Majaa ni life!

Ah! The joys of a whirlwind weekend! I've heard so many people complaining ki 'weekend pe kay karenge?!'..... that I feel truly blessed to have mine spinning away! (For the want of a quiet peaceful hibernating day at home!) :D

It started with Di's birthday so what followed was a grand party at the ITC Windsor Manor! Details here. (Yep... this is my new blog! :) )

It unfurled into a lazy saturday morning at home with Mama n Mami! Chai and gupshup... family time! :) It's always nice to have family around you! Especially when you're far away from home! As is obvious shaadi ki baatein to honi hi thi! So there began the debate with Mama Mami sayin 2 years and Di n Me sayn 5 years before I get married!!! :D I mean 5 bhi mere hisaab se jaldi hi hai! Don't sigh! (yeah I can hear all of you!! :P) I mean c'mon people.. I've just started work.. there needs to be a phase in my life where I am well settled and enjoying my independence... that's when I will be in a position to logically think about shaadi rite?! :)

The entire day was a nice lazy lull with loads of idle chatter... :) Sunday morning heralded her with a flutter somewhere on the insides as she went down to meet a few friends of her significant other! Now he wasn't here but his friends were... and so we met! Anybody seen 'Meet the Parents' ?? :D In the end we had a nice time in each other's company even though there were certain awkward moments of silence... (naturally na.. we were meeting for the first time and he wasn't even there!! takes time people!) It gave a nice fuzzy feeling on the insides to be able to meet up with the people that form his world! :) It's rare to see such friendships where each cares about the other so-so much! It was beautiful!

:) The evening found Bar and Mite pacifying her flutters with Beer again.... first at Le Rock where the Kingfisher Rock Fest was happening...! Bands playing were Pantella and Synapse... twas more shor than muzik so they quickly covered their cover charges and darted out across to Pecos where they found their chairs and lost themselves into the music, the popcorn and the beer!

Ah!! majaa ni life! :)

Hungry Kya?! :)

What is it about the freedom that you have now? You waited for this moment all your life, but what are you doing with it? You have all the time in the world to 'explore, dream, discover' and the truth of your stark freedom hots you in the face saying you don't even have a dream.... Your eyes turn to huge pools of darkness as they turn inward to search your soul... you finally confront your loneliness and let out a smirk at your own self.... Eventually after a mental cloudburst your distant dreams float back to you and you wonder at that annoying thing called a 'purpose in life'...

She finally has an answer.... 'Your purpose is your dream... if only you care enough to look beyond the thunder and lightning of an unkempt today..!'

And she quotes here an sms that a friend sent to her long time back: "Throw off the bow lines, sail away from the harbour, catch the trade winds in your sails... Explore, Dream, Discover!"

:) Go ahead... wonder at the change! This time all credit to Barwala... she narrated her catastrophic thursday and friday to him which included a laptop crashing, data being lost, a certification exam link going wonky, inedible food in the cafeteria and of course the inexplicable loss of appetite.... even her cellphone started to act funny! His very basic solution to the chaos engulfing her and her moods at that moment was. 'Lets go out! I think you need Beer!' :D I shall not reveal how much I drank... I shall only say that was high and not talli... my appetite had come back full force and we feasted on some amazing food at Peko's and by the end of the evening The Barwala himself after looking at her capacity went onto comment, 'I am proud of you!' (Now that's a certification she's proud to have!)

Coming to certifications she finally managed to score a 100% in the exam.... :D (Dream on.. I shall never let the secret out here!) and she also got the title of 'Champaklal Certified Cool Dudette!' :D Ohk Ohk... I shall give a brief explanation of that... Abhay is a colleague who joined with us.. in one of the plays that we bakraas were made to perform he played the part of a very harassed Champaklal doing the rounds of Namma Bengaluru in an auto and trying to find hi way around in the initial days! he's turned into a good buddy now and the name Champaklal happens to have stuck with him like a leech to a human leg! :D

Well, the dudette managed to drag Barwala to watch "Five point Someone" (the play) while it was raining cats and dogs in this city... :D His constant wish was for us to miss the play... and he even managed to ask the auto guy for a match to light his smoke to avoid shivering in the cold Bangalore rain... the rick guy decided to dutifully stop at a nukkad and buy him a box of matches inspite of the fact that we were terribly late and the traffic jam was worse than a nightmare! And yes she blames him completely for being late... :D (she'll get whacked for it!) And yes he did go onto say that, 'Any play with vodka, grass and pink floyd in it has to be good!' :) Not to mention the babes he got to see!

