Smokey is no longer with me

When kalu gave birth to four pups ...the whole colony came to congratulate me ...even the pettifogs who kept bickering about her untidy ways to my MIL. For the record, Kalu is a stray . Her cute four pups meant a life to me , and I looked forward to coming home each day to hold them in my arms, play ball with them...pat them lovingly ....force Kalu to sit at one place so that they could be fed.
I named the four smokey,snowy,chestnut and browny ...They would always play in our lane and sleep below the residents' cars.
Yesterday , someone's car hit smokey and he kept crying all evening ...nothing seemed wrong with him ...nothing broken so I thought that he had just had a shock..though when I tried to hold him , he cried in pain.
In the morning , when I got up for my jog, I found him gone ...He had died of internal bleeding ..
WHY DID I NOT TAKE HIM TO A VET YESTERDAY??????
I am sorry smokey!! Please forgive me ...I have failed you ....When I remember your beseaching eyes when you looked at me yesterday ...I feel like crying all over again

The day that "sucks "

I am not really one of those I-shoot-what-I-like from my mouth kinds, but there are those days that suck.
Today seems to be one of those.
I tried to enrol myself into a freelance writing page, and it asked for expiriences...where have I written, what stuff of mine has gotten published, etc . I thought and thought but couldn't come up with an impressive answer that could scream ," I haven't gotten anything published, but I know how to write ...I know how to send my message across" . Sounds limp and lame, but that's the truth .
And no matter what happens in life , truth is the only thing that remains.
Then I recieved this call and was curtly informed that my aunt was dead. I was stunned. That's ironic since doctors had lost the hope of her surviving ..but I kept telling myself that it won't happen...since she was a person who hadn't hurt even a fly in her life .
God, how do you feel like justifying this?

And I have taken a refuge in past

Before you say long time no see, I will say my sorries ...and we will end it at that .I am going through mood-visscitudes I believe, and that's all I have to offer as apology .

So , I have been spending hours and hours on penguins of madagascar , which has changed my already-wasted accent to match that of King Julien (in addition to his malappropisms I am afraid) but I have suddenly realised its fun to find people making faces at you and knowing that they make fun of your accent as soon as your back is turned ... I think I get a kick out of it .
Also, I have developed a yearning for misty woods and stories on fog ...I wish to read something where the hero and heroine have some kind of a tragic love story where fog plays an important role ...

HUHUHU for the twisted romantic in me :)

When to throw that mascara away

We love our makeup kits (even though we don't really require them...after all, we are oh-so-amazing). They help us when we want our mesmerising eyes to look more mesmerizing ...our skin to look more bewitching ..as well as to hide those not-so pretty dark circles that might crop up when we party too much.

But not many of us know about the expiry date of these makeup products ..I would say primarily because its not a mandate to print expiry date on these unlike food products.So how do we determine when to throw that mascara stick away ?

First of all, why do it in the first place? I mean, why throw away that super-expensive MAC Mascara? Lots of women I know use the same kit year after year that they get as a "bridal kit ". Not only is this dangerous, but come on , use logic... you are applying these products on delicate organs like eyes...shouldn't you be more careful?

As per my discussion with a famous make-up artist, the life of our usual make-up items is :

Foundation:8 months
Eye shadow: 1 year
Compact or Bronzer : 1 year
Eyeliner: 1 year
Lip gloss and lip stick: 1 year
Mascara: 3 months
Sunscreen: 6 months

How to ensure your beautifying product lasts longer?
Ensure you keep your beautification tool-kit at a cool and dry place. Some divas suggest cleaning the brushes of mascara and eyeliner once a month. But the best idea is to buy small quantities of these products ...and tell yourself that if you are throwing them away once their lifespan is over, you are doing your body a favour by keeping it away from bacteria-laden stuff. It may have been expensive, but you deserve better.

The house of thousand lanterns

Catchy title? you bet !!! hey , before your mind races its horses and concludes that this is going to be some travel journal where I will be doling out details of some place I visited that was adorned with ek haazaar laaltein... STOP!

I have been revisiting gothic romance for the last couple of months ....and I am delighted . When the page after page descriptions of haunted houses bathed in mesmerising moonlight, full of secret passages and ghostly staircases intersperse your mind, its nothing but pure pleasure. Be it mysteries of Udolpho or Lady in white ..or the more contemporary writings of Victoria Holt...you are jettisoned into a world you love and from where you don't want to come back.

I even started off with a genre called weird fiction ... but got too scared after a read a couple of stories...I guess I am just a chicken hearted person who tries to pretend nothing spookes her .

