MERRY CHRISTMAS YOU'LL!

running around in loops.....

I'm guessing when our ancient learned fathers had a council and decided to come up with the concept of language, they did it with the idea of avoiding a Babel situation....one week into my new job, I'm convinced that everyone is speaking what I want to call MBA jargon just to fox me. I go from an org when my ed used the F word thrice in a 4 word sentence... Consider now situation below and tell me if I'm being unreasonable....

Day1, meeting 1: Big Boss Guy: "I want the team to integrate seamlessly so we are able to close the loop by Fri"......Hang on one sec, while I process this....ummm...so I assume what he was trying to say is, "Lets get this done by Fri" but he wont say it in those words because....MBA JARGON!!
Day2,meeting 2: Team member: Will you be able to share the contents of the e mail with her so she is also kept in the loop'?.... umm...meaning, "CC her on the mail"???....but they wont say it so easily because, yes u guessed right......

considering how much I have verbal bashed this place already, I'm not surprised that one week down the line I still haven't been logged onto the system...app, it has taken 2days for the others....wont be surprised if on Monday morn, I can't enter the gates because my swipe card has been canceled or something....all in a days work for me.....

Day 1

so i filled out like 3mn copies of what felt like the same things over n over again....n apparently v do the same things tomm....arghh.....ok so i like my new place of work. except of course i'm cursed to leave home at 6:45 every morn.....yes, i asked for this...Que sera sera.....

its the best of times, it is the worst of times...

as regards the cultural scene in this city. well friday i went for the bengalooru habba. was supposed to start at 6:30 (although the passes said 6), we got there by 7 and till 8 there was no sign of any activity. reason? ex-cm krishna hadn't bothered calculating his traveling time correctly before lifting off from mumbai. i feel a little bad now but i was part of the crowd that booed loudly when he finally did make an appearance. or maybe he deserved it considering no apologies with a capital A passed his lips. After an eternity of speechifying, finally the concert kicked off....L Subramaniam was brilliant-breath-taking and absorbing. Its a pity I had to leave a little after but it was pushing on 9:30 and I had to take an auto...

On Sat, deciding not to tag along with the parents for a Glorious X'mas concert, I went instead for a play. The posters said it was unsuitable for ppl under 18yrs of age as it dealt with issues of god and religion and blah. I bought the 100 bucker and waited patiently. Play started on the dot. It was nothing like what I had expected. No doubt the lead actor was good but there was no point to the entire thing. Even in a one act play, I'm sorry but I demand a strong storyline. All I got out of this half-an-hourer (yes it was half an hour only!) was that there is this Muslim undertaker guy in London who hates God and in the last moment he accepts him. And the whole half an hour can be summarised in exactly that 1sentence. The reason why they said only ppl over 18 was not because of any moral/spiritual issues of the soul that might have made young innocents question existence and god and all that but because of the profanity. It never ceases to amuse and amaze me how most of the plays that I have seen of late in Bangalore score on the swearing and no-holds-barred front even if they lack, painfully sometimes, a good script. As if that is all you need to make a good play nowadays.... sad....

well lots of other concerts coming up this season. im hoping some of them live up to the hype they create for themselves.

a curious state of non being...

so this is it then...my last day here and i feel curiously unaffected. dont know if this is good considering i have always felt nauseating fear at the start of anything new-first day at college, first day with my theatre group even....

i'm looking forward to this i guess in some sense...and not too. what if i'm no good at my new job? but then again i was getting too comfy here in any case and the time to try something new is now i guess... i know these arguments like the back of my hand now considering i have been going over and over it for a while ....a month precisely....no one else seems to want to hear it...they just think i'm mad mad mad doing this....it feels a little like i'm selling my soul, my freedom....or maybe i'm being just too fucking dramatic as usual. whatever.

badly paraphrasing here from Zadie Smith but I think this best describes my mood now: The future is a whole new country and I don't know if I still have a valid visa......

goodbye journalism, hello corporate world!

on a serious post script.....

looking at the world with spinster eyes
at 26
too tired too wise

its the proverbial gilded cage. the key has slipped through my fingers ages ago. dusk has settled making it difficult to make out what should be glaringly obvious. staring out of the cage, eyes large with wonder and amazement...how is one born so beautifully incapable of the most basic? with brain, 2eyes, 2 feet, 2 hands...all perfect...and yet so absurdly incomplete it has no cure because it has no name....its amazing how many times the human body can be shattered and still rise up and withstand some more. can the same be said of the heart? i doubt it and it scares me that i'm being made a guinea pig in this game with no name....

my cynicism comfort blanket is proving to be of little use now...people are less tolerant of a difficult adult than they are with a rebellious teen...withdrawal my only option it seems....my tentative forages leave me more shell shocked each time than before....

'Some people are born not belonging'...Salman Rushdie, of all the people in the world, is ringing in my ears at the moment....

oh yes, i have to guard against the self pity...

making such a spectacle of myself....

i've come to the conclusion that looking at life through a piece of glass makes all the difference... i haven't worn my glasses 'publicly' for a while now. being fat and bespectacled growing up was too much to bear and i shed both the minute i hit college. now thanks to a badly scratched old pair and a never ending delay with the new pair of lenses, i'm forced to wear my glasses in my meetings with the outside world.

mind you, i'm not being paranoid. on the few occasions when friends or people in general saw me with my glasses there is always an uncomfy silence initially as if they feel the need to apologise for my hugely deficient vision. or of course there is the outright "how come you wear such thick glasses man" amazement written all over the face but never voiced. v particular then of my looks (little as they may be) i have tried to get rid of my awkward embarrassing childhood by hiding the fact of my glasses as best as i could. until now that is.

