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.