An idle mind and a long tag December 3, 2009

What is your current obsession?
Doodle art

What are you wearing today?
Blue denims, white top.

What’s for dinner?
oats :(

What’s the last thing you bought?
my evening cup of ginger chai.

What are you listening to right now?
One extremely irritating woman’s annoyingly loud giggle.

What do you think about the person who tagged you?
I picked the tag up for myself. And I am nice.

If you could have a house totally paid for, fully furnished anywhere in the world, where would you like it to be?
Bangalore would be really convenient. Thank you.

What are your must-have pieces for summer?
Anything cotton. Anything white.

If you could go anywhere in the world for the next hour, where would you go?
Goa. I am craving sea-food. Calamari batter fry from Martin’s Corner to be specific. If you are a non veg eater and haven’t eaten this, your life is wasted! If you are vegeterian, I respect you.(and I want to be like you)

Which language do you want to learn?
Perfect, fluent Kannada.

What’s your favourite quote?
told you before. remember? “A clear conscience is the softest pillow”

Who do you want to meet right now?
Hero. anytime!

What is your favourite colour?
Aqua blue.

What is your favourite piece of clothing in your own closet?
The skirts that are too short for my sumo thighs!

What is your dream job?
The next one. Touchwood.

What’s your favorite magazine?
Reader’s Digest. That’s the only thing I have ever read.

If you had $100 now, what would you spend it on?
convert to Indian currency and save. I am a miser!

What do you consider a fashion faux pas?
Anything that hurts my eye.

Who according to you is the most over-rated style icon?
Give me options. I am clueless as to who you think are the so called ’style-icons’.

What kind of haircut do you prefer?
Short shoulder length. That’s the only way I can half-hide my bad hair.

What are you going to do after this?
play with the bubble wrap on my desk.

What are your favorite movies?
not a movie freak. I like 15 park avenue though.

What are three cosmetic/makeup/perfume products that you can’t live without?
can’t live without?? are you serious?

Give us three styling tips that always work for you:
Go ask your style icons!

What do you do when you “have nothing to wear” (even though your closet’s packed)?
What is this, some style-tag? why did I even start doing this!!!

Coffee or tea?
Aha, chai.

What do you do when you are feeling low or terribly depressed?
take a walk out in the open and look at the brighter side of the world.

What is the meaning of your name?
The queen. How apt!

Which other blogs do you love visiting?
I find a new addiction every few days.

Favorite Dessert/Sweet?
Ice cream and cakes and mousse and puddings and jelly and some more ice cream.

Favorite Season ?
Winter.

If I come to your house now, what would you cook for me?
Maggi or Wai Wai. I’d let you choose. I am kind that way.

What is the right way to avoid people who purposefully hurt you?
hurt them back unintentionally.

What are you afraid of the most?
Hot tea burning my tongue.

What inspires you?
Any form of hand art.

Is it possible to be in love with two persons simultaneously?
If they are your children, yes.

Life without Music/Dance.. 
..wouldn’t be as bad as you think.
 

When yo have time kill, take this one up!

of making and breaking resolutions December 2, 2009

I love making resolutions as much as I hate breaking them. And my problem is, that I still love making them. I make as many resolutions as I can think of, so that, at the end of the year, I have at least a single unbroken promise to cherish. But three-hundred-and-sixty-five days isn’t a short time to stick to something for a restless soul like mine. In the end,I am left with broken promises, half-kept resolutions, unfulfilled wishes. If you ask me, what was my resolution last year, it was to lose some weight, that I was so scarily gaining. Also, to cut down on sodas and colas. And come December, what we have is nine kilos lost and six gained back, reduced on cola and increased the vodka and the rum. And obviously, I am not going to drink these without some sprite or coke, am I? 

So you get the point. As far as resolutions are concerned, I am a Loser. With a caps L!!

And if you know me enough, you’d know how excited I am to make resolutions for thecoming year. What’s the harm, I ask. And the list goes somewhat like this.

1. Reduce the alcohol intake. 2. Brush twice DAILY. 3. Stick to a vegetarian diet (!!!!) 4. Read the newspaper DAILY. 5. Stop swiping the damn credit card for good. 6. Spend less on clothes. 7. Reduce some weight AND then, maintain. 8. Quit on pizzas 9. Learn yoga. etc etc. 

