Transported

She loved that night...

And she loved that drive.


She loved that conversation...

And she loved that song.


She loved that thought...

And she loved that touch.


Magic is unreal...

Wish pain was too.

Jackasses or Smartasses?

This one is dedicated to the morons I am surrounded by...

Idhar bhi gadhe hain,udhar bhi gadhe hain,

jidhar dekhata hun, gadhe hi gadhe hain,

gadhe hans rahe, aadami ro raha hain,

hindostan main yeh kya ho raha hain?

jawani ka aalam gadhon ke liye hain,

yeh rasiya, yeh baalam gadhon ke liye hain,

yeh dilli, yeh paalam gadhon ke liye hain,

yeh sansaar saalam gadhon ke liye hain,

tu pilaye ja saaki,pilaye ja dat ke,

tu whisky ke matake pe matake pe matke,

main duniya ko ab bhoolana chahata hun,

gadhon ki tarah ab jhoomana chahata hun,

ghodon ko milati nahin ghaas dekho,

gadhe kha rahe chyavanprash hain dekho,

yahaan aadami ki kahaan kab bani hain,

yeh duniya to gadhon ke liye hi bani hian,

jo galiyon main dole, wo kaccha gadha hian,

jo kothe pe bole wo saccha gadha hain,

jo keton main dikhe wo fasali gadha hain,

jo mauke par cheekhe wo asli gadha hain,

main kya kah gaya hun, yeh kya kah gaya hun,

nashe ki pinak main kahaan bah gaya hun,

mujhe maaf karana main bhataka hua tha,

wo tharra tha, bheetar jo atka hua tha!!

- Kavi Om Prakash Aditya

Vague Thoughts

I can feel the pain.

And I can feel the comfort.

Obsession + obsession = madness.

So many things are overrated.

And you can't see the undervalued one.

It's a pity.

There are the shameless.

And there are the jealous.

There are who used to be.

And there are who will never be.

I can see the pain.

And I can see the discomfort.

The Perfect Sunday

I met Karan yesterday after exactly one year. He's one of my closest friends from school. We drove to Khadakvasla Dam only to find it really crowded, it being a Sunday evening. So we decided to drive further up to Sinhagarh Fort. The roads weren't too great, but it was a beautiful drive with great music and awesome conversations to keep me super happy. And you thought I was frustrated with life! :D

The view from up there was to die for. I do not have pictures because we were literally walking in clouds with visibility not more than three feet. The clouds were heavy, it was raining, and it was that storm-like feeling of the recent past, but only SO MUCH BETTER! The temperature must not have been more than 15-16 degrees. So, to make the experience perfect, we had hot pakoras. :D Or call them batata and kanda bhajiya.

I also had another popular local snack. Rather, a fruit. They put masala on raw mangoes, cut them prettily, and serve them yumm. :D

The moment we started driving down, the view cleared up, and I was absolutely mesmerised! I have described it to tens of people already, but I shall do so for my own record here too. (So much for not being able to click!)
While we were driving down a steep and slippery narrow road, the view from my side was a deeeep valley, peaks in the distance, a white patch on top of the hills, and then the magical skies. It took me a while to figure what the white patch over the peaks was. It was the Khadakvasla reservoir. Wow! I SO wish I had a picture. I swear!! It was killer!!!

The drive back to the city was great too. We talked of the craziest things that happened back in school. Gosh! It has already been 6-7 years.

Got a Sub on my way back too. :D :D

On the super-pretty Khadakvasla-Sinhagarh road

The Reservoir

Windy - from the moving car

Lots and lots of people on the closest get-away from Pune city on a Sunday evening
The reservoir at Khadakvasla Dam

He's a childhood friend. Knows of the few constants in my life very well. Never need an occasion for red roses. :-)

Meet my little boy Dhaniya :-)

If I'm connected with you on Facebook, and you bother to follow people's status messages, then you might remember my status about biking through villages in rain last Monday. That was on a day when I went to a different part of the city with a classmate on his bike. It was a super brilliant ride with somebody intelligent and funny through mind-blowing greenery and colour. That day I had lunch at McD's and managed to get Sid with my Happy Meal. :D :D Now he's with me in my keychain. Muhahahaa!


Oh, and btw, I am going home for Rakhi next week. Muhahahaaaaa!!!!