walking down brigade road this morning with my glasses on, i was suddenly unconcerned about who would see me in my glassy glory. no worrying about cat calls, taking a bus in a crowded stop or worrying about getting dust into my eyes all the time. i dont feel the need to explain them away. sure i wear glasses. they lend me a gravity i can easily hide behind...its also the easiest transition, i have realised, from 'akka' to 'aunty'.....

its wot makes the bloody world go around i say

have this really funny piece doing its rounds in my head...i spent the entire weekend reading zadie smiths 'on beauty' and when i walked into office this morning i still had the whole accent thing floating around in my head... apparently how it is v easy to tell a bostonian drawl from a new england one....and the first person i bump into is my colleague with her tanzanian accented english accented with a british schooling accented with south indian force of habit saying 'oh you really really are wicked'...spent 20 secs trying to understand what she was saying and then spent the next 20 trying not to laugh...

reminds me of this piece that ryan seacrest played on his show the other day. potter boy daniel radcliffe sounds exactly like soccer boy david beckham!!!....and its only because they both happen to be english. which means the rest of the bloody world must sound the same to the other rest of the bloody world as well....which also means, for the same of an obtuse argument, that we are wasting our time on trying to decipher and then pin down accents....

on a personal note, i'll always been told i have a v nice accent (*blush*). till a friend i haven't met in 2yrs said 'oh good. ur finally replacing ur delhi punjabi accent with a south indian one'...ouch.....

Hitchhikers guide to a lonely planet

back after a v v refreshing trip to bombay...did the usual touristy stuff..bought books at fountain, shopped at linking road, ate at Leo's, bought alcohol in black at Janata, took moonlit walks along Bandstand...

My most endearing memory however has to be the trains...Bombay to me is actually all about travelling second class...the pushing and shoving, the cursing and smelling sweaty armpits, buying useless hair clips and the method in all that chaos. Travelling some pretty crazy distances-Virar to Churchgate sometimes.....I love how even 4yrs later nothing has changed. Nothing. The same pushing, shoving, cursing, smelling sweaty armpits and greasy station vada pav's... theres something about looking out at so much life through the bars of a train window....but more so how much of life is lived within those trains....

the best way to discover Bombay tho if u asked me is to do it by yourself....i guess i was happiest when i had my knapsack, my water bottle and my walking shoes...

So v Monica Chandler Bing-ish

i'm talking specifically about this one episode where monica decides to adopt a baby. i'm thinking something on these lines except i wanna adopt a baby dog. yeah v little parallel there but bear with me.

now that my office is going to move to electronic city i'm considering getting a house there. my parents don't know yet but that is a minor irritant. that accomplished i want to get my puppylove. 5 of them. which will help me inch closer to the grand plan of being crazy dog lady who lives on a farm and drives a jeep.

oh yeah i'll bake croissants for a living....

1% of the population is absolutely talentless

your's truly just came up with that theory. and i unfortunately, ladies and gentlemen, am queen bee of the 'hood. yup, i have just realised with increasing realisation, that i cant sing. am 2 left feet and splayed hands whenever i attempt to shake the booty. cant paint, hate cooking. cant discourse with poets and argue intelligently with great essayists.
in short, i'm pretty talentless. sigh, whatever shall we do with me?

I'm reminded of this quote by Woody 'The Great' Allen, which is so profound it brings tears to my eyes everytime - "My one regret in life is that I'm not someone else".

srumdiddlyumptious..........

under cooked veggies, lottsa wine, lottsa more laughter under a beautiful sky lit up by fireworks....theres something abt having a bbq with the people who matter most to u....
there's so much magic in the air it feels like christmas already.....

can i have a widget to go?

widgets, rss feeds, posting, hosting, streaming......ahhhhhh.......wen did technology spill outside the 'this-is-how-its-done' section in my brain? i thought i was beyond cool when i discovered how to bluetooth stuff from bro's laptop to my phone....only to wake up naked under harsh arc lights in technology land...

someone has to print a handbook for dummies book esp for me....

Au gout de la creme glacee

i've discovered there's nothing better than a 2 am gossip session with chocolate where everything from parents to career to marriage is dissected...it also got me wondering-how does a cousin whom u kinda grew up with and who is just 6 mths older than u think so diff from u? i guess i gave her a lot of food for thought and i expect part 2 tonight....the little french i did learn helped me read that as creamy ice cream flavoured chocs btw :)

finally trashed my moto for a nokia....with 1 gb memory...which means i spent a good part of my weekend trying to store songs on the phone with overworked left hand....n first thing i do is set my ring tone to 'pump it'....so as i slowly regress......

so true, so true..............

big girls do cry....

life is a bitch.....she takes away the little you have and then some....so my bro has decided to move out after his wedding...after he promised not to. with this i lose my idol, my confidant, my best friend.

this time i'm too tired to cry...too tired from crying over men who felt so right but were never meant to be, too tired from crying over men who shouldn't have been, too exhausted from being mad at the world when its me i hate.

whoever said big girls dont cry didn't mean it...

I'm singing in the rain....

What a glorious feeling to be alive again
I'm waltzing along,
Singing a song
I'm tapping my feet
To a bump-de-bump beat

I have a lil' seeket and I'm all feverish with excitement.....

