As the year wraps up, my blog post counts stands at a dismal .75 post/ month . 09 for me has not been as good as it has been to Mamata Banerjee or Ranbir Kapoor. From an almost lousy Pujo to lousy Christmas. Most of my friends who graduated have moved out of the city in the 2nd half of 09, and each day there were new photo albums or status updates of newfound life to look forward to.

Now, one of the happy things to have happened to mankind in 09 is Farmville. Cows moo, daffodils sway, horses dance, elephants jump, potato pos up. Though I have almost got bored of it, nonetheless I can hardly deny the initial excitement of ploughing , sowing , harvesting and brushing !



Some scary things are up on television right now like Raaz pichle janam ka but more scarier is the forthcoming swayamvar of Rahul Mahajan.
Some trends which I could understand after watching a few episode in bits and parts is :
• Your gender remains the same as that of your last birth
• You remain a human
• Shekhar Suman was from Scotland and Monica Bedi from Portugal.

Its winter, and only when its winter, I suddenly feel this very urge to get up at 5 and go for morning walks. And since there is National handball championship going on at a stadium near home, there are ample hot guys roaming around in the vicinity. Btw , how exactly is a handball game played?

During the semestertime, several blog post ideas used to swim in the upper lobe of my brain,but as the semesters have ended,it seems that someone has hit me with the Ghajini rod and hence I've forgotten everything and can't even write a single post.

With the blog ideas, have also vanished my post exam resolutions of getting up for morning walk at 5 am and rejoining swimming classes. But my father being out of town and my maids being on leave, my mom has made sure that at least I get to see the Sun at 6 and make my way to the market.The vegetable market being a place where I have several embarrassing moments to recount,I am not particularly happy to make my visit there , a daily affair.[ Okay, I've embarrasing moments at every public place , be it banks, post officetelephone office :( ]

Cutting vegetables is also an art where you make sure you save your nimble fingers and yet not turn your product into a geometry lover's delight.

To draw a conclusion, if its Wednesday , then I spend most part of the day with vegetables. Big Bazaar has some amazing marketing strategies.Months back , they had this offer for people who shopped for more than 999 and having fulfilled that criteria , we were bestowed with an offer which said 'you get a year long supply of aloo and pyaz' .So the rule is that every Wednesday , you need to shop for 99 or more and you get to carry a kilo of aloo and pyaz each , back home.Now it so happened that my mom suddenly remembered about this offer and since she thinks me to be a jobless fellow, sent me off to BB.Little did I know that standing in the cash counter would turn out to be one of the longest queues of my life and that an entire civilization would turn up to get aloo and pyaz!

Tough Maggi still doesnt have competition in its proximity, Idli can come close if you have an idli mix and microwave handy.All one needs to do is stir the mix with curd , wait for a few minutes and then put the mixture in the idli container and you have it ready in a couple of minutes. This is again a realisation during semestertime.

P.S: This is a very stupid post.Was just too desperate to write anything:(

So after endless traffic jams , road blockades , processions and other various means of disruption of public life , here came the elections in the city. The last couple of days have been quite peaceful.The campaigns had ended and the heat waves made way to the much needed rains.
The one very question which I've been asking people in any conversation in the past week is that, "vote dichhis toh?"
So here's one such silly conversation with a neighbourhood friend on ym:
me:Bol, you've got your card na?
friend: yes! And I'm voting!I'm really excited!
m: yeah, same here, heh!
f: Hey so, dont you think we should plan our V day attire?
m: mane??
f: See, as it is we dont know many people out here and I think V day is going to be like Ashtami morning , the only time I get to see all the guys in our block.
m: God!

I did not have much hassles in getting the voter's id card.My mom had to stand in a long queue though , but just once.And it was completely error free.Unlike people's whose father's name has been written as husband's.Or age has been doubled.
Talking about constituency awareness, I knew about 5 contenders,and about the rest you have to go and find out!

There is this sheer joy in exercising your right for the first time. And excuses such as 'I dont have faith in the system','I dont have interest in politics', 'Its too hot', 'Its raining' blah blah...do sound boring !!

