So this weekend I could finally manage to make a long due telephone conversation with a long ago met not-so-long distanced friend of mine.
Actually , I fear calling her.calling her means for the next 1 hour we would be on our glorious glib talk, shutting ourselves from the ongoings of the rest of the world, only stopping when enough heat is generated between the duplex device and our auditory canal .


Calling up her means first of all mourning about our common plight of single hood. Either she’ll stance instances of how every damn dumb girl of her college is committed or I’ll make her even more sad citing stories of how the girls we found so stupid in school were dangling away with their boyfriends. Then we’ll pass some expert advices on on certain very important social issues like relationship of certain filmstars, etc, relive our old crushes and mourn again on the fact that we did nothing wild at all in all our teenage.

Last weekend , I attended a couple of unwanted weddings. No, unwantedly attended a couple of weddings. Usually in such functions, me and my brother make it a point to either stick to our father or fly to some uninhabited corner of the venue to get least noticed. So there I was, this time too , at a nook of a not so huge venue. Suddenly a huge came running towards us, with a wide grin.i wanted to play a ringtone on my cell and pretend a call has come. It was too late.


Lady:so you are Ponu’s daughter?(more grin)
Me:umm…ahhh
Now another lady comes to the picture.
Lady1 to lady 2: “ arre is not she Ponu’s daughter?”
Now, I know, and as many other known relatives say, that I don’t look like either of my parents. So I resemble this Ponu?
To my utter relief , I could see my mother , on the verge of visiting this territory
And I indeed turned out to be Ponu’s daughter. These people , who happen to be my mom’s cousin , calls her by this weird name.

Then they started talking of how I wetted their clothes when one of them took me in their lap and lo ! they started having a fight to ascertain whom I had wetted .
These conversations with unknown relatives are more tyrannical than the ragging sessions in the first year of college, I tell you.


There’s nothing good on the TV except for the new vodafone advertisement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB1UPJ4leqs

I rush down from the terrace, climb up the stairs from ground floor,poke out of the bathroom door to see this ad ,whenever I hear it being played on tv.

and i love its jingle too much:

"Everyday I want to fly stay by my side...
Everyday I want to dream stay by my side...

Every morning I wish I could just play....
Wish the mornings would just stay..."""

"My mind is a garden,
My thoughts are the seeds.
My harvest will be
Either flowers or weeds"

So here goes my first Tag , after actually being tagged , by Raka.
Otherwise, I have been just stealing 1-2 tags from others and doing them!
sorry for being late
blame it on my keyboard malfunctioning.

1.last movie you saw in a theatre?
Race

2.what book are you reading?
The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh

3.favourite board game?
ludo , scrabble

4.favourite magazine?
Reader's Digest, The week, India Today

5.favourite smell?<
smell of new books, wet earth, paint,varnish

6.favourite sound?
wind chimes, guitar,piano being played

7.worst feeling ever?
being misunderstood, not being able to convey oneself

8.what is the first thing you think when you wake up?
"What time is it?"

9.favourite fast food place?
KFC,Pizza Hut

10.future child's name?
something prouncible easily-thats all i can say now

11.finish this sentence " if i had a lot of money i'd..."
buy loads of clothes & books, buy a house only for pets

12.do you drive fast?
i don't drive; rather i can't drive :-([unless driving in NFS or Midtown Madness counts!]

13.do you sleep with a stuffed animal?
no way!

14.storm cool or scary?
cool! no matter whether i'm outside or inside my home.

15.what was you first car?<
well, the GIJOE car which i snatched from my cousin

16.favourite drink?
mango drinks, sprite etc

17.finish this sentence "if i had the time i would?"
go through the pages of the few books i still have , from my nursery classes to std 5, go through the childhood albums

18.do you eat the stems of broccoli?
no

19.if you could dye you hair,which colour would it be?
i'm not quite enthusiastic about colouring my hair

20.name the different cities /town you have lived in?
calcutta, delhi, durgapur, jamshedpur

21.favourite sports to watch?
cricket, tennis


22.one nice thing about the person who sent you this?
She's a fantastic writer.

23.whats under you bed?
dusty floor--my maid is too lazy to reach out to that

24.would you like to be reborn as yourself?
no ! is nt it better to explore different lives!

25.morning person or night owl?
morning person


26.over easy,or sunny side up?
sunny side up!

27.favourite place to relax?
lying down on my bed,taking a stroll on the terrace

28.favourite pie?
nothing as such

29.favourite ice cream flavour?
strawberry,black currant, chocolate

30.of all the people you have tagged who will respond to this first?
i'll tag only Amrita

My father’s office tour took us to a hydel power station at the border of West Bengal and Jharkhand.
This being my first train journey since watching ‘Jab We Met’ , so..you know…expectations and imaginations were really running high !
But unlike the movie, the train was not at all empty, it was full of a shit people. The women were running around wearing a whole lot of jewellery and men in their shorts and vests!
Man! This is only a one night journey and the train compartment is no way your bedroom !so , please..
The train was another crap character, stopping at every damn station…
Ok, finally after a bad night’s sleep admist cacophony contributed by kids yelling, people fighting over their seats, TTs shouting on the top of their voices, we finally reached the station..
So for the past 3 days , I have been

* Watching village girls and women passing by merrily , clad in clothes of brightest possible colours !

*Visiting the hydel power plant. Its Asia’s largest pumping project, done in collaboration with Japan.
Construction wise, it had an upper dam, lower dam and the usual switch gears,lock gates, turbine chamber, control rooms.
This visit made me realize how vast the difference between theoretical knowledge and practical experience is. I did not have the slightest hint how huge a transformer can be and what complexities it can have in its construction, whose circuit diagram we draw at one go of the pen!
The job in the field and control rooms involve a lot of expertise and tension.

