back from the dead

well, this post is either gonna be awfully long and boring or really short and irritating. sorry guys, no way out here coz im writing after almost a year so u gotta cut me some slack.


Hmm..to start with, the only explanation for my looong,boooring,yawwwning and almost vanished absence is but obviously my laziness. life has been umm...quite a rollercoaster ride in the past 8-10 months. well, for one i passed outta b-school, went on a holiday to the hills [actually went just till mussorie,but saying hills sounds more fun :)], joined work, moved to mumbai and then life came to a stand-still. i'm currently considering running away and living in the forest or something to start having fun again. Ohkayy, before i start rambling about something more nonsensical again, i'm gonna split this post into 3 parts; in an attempt to making it a decent read and to not digress which i have lately mastered in.
ok, ok, read on, you'll know what the 3 parts are for...


Part 1: bye-bye Poona/Pune/b-school/room no.13 - April 2007 heralded the end of my dreamarish* stint called b-schooling in Pune. [*dreamarish=dream+nightmare]

dreamarish because it was a dream till december and then suddenly turned into a nightmare for 2 months and then came back to normalcy.i will refrain from talking about the nightmarish part because i dont intend to dwell upon things which are best left behind in the dark hallows of the mond to rot into oblivion. ok! i'm gonna STOP right there!!!

well, coming back to the point; [or so i think] life in Pune came to a teary end... had to let go of friends, my beautiful flat, my uncomfortable bed,my life as a student...in short had to move on. all that to become another fish in the vast and stinky corporate ocean.
well, it was definitely an overwhelming experience to say the least. for one,this was one day every single person in college knew they would have to come to but somehow, how much ever one prepares for it one still falls short of the ammo to deal with the emotional upheavals on the d-day.all that i can remember of that day was my stepping out of room no:13 and knowing i'll never return to it with the same authority again, the second thing was leaving my flat.it was horrendous.i wanted to cry and not let go of the keys to it. that place is filled with the memories of some of the best times i've had in my entire life [well,it has some really terrible ones too,but i let them be]it was like leaving something really valueable behind knowingly... but then, somethings are better as memories only i guess.thirdly, the scene at the railway station where i hugged sebi, susheel,nida and crying my eyes out.finally and most painfully, the ride back home. it was such a confusing set of emotions i was going thru that only if u were ever in that situation would you be able to understand.i was glad that i was gonna be on home turf again;but leaving behind another precious part of my life was adding to the chaos.and without doubt,ashwini[my sister-she had come down to help me in moving out] was mortified with the way i was behaving. she was sympathetic but was wondering why i was soo shattered about moving outta Pune...well, that was her take.anyways, all's well that ends well i guess... and the Pune chapter of my life came to a teary halt so that i could move on in life maybe to have more vibrant chapters and to be able to cherish this one in the best possible way.


Part 2: Home, holiday, joining work, and more - homecoming was like...umm...like...homecoming! i'm just not able to find a word/sentence that could encompass the feeling.

it was way too shortlived for comfort but atleast it lived...is what i console myself with nowadays.
I dint let myself to get comfortable with the at home feeling because i knew i would have to snap out of it sooner than i would want to.

so, before i joined work i went on this trip. this was my first trip up north... [okay,okay, the northest i had been till then was mumbai] so, i went to delhi,meerut, rishikesh, dehradun, mussorie and haridwar. all this in about 8 days;it was definitely tiring but truck loads of fun,shopping and getting roasted in the north-indian heat. but worth every minute and penny spent. Thanks a ton Shwets for making this happen. If it wasn't for your motivation and planning i would have still been dreaming about visiting all those beautiful places. Luv ya girl!

That wasn't the end of my travelling spree; i got back home and then left for mysore with my mum for a family celebration to our ancestral village. this place we had to go was near Mysore, actually it is a little further up from mysore called 'Bluff'. YES, BLUFF.
[this is my ancestral village so think twice before you try to pull a fast one, coz i can be pretty ruthless when it comes to landing a punch or two on the nose]

anyways, coming back to my village; the reason its named that was is that when the Brits were ruling, they saw this place and its supposed to be identical to a town called Bluff back in England. Hence, this quaint little village was christened 'Bluff'.

