I'm Alive

This is to tell you all, my friends, out there that I'm well and alive. Or should that be alive and well ?Anyway! I have been busy with work and lots of other things. But I intend to write the following posts by Friday, they have been pending in my head for long and after Friday I will have other stuff to write about :) (Friday ... S and I leave for a 9 day trip of Egypt!!!!!!! :)!!!! ... I think you get the picture )

• A review of this place called Dara's Dhaba
• An account of S and my trip to Matheran and our stay at the Veranda In the Forest
• A chronicle of reasons I like Delhi, or why Delhi has that pull for me (want to write this before I dive into Dalrymple's City of Djinns, a book I have been wanting to read for the longest time and have finally acquired)
• A hilarious tale about my mom coloring my dad's hair black
• A certain dream I had which made me think I was in a dream :)
• About a friend who recently left his current way of life and is now running two schools in Rishikesh
• Addition: The takeover of my car by the driver and turning it into a temple through religious blackmail!!

Can think of only these at the moment. The list is for me as well and now that I look at the list ... looks like a bit much and I may be forced to revise the timelines!!

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All this made me think of this wonderful quote from a TV series which is full of wonderful quotes. Here goes, Allie in Taken:

"People talk a lot as if the most important thing in life is to always see things for what they really are. But everything we do, every plan we make, is kind of a lie. We're closing our eyes and pretending that the day won't ever come when we won't need to make any more plans. Hope is the biggest lie there is, and it is the best. We have to keep going as if it all mattered, or else we wouldn't keep going at all."

Not bad at all

The current presidential elections in Pakistan reminded me of something. A few days ago while browsing through TV channels I stopped to find Mr. Prabhu Chawla interviewing Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto. For the ignorant ones, Prabhu Chawla hosts a talk show with celebrities from politics, bollywood, sports, business ... everywhere. There's even a spoof of his show on MTV/V called 'Prabhu Bawla'. Now, I have an intense dislike for Mr. Chawla, I am still in the process of discovering all reasons for this but mainly, I think he's an arrogant prick, which may be he needs to be and is part of his persona etc., but I don' have to like it, do I?

So, he's interviewing Benazir and the discussion is about whether Gen. Musharraf will get to be the president and with or without uniform etc. and then ...


Benazir: Things are different for you (implying in India), you go and make a nuclear scientist your President.

PC : Ya, but then our scientists do not go and sell our nuclear technology to other countries. (accompanied with this smirking laugh)


Imagine! I say, not bad at all Mr. Chawla. You just might have redeemed yourself in my eyes!

Hiberante

When I shut down my office laptop yesterday, it stuck me that I was shutting it down after about 8-10 days! Had so much work that I just kept hibernating it every time I was taking a break to move from home to car or car to office or office to car or car to home. Also, to take real breaks to sleep, go out etc. Poor lapty!

Think will shut down my brain and eyes for a while as well ... but then its the weekend and I am feeling excited for no reason and that'll make it difficult to shut down. Gonna try!

This and That

S and I went to watch this movie - Loins of Punjab, over the weekend.

The movie: mindless entertainment, one time watch, has some funny moments. Amateurish at best. Its a good thing the movie is just 90 mins.

But I mention the movie outing here not for the movie but to tell you all about this family/group in the movie hall. The family has two mommies, two daddies and two little girls. Now what's special about this family is that the girls are around 2-3 years old (from what I can tell) and one of them is wearing those squeaky shoes kids wear.Movie, children wandering about in squeaky shoes - get the connection? What the hell!!!!What is wrong with people? By all means get your children to a movie and I am even OK with them walking about on the steps in the dark but SQUEAKY SHOES?Too much for me to handle.

So we watched the movie with the squeak squeak and in between calls by one of the mom's loud 'G!G?G?!GGG'. One of the girls is called Jia and the mom is trying to get her attention by calling her 'G', the little girl oblivious of her cool nickname is not paying the mom any attention. I am no expert on parenting but there are things you just know are stupid.

I only told S to kill me if I ever take our kids to a movie wearing squeaky shoes.

P.S: Oh, did I mention that both the mom's were wearing cocktail dresses to watch Loins of Punjab? I don't mean to be mean, but ... Lol!

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I have been having nightmares that my deep, dark fears are going to come true today and our cricket team is going to get beaten badly, shattering the beautiful cloud I have been keeping myself afloat on.

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I recently realised that I have had all women bosses in my four and a half year career. Six of them, so far. Women bosses just exist on two ends of the spectrum, they are either superb or they are nightmarish. There's no in-between. I have had an equal share of both. Not bad at all!
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I am re-reading one of my favorite poetry books - Gulzar's Pukhraj. Although I can recite most of the book, with page numbers, I am discovering that his poetry says different things to me every time I read it. And that I LOVE the Urdu vocab more than I think I did.
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Of various quotes from Shantaram that I like, this one is almost the favorite: "We trust people either because we see a lot of ourselves in them or because we see what we want to be like in them."