Tortilla Flat

was turning out to be a morning of noconsequence...rainy outside, no pressing work....till i received the pleasantest surprise...

i had discussed John Steinbeck with this boss guy i met during an interview ages ago...and he was shocked i had not read Tortilla Flat, which he said is Steinbeck's most popular book...i promised to try and hunt for it....forgot entirely about the conversation till i recieved it by post this morning....v v touched....must remem to say thanks....apart from the fact that i love Steinbeck's books, i think part of my curiosity about this book is because i have this fancy for abstract-vague names....tequila sunrise...purple orange....sidewalks of the world....that's what i'm naming my coffee shop btw....

i'm a happy little girl again....

yawn....

its 8:45 on a monday morning and i'm at work already thanks to my physiotherapist who didn't show...yeah, i have finally decided my wrist pain is not something that will go away...2hrs every morn for a week...painful but highly necessary....went trekking with a bunch of ppl on Sat to this place just outside of Mandya....make that tried.....half way through the bothersome nerve in my wrist started the hip hop....pressure on right hand hip....grabbing at a rock hop....so i had to leave half way through which was v embarrasing....we planning on going on the 10th of Nov again and this time i intend to finish the course...

so im getting a s-i-l...

thats a sis-in-law...yeah, my commitment-phobic brother who has denied the existence of this girl for nearly 8yrs now suddenly decided on sat that he needs to "move on" and that "it is a natural progression"....didn't feel the shock too much since i had just come back from Octoberfest and was on a bit of a high...

but when i did, the next day, i cried non stop for half an hour and stopped only because i fell asleep....before i did, though, apparently i promised to move out of my room and to try and not hate her too much...and also apparently i asked whether i will still be top priority.....

my parents are worried since i said we dont get along too well....but bro assures me i will have no issues because she IS nice after all.... i just missed it all these years when she called me fat and rude...

im very happy for him because he says they love each other very much...but im hurting because i think im going to be brother-less in a bit....

its gonna be a bright, sunshiny day.....

somehow most of my fondest memories have a beautiful sunny day in them...and since im tripping down memory lane at the moment, im pulling one of my most loved ones out of the bag to blog about...

winters' morning in delhi...sun playing hide and seek with the clouds sprinkling the road with golden specks....i was driving down a deserted road with a friend, in no particular hurry to do anything...we pull up at a book sale...its a boutique shop and the discounted books cost a bomb so i wander to the coffee shop next door...

its done up in fiery reds and greens...holly and pretty little christmas trees...we order coffee and decide to stay long enough to play a game of scrabble....im so engrossed in my game i dont notice the owner of the coffee shop watching us....he walks up...asks if he can interrupt...and helps me score a brilliant 33 with just 2 tiles...

we get talking once the game is over.. he is about 30, owns a lovely coffee shop and says he does the crossword first thing in the morning....didnt know men like that existed anymore...it was almost 6 o'clock by the time we leave....and i was madly smitten.....

here we go then...

so about this guy (see post below)....he was the typical "i've got silicon valley written all over me, so stand in awe of me mere mortal. also i am wanting early marriage" type....

after much persuasion and tears, i finally agree to meet the guy... and since i have only promised to meet him and have not said anything about being nice, i decide not to waste time... below are some snatches of conversation from that evening....yes, i'm usually this difficult....

him: so how angry do you get...
me: (silent- i have no clue what he expects me to say)
him: what do you do when you get angry...do u break plates or something....
me: (still silent)
his mother: he is waiting for you to say you don't get angry....
me: (more silence)
him: what makes you angry...
me: people asking me a lot of questions....

him: you cook
me: yeah, maggie...sometimes.....

him: you have passport?
me: (i wish i had thought of something smart to say) yeah...
him: but you have never been abroad??????????????????????????
me: (still wishing i had something smart to say) no...

him: you have any questions for me?
me: no. i dont do this too often...

a bit after this i think they got up and left... i dont remember..i had gone back to reading my book.....

look at what the cat dragged in....

take a quick look around....chances are that nearly 25% of all matrimonial ads on the internet/ newspapers are mine....my parents are doing it with such passion i feel its a sin to stop them.... also the fact that they think i don't know makes it even tougher to confront them....
caught one of the 'ads' that my dad had left carelessly on the laptop...i don't remember the exact words but it was on the lines of "fair, simple, homely(!!?)"...you know the kinds that would make me turn in my grave if i were dead....
i kinda don't fault them though....what do they do..."5ft nothing, brown skinned, introvert, loves dancing and body piercings" won't exactly bring home the harvest....
i am just v averse to this whole 'match making process'.....speaking of which, i have to tell you about this specimen who actually turned up to 'see' me....but that will be a new post in itself....

deadly poets society....

its one of those days where i want to jump around and do the birdie dance but since i cant im going to spend all my pent up energy trying to rhyme very badly....

i want to go on a holiday, its as simple as that
just me and myself
no ifs, no buts

nothing fancy...i'll settle for very less
someplace i can read my book
and be at one with my nothingness

a few places i could see
some music maybe.....

when this will be...i dont know...
sitting at my desk
is turning out to be such a bore!

ode....

this post is one year and about a month too old....but i simply had to put it down in words...and if you see a steve martin starrer on these lines, remember you heard it here first ....

ganesh chaturthi last year...it's around 8:45 by the time i finish at work....traffic is insane...barely 15mins after i leave office, my car stops....i'm out of fuel....bang at the entrance to the busiest flyover this side of town...right outside a used car showroom next to a mosque...exasperated cops help me push car to the side of the road....i try getting an auto to the petrol bunk with no luck....i dont want the used car salesman to mistake my car for one of his own.......
i realise i have 10bucks in my wallet....yeah, its becoming 'one of those days'....i walk upto the ATM, manage to get an auto and its smooth sailing till the petrol bunk...
but its not to be...i have no bottle to get the petrol in..and the petrol guys are not willing to part with one for love or money...seeing that i'm ready to cry at this point, the kind hearted auto driver (may his tribe increase) empties out his 1.5ltr Pepsi waterbottle and gives it to me...he drops me back halfway, i pay him twice the fare and am back in my car...
By now ofcourse, the ganesha procession is well under way....traffic is at a standstill... its around 10:30, i'm stuck outside the mosque and praying really hard there's no communal riot...
i must have been the only woman there because the revellers tried very enthusiastically to engage me for a bit....
i got home half an hour later...with just enough energy to mumble "crazy day" and crawl into bed.....

