Like I haven't noticed it too

I am not blogging. Yeah, I know. Blogging perhaps, was just a phase, after all...

Comeback

The excitement is killing her. But she is not going to share it with anyone just yet, lest she jinxes it by saying it prematurely.

It's too early. No. She won't talk. Not now. Not till...

This has brought her back to her blog. She is overjoyed to know she is typing words again. For some months now she had phased herself out, not writing, not talking, not reading....

Her comeback is not far away now.

Pregnant with a growing foetus of a secret, she walks around the place with a smile on her face.

Restlessness

Always something to do.

Always somewhere to go.

Always something on the agenda.

Can I just sit here on this rock; and do nothing?

Naja naja

There they were.

Snakes.

Big ones.

Not one, but two.

Thoughts in my head- "What are they? Definitely not russels vipers or saw scaled vipers. These guys are looong. So cobras. Wait, they could be rat snakes. Well, I can't make out. They are moving too fast! Can’t see their heads, man! How do I make out?" It was then that I remembered I was holding a camera in my hand. "Stupid girl! Take pictures!! No!! Are you crazy? What if they are cobras? Run you stupid girl! But then I'll never know....

Click. Click. Click. Click. Camera frenzy.

"Check the pics. Did you get the head?"

Zoom in.

A hood.

"Oh my god, they are cobras!"

A parallel series of thoughts and emotions- I had to deal with the realization that it has actually happened. People had warned me about this, about snakes being around my work site. Wear shoes, not sandals, they advised. Wear full pants, not three-fourths. Wear thick full pants, not those flimsy cotton ones. And I had done all that. I had taken all these precautions. But I must tell you, standing there about 7 meters away from two large Indian cobras made all my precautions look puny and stupid.

Now I know why people revere them. Why they are idolized into gods. These guys are the very embodiment of power. Every move they made commanded attention. It seemed as if power actually oozed out of them, slithered to where you were and made you feel really really minuscule, puny and tiny and meaningless. Feeling helpless, I just stood there with dropped jaws watching them gracefully dance away.

Then the practical part of me finally broke through all the 'ooh's and ahhs'; this practical self reminded my jaw-dropped self that I was at least 20 minutes away from help in case anything went wrong, it was almost sunset and I had no idea how to handle snakes, so it would be best to pick up those dropped jaws and get myself out of there as fast as I could.

And I did.

After there was considerable distance between me and the romancing beasts, after the heart beats had returned back to normal a new moment of clarity- this is why I am here, I told myself. For this! This is why I didn't opt for a desk job. This is why I opted to get out of that city. To get out of the rush hour traffic and the local trains! To see a courtship of indian cobras, or as we biologists would call them Naja naja. It's all worth it, I told myself! The loneliness, the silence, the fear. It's all worth it! The moment of clarity broadened and I thought of all the other things that are making this 'living alone' worthwhile. The no-less-than-five hoopoes that visit my front yard everyday! The coppersmith barbet who posed so well in front of my cam! The verditer flycatcher that flew around the tree in my courtyard. The purple sunbird nests we monitored, their cute little chicks and their hungry cries!

I relate this incident to one that unfolds in the Lord of the Rings- when Frodo receives from Galadriel the light from Elendil, the elves' most beloved star; "let this be the light, when all other lights fade".

I sit here tonight, in this giant empty house and just when 'all other lights fade' I think of the spectacle that unfolded before my eyes- the rare sight that reminded me of why I am here. This, for me, is what Elendil was for Frodo.

Sappy? Very.But you know what, I don't care!

By yourself

My project work has been postponing because of some silly logistics. So I have nothing to do but wait here at Rishi Valley.
Everyone tells me this is a wonderful opportunity. And I know it. When else do you get to spend so much time with the trees, the clouds, the open sky and fresh breeze? With sunsets and birds and an occasional snake? What a golden oppurtunity! Yes I know it, I know it very well.
It’s all nice on day one.
It’s nice on day two too.
It’s ok on day three.
By day four you make so many phone calls, you are sure your phone bill is going to shoot up.
By the end of the week, you dream of meeting your friends and family, you are walking down streets and roads of your neighbourhood in your sleep.
By the end of two weeks you are on the verge of depression.

This temporal cycle also has a sub-cycle- a circadian one. Here is how it goes:
In the morning, you wake up feeling aweommse! The birds are singing, the sun is shining and you say to yourself, it couldn’t be a better day. After breakfast, you start your work. There are tonnes of things you have to do. Email your boss, analyze data, read through those books you have to read, do some more literature surveys. You do all this with enthusiasm till its lunch time. Lunch is served at the dining hall ten minutes from your house. Occasionally you meet some interesting people at the lunch table. Small talk happens. This is when you realize that you haven’t opened your mouth at all and used your pharynx to make sounds all morning. For a girl who was always caught in school for talking too much, this is a phenomenon to be reckoned with.