Vague Thoughts Extended

Maybe it was the solar eclipse.

Maybe it's the thoughts.

Maybe it's the world.

Maybe it was you.

Maybe it's just me.

Clouds or the dark side of the moon?

Maybe clouds are better than the dark side of the moon. Would keep confusion, weakness and hurt away.

Windy Affairs

I have never witnessed a storm that has no dust, makes the kind of noise this one is making, is SO cold, and has the power of making somebody my size lose control and almost get pushed away. The wind had been strong since last night, but it is insane right now. The structures behind my window are such that the wind is getting kinda trapped in them and making noises like a roaring lion. I am not kidding or exaggerating. I really thought it's some wild animal or an annoying machine that is at work outside. But when it went on even after 9-10 p.m., I figured it's just the wind.

I like wind. Definitely more than the rain. Especially the rain that never stops.

The hilltop is not feeling too great this semester. I am perpetually in crib mode. So, five minutes in the staircase next to my room felt super nice thanks to this wind. It is piercing. Makes you face it head on. No other way of doing it. Feels incredible!

The wishful thinking here: if only these were winds of change.

Fluid...

There are colours. But everything is a blur. A struggle.

GO(o)Dness!

Sometimes it is hard to differentiate between real and surreal. There is a conflict between what you want to believe and what you should believe.

Dr. V.V.R. Sastry taught us marketing in semester I and II. In the third semester he is taking brand management classes. Unfortunately, it is not the entire 30 hours of the module that he is taking thanks to a damn permanent faculty the college has got for the subject. I have mentioned several times earlier that marketing has been my most favourite subject so far. It is so purely because of this man. He must be at least 60 years old, but the dynamism that he brings with himself is absolutely incredible! To me, he is the god of marketing. Kotler's book has never had the Bible status in my mind because I have had god directly talking to me.

I do not want to compare the new in-house faculty with him, but am forced to because every time I sit in her class I feel I am just wasting time. It takes a lot to kill anything associated with branding. But this woman does it with finesse. I can't believe she is doing 2/3rd of the course! :-/

So, Dr. Sastry took his first class yesterday. I was S U P E R excited. And so were a few other people who can appreciate good things in life. (And some admitted to 'eating their words' later for not realising sooner how great the man is. :P) I sat in front, made notes, and felt happy! The class was brilliant. In Robin's words, it was our weekend bonanza - the perfect close to the week! :D

Now comes the surreal bit.
It being a Wednesday evening, many people had plans of going down to Shree for dinner and drinks. A couple of friends were proactive and asked Dr. Sastry himself to give them a ride till the foot of the hill. And they sat in his car! When I reached Shree an hour later, this is what they had to say: Sastry said to Robin, "the girl (me) sitting next to you in class is intelligent. I remember her from last semester's presentations."
I tried confirming this 20 times. They could very well be taking my case because everybody knows that I am obsessed with the man. But they're maintaining their stand even till this moment. Now either they're being cheap by not admitting that they were kidding, or are actually saying the truth. It is too unreal to be true, too perfect for me to believe, more perfect for me to not want to believe, and I do not know what to do about it!
It makes me happy even if my friends are making it up. But I swear I cannot express what it would mean if it were true and there was some way of validating it! Guess I'll keep obsessing about it for the rest of my life. After all it's god we're talking about!

___

Got bored of the blog's look, so shuffled the colours a little. I like the brightness. Would like to know what you think of it too.


It's an extremely windy day today. The unsettling feelings continue...

Beyond Love

With time, I have become more and more real about the unreal things, and felt detached from the idealistic, perfect world. A non-belief in that 'love is immortal' thing has also strengthened. This, simply because I have personally (if I may use this language) tested this hypothesis wrong. But at the same time, there is a certain fondness that remains for some people. I'd say it is timeless because irrespective of how many years pass since you last met them and how much ever time passes since you even spoke with them last, that smile that that person's being brings to your face has the potential of saying it all. It gives such a good feeling from inside that you are at a loss of words to express the sentiment. It need not be love. It need not be romantic. It is plain. And it is precious.

Movies Happen Now

In 2nd year of college, I remember, I was kicked by the fact that I watched more than 12 movies at the theatre. That, because my parents didn't take me out for movies too often when I was in school, and I personally also was never too interested in watching all kinds of movies. I only watched popular stuff.