All in all , they are all great reads ...I am sure you would like to share your opinions

So much to say ...

So I am finally back from my four month long siesta...The truth is I was active on another blog of mine, gothbroth.wordpress.com. Its a blog about music ...goth metal in particular and all genres of music in general.

I wanted to tell you how I felt about going back to college
I joined MBA from a prestigious college recently and couldn't contain my excitement from the day results were announced..What would it be like after so long a time period...say, 6 years? It must be diffrent this time round..would it be fun,hardwork and excitement ? Would I make new friends?
While it was fun rushing through the college corridors, books in a hand, laptop in another ..What was most exciting was the competitive spirit that suddenly came back after all these years. What was disappointing was the same stress lecturers throw on exams and studies...without even realising that we are working professionals, its more important for us to understand concepts than scoring marks...the certificate won't help us as much as properly driven-into-the-mind basics would.
So was the attitude of students ....everyone kept asking lecturers from the first moment what was important from the exam point of view...I think its a mindset problem ..even though we keep on rattling about the things that are wrong with our education system..we inherently support the same.
But maybe it was the first impression ..I am sure there will be more learnings in the days to come

Dont u wish your contry was fun like mine

Some newspaper gave me a refreshingly good news yesterday.. Navin Jindal, the so called hope-of-the-youth MP has decided to support KHAP Panchayats (KHAP who? arey apne honor killing waale bhai log!) and so has the former chief minister Chautala.

If congress,who just loves to appease every Tom,Dick and Harry in order to cash in on the vote bank politics, decides to agree and same gotra marriages are banned, a lot of amazingly novel things would follow.

First, my archrival Mugdha's marriage would become null-and-void.(Mugdha is a Maharashtrian.They are allowed to marry the son of their maternal uncle.She is married to her maternal cousin).
Then,all those who might have made an attempt to marry by flouting the khaps,would be executed,and Mahesh Bhat would get topic for his next movie.

Then,Some XYZ panchayat from Rajasthan would ask for an approval for child marriages.This would naturally be granted as well.So we will be freed from the tension of what-will-happen-when-my-daughter-grows-up.We can safely marry her as soon as she is old enough to pronounce "shaadi".

After this,ABC panchayat would demand legalising female-infanticide.Needless to say,this will get a nod too. Think how awesome this would be.India would become an alpha-male nation in the true sense. Each woman left (who is not dead since she was born after the rule passed)would have like....umpteen choices between the men. Even John Abraham might be forced to marry some ugly sistah as Bipasha would pass him for someone cuter.

Finally, demands would swarm like anything ... legalising killing of lower castes,muslims,hindus,christians,sikhs and what not .Eventually,noone will be left in this country.Either this would become a barren land with a river of blood or a conglomerate of zillion nations fighting each other at the drop of their hats.

Except me. I am fleeing today itself...Leave ye to yer homeland sistahs.

Mai kaun hun ?

Its like I'm a paranoid looking over my back

its like a whirlwind inside of my head.......

We were having a regular tete-a-tete when one lady's chance remark hit me.She is one of these trained-on-your-own pschycologist types.She talked about what kind of people are prone to schizophrenia and I realised that I am one of those rare few.

I often talk to myself..I talk to myself like there's someone else talking to me.

I also at times,when a disaster has averted on its own,start imagining what would have happened if it wouldn't have been this way.Then I go on imagining the scenario till the time I become in synch with it and actually have to nudge myself to come back to reality and tell myself...no ..this is not reality ..I am safe.

So while I am still sane ... Let me tell you all that if I ever turn schizophrenic, I would try my best to turn one of my -selves into Behenji.(I really want to know what it feels like to have a ten crore ki garland around one's neck)

So it matters where I am from,does it?

I will say this ..and I will say this once
There are two types of people in this world....mature and immature.

Of course we know what mature are like. What we don't understand is that most things that make us feel innately smart actually prove our immaturity.

Judging people on the basis of which state they come from is a huge example.

It makes my cup of anger spill when I see a couple of wiser-than-thou discussing the fallacies of people who are obviously from states other than theirs'.While we all know of the north-south divide,it's another absolute pain to hear punjabis chuckle about uncouth biharis or marathis pooh-poohing at the superficial and full of pomp punjabis.

Just what is the matter with us ,I ask?

