friend evaluation!!!

There were these blasts in bengalooru sometime back..just so happened that i didnt come to know of them till people called me from mumbai...:)

i was really puzzled on seeing some n missed calls on my cell...(yes, when in office i keep that angel on silent mode and leave it on my desk if im going somewhere)..let me not digress coz that phone can be the main lead of a post of its own...it is the source of joy, surprise, anger, disappointment and other 1430 emotions for mortals like me who have most of their friends and family in other cities...

so, coming back...(after saying let me not digress and still digressing)..i had these missed calls on my cell...along with messages like...'r u alrite?', 'r u alive?'...
and i was like.."yeah, wishful thinking! im not dying before killing all of you."

and then i saw this mail and it all fitted to make a complete picture...ohhh so it was not like everyone had a premonition of something adverse happening to me at exactly the same time...(though that would have made for a more interesting blog post)...

and it was really nice to see all these people trying to call me, get in touch with me...after a point i was like..today we'll know who really cares and who doesnt. let's see who doesnt call me today?

So, dennis messaged..i guess he was the first one..bugs called, salz called, Mr cao called...(so that covers my family)..., abs called, jat called..(he covers rest of my family)..reggie called..even sun sent a message...that pretty much covers everyone around me...

only person whose call i was waiting for and who very non-chalantly crushed all my hopes was su...i guess she assumed that the lone woman who had been killed in those blasts was not me..probably going by probability she was right (she's an engineer after all)...but that call would have done lots to kill the ache in my heart...:(

core dump!!

have been home for the whole day today!! very unlikely for me..
have been watching TV for the whole day!! totally likely...
have been watching movie teasers for the whole day!! again totally likely...

and the songs that i heard...the lyrics...trying to say so many things...some boring, run of the mill, some stirring, others bizarre, strange....some make you want to strangle the lyricist, others make you wonder..how did he come up with this...

some that stayed with me through the day were

"chalte sarak sarak ke, dekho ye lazy lamhein...palkein bhaari bhaari ye lazy lamhein..." unusual...what a way to describe all the sunny, summer afternoons...and evenings..and mornings...what the hell! all lamhein are lazy for me...

"aye hawa ja use chhooke aa...woh kahan hai bata" ...ive heard something like this before...

"my heart's crippled by the vein i keep on closing...you cut me open and i keep bleeding love...keep bleeding, keep keep bleeding love"... i liked this one...bleeding love...and no this one was not on the TV...

"you're a part time lover and a full time friend...i dont see what anyone can see in anyone else but you"...the 2nd line is SO complicated...i had to hear it n times before i could come up with a meaning for it...but im stuck with the lines....

"sach hai na...jo tumse aise baat kare...jo tumse itne paas rahe...woh ya toh mere jaisa ho...ya main hoon..." i like the confidence...:)

"dil kabhi ganda, kabhi hai nek banda...dil ka bharosa kaise koi kare...dil hai thanda, kabhi hai atom bomb sa..." i really agree with the dil ka bharosa part...how do you trust your heart and feelings when they are so fickle???

"...gud ki bheli hai tu...mujhko bhi ye gud chakha ...bekaar kyun hai rakha??..."
huh??? what dude??? what were you thinking??? im sure she's putting it to better use then to give it to you..

"shamiyana meri ye baahon ka..aashiyana kuchh begunahon ka..." what thought!!

and ofcourse this one has managed to stay with me for such a long time now...
"rehne de mera ye veham pe hi yakin..na ja abhi
pyaar ki ye raat hai..ab na ja
chhoti si ek baat hai.. ab na ja
pal do pal ka saath hai..ab na ja
jaadoo si ye raat hai..ab na ja
behne de jahan bhi le jaye zindagi..na ja abhi"
euphoria rocks...

and i should sleep!!!! yawn!!!!

something i can live without...

this is another one of my stuck up posts...last time i decided to write fun stuff...but no..i guess i AM stuck up!!!

so i am at this coffee place with dennis...and i dont know how we come to the topic of our parents and the love, respect, affection in their relation...and ofcourse 'indians' that we are, the question of abuse had to come up..and so it did...and we both, very candidly accepted that yes we have seen it in our respective families...

but i guess the similarity ended there...coz though this guy was very pro-mom and my-dad-is-wrong types, he said "maybe our dads were supposed to do that"....and ive not been able to decide whether it disgusted me more or surprised me more..

