Monday, January 23, 2006

Mishterr MoonWalker

In the past few days I have come to two conclusions .
1)Most guys are...umm...well...lets not say what I think about them right now.
2)Girlfriends totally rock!

But I have been tagged and I have to write 8 points about my ideal lover.hehe..this sounds so funny , so ,like Praddy prajji( who, by the way , is the gentle soul with an exclusive i-am-going-to-tag-you evil laughter who tagged me), I too shall not refer to my ideal lover as my ideal lover, instead lets call him Mr. MoonWalker . So, it is a hippopotamus of a task to waddle from the state of mind I am in to the one essential and imperative if one wishes to put up a worthy post on the ideal Mr. MoonWalker.

1. The most important thing for me is the character of the guy. Simple as that. I cannot bear flirts. Okay ,a lot of you would belong to the genre which believes flirting to be as healthy as 3hrs of yoga followed by a gigantic bowl of fresh fruits but i am as far from that group of people as is Pluto from Mummy Earth.So , Mr.MoonWalker has to be someone who doesnt faint with excitement/get hyper/crack those i-am-sucha-dude jokes each time something in a skirt walks by.

2.As far as looks are concerned, no modern day Adonis is required.Hmm..just discussed this with Ma, she is real cool okay. So according to her, those,lean guys in thoda baggy white tees, specs, padhai-likhai waala luk are my types..hehe...maybe...the only thing is that Mr.MoonWalker's nose should be presentable..bus! submarine! helicopter!

3.Well read. Now see, most guys run at a good to very good average speed when brought face to face with a buk. The putative Mr.M should not be one of them. A fellow P.G.Wodehouse fan would be heaven sent.This is classic example of wishful thinking.*deep sigh!*.In case any of you reading this is/becomes a proff of the all important and pertinent subject of Wishful Thinking at Harvard/Stanford you are most welcome to quote this as an example of a bad case of wishful thinking.

4.See, the problem with me is that even though i might have hundreds of things to say when some serious,emotional matter is under discussion, i just end up saying some thing totally non commital.My closest friends have braved these kinds of situations with admirable strength, valour and determination.*applause* I generally just hurriedly end the discussion as thousands of things scream their lungs out, silently, inside my teeny-weeny head.I can only hope that Mr.MoonWalker somehow understands this.He can also take Ms Nivindya's. 'how-to-manage-Ms-MoonWalkeer' classes held on Mondays from 6 in the evening. I hear she is quite good.God bless her.

5.I get scared of people very easily.I hope Mr.M is one of those non-scary types. I would not like to be scared of Mr.MoonWalker. A simple guy would make a very nice Mr.MoonWalker.

6.Mr.MoonWalker should not dictate my way of living.If i want my hair streaked red( right now i have honey-brown streaks ,by the way)and Mr MonnWalker happens to have a distinct proclivity towards blonde, he is most welcome to get all hishair coloured blonde. Mine shall be streaked red . Full stop. Period.

7.I live by some rules..I have a pronounced sense of what's right and what's not. You see, I need to respect myself, I need to be able to look myself back in the eye when I look in the mirror( which since is very often...ahem..), I am very bothered about what I think of myself. This has to be understood by Mr.M. I am neither as frivilous as most girls nor as silly ( atleast most of the times till I don’t see anything PINK .Then I go crazy).

8. It would be nice if there are some common things that both of us want to do .It would be nice if he likes to travel, it would be nice if he likes mountains, we could plan stuff together and have a nice time doing it. It would be nice if Mr. M is a teeny, just a teeny teeny bit like me.

Having said all of this, I must add some more rather abstract stuff. See, things like money and looks genuinely don't matter to me .Someone nice and simple who cares about me would do just fine. However, right now I have other important stuff on my mind …..

Sorry guys, but I always believed that guys are rubbish.. atleast most of them are, now I know how right I have always been………So, Mishterr MoonWalker is most definitely going to be someone my parents choose for me some years down the line. I simply refuse to have anything more to do with guys than is absolutely essential…

Now, I shall go back to my beloved books , books are millions of times better than most people and I wish I were not so cynical now

Sunday, January 15, 2006

The white Maruti

First and foremost, for those of you who actually missed me ,lemme do some explaining..My system at home is acting real smart..it has got tons of attitude, you see. SO i could not really post, blogspot juss wudnt open!!!. Apart from that, i have been keeping busy reading books, having a great time with Bhai( who left yesterday, :( but no fear , i am not going to put up another depressed post which i'll have to remove later!) and in general enjoying the few days i have before the dreaded fifth semester begins...*sigh!*
If you look at it, this IS going to be crucial year for me.I shall ( hopefully!) get a job this year, I will write CAT in November..so yess, it will be an important year...lets see how it turns out for me..