I mean,come on.If you hate someone,it better be because the person is sinister. Not because he is from A-B-C land. When your statements contain dialogues like " aur fir hai to woh punjabi/marathi/gujrati ,to yeh cheez to usne karni hi hai,woh to unka khoon hi hai" , you are not proved wise,but churlish and stupid ,the kind of person who does not have sound judgement enough to look beyond the city/state garb and judge a person based on his qualities.

Most of the times if you look and analyse your own sentences,you would be proved wrong. So
don't judge a person by where he comes from,judge him from what he brings on the platter.

Caustic tones in a dulcet garb

How many people do you know whose only job in this world seems to put others down?
I know at least one.

I have this woman in my relation(I would call her A) who has some bone of contention with me.Since the day we've met,the only thing i have seen her doing is - use seemingly innocous remarks to irritate me,or show me in a diffrent light. Sample this ,

A :What's this doctor's coat that you're wearing ?
Me: Doctor's coat? But this is tweed.
A : Looks more like a doc's coat..perhaps since its so shapeless..
(Believe me ,its absolutely not shapeless)

A: I recieved calls from all colleges,engineering included but i decided against it since every second person is an engineer nowadays.
Me: !@#$%^& ( You must have guessed by now that I am an engineer).

A : People dont learn sensible things nowadays. They would go around learning languages but wont bother to learn cooking.
(My dears, that's again for me, since I 've learnt french and spanish but am not a great chef.)

and so on..I am sick and tired by now..I would devise scathing replies in my mind earlier but curb them at the thought of sounding churlish.However, a little hard work helped me devise my own replies that don't hurt anyone,but serve my purpose. EG:

A: You must be not be facing jetlag issues when you go onsite to Texas .After all, as it is you work night shifts.Its for poor us who work in the day .
Me: Oh no! not at all, I reach there in the late after afternoon,and while coming back ,at night.But you won't know that,having never gone anywhere outside the country,I mean.

Cheap shot ,I know.But has her dumb.Next time she would think twice before she decides to join a verbal war.

Sad news that makes you laugh

So you think there's only Franz Kafka or Upamanyu Chatterjee who can do satire in the most horrendous way possible?


Haha! You forgot God,you simpleton!


For quite sometime,I've been coming past news that's supposed to make you sad/agitated/irritated,but somehow I end up doubling with laughter.


Sample these:

1. A couple in Germany committed suicide over fear of global warming (in Germany!!!What should we do in India then,where temperature is up by ten degrees when compared to last year?).

2. Rani Mukherjee is sad that all the weight she lost for her bakwas movie last year was in vain.

3 .Madhavan is sadly bewildered that all his movies that started with a 'T' were hits,then what happened to teen patti?(As if it was his movie,hehehehhe)

4. Sania Mirza is now Pakistan ki bhabhi.( Hahahahaha...poor pakis .....one more loser joins their ranks)

5. Ms Pushkar is being discriminated and insulted as a woman by media by terming that she is nothing but a proxy whereas she is a successful businesswoman who commands 70 crores for a marketing deal( Pushkar who?never heard of her before the modi-pushkar-tharoor love triangle.C'mon,even CEOs in India dont get paid half that much).

So if you want your daily dose of humour ,just open the newspaper front page..its that easy

No Como Carne

It's 1 am in the night and I am bloddy groggy ..I make my way to the cafetaria in a half-awake dazed slumber and while the ccd guys brews a cup of Joe for me ...I hear this sound and wince......

Not again !!!
My eyes draw themselves towards these bugs getting electrocuted/torched under the footlight ..and I hopelessly look around to think of someway I can help save them from getting killed this atrocious way ...what a waste of life !!!!!!

I move over to the yo china stall to get something to eat ...The guy has advertised his "succulent chicken".I feel abhorrance in my bones.......Why does someone have to describe a carcass as succulent ?.My mind starts running a motion picture of hens and roosters hanging upside down being brought in for a slaughter.

Then my mind asks inadvertantly ..Is it only the suffering that is visible that matters?What if it said succulent cabbage ..It won't matter would it ?Even though you know plants are living forms too ?

My mind puts me back by a week ,when coming back home at 4 am on my hubby's birthday ,i plucked some wild flowers to give him ...The way they oozed out some liquid had me feel as if it was blood and I had amputated the plant for a seemingly innocous gift .
So am I being a phony here?
Or am I just overreacting ?
I wouldn't know...but all I know is I wouldn't find peace.

