manage to exist?)

Which indirect cost?

2007-12-22T20:39:00.000+05:30

Friend: I think I love him

Me : (trying to find out cost pools and cost drivers) uh? hmm? argh!

Friend: Are you even listening?

Me: Yeah, Im trying to see which is the right cost driver

Friend: (taking my notes away) Listen to me, I love him

Me: Him? no, the case is about an apparel indust.... errr.. yeah... him, him! yeah him! love!

Friend: Oho! Do you even know whom Im talking about?

Me: err... (scratches head and thinks of which inidrect cost should go where) Abhishek Bachchan?

Friend: bhaad main jaa tu aur tera abhi-shake (does a li'l jig). arre him .. XYZ, I love him

Me: (Trying to retrieve my notes) Aaahhh, him, he looks like a gorrilla, but doesnt he have a girl friend? She's damn b-o-otiful too :P

Friend: Love Arpana, you dont even know what it means, so what if he has a girlfriend? I still love him ...

Me : Whats the use?

Friend: Not everything is your Balance sheet okay? Not everything is done for "use" okay?

Me: aah, you can dream on, but dawn does break. You can be an NGO, but profit you must make.

Friend: Why the heck do I even talk to you?

Me : Actually, that was so wise! Lemme blog about it yaar .. awesome quote, wait lemme write it down.

Friend: No wonder you are single. (walking away in anger) you will die single

Me: (calling after her) Cleopatra died single .... she sure enjoyed HER life (sticking toungue out)

Later on I pat myself on the back and applaud - wow, what a sentence:
you can dream on, but dawn does break. You can be an NGO, but profit you must make.

On another note:
Rambo arrives in Bangalore on Monday Evening.

Post due on Mona Darling. Do remind me about it. I'll go all senti and teary eyed and all and write about Mona Darling.

And yeah, in case I dont blog in the next few days, run along and have a Merry christmas too :)

A small muse

2007-12-20T17:48:00.000+05:30

Jackie's trying hard to reappear, She hates dolly.

AND

I can't take hints, so, bite me.

PS - 100th post, (few posts and lot of drafts)

PS 2 - tell me this. lately I havent been writing what I want to. what I really write is emailed to the couple of people who *probably* understand. Whats the point in having a blog when you cant write what you want?

a. you want to show off that you too, like a million other people have a blog?
b. you want to be able to write stuff that no one reads / understands?
c. you want to show off that you too can write albeit pathetically?

2007-12-19T17:35:00.000+05:30

looks like the weather mirrors my mood these days.

and , in a moment

2007-12-16T21:49:00.000+05:30

lazy sunday afternoon,

the kind of noons when you hear the phone ringing, dont even stretch your hand out to put it on a silent mode, instead, just turn the other side, drag the pillow over your hear, snuggle a li'l more and curl up.

the kind of noons, that when you suddenly feel bored, and like the feeling of feeling bored and lazily, yawn and stretch and plonk back into your pillows.

the long noon, when a moment reminds of you of someone, and then, a song creeps up into your senses ...

thought Sakshi would have that song, as soon as fingers touched the keyboard, they rummaged through her website and returned back a li'l disappointed; but anyways, here's the moment and feel free to wallow in the grief of broken love as Mukesh sings for Manoj Kumar in this block buster of yester years - Purab aur Paschim.

Koi_Jab_Tumhara_hr...

Reading poetry ... "All You Who Sleep Tonight" by Vikram Seth.

Sit, drink your coffee here; your work can wait awhile.
You’re twenty-six, and still have some life ahead.
No need for wit; just talk vacuities, and I’ll
Reciprocate in kind, or laugh at you instead.

The world is too opaque, distressing and profound.
This twenty minutes’ rendezvous will make my day:
To sit here in the sun, with grackles all around,
Staring with beady eyes, and you two feet away.

- Vikram Seth.

What a juxtaposition to the song and the poem, what a marvel is the mind that can conjure up two separate sets of emotions in a single moment?

2007-12-14T17:53:00.001+05:30

I would love to do so many things, but Im too busy being an adult.