The News: "Cat 2009 goes online.The test will be conducted in a window
of about ten days sometime at the end of the calendar year."

Reaction of a classmate: "Window of about 10 days? So that means it will be like the board exams? Like we go and give the quant section one day, then we have a study leave for 1 or 2 days and then go for the english section...like that?"

Other people trying hard to control their emotions: "No, window of 10 days means you go and get the paper from a test centre on day 1, solve it at your convenience, and submit it on the 10th day".

My Dida thinks that my cousin who is 27,has reached her marriageable age, and since she has not managed to find a groom for herself, its the elders who should take up this mammoth task . So every Sunday she makes it a point to go through the matrimonial columns in a vernacular newspaper , scan them and put a tick mark beside the ones which can be considered.So it was this Sunday,while I visited my maternal grandparents house, that I picked up the matrimonial supplement and started reading some of the ads:

# Alliance invited for Bengali girl,26+;mother senior college lecturer,father senior bank officer,brother settled in USA,cousin working in mnc. Mob:--, box no--- .
Now, we all know that its about loving your family, but where is the minimum information about the girl in question?

# Match for B.sc(h) girl, 23, Ghosh,5'4 , complexion dusky( like Bipasha),parents self employed,own house.Contact ---.
Dusky like Bipasha? What next? Husky like Rani?

# Match for businessman, 45(looks like 30), divorcee(with no fault of his own),passed 10.Bride should be extremely beautiful and educated.
!!!

So, I had enough of my entertainment and put aside the newspaper.
On other news , porshu is Valentines day. I was planning to get hold of somebody and venture into some parks , malls and places suchlike, but have this damn gd sessions in college. The blog was there on V day last year, but it didn't have any reader. But this year it has at least a few! So my dear readers , I love you all , Happy Valentines day .

This one is from Mads. Thank you :)

1. What does your user name mean?
Vanilla sky? I think I was watching the Tom cruise movie of the same name , some days before I created this blog. Liked the name, so kept it.

2. Elaborate on your user photo.
A girl dancing , I think. Was given by a friend.

3. How many comments do you have?
On what?

4. What's your current relationship status?
Current? always single.

5. What exactly are you wearing right now?
White pant, black tee.

6. What is your current problem?
The link of the modem going on and off.

7. What do you love the most?
Roaming aimlessly, travelling, singing, books, blah blah.


8. What makes you most happy?
Walks. Good food. Music. Friends. Family.

9. Are you musically inclined?
Yes, yes.


10. What would you do if you woke up one morning and found out you were on cocaine?
First brush my teeth ....then will think about it .


11. If you could go back in time and change something, what would it be?
Let me think....


12. If you MUST be an animal for ONE day, what would you be?
One animal only? Pigs, donkeys, squirrel, zebra ..whom will I disappoint?

13. Ever had a near-death experience?
Yes. In dreams. Every night I almost die.


14. Name an obvious quality you have.
Modesty :P

15. What's the name of the song that's stuck in your head right now?
The trailer of Delhi-6.

16. Are you happy today?
Yes. No particular reason though.

17. Who will cut and paste this first?
I think everybody has done this by now.

18. Name someone with the same birthday as you
Let me google.Ok, Greek philosopher Plato .(427 BCE; d. 347 BCE).

19. Do you have a secret crush on someone?
Umm..maybe !

20. Do you have a garbage disposal in your kitchen sink?
Below the sink, I think.

21. Have you ever been in a fight?
Recently, no. But had those fights in school bus lines, in class.

22. Have you ever sung in front of a large audience?
Yes, many times.At times, forgot lyrics, then audience started prompting. Too embarrassing. Chorus performances are safer.

23. What's the first thing you notice about the OPPOSITE sex?
Height, shoes, hair.

24. What's your biggest mistake?
With each passing day, it gets bigger and better :(

25. Say something totally random about you.
Being confused all the time.

26. Has anyone ever said you looked like a celebrity?
Mayawati is a celebrity. Maduri Dixit is a celebrity. And about the answer, No.

