To Sum Up...

An unplanned trip to home...

# A two-day trip turned into a two-week long trip.
# Chandni Chowk, Rajouri Garden, Kotla, Punjabi Bagh, Chawri Bazaar - the wedding cards, dhol, band, ghodi, d-day ensemble for the groom, et al - complete utilisation of my presence at home!
# I had an impossible amount of chaat on this trip!
# Did not miss the penne with vodka at Big Chill! :D
# Played a nice, colourful Holi!
# Met Saumya after about a year and a half, and it was obviously lotsa fun!
# Met Prashant after even longer, managed to check out his latest exhibition too, and it was plain, simple, nice to see him!
# Watched two not-so-good movies in one week. Still quite like Morgan Freeman and Abhay Deol though.
# Managed to get back a bit of control over my mind.
# Still haven't managed a frikkin' job.
# Clicked lotsa flowers blooming in my backyard.
# Stopped haggling with auto guys. Every journey does cost Rs 50. Period!
# Felt inflation! Silver which used to cost anywhere between Rs 350-500 has shot up to Rs 1300 and more! And this was before the announcement made in the Budget.

Had home food, slept well, and now heading back. I hope it is the last time I have to board a Pune-bound train. Never felt worse about getting onto one of those!

The Blunt Knife

The luxury of tears that flow,
the luxury of people who notice,
the luxury of family that books tickets for home,
and the luxury of little, material love over and above the unspoken.

Diwali at Home

It has been a while since I wrote about how I spent a particular day. For me it is also worth writing about because ever since I have landed in Delhi (been three days), I have done nothing.

I stepped out to get my mehendi routine taken care of. Lajpat Nagar like every year! I always used to pay 50 bucks for both hands. This time I had to bargain to bring them down to Rs 70 for the same.
My yellow bag saw light of day after weeks today! We were both happy. :-)

At home, the mithai has found a taker. I am enjoying laddoos, and pethas, and barfis, etc in turns. :D

I also googled for a new rangoli design for tomorrow. I think I have found something, but it might need pre-testing.

In the evening, when Bhai got back home, we fixed the lights. I love the little yellow bulbs.
Then, he and I stepped out to buy the diyas. It's this road in Sarojini Nagar where sellers are lined up with the prettiest Diwali stuff made of mud. There was great variety in the style that diyas were made. But we are traditional in thought and taste. We bought the conventional-looking ones. (A handful of white diyas only to satisfy the keeda. :P) We bought more stuff than was needed for home. Such behaviour is one of the few common things (the second mentioned here) between the two of us.

Like I mentioned recently, the P word takes priority. I had been strategically doing all my work since afternoon such that I wouldn't have to wash my hands (in order to allow the mehendi to get darker). Water is known to be a killer in the process. But as the night came, so did my enemy. :-/ So now I am just hoping that the morning does not disappoint me with the colour. Mehendi in bad colour is one of the worst-looking things on earth!

Tomorrow morning also has the annual Diwali havan scheduled. It demands that I sleep early tonight. Have extended family stuff planned for the rest of the day as well. :-)

Aside: This would have been anniversary time.

P.S. - I recently got mom to invest in a green silk saree for me. I can't wait for an occasion to wear it! :D

We're inching towards 400

Delhi was good. It was brilliant. The weather sucked; but HOME.

I am imagining and visualising the red saree.

I am over being on this campus. Officially. April 2010, where are you?

Ye hai dilli nagariya

On April 14th, I realised that I was done with pushing myself. At least for now. I worked through the day, had a quiet dinner down at Shree with a couple of friends, and then stayed up ALL night packing everything, and only managed one hour's sleep after sealing all cartons and shoving them into a corner.
The morning felt a little lazy, but the motivation to come home was enough to push a little more. All flights from Pune to Delhi were delayed because of congestion and construction work at the IGI airport. So we waited and waited. Laughed and laughed too. And those were two horrible sentences. Basically, Gopika Gulati and Sahil Chopra decided to entertain me, and I enjoyed myself.

I slept a bit on the flight, and spent the rest of the time being excited. :D

The Delhi airport is shaping up well. Mom and dad were a delight to see. Hearing a stranger talk in punjabi felt familiar.
I know it has only been about four months, but I had really forgotten how wide the roads here are.

Since technically I do not have a single day off (today I had permission to travel), I could not just let the world fuck itself and sleep at home. I needed to pay some people to make me look presentable.