Foul

2007-12-14T11:34:00.000+05:30

shitty, foul and irritated mood; and no , not the PMS mood swing.
Just F%^& off, before I kill you.

Some musings

2007-12-11T16:02:00.000+05:30

What do you do when you are content with your life, and just one moment rips apart that seemingly calm exterior?

What do you do when the only person who would ever understand you, is the person you dont want to talk to, because understanding you, would just hurt the person even more?

Yet another Sunday? No way

2007-12-11T11:11:00.000+05:30

Sundays are those lazy relaxing days of your life when you spend most of it curled up on your Kurlon matresses.

The above statement holds good, if you dont (I repeat) DONT have a younger cousin who declares her intentions to get married to the family.

*sigh* sadly, I have a horde of younger cousins, and being so very hep and all that, nice and all that, intelligent and beautiful (bootiful too? :P) and all that, it is but imperative that they fall in love; once in love, *more sigh* as the rest of the world knows, you decide to bid adieu to freedom and singledom, leaving poor older cousins to be emotionally blackmailed by everyone excluding (thankfully) the mail man.

So while, my dear pretty intelligent young cousin declares at home that she is in love and shall get married to her knight in shining armor, I cannot help but think of free and tasty three course meal that will served at the occasion of her marriage, with a little twinge of the familiar disgust at the camera man who will be ever so eager to capture those moments when the sambhar trickles down my chin and ruins my expensive salwar suit and my mother cannot help but think of "why is my daughter being such a donkey that she cannot think of marriage, but only the food at marriage?"

Coming to think of it I would love to declare at home that Im in love too, and I keep doing that every now and then too, only I go " mann! I love this book" or I go "mannn whoever invented solitaire, I love the game"; but I guess the society as a whole hasnt advanced so much as yet to allow marriage between living and non living things.

Seriously though, on a parting note : I know the truth. No one else does. No one else understands, and maybe it is better to leave somethings to be un-understood by anyone else.When it comes to that, let it come to that; else , it will all anyways end.

"Let there be friends" - God, Day 7

2007-12-07T22:45:00.000+05:30

Life can be a err female dog sometimes.

What with the apprisal times wherein you have to get a bunch of people put in random things they'd done (or not) over the past 12 months onto an online format which doesnt allow you more than 10 charecters (the company knows us lot very well :D) and put in those two instances when you worked and the company collectively stood up and shouted out in one voice "please arpz, if you dont do anything, nothing can go wrong... do the favor of not doing anything for us" (they ripped off the first line from the Mr Bean movie, and I told them that.
And then, sud-suddenly, the database decides to take a walk in the woods, it decides to stop at a paanipuri stall where it developed dysentry. No one's seen the database ever since. My computer wakes up on the day of a deadline and says - "enough of working for this moron who does nothing but read blogs and write random stuff that no one reads" and coughs, splutters, clutches its Mother board in a dramatic fashion that Dilip Kumar would be proud of and dies.
The technology guys spend two days playing hopscotch, and only when I threatened to join their game, they agreed to help me out, fearing huge craters in their car-parking space. They are yet to find my teeny cubicle. (if there was a God, he would proove his existence by Zapping every techie alive on their butts ... *waits to see if anyone is struck by a thunderbolt - no one is* see, there is NO God!)
My professor is a poor henpecked husband, his wifey dear (i swear to Lord, this is true) expects him home on the dot of 2100 hours. I know this, because I saw him running around trying to catch a flight that was on time from Hyderabad, when asked for the cause of his agitation, he mumbled about the use of belans in the Indian Economy and the reason for high cost of airfares. ( Mini, whose blog url I cannot provide - she doesnt write one you buddhu, can vouch for this .. well, atleast for the non exaggerrated part of this). He enjoys imagining his class to be his biwi amd unleashes his pent up fury on the biwi (the class) by giving us an assignment (which Im yet to submit and the last date of which was the day when Babar invaded India)which made excel turn around cry "mommy" and run up to Bill Gates.

I love these times, it brings out the she-dog in me, the foul mood, the string of cusses, the "teri naani mari to main kya karoon" look, and also those two nukes I keep hidden under the bed (for aunts need to be silenced when they utter the "marriage" word).