Some days ago, we had some people over for dinner.Their 5 year old daughter Shruti came as well...Now, by the time these people got moving it was already past midnight and Shruti was asleep on the sofa. I watched as Shruti's Dad roughly woke her up...it was an OH-MI-GAWD moment for me as I quickly went up to him and asked him to carry Shruti to the car and not wake her up.
In retrospect, i wonder why i did what i did. The answer is simple, when i was little and when i would fall asleep this way in someone elsez place, i was never woken up. My Dad would always carry us( coz if i was asleep there was little chance that Bhai wud be awake) to the car...even if i was not exactly asleep , i would keep my eyes shut :).Then when we would reach home Dad and Ma would again carry us to our beds...
btw, this is all about when we were really tiny, ab nahiin , okay!!!

Talking about sleeping in the car has opened flood gates of memories...let me share some of them with you, here. My nana- nani live 5 hrs away from where i live, so after finishing the evening clinic at 9:30 in the night, Dad would drive us to their place for a tiny one or two day break. I can so totally recall those hours spent in the car( My white Maruti..she was bought when i was 2 years old and she stayed with us for 16 long ,faithful years .I was heart broken when we parted with her..and its funny how i still miss the white Maruti so much at times. )Due to the odd hour, ours would be the only vehicle for miles and miles, the wide open sky visible in its darkness, the stars, the moon, the trees taking up weird shapes.Dad would point out all this to the two of us.Once in a a while, he would switch off the head lights and everything would be pitch dark !Me , Dad and Bhai would get real excited and Ma would almost have a heart attack and Dad would be forced by Ma to switch the head lights on agin. After dinner in the car( which consisted of aloo-puriz, served to all by yours truly.It was, is and shall alwayz be my job to serve food, whether we are in a car or at home!)things would always become very quiet post dinner..as the clock ticked ,the steady banter that goes on between Ma and Dad when they are together would gradually cease,Bhai would doze off and i would try to sleep sitting in the back of the car.
Often ,just as i would fall asleep ( or so it would seem!) i would wake up with a jolt to realize that the car has veered off the road and i would hear Dad wisper sheepishly to ma," AAnkh lag gayi thi.."
Then Ma would say"arre, meri bhi lag gayi thi...toh fir aaj clinic mein kya hua?"
This is Ma's rule .She says that the person sitting next to the one driving at night should not fall asleep ,infact should keep talking to the driver so that the person driving does not fall asleep either.Then Dad would launch into another of the million things which happen at the clinic, sometimes explaining some complicated step in some complicated surgery to Ma ( no, she is NOT a doctor but if any one in the family has any medical problem, shez the one we go to.'we' includes Dad as well:D )and listening to them talk i would doze off once again. My Dad dozes off atleast once each time we travel during the night!!

This last time all four of us went to Naniz place some things were different.The beloved white Maruti has been replaced by something supposedly grander(duh!X( ) for sometime now ,Dad did not drive, Bhai did, Ma did not sit in front ,I did. And yes, me and bhai jabbed all night, all the way ,cuz you know na... the person sitting in front with the guy driving should keep him engaged in conversation lest he dozes off.All this while Ma and Dad slept in the back of the car.

We do become a lot like our parents, don't we?
Adios
Ruchi.

p.s. i have not used spell check, i am not even going to proof read this ..so sorry about the spelling mistakes and bad grammar..mood nahi hai kutch check karane ka:)

Saturday, January 07, 2006

Dear Mr. God,

I don't know if the customary 'I hope this letter finds you in the pink of health' with which I used to begin all informal letters I used to write for English Language tests in class 4 ,shall suffice or no. This however, in no way means that I wish elsewise...
Now coming abruptly to the point,I don't know if you exist. Certainly , you are not someone with a huge white beard attired in a a resplendent white 'dhoti' with a HUGE crown on glittering head, sitting amidst huge lotus petals and smiling benignly as you throw rose petals at people getting married on Earth.That I know, but then I don't know if you exist as in exist as an entity with a thinking brain. All that I see around me viz flowers, insects ,flies, rivers, people ,are all said to be your creations but I wonder....Isn't it simply evolution? Changes keep happening ,not always for the better, and the fittest survives....What role do you have then??
But sometimes, when I want to thank someone for whatever I have , it is you I think of. When things go wrong, even though no one has ever seen you, I turn to you for help and guidance. You are essential for the upkeep of order in the society, I feel that today ,as a society taken as a whole, there is much more crime solely because most of us have no fear of You. No, I know you wont take out ur mutli pronged arrow the moment some babu in some nondescript village in UP takes a bribe of Rs.25 to set a file moving . NO. But if the babu is God fearing he might simply refuse the bribe.That could obviously be attributed to that 'jwaala ki warsha' kit that you or any of your comrades have supposedly used in chapter X ,page Y of some religious text the babu's mother read to him as a child. But it could also be because the Babu's conscience does not allow him to accept the bribe. That conscience is partly you .
As you might have gathered i am not an atheist ( lots of people are, and I am sure they write u hate mails!!!Bad people!!!! ) ,I am not even agnostic, infact I think I believe in you.But at times I just am not very sure. Most people say that since you could not be everywhere, you created mothers.I agree with any blessed soul who says that. All that is attributed to you, i see in Ma , no ,she is not perfect, i am old enough to point out her foibles to her when i see them..but i feel my mother is as close to perfection as one can be. I am sure most people feel the same way about their mothers as well ...but well...i digressed. So my mum was an atheist, she never believed in your existence, but now she does. She tells me that it is only sensible and positive to think of someone very powerful who is on your side.
She tells me to think of myself and You as a team. You and i work together, always. The work is evenly divided. I do the hard work and you do the planning. And since You know best You have the best plans up your sleeve. PLans that shall ultimately turn out to be the best for me even though at some point of time they seem like the worst that could happen to me. So, even if I feel things are not going my way, I have to keep doing my bit, that is keep working hard simply coz you are diligently doing your bit, that is planning the best for me.
She has another theory about you. You , I gather, keep something called a 'trump card' for everyone. Everyone. According to Ma, that trump card could be anything; from getting through the college of your dreams to getting the 'bestest' spouse on the planet . That trump card is big.It is that one thing that happens to you that is sooo big for you it could be the grandest opportunity for that person.It then is up to that person to make best use of that trump card. According to Ma, i still haven't got my trump card.No, no,no, this does not mean that I am asking you to give me mine..not at all...I am ready to wait, to work in the meantime..:) * a lovely smile for you, Mr. G.*
So, well..there is lots more I want to talk to you about , but this is after all a public blog, so I think I'll end my letter to you here.It was nice talking to you and I hope you did not mind anything I said. Rest all is fine here. I am doing good ,my family is doing good.
Thank You.
Ruchi.

