Avanti and I.

A few months ago, in a crazily sun-lit class, I played a game with my friends.
As we sat there, hiding from the monotonous drone of an irritable professor,we discussed emotions that we had never ever experienced.
amidst giggles, snatches of the abovementioned professor's voice and frequent shh-es, I pondered over the question in mind.
Anger,nope.
Love,nope.
Hatred, definitely nope.
Happiness,nope.
Greed,Nope.
Jealousy,nope.
The list was infinite. The lecture wasn't. The closing bell brought an end to the lecture. And to my search as well. Knowing that I had exhausted all possible emotions, I settled on acceptance.
Three days ago, I realized that I was wrong.
Losing someone who you were close to is nothing compared to the way it's portrayed in television soaps and romance novels, its much worse.
Twenty years of knowing her and I realized that whatever I have known about Avanti can't be summarized in a post,a blog or even a dedicated book.
Sure, we all knew about her love for Shahrukh Khan, (it almost bordered on obsession if you ask me) and her hatred towards Yuvraj Singh ( another obsession,if you ask me again!). Yeah, beneath this hair-loving,shopaholic, critically-acclaimed film expert lay a girl like no other.
A girl, who at the age of six, pinched my nose with a clothespin and pushed me onto an overly ripe jack fruit, (though not simultaneously) just for fun.
A girl, who at the age of eight, dressed up as a fairy for a family fancy dress competition wanting to spread peace and harmony across the world.
A girl, who at the age of nine, had a imaginary kangaroo friend named maya.
A girl, who at the age of ten, knew more about the world wresting federation than most boys her age did.
A girl, who at the age of eleven thought that flouroscent green tights and an Undertaker T-shirt were cool, and who was gutsy enough to still think they were.
A girl, who at the of twelve, gave up on meat, because franky speaking, she thought that being a non-vegetarian sucked.
A girl, who at the age of thirteen, loved songs from B-grade Bobby Deol movies, and had the guts to admit it.
A girl, who at the age of fourteen, wanted to become a Miss India Coordinator, and who, in her own cheesy way, wanted to make a difference in the world.
A girl, who at the age of eighteen, said, and I quote " Charlie and the Chocolate factory is a classic Tim Burton movie. Its a movie which says" Come, watch me!"", with a straight face.
A girl who at the age of nineteen, paid for the hundreds of times we went to Mochas or CCDs, telling me that she was going to get pay back when I started earning.
A girl, who at the age of twenty, took me along to see artsy plays at the Prithvi, after which we discussed them rather pretentiously outside the cafe to seem elite.
A girl who at the age of twenty one, obsessed over high heel confidential so much that she could exactly pinpoint a dress in a fashion magazine into the blog's archives, date,name or designer wise.
To the girl, who always wanted to stay tall.

Avanti, this one's for you.

The Morning After.

It is that time of the year again.
the sheets have been rolled, papers stacked in piles, distinguished from each other by the crease lines and coffee stains and the stationery all arranged, stacked away in order in bulging boxes.The pencils are in the pencil cases while the models have been neatly packed , old fading newspapers depicting the latest in the bollywood circles.
And that is when you wake up.
Picture this.It's the first day of your vacations, and you wake up when the sun's already halfway up, hungover because of the bliss and sheer pleasure of not having to do anything , and I repeat anything for the whole day. but who says happiness lasts long anyway ( well,it does in fairy tales and classic-how-we-met-each-other-stories where everything ends with a "happily ever after")
There you are,having hopped,skipped and jumped across your room, not as a celebratory jig, but because of the sheer lack of space to move about.layers of sheets flood your room,a tsunami of subjects crawling all over you. pieces of paper flutter by, carrying remnants of old conversations and made up games.You see a pencil here and a broken set square there,and as you sift through the almost fossilized layers of junk, you unearth chocolate wrappers and crisp packets that helped you through those exam nights while you crammed in an years worth of notes in an hour.
you flash back to the present,wishing that the junk would have had mysteriously disappeared, having had fantastical visions including a self cleaning mop and a robot which eats rubbish.
But it doesn't.
A vacation,indeed.

Journeys with myself

it is amazing how you tend to sit back and think when you are stuck in the traffic, in a car/bus/taxi/ any other vehicle while listening to your i-pod/ disc man/ mp3 player/ any other music player of your choice.it is here while you are sitting in the comfort of the seat of the car ( or the rather uncomfortable bus seat) that you tend to ponder about life and all that. about living life with a different outlook, letting go of friends, and realizing things that you should have probably realised a long time ago.
it is here that you have journeys with yourself.