And one such day, when Arpz was threating to blow up the offices of Shaadi.com and JeevanSathi.com, someone sent her an email .... an email that did not say "hey, you have a face of a baboon's back" no, as much as people would like to send that mail, they dont, you see, you cannot say that to a girl who weighs as much as the titanic and not expect her to kill you by sitting on you.
well, the sweet email just asked (in effect not verbatim) - how are you, take care, I love you.

Aah, I think it should suffice to say, the shaadi.com and the jeevansathi.com offices are still standing and the aunts are yet alive. They now recieve threats from a smiling Arpz.

Flights of Fantasy

2007-12-04T14:43:00.000+05:30

The recent decision of Jet and Kingfisher to hike the fuel surcharge hits another blow to the sorry state of affairs of the Indian skies today.

As it is, the domestic air fares in India are far higher than that of many other countries - the recent increase of Rs 300/- of fuel surcharge bringing up taxes+surcharge to Rs 1650 is just another addition to the long list of "why air travel isnt good"

We already have factors like

1. Delays in the flight schedules, making the old railways joke of
"Passenger 1 : This train is dot on time, India sure is progressing
Passenger 2 : Oh no sir, this train was scheduled to arrive a couple of days back, its arrived today." passe.
Today, we can see people sleeping around in the air terminals like they used to, in the railway platforms earlier (do they still do? please do let me know).
Ridiculous excuses are stated for delays and shoddy service.

2. Pricing of food and water is such that if Bill Gates happened to stay long enough at our airports, he would soon be reduced to beggary. So, even when you have left home - well stuffed, having eaten well and drunk adequate amount of water to keep you those four hours from Bangalore to Delhi, you find yourself shelling our Rs65 for a samosa because of point 1 above.

3. Poor maintainence of the air terminals. One cannot but wonder the efficency of the system which asks you to cough up Rs 1650 as "taxes and surcharge" to gobble it all up without a trace being shown on the improvement of these terminals.
Read with conjunction of Point1 above, you'll see that you have three times the number of people who can be accomodated at a given point of time in the departure lounge, leading to crowding and all the side effects of crowding (the smells, sights et all).

4. With all the surcharges being added into the definition of taxes, the travel agents lose out on the commission recieveable, making this business more and more cold and distant. The travellers get into sites like makemytrip.com which shows the basic fare when you search for air fares, but adds close to Rs 2000 in taxes as you decide to buy the ticket.
Add to that the refund woes.
Ideally, once you cancel a ticket in advance, the passenger is entitled to recieve the taxes that he had paid; but with the congestion charge and fuel surcharge being forfieted, even if the passenger has paid close to Rs 3000/- on a ticket, he ends up getting back only Rs225/- and that too, if he is lucky. God save the poor passenger if he has booked it with one of these web portals, because he might just lose all that Rs225 trying to call up the customer care centre in wierd places like Gurgaon and which do not employ a toll free number, and even if they do, this number is forever off the hook/engaged thus forcing the customer to call on a toll number.

This is a double gain for these carriers, as they dont have to pay commission on these so called taxes and since the definition is built for convience of these carriers; they arent refunded when the passenger cancels the ticket.

With the public carriers stuck in the quagmire of losses (both Indian and Air India have reported losses this year); one cannot expect them to bail the passengers out of this situation.

The only alternative being going back to train travel, which though would come as a news of delight to Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav, is a step backwards in the progress of the country. Shelling out close to Rs 1800, one can enjoy travelling in the I class AC coach of a train, with nothing but those precious days lost in travelling to lose. Where as you pay close to a total fare of Rs 2025 and end up waiting and sweating it out in the airport lounge for close to 4 hours and jostling your fellow travellers for board the flight and huff and puff into your seat to realise you are thirsty and pay Rs 100 for a small bottle of mineral water. I personally, am surprised, these air carriers allow you to use the loo without charging any "surcharge" for this.

India is a country with immense potential for air traffic, with a massive population of the middle classes who are increasingly able to afford air travel, these amenties should get better and more efficient rather going back to the stone age. It makes sense from a long term profit perspective to improve these facilities and pull up their socks for these private air carriers, but I guess they love to be myopic.