27. Are you comfortable with your height?
Yes. Though would n't mind being an inch taller.

28. What is the most romantic thing someone has ever done for you?
*sniff*

29. What are your favourite smells?
My shampoo, vanilla essence, my bed, petrol, paint.

30. What's something that really annoys you?
People spitting, littering.


31. What's something you really like?
Roaming, travelling, singing.

32. Do you give random hugs and kisses?
Well...random hugs to mom.

33. What's the latest you have ever stayed up?
20 hrs maybe.

34. Have you ever been rushed to the emergency room?
No , no.

By the way, this bloggie has completed a year today. I know I write shamelessly bad, but thank you all for dropping in here.

As the sun sets on the western horizon of 2008, and a new day of 2009 beckons , as memories fade away and come back in a harmonic motion, time calls for a farewell post.
No obviously I'm not going to talk about Chidambaram, Bush and Harman Baweja. There are qualified people to tell you about them.

January was the month when this blog thing happened to me. For the past couple of years all I knew was blog comes from weblog. Then unfortunately came across some blogs which was reluctant to talk about anything other than PM's actions and Cm's inactions. So while I was ready to shed the wish of having a blog, there popped up certain blogs which had the 'why so serious?' message on them.And thank God for that.

I have realised that I am at my best behaviour with my parents during exams. Thats the time when I don't have the leisure to fight over whats in breakfast or lunch, why does the paneer curry taste like horlicks, and why does she have to give away all my coloured chalks to the maid's son.

Something needs to be done with these so-concerned mobile service providers.Vodafone has this message on the backside of its recharge card which says Register your number at xxxx.com to get rid of telemarketers. But what about the nuisance they themselves create? Its quite a confident shaker when run around your room trying to find your phone or jostle to open your bag in crowded bus only to find that the caller asking to set Himesh Reshammiya's croonings as your caller tunes.

Kyunki .. has ended and and with it has ended people's favourite game of guessing Ba's age. Big Boss was about watching people holidaying after being released from jail and now we have Big Brother too.My cable wala released back zee cafe and studio after hijacking them for over 6 months.

To my bro: Though we have scratched and kicked each other lesser this year, it does not give you the liberty to torture me with your guitar practice and exhausting our download limit with your games and other similar useless stuff.

Rediff predicts that the tech industry will the fastest one to recover from recession.

Harman and Emraan will be back with their new movies, Rakhi Sawant and Chunky Pandey will continue to be judges, Mtv will continue to be crappier, the likes of Mayawati and mulayam will continue to rule , Ram gopal verma must be thinking about his next venture.
So, as you can foresee, there are enough things to be afraid of the coming year.
The Loksabha elections are coming . And if I don't manage to lose my voter's Id card, and if my booth is not rigged, I might be debuting as a voter!

To anyone who's wasting time reading this, have a happy and prosperous year new year !

...I'll talk about the least significant things in these turbulent times.

1) Now if you consider yourself to be a really well informed being, you must be knowing 2 of India's longest running soaps on television viz. Kyunki....and Kahaani..... has finally met with their fate.
Now these 2 serials played a significant roles in my life for some time.
When these actually started, I was in 6th / 7th standard . In (our) those satellite tv less days, I used hear the opening tune of Kahaani ...at 10 p.m, which would signal that yes, your study time is about to terminate and finally at 10:30 the Kyunki.. tune from the neighbour's drawing room would make me and my bro jump to the dining room.

2)Kuch Kuch hota hai has completed a decade of its release.
Now its significant because
i)it gave us an illusion that college life was all about learning Romeo and Juliet and dancing with your principal.
ii)There was this whole lot of craze about Friendship day and friendship bands.
iii)Sony and set max got a movie to air every alternate Sunday. The count must have reached 4561 by now.
iv)That was the only movie in which I found Salman Khan tolerable.
v)All guys with the name Rahul felt as if they are on cloud nine.

3)And I lost my mobile memory card. It had a really short stay with me. After its insertion it was creating whole lot of problems. I extracted it out and on one sleepy night thought it to be piece of paper or whatever , threw it down on the floor maybe and my dear maid sweept it away and dumped it into the waste paper basket. Poor soul, must be having a tough time in some waste renewal plant.