Love,Sex aur Dhokha....and the Rage of Kauls

OKKK...I already know that this movie has got the whole world raving about how novel the concept is ,how raw the actors are,as well as the scenes (err...read a particular scene) but my take on this movie is ......dhokha.
Yes,thats what Dibankar Banerjee has given me by making this film.
Who the hell gave him an idea to make a movie where all the three stories are as predictable as a mills and boon,where every scene is etched right out of something we have already read about or know? I mean,after a khosala ka ghosala and a oye lucky lucky oye ....I expected something breakthrough.
This is what happens when you decide to trust Nikhat Kazmi's review.
And they go around saying concept of handycams is new new new....puhlease!!!! last year we had paranormal activity ...and before that blairwitch project. Its a concept new in India,I agree..but weren't we comparing ourselves with world cinema?So whats this brouhaha about being new in bollywood?
Then,coming back to stories...first one is a Nitish Katara meets your regular honour killing stories.Second is dilli-wali-mms ripoff and the third one is your sting operations....nothing new here,except that the language is too explicit (so are the scenes ..in all their full glory of distaste,but I guess post Vishal Bharadwaj era, hindi cheap-talk is the new in thing).

I know he is being lauded as the best we have in the current times.I beg to differ.Give me Anurag Kashyap anyday .

pour le etat moi

A conversation overheard at the office sutta corner ...
A: IPL's here man ! how I missed it all this time...I hope Delhi daredevils get the trophy home this chance round huh!
B: I don't care for delhi daredevils...I am a bong yaar ...KKR rules.
A(astonishment in voice apparent ) : C'mon yaar, you've been living in delhi for like what ,three years ? that makes you a delhiite, dosen't it ?
Methinks .... Do we need to decide who we cheer for on the basis of state agaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin? Isn't one MNS enough ? Why can't I cheer for Sachin if I love him without anyone reminding me that he is playing for mumbai and not for Delhi ,or Kolkata ,or Rajasthan ,or wherever I belong ?
Besides , I can cheer for whoever I feel like .I am a staunch follower of behenji ...and she hasn't bought any team for Ghaziabad ..(apparently poor dear isn't left with any money after spending 200 crores on Kanshiram's birthday..so till the time Ghaziabad Gundas is formed in lines of Rajasthan Royals.....three cheers for ...well ...whosoever takes my fancy.

Infrastructure support ke dohe by Sant Shilpa

Karat karat abhyaas ke,employee hot an ass
Credit le jaave manager, all due to his bakwaas.

Bakri paati khaat hai,taaki kaadi khaal
Manager appraisal khaat hai,taako kon hawaal

Naar hui to kya hui,jaise ped khajuur...
Night shift bhi karan pade,promotion fir bhi duur

Eke saadhe sab sadhe,sab saadhe sab jaye
Rahiman go-green ka slogan maaro,cost cutting khud ho jaye

Bura jo dekhan mai chala,bura na miliya koi
Office mein entry maari to dikha,pura department hi bura hoi

KIM YU NA ...Go figure

Just watched the spectacular performance of KIM YU NA in 2010 olympics...and can decidedly say that she is the most delightful figure skater I have ever seen...The jumps are great, but the spins are absolutely out of this world...
Her 2009 act was delectable as well...but this one surpasses the former any day ...I also enjoyed the spirals .No wonder she got a standing ovation.
Figure skating is my favorite sport since I was 10. Though I am aware that India has absolutely no participation in it , and it kinda breaks my heart to cheer for people who belong to some Godforsaken continent, but I tell myself that someday we might have figure skaters from India just like we have an F1 team now...till then, I will cheer who so ever catches my eye from whatsoever place...:)

Going GAGA over GAGA

From the day I heard (and subsequently saw) the video of 'pokerface', I have been singing accolades of Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, better known as Lady GAGA.
Yes,I know thats a far cry from my usual gothic-symphonic metal thing ...and my abhorrance for blond-pop(self coined term for Britany-Gwen-Christina-Paris types pop) is known world over...but I am trying to fathom what makes me immensely like GAGA's trash videos and her europop-dancerock inspired music.
Lyrics..for one?
Not sure...but risque' and shock value has always amused me ....but that's not it ....I like her voice...there is something unusual about the timber of her voice ....( some pieces from bad romance and papparazzi , for instance )
And then her amazingly unique fashion sense .....call me what you want, but I don't find her vulgar. I also keep trying to fathom who comes up with those geometrical glasses and pearls-studded-on-the-face ideas for her .
GAGA is the next Madonna....and rightly so.
P.S.... Just love "We're dead to the world by Nightwish...Why the hell did they drop Tarja Turunen?

