Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Airport Talkies

Place: Mumbai Airport
Reason: Traveling back to college, came to Bombay for my visa interview. Yours truly is going to be in San Francisco for her summer internship.
Time: 5:45 pm, Thursday, 25th March.

Unless there is some pressing work at the other end, airports can be a lovely place to spend time in. And one of the many things that I love about Mumbai is its new airport.
(Friends call me a promotion advertisement for Mumbai.
Mumbai this, Mumbai that.
Mumbai there, Mumbai here.
But I genuinely can’t help it. Mumbai is where home is & Mumbai is where heart is.
)

Call me kiddish, but I love the brightness of the airport. The many counters of food, chocolate donuts, steamed coffee, stark red colors, the plush seats, hot dogs, newspapers, overhearing snatches of conversations, interesting pieces of luggage (for example, the female seated opposite me is holding a huge tweety soft toy, making the ‘curious me’ worrying about who she is taking it for). The reason I love airports most is the random thoughts that sift through my minds while traveling, which inspire me to write every single time. Perhaps this is the only time there is nothing at all to do, no work to worry about, no assignment to finish and no quiz to prepare for. Airports are also a great place to catch up on novels, undisturbed with no buzzes by people in between. Having chosen consulting as a career, it is good that I like airports, considering the fact that I might be spending a considerable amount of time traveling.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

They left it behind


A half scribbled diary

Life strings: confused and wiry


An Orkut account

An entire life to mount


An old photograph

Into real people you wish it would morph


A blood Soiled shirt

A full cycle of death and birth


An uncontested remote

Myriad tragedies to emote


A mute phone

Blood chilled to the bones


A flick of hand

A wrong turn

A crash of glass

And silence forever


With halted conversation and speechless goodbyes, they left. May God Bless them.

Friday, November 13, 2009

Out of the blue


Seafood Risotto and Chocolate Fondue
Anyone who knows me a little well, knows my food cravings from time to time. This is another one of the sets of food that I miss in Ahmedabad, in addition to Thai prawn curry and BBQ chicken, Chicken dimsums and Crabmeat soup:P. And this particular set was first tried by me at Out of the Blue, Carter Road, Bandra. We ventured there due to R's insistence, due to her fondness for Choc Fondue. I still remember that dinner. It was once when all 7 of us were present ( C took a lot of convincing). Most of us were pretty broke and everything on the menu looked tempting and "burn a hole in the pocket" kind, unfortunately when our pockets were kind of already full of holes. Then my eyes landed on the Seafood Risotto. The descriptions sounded heavenly:prawns, squids, cheese, rice..yummy..And the price tab said Rs 400. The 400 declaration made me swtich the page I was on to pastas and sandwiches and sizzlers which seemed much more in the budget. But the prawns seemed to call me to them and after much discussion, debate with everyone and internal turmoil, I decided to SPLURGE. The happiness that I got from eating the Risotto that day was something which I believe was worth the 400 spent. And then it was followed by the delicious fondue which sort of made the day complete. Well satisfied by the dinner and the banter over the dinner, we went back satiated and content. A night well spent!

I returned to the restaurant twice after that, once with a friend, and once with my parents. I missed it a lot in the last 3 months and yesterday I revisited it with my parents to have my favourite combination, and the contentment I felt was still the same. The law of diminishing marginal utility doesn't always apply:)

Thursday, November 12, 2009

To memories!

We never know when we're making a memory, perhaps if we knew, we would try and frame them in our minds better. This blogpost and some more in the future are dedicated to the memories that I have had in my life, the moments that have touched me: some crazy, some beautiful, some painful, some heartbreaking, some utterly romantic, some hugely embarrassing. Perhaps its an attempt to crystallize them before they burst away like bubbles.

Also, since some of these memories may have been shared with close friends, the other readers of the blog may not connect. So go on reading only if you have too much time to kill! And please pardon the fact that my writing is rusty from not having written for effectively almost an year.

