A birthday wish

The first memory I have of Cool Cat (the name of my coolest, nicest and craziest friend) is of me sitting in her house in 2^nd grade and making a collage with pictures of wild animals for some school project. Suddenly in the midst of it, she stopped working and started telling me how much she loved Akshay Kumar and started doing some steps from Main Khiladi Tu Anari. That obsession didn’t last too long…unfortunately, the obsession that followed i.e. the one with SRK, last until this date. (I was hopeful that Happy New Year would reduce it, but that hasn’t happened.)

She was hands down the smartest kid in my class at school. When the rest of us poured over our books before exams, she was busy listing the merits of the Irish coffee in Prithvi theatre and yet managed to effortlessly secure top grades.

We became friends only towards the end of school, and it took me a long time to forgive her for ditching me and taking up science in a townie college, instead of studying commerce at a suburban college as we had originally planned. We had this routine-she would call me at 11 am when she woke up (I still get panic attacks when she wakes up early these days) and then we would catch up on every single event in our lives that had taken place in the hours gone by. We would repeat the same thing at night. At that time, there was an Orange (What Vodafone was then known as) 9 to 9 scheme, wherein calls made between 9 pm and 9 am were free, so we would get onto a conference call with a few others and discuss all sorts of nonsense. By that token, and figuratively as well, she was my 5 am friend.

As with everyone else, I cut off from her too during a bad phase in my life. She did something at that time that brings tears into my eyes even to this date. She showed up at my house on one birthday to wish me and when I tried to explain the reason for my disappearance, she told me it didn’t matter-all that mattered was that I became fine. It was that very day that I met her then boy friend, now husband for the first time ever. He is the finest guy I have ever known and I couldn’t have been happier for Cool cat.

I call out all these random instances because, for some reason, I can’t compose a coherent post to do justice to her. (And its not for lack of trying-I have been at it for the last several weeks).   She is one of the most genuine and caring persons I have had the privilege of knowing. She has a fantastic sense of humor and is this complete madcap party person. I have yet to come across someone as large hearted and forgiving as she. She is so completely comfortable in her own skin-its refreshing to know someone like that in today’s world.

I don’t know what I did right to have her put up with me until this date-but I do genuinely hope she stays in my life and remains someone I can look up to and emulate, because she is a role model innumerable ways for me.

Wish you a very happy birthday and all the happiness and love in the world. Please do visit me-I promise on this semi-public forum that I wont ditch you and vanish somewhere!

Woh CA ki class

Writer’s note: I compose this post in my head as I return after meeting my CA friends, some of whom I have met after close to two years. Please condone the over-sentiness of this post.

When most qualified or semi qualified CAs are asked what they recall about their “process of completing CA” days, they would mention their heavy CA modules, horrible routine of May and November attempts or the torture they went through as interns. When I am asked the same question, however, I always promptly say, “my CA friends”. These are the friends I made during my CA tuition classes who have been kind enough to put up with my nonsense and whimsicalness till date.

It was a rainy day in August 2005 when I entered the CA tuition class for the first time. I was painfully shy and I had joined the class one month late. As a result, all the bonding between the 20 odd classmates had already happened and I was the outsider. I kept telling myself it didn’t matter and that I was there to study, but my heart would sink during break times when everyone would be talking and joking and I would be sitting in the corner and pretending to go over class notes. I had grossly underestimated the kindness and goodness of my classmates, and before I knew it, Peekay (named this way since his real name has the same initials) came up to me and started telling me how he knew me through some common friends. Then the Angel (I have no other name for her-she was and am sure still is the guardian angel of our group) took me into her fold and made sure I sat next to her in class till I became more comfortable. One after the other, each person in the class started befriending me and treating me just like one of them. I felt very loved, wanted and cared for and began to look forward to the class that I used to dread going to not so long ago.

Before I knew it, I had opened up to them totally. They put up with my tuneless singing during the breaks, included me in all their post class plans (and never stopped inviting me although I never went) and even tried to match make between me and another classmate because for some weird reason, we always wore the same color (for gods’ sake, I started wearing pink thinking it was the most feminine color only to find him in pink too!).  Being a huge group, there were the routine fights, crushes, relationships and breakups.. but the group stayed. They included me to such an extent, that I bonded not only with them, but also with their friends who weren’t in the same class. I had a great time throughout the duration of the class and learned not only accounting and taxation, but also lessons in friendship, bonding and loyalty.

At some stage, I went through a horrible patch and cut off from all of them. They were so loving that they never gave up on me. In those two years that I was away, they kept trying to reach out to me in any way possible. And when I did get back in touch, they forgave me and welcomed me back. ( Of course, there were wise cracks about me being the Aamir Khan of 3 Idiots, but that was the least I could expect.) Even today, I have hurt some of them by not attending their weddings, by disappearing for months at end…but they swallow their anger and accept me each and every time.

Today it is close to a decade since that first class. The group has weathered many, many storms. The untimely demise of the one we all loved the most, exam failures, relationship failures, loss of parents, job crises, quarter life and identity crises-but the bonding in most part has stayed intact. It gives me immeasurable pleasure and pride to see how each of them is personally content and professionally successful.

I write this post as a gesture of gratitude to each and every one of them-thank you. Thank you for including that shy, awkward girl into your gang. Thank you for giving me the kind of warmth, love and acceptance that you did. Thank you for teaching me how to stand by friends during their good and bad times. And most of all, thank you for never giving up on me. I am a nerdy weirdo and may do a disappearing act anytime, but please bear in mind, that I truly love  you and will never forget you or what you have done for me.  And while I don’t know if I can be as good a friend as you are, you will always inspire me to try my level best.

A letter to the heart breaker

                                                            

In continuation to my post below, I write another letter. This time it is addressed to the boy that treated my friend abysmally.

