It hardly matters here in Bangalore whether its summer , or autumn or spring or winter , for I always keep shivering in the full speed fan ka hawa, feel like cuddling under the blanket and delaying the morning bath everyday and the geyser is a perennial necessity . Okay , no rainy season matters.
In childhood , winter used to be the time when you have more energy to work as defined by my mother, the time when circus parties started settling in Park Circus maidan , the time for a short holiday , Santa Claus and fruit cake and a all lit up Park Street visit .
My last winter in Chennai was even less wintery . While temperatures kept dipping in the North , South continued to stay aloof with its No winter status ! It reached its height with people putting up statuses on FB like “I mourn the loss of a season in my life “. ! Nevertheless, I had one of the best Christmas visiting Santhome Basillica near Marina Beach , buying all the Santa caps from a streetside girl, stopping at Adyar Bakery to have our share of mandatory Christmas cake .
The point is seasons change in the rest of the earth and you don’t get in winter what you get in summer. And the foremost among them is mango. The Mango milk shake in the Seasonal section of the menu in the juice counter of office cafeteria has been replaced by orange juice and its nowhere close to its predecessor 
I cant explain how good the mango milkshake used to be , its like ekbar peeyoge toh peete hi reh jaoge ..
There was never a day in the summer which went by without me queuing for the mango milkshake and cherishing it as a part of breakfast , maybe at afternoon or just like that .
So no matter how much my teammate from Nagpur tries to attract me to oranges with santra burfi, santra son papdi , santra jamun and what not , mango rules.

The Bangalore metro Reach One has finally been inaugurated and after thinking that the visitor-kind of crowd will be much less after one month of its launch, we decided to pay a visit to the M.GRoad station after catching the afternoon show of Rockstar at Rex .
I watched a Hindi film after a long time in Bangalore, last one being Dhobi Ghat.
Metro was crowded as usual , most people boarding it just to get the feel of it.
The journey reminded me of the local trains in Chennai where you get amazing views in the route from Velacherry to Chepauk Stadium.
The tokens reminded me of the Delhi metro and I searched my mobile to get the snap I had taken in Delhi metro 3 years ago.
The trains look like the new Mumbai locals – silver with a pink lining.
The excitement in young and old reminded me of my first metro ride in Kolkata during Durgapujo many autumns ago.

Talking about other modes of transport, I found the autowallahs of Hyderabad pretty friendly with share auto prices as low as 5 rupees for a fairly large distance. That’s something unimaginable in Bangalore. And the Hyderabad tour was awesome as well. Right from all the historical landmarks , to pearls , to Karachi Bakery and Paradise biriyani, we had it all.

There have been times when you have wanted to do things but haven’t found the partner. Like Rachel wanted to go to an Italian restaurant on a Sunday night and none of her friends agreed. So what do you do? Cancel your plan? Not really. Just go out on your own for once, and there wont be diappointments. Like Rachel did when she went out to have dinner all alone even though everybody else ridiculed. When I had wished the desire to goto the Bangalore Ganesh Festival , everybody yawned. So I caught the bus , had great Karnataka food and enjoyed live performance of Usha Uthhup and Shan n Kareena 

Okay this post is going nowhere, just that I’m pretty bored in office on a Friday evening 

There's this supersmart guy on my Facebook page who has opinions on every single thing on this earth and hence he puts up a status update-Har ek friend ekdam zaroori nehi hota hai.
And he says I quote- I never interact with someone with the idea that somewhere down the line, I'm going to need him/her. During the Prince Williams shaadi phase - this guy said Omg I'm so tired of this marriage thing on news channels , I'd rather prefer a documentary on wildlife. There are documentaries running 24x7...who stopped you from watching :X

Coming back,
here's a list of my zaroori friends and their zaroorats :P

The anytime buddies-You need some friends whom you can call up anytime, whom you can call to share things that just happened in your life, whom to call to tell what shoes you bought yesterday , whom you call to tell how the Chinese at Zytoon tastes so good,to talk about the guy who just sat beside you at office bus, to talk about roommate sagas , or simply bitch about anything.To quote Amrita "Luv u all " :P

The night-walk buddy- Ahh those were the early days in Bangalore, when Srimoyee would sms me post 10pm, asking "Walk e jabi??Come near Liberty ". At a time when traffic has vanished , shops have closed and even street dogs stared at awe, we would keep walking through gullys and nukkads with the gentle breeze as company having a KFC Soft Twirl in hand discovering eateries and institutes, admiring beautiful houses in Koramangala and smiling at Bengali nameplates. Srimoyeeeeee, I miss those days, rather nights so much :(

The outing buddy- Be it 15 hours journey to Mumbai or 9 hours to Ooty or 6 hrs to Tirupati, ever since we came to Bangalore and thus left without a big group we used to have back in Chennai, Kaberi and me have been each other's travel partner. Ya, we survived the 30hr train journey back home too.

The chaddi-buddies- Dola and Jhoomi are like the sisters I never had and ever longed. We grew up in the same place with adjacent houses and we are so chaddi buddies that in most occassions we dont even remember each other's good names. They are among the few friends I can call anytime who would answer back with receptive voice on the other end and bombard you with news and gossips about the neighbourhood.