H10 IDOL

So, R, N and I happened to be the only ones of the gang left on a particular weekend in IITB. And it turned out to be the HOSTEL IDOL weekend. Our amazing singing capabilities, (in case anyone is in doubt, Nithya is not the N, I donot wish people to even remotely confuse us immensely talented people with her:D) and the immense confidence that being in the final year had given us, and probably the lure of more masala in the valfies led us to participate in the competition. We decided to perform two songs, "Tu Tu hai wahi" and "Eli re Eli". We practised our lungs out and realised that our real talent could only be our costumes or rather their absence;) and not our melodious and cacophonous voices. Hence we went on to invent quite innovative costumes inspired by our songs. Our girl audience am sure would not have forgotten getting such a sight of their fourthies. People who are as talented as us and who have never got a chance to display their talent before, will understand the high that we must have got when we were given the mic and a full audience. We went on blaring into the mic, full of optimism, cheered on by our very supportive audience, adjusting our costumes fearing a wardrobe malfunction, forgetting all lines except for the chorus. Inspite of the ruckus we created, we managed our way into the second round (final year senti) but then lost to a freshie who had to be adjudged the best to encourage future talent!! Yet another bead in the string of crazy/foolish doings in last semester :)

But later that night, C, G and I had the mic and the superlounge to ourselves and we performed every favorite song, disturbed every person in the neighbouring rooms shamefully, danced till our feet ached, laughed till our throats parched. A moment that stays close to my heart.

TIP:For anyone who fears dancing and singing, get a mic, trust me it makes the fear go whizzzzz!!!!

Saturday, June 13, 2009

To new beginnings!

Its been 6 months since I signed into blogger. I can count this as my worst kept new years resolution (reference:previous post). Forget working on my writing, i have done nothing productive in the last 6 months except have a ball doing nothing :D. Have enjoyed every bit of the last four months at IIT. Now news for my readers : Yours truly will be joining IIM Ahmedabad in the coming week and subjecting herself to 2 years of torturous studies! I am excited as well as scared as I don't know how I will stand there. 2 more years of resume making and interviews and shortlists. Phew! And I thought I had enough of that after the 16 interviews that I gave on Day 1 of placements.

Its becoming very tough to write, it seems I have totally lost the habit, so pardon me for the bland posts for a few days. I am forcing words out of myself which I seem to have locked up and forgotten in some lazy part of my brain. Btw, just wanted to praise an author I am loving these days. Amitav Ghosh. I read three of his books, one was downright boring (Calcutta Chromosome), but the other two (The Hungry Tide and The Glass Palace) really left an indelible impression on me. The guy writes so beautifully , it seems as if you are viewing a painting/movie and not reading a book. I have never been one for descriptive authors, but this one changed my outlook. I especially loved Glass Palace for the way it dealt with the issue of Indian soldiers in the British army who revolted against the British in the Second World War to pressurise them for independence. There is some romanticism and charm in his key characters which make you want to read the book continually.

Waise now I am on to Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra. I am past 200 odd pages, it seems a really good book too. Will continue with the book now, need to finish 600 more pages before I leave for Ahmedabad. Will sincerely try to post here more often!

Thursday, January 01, 2009

Of 2009 and new year resolutions!

Happy New Year everyone:)
Last year has been an eventful one, with internship, CAT and then placement season.
And thankfully, its been a successful one in almost all respects:)
And now for another year, 2009! Thats when I will start working in a new city, Noida. (I don't know if I mentioned this before on the blog, but yes, ALAS! I am finally going to leave Mumbai after an amazing 8 year stay here)

I guess we do find reasons to make every year eventful:)

As for my new year resolutions:

1) I WILL read slowly and learn something from every book I read and jot down my observations somewhere. (I have been thinking of doing this for the last so many years but have been too lazy to follow this)
2) I am somehow going to work on my writing style in professional terms and try and improve it.
3) I am going to try every good restaurant in Bombay as I can before leaving the city ( atleast as many as possible)
4) And I plan to try all the weird outfits I have ever wanted to, before going into the life of business suits!