Dear Mr I am too great to be wrong,

I won’t begin with the usual formalities, i.e. the “I hope you are doing well” etc-its quite obvious that you are, given the flirtations on your facebook page and my friend’s tears and sleepless nights. I have been forbidden from contacting you and letting you know what I think of your behavior and moral fabric (or complete lack of it) and so I use this platform, hoping the message reaches you loud and clear.

I am not going to berate you or chastise you-I am quite sympathetic towards the disabled, which you are to a great degree. My full consolations lie with you, since it must be so difficult to survive the world without a heart, spine and conscience. After all only a heartless person could discuss marital home rentals with a girl and then tell her six month later that he never loved her. Only someone spineless could let her discover through other sources that he had moved on and was very happy with another girl. And only someone without a conscience could tell a girl he treated atrociously time and again over a ten year period that it was her one sided love that had ruined their friendship.

I have realized that you don’t seem to know the rules of the game called “Love, loyalty and honesty”. And I feel duty bound to guide you, since you have been such an important part of my friend’s life for over a decade. Harmless flirtations are telling a girl she is pretty, and not that you would fight the world to marry her. When you know a girl is hopelessly in love with you and you don’t feel the same way, you don’t keep her as a backup option until you are convinced that she isn’t the one for you. And when a girl is trying desperately to move on and extricate herself from the highly complex web of lies, deceit and pretense that you have spun, you don’t selfishly demand that she treats you as a friend and throw tantrums when she disagrees.

I don’t wish to address you with negative adjectives-the list is far too long and I have very limited time. Besides, we call out the faults of those who accept their faults and are willing to change. Your repetition of the same disgraceful behavior time and again, each time after a profuse apology, has more than proved that you are either too self-deluded to realise that you are wrong  or that you just have a different set of morals and values from the rest of the world. Either way, the blame lies with my friend and my friend alone. She was too naïve, too foolish and too trusting. She deserves to be in the situation that she is in. She deserves to suffer for falling in love stupidly and staying in love ridiculously for so long with someone who proved time and again that he wasn’t worth even the smallest bit of it.

I am really grateful to you that your latest spate of disgusting behavior has finally opened her eyes for good. She maybe in a hell lot of pain now, but she is far stronger than you realise. She may initially do stupid things to prove a point to you and your sycophantic friends, but she will emerge out of this, a finer and braver person.  She will now spend her time over more fruitful activities and more deserving people. Besides, she has a lot to offer to this world and so I am sure she won’t mull over a first world problem like having her heart broken by a jerk, when she could instead help out and serve people suffering from genuine problems and with genuine needs.

I will end this letter by saying that my best wishes lie with you-in all the time that you have existed on this planet, you have left behind such a long trail of agony and anguish that I can’t imagine what will follow once  your sins start catching up with you. You will truly need a lot of wishes to cope.

Casper

A letter to those with a broken heart

I have never made any bones about the fact that I am a romantic and that I love love -I suspect the genesis is the 90s Bollywood movies that I grew up on but anyway, the fact is that love and love stories have always fascinated me. I thrived on matchmaking between friends in my teens and got a major high if the relationship actually clicked.

Unfortunately, one sees only what one wants to see and so I never paid heed to the hundreds of relationships around me that didn’t work out…I am such a firm believer in happy endings that I don’t even watch a movie if it doesn’t end well. And so I lived in denial for virtually most of my life over the fact that sometimes things don’t end the way we want them to..irrespective of how much we put into it, irrespective of how unadulterated our emotions are. God has a way of making us come out of our comfort zone and seeing reality and over the past few years, I have seen some “not so happy endings”, heartbreaks and unpleasantness all around me.

Today I write this to someone who loved a boy very truly and deeply for over a decade, first as a friend and then romantically, only to be led on cruelly, given dreams of marriage, of family, of a future and then, when he had found a better option, to be told that he didnt love her and that they should be friends.

Dear girl whose rose tinted glasses have finally come off,

I realise that you are in tremendous pain and distress right now. I know that you keep questioning what you did wrong and why you have to go through this, since your only fault was to love…blindly and unconditionally. But sometimes we don’t have answers to our questions and we just have to make do with that. Love is a very delicate emotion, especially since it is selfless and pure. We cant understand how someone else can mock it, disrespect it, abuse it. We cant fathom how someone else could so ruthlessly trample over our heart which was filled to the brim with love for them.

But the sooner you accept what has happened, the better it is for you. He never cared for you..he never will care for you..now you need to stop caring too. He treated you in a disgusting way..why are you giving him any sort of importance at all? Respect and trust are far better foundations of any relationship than love ever was and he never considered you worthy of either of those.. is he worth even an iota of your mind-space now? 

 I know that ten years is a long, long time to love someone..but you always knew deep down that he never loved you a fraction of how much you loved him. Remember how he told you that he would need his friends’ approval before committing to you? Remember how he wanted to know about your health conditions before making any lifetime promise (conveniently ignoring  the fact that his health wasnt exactly top notch)?  He has treated you horribly time and again..you were going to come to this state sooner or later.

I am the first to concede that its all much easier said than done. But be brave, be selfish and be strong. Life is going to keep going on regardless, why not just enjoy it? He may not have loved you..but you are blessed with friends and family that care for you and love you. You need to move on for their sake.  You have a tremendous lot going for you..dont succumb to the throes of self pity and depression.

And now the hardest part..dont become bitter, don’t become a disbeliever in love, friendship and goodness. Yes, its very difficult, but believe that this could be a lesson for you never to ill treat someone that comes to you eagerly with emotions so pure and cherish those that love you. Have faith in love, in karma and in goodness…you will find happiness, peace and companionship someday…and that day, you will thank this loser for treating you as he did.

Yours truly,

Casper.

Boo you, bully!

Disclaimer: I don’t watch Bigg Boss regularly neither do I work for Viacom 18. I just happened to watch an episode last night since I was exhausted and the remote was too far for me to change the channel.