The Indian skies were opened up to the private sector with the hope of allowing for more efficency and effectiveness to any class of people that these private air carriers wanted to cater to; I guess that goal has been lost somewhere in the haze of balance sheets and profits that these people want to book.

I hope this silences those sections of people who would like to see more of private investments in the infrastructure and other places of national interest.

PS : thanks to the above though, I was able to book at ticket at 6:30 PM, travel through congested roads for over an hour, and still be able to catch my flight which was scheduled to leave at 8:30PM. No prizes for guessing the fact correctly that the flight was over an hour late and I ended up waiting in the lounge, instead of staring morosely into the skies where the craft should have been, if it was on time.

PS 2: Inputs and some info taken from ET. the rant, though is mine :D

EDIT:
With Zee's help. how can I forget the awful messups these airports create under the mask of "air traffic congestion"? An airplane waits like a prisoner in queue for his daily ration of food, for hours together before they it take off.

A plane lands at an interim airport say the Delhi bound aircraft lands at Hyderabad for a stopover of 15 minutes, this soon stretches to four hours due to "air traffic congestion" in the Delhi aiport.

A plane decides not to go the scheduled port of destination and throws the passengers off at a completely different location.

And of course - read Zee's comment here

The Favor

2007-11-29T11:49:00.001+05:30

Will someone do me this favor?
Empty that cauldron of dreams,
Switch off the moon too
And pull the plug off the stars
For they are far too noisy and add to the chaos deep within

Mute that rustle of the Gulmohar
Pause that incessant dripping of water
From that tap yonder
Hold back the sun
And postpone the day
For they search too long and deep for secrets hidden within

Just let me slip under the blanket of darkness
and moist it with my tears
let me drown in the sounds of my sobs
amplified a zillion times over by my grief
gasping for air and clutching for life
until the sobs and their sounds take over
leading me to that death valley of dreamless sleep.

Guide

2007-11-28T16:35:00.000+05:30

There's something so deep in that exchange that forces you into introspection.

socha tha koi samjhe na samjhe rosy zaroor samajh jaayegi, ye samajh bhi dekho kitni naa samajh nikli

sach to ye hain raju, na main tumhe samjhi, na tum mujhe samjhe

*contented sigh at having dug this video out*

^^|^^

2007-11-19T18:50:00.000+05:30

and then sometimes, I wonder - can I ever stop being disgusted with the human race?

disgusted, pissed off and irritated.

Edit/ Update

Kabhi aisa bhi hota hain,
Ki tanhayee bol utt thi hain

Raaton ke andheron main
Chup chaap lete hue
Na tare, na chand, na neend
bas tanhaayee.

Gum sum baithe hue, kisi kone main
Subah ke halke dhoop main jab
Apna saaya nazar aata hain,
Koi prashn nahin, koi uttar nahin
Sirf tanhaayee

Kabhi kaam karte hue,
thak ke baith yunhi jaao
do lamhe bas rukke jab
sannaton ki aawaazien suno
na tum, na main, bas, tanhaayee

kabhi yunhi, kisi baat pe hansi aati hain
khaali deewaron se takraake goon jut thi hain
honton se nikalti hain, par aankhon tak nahin pahunchti
khaali dil, khaali kamre, bejaan hansi, aur tanhaayee

down down and ?

2007-11-10T00:40:00.000+05:30

You know things on a downward trend when

You miss the engagement of your friend (17 year old friendship), and instead leave a scrap at to her and jiju (err.. would-be-jiju.)

You forget the birthday of your friend of (a 12 year old friendship) and need to be reminded by another friend, and you scrap him saying " in some timezone of the world ; its still your birthday, so happy birthday)

You miss breakfast and lunch for five days in a row and skip dinner because either a. its too late to eat, or b. you are too tired to even chew.

You forget when is diwali, and are only made aware of its existence when an official mail is sent out from the travel agency who books your tickets saying they are closed on So&So date and will not be able to book those SQ flights for you.

Your friend who usually works insane hours calls up and tells you that he's going home to enjoy the festival, and you are slated to work for the next 5 hours at office.