Obviously, I am only joking.

This year, like all other years, I am determined to keep my resolutions. I shall pick one of these and stick to it. Option #1,3,8,4,7,6,9 and 5 are ruled out. They are too silly!! So I pick option #2 of the remaining lot.To brush twice daily. Even though I have more root canal capped teeth than the natural ones, I shall brush them like they are mine. Twice. Daily. And if I skip any day, I shall brush thrice the following day. And I shall never skip doing it.

So now that we have the official ’single, strong new year resolution’ in place, lets talk about the weak other ones. 

Jokes apart, I shall whole heartedly try to walk more often, to read more often, to love nature, to explore my creative side, to be more patient, to learn to listen, to be kind to animals, to love more, to travel as much as I wish to, to become responsible… Oh come on, I am getting unrealistic now. 

Do you make resolutions too? No?

Make one this year. Keep me company.

come December December 1, 2009

And so, its the beginning of the end of another year. Like we say every time, this year went too fast, felt too short!

Well, no. This year didn’t feel any short and January doesn’t seem like yesterday. The year so far did really feel like eleven long months. Except that time flies only when I am with Hero, it quite slows down its pace at all other times. And I am not doing a ‘looking back’ type of a post for the year that is going by. All I want to say is that, its just another month to go, so make the most of it. Stop looking back at whatever went upside down, just remember the good things and step forward, and then just run!

 

I have many plans for this month. And I hope like December usually is, this one is as good a month. I have an exam, a long vacation and the new year’s bash that’s waiting. I want to take one thing at a time, and the first and most important shall be my MSW entrance test. It isn’t a do or die situation, but I want it as badly as the Alchemist desired that hidden treasure. This reminds me that I haven’t been doing any leisure reading off late, but then again, exam first!!

 

I will hopefully tick many things off my wishlist this month and to begin with, I was looking forward to donating blood at the voluntary donation camp that’s happening today at my workplace but they rejected me for having low haemoglobin count. I still can’t believe that the damn blood drop actually refused to just sink at the  bottom of that jar. I am very upset.
 

In the backdrop, everybody is chasing the CAT that’s running so wildly. The servers are crashing, the systems magically rebooting, the passwords mis-matching, so on and so forth. All this goes on, while I continue to live my CAT-less, blissful life. So glad I am not a part of this rat CAT race!

overwhemled November 27, 2009

Early in the morning, I see bright sunshine pouring in from the crack in the window and I wish I had at least a semi professional canon in my hands right then to capture that sight. I have a point and shoot one, but it doesn’t excite me as much. I can hardly take decent pictures but I am greedy for fancy equipment. When I see beautiful photographs on other blogs, I wish I could do similar justice to the beauty around me. And the problem begins here.

 

The more blogs I read see, the more restless I get. I see gingerbread cookies and wish I could bake those. I see snowfall filled roads and I wish I was there now. I stare at pretty flowers and I wish I had a garden too. I see a baby dress and I wish I could sew one. The quilts, the cushions, the cakes, the candles, the pottery, the sketches, the cards, bows and ribbons, they all leave me with a sense of longing. I am unable to simply look, stare, admire and move on from the page. I am glued to it. I see it and love it at the very first sight. Then I come back and see it again, I love it all the more. I shut the page, re-open it, shut it, think of it and I end up feeling glum. They inspire me to a great extent no doubt, but I wish that was all it did.

 

I cannot come to terms with the fact that there is so much I can do and am really doing none. I can sketch, I can take pictures, who knows, I may even be able to knit if I try and do it really well? It can’t be too tough. You think I can bake those cookies too? Oh, I am sure I can do that collage.

 

I love art, I really do and I want to be a part of everything that catches my eye. How fair is that?

 

I am overwhelmed. But in a not so nice way. At precisely this moment, I have eleven plus two things running in my head.

