From the Nizams’s desk

(A popular theory suggests that after founding the city, Quli Qutb Shah fell in love with and married a local Banjara girl known as Bhagmathi or Bhagyavathi naming the city, Bhagyanagaram. Upon her conversion to Islam, she changed her name to Hyder Mahal and thus the city was named Hyderabad)

(A peep from the past)

(Golconda Fort ,a very badly maintained fort, looks infinitely better at night, when well lit during the highly uninspiring Light and Sound show)

(View inside the Charminar)

(The current Nizam )

(With the Royal Family,having Thai food at ‘On the Waterfront’)

(The princess of Hyderabad off for her schooling…)

…………in the art of throwing tantrums*

* in a toy shop,throw yourself down in between the narrow aisles, and bawl your head, while flinging your limbs)

 

The more things change..

Scenario 1, 1989

The evening before the school annual exams-

Girl 1 has not only finished her entire syllabus twice, she is contemplating picking up next year’s text books,for the heck of it.She has re-revised her chapters and is whistling merrily as she fills her pen with Chelpark ink.

Girl 2 is cleaning the dust from the covers,calling up friend for syllabus,calling another for class notes, and another for probable questions- all at one go.Contemplating writing small chits with formulae,but that itself involves hard work.Revision? what on earth is that?Prays to god that tomorrow is a bandh(a monthly occurence in Assam)-or atleast that she gets to sit next to the class topper.Oh God,next year I promise I will start studying from day 1,infact right after my exams.Please let me pass this one final time.

And when she finally gets down to it- the electricity goes off.Solving maths in the sweltering heat, with mosquitoes conducting an orchestra atop her head,has never bode well for her .

Scenario 2, 2009

The last day of submission for a travel writing contest

Girl 1 – Not only has she finished writing the article ,a week before the deadline, she has also been editing it and the day before took a print out to spot typos ,cross the t’s and dot the i’s kind of thing.

Girl2 – Opens a new word doc in the morning of the last day.Goes for coffee,chats with friends,uploads pics,comes back to write a few more words,deletes it.Falls asleep.Wakes up in the evening,has a cup of tea,all charged to write. Inspiration strikes and she types away furiously,racing against time.It literally is the 11th hour when she finishes her article(11.20 pm to be precise)- the first and the only draft.Absolutely no time to read the article,hoping that the forces to be will overlook her “silly mistakes”.

Ohmygod, these people want pictures also.Waste 10 precious minutes hunting for pictures.Uploads them..and waits…and waits…and waits some more.4 minutes left to entry closing time.Quick restart session.Call up partner to upload pics on your behalf.Damn 1 minute32 seconds left.Realises pics are heavier than recommended.Fuck it.Just send the godamm article.If they like it they will ask for pictures.Reload page..20 seconds left..too late.Mail it to organiser directly,hoping she ‘understands’. Mail sent.

Fall back ,close eyes and  see a  flashback of a decade (ok ok ,i made a mistake- two decades .eesh)gone by – Yups.Nothing has changed.

My tragedy in life is that I never learn from past mistakes.I am doomed to repeating the same ones.

P.S. In case you haven’t guessed by now, Girl1 =elder sibling, Girl2 = who else.

Post comment thoughts

mm and Anupa’s comments got me thinking.

Why did we assume that Girl2 is the one with the ‘brilliance’? Is it because we are conditioned to think that ,routine hard work is what average people do and ,random flashes of creativity are displayed by the true geniuses.

Why else will we talk in reverential tones about that classmate who went for his semester exams stoned and barely opened his text books and scored a brilliant CGPA of 8, but immediately slot the one who slogged hard religiously to get his 9, a nerd? Oh but he studied all throughout ,of course he will be a 9 pointer.But imagine what the 8 pointer would have got had he studied/come sober/taken notes in classes.The fact is that he did not.And neither did he get a 9.

I have seen far too many “geniuses” in real life waiting for that one flash of brilliance.They are still waiting.Whereas the ones who have been at it , stretching their talents to the limit, are the ones who are closer to their goals.