Human Nature....

that is one of the sexiest instrumental pieces i have ever heard...by miles davis....the real thing is anything but...and i seem to have gotten the worst of it this week...

monday: editor eggs me on to make a bad decision. when the thing blows up in my face, he pretends like he had nothing to do with it
tuesday: spineless senior who started the whole thing in the first place doesn't back me up...and he doesn't do it in my face either....i find out about him doing it behind-my-back...grrr
wednesday: anchor gets on air info wrong....gets angry mail from viewer....and i get mail from him saying we (????) should let it go this time.... what the.....

sigh sigh sigh...its a friday...i'm doubting v much if i want to come back monday

the 'afterwards'...

so i'm having verbal diarrhoea but then again i hate disappointing people....
just reading this commentary by an author on how he battled with whether or not to include a steamy sex scence in his second novel....and after much thought decided to settle with ..'afterwards'... you know "she entered the room hesitantly and afterwards they lack back contended" types....
i wish more movies/ serials would use this method... consider this scene...i'm watching T.V. even something as 'safe' as Friends....and the min my mom/dad walks past, they make out like its going out of style... i'm not kidding you....it happens every single time....
they could be in the middle of the freaking war zone in afghanistan, all battered and bruised holding body parts in their hands, but the min parents walk into room, they are going at it hammer and tongs... v v avoidable....

the commentary also had some of the entries for the Bad Sex Awards... most are not worth putting up here but this one is a laugh riot....
"she's taking off her blouse. it's on the floor. her breasts are placards for the endomorphically endowed. inspite of yourself, a soft whistle of air escapes you"....
....

men and other miscellaneous irritants....

so i wrote those big words fully aware of the fact that i could get those spellings wrong but hey im digressing....
how do you react to a msg whch says 'much success' after you have poured your heart out?.... so it happens like this...i meet nice burnedoutbanker turned planter boy on shoot....and thanks to sheer effort that we have spent 9hrs in his jeep in close proximity we chat....he seems interesting enough for me to contemplate holiday at his resort and i even progress to the point where i conned my friends into agreeing to go with me...i find out he is not boy but 40yr old man....i begin to have my doubts but voices shout down my concerns to not overthink as usual and ruin whatever this could be as usual....
and then in the middle of an sms-athon where i am pouring my heart out on finding my mr.sometimesright, i get well ...'wish you much success'..... grrr...
and you guess right...we haven't spoken since...what??... how was i supposed to respond to that...

crawling back into my skin...

well i basically crawled out of my skin in the first place since my boss was in town...THE Big Boss who has just had a baby... and she is cranky as hell in the first place...so i ensured i was super busy yesterday...had 2 stories...almost lined up a third but resisted the urge to over do it....and after all that, she didn't even come to office.....
today's the day to breathe easy...some villagers decided to burn 2 people alive all night so i dont dare ask for a camera....so i sit here and keep myself pretty....and yeah expect some more posts today.....

oh for the love of god.....

heard this song on the radio this morning by savage garden which was like a letter to god in the first person.... so i was a little offended by the words but then again i guess religion is such a strong personal subject, its tough to please any one person...
which is why everyone has to have an opinion on it..and ridicule Him just to prove how non conformist they are....here's a thought...if they are that non conformist after all, why not prove their love for God...and not necessarily the other way around...
i remember reading about this art student, for instance, who had painted some 'objectionable' paintings ... well, when i read that he what he had painted... i was well...upset.... or this piece i read by Woody Allen where he outright ridicules Jesus Christ... i mean i know he's Jewish but hey i didn't really appreciate that piece and it stuck in my head....
there's such a fine line between artistic creativity and well crossing the line, it often blurs...and while im not the sort who would go out onto the street waving a banner because someone tarnished the name of my Lord, it still upsets me.....
that said though, i can appreciate humour...to some extent....like this classic comic strip i have up on my desk by johnny hart....love this guy's sense of humour by the way...it goes like this....

When Mary had a little lamb,
Poor Joseph was shocked and awed,
His only option,
It seemed was adoption,
So he adopted the Lamb of God....

my brother on the other hand was deeply offended....

religion is the opium of the masses.....

a tinny piano plays on in the background....

maybe there's a silver lining to my bouts of depression....almost all the authors or poets whose work i love seem to have one thing in common....loneliness and depression... i understand about being sad...which is v necessary to really understand life and live it not just skim the surface.... but what is it about depression and creativity.....
so don't know if it is good news or bad...after all i have the depression without the piano playing in the background for inspiration or New York around me.....

"My dear old fish" said Mr Wonka, "go and boil your head"...

got myself some books yesterday...ok there's 'Charlie and the chocolate factory'....i died laughing...the title of the post is from there...finished that one last night...then finished 'Death of a salesman' this afternoon...cried a bit...in some weird way connected with it....have started on 'A streetcar called desire'....and i intend to finish the fourth one....Complete prose by Woody Allen before i go back to work on mon... yeah i'm having a v literary weekend and loving it....

horray, horray, its a hol-holi-day....

umm...my second post today...fairly light day and im in no mood to particularly change that....we are coming up on a holiday tomo and im feeling v rested already....its funny how festivals are increasingly becoming more of a public nuisance than anything else....huge cut outs of st. mary and ganesha have been put up on my road...which is already v badly chocked...and tomo they are going to have 'arkestra' in the middle of the freaking road.... with loud filmy music, drunk men dancing on the streets and me gently stewing in the car stuck in a traffic jam that will last only about 2hrs when it normally takes me about 15min to reach home... so i shall just sit at home, put my feet up and shut out the world....

