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 The Mango milk shake in the Seasonal section of the menu in the juice counter of office cafeteria has been replaced by orange juice and its nowhere close to its predecessor 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!!

Its mid April, and all I've been thinking is coming up with a sensible post . Nah :(

Teasing the teaser
It was some months back.Some Saturday afternoon.I had got up in the bus from my stop and got a window seat. A couple of stops later, a man got up , and sat beside me.A few minutes later he started behaving as if I'm his newly wed wife, putting his hands around the seat and odd stuffs suchlike.So. I turned towards him and asked him to behave properly.He called back his hands and tried to sit properly, though he kept pushing inside.I was on the verge of praying to God that this chap gets down somewhere near, when he called the conductor and got a ticket for Park Street. Gosh!
Now I thought that I was wasting the window seat by thinking about this idiot and started looking outside.Now again this man started pushing and trying to put his hand around.That was too much , I thought.Even the most wild billi of mine listens to me, but this man was worse. I just turned towards him, and said, "Why can't you just behave properly??" I don't remember whether there was something exceptional in my tone. The man said, "S-sor-ry" and promptly ran out of the bus. The place was some 8 km away from Park Street!

In the family
At times I wonder why both of my parents are engineers?
I tell you why.
On a recent trip to a seaside holiday, in the train. Conversations.
Me and my brother , as usual and as expected, talking crap.
-"Hey see those lotus leaves in the pond".
-"Hey remember how we used to count cows on our way to Jamshedpur?"
-"Not me idiot, you and Mithudidi used to."
-"What are those scarecrows made up of?"

Now my Mom gets excited seeing something.
-"What are those? Beside the scare crows?How come the utility poles are so wide apart? Doesn't that violate the norms?"
Now my father steps in.
-"Thats a three-phase leakage transformer, right? Its okay, you can't expect better mounting, at least in villages."
-"Last dat I was checking the 98B clause of the Electricity Act,it does mention the implementation of APDRP. blah blah.
And this the general scenario everywhere, in the dining table, in the car :(


Beginner's guide to Bargaining
3 simple steps: (from a Mtv program)
1> Shock shock shock---> Whatever price you are told at the beginning, just convey to the man , that you are simply shocked by the high price.
2>Know your maths---> You need to be really quick.
3>Half is full---> Remember this thumb rule. Even if you can't gauge the exact price of the product , just bring it down to half an your job is quite done.

No Eureka
Most of the cities have banned people from sitting beside the autowallah in an autoride. I don't mean to sound like robbing a privilege though.Now suppose you are sitting either on the right or left of the autowallah and the auto takes a winding turn.Are you going to fall towards the autowallah or will have a possibility of falling outside.
On this futile note I end this post :(

Even after 2 years, the Biology lab keeps haunting me at times.
Initially it did n't seem to be a nightmare, with all those cross sectional views of potatoes and leaves that we had to display in the microscope , but it soon moved into the dangerous territories with the lab assistant piercing our finger tops to get blood( how S cried for the whole day cause we told her mischievously that she shared the same needle as K's), identify the body parts of cockroach, and finally to top it all , the dissection of this chloroformed amphibian ...aargghh !

The first day was filled with shrieks, cries, nausea, repentance and emotions suchlike.
Many plans of becoming doctor died premature death ! An added trouble used to creep in when , this being woke up from its slumber in the middle of the operation!