*Visited the ‘Charak mela’…this ‘mela’or fair held in the villages of West Bengal for the last 3 days of the Bengali year, is all about fanatics and faith at its extreme.
People walk barefoot on burning coal,jump bare bodied on sharp iron rods, dangle a child with his body pierced brutally, from the top of a huge stick, hurting oneself in the name of god, and to top it all, on the final night they have 300-400 slaughterings.
The traditional ‘Chau nach’ is probably the only creative aspect of the fair.

*Ram navami was also slated then, when the streets came to standstill with people displaying fights with sticks and swords.

*Our driver took us to a place where bangles of hand made from ‘gala’ . it involved lot of persevearance and creativity. From next time, I go shopping , I’ll try not to bargain for handicraft goods. Their prices are justified.

*Walked the village roads in the mornings,chased herds of goats, took snaps with calves, ate at dhabas of truck wallahs in the afternoon , and counted stars in the evening lying on the terrace of our guest house!

Then , again, there was the inevitable train journey.
This time around, the journey was smooth, if I ignore the fact that the train was running only 4 hours late.i thank the sudoku in my mobile for helping me pass my time in the station.

So back to Calcutta. The taxi breezed fast over the Howrah bridge. There’s some thing in it. Whether it’s the architectural marvel, or the fact that it bridges such a wonderful city….but everytime I see the bridge..it does something to me.....

She left before I could find a suitable name for her. For many days after that I could hear her mother wailing, searching for her new born kitten.
Pomy had given birth to a kitten a few days ago. But life was too short for her. Within a week of her birth, she chose to leave her mother and me behind.
At one point of time , I had 7 seven cats at home, running to and fro to every nook of the house. Their agility spread the vibes in our life too. Now I’m left with only one.
Earlier I used to cry. Cried for the whole day , if any of them left me forever. Now I don’t.
Somewhere down the line, the realization has sunk in to me, the more you love your pets, the less they live with you.And that, pets will always leave before you.

My long standing wish of having a puppy has never been fulfilled. If I had ever asked for a puppy as a birthday gift, my mom would dismiss it, citing excuses of them being working parents and hence nobody will be available to look after it  so I took to the stray pups. I would feed them, pamper them, walk with them in the evenings.
And never do they disappoint you. The Bholu, Tommy, Dodo s have returned more love than I have given to them, being my companion in my everyday walk from home to the bus stop, barking away the trespassers into our garden and sitting in front of our house like a watchman daylong !

I have always been immensely possessive of my pets.
I hate when people stop and wait ,when my cats cross the road.
Its like , “ Arre they are my cats, how can they do any harm to you?” 
I really feel jealous when my cats, after having their lunch at my place, go and lie down on the curnish of my neighbours. “you are having food at my place and relishing somewhere else? Huh “
I hate my street dogs when they run after somebody , who gives them biscuits. “ohh, I give you food na, isn’t that enough?”

Among the other pets I had was fish ! But somehow I failed in that attempt. Though I did n’t have a formal aquarium , I tried to keep the fishes in a bowl after collecting them from a friend’s aquarium. Either the water did not suit them or the food, they did not survive for more than 2 days. After two falied attempts , I did not wish to bother those tiny creatures anymore. Also as people say, goldfish cannot survive without its pair.

Pet loving was extended among our friends too. A friend of mine arranged a party when her rabbit gave birth ! so did another when the number of fishes in his aquarium had crossed 30 ! there were also competition among some friends as to whose dog can run more fast or whose cat is more fluffy !i had named a cat Duggu to tease a friend of mine who is an ardent fan of Hrithik Roshan.

The void created by their death is something which many can’t cope up with.
A friend of mine stopped going to the terrace for years after the death of her rabbit which had its den at one corner there.After the death of their parrot,our neighbours used to feel sad every night , as the parrot used to chirp out ‘good night’ to them .We stopped going to a friend’s house after their dog died. Somehow , we found it hard to get over the fact that there will be no ‘Liza’ running towards us, wagging her tail, running to and fro in joy of seeing us, picking up the ball we threw towards her….

Did I mention about the broken-legged crow which used to visit me every morning at 8:30 a.m sharp?
The poor bird had broken her legs somehow and maybe was unable to move too much. So I found her every morning, sitting on our window pane. And after a few days , I was also familiar with her typical call and thus used to rush towards the window to give her food.
May be her limbs are fine now, that she does n’t visit me anymore !

trivia !- unlike dogs, cats wag their tails when they are angry.

how about adopting a violet monkey?





this stray Puppy surely needs me!






Green Goblin?

Have nothing better to post, hence...

A for Acceptance—accepting failures, accepting truth, accepting people as they are
B for blue , B for books, B for blog, B for Bicycle…
C for Calcutta, C for college…
D for Dilemma
E for Emraan Hashmi and his ever daunting attitude inspite of strings of flops!
F for college Fests
G for the beaches of Goa
H for Humpty Dumpty
I for Inspiration
J for being Jealous
K for Kitkat, K for Keira Knightley in her role in Bend It Like Beckham
L for ‘lalalala’
M for Maggi—only thing which I can claim to cook and can have anytime
N for anything new, smell of new clothes, smell of new books, joy of new clothes
O for opaque
P for Phuchka
Q for Quantum physics
R for Rains and the Romanticism it brings with it, and the Rainbow that follows
S for School –for all the wonderful memories, S for Scrabble, S for Sudoku
T for Trams—the Kolkata exclusive transport, T for Train journeys
U for Umbrella
V for Veronica
W for “Why should boys have all the fun?”—I love this ad and the tagline!
X for Xerox---for making our lives easier !
Y for Yes! The 3 lettered word full of optimism
Z for Zombie