Welcome back all ye lovers of the blog!

So, I write.
*Thunderous applause everywhere in blogdom*

*takes a bow acknowledging the thunderous mirrior shattering applause *

Finally I do. After many concerned emails/scraps from some of you I finally write.
First and foremost I am alive.
And the second equally important thing is that the second trimester is now over.I have had a multitude of experiences in the past 3 months, some of which in their own quiet way have changed bits of me forever.

1. I still cry when too tense.Somethings never change , I guess.

1.5I am still crazy about pink.Somethings never change , I guess. :P

2.I have started depending too heavily on people. May be I should change that.

3.Am not going to France. Dunt even ask why, it is sucha long story that I will go crazy telling it here!!!

5. Sometimes it is simply blissful to just look at people.Some people that is.:)

6.Some people make you luk at things from a totally different perspective. It so different that it shocks you in a nice way.I am glad to have met some people of that kind there.

7.Mum needs to get used to me coming back from college.Only then will she stop burtsing into tears on seeing me.
This time around when she saw me climb down from the coach , her eyes flooded with tears. and it was while she was wiping off tears of [hopefully] joy that she informed me that she thought I had put on oddles of weight [ which I have not, btw ! huh! ] and that my dress sense was horrible and that hopefully I do not go to college dressed the same way.
:

too tired , too worked up .no creative juices flowing.
Just wanted t let u guys know that I have not forgotten u all!

:P
rock on!

At times things here do not make a lot of sense..
It gets bugging to talk to everyone...just needa few minutes to myslef which also I cannot get simply coz ppl are too fake to not pretend to bother..
blah man!
waiting eagerly to go home...
Freaked out mann..just need to be alone for a few minutes and not give explanataions to a hundred and ten people about why I am not my chirpy self.
blah!!
BLAAHHH!

Aaah..am back in my city, one trimester over! One whole trimester over. Here are some of the highlights:

1. There was a point in time when I was so bugged up with life in a b skul, in particular my own that amidst another of those calls to when I cry and mum talks, to calm me, Mum promised to buy me the tickets back home. The deal was that I was to stay in the b skul till Saturday [that day was a Monday] and if even then I wanted to leave, the tickets would be ready.

2. Lets just say I stayed. J

3. Before coming to b skul, I used to sleep for 8 hours a day, after coming here I have managed on 8 hours in 4 days. And I survived!

4. There is this guy I study with, we actually study in a big group but since I stay away from most other guys and spend a lot of time with this one, people like pulling my leg about him and his about me!
So, much so that even I have started pulling his leg about me!!
Hehehe
It is sucha big joke between the two of us! It is my duty and job for the next year and a half to find a nice girl for him.Which hopefully I will.

5. I am very sensitive to the smell of a smoke! Some of the guys are catully scared of coming near me when they have just had a smoke!

6.I was in a pink saree during the second party we had here, it was the reverse freshers and I was supposed to put teeka on the forehead of the seniors.My roomie , however had to do coyote ugly, she was be at the bar.
Ek roomie ne teeka lagaya, doosari ne daaru pilayi
Said another roomie, very philosophically!

7.Finance. I hated it, only 3 days ago I have started liking it…my new found obsession with finance!
Imagine! I think I am in love with finance now .:

8. I think I have done miserably in the term. I studied quite hard and was very consistent and diligent and all of that, but still somehow I managed to screw it all for myself.

9. I did the maths end term so beautifully that I impressed myself no end. I sat cross legged during the exam, got myself a bottle of chilled water and solved one sum after the other, sipping water in between as if it were some great drink.
It was the first time in my life that I did a maths paper so confidently! However, the course, sadly is a non credit one!

10.I am truly and honestly in love with Ecomonics and am really looking forward to the eco course next trimester! I hope we get a good proff!
11.I am 3/4th myself, ¼ of me is the lappy!

12. Last but not the least , lots of good things have happened at B skul to me. Really! I have met ossum people, made some great friends, studied under some of the best proffs I have ever studied with, been busy and have loved it , have slogged and have loved it again.

One of the latest things to have happened is a place 3 hours from Paris. I will be spening one whole trimester in France come this January.
Enough said.
:)

So, tomm I have a Marketing End term and here I am, at 2:30 in the morning, putting up a blog post.

I surprsingly often end up hanging out with the Tamil gang. So, these people have a lot of fun at my expense when I attempt to speak in Tamil.
My Tamil is reasonably fluent now. I can speak 3 senetences. I am not really sure which one means what ..*ahem* but I am reasonably confident of my skills. So today while I was giving final touches to my CV I must confess I did contemplate putting down Tamil as a language I knew at the elementary level .

Huh!

Anyways, so today amidst copying Rajni kant and them almost luaghing their heads off over dialoges I could not make head or tail of, one of my friends taught me this:

waikai orvattum,[ I kept saying, waikai orkuttam :P ]
innnniki jaykravan, naliki tonam
inniki tonakram, nilliki jaipan!

It means that life is a circle, if someone is loosing out today, he will win tomm and if he is winning today he might loose out tomm.

For someone like me, going through what I am right now, these words provided great comfort.

So I htought it must be some grave profound Tamil shloka or something, and I asked that question. The entire Tam Gang burst out laughing again.
Apparently it was some famous tamil movie dialog!
:
:

Huh!

Another thing is that I need to start behaving more sensibly now, the only problem is that I dont want to...
*sigh*
*double sigh*
*triple sigh*
Sensible I shall be...yes, I will be :)

And on that resolute note, it is a buy buy and gunite from my side!
Ta!
-RP.

P.S Bhai coming to Bskul on his way home on the 7th.Yipeeeee!!! I have honestly never waited so much for him! Each and everyone of my friends knows about him coming now!!

Raat koh chaar baje !

In two more minutes it shall be four in the morning.
As I sit in Computer centre typing this I can distinctly hear the tapping of the keys, someone is playing music on his/her lappy, the low hum of the AC proviodes the background score.

I am in touch with someone who has just fallen in love, they are a very sweet couple and I ams o surprised at how I cannot help but smile each time I see my friend talk about her guy. This other day I was in a rotten mood , was missing home really bad, did not feel like doing anything....that was when it so happened that I spoke with my frnd and she told me about him!
Seeing /hearing her talk and blush, share all the sweet nothings with me....I totally went into the 'whoppeee!!!!' mode!
The depression vanished into thin air and I felt almost as happy as the girl in question!
hehehe

I know I have been blogging very intermittently these days but it is only now when the end terms are about to start that we have a little time to breathe, not too much but yes a little.

Academically, I have been messing up big time..but I guess that is okay...may be someother day, some other trimester.
:P

Day after tommorow my end terms begin, we start with a non credit maths course , so I will begin work for it tommorrow only.

Take care:)
RP.

The end terms begin on Monday.
The first tri has almost come to an end now...as they say, time flies...It sure has in my case.
I do not blof at all these days, and today only I got a particularly conerned mail from a bog reader, which kinda woke me up to my responsibilities towards this blog :P

My schedules here are very tight. Like today only, I had classes from 9 till 6:30..have a tets tomm, 3-4 marketing projects have to be done, an entire psychology project has to be dealt with and I am yet to start with padhai for the end terms.

Today was our last class for a particular subject.The proff in question is an intersting case study actually.He began by hitting us where it hurt us the most and he ended with hitting us where it hurt the most but somewhere along the way, we as a class actually ended up liking him better than any other proff here.

He screamed at us, shouted at us, refuted each point we had to say, disagreed with each of our opinions, used abusive language in class....the list actually is endless.

He would throw us out if he acught us yawing in class and the first day he came , he screamed ta the entire class for an hour coz we did not stand in class as we gave our introductions.

But gradually as we became used to his ways, his classes started becoming fun. Things he said , about life in general, made great sense to me, infact I paid greatest attention to him when he talked aboout his life or was some gyaan about life.

As parting words today Proff had just one thing to say.

He said that he saw great potential in each and everyone of us. If we did not reach the top, it would be coz of only one reason. The reason would be we ourselves.

The whole class clapped and cheered for him as we came to the end of the course with him.....
Cheers and have a good rakhee...
:)

Yog.

So we have Yoga classes every alternate day at the painful hour of 6 in the morning.We sleep at 3 the previous night and are woken up by the various alarm clocks we set by 5:30 am.

As a side note, last to last turn, my roomies simply could not wake me up for the class and they had to leave without me!

So with 2 and a half hours of beauty sleep, the couple of us troop down to the place where the yoga sessions happen.
Yoga is compulsory though it is a non credit course.

One can easily spot poeple with tousled hair, crumpled clothes, straight out of the beds, glad to have managed to wke up at 6. Almost everyone is in a trance, we move like zombies, with our eyes closed, hoping to make it to the right room.
Eyes closed, I generally make way to the place where the mats are piled up, and with eyes closed I pick one of them and return to the hall where the yoga begins.

Till the time our instructor begins the session, we simply lie on the floor to catch up on sleep, most of us have to be woken up by guruji himself when he is about to start the session.

Now we have guruji who wears a white kurta payjama and comes to teach us the subtle nuances of yoga.
The session starts with us chanting something, even after many yoga sessions I am not really sure about what we chant...I just make weird noises and hope that that is what is being said.

The sad part is that this chanting has to be done with our eyes closed.Now with just 2.5 hours of sleep the previous night, keeping eyes closed and staying awake is totally impossible..so a couple of us start dozing off as soon as the chanting begins. This irks guruji very much.