Last night I was watching a random episode of Bigg Boss, where Salman Khan, the host, was berating the house mates for isolating one particular housemate and making him feel miserable over something wrong that he had done. I know that Bigg Boss is definitely not a depiction of real life and it is quite pathetic that I am starting a blog post in this manner, but this particular visual set me thinking about the whole pattern of bullying, groupism and isolation.

It is a myth that bullying and groupism are limited to school. Yes, that’s where they begin. But it carries on throughout life, in different situations. Spiderman’s Uncle Ben may definitely have told him that with great power came great responsibility, but believe me you, in today’s cruel world, more often than not, power, coolness and wealth are used irresponsibly to bully others and make them feel small.

I have been both the bully and the victim, maybe due to Karma, maybe due to circumstances. My biggest regret from my school life is that I never stood up for my timid class mates in spite of knowing how badly they were being treated. I got carried away by the notion of wanting to be cool and accepted and I never did the right thing, in spite of being in an influential situation. And this, when I knew that scars inflicted during one’s teens stay forever and shatter confidence. It is a guilt that weighs me down till this date.

I have also been the victim several times. Whether it is horribly condescending and mean comments made on my nature by supposedly close friends, whom I couldn’t hit back at at due to timidity and lack of confidence, being isolated at times merely due to my life style choices, shyness and need for good grades or being cheated by landlords and flat mates since I was perceived as weak..I have gone through it too.

I have also seen these things happen as a neutral third party. I have seen rock solid groups split into two because two people within the group break up/have a huge fight and everyone else rushes to take sides. Or worse still, everyone sides with the one person, leaving the other friendless overnight. This isn’t even limited to social situations. The timid one at work will always stay the longest and have the most files at his/her desk. The region/ commercial business with a spineless head will always get super aggressive, if not impossible revenue targets to achieve. From Bollywood to the corporate world, cronyism and cliques exist. There is a profession that thrives on popularity and groupism-it is called politics.

Bullies are actually the most insecure people-it’s because they don’t feel good about themselves that they want to pull others down. It’s because people can’t accept themselves that they need the acceptance of the “cool” people. So don’t ever let bullies scar your confidence. If you are have been isolated by your friend circle due to a fight that you had with someone else within the group-you are better off, because if they were your true friends, they would be with you. Yes, if you are wrong, they would tell you that, but they wouldn’t desert you. No one that makes you feel small about yourself is worth having in your life.

Most importantly, stop playing victim and start standing up for yourself. If you don’t stand up for yourself and what you think is right…no one else will. Voicing your opinion or making your hurt known isn’t wrong…it is an essential form of self-preservation.  Remember, the people that have made their mark in this world always stood out from the crowd.

Tour de Park

I have fond childhood memories of cycling-it was the first ever athletic activity I indulged in (that is, if you don’t count leaping around like a frog when I saw a lizard). My father had bought me a purple cycle (that was my first ever favourite color) and my sister a pair of skates and she and I learned together. She went through the whole training process with her skates and I with my cycle. My grandfather anxiously watched from the balcony as we learned, fell, brushed off our wounds and started all over again. Unfortunately, Mumbai isn’t a city suited for cyclists and as I grew older, that interest died.

In a bid to check off all my items on my Singapore to-do list, I have been doing a lot of things for the first time recently. The one for this weekend was cycling around East Coast Park. I was super excited because I had wanted to do this for three years, but never got around to it for some reason or another. I was quite confident that I would be a pro, because my mother had told me that swimming and cycling are two activities one never forgets on learning-they come naturally even if one picks them up after years.

Early on Saturday morning, I set off. I rented a cycle and got on to it, with the confidence of Lance Armstrong. And crashed onto the ground. I tried again and again, only to realise I had completely forgotten how cycling is done. Finally I managed to balance myself and started peddling, but couldn’t go five steps before crashing down again. I was frustrated and embarrassed and went up to the rental guy and told him I wouldn’t be cycling after all. He said it was fear that was preventing me from cycling and once I overcame the fear, I would be just fine.

I thought over what he said as I pulled out onto the road. I haven’t exactly been known for my bravery. I always run away from situations when I feel it’s getting tough-whether its not appearing for exams because I don’t feel prepared enough, avoiding events where people I don’t want to see are coming or not doing things which I feel I would embarrass myself in/fail at. Ms GK 2 (The name for my delhi ex- flatmate henceforth since that was the first thing she ever told me about herself, “Hi, I'm *********. I stay in GK2 in South Delhi”) always used to tell me that I missed out on a lot in life due to my fear and I needed to work on it. In another context, a very good friend told me recently that I need to immerse myself fully into things, without any fear or expectations. Long story short, I decided to try again.

And lo and behold…I could do it, I could do it, I could do it!! It was the most amazing feeling…cycling with the breeze hitting my face, almost as if I was flying on a Nimbus 2000! I was in heaven! And once I overcame my fear and stopped saying Hanuman Chalisa, I started listening to my I pod instead. Wind whipping by your face, AR Rahman performing magic and the sea by your side…what more does one want! I was super-duper happy.

A few words of caution to amateur cyclists:

1. You will fall…A lot. And you will come home with bruises and scratches and aches. In case you have an old Aunty as a neighbour, who is as interested in your life as my neighbour is, please budget for some time to explain to her that these are wounds caused due to cycling-you are definitely NOT in an abusive relationship. Or, be smart and use concealer, and avoid the interrogation altogether.

2. Continuing from point 1, please focus on the road. You may think you are an expert since you have managed to stay on the bike for 5 mins nonstop, but don’t let that get into your head. As soon as I felt I had got the hang of it, I started sticking my tongue out at kids as I overtook them and smiling flirtatiously at all the cute Angrez guys I passed. Unfortunately, the same kids stuck their tongues out at me when I crashed a few minutes later and the Angrez guys smiled back, more out of amusement than flirtatiousness, at the sight of me lying in a crumpled heap.

