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!