I think its simply a case of admiring the other type -some people thrive on confusion and medley, and some on routine.

As kopili says ‘hard work is under rated and talent over-rated’ (good one, btw )

And you can here it straight from the Guru- Elizabeth Gilbert, writer of Eat,Pray,Love talks about nuturing creativity,

 

Racism redefined by budding journalist

I was wrong.I thought racism meant discriminating /victimising someone simpy on the basis of his race.Or the belief that certain races are inherently superior to the others.You know, the kind that led a vegan-dog loving-painter to decide that the  Aryans were superior and hence,let me get myself a funny moustache and while I am at it I might as well finish off with them Jews.

Or much before that when the British decided that it was after all the White Man’s Burden to tame the uncivilized, brutal tribes of Africa and Asia.

I was horribly horribly off the mark.

According to journalist (?)Tashneem Nashrulla ,of HT, racism is daring to cheer for your team in a cricket match, when you are in a pub in the opponent’s country,and worst of all,imbibing wine made in that country.What affrontery.Sorry,such mild words will of course not exist in Ms.Nashrulla’s words.Such blatant display of racism will make for better headlines.

Click here to read how the entire nation has been hurt/insulted/abused by three woman,when they rooted for their country in a silly T20 cricket match, which let me remind you, is not even half as good as the original fifty-over match:-)

According to her, she,along with her friends were watching the match between India and England at a cafe, and when a wicket from England, fell the crowd cheered wildly.But moments later when Pietersen whacked Harbhajan for a four “the three girls bereft of any British manners , cried themselves hoarse”.

Of course, manerless English tarts, I say.What gall, to cheer for Pietersen instead of Bhajji.Don’t they know any better?

According to the said journalist(seriously,did she even graduate?) , she is all for team-spirit, but “when you are in India, in a cafe filled with Indians,who worships crickets,it is impolite to make your sentiments so blatant“.(sic,sic and now I AM SICK..)Aah, the final diktat.It is hereby announced that any person in the territory of foreign soil,shall from now on ,support the home team -home being where there arse is at present and definitely not where the heart is.Else risk being painted in racist colours by ignorant story seeking columnists of said foreign soil.

So,this went on for sometime,with each group cheering for their team ,but of course, till one Indian shouted out”England sucks’ and this set of the crowd who started chanting.This is of course not racism,because new diktat says locals can behave as monkeys,for all anyone cares.

The obvious happened.India got hammered, and like any self respecting individual would do, these three girls shouted out loud ,loud enough to be heard above the din  ”Suck on that”.Quite brave I must say,given that they were totally outnumbered.

I don’t know how this makes her point stronger,but the columnist then goes on to say that though no one got violent(thank god for that),some of the Indian retorted with comments like “White Trash” and “British bitches”.

The last lines left me confused…”I am strongly anti- racist.But in the heat of the moment, bearing those women insult us in our own country,I felt antagonistic towards them.But there is a fine line between racism and patriotism and I am not sure whether I crossed it.”

Cross from racism to patriotism? All I can say is that,the crowd was stupid AND you have tried to turn a funny harmless scene into a  OJ Simpson drama with all all the racist overtones.

More I read un-informed articles like these, see journalists push mikes on grieving relatives, and Arnab invite a panel of 6 experts and letting them talk for precisely 7 seconds, the more I feel like switching to MTV.Atleast Splitsvilla has no aspirations in terms of being intellectuals.

 

You are in,only when they make fun of you

This post by  ShetalkslikeJune and links given by MadMomma in her blog( I knew there had to be a story about NE even before I clicked on them) made me realise that whenever there is a story about racism discrimination within India, we North easterns are sure to be there with our own sob story.As STLJ (sorry if that sounds like DDLJ) points out “Any NorthEastern with a computer has written about this”). Including me, of course. We  form a sisterhood of victims. Misery does know a lot of company.

Why is it that we only get talked about , when there is talk of terrorism/racism/development/discrimination/exoticism.All big serious stuff.

