Country Next: Six Things I’d Like to Do

After close to a year in a (not-so) new country, I feel there were some things that I used to do earlier but for some reason discontinued after moving base. There are also some new things I should possibly have done but never got around to doing. There are, of course, a number of reasons for this. The biggest one being that there was so much change to deal with that I never had much energy or interest to go beyond what I was already dealing with (good and bad). 

There will likely be even more new things in the next country I move to – fewer dosa joints to begin with - but I think it warrants some extra effort.

Socialise – When you’re alone in a city that has limited ‘cultural’ things to do, the only thing left to socialize over (well, almost) is drinks. So when you’re making an effort to cut that down, you invariably have to compromise on the socialising front as well. Of course, you can be that outgoing person who can talk to anyone about anything under the sun to overcome this challenge, but that isn’t quite me. *laughs*

Hopefully, things will change. I already have a number of people waiting for me to arrive (!). So I will at least have a starting point. And unlike here in the UAE, they are not two hours away from where I live.

Get Back on Twitter – You may want to club this with the first point itself, but I think this social socialising is of a different type. Being social on Twitter means being engaged with the local politics, markets, brands, activities, or other drama. Of course, you can rant endlessly about every minute of your life too, but that isn’t quite me. *laughs*

This past year, I could not keep up with things in India and there was never anything too interesting happening locally. Or maybe I couldn’t relate to things that were happening. I don’t know. But I want to change this. Twitter can be a lot of fun.

Save My Accent – I do not know how I will achieve this given how much my accent has already been influenced by the Americans around me. The thought that I can make it worse in the company of Brits is rather dreadful. 

Play – I gave this one a very genuine attempt this year, but my body tends not to support me in such endeavours. Hopefully, all the walking that I’ll have to do in the new place will help build up some stamina to play or dance or do something else that would stop the bones from getting too old too soon.

Learn - About the place, about its culture, about its nuances. Know the place like I know home. Be qualified to be the GPS (like in Delhi) there too. That should be the goal.

Document Life – 2014 was an eventful year, but I ended up writing the least this year. I would admit that I didn’t miss it much, but the fact that I don’t have anything much to go back and read about makes me sad. I’d rather do it than not. So Fuchsia, let’s take that word count up next year! 

New Life

There is so much happening every moment of every day since the last few days that this is the best I can get to capturing everything.

Emotions so far:

• Anxiety

• Excitement

• Panic

• Worry

• Happiness

New nationalities I have interacted with:

• Emirati

• Chinese

• Filipino 

• Kiwi

• Aussie

• Malaysian

First time at groceries:

• Pulses

• Cooking oil

• Utensils

• Salt and spices

Other new things:

• Figuring out a new currency and an entire system around it

• Search for a house

• Not having a clue which direction to look in before crossing a road

• Attempts at making every office day dressy

• Efforts at viewing Pakistanis without any bias

• Did I mention cooking?

The good thing is that 9 out of 10 people here have gone through the above experience. 'New life' is such a loosely used phrase that I will never be able to explain what I am going through. But these people are truly making every first step of the new life as comforting as possible. 

And family, well, they are the pillars that keep me standing.

Farewells

More farewells

Packing up, getting stranded and flying on V Day

New extensions, temporary home, huge portions of food, and multiple time zones

Welcome flowers and pastry

Oh yes, I can do this too!

Client offices and views of the sea

Oh My God.. I've Become a Cat!

I mostly stay calm on the exterior now.

I love attention and being loved.

According to people I have bright-ish eyes.

I can choose to be totally mean.

I am temperamental.

I am no more the loyalist I used to be.

OH MY GOD!

Avan, my Catwoman just happened to call. She is happy to know about this discovery of mine, and insists that cats are the nicest 'people' around. I almost want to tip my preferences to the other side now.

Wow, I did not see this day coming.

Temme Temme!

Tell me how the blog looks. From the time when I used to change the template every two months or so, this one's come after about three years. I am liking it. Tell me what you think about it. Of course, keeping in mind the Fuchsia context. :-)

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! :-)

*breathe* *breathe* *breathe*

The project is far from over...
The books are still untouched...
Only one suitcase zipped up still...
Canon is irritating me...
And the back is thinking it is winters!!!

*breathe* *breathe* *breathe*

It's the update season

The girls gave me a super duper hot pair of silver earrings. Parul gave three pairs too. Mansi bought me other stuff. My family took me out for dinner today. Cousins coming over tomorrow. I am being pampered like crazy. What is ironic is that I have not felt as 'alone' in a long long time as I did in the last two days. I don't know what is really happening to my mind.

Anyway, first check out the silver. Hot or what?!

Golf class hangover or managing a bad hair day? Digesting strange women-y gossip or pretending he didn't hear it?
Acting plain wannabe or actually pointing at the new earrings?
Go figure! :-)

Art in the blood, baby! Or water. Whatever. (Not mine. That's Priya at work!)

I have also been doing things that I never thought I'd do. Or rather, that I'd have to do. And then there are some that I did a second time. Felt just as sick as the first time. But it was due.