Its actually pretty awesome, with the gaganchukki,barchukki twin waterfalls and a power generating house [the buildings of which are in typical English architecture] its almost unreal. this place is a must visit if you go upto mysore. its about 80kms from there. and most cabbies would know how to take you there is you say sivasamudram/bluff.

So, the family celebration went off beautifully with the weather being unbelievably wonderful.

Life was perfect till then, its only after that reality hit me real hard and I had to join work.

My holiday was over! finito! fini!

May 13th. I reached the once beautiful and now battered city of Bengalooru. 5 days I had to sit through endless lectures in an effort to induct us into the system. all that it managed to do was bore me to death and even more home-sick.
But the worst was yet to come; I went back home for a day and then had to leave for Mumbai. The city of opportunity for many but for me; it is the city of stench, crowded trains and pure maddness.


Part 3: Bombay, Mumbai, Bambai + Invictus


May20th, 2007. A day i think i'm gonna find dificult to forget. unless i suffer from selective amnesia or somethin.

well, that was the day that i set foot in this city. that day i cried... i cried in the loo, in the rick, in bed, at the dinner table. i cried like i was never going back home again. but then the crying had to stop and it did. thats how i got some sleep that night and hence could make it to office at 8am on monday morning. That was the only day that i went to office at 8am...


thats all im gonna talk about mumbai in this post coz, i have to save it for my future posts [i DO intend to continue blogging you see...]


and then then invictus happened. not very recently though, infact more than a year ago. Life hasn't been the same ever since. I dunno wat else to write about that aspect of my life in this post. i'm saving it for another post...


and oh! the other saving grace of my life in mumbai is my buddies from college; Kochi, Manit, Pola, Divs, Mayur, and all the others; life here would have been a pure and unadultrated hellish experience. but god decided to be kind to me in some ways.

okay, you can see from the way this post is going that i'm either, sleepy or bored. i'm very much the former and slowly going towards the latter. its actually 1:30 am and my body clock shuts down around this time i guess..
i've observed that its only when im sleepy that i start making really long sentencs which are boring and bordering on the nonsensical.

so, i'm gonna stop right here for now and then get back to giving finishing touches to this post.
OK! its saturday afternoon and the rest of the weekend is beckoning me...all i've done from the time i got outta bed is laze and drink multiple cups of coffee, read the newspaper and watch a movie called 'crazy for christmas'... but then this is what weekends are meant for right!
Anyways, as expected this one has turned out to be a rather long post; hopefully wont be a boring read for all ye folks.

keep the comments coming in, and have a great weekend and umm try to good week ahead.
P.S: i'm watching bhool bhulaiya tonite, will fill you in on the same. sadly however, i ain't watching the match today. but then lets see what i've missed...

see ya all!

finally!!!

Ohkay, im finally jotting something down for my long-forgotten dear darling blog. ohkay, before there are any expectations from this post, let me put a disclaimer: this is just a stop gap post, so please please dont judge my blog based on this post. will try and post sumthng better soon.
and before i turn into a crib-o-saurus,i have to thanks my buddies who kept reminding me about blogging…and how I should channel my energies into something more passive and more importantly one that can remain unaffected like my blog.
Ok. Now getting to business; its 'long-time-no-see' re-defined when it concerns my absence from the blog world. Well, I really couldn’t help it either. Even before I could realize and grapple with what was happening with my life, its 3 months down. Never, ever have I felt 4 months of my life disappear in a flash like it has in the past few weeks. its been an influx of work and more work. endless hours of chaapoing other peoples assignments, giving imprompu presentations in class and in the process making a complete fool of myself. for example: "the most important part of communication is the mode of communication" and if people dont find that stupid enough, will give you more of my classics in the coming posts...
well, its been an up and down, my third semester i.e and also my life per se.
work in room:13 has the same old-world charm to it minus the six seniors whom i miss terribly and quite obviously so. suddenly, being a senior in college and at work made me feel a little daunted with the responsibility and the sheer volume of work even. and now its just a few days before the result of the last few months work will be defined...*fingers crossed*
and now i have to necessarily mention about juniors in college...im a tyrannosaurus-rex humanified for most of the bacchas, which im enjoying thoroughly as long as it lasts, he he he.
and now something for the inmates of mad-house, phew! Cant believe that these are the last few months that we are gonna spend together spreading the madness…love all of you a lot! Banwari lal[pathak], dhanno[sebi], thakur[nida] and munshi[saraf]; those endless hours of yapping abt nothing, and saraf's kehwa and sebi's morning chai and the never-ending games of bluff [when I inevitably lose :-D]
and i cant help but mention my dear dahlin invictus, who puts up with all my non-sensical whims and unending sessions, life is a lot more fun than it could have been. I really dunno what I would have without you ;-) please remain as sweet as you are invictus, like you loads just the way you are… and if this statement is making you think if im gonna pop the question at you; then please go on and keep wondering... :P

blast from the past!