Off the to-do list:
Haircut that feels awesome
Golgappe
Good dinner with family
Cake and other meetha
A bit of shopping too
And some surprises from the family

I will be joining work tomorrow morning. Following that, I will worry about the remainder of submissions. :|

But I'm hooooooome!!! :D

What Delhi is to me

Delhi lets you be. Delhi intrudes. Delhi can be very damp, and it can let you breathe too.

For three consecutive nights, I have gotten into a conversation about Delhi with someone or the other. With someone, I was defending the culture. To someone else I was explaining how the stereotype does exist in reality. With another person I was discussing how Delhi is probably cosmopolitan in the truest sense of the word for the sheer coexistence of conflict and blend that people manage between them. And then I talked about the one cause and movement that I feel strongly about... Blank Noise.

The Delhi that I know... the Delhi that I have seen and experienced..t he Delhi that lives in my heart, and this is what my mind thinks of Delhi....

The stereotype?

Yes, Mrs. Sharma does live in the neighbourhood. Goldie does have a Santro with fancy ‘art’ sprayed on it. Most corners on the street do stink of fomenting piss. The large, green trees do beautify the even larger roads. Most chaat walas serve chaat that you can enjoy. You really can buy clothes worth Rs 35 to beat the summer heat. The letch on the street will surely manage to come up with a creative pass. You will not drive down any busy road without a BC-MC playing in the background. You will have the prettiest women walking around in fancy market places of south Delhi. You will also have pseudo-pretty old ladies with coloured hair, make-up, bling bag and weird clothes walking around in the same fancy market places of south Delhi. You can manage to strike a conversation with an auto-wala above an average age of 35 about anything under the sun. Old Delhi will certainly not disappoint you with the food it offers. The Metro is seriously the cleanest public space. The same Mrs. Sharma will not get sleep if she does not offer you her saag and kadi if you live next door. The best blend of Haryanwi and Bihari will greet you in buses and cabs. And you can’t miss the ‘hello ji’ for most people will offer you that too. If you’re street smart and have a thing for breaking rules and getting away with them, all your narratives of funny incidents to friends will be about your rendezvous with the thullas you cross on the streets.

I can go on... but I also want to write a bit about my experience of things beyond the stereotype. Perhaps a rather myopic view, but it is what I have really experienced.

When you walk alone down a busy street, you can choose to look at the people around you who will totally engross you with their activities and conversations. You can also choose to space out and they’ll let you be as well. Board a blueline and you will get to feel the pulse of the city because it’s hard to come by a bus which does not have the radio playing in it. Delhi listens to the radio. And I cannot emphasise on this point enough. Travellers talk of a state’s dynamics changing as you move along a belt, I am telling you that you can sense the changing dynamics of Delhi just as you keep switching bus routes. Take a bus to my place on a Sunday, and you cannot fail to find groups of Mallu women on their weekly shopping trip to the INA market. You won’t just see them, you’ll hear them loud and clear. Non-stop. Sit on a bus to Kashmere Gate in the mornings, you’ll feel you’ve experienced the north campus on a bus itself. For that matter, take a 420 at 7:00 pm and you’ll feel the people look alien if your background is similar to mine. And a Gurgaon DTC at 9:30 am can be found with perfume all over because most of the people on it are white-collared professionals.

(This just makes me realise that I’m done with my share of travelling in buses. :-|)

Anyway, moving on...

Wherever you may turn your head, you will find a frame worth capturing. The most innocent-looking kid looking to have fun his way, the dog playing with a bag of trash, the old lady haggling with the fruit vendor, the old men’s group sipping tea together, the couple with strong beliefs in PDA, the consortium of ice-cream wala bhaiya, churan wala bhaiya, gubbare wala bhaiya, and all the bhaiyas sitting together and cooking up unknown stories. The colours of different seasons in the air, the colours of different brands on bus shelters, and the colours of different cultures floating around in human form.

Delhi can be ruthless with its heat, its men, and the frustrations it breeds as a city of conflicted minds.

At the same time, Delhi is generous with the space, the smiles and the warmth it gives you.

If you didn't know already, I'm homesick and I want to be with my family right now. I know it's just another week left, but the term's been too long. Waiting for the flight to take off.

And for the lack of flow and abruptness of this post, blame the work that I brought to the last minute which made me write this post in parts.