Feeling the Pangs of Separation ;-)

After professing my love for Delhi in the second last post , when I was all set to feel the giddiness you are supposed to have when you are in love (isnt that how it happens in bollywood movies?), came the twist in the story - i was deported to a sleepy little emirate in UAE for some project work.


Foggy winter mornings gave way to the desert sun and then to dark rainy mornings now . I am infact lucky to be here at this time when the climate is pleasant.But the fact that I have to be in office at 7am (I dont know which insomniac set the working hours) , 6 days a week dampens things.

Aloo paranthas are replaced by shawarmas .Most of the restaurants here are run by mallus and I seem to be eating mallu food (the normal, not-so-gud,not-so-bad variety) with an alarming regularity.

The one and only one Lulu substitutes TGIP , I make religious trips to Lulu every week .(I suffer from the lack of regular doses of retail therapy.Not many places to shop here,my last unsuccessful shopping attempt took a quite a few pieces of chocolates to get over)The shoppers paradise is just 130 kms away anyway.





I miss Delhi winter , the stuffed paranthas my friend used to bring me for breakfast (7am and breakfast dont really get along well u see , so as I tweeted once "breakfast is like sunday mass now, happens once in a week and runs for an hour"), dessert from barista (I have not found anything that comes anywhere near to their "dark temptation" ) and most of all waking up at 8am on weekdays :-(


This is where I get my chocolate doses from :-)


But life seems to be moving fast , I cant really believe that I have been here for 3 months now!!! Maybe coz of all the chaos that comes with a site life :-)

Wishlist

How I wish

Conversation was just about speaking what’s in your mind

A man was just an individual rather than a Hindu/Muslim/Christian/Mallu/Indian/French blah blah

The choices I make were guided by what I wanted and not what I was supposed to want

Achieving your dreams was only about putting in the effort

Life was an equation with fewer variables

The world was ideal

Howard Roarks existed

I were just me

........

This is wht a bus with a broken down AC cruising at 100kmph in a desert can do to me ;-)

A bollywood love story – the first half

When I set foot in Delhi almost 3 years ago (July 2006 to be precise) , I hated the city.
A few weeks after I came here a friend of mine asked me how I was finding the capital city; I remember my reply “shallow and hollow”. I was being honest in my opinion.

The streets were dirty, the buses were crowded and filthy, everything was overpriced (atleast by kerala stds), u always had the “south Indian” tag attached, the heat was unbearable (July is not really the best time to make your debut in Delhi), I seemed to be eating aloo or paneer for every single meal and I was staying so far away from home (knowing I cant just pick up my bag n go like I used to do in college was not very comforting) and the flight tickets were not cheap either – I despised Delhi, and was more than eager to get out(Bangalore was where I wanted to be since all my college friends were there).Used to the “save, save and save some more” (so that you can splurge on a grand house or a big wedding) attitude in kerala, I used to watch the “spend as much as you can” attitude of people here with a smirk. ”I don’t belong here” – I decided.

I did attempt a few times to shift my job n 2007, but nothing worked out and 2008 was a hectic year and I didn’t get much time to fret.But now, after a little more than 3 years spent here, I have realized that the city has slowly grown on me (Though I shifted to noida in Dec 2008 and is technically in UP). If Mumbai was love at first sight, Delhi was the slower version.

Buses are still as bad – but the metro will soon come up, the summers are equally horrible. But...
The crowded streets of chandni chowk with all those yummy street food, the cold winter mornings (i need a motivational speech playing at full volume to just get me out of the rajai), the smell of baking when you walk in front of Wengers in CP (I have done that only once, but it still lingers on), getting lost every time I visit Lajpat Nagar market, all those flyovers (especially the one near aiims where you find curious looking sculptures), the relief you feel when it rains after weeks of the hot summer sun , the labyrinth of roads in the Janpath area(i have not yet understood how people find their way there) , the musical fountain at akshardham temple, the silence inside lotus temple, the golgappes,aloo chats,ram ladoos , paranthes in the paranthe wali gali(how can I forget food)– all these and more
And a stroll along rajpath on a winter evening (attempting that in summer is suicide) followed by a spicy dinner at andhra bhavan – bliss!!!!

And I have made a quite a few friends; a very diverse group indeed - I have the luxury of sitting on my lunch table with 10 people –from 8 different states of India.

And I have relaized that I do love the city now and that Bangalore really doesnt cut it except for the weather maybe ;-) Just like those intermissions in bollywood movies when the hero and heroine realizes ;) the second half lies ahead, I guess it ought to have a happy ending ;D
I regret the fact that I have not seen much of Delhi even after all these years, but I intend to catch up once the metro is up and running (I have a metro station a few minutes walk from my pg, that should help )

I had this post in mind for so long , but what finally pushed me to post it? Maybe “The white tiger” I read last week or “The city of Djinns” I am reading currently.




And my roomie of 3 years finally decided to leave me in peace and migrate to greener pastures (Read a phd in US) and I do miss my partner in crime.
My waistline stands proof to it (i would have liked to add my bank balance too reflects it, but it shows no sign of improving whatsoever)

Long time....

Work load at office was at its peak for the past few months .I was under a lot of stress, even got 2 or 3 grey hairs as proof (and for my mother to cry about). I guess that is a good enough excuse for keeping away from blogging, J

I was just experimenting with google reader (I am kind of new to this though it has been around for quite a while I know) and came across my blog posts – 23 in total (the number did surprise me a little, I mean did I really write 23 posts!!!) and yes, looks like my first post was on April 26th 2007 and that makes it almost 2 years. I missed out d first anniversary but am on time for the second. I will surely treat myself to a good dinner today (Ever since me n my roomie shifted to Noida we have been splurging on food-all those calorie loaded weekends explain my reduced bank balance and an extra 10kgs, I think I look malnourished in my college photos - though we complain regularly that Noida lacks good restaurants compared to Delhi. I dare not imagine the consequences if it was otherwise)

So what has been happening? I was never a movie buff to start with, but have been watching a lot of movies these days thanks to friends who have got internet connection with “unlimited downloads” ;) But even now I would prefer curling up in bed with a book anytime, though I have cum a long way from 3-books-in-a-week college days.
I hardly read 2 in a month now

Two movies, which impressed me a lot – Before Sunrise and Before Sunset (I know they are pretty old, but dts y I had taken the anticipatory bail). To keep ppl hooked for 1.5 hours with nothing but 2 ppl talking with each other (of course you have Vienna and Paris as backdrops) isn’t dt easy. I would recommend the 2 to anyone anytime. But 2 of my pg mates found ‘Before Sunrise’ boring. Their review: “bolte ja rahe hain bolte ja rahe “ :O – I consoled them by sayng that they need to grow up a lil more (they are in their final year of engg, not toddlers anyway) to enjoy the beauty of those movies ;)

Maybe I might start blogging more frequently since I have got around 100 movies left to watch and hopefully a bunch of them will cause sudden bouts of creativity(I mean if you count the last few paras dt)