3. You will have to pick yourself up when you fall. I thought the whole world would come to the rescue of this damsel in distress when she fell-but no one did. Ironically, the song playing on my I pod when I fell for the nth time and picked myself up was, “yeh duniyaaaaaa yeh duniya pitall di”. I will not embarrass myself further by quoting the next line.

4. An I pod shuffle is far, far better than an I pod touch when it comes to athletic activity. 

The party’s just started- Cheers to many, many cycling weekends, with lots of  nice sights (men and otherwise ;), lots of exhilaration and a few falls as well!

That fickle thing called fate

I was watching the climax of Lage Raho Munnabhai last night, in which Munnabhai and Circuit were trouncing an astrologer and ranting about how futile the whole horoscope and stars thing is. I have often pondered over this myself. As far as I go, I have some clear beliefs and some grey areas.

I firmly believe in the power of prayers and chanting. I firmly believe in Karma and “good begets good” (Having said that, I have become such a devil in recent times that I feel Satan would get an inferiority complex). In my high school years, my super sweet Hindi teacher said infinite times “Betiyon, humein manushya janma chaurasi lakh yoniyon ke baad milta hai, isliye ise kabhi vyarth nai jaane dena chahiye” (We get the human incarnation after 5.4 million births and hence shouldn’t waste it-AVM girls reading this, raise your hands for a high five!). However, there are sceptics to this too. I once mistakenly deleted an excel I had worked on for hours and told Top Cat that it was all because I had killed a snake in my last birth and so had to struggle and fail a lot in life.  He said in a deadpan way, “Of course-stupidity has nothing to do with it. I must have been a horrible, horrible serial killer then, since I have to put up with you in this birth.” However, I don’t care. These philosophies are non-negotiable for me. In fact, when I really feel sorry for someone going through a bad time, my ultimate words of consolation are, “Don’t worry-everything will be fine. Only good things happen to good people” and “I’ll pray super hard for you.” Both of which I truly believe.

However, there are grey areas as well-gem stones, horoscopes, numerology and the like. My mother believes very firmly in these, sometimes putting me into tricky situations. She made me wear these really uncool rings when I was going through a bad phase. After I wore the rings, things only got worse. And that’s not even taking into account all the teasing I was subjected to any time my fingers were noticed. So I went and whined to my mother about how things had gotten worse after wearing the rings, to which she said, “Imagine HOW bad they could have gotten had you NOT worn them!” What can anyone possibly say to that!

She also believes very firmly in auspicious dates and periods. So I end up paying extra rent because there is no auspicious period when my lease expires and I would otherwise be homeless. I also had to join my current job a month after the date my boss desired for the same reason i.e. no auspicious date before that. I was idiotic enough to tell him the real reason to which I got the sarcastic response, “Of course of course…we can’t have someone like you joining us on an inauspicious date”.  But I know my mother loves me too much and would worry insanely if I didn’t follow her wishes in this matter, so have stopped arguing altogether.

Then there is the whole horoscope issue. I firmly used to believe what Ganesha told me every week in Sunday times. But then, in Bombay times, which is a supplement of the very same newspaper, Peter Vidal and his readings told me something completely contradictory. I got very confused as a result. (I wont say anything more about TOI-I think they are in enough of a mess as it is!) As if that wasn’t enough, sub branches like Numerology and Tarot came up and complicated life even more. I was supposed to have terrible luck in my job according to one reading, but was due for promotion according to another. My dream guy was right around the corner as per one, but I was supposed to have a heart break as per another. So then, I decided to do what suited me the best-believe all the nice things in all of them. So basically, at any given time, depending on the number of horoscopes I choose to read, I am blessed in love, have a promotion happening, have a page 3 social life and amazing health. Cool na! (Don’t ask if this is really happening or not…hint: if it were, do you think I would have the time to be blogging at the rate that I am?)

I am not trying to make any point in this post or give an opinion one way or the other. I have absolutely no idea how these things work or even whether they work. I just go ahead with life and hope my stars will take care of themselves. In the meantime, if any of you reading this had “you will have to read nonsensical rambling on someone’s blog today” in your daily horoscope, please pass on the contact details of your astrologer!

Guess who's back!!

I was a social media sceptic for the longest time and stayed away from it for as long as I could. Then I left home, and was forced to join Facebook so that I could keep in touch with friends back home. I kept my activity to the bare minimum…not because I was a voyeur but because I was painfully shy. I was also scared of people and feared opening up to a large audience. Besides, I felt that lots of people out there were far more “facebookworthy” than I (better looking, funnier and smarter) and wanted to give them the stage.

I have always enjoyed writing and being the nerd that I am, I looked forward to essay writing in an English exam and report writing during my MBA. I had often toyed with the idea of writing a blog, but then I would read the mind-blowing blogs of others and give up altogether. Besides, my fear of putting myself out there and being judged by others overpowered any fleeting temptations I had, and life continued as it was.

Then things started changing. I befriended some really amazing people over the last few years, and also, due to some maturity and wisdom (hopefully!), developed strong bonds with acquaintances and long lost friends back home. I slowly started realising that people weren’t all that scary after all. So, when I was overwhelmed with excitement or sheer boredom, I started putting up fb statuses. And surprise, surprise…the sky didn’t open up and swallow me!

In the meanwhile, I got a fracture and had to spend a lot of time resting. It coincided with several personal and professional blows and I needed to do something that would keep me sane. I started writing blog posts and saved them in a desktop folder but never created a blog.

One fine day, I read each of them. I realised that they weren’t just posts. They were reflections of my childhood and teens, observations of mundane things in my present, and sometimes, dreams about my future. But more than anything, they were me….nerdy, weird, moody, over emotional…but still as honest as I could be. And that’s when it hit me…why be scared of being myself? This realisation took the form of my blog.