4)My brother had a hall debut today .( means he, went out and watched a movie in the cinema hall for the first time) I had mine at a pretty old age i.e after giving my 12th boards in 'o6. A very strange silly fear used to stop me from going to the theatres and I used to put silly excuses to people who ever coaxed me to watch a movie out with them.

Now, its time to end the post..here's The End

The other day , I was at some relative's house, where in course of some discussion, lady started talking about ,how a man rang her doorbell and on questioning him , she found out that he was asking for some monetary help for the treatment of his daughter battling with terminal illness.
"I'm smart you know, I didn't get down in the ground floor to find out where he has come from, what did those prescriptions say, you know na, there are so many frauds around these days".
Yes, lady, smart you are.
I wonder how fool the man must have been to think that people living in big houses , with big cars, had a big heart too?
And yes, smart you are.
Did you ever try to put yourself in his shoes to feel the plight of the father of a daughter battling in between life and death?
You did n't have the time to talk to the man , to find out whether he was really speaking the truth or not,whether he too was a victim of the global meltdown, coz you had to miss parts of your favourite tv program .
You would let your son gulp 100 Mc Donald's burger, be obese, and then spend thousands of bucks in gym , but when it came to giving out 50 bucks to someone in pain, you have every possible reason up in your sleeves.

"Do not do to others , what you do not wish them to do to you"-- the world would have been a much better place if people had stuck to this saying by Confuscious.

As somebody said, if the world's people are to be divided into 2 classes, one possible pair would be morning person and night owl.
"The morning people feel superior to those who trust the sun to rise on its own,and like to tell them so."
My history of morning walks dates back to my pre teen and early teen days when I used put alarm in the tiny alarm clock , made no fuss about getting up early , and merrily went out for walks with my father , even on chilly winter mornings.
Then alarm clocks replaced mobile phone alarms, morning walks made their way to getting up early and mugging up books or those 5 minutes sleep requests in winter.

So what triggered the second season of my morning walks is
(i) I've been getting bizarre dreams of plane crashing on my roof, anacondas in the nearby pond, lions and tigers roaming in the neighbourhood park and these dreams break exactly around 4:30 am ,thus terminating my sleep.
(ii)my mom's constant hammering on the head with "do some exercise" slogan.
(iii)a love story heard from a friend: "You do jogging really well" -was how the guy first complemented her.
So, I go for morning walks alone, I don't have a doggie in my company.So, obviously all I tend to do is notice people and things around.

People: you have the grandpas talking about freedom struggle, how life without inflation was. You have the ladies , who even in the wee hours, don't forget to discuss the saas-bahu serials , how disobedient their progenies have become and how late they return home.You have the uncles , who have 4km walk daily advice in their prescription charts. Coming down to the younger age bracket, guys and gals are hard to find.All one spot are groups playing cricket in nearby grounds or young lads taking driving lessons in yet-to-be-busy roads.

Nature around is pretty pleasant.Red and yellow flowers dot the trees, bushes.And you get to hear the crow's cry clearly, unburied under the noises of car horns.You have the nascent sun peeping out of the clouds, unperturbed by the presence of the dimmed remnants of last night's moon.Cool breeze, colourful surroundings, interesting people make your walk uncomplaining.

So, no matter how many times I hit the snooze button before getting up, no matter how I complain about having to open all the locks of the house, no matter how often my mom keeps complaining that these walks are not having any effect on my energy level, I've again fallen in love with the walks after years.

Preeti's post excited me to write something about the string of train journeys I had to take off late and have been grumbling about them till date.

With very high hopes and faith in the omnipotent God , I brave the unruly mob of people crowded in front of the reservation charts , only to be provided with the fact that people around are m46, f41, m12, m76, f13, watever !
Okay, now lets say the train has started moving, the coolies have said byebye. Here comes the time, when you actually notice the kind of people with whom you are going to spend the next 24 hours of your life.
1. the sleepy kinds-The very first thing they do after boarding the train is to eye the upper berths.Even if they are not allotted the upper berth , they would coax the fellow passengers for an exchange offer and would immediately doze off after getting up.