another weekend and another movie watching session...
the place that i watched a movie last weekend was drastically different from the place that frequent.
well, the story goes like this:
last weekend i wanted to take a break from the multiplex: the escalators, the squeaky clean floors, the smiling sales people in the stalls and the english speaking ticket vendors et al
[dint want to leave the air-conditioned surroundings of the multiplex though but i dint really have a choice]
hence, me and vicky landed up at a cinema hall in abids which supposedly went through a face-lift a couple of years ago to watch "the angrez" a 'hyderabad blues' kinda movie meant only for the hyderabadis...
the first shock: ticket in top most row: Rs.35/-
we simply dint believe the price he quoted and kept asking the ticket vendor for a costlier ticket and higher up in the rows but when he insisted that it was the costliest one and in the top row; after some more arguing then we resign, take the tickets and walk into the bulding.
enter the cinema hall and our seats were in the 3rd row from the top.
but the walk from the ticket counter to the cinema hall was, simply put, a trip down the memory lane.
the pain stained walls, where the request of "donot spit on the walls" was painted pan-red and pan stained too. the picturesque part was the sparkling clean spitoon! couldn't stop laughing when we saw that...!
and then the cinema hall, creaky chairs where the back-rest refused to rest and i had change the seat to avoid getting a back-ache at the end of 2 hrs.
the movie was really funny with all its hyderabadisms and corny jokes which aptly showcased the typical hyderabadi's life.
come interval and the big board of "no eatables allowed inside" was ignored and a whole rush of vendors clinking the soft-drinks bottles and screaming the name of every brand of chips stormed inside the hall and invaded the ramps. but one point to be noted here is that, they might scream out the name of every possible brand in potato chips, but not necessarily have it for sale. they will only have un-branded fryums and roasted peanuts.
he he...talk about ethics in salesmanship!!
oh! and it doesn't end there; there was live dance session too! courtesy: some really happy audience who couldnt stick to their seats when a song on hyderabad started playing, there was the typical hooting when the actors made a cheesy comment, the papers throwing in the air when the audience is happy with a scene was all there to make it a memorable movie watching session.
now do you find such involved audience in a lah-di-dah multiplex?? naaaahh!

come 8:30 pm and there ended our evening at the old-world cinema hall. we were very content with the value that we got for the money that we spent.
the old-world charm of watching a movie in a seedy cinema hall is one thing and the luxury of multiplex movie watching is a completely different thing.
the verdict: multiplexes any day for me!
prasads/PVR...here i come!

a weapon of mass destruction called the movie 'gangster'
in a desperate attempt to watch a movie in the multiplex; i went and watched the movie 'gangster'...it was horrendous! shiney ahuja was a treat to the eyes but the movie per se was yeccchhh!
after about 30 mins into the movie; my sis stopped looking at the screen and started giving me dirty looks with murder in her eyes! i dint know there was emraan hashmi in the movie!!! everytime he came on the screen i felt like kicking myself...the only saving grace[doesnt save the movie though] of the movie was shiney ahuja as a gangster with a conscience.
some unsolicited advice: DONOT watch the movie. unless you are offered a lot of money to do so.

steal my sunshine...

summer! im sure a lot of other people like me donot find summer as a welcome change from my dear old friend winter.
looking back on how the meaning of summer has changed over the years...

5years and below: summer dint mean a thing, basically because i dint really notice the big difference between summer and the other seasons.
or maybe i plain forgot.

5th year to 10th year: summer meant a long period of not having to go to school which meant no waking up early in the morning and not being forced to go to the torture zone called school.
summer instead meant going to madras; my granparents' place.
I used to face an acute language problem in the first week of getting there but by the end of the first week, I would have successfully trained all the kids on the block to speak in telugu[and the really stubborn ones would have atleast learnt to understand telugu if not speak the language]
it also meant getting a really bad tan and a really bad case of mouth-ulcers as a result of eating way too many mangoes.