We can be funny -when we are not dodging bullets or scraping off shards of bombs, or  popping ecstasy pills with a bottle of vodka, or trying out this pleasurable thing called sex,or picking pieces of dog meat stuck between our teeth .

You should see when we are drunk.We go red and then our chinky (I can say chinky, since, I AM CHINKY, yoo hoo) eyes go smaller, till you can barely make out if we are awake.If its our fifteenth glass of the evening, we are not.

So, let me start by telling a joke.Don’t run away.

Did you hear about the one where the loud Punjabi ..oh you already heard that? Ok I have one about this miserly Gujjui..that too? Surely you have not heard about this geeky gult in..Oh damn.

Ok then, have you heard about this Assamese….Aha, I see you haven’t. Neither have I.

We are so bloody insignificant you guys don’t even make jokes about us.Come on embrace us.Make fun of us. Else we will feel like that girl who goes to a new school where everyone is  trading insults with each other and totally ignoring her and she has lunch all alone, and she is miserable because her parents got divorced,so finally she takes to drugs and starts killing people in locker rooms…See YOU are responsible for OUR wanton irresponsible lifestyle.

The point I am trying to make here, is that a sure sign of  minority community/tribe getting truly integrated with the mainstream,is when the majority dares to take a potshot at the minority without getting hauled up for been ‘insensitive’ .Or they can make jokes about them,infront of them. Till then, we will always , at best,be met only my amazement  ”aah, the North-East.I have always wanted to go to that part of the country…’.Which,after a point, frankly ,gets on my nerves. If every person who told me that, actually intends to go there, I think I have stepped onto a right business <wink,wink>

And till the jokes keep coming I have nothing to recount but a few random REAL LIFE conversations that took place in the Assamese hostel I stayed in during my Delhi University undergrad days.

Key : We Assamese cannot ,for the life of us, pronounce “Ch..”as in “Chatri”,Chutiya”,”Chaman Chutiya”, or”Sh” as in “shit”, “Shucks”  and F as in “Fuck”, ..you get the idea, right? We simply are wusses when it comes to swearing. Ch and Sh become ‘S’ like Sootiya  and F is Ph as in Phaak.Oh and V is Bh (which I think the Bengalis might understand). And in Upper Assam , they cannot pronounce R.Its simply doesnot exist . The chinese might identify with this particular problem.Notice, how we have divided ourselves nicely based on the upper bank and lower bank of Brahmaputra- and Upper Assam and Lower Assam are very much local terms now,of course pronounced as Aaapar Oxom and Loar Oxom.
So an Assamese, fully aware of his shortcomings will  try to speak in Hindi by simply using the Assamese word but replacing every S with Ch.*Or by raising his voice,like my Dad.Dad, they are not deaf,they just don’t understand your language.Eibur sob thogabaaz dillialla, sob buji paai (Nonsense, these delhi wallas are thugs, they just pretend not to understand).Oh well, that is my dear pater.

So, now that that is cleared, try to understand my hostel mates quandary.

My roommate G (who btw for reason had misplaced confidence in her hindi speaking skills) wanted to tell the maid to hang the washed clothes out in the sun .She , of course, had no clue what sunshine (dhoop, i know) is called in Hindi. She goes “Didi, aap kapda wooohan pe tangiye jahaan pe..a big pause…suraj ki kirne neeche aake kapdo pe gir sake’…” .By this time, Didi was done with said job.Leaving behind a breathless but very victorious G

Another friend,E, whose umbrella(which is called saati, in assamese,and now refer to my earlier key to figure out how an assamese trying to speak in hindi will try to say this word*) just fell out of her lap as the rickshaw took a sharp turn ,shouted frantically to the guy “Bhaiyya ,rokkiye, mera chatti gir gaya “. This was in a small bylane crowded by the delhi roadside romeos, the worst of the lot.

Can our warden be far behind? The gas pipe in the kitchen was leaking .She calls a repair guy and gives him a lowdown of the situation “Bhaiyaaaaaa, kya bolu,gas leeek ho gaya ,aour itnaaa ganda khusbooo aa raha hain“. Perfect thesis/anti-thesis argument ever. After all ‘bad-boo‘ (odour) is ‘gand-a-khusboo‘ (perfume), right?

