I. love. the. airport.

My favorite place in Bangalore undoubtedly and without competition is the airport. It's unbelievable how much I love the place. I have an almost sentimental attachment with the place. I have hugged, cried, held friends, smiled, laughed, felt ecstatic, waited anxiously and watched with a sad heart as friends and loved ones left. It's as if buckets of all emotions were emptied in one place - their contents thrown out on the canvas of the arrival and departure gates. The place is magic.



The coffee at the airport? It's just normal cafe coffee day coffee but do i love it. Again because it's coffee loaded with all the goodness of all the emotions of picking up friends and seeing them after weeks or maybe months and just taking every bit of goodness in over a cup of coffee. The coffee allows the happiness to sink in and the feelings to settle. You know, get over the ecstasy of seeing people you love after a long time and get your adrenaline back to normal levels. You know the feeling, right? The coffee allows me to drink in the love, the warmth, the moment. Trust me, at any other given moment, I do not like CCD coffee. I'm a south indian that way. Filter coffee for me is what it is.



Do I sound weird? Maybe. But then I'm alone in this city and all my family and friends (barring a couple), basically people that I love are far away. So, they have to come through this airport. Again if I've to go see them, I've to go through the airport. The airport is my gateway to my loved ones. Does it make sense now? In any interaction with anyone that I love, the airport is instrumental. Hence, the almost mad love for the place.



But it would be unfair to say that that is the only reason for the love. The place is really awesome on its own. The lawns, the gardens, the benches, the coffee shops, the eateries, the people, the sheer energy and emotions. It's fun to watch all the people there and guess their stories. You know, like lovers seeing each other off who just can't let each other go, or spouses picking up their better halves -some only for formality, others genuinely happy, parents waving final good-byes to a child who mostly is going abroad to study, families giving assurances to a jittery young lady who is presumably flying abroad for the first time to be with her husband, uncles who cannot stop giving final instructions to their families, so on and so forth. It's full on entertainment - the breadth and depth of these emotions. At which other place do you see such uninhibited display of so many emotions.



Just like at the library, I can spend hours at this airport and stay entertained. But unlike the library, I go here way too many times. Not that I'm complaining. I can go more often and I would go more often if I had my way. Also, unlike the library, they have coffee. :)

god's own country

I spent my saturday here:



But more on this later. Have to get earlier things out of way first.

The gift of long weekend, one week back, was very well received and very well utilized. When I was a young and dreamy girl, I saw an ad in the paper which showed a young couple in the rains under a canopy of lush green trees. The ad was for Kerala in the monsoons and my young heart melted looking at the picture and I have wanted to go to kerala since that day. If it's in the rains, better!

And I got it baby! More than 10 years later but I did make it happen. Yeah, I rock like that.

And just like that it was another awesome adventure. Adventure I call it because it was. Most of the drive was through forests; we even stayed in a foresty area though there were some houses nearby but it was in the midst of a forest; none of the doors in our house had latches!! What?? Yup! Midway through the first night, I thought someone would come in and slit my throat (I do blame a certain guy who put this idea in my head just as I was about to slip under my blanket).



It was officially accepted by my friends that lack of sunshine drives me nuts. So much so that it's not even funny. What happened was that the first day we landed there it was raining continuously and the sunshine person that I am, I was majorly depressed. I even suggested that we go back after all that driving we had done to reach the place. Nuts I know. Good sense prevailed my friends who put their foot down and that proved to be a good thing because sun smiled for us for the rest of our trip. Smiled less, burnt is more like it. And I loved every bit of the warmth on my skin which pissed off my friends further because it was HOT. I think they might have cursed all the sun drama that I do.

But I welcomed the sun and drank in every bit of its warmth. and my friends concluded that lack of sun causes serious harm to people around me.



As usual, we enjoyed lazy mornings of refilled tea glasses.



And evenings of friends huddled together and sharing and cribbing and laughing.



We went to a 5000 years old temple. Yes I went to a temple. I do that sometimes. Mostly because it was a pretty walk through a forest and the temple was 5000 years old. And I'm only 97% atheist. I even prayed.



It helps if the temple has a run down moss covered smaller ignored building that no one would come to.