Through my blog, I wanted the people I loved and cared for to know me better. I have always been socially challenged-I never pick up/return phone calls, reply to messages when I feel like and need to be dragged out of my house to meet up. Often, I disappear for months, if not years, without reason, leaving my friends hurt and worried. This blog was my way of telling all of them that I really did care deeply for them. That I did think about them often and cherished the times I spent with them.

As I started putting up posts, something wonderful started happening. I started overcoming my problems because I had something to look forward to. My mind got diverted in my quest for new inspirations and ideas. I rambled more often than not, my grammar would have caused the Grammar Nazis to put me into prison and my writing was not remotely close to the blogs I followed, but it didn’t matter. Friends who read my blog were enjoying it (or they are damn good liars!). I reconnected with old, long lost friends and got closer to acquaintances who reached out to me with words of encouragement. On a few occasions, rank strangers messaged me to tell me that they related to my posts. I was more at peace than I had been for a long time.

And then I wrote a very honest and heartfelt post…to vent my pain and to help those who were going through something similar. Unfortunately, the reaction to that post from some quarters was harsh and killed my fledgling confidence. Deeply scarred, I not only deleted the blog but also deactivated facebook. I just wanted silence and isolation. The reactions of those close to me ranged from dismayed to disappointed…But I had made up my mind.

   

For close to a month, I stayed away. However, my mind kept going back to my blog. From small observations in my day to day life to huge events, inspiration and ideas kept finding me. I wasn’t at peace and needed to do something about it…and the result is what you are reading right now.

A big, big thank you to those that reached out to me when I deleted my blog. It was the vote of confidence that I needed more than anything at that stage, and helped me get back onto my feet again. I now promise…  I will never do this again. I promise to be myself, even if I come across as uncool, weird, immature or over-senti. Because life is too short to be someone else or to hold back on something that gives you happiness and peace. 

Fun, food and fanfare

                                                                

I know my title sounds festive and that’s because we now enter the most enjoyable part of the year.. *drum roll*….garba, Diwali, weddings, birthdays, Christmas and New year! I realise that all those who know me must be rolling their eyes with contempt, because I am not exactly a party person. I probably have seen the maximum New Year’s eve TV programs from my generation (biggest blockbuster of the year on one channel, stage shows of film stars on another, end of the year countdown on a third), worked/studied unfailingly on Diwali since it always clashes with financial quarter ends/ exams and spent the day after a dandiya night apologizing to all the people I have caused bruises and stubbed toes due to my dandiya sticks and heels. But what the hell...I love this time of the year.

The entire Diwali period brings out the deep seated, but very much existent gujju in me. Although its really uncool, I love Falguni Pathak and the whole garba/dandiya fervor. I am hopeless at it myself, but I guess I just love watching the happiness, care free spirit and enthusiasm with which people get onto the floor and dance.

This period also breaks my tom boy comfort zone a bit, because I have to dress up for all the festivals and weddings. My savior in this department, my ex-flatmate  has already asked me to back off while she searches around and advises me on my clothes for the season. The accountant in me unfailingly loses to the fashionista in her and I guess I will have to take a deep breath (if not a bank loan) before I look at my credit card statement over the next few months.

And of course, Diwali brings with it the biggest Bollywood blockbuster of the year (Although Salman and Amir have now spoilt that a bit). I am not a big fan of SRK/Farah Khan and definitely not of Deepika Padukone but I am an Indiawaali, and hence eagerly await the biggest movie of the year.

I’ve never been able to figure out how exactly the Indian cosmos align so favorably and so frequently in December, but it seems as if the whole world is getting married. I have been fortunate to attend this part of my friends’ lives in a unique way-most of them stopover in Singapore before/after their honey moons, and, the way I choose to see it, seek my blessings for a happy married life! I eagerly await some of my friends this time as well and am spending some happy time planning their brief stay here.

Back home, I loved Christmas since it just seemed like so much fun. I loved the chubby Santa distributing gifts, the beautifully decorated X mas trees, the nip in the air since it was a pleasant change from the usual Mumbai heat and humidity and the one week break from school. However, I now like Christmas for an entirely different reason-it’s the time I get to come home without any worries of office backlog or angry bosses. I can soak in the love of my parents and friends back home which would keep me going for the rest of the year when I am away from them.

And with that, I will stop, before I jinx all of this and end up with a bad end to an eventful 2014! Happy  festivities folks!

Hop on!

Using Public transport is a way of life in this city, and I absolutely love the time I spend in buses or trains. I also love my companions on the bus and would like to introduce them to you:

1. The Candy Crush Saga Survivor-Need I say more? I have unfailingly encountered them on any mode of transport, however short/long be the journey. Many of these were former Angry Bird players, but I guess they prefer some colourful jellybeans over grouchy flock.

2. The Cell Phone Addict-A slight variation from 1, he/she is usually hooked on to a chat app, a movie or some music. I love the chat app ones the best, especially if they are seated next to me. I shamelessly stare at their screens and enter into their worlds for a short time – fights with a mother over moving in with a girlfriend, discussions about Charles and Keith sales, romantic exchanges with two boyfriends simultaneously-I have seen it all.

2. The Kiasu king/queen- Kiasu is a South east Asian term that means “someone with a grasping/selfish attitude”.  These are the people who will start pushing around miles before their stop actually approaches, almost prompting you to say,” slow down grasshopper!”  In case it’s a Kiasu queen she will also destroy your toes with her heels in a bid to reach the exit way before the bus stops. And God forbid, if they don’t get a seat to sit, they will push and shove around like an angry bull that has been shown the brightest shade of red.

3. The Grumpy Granny/Grandpa- They are the moral police and are more effective than all the Stand up Sallies, Move over Mikes and Give up Glens (a marketing initiative to make people offer their seats to the elderly/the disabled). If you dare continue to sit in a seat while they are standing, their fiery gaze will turn you into ashes before too long.