G again.Bargaining with a rickshaw wala bhaiyya and wants him to reduce the fare “Bhaiyya,Kamaiye Kamaiye“( We think what she meant was “kam kariye” .) Rickshaw wala replies “Kama hi to raha hoon, madamji“..

And so on and so forth.

Our ragging sessions new joinee interaction sessions included making freshers stage a play in hindi.Howlarious, to say the least.Oh how we laughed when some new kid says Carol Bagh instead of Karol Bagh.Someone pronounced Janpath as Ganpath.(I donot even dare reveal her excuse lest you think we share the same level of IQ).

My memory fails me,but there were other such interesting Hindi/Assamese conversations which led to delicate situations.

But wait, I still have not told you a Joke as yet.

Ok this one goes for all my khar-khua (staple Assamese diet, which if I tell you what is, you might not share my tiffin.Which is good because when it comes to Assamese food I always lick the plate clean )Assamese ‘countrymen’ , which unfortunately, no one else other than my 3 assamese readers will be able to understand.It is thaaat subtle.

Edited to add: Before I accept the laughters ,and later on accusations of plagiarism,the following are common Assamese jokes, atleast common with the Assamese student community in Delhi.

Joke 1

Two Assamese friends go to a restaurant in Delhi and orders two cups of tea. “Do Sai lao” (”Do Chai lao”)

So the waiter brings two plates of Dosa to them. After much confusion they accept the Dosa and ask for two spoons. “Ok, Ok, Do Saamas lao” (”Do Chammach lao”) So the waiter brings two Samosas this time

Joke 2

One Assamese person was going home in a rickshaw. Suddenly he said “Hey rickshawalla, rickshaw rokho, hum giregaa”. Rickswawalla replied,”Babu,aap nahi girenge, mein thik se chalaa raahaa hun”. The person exclaimed,”Hum idharhi girega. ye hamaaraa ghar haai!!”

Hahahahaah.I am laughing so much that fine Korimgani Assamese tea is coming out of my nose.

P.S. No more blogging till end of month.

 

Welcome to my lesbian paradise

Some time back(maybe yesterday), I saw a tag about women you love (not like). I don’t remember the details so I can take advantage of my temporary amnesia and give my twist to the tag- women you would want to have if you were a lesbian.

I think my tag is way cooler than the original one ,in which everyone’s list had the mandatory presence of Maharani Gayatri Devi , somewhat like having Citizen Kane on the list of Top 10 movies.Tell me how many of you have actually watched that movie.If you have not,let me save you the torture- it is a crashing bore,donot let those intel-types fool you otherwise.Come to think of it, how many of you have actually slept with MGD? Or seen her recent pics,not the sepia tinted ones, with Jaqueline Onassis. Is she alive?

Okay here goes my tag – women who occur in my wet dreams

With her ample bosoms and luscious lips,its difficult to concentrate on what she does best-cook. And oh so effortlessly- and it helps that everything in her kitchen seems to come pre-cut,pre-paste,pre-grind.And she has an appliance for everything.She looks the kind who gets her orgasms by feeding good food to her family and generally one of those Martha Stewart types whose aim in life is to set the perfect dining table and who actually uses words and things like antimacassars.And the way she tastes food by putting her fingers in her mouth and letting out a Mmmmmm .Who am I to deprive her of her pleasure!!!Come to me Nigella.Feed me Nigella.Mother me Nigella.(Oh no, this is like Odepius Complex,except that I am a female.What will this be called then?)

So when Nigella is busy catering to my baser instincts, this woman can tickle my funny bone every now and then.(e.g.You have to stay in shape. My grandmother, she started walking 5 miles a day when she was 60. She’s 97 today and we don’t know where the hell she is.” – I read this many times ,just didn’t know it was hers,but that whats google says)

The only good part about her chat show is when she dances ,especially when she straddles the table.Ellen DeGeneres.