After lunch you get back to work. Read a book, surf net, read another book, read a paper, read your friend’s blogpost, read yet another book by yourself. Even after reading so much you realize you are, without a doubt, bored. You try to write, but mostly in vain. Sometimes something reasonably ok turns out, like this blogpost.

It’s 4.00 pm. Time to get up and exercise.
Tea must be getting served in the dining hall. Off you go for some tea, by yourself. Next item on the agenda- birding. Birding is fun. It is the only activity of the day that has an element of surprise in it. You never know which bird you’ll get to see up close, which bird will allow you to take awesome pics you can put up on facebook. Ah! The purple sunbird was posing so well! I’ll get lots of comments on my FB for this one!
There are lots of nice spots here for perfect sunsets. You sit on a hill top, or near a pond, or on open fields and watch the sun set aginst the hills. It's beautiful! You sit there with the breeze in your hair, again, all by yourself. You wish there was someone with you with whom you could enjoy this scene. It's not an idle thought. You really yearn for it. You really want company.

You come back home. Do the laundry, wash some vessels or sweep the floor. By yourself.
Dinner time.
Again, how well dinner goes depends on the people that come and join you at the table.
Walking back from dinner is when the feeling of dread sets in. Your house is in one direction the rest of the hostels are in the other. You walk back home; (need I mention) by yourself. After unlocking the door to the quiet house the first thing you do is switch on your laptop. I need some sound! Music. Any music. Anything other than this deathly silence. You while away your time doing general things- checking your fb friends’ status accounts, their pics, chatting. You constantly look at your watch. It’s only 8.30 pm.
Then you reach for your cell phone. Whom should I call today? I miss them ALL so much! The talks last for more than an hour. They leave you smiling and reminiscing about all your city-days. Later, the number of your yawns increase. It’s 10.00 pm. Time to sleep. One by one you switch off each light. With the diminishing of each source of light, you feel that the silence becomes more prominent, more noticeable. The switching off of the last light is the worst. As total darkness engulfs you and the house, you edge towards your bed, wimpering in your head.
What was that? That noise? Must be a toad. From outside. Sure it was from outside?
It’s nothing. You are just imagining it.
And that? That was definitely something. Yeah, but it was from outside. Must be those toads in the leaf litter. Should definately clear the leaf litter tomorrow. Leaf litter and toads- perfect place for snakes...
Did the door just crack open? No. It is just the small sounds houses make at night. It’s perfectly normal!
And that scratching noise? Hmm, either rats or civets on the roof again.
With these thoughts you fall asleep, by yourself.

Delays! Delays! Delays!

But I do want to work!

I want to be busy. I want to drown in work and be so busy that I have no time for sadness, no time for loneliness.

Just me and my work.

Then why does it not happen?

I just want my work to start now. But the fact that it's not in my hands is frustrating! I cannot do anything till the props are ready. Too many delays. They just make your enthu snuff out. I am tired of wasting my time. I am tired of nothing happening. I can't wait for the real work to begin. The anticipation of the results is killing me!

This is it

I have to live all by myself from today onwards for a month or so.

The following quote is for my new dearest friend, Sumit:

"May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds."

-Edward Abbey

Finally!!!

A cute guy on campus!!!
FINALLY!!!!
yipppeeee!!!! :) :) :)

Ah!

As I was walking back from dinner tonight, I saw the headlights of a car approaching steadily. Prolly going to the guesthouses to pick someone up, I thought to myself. Then as the car passed by me, I smelled something. Something I had smelled before. A smell I knew. Ah! Gasoline!

I was smelling an automobile's exhaust after eons.

This realization made my day. :)

Hmm so...I did not clear NCBS or CSIR-UGC NET.

But I'm ok.

I just came back form watching a movie in the school's audi which is a 10 minute walk from our house. So after the movie, we had a nice walk under the stars; the sky was especially beautiful tonight and I felt oh so awesome in this place.

Had an unusual day today. I saw how the locals celebrate Pongal by decorating their cattle and dancing and cheering. I met some very wonderful people working in various fields and had some very interesting and enlightning conversations with them. All in all, I'm having a good time. And I'm really very happy.

Yes, I did not clear these exams, but somehow...I'm not loosing faith in myself like I used to earlier. I do firmly believe I can achieve what I want to, exams or no exams. Exactly how that's going to happen I do not know now, yet...

Right before I saw the results online, I asked myself what if I don't clear this exam? And I felt all timid and scared. I almost whimpered to myself "oh no!!! oh no!! I'm so scared! What if I don't clear it?"

Then I asked myself- "What's the worst that can happen?"

That made me find peace.

(Anupamaa, are you reading this?)