Since her appetite was back with a bang sunday found them at a nice 'West Indian Cafe' called 'Sues Kitchen' where they made sure they ate more than the 250 bucks of the buffet was worth! The food was damn good and the dessert was a marble cake reeking in rum! Need I say more?! :D

The evening found her cooking for a bunch of friends... On the Menu:
1. Chicken kaali mirch
2. Pasta-a-la-Pateela! (she's a lil short on the big utensils that she ends up needing when she has to cook for 7-10 people! So the Pasta found it's place in an aluminium Pateela and thus the name... :D Twas actually corn cheese tomato pasta!)
3. Garlic Bread
4. Goes without saying... Beer!

The chef was duly complimented with discussions of Harry potter happening! With 5 females making a racket that's expected poor Bar and Bade Bhaiya were quite scared to even step foot in the house... but they eventually got coaxed into the noisy muddle and it was a nice fun evening!

A walk down the lane near her home-tweet-home with a big smile on her face and her ipod in her ears made a zillion people look at her and wonder, 'Damn! What has this woman been upto?!" She gave 'em all an even bigger grin and went onto tackle the week head-on! :)

As a smile fades....

A sunset sky ablaze with the torment of her heart... she sits in the corner huddled unto herself... Dreamz? She's started getting a lot of those that you're supposed to get in your sleep... It's more like nightmares though! For her to get dreams, let alone nightmares is rare... so this regular occurence and recurrence shakes her up a bit...

Sone pe suhaga factor: the loss of apetite! She's been living on a fruit bowl and a glass of juice plus lil bits of food that people force down her throat off n on! She knows she needs gooooo..d food to snap out of her state but the wish of it just isnt there... :( So till the foodie devil doesn't poke her with his tail she's got the wierdest expression on her face!!!

It looks like rain today.. large thunderous clouds and the violent sparks of brilliant lightning surround her...

PS: The jinx continues... her brand new laptop crashed n her system's been formatted now!!

Pondicherry Maadi!

A day... a weekend... a sunrise... a sunset... and bliss therein!

After a chaotic, butt-damaging bus ride in the cabin with 13 people cramped in and yours truly and the other men in her life 'sitting' on the dashboard and the engine with Bar actually having to undergo the nightmare of watching the driver give them an 'n' number of near death misses in the wee hours of the morning they made it to 'Pondicherry...' where they decided to 'give time a break!' :)

Stop 1: The guest house... an ethereal experience! (pun intended :D) The first one to greet us was 'Le Dog'! Time to give details about Le Dog here:

Name: Eric
Nick Name: Le Dog
Initial Affinity: Ani n Mite
Initial Repulsions: Barwala.. (the dog just sort of smelt his backside and didn't take a fancy to him)
Later Affinity: Barwala after a bath! (yeah yeah... hard to imagine that the laziest lump she's ever come across was actually carrying an electric razor on vacation and managed to get up before her and have a bath... he was actually smelling fresh!) Looks like Le Dog also thought the same and then turned out to be a constant companion for Bar as long as we were in the premises of the guest house! :D

The guest house happened to be one of those old cottages with a thatched roof designed to keep the place cool... it worked well... maybe a li'l too well... When it rained it also rained leaves and twigs from the roof, not to mention gigantic spiders which Bar managed to reduce to smithereens with his bravado and Mite's floaters!! :D 1 such spider decided to creep on close to where we were all sitting and having a gup-session over a local bottle of wine... 'SpiderMan' leaps into action... well so does the gigantic spider and the whole room goes helter skelter as the spider decides to jump into unknown territory and disappear... lo and behold he is located in the loo where Spider Man steps in with his weapon aka the floater and murders it with an alternative weapon by sheer chance... his own two feet! :D

Stop 2: The Beach Cafe
On the menu: Prawn masala, Squid masala and veg biryani for the manager! Gud food... french babes with tamil guys that made the 'other men' repeat a VIP Frenchie ad... 'usme hai aisa kya jo mujhme nahiiiii.....!' :P

Stop 3: The bike rental after a long search up and down various roads for a kinetic to be available.... Come to think of it.. Le Kapoor was a saving grace! He was the only one who could ride a bike and Bar couldn't do the kinetic either! The photo id deposited happened to be a nirma i-card! :D (years gone by and still.... :) )

Stop 4: Le Club
A long search... some map reading... and some direction taking later we landed up at Le Cafe... (which there were too many of) and eventually made our way to Le Club. (Notice the fact that we've still not hit the beach). A nice sofa seat with soft cushions... a menu that cam calling at all our senses... and Dire Straits in the background (which eventually gave way to Himesh Reshammiya... but that's a different ball game altogether!) We chilled out in those premises with beautiful 'french babes' and the other men making eyes at them constantly as she sat there and giggled away over loads o cocktails and awwwwwwwwwsum food! The soul of the foodie was immensely satisfied and her heart was taken by the Mojito!