And this is my original pin up lady. I first saw her on Readers Digest or Parade , I forgot.(See kids, in the good old days before cable , we had but two or three sources of foreign news.The third been the one hour show of Prannoy Roy ‘The World this Week’).Oh what a mole – hers I mean, not Prannoy’s.I too have a mole,but on my nose.Other than that, I think we pretty much look alike-except for the hair colour..and the height..and the weight.. Give me your mole Cindy

(This is not her best picture,but the one which shows her mole the best)

And since we are getting into specifics, I would love to have this woman’s lips.And her soft lilting laugh..And her sparkling eyes and pert nose. Charlize Theron makes me want to make millions only so that I can woo her princess style

And once we are out of the bed, you know who I would like to take out for coffee?

Meg Ryan thats who.But only the Meg Ryan of short tousled justoutofbed ohclumsyme hair cut.We will go for coffee,maybe go bowling,or catch up on a movie and then a couple of drinks .Yes I have the dates all planned out.But I don’t think I can do it with her.Sorry Meg, its not you.Its me.I need space in our relationship.Maybe we will take it slowly.I will call you.Sometime soon….

So there you are .Thats what goes on inside my dirty mind.

You might question the absence of any Indians on this list.Actually there are a few -but they are not famous, yet.And I am not sure if my friends/teachers/hostel warden (ok ok the last one was a cliche.In reality, my hostel wardens were pretty much like all hostel wardens – ugly,single,dowdy and frustrated) will be ecstatic to see their name on this list.

Tell me, who features in your lesbian orgy?

P.S.For the straight male readers,with  whom would you want a threesome ?, which guy gets you all hot and sweaty ?

 

Guess who was in town

(Getting into her  aunt’s top)

(When your meal is bigger than your mouth)

(Time for a camel ride. That, by the way, is her artificial smile for the camera)

(Horsing around )

(Nothing like chilled beer to unwind after a hard day’s play.It’s never too early)

P.S. Blame the bad haircut on the mother.

 

End of an era

( RIP: 2004- 2009)

Good Bye my love

You have been with me right from my college days, to my first job (then second,then third…),right upto my present stage of unemployment.We changed companies,homes,cities and men.

As a friend once said “It’s not a phone-it’s a bundle of emotions”

I have to admit that it was not love at first sight.You see, I lost my first phone at a pub in Delhi (which was a gift from Deuta),and with my meagre pocket money, I could just afford you – the cheapest one available.You were supposed to be a temporary arrangement, till I got some money and buy a shiny sleeker model.Aah, the follies of youth.You fought your way into my life,till there came a day when even with my first paycheck,it never occured to me that I must get you exchanged.

How could I?

You coolly bore the brunt of my anger, my carelessness . The number of times I must have flung you across the room and you came apart  -only to be back in action within minutes.An ex remarked that with all that practice, he can now  assemble a nokia phone in 10 seconds-blindfolded.Or when I held you in the nook of my shoulder,riding my scooty, making the nth plan for the saturday evening, and out you popped when I sped over a speed breaker.At one particular rush of anger I threw you out of the window.The screen broke,of course.But guess what.We still could hear your ring from the ledge.

And of course the ever changing contact list.Between then and now,the contact list has almost gone a total over haul.Only family and a handful of others are the constant in the list.(Is that good or bad?) Numbers which were once on the speed dial,now donot even occur on the list.Speed Dial No.3 in the last city was not even a guy I dated- it belonged to a friend much more precious to me.The kind of friend who finishes your sentence for you, the kind who knows exactly when you will get drunk, and when you can’t, puts his finger in your mouth so that you can throw up and stop feeling sick.(Was too much info than required?) And now we are not in touch.Me and that friend.Funny,eh?