The next thing in line is 'Bhatrika'. I personally do not even attempt bhastrika. And apparenlty there are many like me. So during the last class, a guy from my batch , closed his eyes, sat in the mudra and promptly fell asleep when he was supposed to be breathing in and out doing bhastrika. Guruji is smarrt. He can sense a sleeping yogi pretending to do yoga from a distance. So what he did was that he calmly walked upto the guy in question and put the mike in his hand right under the guy's nose.

All remained silent.

None of the heavy duty breathing sound that should have rightfully eminated from the mike.
Guruji kept the mike there for 30 40 seconds .The guy slept for the next 30-40 seconds.
Then guruji had had enough, he prodded the guy saying 'arre devdas, utho'

Devdas, blissfully asleep sitting in padmasan, was jerked out of his slumber. Within seconds he was back to doing bhastrika to the bets of his abilities amidst laughter around.

The point is that , shav asan is our fave asan, the moment guruji says, 'abb, aap kripiya let jaye, shav asan ki sthiti mein' , we give a mental whoop of joy and lie down on the mats , ready to catch a couple of minutes sleep.

Guruji spends the next few minutes waking up people by prodding them with his feet as he moves along the students.

When guruji begins the yoga class he always makes it a point to ask the class this question,' kaun kaun pet saaf karke aaya hai'.
Initially we were too embaressed to say anything and not a single hand would go up when this question was put up.But...now approximately 6-7 hands shoot up.
The reason is simple, guruji does not allow thses people to sit for yoga lessons, asks them to drink a cup of warm water, take a small 2 minute strol around and then spend soem time in the loo and then come back for yoga.So these guys just leave not to come till it is almost 7 and time to give attendance.

Yoga is good for health. Yoga gives us about 5-6 minutes of sleep, if you are a good potential manager you can grab upto 10 minutes of sleep.

aaaahhhh..sleep...ossum !

Gunite guys!
RP.

Hi,
So It has been 12 days in this place now.It is 2:25 in the morning and I still have loads of work I need to wrap up before I call it a day.
Highlights:

1.I have managed with about an hours sleep, e.g come back from a session with the seniors at 3, jab /settle down by 4, get up 5:30 to drag yourself for yoga at 6.

2.I am generally oscillating between extremes here. Sometimes I miss home so bad that it is almost a physical pain.

3.I keep looking at the gates of my bskul , and have been tempted real bad to just run away and never come back.

4.In the past week, I had a stomach upset followed with some fancy insect taking a fancy to my face, crawling across it and leaving a huge scar behind. If that was not enough I promptly fell ill again, viral fever being the culprit this time .

5.Fo the first time today in 12 days I laughed my guts out, I laughed so bad that I thought I would die laughing. This guy in class was enacting the nirma super ad while the proff was droning on and on about direct and derived demand.Gosh, he was funny!

6.I am so much in awe of the students I am studying with.90%of them are toppers .

7.I messed up the first quiz I wrote here so terribly bad that I cannot even begin to talk about it!

8.I have realised that if I have free time , it almost kills me!!!

I hope you guys have been doing good, as far as I am concerned , I am hoping I will soon start feeling better here.

gunite
RP.

P.S. Will try to be more regular with blogging from now on!

Two things..


Today is the 30th of June 2007. This day is significant 'coz of two things.


1. My blog turns 2 today. It has been a very nice two years at that!

2. I leave home today , for the first time, to try and get an MBA degree for myself. I am all packed and ready to leave, which I will at 9 in the night.

It is funny that my blog should turn two the day I leave home. I have spent the last two years working for CAT and other MBA exams, my blog bears ample testimony to that. Little had I known when I had started the blog that that very day, two years later I would be leaving home , no not for a job which I so dreaded but for MBA which I dread even more now!


The pic below shows N writting on the blackboard on our last day in college a few days ago.http://smilethesmile.blogspot.com/2007/06/good-bye-as-i-begin-to-pen-down-this-it.html: chek the end of the post for more details on this picture.

So, Happy birthday and goodbye.

Happy Birthday Blog.

Goodbye ma, pa, my home, my room, my city, neighbours and everything else that has been a part fo my life here....will come to you all in 10 weeks :)

Celebrationzz...

Aaah...well, the results were declared. 8th semester Btech results.
Today, in the morning , I read about them in the newspaper and tried hopelessly to log on to the website but to no avail.

I had not received my customary sms from him[http://smilethesmile.blogspot.com/2006/09/so-i-blog-about-him-today-and-let-me.html ] either. So that meant that either the results had not yet been declared or I had done miserably.But about 15 minutes later a message sent at about one the morning reached me .
It was from P. I have not spoken to him since I left college, but yet he remember his job [:P]

I read the message and smiled for 2 minutes non stop.

Time for a beeeeeeeegggggg wala 'yeayyyyyyyyyyy'
:P

A round of chilled mango shake with dollops of ice cream and a generous sprinkling of nuts for everyone here!


And yess, I could not help but put the links of some other ecstatic moments when the first thing I did on knowing my result was to go online and blog about err...umm..myslef!

http://smilethesmile.blogspot.com/2006/09/results-well-6th-sem-results-are.html
http://smilethesmile.blogspot.com/2006/03/yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy1.html

And yeah, btw, I am Er. Raam Pyari now.*superior look*

Memories inside a Drawer.....

A bad net connection and an even worse volatage situation at home has ensured very few posts in the last few days.I have been packing and buying for most part of this week and am now basically done with most of the packing.

It is funny in a sad way to go through all the drawers. You simply have no idea how many memories they treasure within their closed and dark interiors.Going through ancient drawers has been the most difficult part of the process of leaving home till now.

This one particular drawer is an ancient one. It is mostly neat and organised. I can take a few things from that drawer I decide for myself as I start taking out stuff one after the other, fingering each item that my eager fingers find and reliving memories associated with it.

There is this beautiful hand made birthday card from Dada(my nana ji), who is a renowned artist.I am his favourite grandchild.
Inside the card which has Lord Ganesh on the front , in his beautiful artistic hand writing are these words in Hindi.

'Tejaswini Pyari RP,

Jeevan ho prasson sa,
Mann nache mayur sa,

Tej ho suraj sa,
Bhagya ho chand sa.

-Dada
-Nani''

I spent some time staring at the card. Both my grandparents are 80+, Nani has not been keeping well these days and each time I meet her, I fear it will be the last. I went over to my grand parents for 3 days last week. There was so much of love around me that I cannot even try to put it in words.Since I am as it is emtionally very volatile these days, I almost broke down into tears when it was time to leave everyone . 15 people whom you pretty much love like anything, standing outside an ancient house where you have spent some of the best few days of your life , waving a bye at you sitting in an about to speed off car......

I shirk off the memory and dive into the drawer once again.
There is this HUGE birthday card from Bhai.It is a simple card.There is a cute girl wearing a pink ribbon in her hair on the front.

It says:

'Didi,

I might have taken
The pampering for granted
in all these years

But never the love behind it all.

Love always,
Bhai.'

I have never ever read these simple words without having silent , helpless tears cascade down my cheeks.Never ever. Not even now.

There is a letter from my cousin tucked in some remote corner of the drawer . I take it out and go through it . The letter consists of the type of nonsense sisters in class 8 somehow manage to write each time, without fail . However, just below the main letter are a few lines which have been unsuccessfully hidden by a scrap of paper which has not even been glued propely. On top of this piece of paper is written the following:

'Didi, please do not remove this scrap of paper'.

So, when on the morning of my 21st birthday I got the letter, I immeditaely removed the scrap of paper to see what was written under it.

This is what was written:

Didi, I do not think I am supposed to tell you this but a surprise birthday party has been planned for you .All your friends are being invited in the evening . But you are not supposed to know this .

I spent the evening pretending to be surprised at the very expected turn of events unfolding in front of my eyes.

Hehee..but it is such a cute letter , and she so innocently told me of the surprise birthday party that I cannot help but smile each time I see that letter and recall how I had to keep pretending to be surprised the whole of that evening!

Then there is this weird thing in my drawer. I had a crush in college, I never spoke much to him and he spent his days in college telling everyone what a responsible girl RP is. Huh!
Anyways, so he had given me that thing. Just like that, he had one extra and he thrust it at me while we were waiting ,in college, for an event to begin which I was supposed to host.
'Here, you keep this', he had said smiling.
It has been over 3 years since that day and I sure have kept it!

There are sets of bangles kept neatly in boxes.I open each of the boxes and finger the pink, blue and silver bangles. My Mum has no sense of which bangle will go with which suit/ saree. I always do that for her. For a moment I sit and wonder who will do that now.

There is a green and yellow wind chime.It is all tangled and messed up now. It was very pretty once . It is so symbolic. Read on.A good friend of mine gave it to me on my birthday. We were such good friends, I recall and something somewhere hurts at the memory of what happened later. We studied together for CAT, used to go for the AIMCATs, do quanttogether , discuss questions hell, we even had adjacent rooms for the actual CAT exam. Then I got thru a b skul and she could not convert any call, so she stopped talking to me, stopped talking my calls, stopped replying to messages. I remember calling her up many times even when I was holidaying in Chandigarh and Simla. BUt she would not take my calls.

Then she called me when both of us had cleared the written round of this job inteview, that day was like the old days, I did not question her much about the calls and everthing was , it seemed, back to normal.Then I got through and she was chucked out. So, well...she stopped talking again.
So, now we do not speak, without even a single fight, no harsh words spoken, nothing .For me she was a good friend but for her I was just competition.....it is sad, but it is also a lesson.An important one.