Birthday Surprises

A first birthday is often celebrated with as much gusto and gaiety as a wedding ( not mine though, it was just a simple affair, only close family, not the wedding, my birthday!).
I had the opportunity to relive my childhood about a week back at a distant cousins first birthday party (I didn't relive much though, just chomped away at the appetizers, trying to catch the eyes of the waiters carrying the soft drinks while children zoomed past, cackling like the witches of Salem).
While I chomped on the millionth spring roll, I glanced across the room. Yes, a magician wearing shiny suspenders, an extremely energetic entertainer, a large highly decorated cartoon shaped cake ( dunno which cartoon, it was quite tasty though!), and 30-odd sugar crazed children.
two hours and many more oily spring rolls later, i had had 3 glasses of extra fizzy soft drinks,a plate full of rich food and had witnessed three of the most common games to be played during birthday parties. no prizes if you guess them.
finally i bid farewell to the baby girl and the other children and everybody else ( though no body paid much heed, they were all sugar crazed, you see), and walked away as my recently-turned- one cousin enjoyed for the last time, her very own first birthday party.

How I Met My Mother

Well, technically, I met my mother eighteen years and eight months ago in a spotlessly clean bright-white hospital room somewhere in the city of Bombay. About two days back, I realized that I wasn’t completely correct. I had been meeting my mother, the same woman who suffered through mine and my sister’s tantrums (there were many of them!), who sat back at home, not pursuing her dreams so that we could have a hot home cooked meal, and who pampered us enough for the melodramatic actors that we are today. Yes, I realized that I had been meeting my mother every day for the last nineteen years, who became a new woman everyday, forgetting the times we made her cry, repeatedly praising us for our past glories, and getting to know us every single moment she has known us.

And so this mother’s day (which incidentally falls tomorrow), I wish that I would get to meet my mother every single day for years to come.

Dustbunnies and some...

Did you know that the balls of dust which you usually find under your beds or in deep corners of your homes are called dustbunnies?
Pretty cute name for such a vile thing, don't you think?
Yeah, and then I think of ladybugs and blobs...

Reality Bytes

There I was staring at my computer screen, Figuring out what to do with the question which flickered in front of me, " Are You a real person?". posting a link would never have had been easier, i had thought.holding myself, I entered the code into the text box imitating the one which flashed onto the screen and clicked the submit button a split second before i realized that i had made an error. I glanced sideways as a new message popped up." Access denied. wrong code. You are not a real person" (OK fine, i made the "you are not a real person " bit up myself, but you do get the gist, don't you?)
Isn't it ironical that a virtual ( read unreal) object tells me that I'm am not real enough!

Medu vada movies....

It was yesterday when i was surfing through my television set, when i saw a South Indian flick reaching its climax. two overweight heroes, who looked old enough to be sitting in retirement homes, were fighting burly, dark skinned henchmen, while their damsels in distresses screamed in agony, while being chained to a nearby tree,(or was it, the tree being chained to them?) . as i laughed my way through this scene, it suddenly struck me.
Showing normal balding men as heroes is not wrong, neither is it wrong to show overweight women, dressed in plain sarees, as their wives to be.Though I think that the directors do it unintentionally.and that, I think should be taken with a pink of curry powder!

Please peruse pathetic poetry! :P

Well a few of my funny poems, because it suddenly struck me that too much of philosophy is not good for anyone's health:
Pitter patter it flows,
like a gurgling stream it flows,
drip drip it leaks,
when i leave the place, of urine the place reeks.
I know, but it was at the spur of the moment and you really cant help it now, can you? here goes one more:
The wind blows through my hair,
the scent of maple fresh in the air,
then i look up at the baby blue sky,
bird shit drops down on me from up high!
I repeat....these poems are funny! (please please please let them be!)

Mr.Tootles

Well, i was cleaning through my closet, when i chanced upon this poem which i had written in the 6th standard:

Mr. Tootles went out to buy,
a huge delicious blueberry pie,
He walked and walked on his pudgy little feet,
and saw the shop that sold the treat.
He licked his lips and praised the baker,
after all he was the blueberry pie maker.
On the counter, he placed a dime,
the baker packed the pie in no time
Soon Mr. Tootles hurried down the lane,
he stumbled upon a rock and winced in pain.
Down came the pie blueberry and all,
at which poor Mr. tootles began to bawl,
From dawn to dusk he cried and wailed,
at demure passersbys, he shouted and railed,
he licked the cream off his nose,
and arched his legs to lick it off his toes.
from a tear in his pocket, out rolled a dime
Mr. Tootles realised he was wasting time.
Mr tootles then set off to buy,
Another delicious blueberry pie!

if i only had a pie with me now! (sigh!)