2.The most noisy group in the train non arguably is the mother-kid combo-This section can be further classified:
i)The mother of an infant- they would run to the loo a billion times, cleaning utensils, washing clothes, to bathe the kid, to wash his face, to brush his teeth , to change his clothes, then would play snakes and ladder and so on!
ii)The mother of kids in the age group of 10-14--"you have an exam na? after the school reopens? wait, let me , take out your books for you to study, i've kept them handy"
"No mommm, please I will look out of the window for now"
"Nooo, you are not a kid anymore, there's nothing to look out of the window, its quite dark"
"yeah, mom, thats what I like, the lights glowing with darkness all around, mom are those will-o-wisp?"
"Shut up, study, here's your book".

3.Then there will be some men who would leave all the places in the train and find the space before the loos the most comfortable. And you would have to say "excuse me" a thousand times to get it registered in them.

4.This kind of people really gets on my nerves-they need to change clothes on the train , that too in full public glare. Men and women, in only a one night journey can't you really sleep in whatever you are?

And from Delhi , we took the Rajdhani. More than anything else its known as the train which serves you food on board.
So, 30 mins into the journey, a kid break the silence "Papa you, told they will serve us chocolates..when?"
I'll hate Rajdhani for serving me apple juice 4 times.

Remember that Parle orange cream ad ? where a lady waits in a queue , and behind her is another young lady with her kid who has this biscuit packet in his hand. The old lady takes out the biscuits , eats off the cream in between and returns back the cream-less biscuits to the kid, and the kid starts crying !
Many a times, I've told myself , that since you've grown up , you must learn to eat a cream biscuit properly, and not like a two year old, who licks off the cream first and then dips the robbed biscuits into milk.
But, as the say, old habits die hard.

Now , when a public figure , makes some promise, however stupid it may sound, in full media glare , one must take that seriously, else lose some easy route to fortune. So months back, Ram Gopal Verma made a movie Phoonk , on some obscure subject and challenged the masses that whoever could watch it alone in a theatre , would win 5 lakhs for oneself. So while people were busy cracking jokes about the movie, one man in Bangalore booked a whole 247 seater and watched the movie alone and (must have) won 5 lakhs for himself !
Assuming each ticket cost atmost 250 bucks,
and number of seats 247 (given),
the total investment was 247 *250 =61750
and the output was 5,00,000
Therefore, total gain=5,00,000-61,750= 438,250 !

The other day, the back window of a car, before my bus , had these words written :
'Have you been tagged recently?'
Everybody talks in blog lingo, it seems !

Who cares if India lost the last test and Sri Lanka won the series by 2-1?

Its somebody else's day and here's congratulations to Abhinav Bindra for winning the first ever gold in an individual event for India

Here's a bit of conversation that was going on in an orkut forum:

X: "Felicitations Abhinav Bindra. I hope we produce many more Bindras "

Y :"Bindras to onek achhey india te...or gota poribar i to bindra...kintu shudhu oi medal peyechhey...
aro onek bhalo shooters toiri hok borong...." (there are so many Bindras in India, his whole family is Bindra !, but its only he who has won the medal, what we need is more competent shooters !)

The tea time and the dinner table in my house has become What-are-you-planning-to-do-with-your-life discussion time. Not that I'm an eager participant. Even if the morning discussion time can be avoided by getting up late, the dinner time discussion is inevitable. So, the result is food tastes bad to worse, even your favourite TV program appears irritating, and in the end all you get is a more confused mind. Lucky are those people who know what exactly they want from life.
The trouble has started with the onset of 3rd year. Why have people around become so serious? Even the girls beside me in auto or the guys in front of me in the bus discuss career nowadays. Which coaching institute assures you entry to the top notch institutions , which teachers have left one coaching centre to join another..blah blah blah
Wish I were in 2nd year, even 1st year. Braving ragging is much better than getting confused about one's future.


