31Jan09

I’m shifting back to my old blog. Leave email address for an invite.

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29Jan09

Si proprius stes
Te capiet magis
- Horace
(if you stand closer, it will charm you more)

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Blah blah

28Jan09

I’ve had a glorious vacation. I did everything I wanted to, met almost everyone I wanted to, in short, it was brilliant. A few things stand out : a girls night out and a photograph taken which all the people present at Someplace Else won’t forget in a hurry, meeting R and managing not to fight and be at peace, seeing my cousin after almost two years, a precious afternoon of gossip and shopping with Anu and the drive back, the entire family joined together in one crazy circus like act at a wedding.
G called me on Sunday while I was haggling over a copper bag at New Market with A to say that RFH is leaving soon. That’s the icing on the cake. Whoohooo! Wherever you are, and whoever you may be, do a little jig to join in my joy.
…
The train was twelve hours late on the way back. The family travelling with me had three children all under the age of four. They wailed, they whined, they cried, they yelled, they created pandemonium. I was utterly fascinated (and horrified) at the amount of time it takes to feed children. By the time the parents were done feeding breakfast to all three, it was time for lunch. I contemplated also on their family planning (or the lack of it). Family planning was also something I accused my mother of not having when she claimed that she was growing old and started her now-you-should-think-of-marriage talk. She had no choice but to laugh.
…
Why do all the men I know carry black purses? All of them. A couple have brown purses, but that’s it. Do men’s purses not come in any other colours?

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Utterly butterly

21Jan09

I had a gtalk status message that declared, I’m fat and which led an indignant Sangeeta to declare in capital letters, ‘You are not fat.’
But if I stay here too long and continue gorging on my wonderful mother’s sumptuous cooking, that is exactly what I’ll end up being.
What I’ve been eating so far:
(You have to be Bong or know about Bong food to appreciate this list fully.)
Biriyani, chilli fish, fried rice, pualo, phuchka, mishti of bewildering variety – sandesh, shor bhaja, rosogolla, rajbhog, dorbesh, mishti doi, payesh, patishapta, mochar ghonto, kheer, pithey puli, chingri macher malai curry (prawns cooked in the yummiest way possible), tangra mach, chicken a la kiev, momos, chicken rolls, pabda mach, topshe mach, mutton cooked in a dozen ways, cake from Flury’s, pastries from Kookie Jar, vegetables cooked in all those incredible ways that only Ma knows how and which I can never replicate in a thousand years, chocolates from Hawai, Lindt chocolates, and i know not what else.
I’m a pig. When everything’s made to wither away into dust, remember this,all that matters is the chocolate.
I wrote this when I was tipsy, naturally it sounds strange.

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I’m lovin it…

18Jan09

everything that comes with trying to live your life like it’s running out.
So, I’m breathless and bone weary and I’ve worn out a pair of shoes, but it’s all like a kaleidoscope of everything I love, and I can’t tear myself away .
Excuse the terrible similes. I’m not very articulate when I’m like this.
So there’s all this love that surrounds you because you know, you’re home. There are friends, and people to meet, and cousins to see after years, and warmth to bask in. I’m going to make a separate post on the food. I can’t possibly fit it all in this post.
I kept telling Crazy-Boy on the train that I was running out of words to describe his stupidity, and the fact that I believe he’s mad. (Yes, he travelled back on the same train as me. Yes, he’s nuts.)
It’s like that now. Just super-duper excited and happy and not enough words.

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15Jan09

You know how when sometimes you fill out those dumb questionnaires and they ask you, what’s the craziest thing someone has ever done for you?
And then you know, you heehaw and you ponder and think of the birthday poem, the three feet tall teddy bear, all that.
I have a new one, and it’s not romantic and it’s not nice.
Yesterday Nice-Boy came to my office. All the way from Cal. He is now officially Crazy-Boy.
I panicked, freaked out, screamed and yelled. The works.
I didn’t meet him.
Someday I will see the funny side of this. Not yet.
Anyway, moi is going home, and moi intends to have a brilliant time.

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13Jan09

Do you like your name?
Why so or why not? And, what does it mean?

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12Jan09

At twenty three and twenty four, and six months into our jobs, I don’t know what’s hit my friends. I find last night’s conversation with F slightly unreal. Stability over fun, loyalty over zest, family over friends. When did we grow so old, when did the flirting stop mattering, when did we start pondering on guys she’d be meeting as future husbands and not just as people to have fun with, when did it all change?
There are of course plenty of people I know who are my age and are hitched. Some of them even got married at twenty. But then that’s what they always wanted, perhaps. Shaadi, pati and bachche. And nothing else.
There’s B who’s going to walk down the aisle soon. Sooner than she thinks and if she doesn’t give me six months notice (to grow my hair and go shopping) I won’t go. And then who’s going to organise her bachelorette party?
Soon it’ll be an avalanche I fear. And soon there’ll be children too. I’m going Oh my god Friends ishtyle in my head at this point.
One of my friends is getting married this year. He’s twenty four. I think it’s ridiculously early, especially for someone whose last big fight with his fiancee centred on whether she’d let him hang his old keyboard on the wall of their bedroom. (He’s ultra weird but that is a post for another day.)
Twenty four. You still have so much to do, to see, to experience, so much to know before you do something so serious. What if you don’t know yourself well enough, I asked my friend, when he called to tell me the news. What if you think two years later that you should have waited a bit, what if you think that this was a wrong decision and you should have gone backpacking across the country instead? What if someone else comes into your life and you realise you like the person better?
Sometimes I find it incredibly disorienting that people around me know. This job, this city, this person. With absolute finality. Maybe some of them don’t have their lives littered with ellipses and question marks like me, maybe it’s more of commas and full stops.
Maybe.

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08Jan09

Apparently I remind people of a cat. Heh.

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06Jan09

What people around me say:
‘I’ve grown taller’ (this from a 23 year old)
‘My hair has shrunk again’ (this ahem was me)
‘Hi hw are u? Let us frnd, tk care bye.’ (from the wonder that is Orkut)
‘ Come on, you have to tell the maid. Just say, look boss, this just isn’t hapenning, you need to come on time’ (this again, me. I don’t know why they reacted by falling off the bed laughing)
‘Dekh, you need to be allowed to kill at least a couple of people and walk away scot-free. Okay, so not everyone’s a Modi but come on, we’re overpopulated. ‘
(SA in a violent mood)
…
And remember the song, Tum toh thehre pardesi’? Someone I know has it as their callertune. Reminds me of the time I found everyone dying to call me so that they could hear Kumar Sanu sing, Jiye toh jiye kaise bin apke’. It had somehow become my callertune. Ideasmithy has a fantastic caller tune, so does Childwoman, it says, we will rock you I want the ‘emotional atyachaar’ song as mine. Or maybe, something by U2.
What song would you choose as a callertune?

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