4. The lost in lust couple-They are the ones that I typically avoid looking at out of sheer embarrassment. I have actually noticed parents cover their childrens’ eye sometimes when such couples are around.  But to be fair to them, they are so busy with one another that they never disturb anyone else.

5. The corporate honcho-I encounter them on some segments-guess they are too busy to accompany me daily. He/She can be identified due to ear blasting conversations which have the words “deal cracked”, “millions”, “commission” and “bonus” generously used.

6. The chatterbox-Again, I don’t encounter them on every single journey, but when I do, they make me glad that my ride is over. They want to know everything about you-job, marital status, address, nationality, parents, friends…and have words of wisdom to offer on each of these.

So the next time you take a bus/train ride, keep your cell phone in your pocket, your Ipad in your bag and look around- I am sure you will meet my companions too.  Until then, hasta la vista!

Piece by Piece, we build a masterpiece

As a child, I was fascinated by games which require one to put all the pieces together and create something. Jigsaws, legos, building blocks….you name it and I’ve played with it. It all started because I used to bite my nails a lot, so my parents wanted to give me something that could keep my hands occupied. My nails are still the nightmare of any manicurist, but this led to a love for puzzles and games.

I’ve spent many hours in my childhood building Lego worlds or working on Jigsaw puzzles. When I had a fight with my sister, my ultimate revenge was to hide  just one piece of the Jigsaw she would be working on and deprive her of the satisfaction of a complete Jigsaw puzzle (Yes I know, I can be mean!). As the years progressed, Newton’s laws of gravity, Pythagoras’ triangles and then, Manoharan’s interpretation of the Indian Income Tax took up so much of my time that I forgot about this interest. Until some time ago, when a Japanese colleague moved into my office.

When he was setting his desk up, he began to put up some figurines of famous monuments (The Eiffel tower, Tokyo Tower, Sydney Opera house). On examining them more closely, I realised they were actually made up of nano blocks. So I asked him and he told me he had got them as his DIY project. He would get the nano block sets for each one (similar to miniature legos) and make them himself. I was amazed and told him about my childhood lego and jigsaw fascination. So he gave me the Sagrada familia (A famous church in Spain) nano block set and offered to let me make it. I was thrilled!

That very weekend, I sat down and began to work on it with tremendous enthusiasm. I put on some music and opened the set. The blocks spilled open and uh oh…they were tiny. I should have realised…they arent called nano blocks for nothing. I picked them up and examined them closely. They looked alike at a distance, but they were actually different pieces. I looked at the instruction manual and it was in Japanese. I realised this wasn’t going to be as easy as I had originally thought. However, on turning the page, I saw some step by step illustrations. Ok…some start. And then I began.

It was incredibly tough. I had to dismantle my work five times at different stages and restart. My fingers were big and clumsy and the pieces kept slipping through. The hours went by. The playlist on my laptop had stopped a long time ago and I hadn’t even realised. I guess this must have been the longest time I have ever been away from my phone inspite of having full network connectivity. But I kept at it. Finally, seven hours later, I completed it. Was I proud or what.

The next day, I went and kept it on my colleague’s desk. “Great! How did it go?’, he asked. “Oh lord, it was exhausting but exhilarating.  I had to tear the Sagrada Familia down five times before I could finally complete it!” I chirped happily. To which of course, Top Cat commented in his usual dry fashion, “Oh wow, we have Godzilla in our midst. She can tear down monuments!”

I took a picture of that and look at it each time I have a task I don’t want to do or think I can't complete. I have realised that if we attack it, little by little, with all our heart, whatever be the task, we can do it and do it well. After all, even Rome wasn’t built in a day!

"Maid" in heaven

I recently caught up with an extremely close friend back home who has settled into marital bliss. Or so I thought, until I discovered, it isn’t that “blissful” after all. Nothing to do with her husband (he is THE nicest guy I know) but to do with her new maid. I couldn’t stop laughing. This friend ( I will write a whole post on her someday because I love her to bits) is the epitomy of cool.  She is incredibly smart, very  funny, really chilled out, and well, not exactly “domesticated”. Hence, I had never expected to have a discussion on domestic help with her. So, of course, I couldn’t stop pulling her leg about it.

On my way back home, I was still giggling over the conversation and I suddenly realised that this wasn’t the first time that I had had the maid discussion with people I least expected. I recall having a banker friend with whom I was trying to make a Saturday morning jog plan. He first agreed, but then later called me and said, “Sorry I just realised, Saturday morning OBVIOUSLY doesn’t work for me-can we move this to Sunday instead?” To which I nodded understandingly and replied, “Oh of course…you would be too hungover from Friday evening drinks”.  “No No”, he said. “My maid comes in on Saturday morning and that’s an appointment I won’t change for anything”.  It took me some time to get over my shock after which I burst into peals of laughter.  Another time, another male friend of mine was in a scarily bad mood. When I asked him the reason, he said, “My maid has just quit…she is the fourth in three months. Now how am I going to manage?” And of course, my smart alec comment about him being a closet Shiney Ahuja wasn’t much appreciated. I even have a male friend looking for brides, who has kept "must be a good maid manager" as one of the criteria he looks for in his bride!

Once I reached home, I took a look at my weekend to do list (I’m a big fan of to-do lists. The first item on my to-do list is “make to do list” which Top Cat finds highly amusing. In my defence, if you can strike off an item as soon as you write it, it motivates you to get through the others. To which Top Cat quips, “why don’t you keep, “strike off first item” as a to-do too? That way, you will have TWO items ticked off…even more motivation!”).  

My to do list went roughly like this:

1. Make to do list

2. Call maid to check weekend timing

3. Maid-clothes for ironing

4. Aircon services guy??????

I won’t bore you with the other items but essentially, I realised that I am no one to laugh at my friends given that I seem to have the same struggles as they do. Even my weekends seem to revolve around the maid, plumber, aircon maintenance guy and other handymen (or handywomen). Guess grown up life isn’t exactly “maid" in heaven!

