Shoving the Blunt Knife

*dancing in my room*
*irritated, standing in mom's kitchen, bitching about girls in my class*
*gobbling down golgappe*
*draping sarees for fun*
*potty troubles*
*having lollipops*
......

13 or 23, some things are constant. :-)

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.

Head Rush

Over the past one week of inertia, there were a zillion things-to-do that got lined up for attention. Among those, one of the most important was the stock of fruits that I had not replenished for two weeks. Yes, I am a proud buyer and consumer of expensive but happy, healthy fruits. There's this father-son miyan duo on F.C. Road that I often make the purchase from. Their USP? They give fruits in recycled paper carry-bags. Others, depending upon the location, either wrap them in newspapers or hand them over in those fancy brown paper bags. Yep, Pune is pretty serious about plastic bags. [And here I admit a good thing about the city! :D]
Anyway, let's not digress. Fruit shops make me happy. Bigger the shop, happier I am. No, not Reliance Fresh kinda bigger. The bigger, local ones that are nicely stocked are the ones that I am talking about. So I stand in the middle of all the fruits, and they call out to me hoping I'll take them home. Alas, there are only so many I can buy in one go. Moreover, my preference basket usually has room for only 3-4 categories. Soft pears and cheekus always make the cut. They make my tummy soooo happy!! :D Even though I love apples, I have stopped buying them because they make me unbelievably hungry and there is never a good time to do that to myself because I am hungry all the time any which way! :-/
So, today, along with pears and cheekus, I chose to buy a watermelon. I know having a watermelon is a family activity. And now that I am back to spending some more time with friends in the hostel, I decided in favour of the little watermelon. And then what happened! Senior miyan mentioned mangoes. I went berserk. Rs. 1600 for a box of mangoes. But before I could give him the look, he made me smell them. And I swear to god it was the best feeling I have had since the day I saw my mom, last! So I nicely asked him how much he would charge for one mango. He quoted Rs 150. With a lot of courage, I got to keeping that one mango down. He told me I could pay whatever I want to for it, but should take it along. But I suck at that kind of bargains. So I kept insisting that I cannot afford it as a student, and he kept lowering the price. I made a genuine bargain. He gave it to me for Rs 50. And I brought it home!!!! You know from which budget I paid for it? The one I had for the flowers I was waiting to buy for myself post the V-Day madness. But this time I happily gave up on them. Mango!!!
While having it I could smell all the summer afternoons spent at home. Thank god my mom, dad, and bro never used to be home. Today I didn't feel weird eating alone thanks to the training I got at home.

The happiness Fs of my life help keep that one degree of sanity that I can positively claim.
Family
Friends
Fuchsia
Flickr
Flowers and
Fruits

I remembered that my initial months here were very comfortable. I was detached, sane, and sorted. I stayed happy. And then lots of Fs of lots of factors effed my happiness. Of course, I will be taking full responsibility for all of them. Don't worry, I am not blaming you.
But I liked being sane, man! I liked not giving a fuck about getting too close to people. Doing it one-hundred-percent sucks! And letting them in in your zone sucks more.

Oh, by the way, remember my superhot boss from WWW? He is marrying the girl he was dating in office. I saw their pictures on Facebook and started smiling along just watching their smiles! I hope they stay blessed.

Now I will go. Just had to talk about the mango. :D


P.S. - Photography also begins with an F!

:-/

The friend who kept me warm
the sleep that kept me sane
they have started dating
and I am jealous.

We're a Brand

This is about each of those times, over the past two years, that Sahil, Robin and I have genuinely sat together to work on an assignment. The times when we don't think of just completing work for the sake of it. The times when 99.9% of the times the rest of our 'group' goes missing or does not work or does not like the way we work. Oh, the most important case - the times when we choose to work ourselves than redo what others do. Yes, we're snobs.

The trends...
# We think. Add your exclamation marks and add an exponent of your liking to the key word.
# We often go on a wrong track, or a track that is actually the service lane before it strikes one of us what is really needed!
# Then there's no stopping us. We know every minute detail that there is, plus a lot of extra information.
# And my favourite part - we go slow! I SO cannot work in a haphazard manner. I love these two for thinking out each word, each comma, and each frikkin' space before we put it in. There isn't anything in our work that does not have logic behind it. There's never a suggestion without a how-to of it. There's never the easiest route taken.
# CCP is never our foundation.
# We do neat work.
# Profanities are found in abudance between the three of us. After all, they're the ones who taught me all the Hindi stuff. But please note, we never use them for each other. Ever. It's always for people we know, brands we think we know, and strategies we think are stupid. We're extremely civil with each other when working. The only time when that happens. I don't throw tantrums, Robin doesn't PMS, and Sahil plain behaves.