One thing that has not changed since then is the fact that I am not too much into movies. Few things interest me enough to either sit in front of my laptop or go all the way to a theatre to watch a particular movie. The theatre here is an even less attractive option simply because the closest one is too far.

This post is here today because this time I have watched 12 movies in the last one month itself! Yes, 12!! Two at a theatre, one during the weekly screenings of the campus, one during a random screening in class, and the rest on my laptop. Pretty incredible I say!
This would mean that I have a lot of free time on me nowadays. It is not quite that. Two things which have led to this are: too much rain for me to spend any time outside of the hostel (if not in class) .Secondly, internet connectivity has been an issue on my floor for the past couple of weeks. So I am often left without any options. But it's been quite ok so far. I watched a few of the very popular movies. The ones that got people to raise their eyebrows when I said I had not watched.
Here's a list of those movies.

Lost in Translation
Ice Age 3
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Into the Wild
The Hangover
Pursuit of Happyness
Kamasutra
He's Just Not That Into You
Mixed Doubles
PS I Love You - Didn't watch it in entirety. Was too depressing.
Angels and Demons
12 Angry Men

Next I will watch Pulp Fiction. I had started it one day but had dozed off while watching.

Most of it is thanks to the intranet. I know I would never have gotten to watching them if it wasn't for the uncalled for multicasts on the IP.

:-)

Metamorphosis

This is about the last one year. The newness. The developments. The closures. The learning. The independence. The adaptations. A new me - with the old one.

I am a lot more independent today than I was a year ago. It may sound obvious, but I know of people who have not experienced this change.
I may not be as independent in thought yet, but surely am in action.

Whatever little independence in thought I have managed to attain is helping me be more objective about certain things too. I do remain highly opinionated, but managing to find a balance at some level and be objective when need to.

I have become a lot less expressive. I surprise myself with the kind of thoughts and emotions that I do not allow to surface any more, without any struggle. Yes, I still have issues – lots of them – and I do not claim to be in 100% control either. Yet, control over emotions – something that I have been struggling with all my life – seems to be coming by.

A corollary to the previous point is that some people find me too cold.

Although, I have completely lost control on my temper now.

I realised that you cannot derive any amount of strength from anywhere except from your family, and how important it is to know that things are right back home. There may be a lot of things that fuck your happiness, but nothing like the moments when you feel you should be with your folks. Similarly, when everything else seems to collapse, ONLY the family can lend the staff even from so far.

I can spot thin lines between me and myself, and between me and the world too. Therefore, I have begun to feel responsible for the ‘self’ in me. I can also clearly see how you can or cannot enter my zone irrespective of how much time you spend with me. And I know that now for somebody to see the inside of me, it will take a lot more because there really are that many more layers, and also because I am going to make it that much more difficult. It’s part natural and part effort.

Of course, I do lose sight of these things sometimes. Those are the moments of weakness. They end up lasting days at times, but I am good. Certainly better off at a relative level.

It is incredible how one person has managed to be a weakness ever since I have come to this campus! I have tried hard to change it, have given up at times, tried to accept it matter-of-factly, denied it, tried to maintain distance, and gone through a plethora of emotions about the same over time, but to no avail. I do not know why, but it does not change. Has always been complicated in my head. Obviously, I do not like it.

My conversations with god have reduced considerably. I almost feel something like guilt because of it, but it is not as if I am making an effort to change it. I think making the effort would completely defeat the purpose anyway, but still wish this had not happened.

Few discoveries about health were far from fun, but in general, I have been a lot healthier here (it’s a different matter that I have fever as I type this :P).

I started washing my clothes here. I often postpone the process, but I actually enjoy doing it. :-) Just as much as I hate doing dishes. I thought I hated cooking, but I hate doing dishes more. Which is why I now keep disposable plates in my room. Anything for staying away from the shitty work!

I started travelling! I write about that in great detail here, so shall not elaborate on this. I am just hoping that it continues in times to come.

A relationship I thought was perfect died in front of my eyes. I denied seeing it happen for long. I tried fixing it even when it was beyond repair. To my own surprise, my first emotion related to it was guilt. But to my further surprise, I was made to feel guilty too. I feel sad over the bitterness I developed. I seek closure even though I am no more in love.