Monday, January 02, 2006

Realizations....

One whole year gone by...another whole year gone by...just as a gust of the high winds rustles past you as you trek a mountain . It is past me..there is nothing that i can now change ,there is little that i want to change....
There are some forces of nature which one cannot disregard with impunity.I live far from Southern India but the Tsunami affected me...I live a considerable distance from Kashmir but the earthquake affected me....the apocryphal power of His greatest creation could do nothing in the face of His unmitigated fury....thousands and thousands perished and not much could be done other than mourn the departure of innocent lives from this world to the next.....
I have learnt some important lessons. The one that i have not learnt the hard way is the quiet virtue of speaking sweetly and politely.I do it coz i am inherently soft spoken and also due to my upbringing.In my family you are allowed to murder , kill, rob..but no, you can't speak rudely to anyone in the family.So it is ,in a way a habit now...but i have seen its advantages outside.According to Ma, it is the single most important quality a girl should have:D...Things have happened that have made me realise the importance of this....
I have also realized how important good health is .'05 was not very good from the health point of view . Four months ago i got German measles, it is not a big thing ( i just had rashes for about 3-4 days), but till it was not diagnosed ,living with slightly enlarged lymph nodes and with doctors telling me to get them removed (and get a biopsy done on the tissue ) does not exactly ensure a state of unbridled joy.
I have realized that ignorance can be bliss.
I have been amazed at how well i ..err..umm..how do i put this...read whats going on the minds of people i am close to. A small frown, an almost successful attempt at concealing a smile, a slight change in voice that could be coz the person is irritated/angry/tired . Ma gets irritated, she is like 'Cannot i think something without you knowing what i am thinking????':D :D The answer is simple.NO.
:D( See, its a simple thing.Ma has knwn me for as many days as i have known her.) This happens because of my overly sensitive nature, i know that and i wish it were not so . It's liberating to not know what is going through the minds of people around you.It is.
I have realized how important healthy relationships are . I don't have 60 best friends , infact i have few friends, but they are the best on this planet . It is amazing how someone can just listen to you and make you feel better. It is amazing how you can just listen to someone and make them feel better.
I have again realized how important hard work and honesty are. I don't care what the world thinks of me but I do care very much about whatI think of myself.
I have realized that I live according to some principles , I never knew that..quietly, unknowingly they decide which course of action I take. I do not cheat in tests or exams. In a practical exam I wrote the previous semester, we had to answer two 15 mark questions.I knew nothing about one question.No one in class did, but most people had 'pharraz' to help them out. The guy sitting next to me opened his answer sheet for me and asked me to copy everything that he was putting down.I had jotted down around four lines when I stopped, cancelled the entire page and spent the rest of the time on the first answer. I was so surprised at myself..I kept telling myself not be so stupid , it was a 15 mark question! But I did NOT WANT those 15 marks, I just did not! Do not conjure up grand visions of me feeling very grand about it; on the contrary, I felt wretched after I submitted the answer script. I was inconsolable. I called up Latika from college, then Ma..but nothing consoled me....but even today, I am okay with not having cheated then.aah..and the result of the exam? lets just say that i did well.... :)
I have realized that my family, even my extended family is very important to me .


well..these were reasonably abstract things that I have realized during this past year..As each year passes, I find myself mellowing, becoming more sensible, am able to understand others point of view better...in short, I am growing older each year!!!!!!!NAHIIIINNNNNN!!!!