Earthly

Nothing can be defined as 'effort' if not waking up at 6:30 am on a Sunday morning. But like some efforts are totally worth every penny, or as I'd like to say, every minute of precious sleep, so was today's for me!

Daksh, my cousin, and I had planned a trip to Rajasthan for my first week in Delhi this time. But my father often plays spoilsport. And so he did this time too. So, as Sariska waits for me, a green patch en route to my current office greeted us this morning. Asola Wildlife Sanctuary was once home to a host of animals including the leopard. Today, it is said that there are more birds than anything else over there.

We did know the route, just had to ask around to find the entrance to the वन. At a check post I asked a police guy for the route, and he was surprisingly sweet enough to offer us tea too. ;-)

We reached just when the sunlight was perfect. But it took us a while to spot our first friend for the morning. Huuge peacocks, lots of deer, white camels, pretty butterflies, some animals whose names I did not know, and unfortunately very few birds - they were all there!
Moreover, I had good company in human form too.

His father was nice enough to let him take his car on his 22nd birthday! :D

Poor guys were scared!

And I was super-excited! Not because of the thorns and wild twigs in my jeans though. :|

I read somewhere that Pune also has a little wildlife sanctuary. I'll have to check on that soon. But a good, bigger national park can't be kept waiting for too long. The itch is getting too much!

P.S. - Every morning should be like a Sunday morning for Mathura Road and the B.R.T. corridor. The drive was dreamy!

Bump on my head

A feeble attempt. Of sinking feet. In a colourful hue.

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I have watched Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge innumerable times, but never imagined that something from the movie could come true in my personal life. Remember Simran's hands reaching her ears frantically every time she imagined hearing the leitmotif? I did the same today. Only, I did not imagine that tune. Some annoying person's phone rings to that tune in office every day. Endlessly. The moment I did it the scene flashed in front of my eyes. How I wished somebody fun was around to share it! :-/

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I never thought being polite and formal all day could be so taxing! I admit it's a nice change for someone like me who had forgotten how to be polite (read non-sarcastic) in normal conversation. It's a place where definition of casual goes beyond jeans, and makes me realise that I am more casual than I thought I was.

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Today the driver rammed the car for a second time in a week. Last time the car got damaged, this time I got hurt. And people tell me that it's a comfort traveling in the backseat of your car!

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A guy from my college was on the front page of ET today. For getting recruited for an obscene 32 lakhs after his graduation. Of course, sounds hyped - it's an international placement. But still! Three and two! The highest after my immediate juniors' who got 14 lakhs' packages by Lehman Brothers that used to be.

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I am soon going to become the expert queen of awkward social formal situations. It will equip me for a good consulting business that will fetch me 32 lakhs a year too.

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I recently visited the WWF office here. Got an opportunity to visit their exclusive gallery too. I cannot write about the brilliant work I saw there. It was out of the world! In fact, even the tiger was SO beautifully adorning their walls in the front lobby that I almost fell in love - with the place, the photographer, and the tiger itself!

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Some more relationships are officially over. I want to say that I don't know how many more there are to absorb, but I am so sure there are many many more to absorb!

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My struggling equation with god is also in a transitionary phase right now. I'm wondering where it will go.

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With this yours truly is hopefully back to being regular. Not planning on fighting with time anyway.

Heartache

Obliged to...
Misunderstood so...
Expected to...
Unreasonably so.

A loop, an endless loop.

Scrambled

The white car got scraped.

The leaves got wet in the rain.

The kathi roll had too much onion.

He lost yet another game of cards.

She bought her first non-leather bag in more than a decade.

The squirrel jumped over.

This time she cooked for her son.

We expected him to design it better.

It might explode within the next 10 years.

That's not the purple she likes.

The Peanut Butter Weekend

This weekend came and went by in a snap. After ages I felt like my social self again. And it was great because unfortunately, like I've been telling everyone I know, in spite of an entire lifetime in this city, I hardly have any friends left here. So it was great meeting some of my people again.

On Saturday morning, my brother was kind enough to actually ask me to accompany him for some shopping. In the process I got myself the most beautiful pair of earrings I have ever bought. They beat the second most beautiful pair of earrings I own which I had bought just last week. :-)

I met Megha as well, and pleased her by showing interest in shiny clothes because according to her I wear extremely boring clothes.

The evening was spent in shopping with mom at another location. Even though mom paid for herself (obviously! I'm a student. What do you expect?), she was happy that one of her kids was nice to her for a change. Especially because we only shopped for her.

I came back with a brilliantly annoying headache, but Avan tried to meet my demand of wanting to talk to her for two hours on the phone. We didn't meet the two-hour goal, but we came close. We did a lot of pending 'catching up'. Only I know how much I miss our long phone conversations ever since she went to a B school!

Sunday afternoon was something I was looking forward to. I was meeting school friends after a really long gap. So much so that I saw my closest friend from school after about a year today. I was damn excited. Most of the people in that chain mail did turn up. Basketball kept the boys away for longer than expected, but it was still nice to meet the old gang! The old commerce gang (I used to hang out more with the science students in 11th and 12th)! We had a lot more to talk about, but other commitments kept it slightly shorter than we would have liked. Incidentally, we also ran into one of the most dedicated students of our batch from school. The conviction with which he used to say that he wants to be a doctor totally reflected in the fact that today he's at the Safdarjung Hospital. Highly impressive!