10th year to 15th year: the time when summer looks all hunky dory till it actually starts...
used to love the run up to the start of summer, didn't even mind writing the friggin final exams too only because there was light at the end of the tunnel: summer hols!
but the light slowly used to turn into very very bright sunshine.
it was during this time that my interest span in about everything came down to the bare minimum. I used to carry loads of nancy drews with me for company but surprisingly the desperation to read nancy drew, hardy boys wasnt even half as much as it used to be during exams.
this trend continues till date, only that the nancy drews and hardy boys have been replaced by tom clancy and the ilk...

15th year to 20th year: it was during this time that i developed a definite aversion for summer and all that it brings with it with an exception of mangoes ofcourse. well, summer meant either landing up in chennai which was like a reflex action when summer came. or my cousins from everywhere would land up at my place. well, it used to be fun for the first few days and then the ritual visiting of tourist places and entertaining lil brats used not exactly fit into my definition of fun. and not to forget the sun burn...an inevitable part of summer!

20th year onwards: hmm...in that past few years summer has only meant work...and more work. summer brings with it internship which means no trips to chennai or no ritual trips to the tourist spots with visiting relatives. it also means no lazy afternoon siestas and a finito to endless hours of watching television and a definite end to reading umpteen number of books and magazines which used to have an uncanny ability to gobble up all my daytime hours...

hmm...wonder why i used to crib so much then; when summer only meant guaranteed, un-interrupted laziness.
well, a classic case of grass being greener on the other side...
or to be more appropriate: mangoes being yummier in the other basket...

Horn OK Please

I suffer from it, im sure you suffer from it too, infact almost every person i know suffers from it...and i bet thats the case with most of the people living in overcrowded cities.
Driving blues...!!!this is worse than a nagging head ache. atleast a headache quitely sits inside your head but this is right there, in your face! and the bad news is: its incurable...!!!
read on...
some of the things which make me feel like carrying a club with me when I set out driving:
People speaking on their cell phones when driving in the fast lane!
This dude who is driving his car suddenly gets a call on his cell phone and despite being in the middle of dense traffic which is driving at an average of 40-50kmph just suddenly slows down and speaks on his cell phone at leisure being oblivious to all the honking and the angry glares he was getting from the rest of the people on the road.
The only thing I was desperately wishing I had a genie who would have magically given me a club to teach that freak some lessons in driving. But then sadly; I realized that we are not still living in the stone age where all issues could be solved with the use of a club.
Another situation which made me wish I had a club with me; people playing blaring music in their cars and being absolutely oblivious to the traffic and incessant honking around them. I can understand that some people have a compulsive disorder to listen to blaring music when driving on vehicle choked roads; but the least they could do is not drive everyone else on the crazy because of their antics.
And who can forget to mention about the bus driver with an over-inflated ego and a sheer disregard to traffic rules. I wish I could explain to the bus driver that wherever he stops doesn’t become the bus’ stopping point; and that places like the middle of the road are definitely not places where he can stop the bus for people to alight!
He is not only causing grave danger for the people who are alighting; he is also creating an extremely annoying traffic jam.
But what crosses all levels of being annoying is when people cross the road by being absolutely oblivious to which vehicle is speeding towards them. The attitude that they have is: “he is the one driving the vehicle, so he better be careful when he is doing so”
Who will tell these ignorant souls that the road is meant for the vehicles hence the pedestrians should be much more careful when they are crossing busy roads.
Now I don’t contend the fact that the drivers also should take maximum care but then how much can a driver be careful too?