Messedup Chef Singapore

Cooking had never been my cup of tea (pun unintended). When I stayed with family, I always got delicious home cooked food, garnished with “Ma ka pyaar”. So, I never took the effort to learn cooking. Then I left home for further studies and my mother tried to convince me to learn cooking but I shot her down, telling her that I had enough stresses to deal with, since I was leaving home for the first time.

I was fortunate that my campus had a nice Indian food place and throughout my student life, I was well fed without any effort. After I left campus, Subway, Ananda Bhawan, Greenwitch salad, Nutella and Kinara prospered tremendously due to my lack of culinary skills.  

My mother isn’t a quitter and used all the weapons in her arsenal to get me to the kitchen…ranging from the usual worried mother of an unmarried girl mode “however modern society gets, you will need to cook for your family” and the self-appointed Shehnaaz Hussain mode “when you cook a healthy meal your complexion will glow and the spots on your face will vanish” to the HDFC relationship manager mode “think how much you will save if you cook instead of eating outside”. I must confess, she did get me thinking at times, but the desire to cook was as short lived as the run of “Ram Gopal Varma ki Aag” at the box office.

When I moved into a new house, I did have the temptation to start cooking and invite friends home for dinner, but the mean jeers of a heckling flatmate when I so much as mentioned this were sufficient to kill my confidence. And then I had a fracture…which changed my life in big ways and small.

 I couldn’t get out anymore and had to order food home. The minimum order size and amount soon reflected on my bank balance and waist line, and I realised that this wasn’t a realistic solution for the entire healing period of my fracture. So, I decided to take the plunge and cook some basic food. Top Cat panicked and declared that he was going to gift me a fire extinguisher as my induction gift but I decided to go ahead anyway.

I have been cooking for a few weeks now and here are some of my key learnings:

1. We need to put water in the pressure cooker when we put in the rice…else we land up with a ton of burnt rice and a charred cooker.

2. We definitely lose weight when we cook-more because of the cleaning up that ensues(especially when you forget to cover the mixer while making a smoothie or open the pressure cooker before the steam has settled down).

3. Potatoes can be peeled even after they are boiled!!

Sneer away, all you Michellin starred chefs, but I have just started and the learning curve has been steep. So far, I have made dal, soup, khichdi and basic boiled vegetables.  And, I have lived to tell the tale, so obviously my food was edible.  

However, the biggest discovery in all of this was that I enjoy cooking! It isn’t a chore anymore and I have voluntarily started visiting cookery websites to find more recipes. Rest assured, my mom is a pleased lady and I suspect that the Siddhivinayak temple has benefited a lot from my cooking due to all the money she must have donated there to thank God for this miracle.

I am almost confident that I will get from Messed up Chef to Master Chef soon…and the ingredients for that, besides the obvious, are lots of burnt and broken cutlery, ruined aprons and mutilated kitchen ceilings! On that note, Bon Appetite!

Chitrahaar ka Chamatkaar

Saturdays are usually my chore days-the day I do all the tasks that I’ve put off until I absolutely HAVE to do them-laundry, cleaning, grocery shopping and paying bills.  And to incentivize myself, I typically choose some music that I love so that I can complete everything on my to-do list without getting bored. Today, tired to death of all the music I had been listening to recently, I chose a 90s Bollywood playlist. Turned out, it was not so much a playlist as a time machine that took me back into my childhood.

My parents didn’t encourage TV viewing as a child and so we didn’t have cable channels at home for most of my childhood. But I think they missed something there, because hindi music became as much a part of my diet as daal, rotli, shaak, kachumbar and dahi.

Dil is the first movie I can recall watching in a theatre and I fell into undying love with  hindi film music. My parents even have a recording of me singing “khambe jaisi khadi hai” with such a mish-mash of words that Sameer (the actual lyricist) would probably have sued me had the version ever reached him.

My sister and I behaved like absolute angels on nights that had Chayageet, Chitrahaar and Superhit Muqabla on Doordarshan so as to ensure that our TV privileges weren’t taken away. And during the entire one hour that those shows were on air, we were enthralled by the romance of “Tujhe dekha toh”, the seductiveness of “Dhak Dhak karne laga” and the sheer indianess of “Morni bagha maa”. It was almost as if the Ministry of Magic had introduced magic to muggles like myself for that short span of time.

We were delirious with joy every time my mom bought  an audio cassette for us and we would hear the entire tape again and again. If it was a Rangeela , Roja or 1942 a love story, then we could play it during meal times or car rides as well, since my parents loved AR Rahman and RD Burman as much as we did. I have had some major fights with my sister over which song to listen to and  ridiculous as it sounds now, even over which song to sing when it was my turn during antakshari.

Today I have absolute freedom to listen to whatever I want and watch whatever I want.  But there is something missing. . I don’t think the best Ipods or Spotifys can replace the triumphant moment when a radio was finally tuned to the right channel and the crackling had turned into Alka Yagnik or Kumar Sanu or the feeling of exhilaration when the reels of the cassette finally reached the song one had been waiting for. It’s not that there isn’t good music in Bollywood today-there are some amazing soundtracks and soulful lyrics. But I guess, my deepest love will always be the “chura ke dil mera”, “bahut pyaar karte hain tumko sanam” and “maiyin maiyin” of the world. Not just because they are awesome songs, but also because they have so many memories and associations.  And I am sure that every person who has grown up in the late eighties or early 90s would agree….. E…always a tricky one for Antakshari until “imli ka boota beri ka ber” came along!

Up in the air

Throughout my childhood and teens, I stayed near the airport. While most would consider this a nuisance, given the drone of an airplane taking off or landing every fifteen minutes (or whatever is permissible as per ATC regulations), I went on to love airplanes and everything associated with aviation. Each time a plane took off, I would go running to the window to see which one it was and conjure stories about the passengers aboard. If it was a particularly fancy one, i.e. an Alitalia/Air France/British Airways, I wished desperately that I could be on it too. 