Another news update is that I won a photography contest. My first ever - supported by DFC on Flickr. Loadsa thanks to the people who voted for my photograph.



The new near-disastrous hairstyle has started looking much much better. It's 'cool and sassy' now. :D :P

Visited a fancy hotel today - Intercontinental at Nehru Place. These places cause too much of a discomfort for some reason.

And now about tonight's dinner. We went to The Great Kebab Factory at Punjabi Bagh. I have things to write about the restaurant AND the location. Firstly, I liked the different style of serving they had. Made me realise that I was tired of the same old stuff. And I never knew that a buffet could come to your table too. They serve you with starters, one by one, and keep serving till the time you tell them that you are ready for the main course. You get to taste all that there is on the menu. And then similarly the food is served. That is followed by dessert. You have options all along, and you can choose to try it all too. What I really appreciate is the fact that it is hard to be efficient with this kind of service. And they were very efficient. The food was good too.

And Punjabi Bagh! Do you remember that party scene in Sarfarosh (Aamir Khan one) where Sonali Bendre's brother talks to someone about Delhi and mentions Punjabi Bagh? I really hope you do. That tone in which he says it can't be missed. So, this is the real Delhi-Punj locality. The Punjus that are talked about all the time live here. The ones that wear bling and talk bling and drive bling and basically LIVE bling. The restaurant obviously had most such people there. And it was almost full. There was more than one family of 10 and more. I felt like a pseudo Punjabi between them. One man entered the restaurant doing a balle balle yelling to someone who was waiting for him that he finally wasn't late on this occasion. He did a balle balle ! With lots of loud OYEs ! All of it was just too amusing. And I wondered why people call ME loud. The lone south Indian family there looked like aliens. Seriously. :-)
By the way, I do belong to a loud Punjabi family, but we are neither bling nor go balle balle in public. More blended maybe. :D

On a more serious note, I would really like Butterfly to update her blog soon. Too much of a coincidence wrt name, age and location happened in the news. I know it wasn't her, but would still like to see her presence.

Oh, my point&shoot is still on the job. 50 more to go before it reaches 5K. Now I am sure the milestone will be reached. :-)

It's good to see double digits as this month's total posts. Happened after quite a bit, innit?

Will be back with more updates very soon. Till then, tada! :-)

Mindplay

It is raining outside. I am in a daze for a second night in a row. But today's is different from last night's. Last night everything around me was depressing and I could not think. Tonight I am calm. And alert. I spent the last hour reading something that had this effect on me.
Some people are good writers, and some people are better because they connect. I don't know the technicalities if there are any, but I know that there are very few things that can get me engrossed enough to read through them. Writing about nothing fancy. Rather, about the most mundane things in the world. Things one doesn't look at or think about twice. But things that are always there. Having a perspective and communicating it too - it's probably an art. And amidst all of it, it kindles a desire to be like it. And also making you realise that it is something unique. Something that you can never do because you are not what the writer is. You are someone else.

+++

A recent power failure in my locality got me out of my house to take a walk around. And I realised that the place where everybody knew me, and knew my parents as Richa's parents, has almost become alien. I don't know anyone here, and nobody knows me. I step out only to go out. The only ten minutes a month I spend within the locality are when I go to drop my phone bill's cheque. And today I didn't even do that. The trees have grown so tall that I can't see the houses on the other side. They have grown SO tall that I can't see the moon sitting on my doorstep. I don't sit on that doorstep now that none of my friends are here. I used to drive my ass sore sitting in and sharing that small space with them. And now I am leaving too. I wonder why the realisation of big changes never hits me till the time they are not stale news. But I am guessing this one is going to take a while before that happens.
I am going to miss these pink houses with blue and white doors. And I am going to miss being oblivious to the kids cycling around the block. I might not miss the maids gossiping in the afternoons, and the Mrs Sharmas gossiping in the evenings. But I will miss running to Pappu ki dukaan (which is actually Mohan ki dukaan) at odd hours to buy the oddest things. I might not miss ramming barefoot into furniture, but I will miss being scolded for sitting on the glass dining table. I might not miss the strange elements around the place, but I will miss seeing kids coming back from school with their bags hanging half way down. I won't miss the permanent chaos outside Dilli Haat, but I will miss having the same sick chaat every time I go there with Mansi. I won't miss the killer smell of masalas/fish/vegetables that inflicted the INA market, but I will miss the comfort of letting the same stranger take over my eyebrows every fortnight.
I will never walk the streets there hoping to run into someone I know. Or maybe I will do that even more. There won't be any doorbells being rung by people who want to see me, but I will probably wait for a call that will say that I have a visitor. Yoga will probably keep me healthier, but I might hope for mom to come press my shoulders when my spondylitis will hurt me to madness. Tarun, Neha, Mansi or Avan won't be a 50 paise phone call away, but I am hoping they will adopt GTalk for me. Sumit won't be a Gurgaon DTC away, but I am hoping that there be a few surprises for both of us. I might have to live on Maggi, and I am guessing I won't like it then. Mom will be the happiest for my intestines, she won't have to imagine them being clogged.

Oh what do you know. I opened the gates to realisation right here. This is going to be hard.