In the end, as a spectator you may or may not be able to appreciate the work, or see how much effort has gone into it, but we're the most satisfied lot that there is. Not because of any sort of indifference, but because we know there's no better way of doing what is asked of us.

I am going to miss working with them. These all-nighters are in my list of top five take-aways from this place. For sure!


P.S. - I know that one sentence sounds annoyingly inaccurate.

I Want To...

# Be on a talk show
# Address a live audience on stage
# Have a perfect white house with oak wood furniture
# Make these random morning jogs a non-compromised part of life
# Watch Ustad Zakir Hussain live in action

:-)

The Smile-Flashing Night

Thanks to a highly corny mood and corny music...

Bijli to girti rehti hai,
deewane to roz paida hote hain,
tumne kaun sa teer maara
agar tumhein pyaar hua!

:P

Monarchy of My Mind

I slept so late last night that I ended up missing the flag hoisting on campus, and later lunch at a friend's home.

It was a standard day spent alone in the room - first the loop, then some job hunt, some almonds, more of the loop, more sleep, and more of the loop. Then I stepped out for some time in the evening for food, and was soon back to my laptop, music, and non-sense.

I know I have been rather inactive on my Flickr page, but the fact that my pro account subscription expired earlier in the month was killing me. So finally I got off the idea of living with it for a few more months and called my brother to renew it for me. Cheap, but happiness!!!!!

I also watched the new 'phir mile sur mera tumhara' videos. Few things...
1. Why did the makers try so hard to mix everything?
2. I could not figure why the music could not be arranged better.
3. What the fuck happened to Deepika Padukone in it?!
4. If there were Shahid Kapur and Ranbir Kapoor, why wasn't Abhay Deol there?
5. How did Sachin Tendulkar go missing!
6. I liked seeing Amaan Ali, Ayaan Ali, Rahul Sharma, and Anoushka Shankar in it.
7. But really, why so much of Bollywood?
8. The grandeur they tried to show was missing.

Bottomline: it did not give me goosebumps like the original one did!

I went to youtube to look for the old one right after watching this, and ALL the latest comments on the video indicated the exact same sentiment of wanting to watch it after going through over 16 minutes of randomness.

__

My constantly changing status messages on Gtalk today:
I need a job.xlsx
For it's a file that is always open on my system now.

'Kutte bhi bechare hi pasand aate hain!'
My universal love for vulnerability

Welcome back to the pro world, baby!!! :D
For the Flickr Pro account I mentioned

In loving memory of the original 5!
It was a year ago that I broke the '5' key on my keypad

That's all for tonight. See you soon. Tada!!

Experience of a Lifetime

Here on campus we have a culture of screening movies in the auditorium every week. They range from award-winning work to popular stuff from across the globe. As you may expect, the popular stuff always has a bigger audience (including me).

This week's movie was Andaz Apna Apna. Social media got exploited in the best form - what with people's status messages on Facebook buzzing and the college intranet having constant updates too.

The auditorium regularly sees full occupancy because of random mandatory seminars. Seminars through which we nicely sleep. But the movie experience is different. The last time I saw madness there was during the screening of Dev D.

But last night...
The auditorium was almost full. People got packs of chips to eat through the screening. We had early dinner to ensure that we're there on time. Usually screenings begin at 10 p.m., but Hindi movies begin earlier because the hostel deadline of midnight needs to be factored in.

Aamir Khan's entry on the bicycle, Juhi Chawla's adaayein, Salman Khan's 'uyi ma', Aamir's 'hayi la', Crime Master Gogo's ghagra, just the name Bhalla, Teja's 'humara Bajaj', and almost every single scene with the audience delivering the dialogues in chorus, had us all in splits!
We sang along throughout. Be it 'do mastane chale zindagi banane', or 'ye raat aur ye doori', people knew every word with every sound effect!!

Karisma Kapoor's wardrobe was also a unique laughter point in itself. Phew!

This white thing even had pockets! :D :D

I don't remember a movie experience as crazy as this one! And I am sure nothing in future could beat it either. Some things are never to be missed. I am so glad I went for this one! :-)

I Might Miss This Hill

The other night I was sitting in a quiet corner with friends, talking about the soon-to-become-common topic of discussion - how things will be when we finish college. I looked up towards the sky, not in thought, but only to give my neck some relief, when I saw a shooting star in the far distance.
.
.
.
Just when I thought that dreamy things had ceased to exist.

Hissing Through

If we have a pretty valley view and the most beautiful sunsets here on campus, we also have these guys...

Venomous Russel's Viper - one of the 'most dangerous snakes in all of Asia'!

Photo courtesy: Manu Bhadane, an ace photographer of my batch here.

So much for intruding into their space!!