Quick Note: Angostura Bitters - Aromatic bitters made in Trinidad using orange peel and gentian as its main ingredients.

Loads o chit chat... how work has been treating everyone... how life has taken various turns for all of them... and how things are slowly (or faster in some cases) changing and maturity setting on! (yes maturity and not old age!! give us a break man!) :D Soon we were graced by the presence of 'The fairy Godma and her knight in shining armour... err.. a red t-shirt in this case!' aka Smriti and Amar! Loads o laughter... loads more chit chat and another 2 rounds of cocktails and/or beer as the connoisseur so desired...! :D 6 whole hours passed us by.... the afternoon sun shrouded by clouds gave way to a grey evening sky laden with rain and eventually to a breezy all encompassing darkness.... Bliss!

Needless to say they slept like babies!

Day break happened for her at least at 11:12 am with Mite's pointing his cellphone clock right into her face as she drowsily stretched to open one twiddly eye! :) Ultimatum: You have 20 mins! Her reaction: a laaaaazzzyyyy smile and she dozes of for another 2 mins! :D

The morning (or whatever was left of it) found them hunting for return tickets to avoid the nightmare of cabin seats!!! :D Well... Mission successful! :D

Next Stop: Satsanga.
Chill... they didn't suddenly turn religious... it's a nice french cafe again with loads o french babes! (esp one in particular who Bar seems to have lost his heart to!) By the way Bar insists that if we stay for a week in Pondicherry we can become a part of the french community quite easily and then their 'girl-woories' so to say will be over! :D As luck would have it, Bar's Kingfisher Lager started to taste like 'Le Beer'! (:D It tasted like a mix of Beer and wine... speculations went on to say that it was over fermented... which reminds me of another beer story that Amar had to tell...) Well... after that bottled Kingfisher was a strict no-no! We conveniently and gladly stuck with Fosters!! The food needless to say was awwwwwwwwwwww.............sum! And the afternoon b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l!

Coming to Amar's story: The man and his buddies decided to make a sand box with waves to come in and keep the beer chilled... after having lost all sense of time and tide (yup.. time and tide actually wait for no man) the bottles happened to be sunk under 2 feet of sand lost to the ocean.....

What followed was a photography session of a few historical landmarks and a video made under the direction of 'Le Kapoor' and The cinematography of 'Le Bar' with yours truly as 'Le Assistant'! :D

Finally.... finally... finally we hit the beach at 3 in the afternoon (would have gone the night before but we got warned that a murder had taken place 2 nights earlier so we decided to stick in to our rooms!) where Barwala took to the sea like a fish takes to water! And yours truly went on a shell collecting trip! Her favourite's were a white serrated shell and another one with shades of purple and orange showing her both sides of twilight! :) Ah... she almost missed the mention of 'french babes' here again.. but this time Bikini clad for bar to feast his eyes on for about 4 seconds after which we were told 'this is a private beach... please go to the other side!' :D lolz!!!

Well... after wallowing around in the sand and the sea and making a structure in sand that she likes to refer to as the 'sand pyramid' they trudged back, packed their bags and got ready to leave as 'Le Dog' jumped on them for one last time... Mutual consensus - the trip was incomplete without 'The Last Supper' and so we found ourselves plodding onto 'Le Club' yet again. En Route, 'Le Bar' decides that he is inappropriately dressed for the place in 'chindi shorts and a t-shirt with a whole in them' so he finds a khopcha and changes into something more 'appropriate' and doesn't leave the 'dressing khopcha' without spraying on some 'axe white' so as to attract the french babes! :D She n Mite are in splits of laughter by the end of it!

The second round at 'Le Club' gives them a feeling of instant deja-vu... same sofa again, same french family dining in front of them in the same clothes and the same muzik! :D A re of the mojito's and an assortment of food platters later Mite observes that, 'this has been one of our quietest meals'... each lost in his/her own space... dwindling their own glasses but humming the same music even though differently! As they say... 'each to his own!'