Now, you tell me, what should I leave and what do I take with me? Which memory do I let go of, what part of myself do I leave behind?
This is going to be such a big change for me that I cannot even begin to put it in words. When I was done with the drawer I sat in my room for a long time, thinking .Thoughts pressed against my mind and my heart felt heavy and laden.

RP.

Of feet :)

After many days I feel like writing something random, so all ye 'random lovers' welcome aboard!

You know how it often is..ow when you try to catch hold of time and stretch it and make it last longer, the exact opposite happens..time flies and the more you try to slow it the faster it slips from your clutched fingers.

I have been trying to do the same.

I have been trying to stop time, trying to make memories, trying to learn faces, places, smells, touch.
I have often wondered who the one person I love the most and cannot live without is . Funnily enough, these are two different people in my case. I love my brother the most and it is my mother I cannot manage without.

I was a year and a day old when I became the elder child of the family, my brother was born a day after my first birthday. So, Ma suddenly had two very young kids to put to sleep. She would pat my brother to sleep with her hands and would use her feet to pat me to sleep.
That probably explains the immense love I have for her feet. I never sleep next to her, I always sleep next to her feet. The entire bed might be empty but it her feet next to which I would crawl to and find my heaven on earth.

My mother has the most unglamorous feet. Her toes are thin and have been kinda shriveled up ever since I can remember. She is, in fact most embarrassed about her feet, but I really do not find anything more calming than placing my palm or even my face against what are amongst the most non good looking pair of feet on this planet.

It is so unhygienic also! I mean Ma's feet do not have to be clean for me to place my cheeks against her feet. My father, a doctor, has regular heart attacks when he sees me do this, but how can explain to him the peace, the quiet I feel when I do that.

I remember coming back tired from college during Btech, Ma would be sitting on a chair and I would simply sit on the floor next to her , next to her feet and I would start feeling better.

I come from a family where my Mother always wanted her children to not blindly ape the West. Which is probably why I have never had a single 'western' type birthday. Yeah, I am soooo many many years old and yet I have never cut a birthday cake!

Her dream was to have a daughter who could on one hand speak the 'fluentest' of English and would on the other never be embarrassed to touch an elder's feet when she met him while in a mall with friends. So, I have been trained that way.

Touching of feet is a very serious issue in my family. I cannot imagine not immediately bending down to touch a relative’s feet no matter where I see him/her; in college, in school, in a mall, with friends whatever! I see a relative and I obediently bend down to ask for their blessings while my uber cool friends gasp in horror!

Training has to start at home. Each night before I go to bed, I touch both my Mother and Father's feet.
Each night.
Without fail.
Both of us, my brother and I do this.
It is now mainly a habit I cannot let go of. If supposing I forget to touch their feet, I will simply not be able to sleep. I mean just before I am about to like really fall asleep I would wake up and remember that I have not!!

Ma's take it this. Apart from the fact that it is a part of our culture, she says it is important, for success, to be able to bend in front of people, at times. Touching of feet, at least in one way, is all about bending, right?
Hehee

Yes, it is not very cool these days to do this, relatives is may be a bit all right, but parents, both of them, each night, that certainly is very uncool..but aaah..well..thats the way it is and if some day I have a child to bring up, she[preferably]/he[*sigh*] would be doing the same.

It will be funny to not be in my room in 20 odd days' time. It will be funny to not have Ma and Papa there in person.
These days I try to fall sleep while they are still moving about, I like the feel of Ma and Pa being around and awake . I like the sound of Harsha Bhogle's commentary as some how I associate cricket with Papa.I am at times so hopelessly trying to memorise evry tiny detail that it gets claustorphobic.

I will miss touching their feet at night.
I will also miss the 'Kush raho beta' which is in its own quiet way one of the most comforting and familiar phrases I have ever heard.

Gunite.
RP

Good Bye :(

As I begin to pen down this, it is already almost 8 in the morning. At 9 I have to leave for college for my last official day there. We have the ‘Industrial Interface’[summer training ] viva and with that complete, we would officially be over with Btech.

In the last few days we had loads of work to wrap up including a variety of viva and the dreaded BTP[ For the uninitiated BTP is the Btech Final year project, a maxx beeg thing for any Btech student.] .We were a group of 4 people, 2 guys and 2 girls who had to submit the BTP together, so that required loads of proper division of work and labor!
For the past 5-6 days or so, I have been up till almost 3 each night making the rubbish 150 page Report that is so essential for the BTP.The tension continuously increased as somehow did the work.

In the 4 years here, I have been part of two different groups. One had N, S and I and the other had P ,R ,N and I. The first one was an all girl group and somehow it was extremely hellish. There were hardly any giggles, S was never serious about work which would make me very angry, she could be very rude and that intimidated me no end and some time later when S and I had a MAJOR fight [which had its roots in the fact that she left an entire 10 hours of work for N and I to deal with while she went for a movie ] we mutually decided to part ways. The next group was totally different. The last few weeks have been a pleasant experience that ways, not a single fight, no ego issues, infact no issues at all.. It was easy to divide the work and manage it. N and I wrote the entire 150 page Report and made the 30 slide PPT as well..but as we did the PPT work together for about 6 hours there were many times when we would simply crack up laughing ; it actually ended up being a lot of fun!
Calling up other team members at 3 in the morning to ask them some silly doubt, the program not running properly till 8 in the morning of the presentation, then the Lappy acting smart, preparing for the presentation, deciding who will speak what and finally the presentation itself.
Phew!

Well, to cut a long story short the presentation went of smoothly, our topic was interesting and fun and the lady taking the presentation seemed quite happy with our work!
However all through the past few weeks there has been a non existent lump in my throat…it would soon be time to leave and now it is time to leave.
L

After the BTP got over, N and I, we went to each and every Lecture Theater that exists in my college. We sat in each class we have ever been into as students. And as we would enter a particular class N and I would suddenly have so many memories to share and recount. This is where I used to sit often, this happened that semester, that proff said that to that guy.
N would pick up a chalk piece and scribble a ‘GOOD BYE’ on the black/Green Board of each LT we visited as I would sit quietly in a corner, seeing her do this and letting the realization dawn upon me.
It is over.
OVER.

Four years and 8 at times very long and at times very short semesters later, it is all now finally over.

Of me and Bahin...

Well, so some of you know me better than I know myself! I am indeed back and I am surprised ! I know, some of who had even prophesied an early return-- ‘waah’ ‘waah’ to you!
:)

Now, let me tell you how Sayesha, unknowingly paid a beeeg role in my return.

You know, I am not Raam Pyari, as in I was not named RP by my parents .But yet it has somehow become a part of my identity. ‘Smilethesmile’ is just a blog, I know, but it is indeed at least a small part of my identity. It is difficult to get a new name, a new address and pretend as if all was like before.

In comes Sayesha.

I am, I guess, one of her most regular readers even if I do not comment on each and every post. So, when I came face to face with the problem coz of which I had stopped blogging here, the first person whose advice I wanted to take was, well, you guessed it right, Sayesha.

So, I went to her blog, but sadly there was no email contact to be found and I again found myself at sea.

So, with all this happening, ‘Blogging all the way’ shut down and all, I happened to read the latest post at the bar.
500 drinks :) !!!

[Cheers, bahin, btw! ]

There is this one line in her post which I shall not quote, which was almost like ‘Bahin’ talking to me about the problem I was facing here. In the post she also mentions what she thinks about such a situation .AndI could so totally see her point of view. It was an epiphany of sorts, the clouds parted and there was the proverbial sunshine all around.

So, that got me thinking, and the more I thought about it, the more sure I started feeling about reopening this place.

I will not/ cannot die for ‘Blogging all the way..’ but you see, it is two years of me- from the time when I was in 2nd year Btech till today, when I have just finished the last theory exam I will ever write as a student of a Btech course.

Almost two years and about 180 posts.

That is a lot of me.

I could not let it go, just like that.

I kept thinking about all of you who read whatever crap I write here. I mean, it just seemed useless to let go of this place.

Hence and therefore, I am back and Bahin is to be at least partially thanked for the dramatic return!

So, I take this[she has just reached post number 500] opportunity to thank Bahin, not for writing that particular post but for churning out post after post, for allowing me and others like me , unknown strangers , to peek into her life , for being honest, for being funny ,for sharing with us the smallest of things, for sharing with us the biggest of things , for making the bar such an integral part of our lives.And for helping me decide on coming back here:)

500 down?
5000 more to go re!

The good thing was that due to all that happened here, I got a chance to know some of my readers here who took out the time to actually mail me.

Keep Rocking!

RP.

P.S. Girl series will be back. I will try and finish the story before I leave my city!
I do not think I need to put this here, but Sayesha a.k.a. Bahin can be found at www.sayesha.blogspot.com

The blog is open.
Details later, have an exam kal.
Big thankyou to Sayesha, for making me see sense.

will be back with a detailed post!!!

Dear readers,

Some of the more regular ones amongst you all have been mailing me about why I have restricted access to my blog...

Well, restricted access it will be..I might start a new blog, migt not blog, might blog here only with limited access.
However, my stat counter has been telling me that there are people around who have been reading my blog with tremendous regularity for a long time, poeple who I do not know, probably poeple who do not even blog themselves.
So, this is message for all of you, who I am vain enough to believe , like to read my posts.
I am putting down my email id...do lemme know about yourselves,if I ill start blogging again, I will let you guys know :)

Thankyou for reading what I have written for the past 2 years.