People laughed at you.Outdated ,old model and cheap- that’s how they smirked at you.Ha.Little did they know.With their fancy gizmos, I can bet they didn’t get as many dates as we both did.Oh the joy of typing in a new number,of not quite getting his name ,thanks to the loud music and my inebriated state, and then storing it as ‘zero g’, ‘f’pani’ ,’taika’   ,depending on the place..  .And days later trying to figure out who on earth is  ‘P Haze’. The stupidity of going through the whole social ritual of storing numbers of people you just met (’Oh we MUST catch up someday for drinks’)  as ‘x’,'y’,'z’ and deleting it after a week.Of saving frequently dialled names with an A so that it comes first in the list and you dont have to keep fiddling with the buttons.And then changing the name that succeeded that A.

Now I don’t take numbers.and no one asks for mine either.I have trimmed the contact list to the bare minimum.

There was no fear of losing you- even auto drivers carried better models

My sweet loving phone cum torch cum alarm clock cum calculator cum…well thats all about it.You were definitely not a James Bong gizmo – you didn’t come loaded with music,games or camera (ha).But then you had the ever handy torch on you.Helped in in tough spots like getting stuck in a lift.

The screen saver which was quite a conversation starter.

Got that screen saver from a hot Palestinian guy in campus.Took it only because he was hot.of course. And in case you are wondering what’s written in Arabic, it is Bin Laden.I swapped this with a friend for his rather funny one of a deflated penis. Well it seemed funny then. Yes, we were a pretty cultural and intellectual  lot that way.

I shall miss you.But getting the damn batteries changed is going to cost as much as a new replacement.You have done your job mate. You have done it real well.

psst . It helped that I am pretty cheap to splurge on better phones.

 

More reader interaction demanded

First of all, notice that cute little button on the left right side of the page. Go ahead click on that, join us on facebook AND join us on our trips.And tell me what you think of it.

Yes yes, I know you are dying to get one too aren’t you?Fret not,all you have to do is copy this code on to a text widget and you are done.

<!–  START –><a href=”http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=1808423&amp;id=59599283964#/pages/GypsyFeet/59599283964?v=info&amp;viewas=667687017/”><img src=”http://kopili.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/gypsyfeet-gif-small.gif” alt=”GypsyFeet’s Facebook Page” width=”150″ height=”100″ style=”border:0;” /></a><br /><!–  END –>

Its ok ,you don’t have to thank me.Just refer a person to us, and we will give you 50% discount (ok that idea was not too well taken by other GypsyFeeters ).Fine , [inaudible] % of discount for sure (we will take this offline?)

Second of all, you might be thinking that by now I would have gotten sick of begging for comments.How very right.I am now demanding comments. Come on  now.I think there are lot more of you reading and very few of you commenting.Unless my schizophrenic other self is clicking on my blog to increase hits. Why wouldn’t anyone want to insult me in the safe anonymity of the internet? I mean in real life people insult me (and my work) on my face.

And to show how much I have advanced technologically, here is the poll for the day.

Edited to add: And now just to spite me,you guys are voting but still refuse to respond to my roll call.Guess, I can’t win this one!

 

So what exactly are you doing right now?

Friend (or something to that effect): Hey how much do you get paid for those articles

Me : Not much.Around xxx

Friend : Oh not bad.You know, I travel so much (he means he goes to pune/delhi/bangalore on office trips) I think I will also write about all my travels.Not a bad way to earn money huh?

Me :How much do you get paid per month? 80,000? Hey why don’t I also churn out a few lines of codes every month, definitely not a bad way to rake in the moolah.(Wait a minute, I used to do that No, not the raking in the moolah bit, but churning out a few lines of codes every month bit-that was before I moved to finance.)

Seriously, I have had the above conversation and subtle variants of it with quite a few people.I am NOT harboring illusions of being the next Norman Lewis or Bill Bryson.But I will not take this degradation of my work lying down.The measly few bucks that I have earned in the last 3-4 months have meant much more to me than the hefty not-so-measly paycheck I got ,just by reproducing old codes,making PPTs or even taking trades based on some the writing style  of stock reports .

I am gently treading onto unknown territory,learning to live with rejections from nice and rude editors alike.I never thought I had it in me to be so patient as editors sit on my article for weeks,only to reply with a curt “No”.Surprisingly enough, I am not as dejected as I thought I would be.Unlike in my corporate life ,I have learnt to keep my ego aside and am taking pains to understand why the first article I wrote has been rejected by 6 different publications.My old mantra of ‘if at first you don’t succeed,give up’ is now haunting me, as inspite of getting other articles published, I  atill stubbornly keep sending that rejected article to other editors in the faint hope someone might just be willing to pick it up.