The only appropriate end to this post is one word: "Cheers!"

:)

Addendum: By all our standards, it was nice to be able to sweat and feel human again!! :D

Floating...

The day's dun and as I lay back in the chair and look towards the ceiling, the intermittently blinking red light on the security cam catches more than my attention... it catches a piece of my memory where it reminds me of the Konkan Trip with buddies just after MBA.... as I look on a vivid image of the lighthouse on an island off Karwar comes into play and I can see myself standing in the waves... letting the wind play with my hair....

The words that come to mind are a Def Lepp song....

"All I want is everything
Am I asking too much?
All I want is everything
Like the feel of your touch
But all I have are yesterdays
Tomorrow never comes

Its hard to hold your head up
When youre kneeling down to pray
And the talking dooesnt come easy now
When the words get in the way
And if you could see whats going on
Behind these private eyes
The truth would look so easy now
But Im running out of lies

You think the shadow of doubt
Is hangin over my head
Its just an angel whose wings hide the sun"

Reality Check!

Ok ok! I know! Long hiatus! But one thing just kept leading onto another and i've been losing out on "me time!" No other reasons and no other bahanas!!

I have had a lot of worried people pinging me n askin me about my status on Gtalk which reads "the violent sound of crashing waves!" :) Luv ya all. It's jus that you know life takes you in myriad directions and you end up wanting to explore every li'l nook and corner before you realize that you have time on your hands and you can let the experience happen at a nice leisurely pace. Letting the experience happen to me now..

The turmoil is essentially in my head... 'ye karna hai, vo karna hai, kab karna hai, kaise karna hai...' but u know that's not even it! It's all because I actually want to let go of everything and jus flow... n the confines of my material life are killing me! Its like, 'I want to break free!' My life is my theme song and my dreams are the lyrics! And i've not been humming the tune lately...

The main event: House Shifting!

The chaos: Humungous! :D
The packer arrived a day early, there was no one to recieve the stuff, my phone decided to stay out of coverage, mommy did all the running around, the gas connection needed a ration card, there was stuff to be bought and there wasn't any money, an account malfunction landed up a huge some of money being transferred into a suspense account, an inactivated salary account, lil broke me, wlaking walkin and loads of walking, a reliance customer care that says I need to pay an extra Rs 562!!!! (my bill was 2300 Indian Rupees!!!)

The intermittents that made it b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l:

- Mite's and Bar at home for dinner and yours truly cooked cheese tomato pasta, corn bake and chicken in brown sauce (which was specially dun up using a Jack Daniel's Barbecue Sauce!) :D And loads of booze.... The bestest company, good food and awwsum music.. loads o gupshup... guys freakin out at the sight of a place called 'home' so much so that 'Oh wow! The platform in the kitchen is so much cleaner than our rooms!!!!!' :D Mite found his throne on the platform in a corner of the kitchen from where he kept getting displaced regulary to grind nuts and grate cheese! :D

- Mommy's comin! Man would I have been hasseled and frazzeled without her!

- Regular phone calls from the 'Baba' to keep my sanity in place... :) He's too much of a gem to be true... and he's goin to hate readin this so I might as well call him a 'Beastheart'! :D

- Bonus: A nite out at the beach with her flatmates and Papa MITE in tow teaching them the fine art of making the best of a 'ladies night' where booze is free! :D (She then slept at 1 am and got up at 5 in the morning 'coz she had to go n recieve Mommy dearest at the station! The rest is for you to imagine...!) :D

- A sweet li'l housewarming... dinner by mom, room set by me, loads o frenz, flowers n cookies, lotsa friendly banter and conversations and a promise to be taken out for dinner next weekend!!! :D

And now I wonder if this is the stuff dreams are made of... As I am writing my peace decided to gradually trickle in and colleagues have notice a calm smile on my hormonally imbalanced expressionedly freaked out face! :)

The thought in my head: I'm so lucky to be surrounded by all the people in my life! It's been a crazy roller coaster where I'm still trying to figure out in which way to hold the handlebars so that I don't topple over... But it's an amazing ride with the wind in my hair and a rush in my heart and NOW... a smile around my soul!

And she wanders lonely as a cloud.... :)

The song in my head:

"I've always thought
that I would love to live by the sea
To travel the world alone
and live my life more simply
I have no idea what's happened to that dream
Cos there's really nothing left here to stop me

It's just a thought, only a thought

But if my life is for rent and I don't learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cos nothing I have is truly mine"

(There's a reason this post is not about her but about me! :) )