Will miss 'Blogging all the way'

RP.

P.S.: EMAIL ID= raampyari007@rediffmail.com

The Logic and Science behind an Indian Marriage

So, my cousin’s wedding just got over and in taking an active part in her wedding, I got an opportuniy to observe keenly all that is so intrinsicly a part of the proverbial big fat indian wedding!

Seeing all ‘rasma’s and riwaazs [customs]I was surprised to see the sheer logic and sense behind even some of the tiniest of customs we follow so casually .
For starters ‘dowry’..no not the dowry we talk of today but go back a couple of hundred years I guess.A girl going to a new place would simply feel more comfortable using things she gets from her own home….than actually going to new and strange people and asking them for it.

By giving things like utensils etc as part of dowry the girl’s parents set up a mini household for her simply for her convenience.

The whole huge gathering that happens at the wedding--I think in ancient times also all the community members would gather for a girl’s wedding. The reason? My guess is that instead of being the grand show of one’s riches and affluence that a wedding now sadly is, it was ,I guess ,meant to ensure that all from both the sides got to meet one another and know the other one better.

Similarly customs like ‘joota churai’ et al ensure a light atmosphere during the wedding itself and also helps the two families to get to know each other better.
The excessive make up girls are supposed to put on during the wedding and the bangles and ‘bichia’s , the ‘mangal sutra’s and the sindoor ; now I have two theories on that. One is that since these are telltale signs of a girl being married, random men who would see the girl would know before hand that the girl is married and hence no untoward incident would happen.

The other logic is that that makes the girl look more attractive and there by the husband would feel more attracted to her. Now this brings me to another aspect of the whole thing. The ‘ghonghat’. Why the ghooghat? I have done my bit of talking to a lot of people on this and have come to a conclusion which is as follows. See, culturally we are not a ‘nuclear-family’ society, we have joint families ,with the father , all the sons and their families –everyone living together. Now from what I have heard apparently incest is quite common in rural and probably also in urban India even today. So, keeping the girl’s face covered, particularly when she went in front of the other men of the family was a tiny step in ensuring that that would not happen.

Similarly take the widows; they are not supposed to wear any kind of makeup, no colorful clothes, nothing that makes them attractive; this being done to ensure that men would not be interested in them!

The saying ‘Ladaki ke shaadi waaley ghar mein kaam karne se punya milta hai’ [You are blessed if you help out in a household preparing for their girl’s wedding ] is one of the smartest thing our pundit jees have come up with. I have seen enough of a household preparing for its girl’s wedding to know how much of work there is to be done!!! So they really need people to come forward and help! And if people generally believe that by helping out they are getting brownie points , so be it!!

Customs like the ‘chauthi’ according to which the girl is supposed to return to her parent’s house for a day on the 4th day after her wedding is another smart one! See, obviously the girl is suddenly face to face with so many strangers , so like if she knows that she would be going back to her house in just a few days , that might make things that little bit easier for her! I also think that the custom of the girl celebrating her first Holi at her parents house is just another gimmick our ancestors cooked up to ensure that the poor girl gets at least one more break!!

If you look closely at the nitty gritties that happen during the actual wedding you will notice that there is some tiny thing that only the ‘bua’ is supposed to do, something the ‘chacha’ is supposed to do. This distribution of roles and duties amidst the members of the family probably kept the interest of all alive and kicking! This probably came about as the only way to keep the whole family together and make them feel important!

I don’t know really, I have no great knowledge of the human mind, nor do I claim to possess a great insight into our culture and history. Hence this can but be called only a very naïve attempt at understanding the science and logic behind the manner in which the marriages in our society in general have been shaped. Everything that we refer to as being part of our ‘culture’ is nothing but probably a way of keeping the society in order. What we think of that ‘way’ per se might be good or bad ; it depends on us as individuals but I feel that with most of our customs , if you look just that closely , you will come across some thing that definitely makes sense.If nothing , you will atleast be able to make a vague guess of what was probably going on in mind of our society at that point in time.

Job #2...

Okay, so 2 days back Adobe came visiting to our campus. I came to know of it only the night before that and I was in mood to work for it. I had stopped working on my technical skills by Jan last year when I had started working for a b skul in full earnest and somehow never started working on it again.
So like , I was in no mood to stay up the whole night working for it...so I just brushed up a little bit of C and was basically ready to go give the test.
I was mentally prepared for being chucked out in the 1st round itself.
It would be nothing more than a slight embarrassment, I reasoned with myself!

The whole day was spent busy with the farewell party that my branch juniors had organized for us , I came back dead tired at about 8 , watched some TV [only ' some' because it was a Sunday and Dad was home for the evening! ] and went off to bed!

The next day I got up at around 8, got out of bed at about 8:45 and left home for the PPT that was to begin at 9 , at about 9:15.

Spent the next hour listening to the ppt and err… admiring the cute guys …ahem..and before I knew it, it was time to write the test..

There were three things they tested, analytical skills, mathematical skills and C .
I personally was not very satisfied with the test and instead of waiting for the results I decided to head back home. There was no point in waiting for about 2 hours for the potentially negative results!

At 5, a friend called up to tell me that my interview was slotted for 5 sharp.


Needless to say all hell broke loose…I had been semi asleep cuddled next to Ma when the call had come and the transformation from the sleepy me to the screaming me had to be seen to be believed !! After having created enough tension at home ,I changed into a dark maroon salwaar kurta, tied my hair in a plait, kajal for the eyes, a tiny black bindi .This was followed by a mad rush to look for the CV and certificates [ which were still in the file I had used for the Narsee Monjee interview in Delhi ] which was then followed with forcing Dad to drive fast to drop me to college!!

When I reached college, I was immediately handed this huge form to fill..I had just borrowed a pen [I do not have any faith in having pens of my own, you see ]and was about to fill in my name when this guy from the team came out and called my name!

Like a woman possessed I hastily tried to fill my form .Once that was done I headed for the interview room. I just paused outside the room for a few seconds to compose myself before heading straight in.

So began the first round of interview.

The guy taking my interview and I felt completely relaxed…infact he even asked me how I was so well prepared for the interview!
:P
Then followed some puzzles which believe it or no I managed to solve !!!I guess the tough DI caselets I solved for CAT helped me there…
He even got me to play a game with him..he asked me to sell him a paper weight, a pen and sooo many many other questions!
The interview went on for about an hour..it was so extensive, the fact that he was easy on the eyes helped a little bit ..hehehe :P

Then the second round happened –another 50 minute interview of extensive grilling!
And then as soon as I was about to go in for the third one I was asked to wait for sometime…by this time it was already 9 o clock in the night, so I got together with some frnds of mine and we went and had Maggie at the Nestle counter just outside the academic block….


Maggie in college at 9 in the night?
Priceless!

So, then finally the interview happened at 10 in the night, from 10:30 to 11:00!! Haf an hour of the gentleman trying ot figure out my insecurities!
:|
Yess, that is what he said…he also asked to me to tell him about the craziest thing I had done.
I actually told him that it was censored and could not be mentioned here!
And he actually said that whatever I said would remain within the walls of the room!

Heheh..Imagine

So finally at about 11:15 I reached home, after having been standing the whole day without a moments rest!

And with that my second job interview came to an end.

Epilogue: I got the job!!! Yeayyyyy!!!

P.S : If you wish to check out my first job interview with CTS , here is the link--- http://smilethesmile.blogspot.com/2006_06_01_archive.html
Check out the post in green

So, apparently, I am the only one who has managed a vaguely decent convert from my coaching institute[ Yes, you can go be as surprised as you wish to be ]. The centre heads had decided to arrange a seminar for the entire batch for CAT 07 and I was cordially invited to share with the students my own experiences.

Ahem.

Since it is the first time that I am actually being treated this way, let me share with you guys all that happened.
First of all, I had no idea what I should ideally wear for the occasion! [ A day before that a class 12 girl who wanted to speak to me had exclaimed on seeing me ‘ Didi toh humare age ki lagati hai ‘ .
Huh! ]
So, Western wear was totally out, it makes me look much younger than I actually am , so I settled for a light pink churidaar salwaar kameez with substantial chikan work all over in white, tiny pink danglers and a touch of kohl for the eyes. The cotton suit + hair in a pony, academic, hard working girl look! :P

Ma dropped me off at the venue and Chotu Bhaiyya [ the odd job guy at the coaching I used to be very good friends with when I was regular with the classes] on seeing me waved a cheerful ‘hello’ and directed me to the hall.
It was a HUGE hall and had around 200 seats, the centre Head#1 was on stage giving gyaan about the various terms used in business mags et al. Centre head #2 , a female who has without fail failed to impress me , was seated in the front row.On seeing me, she waved and asked me to come over, So I sat next to her and listened to centre head #1 give gyan. It was actually a pretty decent lecture and I listened very attentively to all that was being said while centre head #2 yawned and yawned non stop beside me.
Other faculty members were also there and it was nice to talk to them once in a while in hushed whispers…
One hour later, centre head #1, wrapped up his lecture and Centre head#2 went on stage and introduced to the audience the three of us.
Before calling me to the podium, she said ‘I have to mention one thing about this girl, she happens to be one the most hard working girls I have ever come across’

Nice thing to say?
Yeah , you might say so..but it rang quite hollow for me simply coz I know Centre Head #2 never bothered about me during the time I was studying with them..it just did not make a lot of sense ..
Anyways..I had no idea really about what to say…I think I gave gyan about the AIMCATs, asked those kids to read as much as they could and stressed on how important revision is.
Blah blah!