Troubles are relative. Happiness is relative.
Thus, while I spend my time contemplating about all these nonsense, the other day while listening to the FM, I came across a channel where a guy called up to know how colour therapy can help while he is about to tell his mom about his love life.
The sujjestion was that : use a lot of turqoise
How? How?
Paint the room with the colour turqoise, use turqoise coloured curtains, change the cushion covers of that room to turqoise.
Now, a 20 year old guy, is suddenly going to paint his room, change cushion covers,buy new curtains? That itself is enough for the mom to get irritated and the plan to tell about girlfriend , fail miserably.

Meanwhile the bomb hoax is slightly lesser . The sale of metal detectors, hiring of manpower in security agencies are at a high. They kept themselves busy by checking people with all the weirdest ways possible. Hope this concern does not fade off.

After citing stress as reason to opt out of the ongoing series, Dhoni decided to take care of the nation's fashion , help out girls from eve teasers and encourage participants in reality shows ! Finally his efforts paid off and congratulations for the Khel Ratna award.

Since there’s a competition among my cable operator and Sony as to who can air the same film over and over again, I watched Kuch Kuch Hota hai for say 93^rd, K3G for 64^th times. And kept wondering whether this is how , we had imagined our college lives to be , when we watched these movies as school going kids.

A month ago, 2 girls on their way to exam, were talking everything other than the exam some minutes later.
"Have you heard the song Aditi?"
"Yeah, nice na?"
"So are we going to watch the movie?"
"Yes ! Yes! Off course! what yaar! Enough of Race and Dhoom2 ! we're in college and watch something like that "

So there we were , watching the morning show of Jane Tu...Ya Jane na at Fame, South City.

Now, who goes for a morning show at 10 a.m, that too on a Monday morning?

People who are jobless and responsible bachhas of their respective parents, who makes sure that they spend their parent's hard earned money in a sensible way (!).

But this theory did not work as we had a Monday morning Housefull show, with Uncles, Aunties, and even school kids in uniform turning up. Have schools become such boring places that people have to bunk in the wee hours of morning?

Talking of the movie, it made a refreshing watch. Characters looked real college kids and not some 40 something made to wear tight trousers or short skirts.

So what if Nasiruddin shah's act brought memories of Hum Paanch's Priya Tendulkar, what if love and friendship be the 'duniya ki sabse purani kahani', with super cool mom and dads, lively bunch of friends speaking your lingo , sibling love, gripping narration and apt soundtrack, and above all a vibrant lead pair, the film makes it a must watch for the season.

the songs popping up at the right time, binded the storyline aptfully.

And the billi surprise in the song Aditi was really, really sweet :)

[ Kash, somebody sang for me and my billi *sigh*]

FYI , the word Aditi features 15 times in the song.( yeah, i'm jobless, i listened to it 110 times and the thought of counting it cropped up when I was listening to it for the 109th time)

So, enough of film reviewing(!). And since this post has become respectably long, I stop here.

So, for the time being, ciao and Meeow!

The other day there was this kind of sarcastic awards function telecast on the tv, organized by a popular radio station. In one section , there was an award ‘city’s shaan’ .

When it came to Kolkata, the options were

1. public bus mein chhed –chhad
2. calendar se bhi zyaada chuttiyan
3. the autowallahs and their notoriety

well, the award went to ‘public bus mein ched-chaad.

But it should have gone to the second option – “calendar se bhi zyaada chuttiyan”

Because that is the exact situation today. And may be tomorrow too.

The communist party of India called for a 12 hour strike in W.B,Kerala and Tripura, in protest of exorbitant rice in fuel price.

And to add 'fuel' to that , the state opposition party called for another 12 bandh on friday. btw, the question is who called first? and the issue being the same, could nt they settle for the same day?

So what follows the ‘bandh ‘ declaration is – news channels calling up a bunch of politicians and economists, people anxiously shopping household stuffs, cars and taxis lining up in petrol pumps to fuel themselves before prices soar up after midnight and universities across the state postponding their ongoing exams…

The morning started with sound of incessant rain instead of the hustles of plying buses.

It rained and rained , the streets wearing a deserted look, in contrast to the usual noise and commotion and high pollution level.

What better way to celebrate Environment day?