well Jesus you know....

if you're looking below,
its worse now than then....

snatches of a song i grew up knowing......so true of what is happening today....everytime someone says oh but you know India's shining, i feel like clobberring them on the head....yes, i'm of a violent nature but hey that is nothing compared to what i'm seeing around me....just look at the news....10 people accused of stealing clothes beaten to death yesterday, 3 teenagers have their eyes pierced because they stole a motorcycle, a woman branded with a hot iron yesterday because she was a lower caste woman lodging a case against a upper class person, a man dragged by a cop on his motorcycle --his crime: stealing a chain.... what is happening...it sickens me everytime i watch the news.....
why are we as indians so disinclined to order and discipline of any form....
why this apathy, this "i dont care a fucking damn but thats only because i dont know better".... and of course i have to have my 2-bit sarcastic line about the higgedly piggedly nature of our lives...if there's a shortcut we indians have either discovered it or copied it already....

sunshine through my window...

just back from the awesomest trip to chickmanglur... i know, i know...i might as well just get a house there considering how often i have been there of late...i used to see some of the great destinations on travel and living and wonder at the beauty of nature...but being to chickmanglur and coorg so many times has opened up my eyes....i dont have to save up for a holiday i will never be able to afford to europe...i can just hire a cab and take off....and theres everything here....terrific weather (either over-cast or just clearing up after a shower), great scenery (rolling hills, green as far as you can see, clouds barely kissing the top of mountains) and of course quiet....none of the vehicular noise and grime of big city life.....
and after 2days of being on the road, walking through fields and having no time to eat, i got a surprise compliment from my brother when i came back...."your skin is actually glowing, wots up"....i said a silent thanks to my hills....

yawn....

its a tuesday and i have already lost my zing to do any work... yawn... any suggestions?

its not about who wins or loses, its about passion for the sport....

back from the most fantabulous (spelling?) trip of my life to Saklespur. Near Coorg, if you are not from these parts. On work. Which I initially complained and cribbed about for a bit but now that I'm back, the glow is still going strong.....
it was this car rally with about 45 odd guys in jeeps going through some of the craziest territory. Through virgin forest, mud roads, tracks barely wide enough for one jeep to pass through, tea estates, lakes, ponds, slush. In pouring rain, in barely there drizzle. In absolute peace, fresh air and the most awesome stretch of the Western Ghats you can think of. And I rode standing up in an old battered up jeep for most of the over 5 hr journey for the sheer pleasure of it...
cant wait for the next "Off track rally"...its in Goa apparently. This is the part where be a journalist is beginning to pay off....

famous hip-hop star rajnikantha .....

this is an ode to the nameless stranger who hit on me like I've never been hit on in my life...and completely made my day...i suck at verse, but pl bear with me....
I was sitting there having coffee
When this really cute firangi hottie
Asked me for a smoke
And stayed on to tell a joke
About his friends' pup
And how he loves him so so much
And whether he should name it such and such

I loved him fleetingly for 5
And thanked him for stopping by
But hey ho and the jolly ho
I simply had to go....

and that was the end of that.... and no, we didnt exchange no's...dont even ask, it happens only to me....

after the thrill is gone....

umm...lets see... if i ever do quit journalism, what will i do....i have this urge to open up my own coffee shop...i know i know...it kinda passe but its not going to be just any old coffee shop....
i have it all pictured out in my head. its going to be on a quiet side street. made entirely of brick. no steel and glass for me. with a huge garden around it. and wooden benches so you can sit there for as long as you want. one side is going to have a nice bookshop. this is the only area where i will have sofas. so you can browse as well. in one corner there will be an area where people can have performances. like i could invite a band in on wednesdays to play a couple of songs. a very small band that play soothing music. nothing great. no hoo ha.. or on fridays an up and coming theatre group to have an impromptu performance....
the best part is yet to come though....i plan to have a bakery...yup... i plan to serve fresh baked croissants, breads and yummy brownies....the smell of which will drive you crazy....and im working on my baking skills now.....

it's the absolute beginning of the end....

dont know why but feel like having that as the heading of my post...and nothing else...

ann(he he) hall

watched annie hall directed by woody allen last night and im still on a high... anyone would be i guess....take this dialogue for example.... Annie: (talking about California): "Its so amazingly clean"....Alvy (played by a brilliantly neurotic Woody Allen): But of course it will be. They take all their garbage and put it on television".... i mean wot normal person wouldnt love it.... or this one-liner he repeats constantly in the movie, "I would never want to belong to a club that would have me for a member".... well its apparently originally Freud but delivered by him its like it was written by him, for him...
i've seen one other film of his--husbands and wives...that was such a unique movie because it was so eerily real. but the theme that runs through all these movies is this sarcasm which simply gets to me. throw in a little bit of bitterness combined with sarcasm or even a mild mockery and you have me hooked for life... i love charlie chaplin for that.... ummm... anyways, i knew woody allen was great but i now think he's god. going to get his other movies, especially 'wots new, pussycat'? it has peter sellers and woody allen...rare rare treat....

it takes all types...

this post is about a girl i met recently and her truly remarkable story. i dont know her complete story. probably never will. and i dont think it really matters if i do or dont because this post is essentially about me.
i dont want to go into how i met her or how we got chatting because things like this will happen to me only and its very hard to explain the how or why. but from the moment i met her i knew her life was, well basically fucked up. i just get a sense about these things and 9 times out of 10, im right.
anyways so we got chatting and she told me she has never had a family. not that she's an orphan but that her dad died when she was a child and that she has lived all alone since then. i dont know how it works but i was too scared to ask her for fear of releasing some deep seated emotion i couldn't handle...
standing there in semi darkness listening to her saying in a gradually peaking voice of desperation almost, 'but i've never had anybody, but i've never had anybody' .....gave me goose bumps...and a perverse sense of happiness thanking god for my own parents...
i cant think of coming back home day after day after day to nobody. having no one to call me during the day and ask me if i've had lunch, no body to serve me dinner when i come home so tired sometimes im ready to cry, nobody to stonewall me when i come home late on saturday nights, no one to have stupid fights with...
i see so so many half families around me, im almost scared to speak aloud of mine for fear they'll be taken away... where ever will i be then?....