After the whole thing was done with, I was standing outside the hall, surrounded by a group of boys asking a variety of questions. One of them, a very enthu type of a guy[ he put up a pertinent koschan . ‘I am really very serious and want to do my MBA from abroad.How should I prepare for GRE’!! Ahem.Double Ahem ]was asking most of them.
Suddenly he thrust his register at me and said, ‘ Ma’am can I have your autograph please’
I was too taken aback to know what to do, it was sooo silly! One senior standing near me started laughing and said that he should leave the star and her fans alone.
Grrrrrrrrrr…
So, well, I refused to give the silly autograph as it made no sense to do so, but then the boy kept insisting and I did not wish o create a huge issue out of it, so I asked his name, wrote his name, and wrote my name a little lower and a ‘have fun’ in between.

The boy looked at me and said, ‘ Ma’am aapka pehla autograph!’

Ahem.

This reached the centre heads also and they pulled my leg real bad about it  , one of them , centre head #2, actually pretended to fish out her own autograph book and asked me for a autograph as well. All of us had a jolly good laugh about the whole thing.
Anyways, for the next 30-45 minutes I was surrounded by students who had a variety of questions they wished to ask me.

As I was answering their questions there were some things that kept coming back to my mind.

First and foremost, I had this overwhelming feeling that all the CAT +Bskul tamasha had finally come to an end for me. I know I am not heading for an IIM, but I do not regret anything per se. I genuinely never was IIM material. CAT tests your IQ, hard work can only take you that far..I know this sounds pessimistic but then one can only do as much as one can possibly do. I worked as hard as I could and yet my performance in CAT was worse than it had been in most of the AIMCATs and the SIMCATs.English was my forte and I messed it up so bad, if an institute kicks me out coz they believe that my English is rotten, then so be it ..but I cannot be bitter about it….
Almost always I end up in an institute that I have never even contemplated going to which is quite a funny thing in its own way.

My B skul, although not one which had been my dream college, is respectable enough for me. The IIM dream remains one that I could not realize but I guess that is okay.
I will try to make the best of whatever opportunities that come my way and lets see where I head to.

In the beginning of 3rd year I had put up a cynical, irritated post. 3rd year is going ot be tough, I had written angrily as if the weight of the world was on my slim shoulders.
I need to get placed and I need to get thru a good b skul.
Even as I was putting down those words I remember wondering which out of these two I will get and which one I won’t.
I got the first job I interviewed for, maintained my rank in college, got a decent b skul.And to add to it, Adobe came visiting our campus , and after 3 rounds of lambaa interviews , picked a handful of people including.And the package is about 2.5 time more than what I was getting earlier!Also till I go join my bskul, my coaching people want me to work for them
So, I have 3 jobs and one b skul admit.

Academically and professionally what more can I ask for?

:P

The Big Fat Indian Wedding!

So, I am back , the wedding is done with and bidai khatam!!! Let us move chapterwise here!!

Chapter One : The Evening of the wedding!

The drama began at around 2 in the afternoon yesterday when the bride’s barat reached my city and from that point on , being the only family essentially from this city we had a lot of work to do!

Bhai spent majority of his time driving around people [ a la the myth during his cousin’s wedding :) ] and I would at times catch a glimpse of him, sweating like anything in the horrid heat , shouting instructions at some random person.
Anyways…we [S, the bride to be and I ] had to reach the beauty parlor at 5 sharp and by 6 we were still at home , managing stuff! That got us into the panic mode big time, so by 6:15 we somehow namanged to reach the parlour. On reaching there, I realized that I did not have a matching petticoat for my sari!!!!! [The petticoat continuies to create problems for us as a family also!] It was 6:30 by the time the realization dawned upon me and tht got me into a super panic mode . So I grabbed the arm of Megha, a friend of S and we hailed for a rick and headed for an unknown market place to get the elusive blue petticoat.
Having never gone to that market made things a bit difficult as it is , plus it was getting late and dark, the last I had eaten was I dunno when and I was getting extremely panicky.

We stopped at this dingy shop which hopefully stocked petticoats, and I handed the blouse to the shopkeeper. He immediately told me that he did not have the same colour .But on seeing my crestfallen face he actually offered to run around the market to look for one !

So, there Megha and I munched on somethings from a shop nearby while she told me her love story [ she is getting married to her guy this November ] while the nice shopkeeper got me the petticoat!
Virtual ‘muah’ for the random stranger who helped me out. *blush*

So, then as soon as we reached the parlor , I got down to wearing my saree for the day, I had loads of hands to help me , one aunty helped me wrap my saree, another did my make up [ which was too dark for my simple tastes, so I washed it all off as soon as I got home and re applied light makeup, and yess btw! The lady at the saloon has sent me a nice 600 rupees ka bill for the makeup.huh! ] and so I was ready by 8:30, by 9 we all reached the venue for the wedding.

Chapter Two: The gathering!

This wedding was a khumbh mela of sorts! Relatives who had not met each other for like a century were squealing with delight on spotting some long lost cousin/whatever . The sheer number of relatives was mind boggling!!There were so many of them!!!I was on my feet non stop attending to the guests, managing my sister on stage, receiving the guests, saying the farewells..etc etc

I have never been hugged /kissed sooooooo many times in such a short span of time [ got loads of compliments as well *blush* ]. It is funny how now with a MBA degree in sight I am considered to be highly qualified, its funny coz from the circle I come from I have in my vicinity people heading who are heading off to A , so my meager lil college does not seem good enough, and here amongst people in general things are so different.



Us taking centre stage even before the bride and the groom arrived! Moi in the blue and green saree with cousins!

Chapter Three : The Jaymal

So we began the coy , shy , walk with the bride , with the jaymaal in her hand. We were a couple of cousins and bhabhiz walking beside S . I am actually quite good at the shy coy bride thing or so I have been told. Imagine!
The strong light of the cameras and the instructions barked out by the cameramen ?
Shee shee

Okay , now finally we reached the stage and the boy and the girl both stood facing each other when the ladake waaleyz began their traditional drama!
R wouldn’t bend his head down and S was not tall enough to manage the jaymal unless the high and mighty groom deigned to bend his oversized head!S tried to reach for him a couple of times. On seeing S try, the ladaka waalaz lifted R so that he was now totally out of reach.!!!

Bleddy ladaka waalaz!
But we girls were also very smart!

We were like, sure go ahead, kab tak 70 kilo ke aadami koh kandhe parr uthaye rahoge, We decided that we would wait for the ladaka walaz to put down their precious 70 kilograms of human flesh! [ yess, that’s exactly what one of my cousins said to the groom’s elder brother! ].

So we stood their waiting for some time amidst loads of shor sharaba!
By that time one Mama stealithily made his way to the stage and before we knew it, he lifted S high up!!!

R was so totally taken aback , and we were like ‘ Cummmon S mala daalo!!!!’ S is my sister and like any intelligent female she does not let an opportunity slip by, so hoisted a couple of feet up the ground inspite of being dressed in all that bridal finery [ which can switch off any body’s brain functioning, trust me!]she immediately flung the jaymal around R’s neck! .So the jaymal happened when both the boy and girl were about 4 feet above stage level!!

This unexpected turn of events brought maxxxxx taaliz and whistles from amongst the crowd!



Just before the ladake waaleyz started their drama, the bridde and the groom!
Chapter Four : The actual wedding and the cheaters!.

So at around one the wedding began. Almost the entire family stayed up including me !And it was such ossum fun! Most of us cousins had changed from sarees to salwar kurtas for the sake of convenience by then. [ Being the eldest one , I was the undisputed leader of us all gundaz and all did my bidding! *superior luk* ] However our sooper high spirits were dampened a bit as soon as S enetered the mandap as she was already in tears and that made us get quite emotional as well.




S getting very emotional and moi trying to calm her down, my Nani looks on and the errr...cooler.

The joota churai is an art. It requires careful planning followed with a meticulous execution of the plan. The ladake waale cheaters cheated their way to glory, the moment R [the groom ] got off the stage , bingo!! No jootez on his feet!!!
Imagine!

And then they sit and taunt us!

So, well, we kind of searched for the jootez and then when we really could not find them we started doing a bit of jasoosi!

First and foremost we spoke with the ladake waaley ke side ka head cheater [ that fellow has taken away ALL my CAT material! ] , then we followed their each and every move with care and we came to a shocking albeit correct conclusion!
They had chupaoed the jootez in their hotel, that was across the street!!!
Locked it in a room!!
Imagine!
Bleddy cheaters!

Ah, so well…R was wearing a pagadi on his head, I was standing next to him, I simply whisked away the pagadi while R was busy doing something to something as per the panditjee’s instructions You cannot imagine the halla the other cheaters made when they saw us pull off this coup!.
We refused to hand over the pagadi unless they told us where the jootez were.
At around the same time Mamaz got extra enthu and we started making up songs for the occasion.

Lyrics of some of them
“ mushkil mein hai banna,
pagadi ke binna!
Jootey ki lalach mein
Pagadi hi lutai|”

Heheh..it was funny you know, we made up load of songs, taunting them like anything.
However there was this cap kind of a thing which looked like a Christmas tree to me, so they placed it on R’s head and that acted like his pagadi.However we soon got bored and after announcing that afterall R is our ‘jeeja ji’, and we cannot bear to see him pareshaan and all that ,I placed the pagadi back on R’s head amidst thunderous applause form the grooms side!