 

They clog my brain so much, that it hurts.

my best friend November 26, 2009

We usually grow up with the idea of a single ‘best friend’ and the definition each one holds for this term is never the same. But the general idea of it is pretty much common: a person with whom you share everything! And this ‘everything’ in the school days is nothing more than revealing the secret crushes one has, talks of sibling fights, of pretty dresses and matching nail-paint and the likes. Slowly, as we enter college, we still try to cling on to that idea of the best friend. The ‘everything’ now becomes talks of boys, of the first kiss, of break-ups, of careers, of drinking and partying, etc. Wiki defines its as  someone (singular) with whom one shares the strongest possible kind of friendship(s). Singular, right!
 

I had similar notions too. But I could never decide who my best friend was. In school, there was one girl whom I first told about my first crush. There was another I would cry to whenever I felt Dad loved my sister more than me. I had different connections with both of them and could never share the same details with both. So tell me, who was my best friend? I was confused and decided to call the former one so. Because, to her I had told what was the biggest secret then. Moving on, we went to different colleges. Distance grew. There weren’t any cell phones to send each other SMSs. But we both believed we were still the best of buddies. The other girl however was in the same college, same class. We almost shared everything. We could have serious talks that grown up girls have. And staying loyal to my best friend, I chose to call this girl my ‘very close friend’.
  

In the years to follow, I made many more such friends. I mentally categorized them into ‘friends’, ‘good friends’ and ‘very good friends’. The best friend moved to another city, another state. She made many more friends there. She even found another best friend. I was shown the photograph and told, “..and this is my best friend”. I was stunned!
   

 Life went on, with so many friends around that I never felt the need to have a so called best friend. I was content with the whole lot of pals I had made, each one different from the rest. And then came Hero. All of a sudden, I had a best friend once again. I could tell him anything and everything. He would understand. I was convinced, this guy is my best friend.

  
But then, we never stop growing, do we? I learned that for a person like me, I cannot just have a single best friend. And particularly not, if he is my lover. Now, there are no categories as such. There are friends, some of who, go on to get closer. At this very moment, I find my best friend in many people. In Hero at times, in that girl who is now married, in another one whom I have known for over a decade, yet another one I known for just a couple of years, in a guy who treats me like one among the boys and another who is always very protective. These are people with whom I have shared my bench, lunch, notes, secrets, hugs, clothes, earrings, childhood, fears, joys and tears. There is no magnitude to any. The memories are countless and that’s what makes them all my best friends.
  

The bonding with all these people are very different and equally special. I do not know how many of these consider me their friend. I haven’t spoken to a couple of them in months, haven’t met another one in ages. Some of them do not remember my birthday and some never forget to call at midnight to wish. With some, I can sit and talk for hours together, with others I quarrel at every chance I get. I don’t like all of them equally, but I cannot decide if I like one more than the other. I will sit with one in a coffee shop an eat pastries and talk movies, with another I will get drunk and talk of my sorrows and with yet another I will go to a book shop and spend hours in silence.
  

Friendship, for me, is like an umbrella. A big one. It covers everything under the sun!

my side of the story November 23, 2009

With absolutely no surprise, the three days flew and felt like just a moment. And though we did manage to do quite a bit in that single moment, I will still complain of how the three days were just too short.

Now that I had heartily made that list of ‘to-do’s for ourselves, I shall reply point-wise to what we finally really did!

1. The Japanese cuisine was quite an adventure. And though it burnt a hole in our pockets, it was in all other ways totally worth. Hero, the pakka Indian boy, doesn’t like unflavored, non-spicy, sophisticated looking food too much. I do enjoy variety a lot. The names that made up our meal were very interesting: salmon sushi, wasabi, prawn ebimayo, sea weeds, beef in teriyaki sauce, mackerel in miso sauce, seaweed, sticky rice, green tea ice-cream. Each item had a story of its own, and I shall resist writing in too much detail else I would lose the sense of this post. But I can’t skip talking about the goddamn wasabi. The simple, innocent, green chutney look-alike is actually a terror. I picked it up with a bite of sushi, only to have my throat and nostrils set on fire. No, its not spicy, hot or pungent in taste. Its plain acidic. Have you ever smelled an acid too close from a test tube in your chemistry lab and immediately repented it? Well, DITTO!! The rest of the meal was much safer. We did try some stunts with chopsticks because we got a complex when we saw a seven and a seventy year old at a next table comfortably picking up rice with those sticks, God only knows how!
    
