Blank!

There are many a times when the mind just draws a blank. One is well aware of whats happening around and would like to react, you want to put your point forward. But you realize you mind is just numb. Like as if in jiffy, the gray cells in your mind have all vanished and all thats left is dark cavities of nothingness.

Its imperative to come off this and get back on my feet thinking.... But how I wonder?!

Memories

Social networking has done wonders! It brings back people whom we long lost thanks to the course of life and its different directions. There are many such friends whom I have had met after decades. The euphoria in meeting someone you lost and catching up is indeed charming and nostalgic!

This afternoon I was chatting with one of my friends whom social networking had brought back to me. After we found each other we exchanged phone numbers, spoke to each other, and caught up on all the lost time. Ever since his once in a while scraps and my replies has been the mode of communication.

The common thread that ties us together is OOTY! Yes that’s where I grew up. Amongst the lush green hills and ripples of the lake, white sheet of frost in winter and colourful flowers in summer. Long winding roads that had Mother Nature dressed in her most beautiful, luring you to fall in love. And fall in love you will. With the place and the people, warm, friendly, childlike and ever ready to help!

While talking to each other we of course took another trip down memory lane. We were talking of how we first met, thanks to a Rotaract Club meeting we were going to in Kochi (Cochin then). It was just after the results of my 12^th boards and I was at my depressed worst since I had not fared too well. A friend had invited me to this trip saying it would at least serve to distract me.

Believe me though this was so many years ago, I remember every small detail from this trip. But incidents and people from later in life are not so well etched in my memory. For instance I do not recall names of many of my classmates from my masters in communication class (MOP Vaishnav).

This fact was brought to the fore while I was talking to this friend. We went into finer details of who all were there on the trip, who all sat together. What we talked and even where we got off to eat!

From the time I had this interesting conversation with this friend of mine there is only one thought predominantly playing in my mind.

Why is it that we remember some parts of our life like they occurred yesterday while a few more (even if recent) just vanish into thin air?

Confused Concoction!!

Since the tender age of 10 I have been asking myself what is it I want??!

At 10 of course the answers were freedom from books, no comparisons to my intelligent and dutiful sister and freedom to do jus the thing I felt like doing. No doubt I was a naughty child! I have troubled my mom by my truant ways no end! She has had to come over to school over a zillion times asking my principal sister to please pardon me this one time and take me back to class. Those were playful days when one never thought of consequences or how it would impact our tomorrow. I remember my first ambition during those days was to be an engine driver. I was so fascinated by the world of trains (still am in fact).

Life’s playful days moved at a rapid pace and soon it was time to make a few crucial decisions. Class 11!! What group will I take up? The decision was easy since there were but 3 options (not like today where you have a score). But within these options I was confused, which one do I go for? Confusions in life thus began. The final decision was based on herd mentality. My friends are all doing math and science so will I. This decision was least rational, extremely emotional and over all had no roots. 11th and 12th were my most fun years. I look back at them very fondly. But these were also the years in which further confusions began. I could never make my mind up about anything was easily pushed into doing things and was completely into following the herd.

The jewel in the crown of confusion was when I completed 12th (I had taken up science saying that MBBS was my look out :D). I fared quite miserably in physics, barely scrapped through in fact. The saving grace was that chemistry and biology I had good marks. Now what next? Bewildered again I tried following the herd. But this time round my mom averted the mishap. I was left with the choice of zoology in one of the two colleges in Ooty. I took it up and did it with great zest for the first one month. Before life posed another situation, a lot of my friend had moved into literature department in the same college. Of course you’re right! I promptly took a transfer to literature. What is it that I wanted to achieve in life? God only knew… with no aim or objective I just twittered like a butterfly. I loved literature though and I attribute it to the wonderful lecturers I had in college. I fondly remember Elizabeth Mam and her poetry classes; Paradise Lost was almost visually enacted by her. Her use of words and the parallels she drew were just so mind blowing. I enjoyed those three years but yet did not have a handle on what next?!

I remember in those days I vaguely heard of communication being a good subject to take up. So I stood adamant and did take it up yet not clear what’s coming out of it though. Ask me today and I swear I don’t remember a thing I learnt in college. I recollect more from my bachelors than from my master’s classes. I was in a big city for the first time and alone to top it, I was so taken up internalizing things around me and finding my feet that hear again the main focus never got established.

Today as I reminiscence I realize, its only providence that in spite of lack of clarity all my life, I yet have managed to get to where I am.

And have I gained clarity of thought at least now?

Trepidations…

One day is never the same as the other in life, am sure everyone that walks the world will agree with me on this. We can plan and plan and device ways and means to minimize the effects sudden rumblers we encounter but we cannot totally avoid the mild discomfort while passing through one.

I have understood this with experience. For someone who has never lived away from home the short stint in Pune due to a job transfer brought in with it both opportunities and apprehensions galore. Will I be able to survive in an alien land? Will I adapt myself to the food style there? Will I manage living on my own? There were so many questions lurking in my mind. In some dark corner of my mind I was afraid of going to live in a land with no friends.

However when the appointed time came I pulled up my socks and tread the new path with confidence in my mind. My heart yet filled with trepidations unanswered.

My first contact in Pune, Poonam, who later went on to become my room mate was warm and courteous & boisterous. She went out of her way to help me. I moved in to stay in a house on my own for the first month of life in this new place and she made sure she shared with me even a mattress from her home to make me comfortable and settle me down. Shortly I began settling into work and since it was a new, yet to open hotel, there was work and loads of fun alongside. A month passed in the city with me alone in a single bedroom house in which I don’t ever remember using the living room and kitchen.