I have finally understood what my bosses have so long been trying to get into my thick head- take pride in one’s work.But if your coding skills were anything like mine, I would , instead,advise you to totally disown your part of the job that almost killed the mammoth project and made the entire team work overtime.

And then along comes dick heads like the above, for whom ,supposedly,it is just a matter of putting pen to paper, and words flow out of it miraculously and you produce bestsellers one after the other.It might come easily for you, dear friend.Not for me.Why don’t you first send me one well written piece.Something more meaningful, and definitely longer than your witty status messages on Facebook.

Ihad this discussion with a friend the other day and we agreed that blogs and digital cameras have delusioned everyone into thinking that he or she is the next big thing in the travel world. I shot a random picture of the Wild Asses on my trip to the Rann of Kutch.And a comment I got from a nice soul -” you should become a wildlife photographer”.Really?I have also clicked umpteen pictures of my niece in what only I can say are cute faces.Does that make me the next Anne Geddes?

And these are the kind of over blown comments going all over facebook.Friend A assuring Friend B that A had it in him/her and is wasting time as a banker/software engineer/<insert your job>.Friend A by now, absolutely sure that he just has to leave his current job and publishers will line up outside to sign him up for his next book and Travel and Living will ask him to host his own t.v. show.

Perspective, that is what we all need.Look closely and the untrodden path that you thought you would explore is lined with garbage left over by the earlier ‘explorer’.

And what might be the entire point of this post?

a)In the absence of quirky colleagues and dilbert-uesque bosses, I am left to scrapping the barrel looking for rants.Seriously, whom do I bitch about now?

What I miss most about office is lack of blog material.No wait, what I miss most is the printer and xerox machine.And the lovely stationery,which thankfully I had the good sense to pilfer enough of to last me a lifetime.

b)I am bored.Last 3 days have been spent simply staring at unfinished drafts.Writing this post, I hope, will set things in motion.

P.S: And just as I was was typing the last line, I got a reply from a editor accepting my article on caving in Meghalaya-unfortunately now is not the season, so it is going to be one long wait till I see my name on print.Still, this is like BIG NEWS ok.It a premier travel magazine.But oh its going to be one long wait.Urghhhh, I am going to be like Calvin waiting for his flying helmet every single day..

 

A woman needs a bicycle like a man needs his fish

I am back from the cycling trip that I mentioned (blog pimping alert). Mumbai to Daman.

I started by  having a black out half an hour after the start. And I have only my impatience to blame for it. At the start the trip leader was giving a brief about gears and maintaining a steady comfortable pace, it been a 2 day long trip and there was no point speeding up and getting tired early.I of course , decided there is nothing new to learn and pooh poohed his instructions and sped off in full swing , not even changing gears in the uphill,since I had no clue how to do it. 25 min of pedalling furiously ,in the full blast of the summer heat, at 12 in the noon,I stopped for a quick water break. When I resumed cycling after that, things started going horribly wrong and I could feel trucks whizzing past me.My vision was getting blurred and I couldnot hear the traffic in the highway.I could feel myself swaying. STOP before you kill yourself, my brain shouted.

And I did..and sheepishly waited for the back up car to pick me up.next one hour I was busy recovering from the shock.I had to get back on my cycle.And decided come what may, I shall not get off it till we reach our destination. And I pedalled. Some more. Yet more. It was a fight against the heat, the aching thighs, the bruised hands.

And I managed to complete 84 kms.

And now to re-live those moments as I pen it down for some magazine (which explains this half hearted post)

(left leg down,right up,left down ,right up,left….)

(the afternoon sessions were bearable)

(crossing on a ferry) Sid did around 102 kms, and is preparing for the Nilgiris cycling expedition in Nov.Refuses to take me along as he fears I might slow him down…