I figured comfort zones make my life worthless. But I am in yet another comfort zone, it is again difficult to get out of it, and I am again beginning to feel sick about it all.

Resorting to mindless fun has become a very rare phenomenon now. I miss it. But I see no sense in it to actually do it - unless you're a Tarun or a Mansi because the foundation of my relationships with these people is mindlessness.

I developed a liking for The Financial Express. I think it's a darn good newspaper.

The B/C School stuff: We tend to believe that there isn't great learning here. But I think I do know more about marketing and management a lot more than I did last year. For that matter, I did not know jackshit about all this a year ago. Especially about my area of specialisation - public relations and corporate communication. The college surely leaves us yearning for more sense and knowledge, but I like to hope that common sense will give me the push that I will need in less than six months from now. I figure it works well in this industry.

I got to experience living in a village and a small city, both at the same time. It has been quite a change from my 21 years in a metro even though I do see a Fabindia and a Subway 20 kms from here. It still remains different. Especially the village. I must add here though that I never found it too irksome to not have immediate access to any of the facilities that I always took for granted. Here I need to take out two hours if I need to buy a pin, but somehow I made peace with that comfortably.
Clarification: What I mention on and off as pains are in that state of stubbornness where I hate settling for things that I do not like. It is not the time factor that I write about that time. :P

Ohh.. forgot to mention! I learned the art of sleeping in class here. I mean, it is incredible that I did not do it during my 'DU days', but do it here shamelessly. This is not the sleep where you are trying hard to stay awake or pretending to stay awake but dozing off. I am talking of the lectures where you close your notebook, take your glasses off, keep them on the side, and merrily sleep for 30-40 minutes in a 90-minute lecture. Please let me add that I do it a lot less than some of my friends here, but I do it nonetheless. :P

I have figured out a rough career plan for myself. With a plan B in place too. The details and nuances are not worked out, and I think I'd let that happen with time. Anyway time likes to fuck my plans and consequently my happiness all the time.
But if you must know, there's more of academics in future. :O


I think I can go on but I need to go back to a penalty assignment. A sadistic, senile man likes to torture my class. He says he is taking revenge on behalf of my favourite faculty from the previous two terms whom the rest of my batch gave a very tough time. Bunch of morons!

So, I shall take off now. Will be back soon. Tada! :-)

Happiness Initiatives

I watched Ice Age 3 yesterday. And I am glad that it is just as good as the previous two parts.
It was after really long that I was excited about a movie. Of course, the fact that there were no movies releasing while I was at home cannot be ignored. But still, it was nice to realise that my excitement was not unjustified. The movie was brilliant.
The past couple of weeks in this city have been a little annoying 'coz something or the other keeps screaming out loud that it's a small city. Now I don't know why even an Inox or an Adlabs didn't screen it in 3D. It was soo made for a 3D experience! :(
My official love through the movie (excluding Sid who is anyway the cutest) was Ray Romano. Loved his series on TV, and love his voice here too!



After the movie, friends and I went to McDonald's. Happy Meal toy of the day was Ice Age 3 stuff!!! So I got Manny, a tumbler with the dinosaur landscape on it, and one ice-cream maker. :D Happppy!!

I also finally bought a happy yellow bag. I'd been wanting one for a couple of months, and yesterday I finally spotted the perfect one. Rs 350 only! :D :D

I also finally planted my croton. It is super-pretty and I love it!! Swetha named it 'Dhaniya'. So Dhaniya it is from now on. :P


P.S. - Dhaniya's picture another time. :-)

Much more than a 1000 words

I completed a year on this campus yesterday. I wanted to kinda celebrate, but actually ended up spending the evening alone in the city. The only thing celebratory about that was that I got a new plant. It's a croton this time. So I am hoping it would resist the dying business.

There are a lot of things that I'd like to write about wrt this past year, but another post for that.