Your relatives have forgotten how you look, your friends have deleted your number from their phone book, you no longer recieve those forwarded emails because you dont read them anyways.

You promise your friends that you will catch a movie with them, and make them book the tickets, but never turn up - because in the course of doing that PPT presentation, you'd completely forgotten that you had a couple of friends to meet.

When you have a relapse of intestinal infection and refuse to listen to the doc when he asks you to please take a day off for tests because you have meetings to catch.

The nice sweets that your cousin got for you are mouldy and untouched for the past one week

When you look at your wrist watch and say "aah, its still 9:30 PM mom, I told you I'll be home at 11" and your mom goes - damn you its 9:30 PM in Manila; midnight in India.

When your bro asks you to come fire cracker shopping with him, and you pull out a couple of notes from your wallet and ask him to buy some.

When on the day of the festival mom tells you that you havent shopped for new clothes for the kid brother, and you again put the money on the pillow of the sleeping bro, because you havent the time to wake him up and atleast talk to him. Inspite of which bro waits for you at the doorstep even at a time close to midnight without having burst any crackers becuase he's waiting for you to join him, crestfallen face and all you see.

PS - I did burst crackers with bro and contributed to the air pollution, so what if the whole world was asleep and we were the only two shouting our lungs out?

Next update, after yours truly gets back from her trip to Manila.

Packaged deal

2007-11-03T21:25:00.000+05:30

Browsed through Raj's blog, and saw this post.
Signature Raj, that post is.Straightforward and unbiased.
Hits you where it hurts the most while mincing no words.
Though I set out to write something totally different, and the title should tell you, I'll end up stuffing everything down your unwilling throats, I think its time we actually stood up and owned up to our mistakes.
The first thought that came upto my mind as I looked through all those links and his write-up, was that "bloody corrupt politicians"; the conscience would not let go. "who chose them? your vote" the voice echoed. Every damn politicain is the same; I sighed , the developments in Karnataka (of which you are unaware, then you must be one those M&B reader types, in your own arabia) should reiterate that. "Who made them politicians? " my irksome conscience asked.
Well, the choice of a career is upto the individual - my weak defense.
Did I tell you my conscience is an avid movie buff? It quotes that statement from Nayak about everyone complaining of dirty politics, but no one wanting to do a thing about it.
I agree. I want my brother to do an MBA. Im happy working in a company, the minute whose name people hear go "acha! TV discount pe milega?". I would not want to marry a guy who's career choice is "municipal corporator". What right then, have I to criticise anyone?

While i leave that thought for you to chew on, like a cow chews on the cud;

I shall subject you to yet another torrent of my poem. (Raj who was subjected to the first hearing of this poem has some really nice insights to provide about the interpretation, and as you've rightly guessed, quite unpublishable too :D)

The crease of silks,
The sigh escaping the lips
The moonlight
The silvery night
The night, it refuses to go away.

Thousands of waves, lifting their arms up
Try reaching the sky, to drape the dark satin
I smile at their penance, they never give up
And the night, it refuses to go away

Two parallel lines; run together
The earth and the sky, toward the horizon
I smile at their futility, the moments of togetherness, they try to gather
The night, it refuses to go away

One droplet behind another
Rush out in silent anguish
The light dawns, the strength I try and muster
But the night, it refuses to go away.

(PS - not everyone will get the extremely introspective and unpublishable insights such as my dear friend Raj was enlightened with, but I know, of one person who will. and to that person *hugs*)

As the other 2 of you (cos just four kind souls with way too much time on their hands read this blog) wonder about who that person whom Im hugging above is,

I present to you an excerpt, a very rare glimpse, as rare as Nisha Kothari playing a nun, from my private blog ;
"It doesnt matter if you let go of a hundred "right" decisions because there are times when nothing is right or wrong. What use of a future happiness if Im sad today? My life is here, today and now. I want to be happy today. Who knows of tomorrow? Here and now, I may die. Any moment. I may live to be a hundred and ten too; but how do I know that today's right decision will make me happy on my 99th birthday?Is there is a formula to convert present value of anguish to future value of happiness and compare the rate of return and see which is a better option? Even if there is, I shall discount the future with uncertainty. The future may never arrive. ...............If Im alone and miserable tomorrow, the memories of today shall put back a smile on my lips, for these are all I'll have, the moments of when Ive lived life, for otherwise, I will have waited, waited for something to arrive, and happiness cannot be fedexed, it has to be experienced."