We met the coolest old man with a pretty young wife who also happens to be the world's best cook. She made the most awesome fish curry and her chicken curry was to die for. Serious.



And I call him coolest because he drove his jeep over the most treacherous mud path right on the edge of a cliff. With all the ease and composure of a pro.



We met some of our jungle friends on our way. It was quite poetic the way deers galloped right in front of our car as we drove through the forest.



The icing on this trip was bluff. Yeah baby. My first real card game. I couldn't get enough of it, I'm dying for an encore. If you didn't know, I suck at cards. You should see me shuffling.



Another discovery was 'puttu', typical kerala breakfast, and that it makes me wanna throw up. yeckkkksssss!! You know what calls for another yeckkksss?? - leeches who tried to be our friends on our random walks through random forests. What were we expecting in a dense swampy forests after heavy rains, anyways?

The kerala ad in the paper years back had no mention of leeches or puttu (I wonder why). But it did show a good time and good time I had!

The adventure of dancing men

As I mentioned in my last post, I celebrated my birthday a while back, well, almost a month back, in Ooty. It was a last minute plan, like all other plans. I got my friends together, looked for a place, made a booking, got into the car and left.

The drive to ooty is a little longish and winding. Mostly because I don't want to risk taking my car up the 36 hairpin bends, so I take the longer but less steep route. On the other hand, the drive is a treat in itself as we have to drive through some amazing forests and if we are lucky, we can see wild animals up close and personal, like this guy:




It was three days of relaxing, having a good time with friends, of putting my feet up, of sleeping under the sun in the afternoon in a public garden, and just doing what I felt like. It was three days of (re-)discovering that I have great friends who love me and care for me. It was three days of going where your feet may take you. Nobody cared about watches or schedules.

Not to forget, it was three days of very chilly weather. Now the thing is that I went to ooty last year April and somewhere in my mind, I concluded that "ooty is not chilly this time of the year. It gets nippy in the evenings but otherwise it's fine". Turns out, not fine, extremely chilly. Note to myself: weather changes in two months. Not to mention, multiple layers of clothing followed.

There was lots of tea. Cue: cold weather, good times with friends.




There were conversations around warm fireplaces.



There were layers and layers of clothes and a beautiful property that made this stay all the more amazing.



Like I said, there were lots of moments that we stopped to savor only that moment. How many times have you passed by a field of sunflowers on a highway and said to yourself that "one day, I'll stop to admire them and take their beauty in".




I completely spoilt myself and indulged my sweet tooth way too much. (I ordered and finished both desserts on the right in one sitting)



I was gifted two gorgeous lenses for my camera and this trip was when I unleashed the babies. I came back with close to 800 pics in my canon DSLR and more than 200 pics in my sony. So we did take a lot of pics. I like to say we were perfecting our art.







Now to explain the title of this post. We stayed at this quaint and most awesome heritage property Sherlock. These guys have styled each room after a novel of Sherlock Holmes and the room that I stayed in was called 'Dancing Men' and needless to say, the theme was 'the adventure of dancing men'.

Since I've mentioned my last trip to ooty, I can't end this post without digging out memories from that trip - a trip that was in a very different zone compared to this one but is very special nonetheless.

feels like home

I am back from my not first, not second, not third, wait for it, fifth trip to auroville. Needless to say, I am in love with the place. When I say love, I mean loooove. If there is something like karmic connection or any such jazz, I would definitely have one with this place.

The first time I went to Auroville, I was looking for answers. I was going through a bad patch and I was in the why-me mode. My first memory of Auroville is sitting in the lawn of the crowded visitor centre and crying. I couldn't care less if anyone was looking.

I stayed at the most beautiful guest house Sharnga. The place is pure bliss. Everyday I woke up to the chirps of birds and the calls of peacocks.



Like I said, I was looking for answers at that point and answers I did get. I met Peter at Sharnga, a Canadian professor. We met casually over dinner at the guest house and I latched on to him like a leech.

I still carry our conversations as lessons which have touched so many areas of my life. Infact, I live by some of the rules I learnt from him an one of my trips to Auroville was only to meet him again.

He suggested me to read 'The Power of Now' and I loved the book. For one, the book describes how every negative thought is the creation of your mind and you can stop a free fall into negativity by controlling your mind and stopping it at the first negative thought.