For now, I am concentrating on this collage of a collage that I'm displaying here. Please excuse the bad pictures... the lighting was somehow too difficult. Anyway. The point here is that I got lots of pictures printed before coming from Delhi this time because I wanted to make my wall look pretty. It took more than a couple of days to get this thing done, but it's finally done. Actually, it's 98% done 'coz there's a bit left too... but I am sure I will complete that tomorrow.
This collage is making me so happy that I cannot stop smiling. It's one of the most perfect things ever. It has pictures of a lot of people with a lot of different kinds of smiles. Each of these pictures is significant in its own way. Each one has a story. I love each one. They're perfect. :-)

My friends seem to be happier than me about a certain development that has happened. I don't think I'm happy about it at all, but maybe it's good for me at some level.

People seem to like me when I am obsessive happy. I like myself like that too. It's niice. :D


PS - Special thanks to Priyam and Ridhima for helping me with the collage. :-)

Prison Break

This campus is becoming crazier with rules with each passing day. And if I have started feeling suffocated, I cannot imagine what people who do not believe in following rules must feel like.

So, this post is about the little time I spent out of the jail-like environment recently.

I guess I should cut out the 'it was difficult to make this trip happen' bit from my posts this travelogue onwards. They all seem to be highly difficult and almost impossible because of the issues that come up at friends' ends. Every time I end up deciding that I'd go alone if that's what it takes to travel. Every time I end up almost cancelling because it's not safe to travel alone. And so on.
So, this routine happened this time too. I wanted to go to the beach that I had mentioned in my Ajanta-Ellora travelogue - Srivardhan. It had been due since February. Swetha, Ridhima and I had even gotten onto a bus to the beach during the first week of this semester, but it was not meant to work out that time, and it didn't. And that episode had made me even surer about it - no way I would have gone too long without seeing the place!

At 11:00 p.m. on the 30th of June, I was sitting with 20 tabs about the place opened on my laptop, a permission letter to be out of campus the next night, and no friends to accompany me. 30th was anyway one of the crappiest days in a very long time. I was homesick, lonely, depressed, and sick of a lot of things around me. One last attempt at asking a friend worked. There was a sudden development at her end, and she could take out that one day to come with me. Then a 3rd one also agreed. Her roomie followed suit, and we were four of us ready to get going. Priyam and Ankita are the ones I went to Ajanta-Ellora with last term. Swetha, I'm sure you all know by now. I was happy I had company. I was happier that I had perfect company. At midnight we booked a cab for 5:00 a.m. We were going to take a 6:00 a.m. bus from the city. This time from the Swargate bus station.

We had spicy idli sambhar for breakfast here

At our first pit stop near the Mulshi dam

Priyam clicked too many such shots of Swetha and me

This is what we were trying to click

Near Mulshi dam

The bus was to take about 5-5.5 hours for this virgin beach which is close to 150 kms from Pune. The route taken was via all state highways which had the most picturesque landscape ever! I live on a hill, but still managed to get impressed by other hills around. The rocks, the rivers, and the rains.. it was too pretty! There was a patch in between where it felt like we were driving through a grove 'coz there were pretty trees with a nice shade on both sides of the road. Then there was another patch where there were rocks on both sides even though it was not a tunnel. It was superb! I can't believe people were sleeping through all this. I mentioned this to my friends, but I have to register it here too: I never knew the wild could turn me on the way it did this time. It was a little funny, but interesting to imagine. :P

One of the bus stops on the way

View from my window seat on the bus

It started raining when we were just about 10 kms away from Srivardhan. I didn't like the sight too much since I did not want my plans of spending time on the beach to get fucked because of rains. But it did rain heavily for quite a while. Apparently it was the first day of the monsoons in that area. Till the time it rained, we found ourselves a nice, MTDC-approved hotel to stay in. It was affordable and clean. Didn't need anything more. We clicked a few pictures, changed, and stepped out for lunch.

All hotels/restaurants/public washrooms seem to have Medimix nowadays. Good marketing!

A street in Srivardhan

We had lunch in this under-renovation restaurant

Picture dedication! :-)

Three out of the four of us were photography enthusiasts, and the fourth one was an extremely patient woman. We'd taken our cameras out with us, but the rain was getting too scary for us to be experimenting too much. So, on our way to the beach, we left our cameras back at the hotel. We planned on coming back and taking them if the weather cleared up since the hotel was barely 300-400 metres away from the beach.