The study buddies-Thank you Sudeshna for Organic Chemistry, Amrita for Control system, Parnisha for Process control, Srimoyee for the DSP matrix, and Amrita again on whether Data Structure matrix is better than the book :)

The Tution buddy- Me and Arpita have never been to the same school but we always had a tution class in common right from Science tution in 10th , Chemistry tution in 12th to CAT classes.And post classes we would walk back home having icecream and phuchka, discovering new shortcuts each day :)

The Rules-n -refulations buddy- Whenever I want to know hw much is my speed post going to cost , or what is the smartest way to book a Tatkal ticket or whether sick leaves need to be availed by August only, all I have to do is to turn to Ratna and she has all the answers!

The work buddies- You all are really not work buddies, but training day buddies. I didnt really make any good friend post training days.So Neha, Arpita , Noor- we needed you to make Siebel days as energetic as you are, all the Sakthi girls hostel girls for making the Durgapujo, new year , christmas and every birthday memorable for life , and all you four girls in Bangalore for making life easier for each one of us.

Finally, They-make-you-feel-important buddies- Pallavi , Abhay(who dies to see his name in everybody's blogs !) Priyanka, Payal , Ria....chalo thank you for saying nice and sometimes embarrasing things about me!!

Learning a language opens up a whole new world in front of you-a whole new culture- a whole new way of life.
I had started learning Spanish way back in July 2010 right after college got over. I was actually googling for Free online French course when I came across this BBC Languages site. They had an audio course for French while there was a tempting course for Spanish. It was an BAFTA Award winning short film divided in chapterwise model which taught you the basics of Spanish while engaging you in a thriller based in Madrid.
And thus started my trst with Spanish where I would get up early in the morning to avail free download till 8am, download 1 episode each day, pause and repause the episode to get the heck of it!
That was for one month-then in August I went to Chennai-and after 3 months when I went back home, I couldn't even find the notebook where I had jotted down things while watching the course video :(
The tryst with Spanish restarted when I came to Bangalore office and the project client was a Spanish-Latin American Telecom major.
The entire application is in Spanish which blows our nuts off at times when Google translate too comes up entirely out of context suggestions.
The most rewarding experience of being in this project has been the Spanish classes every morning- which turns out to be the best hour of our poffice time.
Our teacher is also a very passionate linguistic who knows Spanish , Portuguese, Dutch , French :)
From then , we have started exchanging pleasantries among us in Spanish, wishing Happy birthday too in Spanish.
The teacher guy tells us how passionate he is about language that even after a Masters in Mathematics , he pursued several language courses just for the love of it .
He admits that the present job of teaching and translation of documents is pretty boring and is his means of funding his travel n expenses if he gets a prestigious scholarship offered by the Spanish embassy.
In the one hour session we not only conjugate hablo-hablar-hablais-hablan but also share stories of Latin America, how you cannot stop Spanish people from taking the siesta, where are the best places to learn salsa in Bangalore, how good the Tapas es are in the El Tablao rest in Koramangala and what our Spanish counterpart Alberto meant to say when he said Oooorgent!

Getting up at 6.
Waiting for the the bathroom to be vacated by the roommate.
Catching the office shuttle at 7:20.
Reaching office with sleepy eyes.
Getting the posterior glued to the chair.
Checking mails and mails reminding about deadlines.
Opening the application and doing the same work.Day after day.
Hurriedly have lunch at the cafetaria.
Get the "Stay back" mail from the supervisor.
Return at 12 o' clock.
Watch an episode of HIMYM on the laptop.
Come Friday and keep fingers crossed about weekend office.
Have coffee at French Loaf and dinner at KFC if a weekend is gifted.
Count number of days left for October to come.


This life ain't any good . :(

Its been around 90 days only including 2 trips to Chennai and I get the feeling that I have never lived in a city without the sea. Bangalore has been about battling loneliness in and out. From the initial days of wandering about the cafeteria in the busy hours of lunch with the food plate in hand trying hard to find a single empty table, to coming back to the pg admist strangers.
It seems like ages since I hummed the tune of a song aloud in the room, listened to songs full volume or watched ghost movies holding somebody tightly.
Here there’s nobody to mock my addiction to Tamil songs, laugh at my silly ways of combing hair , and tell nice nice things about me.
Unlike Chennai hostel, I keep my bed clean , lest my roomies ridicule me, sleep in perfect postures, never bang the door and talk softly on the phone !
The roomies grow stranger day by day and instead of having some hot and happening life , I shed tears over incidents with grumpy coworkers and ruthless roommates !


Now that K, P , N and S are there, things don’t seem as bad it was.
I don’t understand what this hullabaloo is about Bangalore nightlife. Most pubs have to close by 11 whereas back in Kolkata, you can party till early morning. Not that it affects me anyhow , coz me and S have redefined nightlife and to the utter dismay of friends , family , street dogs , pg owner , shopkeepers, lechers – we go for night walks. Yeah, walks that typically start past 9:45 and end somewhere around 11. Each day , rather night , we have discovered new lanes and bylanes, eateries , clubs, institutes , pan shops and icecream parlours!

Weather has its own mood swings during the day, though at night it lives up to its declared standard. One thing I am loving about Bangalore are the roadside trees. Though S is tired of me telling her this, I’m simply in love the way they have grown . Then there is Lalbagh gardens. Brigade Road is kinda okay too. Just that its overflows at time with pseudo coolness. And I love the Chinese at Beijing at Garuda mall. I love the Big 10 buses. I love the Bengali restaurants at Koramangala 6th Block. I love the windy breeze at night.