little birdie...

this morning a little bird came outside our kitchen and started chirping and my mom said, who has come to visit me... and stood watching it for a couple of seconds....it was so nice to see her in the quiet of the morning standing and listening to the bird. the innocence of that moment will stay with me for a while....
a friend of mine once said she loves my house because it is so peaceful... i think its the best compliment i have received in a while... and i know whom to thank...

ahhhhhhhhh.......................

ok its gng to be a crazy crazy day tomo...and i may not have a job the day after. basically my BIG boss is coming and well i dont think it is gng to b v good for me..... keeping my fingers crossed, blow me a good-luck kiss....

hate the damn french!!

have just started french classes and i can say i positively hate it. i mean why the hell do they have all those extra letters if they dont intend to use it? and as if it wasnt complicated enough, there are those funny little thingies on the top of some words which changes what it has taken you forever to learn in the first place....but i am not one to give up easily. i shall persist to the end. till then heres wishing me a bonne journee!

socially depressed...

coined by yours truly to talk about social shyness (atleast that phrase exists right??)... i just realised how much i hate talking to people. not everybody but most people...
some people i switch off from the first word because most often than not i hate going through the process of listening to them from 'go' and having to respond 'appropriately' when i dont care/dont know what they are talking about....
i get the feeling of being held by my hair and dragged into a conversation at times....and i am in the most social of all professions....no not a prostitute silly.....a journalist...yeah i know its one step above, but hey who cares......sigh, the things i get myself into....

going, going...

and gone past 25 in a flash... I feel like Donkey from Shrek, running towards something with ears flapping and arms outstreched only to screech to a halt and say hey wait a min, i think i missed the right turn...
ok so im 26 now. dont feel any different. didnt expect to feel any different actually from last year. but i dont feel any different from 13 years ago or maybe 14. i could very well be 12 in my little pink frock, confused, spaced out and pretty much just doing my own thing.... adulthood, where is thy clarity?

a party for pooh bear....

reading a couple of pooh bear books i picked up.. 2 of the 4 favourites in fact- winnie the pooh and house at pooh corner... the book has the most amazing illustrations... yeah it feels like im going back to my childhood...just bought 2 of the shrek toys, donkey and princess fiona, and am dying to get shrek with my next happy meal... but i digress....
i want a party...sigh...a nice grown up party with lots of stuff to drink, loud music and if its workable a beach... but then again im not too fussy... and im getting all itchy and twitchy cos its my birthday cming up... and like eeyore im super depressed about it...

GLAMOUROUS!

was watching paris hilton being taken back to prison and she was as usual well ...dressed glamourously ...can't help wonderng how much stars spend on their clothes.... i know it is sin for them to be caught in the same outfit twice.. some stars like Beyonce i heard apparently have a stylist who checks her from head to toe EVERY time she steps out...phew!
which brings me to the question, what do they do with the old clothes. t-shirts/tops can be re cycled ONCE i guess but what about the rest? do they just chuck it in the bin ( i dont see a paris hilton or lindsay lohan contributing to charity!!) or do they sell them back to the designers? does it hold true for accesories as well? esp jewelry. after having spent a couple of hundred dollars on a much talked about and ofcourse photographed piece, do they put it away in safe keep for when it fades from collective public memory?
v life changing this thought of mine...

that thingie you know..

why cant i EVER remember things? places, people, addresses....why? its so embarassing when i meet people i've spoken with/done stories on and the whole thing and I cant remember their godforsaken name. increasinlgy i cant seem to place a face as well. like this lady i did a half an hour shoot with and i put my foot in my mouth when i met her only a month later and said, "We've met somewhere havent we''?
or names of roads... im always saying you know, the road thats parallel to the railway crossing..evn if my office happens to be on the same road....gaaaaah....getting old my ladies.....

the blah sutra....

blah...blah...blah...voices...voices...voices in my head...like a bad tape recorder playing back the same song over and over again...snippets of conversations, songs and everything else mundane...crowding my head up so much theres no space left to listen to the real things...the little squeak inside of me....

YAARU?....SMITH

thats the topmost thought on my mind post steve tyler's hiss-tronics... the audio was terrible...and I was right in front...they sat during one song on some easy chairs (or should I have expected that considering their age?)...and didnt sing some of their most popular songs.... so all in all it was very 'who-the' and 'what-the'.....
sad, considering all the money spent and all the publicity given......

run your own race...

read this in the 'Monk who sold..'....yeah im reading it only now becos im not a self help book person at all...but there are so many interesting things about this book...talks about how to run your own race and not be bothered about what other people are saying as long as in your head it feels right.... and about enjoying the simple things in life...
i know its all easier said then done, but if theres anything that gives me a sense of peace...no matter how temporary, im willing to try....

a slow road to nowhere spectacular....

i notice my chief vice is whine and my whine is work... tongue twisters apart, why is it that no one actually lets you in on the whole work-world when you are little...will help you to bear the self doubt and ego crushing so much better... the scales all of a sudden fall from your eyes and you see the briefcase as a tool to tie you down, your phone/mail as the most dreaded accountability meter and of course the boss for who he really is....

need a life..need a life...

ok just in the middle of the week but i alredy hate my life and want a break

alice in wanderland.....