I can't explain it well. You have to read the book. The main point is that you should be the master of your mind, not the other way around.

My fifth trip was a lot of fun (like all the earlier ones). I drove with a cool bunch of friends. The road trip is so much fun.

This time I was supposed to meet Ulrik, my bus friend from Norway. Long story short, I met him while going to the airport on the bus. And again while coming back from the airport. And just like that, we became friends. Fun fact about Ulrik: He does not know who Demo Moore is but he knows who Shilpa Shetty is beacuse he has seen hey yoga DVD :P.



We had hours of discussions on cultures, religions, constellations, history, yada yada



And we ended with stealing mangoes from an orchard. Hehe. It was so amazing: locating a mango orchard in pitch dark in the middle of nowhere along the highway, stopping and searching for a way to get in, taking the mangoes and finally, enjoying them by the side of the highway.

Talk about ending on a high note! Fun fun fun!

Count your blessings

Last week was not particularly a good one. Something I was planning on doing for a while didn't materialize. Well, I was disappointed but I got back on my feet fairly quickly and I'm back to my rocking self. Obviously, having good friends around you always helps, doesn't it? And that brings us to the case in point, namely, Abs.

He, single-handedly, pulled me out of the doldrums by trying (really hard) to cheer me up till very late in the night. He stuck around till he was sure that I'm really really sleepy and don't have any more energy to sulk :). The fact that he lives nowhere close to me just made his task a lot tougher but then if it ain't tough, it's not worth writing about!

Then early morning, the doorbell rang and at the door was this:



Now, aren't they right when they say, if you can't be there, do the next best thing - send flowers. Well, I don't think anybody has said that, but I wish someone would :).



When I asked abs why he sent me flowers now, he said "expect the unexpected". The statement is flawed and I really want to ask him how to expect the unexpected. Because if I expect something, it won't remain unexpected. But Whatever!

The whole thing reminded me once again how I am so blessed with the most amazing friends who bless me with these lovely gestures. Ups and downs are a part of life - we just need to count our blessings!

The tito's curse

2010 wasn't a great year. Infact, it was disastrous. Horrible things happened - both personal as well as professional. I even fell sick for a month! But then as they say, every adversity teaches us something and we have the choice of learning from it and growing. Not every, I would say but most of them do.

Enough gyan done.

They also say that all's well that ends well. And if we go by this then what a year 2010 was. OMG. The end of 2010 marked the end of the tito's curse. What is the tito's curse, you ask? Well, everyone around me, everyone you know and their sister and brother have been to tito's and mambo's at baga in goa. Except, humble mortal, me.

So, towards the end of 2010, I vowed to end the year on a high note and I set the wheels turning. Afterall, you have to make things happen for yourself, right? After weeks of meticulous planning and plotting and convincing and negotiating and a bit of serendipity, lo and behold, I was in goa with some awesome people. It was slow and ordinary till after dinner on the first day when I stepped into tito's. And then I partied. And how. For the next 4 days, it was a dusk to dawn affair in tito's lane. I slept only after seeing the morning light everyday.

Not to mention that it took me days to recuperate after all this madness but what the hell, it was totally worth it.

Going to goa, staying right on the beach, drinking tea (yes, not beer) all day long and partying all night with the most awesome friends. If I had a bucket list, this would have been on it and I would have ticked it right off at the end of 2010.

chikka mari!!

I remember when my bestest friend Su's dad used to call her "shali mari" and i used to burst out laughing because in hindi 'mari' translates to 'died'. Well, that was not what her dad meant. Her dad was endearingly calling her a sweet little kid, loosely translated from Kannada.

And now 'shali mari' has a 'mari' of her own. The title says 'chikka mari' because having been in bangalore for sometime, I myself have picked up a bit of Kannada and 'chikka' is small. So there you go.



I can't believe that that mad young girl who used to do walk back from college with me is now a mom to a beautiful daughter! And let me tell you Su is pretty mad, the maddest girl I've known. To see her with her daughter is such a joy because this is what she always wanted and dreamt of.

To many more of her dreams coming true!!

First impression

Whoever said that "first impression is the last impression" was an idiot!