All this ranting is the result of sheer exasperation...a result of driving on over-crowded roads, with the most unruly drivers who have anything but commonsense in the tiny lil thing between their ears called brain
[i know how the prev sentence sounds but that was kinda unintended]
I recently was cursed enough to be a part of a situation where the age old pedestrian-driver power struggle was out in full force.
Me driving at 50kmph on a 60kmph limit road and just after I overtook the vehicle that was just before me; out of nowhere I see a pedestrian crossing the road and who to my utter horror was completely oblivious to the vehicle speeding towards him.
I had to bring my vehicle to a screeching halt at about 2 or 3 mtrs away from the pedestrian. And what made me want to bring my club out was the fact that, the mad cap pedestrian didn't even realize the grave danger he was putting himself in and worse my ass would have been on the line if anything would have happened to the car. I felt like my heart was beating in my throat after the incident but that bloody butthead was completely unaffected and worse, he found the whole incident amusing!!! Was wishing it was stone age…using the club would have been mandatory in such a similar situation rather than being a crime.
These are troubled times, law makers do not realize the frustration that they are causing to the general public by making the use of things like clubs, stones etc in order to speak your mind as unlawful.
hmmph!! may god save the world...!

I had a dream,

which turned into a mirage...

I'm beginning to wonder now as to why everything i believed in is slowly breaking out of the perfect mould that it was in and coming out as an ugly, in-the-face truth.
i feel helpless sometimes; and all i want to do is run out and complain and do whatever necessary to correct things around me. but i just feel like im stupefied. plain stupefied.


The shallowness in people and situations is making me disillusioned with life and the very purpose of existence. not that im tilting towards another one of those self-discovery kind of posts looking for meaning in life...actually, i have just stopped looking. stopped looking for a soul,wondering about the purpose of having a conscience.
the level of hypocrisy and shallowness in people around me is making me wonder about the very existence of things like morals and principles. like they say: 'promises are made to be broken'; maybe morals and principles are there to be forgotten.
im not trying to be an idealistic person here, but i dont know what i am trying to do here either. what i do know is that there is no soul in the world today.
i always dreamt of a world; a not-so-perfect world but a world that could have been perfected; but slowly and steadily im being introduced to world whose ways are just too different from what i ever expected to confront; a world where the concept of a 'friend' is either non-existent or way too garbled for me understand. a friend for me is one in whom you can confide in just about everything and whose presence is in its simplest form; reassuring. but the world that im rudely waking up to is a world where friends are people you go out drinking with and do anything but confide in coz u never know what this 'friend' can turn out to be...and yaa his presence will be reassuring only when he is there to foot the bill with you; but before and after that he is just a prick who is out there to take advantage of your fat wallet.
i dunno where i went wrong in dreaming about my perfect world, or maybe thats where i went wrong...in expecting that there can be a perfect world.
maybe im overreacting or maybe im too immature to understand the way the world functions or maybe im just not meant to be a part of this world...

and the engine fell silent...

march 17th 2006. william uncle is dead.
After I landed in Hyderabad; the first thing that i wanted to do was get my kinetic back into shape and where else other than the my dear william uncle's ameet kinetic works.
thanx to my every so lazy bum; someone else dropped my vehicle off at the garage for the work to atleast begin.
and it was when i went to pick up my vehicle that i got the shock of my life! infact that was when i firmly decided that god has a terribly mixed up head.
william uncle, MY william uncle was no more! he was just...gone!
after i heard that he was no more; my head just went numb. plain numb. like the feeling you have in your legs after sitting in the same position for too long.
after informing me abt uncle's death; the guy went on with the details, but my mind just failed to gather anything of what he was saying. and all the noise around me went silent. and my mind just kept whirring. i dunno why i was feeling that extreme levels of hollowness...maybe it was because of the sheer unexpectedness of the situation or maybe because i was reliving another one.
i was reliving the same numbness in my head, the same feeling of standing in a crowd but deaf to all sounds except for the sounds in my head.
william uncle managed to make me feel like i still had a father figure.
he was one of the most genuine persons i had known; someone who kept alive the sense of compassion in a world where it had been close to banished.
he has helped people without expecting anything in return; not even gratitude.
and whenever i met him, there used be a ray of hope of meeting people who were in the real sense beautiful people. there used to be the faith that god after all isn't as crazy as i thot he was.
but then all this had to changed by that crazy psychotic god of mine.
i wonder why i still believe in the concept of god; maybe because that to an extent soothes my fears and inhibitions but then an illusion doesn't hold too long or does it?
then slowly i realised that its almost 5 yrs now since dad passed away. the man who is an angel now; and is watching out for me at every turn...
the man who loved me despite being an absolutely worthless being; who stood by me in all circumstances even when i was solely responsible for the shit i was in.
and who was just the most amazing human being i had and would ever know.
love you ever so much