dying to travel but where to go? or rather how to go is my problem... i want to go to Bhutan but all the ppls i was orginally supposed to go with have dropped out...and i dont think its too safe to go by myself...
speaking of which i thought i would give myself a 2week backpacking trip to Europe as a 26th b'day present...yeah, i know...too expensive. plus i suddenly started freaking out about the whole being on my own thing. i mean im a loner and all but the thought of havng no one to talk to for 2weeks kinda didnt appeal to me... and im not exactly the kind of person who can strike up a conversation with strangers just like that.... so well that fell through...
now im planning goa again for my b'day (its a midlife crisis thing!!)...again lots of ppls droppng out n stuff...lets see, thats one trip i can make on my own...
the travel bug is biting hard and im itching all over....

a project-in-process

thats me! its funny how the very things I used to think were sooo cool till like a while ago, I hate. No, its not the teeny bopper come of age thing that everyone goes through I'm talking about...I'm talking a couple of months ago...and its happening with a lot of things...
for ex, ppl who knew me a yr ago wouldnt recognise the 'far from the marrying crowd' attitude I have now...no siree not for me is the reply when anyone asks me if I'm gonna get married....
or for that matter, wanting to live on my own and have my own 'space'.... I used to be quiet the 'wall' as far relationships went....and was all about givng ppl space.... to the extent I was contemplating getting my own place, in Bangalore (!!!!) so I didnt have to contend with parents/whoeverelse and could have well, space! The lines are completely blurred now....
something in me seems to have let go of the rigidity and discipline I used to have earlier...and its not always a good thing....

school of hard knocks...

or life if you prefer the short and easy. why is everything to be learned from experience? and why is experience always, always tough. there are no soft landings in life i've discovered.
be it coming to the conclusion that work sucks, that bosses are mean and will only remember the mistakes you've made or that its such hard work just having to wake up every morning being positive (I think its a quarter life crisis)...god! everything has to be learned the hard way.....
funny i dont remember life being such an up hill task when I was a kid. or maybe my brain wasnt fully developed enough to comprehend such complexities.

a garden of sunshine and a scardey cat

just finished reading haroun and the sea of stories by salman rushdie and i loved it! something about kiddie stories that makes you smile. had heard quiet a bit about the book and frankly expected something else like talking rabbits or something but loved the book nevertheless....
and in a similar impulse buy i also managed to get a illustrated version of the wizard of oz which has the cutest drawing of the timid lion on the cover. also have a slim book called a garden of verse by robert louis stevenson which has some of the most lovable poems. harshvanshraj bachchan...amitabh's dad... also writes or has written some stuff for children..heard it once somewhre and loved it. havent had too much sucess sourcing it on the net though.....

random.....

is it easy to kill oneself? just be over and done wth the whole living thing? and how do u know ur ready for it? are u ready only if u dont think abt the ppl ur leaving behnd or r u ready when its the only thing on ur mind day in and day out?

sultans of swing....

have the sultans of swing running in my head...its the sexiest song and is the top of my love list at the moment....a while ago I was crazy about smooth operator and before that rush by paula abdul...something about a powerful womans voice singing a love song... even a man singing about love although I tend to be very sceptical about a man expressing softer feelings.... who can dismiss the power of James Blunt's voice singing ur beautiful?.....
then again, I would so hate to have a man play or sing me a romantic song when he is wooing me...I'm so not romantic that way...wonder why my favourite songs are all romantic songs then....
I'm sitting here thinking about love songs while I wait for someone to clear my script so I can get on with my life...which constitutes going home and crashing out like a baby.....

Hello Moto...

thats the ringtone on my phone at the moment which is a (no prizes for guessing) Motorola Slivr. And I know which model it is simply becos I have been asked it soooo many times not out of any love for gadgets. I know how slim it is, the pixels on the camera and the amount of space on my phone post downloads(free space)...too much information in my already overloaded brain.. and thrs a reason why I dont care too much for these figures....thats becos technology HATES me!
I mean I take pix on my phone and try to transfer onto the net...I cant do it. cos my wire thing that I got with the phone doesnt seem to wrk. I buy speakers to connect to my comp at work but apparently some port thing isnt compatible/doesnt work....I try to copy some stuff onto a flash drive (after a LOT of trial) and the damn file doesnt copy cos well...I DONTFREAKINGKNOW .... I flunked all of my computer papers in college...and even the simplest of tech like how many gb is my comp fails me......
ummm....I think I sound almost like the couple from 'Zen and the Art of...' goddam.....

far from the marrying mob...

what is this obsession with marriage? why is evryone I know getting married....is it because I've gotten old(????) or is it because its suddenly the 'in' thing to do?
I mean like this guy I was madlyinsanely in love with suddenly decides to get married just when my obsession was making headway..
practically everyone from my class from college and school are married already or proudly wear a 'committed' tag....
not a happy state of affairs...def not....I'm staying as far away from this entire maddness as I can....inspite of momdad's best efforts including surreptitiously putting my profile online and scanning the matrimonial section in the papers with a microscope...I'm sorry, I'm refusing to go down just yet....

stand at the door of what was 'ere before...

that is a line from a poem by Edna St.Vincent Millay talking about how she yearns for her childhood..standing at the door and looking back at what was knowing she will never be able to go back... well I'm not sure of the exact words but the thought stayed with me and I'm thinking of it so so much as I feel old at 25...
so many things lost. Innocence. and I'm not being dramatic when I say that... so many things like who said what and how it was said and who didn't tell me what just didn't matter to me earlier. It suddenly occupies a large portion of the inside of my head....Peace. Maybe its the job I do maybe the stress is natural for a matureworkingadult but I cant remember a day when I'm not hyperventilating, irratated or impatient. Conviction. There maybe a God in heaven but everything is NOT alright with the world and doubt if I even believe it ever will be.....
just a couple of things I wish were still in me...
is it already another weekend? time for me to start making my plans for Monday Morning and trying to sleep just a little bit longer on saturday...