How is that even possible? People have gone horribly wrong with me and I've gone absolutely horribly wrong with people when it comes to first encounters.

Now, maybe this is true of job interviews or more formal meetings when you know that 10 minutes or so is all you have. But what about when you meet the same person over and over and over again? Don't your perceptions go through one of those huge revolving crusher machines every single time? Well, mine do. Till I reach a stable point where I have figured out the person reasonably well.

Blame my geminian fickle-minded-ness. My opinions about a person can go from one end of the spectrum directly to the opposite end in one meeting which maybe the 2nd or the 12th. That doesn't matter. What matters is whether that person is buried so deep under in my 'good books' that one/two actions or statements will not make me tear up his/her page.

There have been times when people have not even registered with me after I have been around them for over months. Then stuff has happened, we came close and we became best buddies and continue to remain so. There is no scope for a first impression when I don't even remember my first meeting with them. Su, God gulty, abs, Rajesh, Suzie, Sho all fall in this category.

I have always grown fond of people or un-fond. I have drifted towards people or away. Gradually. By the time I realized how much I love these people, I have forgotten what my first meeting with them was like.

What should also be noted is that my finding a person so-damn-cute/attractive/ohh-m-g is invariably always followed by my asking myself "What the eff were you thinking?". My people evaluation kit is grossly under-stocked.

To make things better(??), I have consolation in the fact that other people too have been wrong about me before they got to know me better. I have been thought to be a snob, a loner, a spoilt brat, irresponsible, not-interested-in-studies, callous...I should stop. Well, these opinions have changed over time and that is the only reason why they are mentioned here. There is no place for negativity on this blog, especially if it's about me.

Now, whoever said "All that glitters is not gold" made so much more sense. There is an entire science to understanding people. People are complex and there is so much more to them than just first impressions and first hand-shakes. If it was not the case, I would be highly unpopular!

Its been a while

...since I posted last but it was only because after 15th Feb life was fucking with me. First, ISB didn't want me and then just when I got over that slight, something far worse happened. Actually, it was happening for sometime, only I was not aware. And it took immense amount of time and effort to emerge out of this one. Can't say I am still out of it, but I am getting there!

One belief that has been reinforced in the past 2 and a half months is that God does look after me and everytime he screws with my life, he sends someone to pull me out of the shit. Either that or I am a very 'go-along' person and I can get along with almost everyone. Nah, I think the previous option is correct. God is calculating to the nano scale and maintaining a very fine balance in my life. He's like, I screwed with you for 15 nano units so, let me show you a good time of 14.5 nano units. Something of that sort.

And I say this because initially I was a mess. I wouldn't go out, I wouldn't eat, wouldn't sleep, would drink a lot (almost everyday) and wouldn't stop crying. I was a beeyach basically and I would just curl up at home and scream at anyone who tried coming close.

Then, very dramatically, just like that, one fine day, I found my happy streak. I cannot pin-point to that moment but I can definitely pin point to the person who indirectly, just by being there made it all happen. Here is one more person who gets credit for being at the right place at the right time. (I have a few more of such persons and I give them too much credit which some other people feel is undeserved).

I managed to be quite a fun person in the past 2 months despite the painful incident. I visited Auroville and Pondicherry. Auroville was awesome beyond words and also helped me clear my head of a lot of mess. I also drove to Ooty and Coonoor and saw the most amazing forests. I made a very good friend. I had some crazy party nights and some absolutely amazing evenings. I did not sleep for one entire night purely out of choice. I was having coffee at the airport instead. I also managed a week of vacationing in Mumbai. I finally went to Blue Frog at Parel. This was something high up on my list of things-to-do. And I had an amazing evening filled with humidity and salty sea breeze at the Aer lounge in Four Seasons Mumbai.

When this one lady walked into Aer at 12.30 in the night and asked for a table, I, for the nth time, felt that maybe Mumbai is sticky and smelly and hot, it is so much cooler. In other places, such as the one I stay in, I can only wish to be served after 11.00pm. And that wish doesn't go down too well with the waiters and I am threatened with police action. Way to go Mumbai!!

I do not know how the chain of thoughts has made me end up praising Mumbai. I guess its out of habit. Its also a good note to end this rambler of a post.