Among other fun things, I had a fruit salad sundae from Nirula's after really long. As in many other places, the quality is nothing like it used to be. Nonetheless, it remains one of my most favourite things ever!
This reminds me - last week when I had gone to Chandni Chowk, we'd gone to the parathe wali gali and to my disappointment, the size of the parathas has now been halved. Moreover, there was absolutely no difference between a khurchan and a rabdi paratha. Yes, I have progressed from the apprehensive days of aloo parathas, but let's not digress from the point. So much for a slowdown! :-/

Back to today: From CP I headed to Khan Market with Kulsum's truck driver skills. She turned out to be better than what I was told about her. She left, and I met Udit. We spent some time at Cafe Oz. A place where pasta was not well-cooked, none of the desserts were (thankfully) appealing, and the iced tea was just about ok. I also went through some of his photographs' prints. Quite liked a few!

He was nice enough to drop me home. Post dinner I sat with my family, and we talked for a good two hours. It hardly ever happens. I loved every single moment of it!

My tickets for going back to Pune are booked. A train that takes more than a day, and I don't have a window seat. I know how much sulking these facts involve!

And oh, I got to talk to the 'love of my life' Sahil properly after more than three weeks today. It was nice. :-)

Why peanut butter? Because back in the hostel I developed a liking for untimely slices of bread with peanut butter - something I never really had at home. So to add to my already excessive weight, I got a jar recently and have been having untimely slices of bread with peanut butter again! Who would have thought I would bring stupid habits from hostel to my home! But stupid things are the easiest and quickest to travel, aren't they?

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I could not make a post about the recently-discovered engineer hidden in me. For your reference, I am working with one of the engineering giants right now. Last week I was disappointed because a stupid reason led to me missing a photoshoot of our technology at a substation. On Friday, I highly enjoyed reading about all the physics I missed out on after 10th standard. I also visited our instrumentations factory. It did take all these weeks for me to begin enjoying it, but really, if it wasn't for nauseating chemistry, I would have been in a completely different world today!!

So this is it about my weekend. Now I'll go decide what I have to wear to work tomorrow. Tada!!

Head Girl and Vice Head Girl - Batch 2004

Best buds

Trained at Delhi School of Social Work and National Institute of Fashion Technology respectively - talking about and agreeing upon how to handle rishtedars with shaadi ka rishtas

Kulsum has a 'thing' for getting people's invisible feet in all pictures she clicks

And Parul ka dil! :D

Not So Dull

Why should dull be a bad word?

# When everyone is hyper, somebody dull can actually be someone sane.

# When the light is blinding, something dull can bring relief to the eyes.

# Things that are dull can contrast well with most things pretty.


Help me add to this, please. I am working on a defence for my friend Dull.

*...*

Not for a reason, not in any order...






































Two of the pictures here are not clicked by me. Priyam, a friend, has the copyright.

On Guru Nanak's Birthday...

I...


went to...


with...


to capture some absolutely typical stuff like...


and had lots of fun! :-)

A Sunday Well Spent

First thing in the morning was the Delhi Half Marathon! I cannot claim to have run through the entire distance, but I did complete it. Without much struggle. I didn't expect myself to even do this much, so I am very happy.

There I saw somebody who was a senior in school. I also saw someone who was a co-traveller in the Vasant Kunj U Special. Somebody from college saw me. Essentially, it seemed like Dilli truly daud rahi thi*. Of course, Shiela aunty and Shah Rukh Khan were there only to flag everybody off, and they did their job well.

Harry, an old friend, was also running the corporate challenge. The last time I had seen him was over three years ago. So it was a good day to catch up with him too. At lunch I tried red wine and I don't think I liked it. So, after lots of chit-chatting and chocolate pastry, I overpaid an auto guy to drop me back home.
On my way, I ran into Shweta Guha from the very old days of Orkut Delhi Meets that I used to attend. It was nice seeing her with her little baby.

Late afternoon got spent in watching Maine Pyaar Kiya on TV. And man! that movie was dramatic. I mean I have seen it before, but I have never rolled my eyes at every scene as much as I did today. It was almost hilarious.
Following that was Rock On! and bits of Border. This is what happens when you sit in front of the idiot box after a light year. But the winner is the Tata Docomo ad with that ugly boy in the train. His expressions are so annoying that I don't think I can look at the TV when he's on air, and the ad is so bad that I can't look at the TV when it's on air. Maybe the two were meant to be together, but it's one of the top 5 most painful things I have ever seen in the audio-visual medium. Ever.

Talking of bad ads, wtf is that juice ad from Parle Agro. Saint Juice or something? "Juice the way god meant it to be". Where the eff are your commas, and where the eff is 'good copy'?!


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Been a perfectly active+lazy day! I should get good sleep tonight.


*I know this is what Hutch used to say during the Hutch Delhi Half Marathon days. Somehow Airtel's 'joy of running' doesn't do it for me.
And I am a former disgruntled Hutch user now using Airtel. :D