Just Not Right

2007-11-01T11:50:00.000+05:30

something isnt right.

Pyaar Mein Jinke Sab Jag Chhodha
Aur Huye Badnaam
Unke Hi Haathon Haal Hua Yeh
Baithe Hai Dil Ko Tham
Apne Kabhi The Ab Hain Paraaye
Din Dhal jaaye

GUIDE - Din Dhal J...

random

2007-10-31T22:50:00.000+05:30

# learnt why they say dont mix business and pleasure

# relearnt why Quality guys are such dorks by definition

# best friend's getting married - in th midst of all the Yippeees and congrats and bhangdas and pulling jiju's leg, a bolt of electricity just struck home that mom's not gonna be happy -she'll re-start her "search" with greater vigour, and every single day your's truly shall be nagged to death.(the gazillion rupee (now that the rupee is appreciating - I prefer to be more patriotic and not say dollar :P) queschun is that, how do you convince mom that you would kill to stay alone but you dont want to be a murderer.

# Meenakshi's post and Taru's comments on love just made me feel like Hitler bhaishab part 2 (of course the female version - what were you thinking??) This made sure that there ensued a detailed conversation with yours truly on the pros and cons of love. After a detailed cost-benefit analysis (now I have to show some value add to the amount my company's spending on the corporate course at IIMB dont I? but err... just dont ask me what the words mean) ont eht extensive topic of love, we (the pro yours truly and the con yours truly) decided that , our resumes do not have requsitie skill sets to even venture out in that field.
The skill sets on the cirriculum vitae is limited to being a dork and being made fun of.
(the author does not wish to disclose the deep emotional moments of introspection she had .... the times when she listened to the songs of Pyaare Mohan - (remember that very forgettable movie?) and almost cried out loud at the growing "chakkaism" in the bollywood with the advent of Ranbir Kapoor, so she'll end the post here, and now.)

The Saturday

2007-10-27T21:04:00.000+05:30

*loonnggg one, brace yourselves*

Friday night is when you get to talk a li'l to friends, and browse some blogs. Friday night is when you realise with a start that you have that course at IIMB tomorrow and you havent yet done that project.
At 12 AM or is it 1AM? you download that Pdf that the teammate has forwarded, and the stupid Lan connection takes forever to download a silly attachment with numbers in, a Mallika Sherawat jpg I can understand taking a half hour to download, builds the anticipation in the poor male who's so desperate that he needs to download a jpg at 1AM; but a 5 year Balance sheet and Income statement? a pdf? Hurmpf ! the limit I tell you.

You decide to finish the bloody analysis but the ratios just escape your mind - what was the gross profit ratio again?
favorite blanket/ teddy bear?
stupid woman, shake your head, drink some water -
its gross profit/ Pillows?
no you idiot its bed/ Net Sales...
and so you decide to do the ratio analysis.

Inventory Turnover ratio = number of times you could have turned in your sleep already if you were in bed/ number of times you've washed your face to stay awake

Finally, the last straw was when you typed in your VPs name where the capital should have been, and the name of the guy you were talking to, where the Intangible Assets should have been.
The @ sum( A25:A45) is typed in @watamidoing(A25:sleepnow)

the excel sheet farts out a nice total @fcuk! as the end result.

Saturday Morning you find yourself sleeping on the computer, the drool from the corner of your wide open mouth might have permanently damaged the keyboard, but your immediate concern is the stiff neck and the imprint of the Caps Lock and Shift key that your left cheek bears.

The Gtalk window is open, and a friend who was kind enough to send you a "hi" in an ungodly 4AM, has gotten a reply that reads #%$#^%$DDFFUU (which you estimate later - are the letters that might have gotten typed when you were dreaming about punching Ranbir Kapoor on his effeminate face and hit a few keys)and the friend is kind enough to reply back to that and ask you to go to hell. All at 4AM.
Mom's towering over you and lecturing about the national wastage of electricity you have caused by not switching off the computer, the part that the daughter is jumping around in pain due to a stiff neck is quite conviently forgotten.