During the wedding we put digi cams to good use by clicking pictures of any barati found sleeping..the moment our cameras would point to the sleeping , unsuspecting barati, the other bleddy cheaters would get ultra alert and start poking and jabbing the poor guy real bad and would generally wake them up before we would really click the snap!

Lots of dholak pitana happened all throughout the night, we made up many many songs and outdid the ladake waaleyz when it came to originality and creativity!
Huh!
*Superior look*

All throughout the night elders would point out stuff and tell me to observe the proceedings carefully as I would presumably be the next one sitting in a mandap. One month ago, this would scared me like hell..but now that I know that no shaadi waadi for the next 2 years, I took it all in my stride.

At about 4 one of the boys from the other side , brought into the room a packet which looked suspiciously big , my cuuzn , being ultra smart that she obviously is, immediately pounced upon that and guess what we found inside that packet?????

Them bleddy jootez!!!!!!!!!!!!

The bhais spent the remaining part of the night closely guarding the jootez, most of the time by actually wearing them, and sauntering to the ladake waala side to simply piss them off!!

So, when at 5 the shaddi finally ended, and R and S had to be led away from the Mandap, we all surrounded the groom and refused to budge till we were give a decent amount of money!
After many rounds of ‘yaar pachchas each mein mann jao, achcha sau each parr man jao” we finally settled on one thousand each!!!!

It was it guess a decent performance from all of us.
Good work, team!

*pat on the back!*

There were more things to be done including my having to touch R’s shoulders knees and forehead with rice 10 times with rice in my hands!
How weird was that!
We also played some games with R and S which were a lot of fun!

Post that I had to come back home to manage kaam dhaam here and hence I missed the vidai, which in a way was a good thing!
Infact today has been sooo busy that I cannot put it in words here, I have been on my feet the whole day busy managing innumerable things at the same time!
:|
This is actually the first one hour that I have manged to steal and it is almost one o clock at night!

With that the wedding comes to an end , I have my exams in a fortnight and now I need to go back to padhai!!

It is 12:30 and I am waiting for Bhai to come back from a shaadi so that we can lock up .

The IIMs declared their lists a couple of days ago and the girl I used to study with has managed to convert A amongst the total of 5 calls that she converted.

My IIM dream however, remains a dream.

:|

People tell me how a huge slary does not matter , how if I had gotten through IIM , it would have been difficult for Mum and Dad to find a guy for me [yh! I get that also!] etc etc...all of these are supposed to make me feel better ..
BUt they don't.
The reason is simple, I never wanted to go to IIM to get a huge pay package...infact really money does not attract me at all...I just wanted to spend 2 years at an Ossumm place and learn as much as I could.

Sometimes I genulinely hate eerything about my b skul , they even have supposed PDP programmes [ a.k.a rgging]
:|
what rubbish is that!!
You leave home and all just to tolerate the shit the seniors decide to dole out ot you!
bleh!

My cousin is getting married tomm..errr..I mean today and so today is going to be a longgg day..I guess I need to sleep...

The engagement!!!!

So, my cousin got engaged on the 23rd of this month, in my city . It was after a long long time that I was able to enjoy a family function.No upcoming exams to worry about, no PIs to appear for!! Waah! Waah!
[Are huzoor, waah taj boliye! …err..okay, that was a bad one! ]

My cousin, lets call her S and Mamijee came to my city on the 20th itself, it was R [S’s fiancé] ‘s budday on the 20th you see, and the love birds wanted to be together for the special day.
But, being the traditional arranged marriage that this is going to be, S was slightly reluctant to go out with her would be husband alone so I had to tag along!

*sigh*
Ever heard of something called ‘kebab mein haddi’??I was, sadly a living example of that unfortunate situation. The lunch at Pizza Hut was good, the movie [Bheja Fry, highly recommended, btw! ]was also okay , coz like I was bijee with the movie [There were about 20 ppl in the hall which had a capacity of not less that 200] but after that the situation got worse.

We started roaming around the mall.

*dramatic pause, the discernin reader makes a correct guess*

So, there were the two soon to be married people, totally oblivious of the world around them and of me with them ! Poor moi could be spotted walking a few feet behind them trying to not get bored by window shopping. I even stopped to sticking out my tongue at little kids when their parents were not watching to cut the boredom!! Inside the shops the two of them and I could be found in different ends of the show rooms.
Dukh mein I even bought stuff for myself that I did not even need to buy:|

Then they started sharing ice creams.
:| :|

And then there was the ride back home during which S and R [R dropped us home ] continuously whispered sweet nothings to one another and I bijeed myself this time by counting the number of stray street dogs I could spot.

[spotted 17 , for your information! ]

But it was good fun nevertheless, I felt happy seeing S and R behaving like a couple…R would pick out dresses for my sister and ask her to try them out for he wanted her to buy something! Anything!
‘Kutch toh please please leh lo!’ that was what he kept saying! It was sweet, you know..


I personally feel this is the best time ..as in everything is new for both of them, the attention that each gets from the other, the average of 15 calls a day, how when the tiniest of things happens to S, R has to be called and given a detailed synopsis , how her fiancé calls her as soon as he gets up in the morning, the half smile on my cousins’s face when R would call back a mere 15 minutes after having ended an hour long chat on the phone , how she would grumble and say ,’ Abhi toh fone parr baat hui thi, firr kyu karra hai!’,how she would try to look annoyed but the smile would betray it all.

Anyways, the engagement happened on the 23rd, 15 of my relatives from different parts of the country had assembled in my house by that day, and my house meant for 4 people did all it could to handle the 19 people that lived in it for 2 days!
It was sooo much fun, watching the DVD of the Sangeet, cracking random jokes about random people, dissecting everything/ anyone from the ladake waalon ki side had said/ done,pulling S’s leg about R..The extra beds that were put up wherever there was enough space, the 20 cups of tea which had to be made,getting up at 5 in the morning to see sooooooooo many people everywhere, sleeping.
Priceless.

I had , being the innocent gaon ki gori that I am, envisioned a royal evening for myself where in I would start getting ready at about 5 for the function that was to begin at 7:30 , spend 2 hours getting dressed, make my hair look nice, wear my dress real nice…but.

[Ahh, the word ‘but’, it can be sucha pain in the butt!!!, okay, that was a bad one again , I apologize! ]

At around 5 I decide to saunter royally into the bathroom and have an hour long shower, I open the door and before I know it I have been shoved aside, 16yr old cousin needs to have a bath , a cheeky voice shouts from the other side of the closed door!

Hmmphhhh.

By 5:30 , cousin has still not finished with her bath.. and Mum takes this opportunity to have an epiphany of sorts. The sari that has to be worn in two hours does not have a matching petticoat.So, I am summoned and told to take the car to the market 5 kms away and get a matching petticoat for my Mum’s newest saree which she obvio wants to wear for the evening’s function., So I rush out at top speed , drive to the market at 20k kms/hr , match 10,000000000 petticoats to get that right shade of green , drive back home at break neck speed only to see another cousin waiting at the main gate for me!
‘Di!!!!! All out chahiye!!!’

And there , like a woman possessed , I again rush to the same market to get the precious All outs! And then drive back home only to see S waiting at the door, ‘Ruchh!! Parlour chor de mujhe yaar! ‘

*sigh*
So, I pile her into my car and again drive us to the beauty parlour. It is 6:30 by now.So much for the royal hour long bath.
Ahem.
I am almost home when I get this frantic call from S ,”Ruchh!!!! Mehendi!!! I cannot put mehendi, I need the mehendi waala tattoo!! Buy it for me and give it to me, ABHI!!”

So, there again I make another trip to the same market and get the stupid 30 rupees ka mehendi waala tattoo, drive to ‘Rays beauty parlour ‘ and hand over the 30 rupees ka mehendi waala tattoo to the bride to be.
Being the intelligent girl that I am , I do not linger in the parlour for another second , knowing fully well that if I stay, some work will be produced and I would be expected to do it!

By this time it is 7 :00 pm.
Ahem.
And I am still in jeans and a sweaty shirt.
Double ahem.

Anyways… by a miraculous positioning of the stars / my good karma finding its way back to me,I reach home to not one but two absolutely empty bathrooms.
By 7:15 , I am half way to wearing the occur and red colour sari, and am delicately balancing the half made pleats in one hand and the samane ka anchal in the other , when from my cell bellows some arbit tune .

Another franctic call from the bride to be.

“ oye!!!! Pick me , I am almost done !! and haan, pick up my frnd also, she is waiting at blah blah place and go pick her ASAP”

So 10 minutes later, this time in a sari, very nicely draped but hair still very wet from the bath and piled on top of my pretty lil head with a pink colored clutcher, I drive to pick up random friend, and then go pick up the bride to be from the beauty parlor!.

And, oh boy! Didn’t she look amazing in her blue lehenga!

Anyways, drove back home, announced that no one who wants to live will dare to disturb me , I plant myself firmly in front of the mirror and start with making my face look thoda sa presentable.

Finally S and I reach the venue at 8:30 , by which time the boys’ family had already arrived and had been waiting for the bride . S and I did the slow , coy , shy walk from the door to the place where she was supposed to sit, with all the eyes present in the room staring at the two of us. I dunno why, but I was actually holding S ‘s elbow as if I were helping her walk…ummm I dunno why I did that mebbe coz movies mein aese hi hota hai!!!