a sudden spark of brilliance...

well ok so I use the word brilliance a lot...like when I'm playing scrabble with my mom and I say Hurry up, I have the brilliantest word to make...or I wash my hair and think it smells brilliant..whatever...
anyways, have had the most brilliantest energy today...met up with some clients at 8:30...not a breakfast meeting mind u since there was no food offered to resuscitate me (i actually got that spelling in place!) and then one more... and I'm not even half way done...whats that? social life? what?.. sorry??....

reportedly not a sober canine...

this is the content of an actual story on a leading english news channel...while this is funny...(not sober? what are sources saying he has been drinking???) the larger issue is definitely definitely not...
what gives humans the rights to behave as if they are any better (mind you not better off) but better behaviour-wise than some of the animals? animals world over are over-worked, under fed, beaten, traumatised, tortured, mutilated and when one of them decides to give as good as it gets, we bay for their blood?....
the way it is being handled in bangalore is barbaric....even healthy dogs with pups are being killed... in cold blood...protests are on, nothing though seems to be getting done about it....
where do you start? the issue of animal cruelty extends to far more issues...pet dogs that are continuously changed, bullocks being over loaded and beaten, horses that are so thin their bones are sticking out...where do you start? is starting a shelter for traumitised animals a workable solution? conducting workshops/ classes in schools and colleges about animal cruelty (use of leather/turning vegetarian) workable solutions?....where DOES one start? what DO you do?

its gonna be a manic monday

well i haven't posted since the 9th which was Monday and today is Monday again...which means it's been a crazy week...and promises to be so till the rest of the month atleast....no wonder the title of my last post...
this is the annual results season of cos which is like exam time for me...all i hve time for is wake up rush to work have the craziestf***ingday go back home irratated-hatingtheworld-readytodie and do the same routine all over again the next day....ok now im cribbing...
my horoscope for today says that I am about to hve a major change in my line of work....i hope tats for the better...wouldnt mind the job of all those travel reporters on discovery travel and living...but then again i dont believe in horoscopes.....

i want to kwiii

its been the worst of all weeks...and im just begining it...i thnk im sleep walking and work is pouring out of my ears....hate it hate it hate it!!!!!

the age of exhibitionism...

i dont get it..this urge to put everything on the net...including parts of your own body...

was surfing the net the other day and came across what I thought was a innocent looking blog...about a girl talking about her day..blah blah blah..was quiet funny till i scrolled down and saw...well her pricey assests smack bang in the middle of an otherwise interesting blog....

this is kinda a follow up on my earlier post actually... the urge to share something, anything with nameless, faceless strangers....why would i be interested in seeing say someones ass online?...beats me completely....

another thing i am rather curious in knowing...what are these ppls families doing? if i was putting up some filth on the net say 6 yrs ago...(lets admit it most of these ppl are between 16-30) im sure as hell my parents would have found out...and that would have been a story in itself... if i found something 'inappropriate' online about someone i knew...even if it was a friend i would be concerned enough to do something about it...and i do think one can make a fairly good judement in terms of what is 'appropriate' and what is 'inappropriate'...

sigh...kids these days....

New Kid on the Blog

well this should have ideally been my first post but I just had so many thngs to say yesterday that I forgot to say Hi!

very new to this...not because I'm tech un-savvy ( ok ok I am but not that much) but because I honestly didnt see the point of putting my life+thoughts out on the net for the whole world to see....the idea just didn't appeal to me initially....

Till that is I came across this article in some paper about this guy who charges some 10,000 bucks to write biographies of ordinary ppls...you and me ppls...his justification....everybody has a story to tell and somebody somewhere is interested in the stories you tell.... 'You have to maintain a record of who you are...doesnt make sense for humans to live and die like animals'....I thnk is what he said....dont quite like him being so dismissive about animals but I thought ..yeah what he says makes a LOT of sense....besides I can do it 10,000 bucks cheaper :O....

So, will there maybe no 'Hang on, let us get the popcorn' stuff here... its just gnna be me...sarcastic, cynical, confused

feeling dsylexic

Ok I may have writer lady in my name, but I am sooo bad at spelling...and I kid you not....

I teach school drop outs at a nearby govt school once a week...and I teach them English. Simple right? Ought to be. Atleast my intentions intially were....till I tried to remember the spelling of say...license. Which is the one with a 'C' and which is the one with a 'S'? I DONT FREAKING REMEMBER! and the thing with spellings is that it just sneaks up on me...I go prepared with one lesson and the next thing I know we have gone on to something else, and then some horrible spelling thing sneaks up on me and I put on my confused umm-we'll-come-back-to-this-later look....

And did I mention that I write for a living? Yup, I'm a journalist supposed to make a living out of my words...actually, wait..is it journalist or journolist?....spell check, spell check!

What if I wrote something intellectual?....

What are the chances that if I did write something that someone did want to say copy/ use without my knowledge....what do I do?

The reason I'm asking : Y! India has published some stuff off someones blog without crediting her for it...she along with some of her blogger friends went as far as marking Mar 5 or something as 'Protest Plagarism' Day...what did she get in return? zilch....or atleast a hastily posted 'We're real sorry but v real careful normally about this kind of thing'...which was removed after a while is what i understand.... scary...or atleast it would be if it was something that was dear to me....

So I set out to do my own little 'investigating'...found out all about licenses and stuff...which is v confusing...app most blogs come with an in-built license which you are supposed to verify at the time of signing up...umm...after all that reading, I still dont know whether I'm copy right protected or not....and theres vvvv little knowledge of this..atleast in India....what DO you do?