3 long years or 3 short years

I have just completed 3 years in bangalore. Well, my love for bangalore is well known and this post is not about that.

Coming every morning and sitting in the same cube at around the same time has done very little for my vitality and happiness BUT I managed to notice a nice little nature cycle.

This is the view from my cube (not exactly, a little to the right):






Every february, I see the tree shed leaves and become bare. Then in a matter of days it gets these tiny sprouts, which grow into lush green leaves and before you know it, the tree again has a lush green canopy. Infact, right now, the tree is covered with infinite lovely pink flowers. (Too bad I don't have a picture of that). All these pictures are taken at an interval of one week. In only one week, the tree undergoes complete transformation.

This is the fourth spring I'm witnessing in this place and fourth time I have seen this cycle.

Makes me realize that springs, summers, monsoons and winters have flown past me and will keep flying by. How many times will I and you be able to see a plant spring back to life or a garden full of all the flowery spring goodness?

Life is short and we should cram up all the goodness we can in whatever it is that matters to us in this short time!

i love the mail!

Yes I do. And wouldn't you too if the mail keeps surprising you with wonderful stuff!

Such as this:



When I received this in my office, I was completely stumped. I did not even come close to guessing who could have sent me such a big package. Expecting some promotional material from some company, I didn't even want to open it.

But then I saw the return address and I was intrigued to say the least. Then I read the accompanying letter and opened the package and inside was this beautiful girl.



And she has a story and it goes like this: she was brought to life by (no prizes for guessing) Kaurvika aka Keiku. I completely loved her when I saw her and from then on she lived on the wall behind my system at Powai Labs which is where I worked. She didn't have this lovely frame then. Then I left Powai Labs (in a hurry) and i forgot about her.

Well, some people didn't. Or maybe they did for 3 years. But the important thing is that they remembered her after all, got a nice frame for her and sent her to me. Now she's mine all over again. Lovely ain't it!

That's why I love the mail. Otherwise, how would these beautiful gestures travel across the wide chasms that separate people.

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!

Waiting and uncertainity

Waiting comes in many flavors, but can be broadly classified into 'good' and 'torturous'.

Good waiting is the waiting when I'm waiting for something pleasant to happen and it's almost certain. For eg., a friend coming to town, me going home, me going on a trip, and so on. You get the drift. This wait is spent entirely in excitement and planning.


Flowers on my new creeper :)

Uncertainty on the other hand can be a killer. And that is when we have the torturous wait. The outcome is uncertain and probably big things are at stake. You cannot plan because you don't know what's going to happen. You cannot get excited again because the outcome may not be something to be excited about. Like when you wait for your results on an exam that didn't go very well or a job interview and so on.

waiting is something I don't mind. I love the 'good' wait because it holds a promise. Otherwise also I would rate myself very highly in the patience department. I don't get flustered in traffic jams or while waiting for my doctor or in the queue at the airport or when people jump in front of me at trial rooms or to get out of an airplane.

Uncertainty, on the other hand, I cannot handle. It just gets the better of me. I'm a sucker for knowing. Not knowing makes me, I don't know, cocooned? It makes me retract into a shell. I don't want to discuss all the possibilities and permutations and combinations that are doing rounds in my head with other people .It can get quite boring and repetitive, you know. And I can't seem to think of anything else to converse about. I just can't focus on any other thing. So, cocooned it is.

To move away from downers like uncertainty and brighter (literally) topics, there was one another thing I did last weekend.



These go on my kitchen counter. They are hidden behind the fruits.



The belvedere bottle is not mine. I mean now it is. But it was given to me empty by a friend who knows about my love affair with plants in pretty bottles. Like the dark one you see on the right - a bottle of porto tawny from Portugal.

A weekend of learning and a farewell

It was a busy busy weekend like several past weekends. All of my weekends for a couple of months now have been roller coaster rides except the one after I came back from goa-mumbai from my new year vacation. That weekend I decided to veg-in inside the house and be 'non-happening'. Ha.

Though many of these weekends were dedicated to friends, I have also spent considerable number of weekends cleaning my house in preparation for having these friends over.

But, this weekend was different. I cleaned though I'm not expecting friends anytime soon! (I think I need help!) And that too, I cleaned my windows - grills and panes and all that! (I definitely need help!)

My sister's husband is leaving banaglore for good after being here for 1 year. When my sister used to visit him, she had assorted a few plants for my pots. I never cared to pick them up and she always forgot to bring them along. Now that her husband was leaving and I had to meet him to bid him farewell from this city, I picked up my plants from his place. And THAT was the good part of my weekend.

I was soo excited that I couldn't wait for sunday morning to get some new pots. (It was late saturday when I got the plants) Early sunday morning I drove to my nursery guy, got some new pots and planted my newly acquired flora in them. I was so pleased to see my new babies all set.

In between all this, I went to the school that I go to on saturday only to find it closed. What a waste!

And in between all this also, including friday late night, I learnt a new thing - How to create collages in picasa. And how I can put them up on my header. I was so excited that I was up on friday night waaay past my bedtime just experimenting with collages.

Well, to sum up my entire weekend, I present to you a collage of my new potted plants :P. And, ofcourse, there's the header!

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.

Crush

There is this blog that I used to read a while back. Then the girl had become negative and her posts were dark. The sun-loving person that I am, I stopped reading the blog till yesterday when I had lots of time to kill and nothing to do.

One of her posts is about crushes. Crushes that I and you have and according to me it's an awesome description of these crushes. You can read it here.

Crushes are great. Atleast I think so. They bring excitement and purpose and smiles and anticipation and palpitations to an otherwise sedate life and don't ask anything in return. They disappear in sometime - 99% of the times. You couldn't ask for more risk-free entertainment. That would be greedy!