2. We went to inox in hopes of watching 2012 because inox serves the best (caramel) popcorn in the world. We stood in the queue for over 20 minutes and when we reached the counter there were just two tickets left, each in a different row! So we made new plans and went to Fame. There was no queue, for the tickets and the popcorn and no wonder why! ( i-hate-fame-i-love-inox)
   That apart, while we stood in the queue at inox, we were surprised to see the younger crowd around. Guys with denims so low like there is nothing called as a waistline, hair spikes resembling electric shock after effects, with tattoos and accessories in all the wrong places. Not far behind, girls, hardly in their teens, wearing halters and transparent bra straps, heels literally doubling their heights, lip-gloss that shines so much to make you blind. The world, as you can see, is really coming to an end!!!!
    
3. The caramel popcorn at Fame cannot compete with the one you get at Inox. Really. With caramel miserly sprayed on popcorn, its was a major disappointment I tell you. ( i-hate-fame-i-love-inox)
    
4. We didn’t go to Crossword. We didn’t have spare time that needed to be killed. We did go to Landmark for a while, and to just think of how crowded it was makes me sick.
    
5. Another disappointment was the pottery store. They had too little a variety to please the artist in me, so even after walking eight blocks to reach them, I didn’t think it was worth to sit there and paint that stupid kissing frog!! So we walked out empty handed and went on to eat Chocó orange ice-cream cake. Not half as bad as the depressing popcorn, but not as good as the name.
    
6.  The drinking session was quite eventful with me being sober and Hero getting high. I was all motherly telling him to control himself (with the drinking I mean). He wouldn’t listen and eventually threw up (his first!!, I have a record that’s hard to break). The rum was good and so was the cheese and the chips but sadly, not the chicken. I can’t digest the fact that we made so many wrong choices this time!
    
7.  We met this real cute pup outside a mall. Yes, I am actually calling a dog cute. He was teething and was trying to bite anything that gets near him. We fed him tiger biscuits and I name d him too. ‘Lutu’ it is. :)
    
8. Shopping can never be bad. I go crazy in supermarkets more than at malls. I ride around with the carriage trolley watching in amusement at all the variety that’s available nowadays. I resisted impulse shopping and even put back that red bowl for my cornflakes because it didn’t feature on my shopping list.(and because it was costlier than a two whole packets of cornflakes!!!)
    
9. I ate many pastries and even more ice creams, and as mentioned above, even the ice cream cake. So no complains on this front.
    
10.  We spoke about everything under the sun and we did share those special moments of silence too. Particularly on the auto ride back to my place yesterday, just before we kissed goodbye. The entire journey, we held hands so tight that they became damp with sweat. It was as if we didn’t want to leave. We hardly spoke during those thirty minutes and the only thing we did talk about was about when and how we would meet next.
     
11. Now I cannot emphasize on how much this was done, can I? All to say, I am still blushing…

Among other things that happened was getting sick and visiting the doctor, dancing like our ass was on fire, meeting our dear friend and pulling her (sexy) leg, eating cheesy pizzas against the doctor’s word, craving for falooda and of course, eating it off immediately, taking long walks into unknown streets, getting sad as the time of departure neared, asking Hero to stay longer, threatening him to marry me soon, again asking him to stay forever and crying just a little when saying goodbye.

I can’t imagine what the world would have been without love.

looking forward to November 19, 2009

1. exploring and experimenting the japanese cuisine 
    
2. watching 2012 (without believing that the world will end)
    
3. devouring a tub of caramel popcorn (without sharing with neighbor)
     
4. picking and reading random books at Crossword (and resisting buying  any)
    
5. painting at the pottery store (among other kids)
    
6. feasting on kebabs and rum and coke in the night (and not crying when high)
    
7. buying and feeding biscuits to street dogs (!!!!)
    
8. (impulse) shopping at the supermart inspite of having made a list
    
9. gorging on (a) gooey chocolate pastries pastry
    
10. talking on relevant and irrelevant (both terms are highly relative) stuff for long hours
     
11. being held, hugged and kissed. (blush blush)
     
    Didn’t I say already, Hero’s comin down. And we have declared ourselves an off from work tomorrow. So its a three day long party this weekend!
     
    I will come back on Monday with stories to tell.