The road to the beach

Bara was discriminated against for having worn black & white chappals

The rain did stop for a while. As we approached the beach, the sound of the waves was the most intoxicating thing that had happened to me in a while. Please note that this was the first time I had gone to a beach. So you can imagine the level of excitement that I was experiencing. Within 2 minutes of being there I figured that I am totally a beach person. Hills are nice, but the water is bloody exciting! Although, I will have to admit that I am equally afraid of height and water. In fact, being in water wasn't just scary, it was making me kinda sick too... but that was only initially. Of course, my dear friends found it absolutely hilarious that I felt I was moving with the waves. And it was even funnier when I once did almost get taken away by the waves.

Anyway. There was nobody on that beach except the four of us through the entire afternoon. There was just a creepy man in a green jacket who seemed to be noticing us from a distance. He left only when a few more people/families started coming in towards the evening. We were on the beach from about 2 p.m. till 7ish. The last hour or so was spent clicking. Rest of the time I sang songs from Dev D (for no plausible reason) and annoyed the girls, noticed little crabs fool around on the beach, got informed about the difference between white sand and the dark, fine sand that this beach had, played with the waves, got a lot of sand smacked at me, and did poetry for the first time in five years!! Like I mentioned, I got hit hard by one of the waves too. Bloody hell, it was the saltiest, most scary feeling ever!
I also felt like going away into infinity with the waves. Nature does that to me. It stirs the deepest, most hidden emotions inside. That's why I also avoid sitting by the edge of the hill on my own. Or staring at the sky for too long. It's a strange, calm, yet unsettling kind of feeling. It is not quite sadness, but it almost feels like it. I don't know how to word it better.

But I was not going to let myself get carried away with those feelings. I was there to enjoy myself, not to distance myself from the world. And once we got clicking, nothing else mattered anyway.
The only sad bit was that there was no sun. I did not get to see the sun setting. I did not get to click it by the horizon. There was no drama in the sky either because of the clouds. And that was such a letdown!! But I still had fun ! :D

Garam Masala :P

I was having fun.

My latest love

Apparently I rarely express affection

Roomies

Fishermen and other men

Priyam made Swetha and me look like "kudewalis"

:P

We also managed to have some bhel puri and vada pav by the beach in the evening. And by the time we got ready for dinner, it was 8 o' clock. Since it was a small place, it was almost dead by that time. We were almost killing the silence through the streets looking for a place to eat. A man in a market-place suggested that there's a good restaurant close-by and that we should definitely eat there. It turned out to be the crappiest place with the most horrible food ever. But all of us were too exhausted to bother too much. We just ate, came back, and crashed on our respective beds. I hear though that Ankita watched a couple of K-serials before going to sleep. After all the hotel had provided us with TVs that had cable!

All four of us back at the hotel

Our bus back to Pune was at 5:00 a.m. So a 4:15 a.m. alarm, a heavy rainfall morning, and a sleepy 5.5-hour journey later, we were back in Pune. We spent the morning in the city, and took the 2 p.m. bus back to campus.
It was also a day to celebrate Delhi High Court's verdict on gay rights. Was soo happy for a few friends in particular!! So the evening was spent at Shree with rum. The alcohol led to a different kind of intoxication and fun. :P
And I had the two most perfect days of the term! :-)

Lunch in the city

Details of the travel:
# State buses from Pune to Srivardhan are not too frequent. Only twice a day from Swargate - 6:00 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. Similarly from Srivardhan to Pune too.
Fare: Rs 117 for an ordinary bus, and Rs 140 for a semi-deluxe one. But you don't get to choose.
Just that the bus will be kinda slow 'coz it's supposed to be a local bus for the locals of all the villages it passes through. So it stops too often.

# From the bus stop to a hotel/the beach: 3o bucks for the auto.

# We stayed at the Sagar Darshan Hotel. It was the closest to the beach. Rs 400 for a double-occupany room, and Rs 700 for a 4-bed room. But these are off-season rates. The off season is from June 15 to September 15 - essentially the monsoons.

# Sea food is supposed to be good there. I thought standard,vegetarian was fine too. Except at Hotel Prasad close to the police station there. :-/

We spent less than Rs 800 per head for this day trip. Just the thought of it gives us such a kick because it's not like we tried too hard to cut costs. And an amount like that gets spent even if we decide to go to the city, watch a movie, have lunch, and come back. :D


Yayii!! :D


P.S. - Pictures courtesy Ankita, Priyam, Swetha and me. :D