Now, there was this huge room with loads of chairs and all and it was basically very quiet, most of us did not know what exactly could be done. It was getting uncomfortable waala silent, so Mum called me and asked me to organize a ladake waaley vs ladaki waaley ‘antakshari match’

1.I went to the would be MIL and asked for her permission, being the sweetheart that she is, she immediately agreed.

2.Then I got up and announced to all present there about the game. Having seen enough of Ekta Kapoor’s serials and Karan Johar’s movies I knew what had to be said.

“Abb ek antakshari match hoga..usmein 3 rounds honge, and aap ka ladaka humari behen koh angoothi tabhi pehna payega jab ladake waale yeh match jeetnege, nahi jeete toh hum ladaki koh wapis leh jayenge! Huh!”

Sheesh.
Double sheesh.
And if that was not sickeningly filmy this is what I said next!

Shuru karo antakshari,
Leh karr hari ka naam,
R, S ki sagai mein,
karma hai kutch dhamal,
la, la se aap gaiyye!

Sheesh. Double sheesh. Ughhhh!

And so began the match, I was the referee, the host and the camera girl [ I had been handed the cam corder and was doing most of the filming! ] The next hour was spent with lots of shor sharaba, lots of clapping, singing, cheating et al.
I occasionally added comments to make it more fun for all and I think all of us had good fun!

Thankfully the boys’ side won the match [ nahi jeetate toh kya hota !!!:O, behen wapis!! :O :P] Really if they would have lost it , it would have put me in a tight spot!

The antakshari was followed by a little bit of dance wherein both R and S were dragged on the floor for a few minutes. And then the actual ring ceremony happened which was followed by dinner and the final farewells for the night.
And to give that final filmy touch to the entire drama , when R’s bhabhi was about to leave I said to her ,” Bhabhi shaadi mein joote sambhal karr rakhiyega , hum poori taiyyari se ayenge!!”

*sigh*
So, with that an interesting day came to end.

The shaadi is on the 1st of May.

A picture for the bloggers :)



Moi in the yellow sari, bride to be in the blue lehenga, and mamiz and cujjz behind us. Moi laso holding khane ki pilate for the bride to be who is bijee jabbing with umreecah waaley bhaiyya!
Pic taken about 10 minutes after the engagement.

It is official.

I am the latest victim of the dreaded writers block.

So, help me.
Gimme topics you want me to write on.

And oh..a couple of points just hit me.

1. Bhai en route to his pardesi ghar overslept , and got up only when he was a good 2 hours ahead of his station.

2.When I told Mum this , this is how our conversation went:
Mum:!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
*Mum panikcs big time!*
*Mum then looks resolute*

me: kya?
Mum: decide karr liya!
me: kya??!
Mum: Bhai next time aayega toh we will take him to the doctor!
me:!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
Mum: kya?!
me: And what exactyl do you plan to tell the doctor?
Mum:*looking coyly at her nails* yehi ki mera beta sota hai, isko koi beemari hai.
ahem.

3.Later that day my converstaionn with bhai in pardesi lad went a lil like this :

me: blah blha( I tell him about this converstaion with ma)
bhai :*mock angry*achcha!!! Mummy koh fone doh.
me:err...she cant speak to you.
bhai :why?
me: she is sleeping

ouch!

4.A good way of loosing weight is to get dental treatment done!

5.cuzn shaadi cuming up!!! yeayyyyyyyy!!!!

6.ummm....errrrrrrrrrr....
see!!!
The cblock again!
plz plz kutch topic suggest karo :(

P.S adarsh, I cannot open your mail....net at home still ot working :(

Now for those who don't know, sweater shopping at a place like shimla is one tough job esp when you're shivering in clothes visually unacceptable in such surroundings. But I took anything I could find and now I'm sitting in this tiny cybercafe inside a big fattt sweater and a huge dull guy sitting next to me and trying occasionally to read what I type.

So, I have always loved hill stations and if you ever mention the name shimla the first thing that comes up in my mind is...... snow!!!!
And can you guess what! there is no snow here.
:P

[Breaking News : That guy has stopped looking , I guess he read that line about him. ]

I don't have a lot of time , as usual because people on vacations are busy ones, esp on their last vacations. The weather here , although without snow, is beautiful and it feels much more comfortable inside a sweater.

But, I have always thought of one thing. A sweater is called a sweater. But it will make you sweat only if you wear in the summers. It is usually used in winters and then there is no sweat. Why should one call it a sweater ????
Why ???
Why ???

Okay okay. I know stupid question. But that is how the stupid Rami Pyari thinks!

So now! I have to go because Mum is waiting!
Bubye! NjoI.

Of Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Nahan and a romantic setting!

So, at around 3 in the afternoon we decided to go to my Mamaji'z newest factory that he is setting up...it was a 60km drive...and we went to pick up Mamaji.
And hence we travelled from Punjab to Himachal Pradesh this time...

Its an ossum pharma foctory that he is putting up...and I kept asking him soooo many koschans!
I was sooo fascinated...
Why has he shifted from Hyderabd to HP?
How is the government treating them?
The financing?
The differnce in seeting up a factory when comparing both the times he set up one [this is his second factory, the first one he set up was wayy back in the nineties ]

The factory itself has sooo many sections including the packing section to the R and D section...they are even builiding a pent house on top of the building..It was sooo ossumm...surrounded by hills all around, everything was so green and nice!

I will always remeber standing sabb se upar...hills all around myself....the breeze soo cool flowing through my hair!

Anyways after that, we decided to move on...and went ahead to a place called 'Nahan'!!
so, whats specail about this place?
Nothing really, it is a normal tiny hill town...but the drive was nice.
it was getting dark by the time we reached the tiny city, a good 15-20 kms away from the factory.
The city itself nestles on the top of this mountain and we drove to the top of the mountain.
It was absolutley dark as we all stepped out of the car to take in the beauty of the place
Imagine standing on top of the tallest mountain around.
The moon is full and HUGE.
The stars appear to be closer than they ever have been.
The cool breeze whistles to you as it rustles the leaves of the tall trees around.\
And as you look below , in the darkenss of the night, it appears as if someone has opened an overflowing box of jewels, the yellow bulbs and whiteish tubelights that light the various homes bothe close and far , at different heigts,in different corners of the undulating layered mountains make for such a visual treat!

And as I pulled Mummy's duppatta closer around me , and soaked in the beauty...I have to say, that given the totally totally unromantic person that I guess I sadly am, I could not help but understand why the poets find this kind of a setting so terribly irresistable!

It was soo damn romantic!!!
Imagine me saying that!I never thought I would ever fin anything romantic!
:P

After walking around for a couple of minutes more , we then headed for a coffee joint, where it took them an hour to get us coffee and french fries!
Another 3 hours to get back home and it is now past 11!!

So, I hurry to wrap up this tiny post....tomm I leave for two days[i guess] in simla..I only have sleevess shirts[ahem] so that means will be doing some sweater shopping in simla itsellf.

:P

maafi for the hurriedly typed post...just had 15 mins or so!
buhbie and be good!

Hi!
So, yesterday at around 10 in the morning certain things happened and right now I am about 15 hours away fom home!
However , I have decided that this time everything is going to be well documented coz this could very well be one of the last full fledged vacations I take with my Mum and Dad before I leave home for college.

So for starters, Dad suddenly had a week off...and within 2 hours we had a weeks vacation chalked out and it includes heavy duty shopping in Chandigarh +Ambala and then we plan to move up the hills to shimla/kausali et al.

So last night I boarded the train which would take me to Chandigarh,at around 10:30 in the night after major heated arguments with Mum about what dresses to take :P

What was the most priceless thing about nearing CHD???
Guess guess!!!

Well, when u can just start making out the dim outline of distant mountains....I go into some other mode altogether, glue my nose to the window and watch spellbound , trying ot make out the various shapes and sizes....they look so majestic and strong and reliable...aah I dont have enough words to describe that feeling.
Years ago when Malory Towers and St Clares [both by Enid Blyton ]were staple diet for me, there was one line I would always wait for in the book, when Darrel's[the lead in the story] car would take this particular turn around this particular bend and suddenly her school would be visible to her.
Darrel always waited for that one bend, that one turn, that was the first look she would get of her beloved school.

It is a similar thing for me...that first time I see the mountains, almost always the same way..

My Dad would exclaim 'Beta!!! dekho!!!! pahad!"
I would have my nose burried in some buk [This time it was Freakonomics] and would luk up at the mention of the word'pahad'
And then I would keep my nose glued ot the window, move the curtains as far as possible and keep on and on and on staring at the mountains, completely oblivious of anything around me....

It is amazing.....
It is homecoming for me each time I see the mountains ...

As I type from My Mami's comp , from her bedroom in CHD, I need to just crane my neck to be able to get a glimpse of the distant, dark mountains....

aaahhhh..

Mum wants me to come have lunch now....will keep ya all posted , as long as it will be possible.
Nzoi!
Pics will be put up only once I reach home.
adios and enjoy!

I need to spend the time that I have more sensibly..I just spend it watching TV or orkutting....
So from now on , no ORKUT!

Why cannot I be nicer on the inside....I soooo hate the khandaani gussa I have inherited from my fathers side.
It is just a matter of perspective..if I can just be in his/her shoes things will appear diffrently to me..
I need to mellow down...but how, I do not know..
I need to probably start speaking up as well..
I am sucha weird combo of a couple of such sad things that I would really like to change....