SUPPOSED to do that???? supposed to treat a person like she was not a normal human with normal desires, feelings, emotions? supposed to suppress her free will? supposed to treat her as your personal slave, like she's born to sacrifice, born to give up? supposed to do that???

im not going on a personal war against this guy,,,he's a good friend and will be...but this is the general mindset we have..its not about him...its about us...

i wonder if dennis was a girl, would he still say the same thing? and i wondered if my partner abused me and then someone said to me..."listen dont make a fuss about it...you're just a mortal and probably he's supposed to do it", what would my reaction be? i know what it would be...

i would say...when i was probably 1 minute old and my mom held me in her arms for the first time..she would have looked at me and thought that i would have a beautiful life, she would have hoped that her little child would live a life better than hers, a life with love, affection, laughter, dreams, a life that every mother's every child deserves. she would have wished for me, every happiness that she could not have. And so, i would not take a single minute of abuse because i owe a beautiful life to my mom....and no one is 'supposed' to take it away from me or from her.

really, i wonder what kind of society we live in, which still lets men be bastards...

move on..

ive written quite some depressing posts..and im not happy about it. imagine i coming back to read my posts at the age of 40 and all i see is these dull depressing, saaaaaaad posts...wont speak much about my 'young' days...if im still young that is...imagine what a 40 year old would go through on realising that her life's best days were spent living a depressing life and on top of that even writing about it.

so for the sake of 40-year-old-me, ive decided not to write depressing posts now...

was speaking to a friend yday...and happened to breach the subject of 'hum dil de chuke sanam'.. yeah that movie which has managed to make me cry 3 times...actually everytime i saw the last scene. when salman is finally finally snubbed. yeah snubbed, what else?

everybody found peace...the wife, the husband, the director, the indian mentality (wife sticks to husband, doesnt go with former lover)...but what about salman...my heart always went out for him...always..

maybe he was wrong to have lacked the conviction and gone...but whatever happened was due to lack of communication and some silly fights. I always felt that it was unfair. ok you fight, ok there is miscommunication...but if that had not happened, those two would still be together...so salman shud have been with the girl...not someone who comes into the girl's life and tries to help her find her love.

this other guy was a means..not the end. yeah then it would have been unfair on him but the degree would be less...he barely knows the girl and never felt that she loves him back...so the hurt is less.

but then what the heck...i hope salman became a rockstar and had hordes of girls following him..robbie william type...and he stayed single and had orgies till he became old enough to settle down...and then he found some perfect girl and they lived happily ever after. (and yeah good luck to the sad, boring housewife and sadder, more boring lawyer husband leading their sad, boring, mediocre lives)

yeah because from what i know..love and people you love are totally replacable...if you think you cant live without someone or someone is just right for you...its just what you think...not the reality...its just about moving on...some are good at it, the others take time but everyone is capable of it..and true love is a joke...so like in the ad thats showing nowadays...move on, man...

at the end of one month..

i have moved to this new place...and i dont like it at all..its quite depressing really..and i dont know why..im so far from my zone of comfort..im so far from "my" place...back in mumbai it was like this is my place my home..i knew everyone...there was not a time i went out and didnt meet 5 people i knew...i knew the roads, the shops, the shopkeepers, the parks, the coffee shops, the malls, the theatres, the cool places, the uncool places, and ofcourse my fav place, IITB...where i would go when i was feeling low and wanted to be alone or when i wanted to talk my heart out...

and there were my friends...i was never alone..anytime of the day or night i had someone...i want to see a movie, i had someone...i wanted to shop, nah i usually shop alone..its better that way...i wanted to go for coffee i had someone..i wanted to understand something technical, i had someone...i wanted to party, i had someone...i wanted to just not be alone at 12 in the night, i had someone...i wanted to kill time before going home i had someone...i was too tired to cook and wanted to eat outside i had someone...