I grew up and the fascination for airplanes faded (Kandahar and 9/11 to be blamed), or rather metamorphosed into a love for airports, one that lasts until this very day.

I absolutely love the thrill of anticipation I feel each time I go to an airport. The buzz of activity that goes on 24/7, the aroma of coffee (I am told the CCD at the Mumbai Airport brings in the most revenue from all the CCDs in India), the distinct feel of duty free shopping, the ever changing status boards of airlines…bliss. I remember standing in front of many of those status boards and day dreaming about where my next vacation/work trip would be…Cebu? Melbourne? Geneva? Not a single one has materialised, but the day dreamer in me loved the indulgence.

It’s also the place where I get the maximum thrills over silly things-bags showing up first on a baggage belt, not having to wait in serpentine security/boarding queues since I showed up with my foot in a cast, getting my name announced all over the airport since I was busy finding billabong chappals for a friend and completely forgot that I had a flight to board, doing a little jig with a Santa in his grotto before a Christmas flight, getting a free coffee voucher since my reservation was mistakenly cancelled..the list can go on and on.

But what I love most about airports is that they are the best place to see love exhibited in its purest and truest form. Children jumping up and down to meet the father returning from a business trip, A husband stowing away his laptop bag with reckless abandon as he rushes to meet his pregnant wife, A girl crying buckets as her best friend leaves for further studies…I have yet to come across another place where such unadulterated emotions are on display. It makes one believe that the power and beauty of love, friendship and family bonding still very much exist.

So the next time you feel down on the world, I urge you, unless you are aviophobic (I looked that up and it does exist), to go the nearest airport, take a coffee and sit down. Let the warmth of all the love you see around embrace you. Take a flight of fantasy (pun intended) to some exotic location. It will do you a world of good. Or so feels this self-proclaimed philosopher of the twenty first century.

Fractured foot, strengthened spirits

About two months back, I suddenly couldn't walk that easily. Every foot step made me wince with pain and after a battery of tests and tons of doctor visits, I got diagnosed with a foot fracture and screeeeeccccchhhhh…. went the breaks on my long impending bollywood dance classes, travel plans, gym routine…and on life. Overnight,  I was forced to go from being a duracel energiser bunny to a partial egyptian mummy with a bandaged leg.  The doctors prescribed the usual medication and rest, and I prescribed to myself a heavy dose of self-pity.

To be fair, it really wasn't easy to cope alone with an injured foot, manage doctor visits, work, food and just life in general. I had never had this degree of  severe illness while being away from home before, and more than ever, I came to appreciate and miss the love and attention that had been bestowed upon me during illnesses by family and friends back home. However, at some stage, I got too caught up in the frustration of partial immobility and incessant pain and almost felt like life would never return to normal again.

It was during this phase that I realised who my friends were, who cared and who didn’t.  The sheer indifference of some people that I  previously thought cared appalled me. At the same time, the warmth, concern and love of people that did care brought vast cheer into my life. It made me appreciate just how important it was to be there for friends during both good and bad times. I also felt blessed to have wonderful colleagues who tried their level best to distract me whenever they noticed that I was writhing with pain.  The kindness of complete strangers (from never having to stand in a bus to the patient MRI staff who dealt with my sudden case of nerves due to the 20,000 disclaimer forms that I had to fill in) made me have the epiphany that the world is still a very nice place after all.

Long hospital visits and sleepless nights gave me a lot of time for self introspection. Instead of running on the treadmill of routine day to day life as I had been doing thus far, I paused and started asking questions. Not the heavy duty “what is the purpose of life” type of questions..let’s leave that to the Deepak Chopras and Sri Sris of the world-but  more the usual, quarter life crisis type.  I suddenly realised that half of 2014 was already over without me having ticked off even a single item on my new year resolution list. The solitude helped me to take some really difficult, heart-breaking decisions to get my life back on track.

But what made the most difference was a visit from my father for a few days- There ain't no medicine even half as powerful as the love of one's family. That visit made all the difference and helped me get back on my feet (literally and otherwise).

A big thank you to all of those that cared and stood by me during this time- I can never appreciate enough how much strength it gave me. More than anything, it has hopefully made me a better friend and  a better person. And rest assured, the energiser bunny will soon be back into action…she has a whole list of items to tick off before 2014 ends and only five months to do so. She is raring to go now! So watch out world, it will be you that will knocked off your feet this time round!

Life's lessons...we live and we learn

1.  Study for the sake of knowledge, work for the sake of commitment to your role and to your company-always do things for the right reason, else you will never be truly happy.

2. We have always been taught  “we reap as we sow”…but friendship isn’t always recognised, however faithful it may be- don’t give up…cuz life is too short to be scared of forming relations due to the possible pain that they may cause.

3. Be kind to strangers…you never know when you may need someone’s kindness.

4. Don’t be scared of loneliness…it sometimes is the ideal way to bring out the best in you.

5. Be true to yourself and your beliefs…make your own identity…you will live to cherish it

6. Popularity is fleeting but the pain you may cause in a bid to get that popularity can scar forever

7. Spend as much time as you can with kids-their innocence is probably the only pure emotion left in the world today.

8. Appearance is very important…for the longest time I was an idealistic fool who believed that there are people who don’t care about what one wears or how one looks, but I think those people are as pre historic as dinosaurs.

9. Never have orange juice just after you brush your teeth-just trust me on this.

10. Say hi to the watchmen, cab drivers, cashiers and waiters-they sometimes have really interesting stories to tell you.

11. Judge a guy by his actions and never, ever by his words.

12. We don’t always deserve the bad things that happen to us-but then, we don’t always deserve the good either. Life is a mixed bag and its best to enjoy all the good times and learn from the bad ones.

13. Read, read, read….books are truly a person’s best companion.

14. Have strong values but malleable opinions.