Till sometime back, I really wanted an MBA...mebbe I still do, but things are getting fuzzy...
ummm
well..mebbe I just need to sleep..

I like blogging semi anonymously.

how random is that!
ohh..what crap!
gunite!
over and out!

In retrospect...

So, now that my MBA prep has come to an end and also paid off reasonably well , I think I can sit back and retrospect.Again , another, pointwise post...

1.I appeared for a TIME scholarship test sometime in January.I got some 4k off coz of the test.I remember almost ramming into a truck on the way home.
*sigh*
MBA ke liye almost shaheed!

2.The first TIME class I attended was on my budday,the 2nd of Feb. The faculty came in very flustered and locked the door from inside!! Apparently some gunda was outside asking her to reduce the fee for the course!
I sometimes believe in signals, I had wondered then and I wonder now also what that stood for!

3.The classes I enjoyed most were the Vocab classes.DI , I hated like anything!

4.Sitting at the back of the class , always , without fail--Ossumm!

5.The first AIMCAT I wrote.I remember not even totalling my marks as I felt I had messed it up.
I was city rank one.
*Sigh.*

6.The moment the AIMCAT would end, I would wait impatienlty for the solutions to be distributed .Most of the time I would be the last person on the entire floor, totally engrossed in calculating the score and seeing where I had gone wrong ,groaning as if in severe pain whenever I would realise what a silly mistake I had made.

7.The loooonnggg bus ride back home, the mad rush to get onto the correct bus.I almost never made it safely onto the bus without the help of some guy who had been observing me make unsuccesful attempts to get on a bus or the conductor.
Almost everyone on the bus would be holding the same white/pink question paper...it used to be fun listening to others talk about the same paper.

8.And then the AIMCATs +the SIMCATs. Saturday afternoons for the AIMCATs and sunday mornings for the SIMz.What madness!

9.The madness would continue during the weekdays, waiting fo rthe results to be announced.AIMCATs by Wednesday and Simz the next day.
The sectionals,the percentile, the cut offz, the city ranks, the all india ranks.
bleh!

10.Coming to IIFT exam per se.Somethings worth noticing are as follows.

i) I was dead tired during the entire exam.Never before have I spent sooo much time looking around as I did in that exam.

ii) Never before was I so totally bored while giving the exam, generally I am like verrry alert.

iii) I started humming a song in my head--I was sooo bored and tired and was done with the paper a good 5 minutes before time.

iv)The paper was in itself horrible[ 5 options+any number could be correct=you get no marks unless you get all the correct answers of the question+sectional cut offz+GK in the paper] so while on my way back home, I asked my borther who had come to pick me up to stop midway, opened the door and I leaned out of the car to leave the question paper on the side of the road.

11) Once the calls ahppened, it was much more funn, I enjoyed learning, I spent hours online, digging up important stuff, geting familiar with all the economics ka terms.

Now, I know I am through to an okay college..two more years of padhai await me, I will soon be leaving city I have lived in since the day I was born.
I will soon be leaving poeple I have never lived a day without.
Sometimes these daysI feel like hugging my house, my room, goshh..even my bathroom...
There are diaries kept here, in which I poured my silly 12 year old heart[Dear Diary, Today S got 8/10 and I got 7.5/10..I dont know where I went wrong, mebbe I am not studying enough...]There are places in this city I feel as comfy in as I can possibly feel anywhere.
I have started doing random things now...out of the blue I go up to Ma and give her a hug and do not leave her till she pushes me off.
chee chee..I even have started sitting in her lap. She is horrified, my twenty something daughter is moving on to ten something, she says.
I tell her to get me a glass of water, I can do it myself.. I have never before asked her to do such things, but now I want her to.

*sigh*

My regular readers, I know ,are already weary of the ultra emotional me but I guess they will bear with me .
Again.
:)

So, I went to my naniz place for a day.Highlights of the trip:

1.I have finally deicded that I am real scared of accidents, all throughout the 5 hour drive I was on tenderhooks.
kya yaar!

2.After having been in 2 road accidents it is only natural, I guess.

3.There is something sooo nice and warm about ancient houses. They ,somehow seem much more welcoming.

4.It is funny how now whenever I touch someone's feet, the most common 'asheerwaad's are related to shaadi.
ahem.

5.Random relative who came over told mummy how it would now be sooooooooo difficult to find a guy for me.
Apparently, doing an MBA= saying tata bye bye to any chaces I had left of finding a good match for myself.
chee chee.

6.Seeing Dada( nana) standing there, his 6 foot frame erect, face outlined with snow white and thick hair and beard, arms outstretched, ready to welcome his favourite of 14 grandchildren.

7.Listening to a younger cousin's absolutely scandulous[?] tale of how one of her female classmates is interested in another girl in her class.

8.The dawning of a sad realization.
I am now offically one of those girls who , during meal times,do all the serving .

9. I dunno if my cousins are or no, but I def am sick of them being told that they should try and be like me!

10.Spending 3 hours with a 3 year old niece who has not seen you in 6 months can be quite an experience.
She stared off with totally ignoring me , nothing seemed to break the ice between us..untill I did the operation.
*maxxx threatening type luk*

The purpose of the operation was to chop off another cousin's unsuspecting nose.
The instruments used made of pink and green plastic and were part of her 'doctor-doctor' play set.
The operation was mostly okay, except when the patient had to leave the room to take a call from her friend who wanted to know what homework had to be done for next day's geography class.
5 minutes post the operation, in an attempt to grab a toy, when my niece fell 2 feet onto the floor, it was obviously time for her operation.She chose me to do her operation.
*proud as peacock type luk*
Her operation consisted of first applying 'garnier's ' something cream all over her face.
This had to be stopped abruptly due to the untimely arrival of bhabhi who , i dunno why, freaked out on seeing her daughter's face covered with the expensive cream.
So, then we put a thin coating of some talcum powder on her face.

Ahem

We wrapped up the days affairs with a game of 'chai-chai' .
sigh!

11.Another highlight was the crisp thousand rupee note that Dada handed to me as I was about to leave today at 5 in the moring.

12. Saw the partial solar eclipse with naked eyes.
yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!

P.S.--again a totally random post.
And as with most other random posts, this one too has been written in points. Why I have this fixation with having verything in points is beyond me!

Bond,
James Bond.


Converted,
B-skul converted!

Enough said. :)

Poorer by two.

*sigh*

So, my Mother always has had problems with my teeth. So, I hvae regularly been to dentists of all kinds , shapes and sizes.
They have all told me that the upper denture is very pretty and the lower is useless but then I have toothy smile where only the upper denture shows , so no fite karne ka types.

So, yesterday also, I was taken to another dentist. As I lay on the chair with the huge white light and doctor peering inside my mouth, he said these few very casual words to my father," Doc Sa'ab, yeh ...yeh waala dekh rahe haina..iskoh toh nikal dete hain....ummm..and yeh waala bhi"

I immediately get up," Lets go Dad'
The doc pushes me back," Lets NOT go, beta!"

And then I sat there dressed in blue denims and my pretty white shirt totally distressed for the next 20 minutes wherein I just sat and said 'NO ' in a variety of tones, expressions and gestures.

But then it did start making sense..as in like he said that this is not really going ot be cosmetic, if I leave this the way it is right now, 99%, by the end of the next five years I would be getting multiple root canals done.

And many more such statistcis were thrown at me.
*sigh*
And they all made sense.
Which was worse.
So, I said a dejected 'yes' and the dentist almost gave a whoop of joy and my Dad told me that he had fainted when he had seen a tooth extraction for the first time.Neither of the two reactions helped me at all.
As I prepared to lay down once again, the dentist said," Thats like a nice baby"
Ahem.

So, local anasthesia was to be given, Dad first injected me on my arm to make sure that I was not allergic to the medicine, once that was done, I just closed my eyes and started humming a song in my head. My father would keep coming again and again to check my heart beat.Hehehe..he was more tense about the whole thing than I was.

So, then it started *sigh*
It was mostly painless..I guess it was scarier to see it happen that it actually was which is why my father kept coming to me, to hold my wrist to chek my pulse rate.
He would then turn to the dentist and say ," She is behaving well under anathesia, her body is reacting well".
To which the dentist would reply " Ohh, yess yess, Doc Sa'ab, she is doing just fine"

The injections were weird and the pulling and extraction was ..umm..not as bad really....

As I finished with it, I was given specific instructions about stuff.My lower jaw felt swollen real bad, I could not feel any part of lower jaw and was not allowed ot speak much.
Last night was rather bad..as the bleeding would not stop.
But I am OKay now,next in line will be braces..*sigh. sigh*
But then I am in my city for the next 4 months minimum and in case I do not get through Bskul then that would increse to 6 months if I have to work..so the braces are supposed to last not more than 6 months..so I guess it iwll be okay!

Phew!
Till yetserday things were differt and today I sit on my computer , early in the morning with my lower jaw hurting just a tiny bit and in general feeling weird.

Sigh!
So next six months=loads of visits to the dentist.
After six months= very very pretty teeth:) ;)
After 5 years= no root canal!
Yeaaaayyyyyyyyyyy!!!

And yess!! All ye people who were concerned about my teeth coz I brush them so often, abb toh rahe hi nahe daat!! Abb kahe ki chinta !!
:P
:P
*crooked smile jismein lower denture ke 2 missing teeth become very apparent!*