Its time to rush to the Insti which is a good 27 kilometers away and you have just 15 minutes to make it.
The excel sheet still reads @fcuk! -> the ratio analysis you've done.
Well someone once said - "something's better than nothing" so the @fcuk! should do for now.

The entire saturday is spent, trying to SMS the good friend who was the recieveing end of the virtual punches you threw at a "cute as a girl" - eggaaddd!!! Ranbir Kapoor. The friend decides to use you as a whipping post and sends messages that will seem Osama's threat to the WTC like a child's play. *sigh*
Meanwhile, you try and listen to what the prof's saying, afterall, one must hear out people's woes :P
The extremely complicated words act as a lullaby, and as you struggle to stay awake, the prof singles you out and asks you a question that sounds to you, in the haze of sleep and boredom as Amitabh's proverbial question - "tumhare paas kya hain aaiinn???"
you are ready to tax your vocal chords to do a Shashi Kapoor imitation, but the nice classmate sitting next to you, nudges you in time and shows you her notebook... you look up confidently and answer
" give him this answer - these two lines"
The rest, Ladies and Gentlemen, as they say, is history.

You manage to catch "who the hell employs these morons..."and something that sounded like "fake cerificates " before the merciful godess of sleep takes over again.
Having been made the laughing butt, you spend the next half of the class (when you manage to be awake that is) scheming of how to pry loose that projector and dump it on the prof's head and manage to make it look like an accident and you had nothing to do with it.
Finally, on the thought that the grey cells cannot handle complicated plans and strategies, you decide to put your time to better use - sleeping.

Finally the hour of freedom arrives, and the prof sighs a breath of relief, "kuch lete kyon nahin" he asks, when faced with a blank stare, he elaborates " your snores were disturbing the class"
Sheepishly you walk out to notice that its raining, and not your "Im taking a piss" raining, its is Raining - as in 'all the glaciers have melted due to Global Warming and decided to migrate to Bangalore' raining.
You shout and curse and abuse the skies and the city. October? Rains? WTF is going on? You think. The roads will be full of slush and traffic, you'll get drenched to the bone, your nose will ache, you will have a sinusitis that will stick to you in a fashion fevicol would have been proud of for the next 3 weeks, the doctor will find a new reason to add another floor to his mansion, the chemist will buy new clothes for Diwali.
You hate rains. Nothing can put you in a fouler mood more than a drop of a minimum of 5 degrees celcius and a rain that doesnt allow you to see your outstretched hand.

Switching on the Mp3, which plays an ironical "ni sultana re, aaya pyaar ka mausam aaya", you step into the milling crowds. What takes a hour and fifteen minutes, today takes you a three and a half hours to reach home, You could have watched a half Karan Johan movie (arent his movies usually 8 hours long? no? oh, then I guess its the Einstien's theory of relativity - every boring second would probably seem like ten minutes to me).
Anyways, as you alternate between loving the splatter of rain drops on your face,the beauty of nature, the brightly lit streets blurred by rain and looking like a scene right out of a story book and hating the cold and traffic and the nose which, by now has taken a color that would make a brinjal shy and is throbbing in pain - if only the nose had a mouth - you would have heard a wail worse than Shamita Shetty's 'Mind Blowing Mahiya' - thankfully, the nose doesnt possess a mouth of its own. You reach home, only barely... to park your vehicle, and step inside, dripping with water , take one look at mom, and faint at the door step.
(I am told two cranes were employed to lift me up and change me into something more dry and tuck me into bed.)
Brother tells you , you were delirious. you know he's telling the truth, because, he has asked you the location of a particular Game CD - which was supposedly a secret, but is no longer one, for he holds it in his hands.
Brother also tells you that you have let go of several "important" (followed by a wink) truths, in the moments of your mumbo-jumbo time.
A thermometer is stuck into your mouth, and shortly, an exclamation at the boiling point of water follows from mom. You try to explain the difference in Fahrenhiet and Centigrade and find your pillow.
Finally, the ratio for Gross Profit Percentage flashes clearly across your minds eye - it is
(Two soft pillows+ one teddy bear)/ (One warm blanket* soft and well made bed)

(Note : Im supposedly delirious. If this makes sense, give me a nobel prize, if it doesnt - well, which post of mine ever has?)