The Baked and burnt memories

Friday,12th Feb, I was speaking to my friend over phone who was describing the ordeal of watching MNIK in a theater where "the front three rows where packed with police and so was 15 meter radius of the hall". I joked that with all the police busy with saving people from the sainiks...I expect another bomb blast.
And then, it did.
This post is not to take out my anger on government,or ourselves, or anyone.
This post is about a shaken me who feels more and more insecure as terror strikes nearer and nearer.
German bakery is around 500 meters from my Pune home.All my Pune years,it has been one of out regular hangouts,since its near,its cheap and its quite a fun place with a lot of eye candy (of all weird kinds..since 80% of the visiting crowd is that of Osho foreigners,who are as bizzare as they can be).
We would hangout in the evenings, in the mornings, after dinner.....in fact,any time you name it .
You could never find any table empty...you kind of had to share all the time..Once,after dinner we decided to have masala chai at the bakery,but didn't find a single table. My inebirated friend just plopped herself in the midst of a couple,simpering at them till the time we dragged her out in embarrassment.
We would go,sit and gossip(hehe! look at the guy to your left ...what in the hell is that sore like stuff on his eye...OMG that's a bangle....the woman to your right ...is she wearing a bra over her shirt...what kind of makeup is that woman wearing ..is that a black lipstick ?)
There are lots of incidents buzzing in my mind that I can't write about (censored kinds) ...but I kind of am sure that when I will go to Pune in near future ...the bakery would be back ..and because of the commonplace occurance (unfortunately ironic) called blasts, people won't really be scared of catching a couple of moments of bliss as they used to there earlier.
Or so I hope.

Tiger Tiger burning bright

When you see that ad where this tiger cub is waiting for its mum to return with food....you kind of feel restless, as if you are getting some premonition of another catastrophe on its way.Last year recorded a maximum of around 90 tiger deaths in India.
Why?..The same old story.Putting wildlife act in place...but not being serious about it (You know our dear government).And thus, tigers end up as tiger skins and medicines and God knows what by poachers.
What's needed ? A strong federal setup to prevent poaching, and punish poachers.
What to do as a commoner.... Raise voice,invoke media....and try to open everyone's eyes.
When we mess with nature, nature takes an exemplery revenge ........
I am doing my bit....when will you join me ?

I cant see you

Sansaar ki har shai ka;

itna hi fasana hai

ik dhundh ne aaana hai ;

ik dhundh ne jana hai ....
Most of you,I am sure have not heard this song...its from some old movie where a sleazy killer arrives in a fog and murders people.Now,before you get alarmed and switch blogs..I am not planning a plot spoiler stint of "who turns out to be the culprit" in the movie..Its just that each day for the last two weeks..I have been convincing myself with this song..rather the last line of it to be more specific.
Not that I am new to this fog thing...In my college days I absolutely loved it when I came home from the hot-hot south maharashtrian towns.......it provided me a perfect excuse to skip morning walks and sleep till late.When I worked in Gurgaon...I found the fog way too romantic...a kind of cloud in which you could kind of lose yourself for hours....surrounded by misty sercrets of nature...wondering what lay ahead....Most of the poems I wrote on winters had fog as one of the central themes.
In Pune,I missed it......like I missed winters...I would wistfully tell my friends that "this city just dosen't know the beauty of a fog...and the freedom of getting lost in it."
Unfortunately,the poet and the romantic in me has died a pragmatic death in the last couple of weeks...Cursed that I am to work nights for the last couple of months and more time to come..Every day ,either the cabs get cancelled....with all of us arguing with the company transport that visiblity is not "as less as it seems to be".....or worse...we have to wait till wee hours in the morning when the visiblity changes from zero to 1. Teeth chattering, bodies shivering....we look around praying for strong gusts to blow this nuisance of a blinding cloud away..
If and when we get the cab,thats worse...since people from all over the world are clubbed with you to go home...when you drop someone at his place, you forget your way back and keep going in circles till you recognise some road to your deliverance.Couple of days back a colleague boarded the cab from office at 2:30 am ...lost her way ...kept trying to find her place for two hours,gave up, came back to office ...and left in the morning.
But four of us(me and my cabmates),I must add, are a valiant lot...We fight and scream and ransack other people's cabs..Once on board, we stick our heads out from all four directions(forget the fact that the only thing visible is neon boards) and try to guide the driver....each day when we reach home...it feels like an accomplishment.

I can't see you

I can't feel you ..

Do we exist at all?

(sung by Simone simons of the symphonic band Epica...felt by people lost in fog on their way home)