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.