Before long we had a second batch of people joining our team and I was introduced to this soft spoken, gentle girl, our training manager, Neha. We hit it off instantly and life at work got better with more laughs and merrymaking. Soon Neha and I decided to move into together, we saw only one house and fell in love with it and for the period I was there this was our party zone.

It was a different thing setting up a house without anyone around you. Signing a contract, moving in with your belongings, getting that gas connection, buying the sundry items for the house, it was all loads of fun. We had a three bedroom house, a football ground of a living room, bare with hardly two pieces of furniture and a TV that came in much later. The only well stocked area was the kitchen. For the first month of staying in that house we used only one bedroom, Neha and I chatting late into the night and falling asleep.

Poo as Poonam began being called moved in with us. As she walked in the door, she came in with a smallish suitcase. Neha and I assumed that’s all she did have; little did we know she had come with a truckload of stuff. An entire evening she unloaded things and set it up in the smallest of the bedrooms that did not have an attached wash room.

Gradually we settled in and our home (yes that’s what it became for us by now) became the hub for all get togethers and parties. No occasion was too small for us to celebrate. Someone coming from Bombay, to someone winning an award, to birthdays to just like that surprises, to weekends, every little thing called for a celebration.

Our first party though is momentous. There we were some 10 -12 of us eating Pizza ordered from Pizza Hut and drinking (liquor and coke) out of steel glasses since we did not have glassware. From there the progress to the most happening party place was thanks to Poo’s truckload in which apart from other things she also had glassware for every kind of drink.

I remember it being a bright and chirpy spring day, exactly a year ago when we picked up this guy on the way to take him to the hotel. We were introduced to him and told that he was Palash our new restaurant manager.

In a couple of days Palash along with a few more guys from the hotel found a house just behind ours in a complex called 5 gardens and settled in. By the way we lived in Element 5. Five was the synergy. And within a short period of time we became as thick as thieves. We spent all the evening together, Palash & I making dinner and the rest of the guys (Preety Preetam, Aadheer, Shiraz, George, Yadhu, Muthu, Poo and Neha) talking to the dozen, teasing each other, playing cards and going nuts.

When I left the city I was sure of one thing, I had made friends for a lifetime.

As I sit back today and reminisce the days in Pune and the trepidations I had before I went there I feel I was foolish and yet as a new saga unfolds before me, the trepidations show up again….

Accupany low!

It was just another evening when I was standing in the usual street corner from where I normally hail a rickshaw to go home. Getting a rick in the evening is no easy task. I have had to wait for anything between 10 mins to half hour to get one. Today I was a little late and a wee bit edgy so all wanted was to just get home quickly!

Just after about 3-4 mins of waiting, an auto pulled up that was the fastest thought to myself and proceeded as usual to ask the driver “bhaiya maradpally jaoge”? That question normally drew a negative response and the auto drivers zoom away without as much as responding to my query. But this driver was more forthcoming, he said "meter pe 5 rupai dena amma". I would normally have not budged and spoken the law and said "kyun bhaiya meter pe jao, extra kyun dun"? But like I said I really wanted to get home, so after a little persuasion from my chauffer I relented!!

I got in and as usual went into my mobile, was peering into the street and relaxing after a long day at work. In between the driver spoke to me for directions and as he did he also mentioned his stand was close to the hotel. For the rest of the journey, until almost close home we were silent.

Just when we turned into the street in which my flat was, the driver began talking again. I often tend to avoid talking to auto drivers because I somehow feel its not very safe. Don’t ask me why, I don’t have an answer. But since this one has already begun I could not avoid conversation.

He nonchalantly asked me “Aaj kal hotel ka accupany low hain na madam”? I was completely taken aback, an auto driver asking about the hotel business and to top it using professional terminology. After the brief moments of shock I recovered soon enough to tell him it’s been bad for the city because of the current political instability. He promptly said his business had been affected as well, where he used to have at least 15 - 17 'savaris' in a day now he has only about 7-8. He then told me that the owners of our hotel had given the auto drivers permission to put a stand close to the hotel and that he operated from the stand for 10 years now.

After a pause in conversation when I had reached my flat and was pulling my wallet out to pay him off, he caught me off guard with another question. Madam “Srinivas sir nahin hain na”, he asked. It took me sometime to put into perspective his question and figure out whom he is talking about. By the time I stabilized and understood his first question he had his next ready, “abhi colnel sahab ayye hain na”? Only when he asked me the second question did I understand whom he was referring to question one. I gave him a meek jee han, paid him and went home.

Once I was home I kept going back to the conversation with the auto driver and could not stop myself from thinking he knows all the inside information about the hotel, in fact sometimes more than an associate in it may!!

An ode to life!

From the first time our eyes locked in glance
To the very first meeting by chance
This is a relationship that was meant to be
Construed by 'my son' you see

Like a whirlwind my life you take over
All your smiles and love you shower
Knowing the smallest of my care
Our little son you share!

You smile with me and cry with me
And hold my hands as a dream we see
You mock at me, you chide me
You tease me, you own me

The feeling of being owned by you
Is the feeling of bliss I always knew
I thought this bliss is for ever more
Until a storm broke out creating a furor

Beautiful memories you leave to reminisce
Sealed all the way with every beautiful kiss
These memories yet feed me
Whatever in life I want to see

I lose all & you lose none!

As the red of the rising sun sets the sky ablaze
You look me in my eyes and say
You mean the world to me
And I love you dearly

Two separate lives we lived
With one dream
And yet one day you made me realize
I lose all. You lose none!

We stepped out into the cold wind
You held my hand, wrapped me around and say
You make my world go around
And I love you baby

We dream of a future
With our own family
And yet one day you made me realize
I lose all. You lose none!