Turn it on

2007-10-24T18:49:00.000+05:30

Its the dark sarcastic humor that turns me on the most.
A man with whom I can wage a battle of wits and at the same time giggle at the "naughty" yet dark jokes.
Keeps life interesting me thinks.

Game?

On a totally unrelated random note:
What is it about marriage that makes people go all starry eyed? A colleague just passed by, I bet the irradiant face lit up atleast the whole corridor if not the whole shop floor. Nice. Very Nice.

Unrelated, random note 2:
I dont care. Really, I dont. If anyone ever thought I cared, even an iota about anything, they need to re-read the definition of a cynic.

Unrelated random note 3:
No, the change in the position doesnt bring any change in me. I continue to be who I am. Behaviour at certain places may change. The level of frustration might too. The frequency of waking up in cold sweat in the middle of the night wondering if Ive sent that report right may change too. Not who I am.
If you expect me to change - well, read Random Note 2.

bas itna sa khwaab hain (?)

2007-10-21T23:39:00.000+05:30

Back to the blogging world with a little fizz Ive created a couple of new rules for meself (these shall remain unannounced until the need to announce them really appears)

A cute girl named Taru happened to tag Arpz.

Now, Arpz is not the kind of girl who shall balk at doing a tag, in fact, she likes doing tags. So, she immediately breaks the first of the couple of rules (which is not to blog too often and too late in the night) and sets down to do the tag.

Read about the tag's rules here.

So here comes up my list of 5 things I have and would like to have :

1. My teddy bear - I wish I had a bigger and cleaner teddy bear :-)

2. My stupid sense of humor - I wish I had a sense of humor that everyone understood and not just me

3. My independence - I wish I had a more consistent sense of independence - esp in the emotional matters.

4. My Camera - I wish I had a camera with a larger resolution and a higher zoom

5. My dad - I wish he was around today.

While I think up people to subject to this tag; take a look at this pic -

Agreed the pic isnt a fine example of skill and craftmanship at taking pictures and definetly not the one you would want to show in a class of photography and call it exemplary, but this is the pic of the hotel I stayed in. :P

and before you think (using up most of the grey matter there) on these lines ->" what pathetic hotel has so many storeys but such a small room", let me just open your tiny minds to the possibility that this is just "one" of the several rooms that the suite is made of :P

And, now for tagging:

The list is as usual:

1. Raj (who always promises but never does a single tag )

2. Bulshee (who says he never says no to a girl, but didnt do my last tag)

3. Pavitra (who keeps boring me in the middle of the night, start your blog anew girl, and do this tag)

4.Sakshi (who is a darling :D and is enjoying the season of fall)

EDIT: 5. Abhi (a big hit with anon admirers)

6. Anyone else who would want to pick up the tag.

updates

2007-10-18T17:05:00.000+05:30

well, though no one asked, Im just going to ramble off again.

though inbox did not contain any frantic "where are you? the world is on the brink of disaster without you" or " miss you sweetheart" mails, I shall assume that the blog missed me, if not the readers

got promoted, been biji (whoever said the higher up you get, the lesser work you do? - sue him), travelled a li'l, (snaps shall be uploaded the instant I get a moment where people dont go Arpana, this is going wrong - take that *pow bang wham* - now set it right)

Purchased an expensive perfume - the aircraft crew wouldnt let me in - they said I stank worse than their captain's fart .... purchased some gizmos, which have been upsurped by my bro. bought choclates which have all been emptied by relatives, family and colleagues before I could say Jack the Rabbit, purchased a couple of cute trinkets which cousins decided would look cuter on their tight tank tops and hip hugging jeans and skirts rather than on my rather unshapely salwar kameez.

So what did I do? Work.
Work
work
work
work
work
work
work
work
work
and some more
work
work
work
work
work

until next time.