Daughter of the East!

I had bought my copy of 'Daughter of the East' many many years back.[ shit, am old enough to say things like now ::: ].However ,the hard bound thick book somehow always put me off.I always wanted to read it..but it sadly always was the book I was planning to read after my current read.

It was her assasination that made me quickly finish the book I was reading then and start with her autobiography.
Today while travelling for close to 10 hours in the traina nd then in the auto, I spent a lot of time with Ms Bhutto, and I cannot even begin to put in words how terribly impressed I am!!

She was an amazing woman, it is not easy to bear all that she has borne! and with so much dignity!
Without giving anything away, for the first time on this blog, I am actually going to ask all those of you even slightly interested in history and its many shades, to go and pick up a copy of the 'Daughter of the East!'

Am back in Bskul after a good few days at home. I am already not liking it :(

Buy buy and take care! My hands are so cold!! brrrrr

and oh yes, btw, Have a great 2008 !:)

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