and there was my family...if there is no water supply in my house i would go to my sis' place..if i was feeling lonely i would go for a night out to my other sis' place..if there is no dinner at home again my sis' place...if i locked the house keys inside, my sis' place..boring evening, sis' place...no reason whatsoever, sis' place.

whats really surprising is when you are so far away from home, its interesting to realize, whom you really miss..gives you a perspective on who's really important to you...atleast i know now...really, i never thought i would miss some people as much as i do. but it makes me kind of happy because i dont miss some people as much as i thought i would..

it balances out in the end...you win some you lose some...maybe ill get to like this place over time...i have this thing of clinging on to things, to places, to people because change makes me very, very uncomfortable..i would just continue to go the same restaurant, same theatre, same mall, continue to work on the same tool..basically i have too much inertia...

but now that ive shed that inertia and come all this way, maybe things would become better..atleast that's what i thought when i took this decision...though im really miserable now, im hoping for the best...the true optimist that i am...God has something good planned for me..maybe right now not the favorite one, but im His child...

and thank God for cell phones..:)

"shlitzy"

i have to put this in black and white..it was quite amazing...i have never interacted with a firang in my life...(2-3 sentences exchanged in an elevator or coffee shop dont count) ..so here i was face to face with this firang, german to be precise, and i had to speak...it never hit me till that time that it might be a problem conversing with him since i shuffle between english and hindi almost 3 times in every sentence...and i did that with him also...i was like "those guys pick up the 'saamaan'.." and had to then re-phrase my sentence after seeing the look on his face :).

that said, it was a very interesting conversation....

the best pieces went like this:
me: "I have my car parked in galleria" (this place is 15 minutes walk from my house).
"could you please repeat that". I actually thought he didnt understand my
accent. but the incredulous look on his face is indescribable. so im like "my
car is parked in galleria".
"you walked from your house to galleria, thats walking distance".
yeah i know its walking distance but why would i walk this distance. but the guy
was shocked to hear this...something which was quite normal for me.

he: "if you dont go to office, how do you spend the day?".
"I sleep in the afternoon so that takes care of two hours"
again that same amazed look. "you sleep in the afternoon? you do that when you
are above 40...that time you need an afternoon nap. you should be full of
energy. you should utilize your time"

he: do you have a preferred bollywood star?"
"shahrukh khan" ..without even a moment's thought.
"ohhh...thats surprising" ...full of sarcasm.

me: "you should learn hindi...that way it'll be easier for me to communicate with
you"
"thats quite egoist of you...but even i feel i should know hindi"

he: "chalo" and i was like it should be "chalein?" because..'chalein?' is a
question, 'chalo' is an order.
"ohh then i'd always use chalo"...yeah wise guy.

and i picked up a bit of geography too...so to round it up it was quite a different experience...one that actually made me come and jot it down.

and if you are wondering why the blog is so-called...the word is german slang for 'chinkis'...my first german word..ofcourse after achtung!

equations, equations...but its not physics

im writing this post to celebrate somebody else's article...i read the article and was left wondering how correct that person could be...the person in question is Vikarm Bhatt (yup..you heard it...he is that director)..and it was his article in the hindustan times that has me thinking since morning...

the article was about how in a relationship, one person will always love more and the other less..."everyone is someone's fool!!"...he says that the rule of love should be taught in school like all other laws of physics and it goes like..."when two people are in love, one will always love the other person more and the one who loves less will control the relationship"(thats like THE truth of any realtionship...i subscribe to this completely)

yeah ironical but its true...the one who loves more would want the relationship more, so naturally would go all out to make it work. this person would sacrifice more, bear more insults and snubs, get hurt more (and still put up with it), and compromise more. whats bad about this whole situation is that the more you give, the less you get in return, infact the more you are taken for granted.

but what caught my heart were his last 2 paras...how much ever we realize and understand the irony of this law, we can do nothing about it. "It's not in our power to love more or love less. we just love as we know how to."

so the next time you're hurt, the next time you compromise and bend and accomodate the whim of your lover, remember the equation. "Its not the power of our lover over us, its the power of our love that makes us weak."

P.S.: the theoritical part of love is so scientific and easy to understand and handle. then why does everyone mess up the practicals?