Rebuilding a lost world, piece by piece

I lost ALL of my bookmarks when I formatted my C drive recently. Never knew google chrome stored bookmarks on your local drive, thought it was more like google toolbar bookmarks, which are stored under your google account. Painstakingly obtained, meticulously organized information...all lost.
Its a sad thing you know,to loose all the pages you liked, adored, were attached to, and were just a click of a button away...
Tonight I'm trying to fill the gaps, trying to reassemble all that I lost. It has a rejuvenating feeling to it, like reforestation of a degraded habitat...
I thought one of the reasons I have been unable to start hard core work on my pc is because I have been reluctant to manually search all those pages again.
I hope this action brings back the enth.

City girl misses the peak hour traffic

I am not used to this.
I don't want to get used to this.
Never thought I'll miss the sound of the loud TV, traffic noises, the honking, the screeching of brakes, the sound of the fast trains, the fights in the ladies compartments...
This is toooo silent for me.
Too closed a system.
Too small, too peaceful, too fairytale-like. The same people, the same food, the same places day in and day out.
Work has kinda come to a standstill. It won't begin before the 25th for whatever reasons.
So here I am, I have tonnes and tonnes of other awesome stuff I can do here, want to do here, should do here, but am not.
Not enthu.

Tales from the Valley

I'll post all my Rishi Valley posts under this heading, and give a brief background before I start. The background will be common for all posts.

Background- Rishi Valley is a place in the middle of southern rural India surrounded by farms, orchards, rocky hills and more farms. It also happens to be the place where I am working currently.

The following is one of the numerous incidents that has defined the whole Rishi-Valley-experience for me. Hopefully, more will follow.

It was an unusually hot day. I was on my way from Rishi Valley to Bangalore.To make this journey you have to hop onto a number of rickety buses and autorickshaws- that are more like a random assemblage of nuts and bolts that may all disassemble with the next road bump. As I said, it was an unusually hot day and my backpack with my laptop, clothes and an assortment of things I always carry but never use was not making things any easier. So as I stood in the bus’s aisle I cursed pretty much everything around me.

The bus made yet another halt and a hoard of people got in. Great, I thought. Just what I need. As the throng of people pushed inside, I suddenly found myself at the receiving end of a stampede in the narrow aisle. There is no way these guys can move in, I thought. There simply isn’t any space! A man tried to get past me. The grey hair on his beard were covered with dust, and yet stood out on his wrinkled, dark face. He was wearing what once must have been a white shirt and a white lungi. They looked more like brown than white now, just like his hair. He tried to motion to me to move so he could get past me. At that moment I don’t know how or why, I happened to look into his eyes. And as I saw the eyes of that farmer, I mused- ‘The tomatoes I had in my rassam today might have been from his farm’. I have no idea where this thought came from. It just appeared there in my head, out of nowhere. I imagined a single tomato making its journey from that man’s hand to my mouth.

I smiled, and let him through.

Priceless

Wow..I can't believe I'm leaving tomorrow. Didn't think the days would pass by so quickly and it'll be time to leave already.

This time, it's going to be harder. I am going to miss home much more than last time. In fact, I didn'teven miss it last time. But this time, I know what I'll be leaving behind, and how much it's worth.

Never thought human beings could be priceless.

My school reunion

There was a school reunion yesterday. I didn't really attend it. Why? Well...I'm not really a fan of school reunions actually. I had posted something about my school reunions on my earlier blog eons ago. I shall post it here now, to get the point across.

My school reunion

So Pranali calls me up today and asks if I have plans for the following evening, Why? Because a sudden school reunion has been arranged.

My first reaction- “Arrrrggghhh!!! Noooo!!!”

I have better things to do, thank you.

I mean, think about it, what could be worse than being greeted by some female (who, apparently, thinks showing your undies through your jeans and your nipples through your tight top is cool) with a big , “ HI!!! YASHADA!!’ and pecking you on your cheek (because it’s the hep thing to do) while you franctically try to jog through your memory trying to remember her name.

Did I say, what could be worse? Maybe this: Some other ‘babe’ showing off her new state-of-the-art cell phone and ‘accidentally’ scrolling to the folder full of her latest boy friend’s pics. While you smile back and throw some words of admiration at her, you are going “YUUUK!! what in the world did she find so cute in that guy??!”

And then the usual, “ I’m doing blah blah course from blah blah college” and “ My brother is in UK now, I’ll be joining him this fall”

No wonder you get to watch Desperate Housewives on TV, not Desperate Men.


I shifted to my dear wonderful school when I was in std 3rd. I did pretty much the same things that I did in my old school, but somehow things were different here. Why? Well, you can give it any other reason you like, but I think there is only one answer to it.
My previous school was co-ed, this one, was girls only.

(I am not trying to be anti-feminist or sexist at all. I am simply pointing out to you what life is like in such a school. And I am sure many of you will oppose this view strongly, but ‘freedom of speech’ are the only words I can think of).

Anyways, so I joined this school and searched for a niche for myself and tried to ‘fit in’. And in time I found one (for all those who don’t know or don’t remember, I was the weird kid in school who thought dinosaur names were cool and by-hearted the geological time-scale for fun.)

Not that school years were altogether bad. The one thing I am really glad about is that I forged an ever-lasting friendship with Pranali. And…..um…well, ya that’s pretty much it. Can’t think of any other ‘good’ things….

(As i write all this, at the back of my head, i'm visualising my clothes rack, thinking 'what shall i wear for the reunion? hmm, wonder if i should do something with my hair...'
i hate to admit it, but i'm no different from those girls!!)

P.S. Just for the record, Pranu attended yesterday's reunion. Apparently it was not that bad...

Shopaholic?

The 2^nd of Jan 2010 shall go down in history as Yashada’s day of shopping.

I woke up at 7.30 in the morning for the sole purpose of marauding a clothes store. I have never really been stricken by a shopper’s craze as such, and never thought I would be the types to wake up to an early morning alarm just to go shopping. But, it was the first day of an off season sale, I was low on cash and I badly needed clothes for my field trip. Also, I wanted to avoid the crazed Lokhandwala crowd that looks like it’s come prepared more for warfare than a sale, early morning would be a good idea, I thought. Sadly, all the women in Andheri thought the same, and I found the store to be jam-packed at 9.30 in the morning. 9.30 in the morning!! How insane is that?? So after battling for the trial rooms with women who had picked up every piece of clothing they thought would fit them and after battling some more with women brandishing credit cards at the payment counter, I was out. The actual shopping part took about 25 minutes of my time, the rest of the hour and a half was the battle part.

But this was just the beginning. The more interesting event happened post-lunch.

Nachi, Viraj two of my closest friends were facing a dilemma-

You see they have a very dear friend from their school years, whom they have not met for a while, because the dear friend is in the US. This dear friend’s birthday was coming up and, good kind hearted souls that they are, Nachi Viraj planned to courier a birthday present to this dear friend all the way to the US. Now, the dilemma rested in the fact that they didn’t know what to buy as the birthday present. And the reason this was a dilemma for these boys was the fact that their friend happened to be a girl.

What do you buy as a birthday present for a friend, if the friend happens to be a girl?

Wow, I thought, men really don’t know what women want.

So I played consultant. I met them at this place in Ghatkopar called R World, it’s supposedly the biggest mall in Mumbai/India/this side of Asia, or something like that. In short, its HUGE.

We discussed the situation over frankies and colas at the Foodcourt. I asked all the relevant questions-

Who is this girl? Where does she live? What does she do? How old is she? What does she like? What does she not like?

After doing what I hoped to appear like some deep thinking, I walked out of the foodcourt and behaved as if the situation was under control and asked them to follow me.

And that is exactly what they did.

If anyone had seen us then, they would have seen a girl being literally followed by two, bewildered looking boys. Poor souls, they had no idea what to look for and where. I suppose they were like 3 year olds following their mother in a fair, scared not to stray too far away from her.

I was fascinated to realize how simple the task actually seemed to me, and how much importance they were giving to this situation. As if it was a vexed problem that needed some intense thinking and studying to be solved. But I played along and gave them solace by agreeing that the situation needed a great deal of effort to resolve. I think I did a pretty neat job. Hmm, maybe I should go pro.

If I had to buy a gift for a friend, I would have bought her something she likes, or, if I was in almost constant touch with her, then I would have known if there is something she was looking for, and according to my budget bought the gift. Or, in case she had everything she wanted, or if no ideas came to me, I would have gone strolling around in stores. And the moment I would have seen something good, I would have just bought it, provided it fitted in my budget. Simple!

But I should have known, Nachi Viraj- my ‘ clients’- are IIT-ians/IIM-ians. In other words, they are methodical, precise, and their brains work on logic not impulse.

So for three hours we searched for purses, bags, bangles, bracelets, earrings, necklaces, clothes….

And after they had surveyed the whole of their sample space did they make very logical and non-impulsive decisions, and finalized the gift items.

All this required a lot of effort on their part, and finally when we were done, they dragged me to this place called Jammin where they splurged on loud video games that involved a lot of guns, bikes and cars and crashing a lot of these things together. I had more fun watching the mad grin on their faces as they played these games. Jammin completed these two boys the way Wonderland completes Alice, or Neverland completes Peter Pan, or like Hogwarts completes Harry Potter. Nachi, Viraj had arrived! After three hours of looking at girly stuff, I think they deserved it!