Home will be warmer from today… Post 10

Because In-Laws are reaching Bangalore tonight J

This means -

I will be waking up early

I will not have to unlock the door and enter an empty home (as aman invariably comes home after me!!)

Aman and I will be on a detox for obvious reasons ;)

There will be yum paratha’s for breakfast

There will be longish Mango hogging sessions after dinner

There will be home made mango pickle

There will be more laughter in the house

There will be a lot of baby talks – for which I will not have an answer!!

There will be good food all around

There will be more talks on shifting to Delhi

There will be gifts and more

There will be an attempt to wrap up work and reach home on time

There will be packed weekends and some out of Bangalore trips

Home will be a lot happier place. I am blessed, truly. Touchwood.

No Desserts for me please - Post 9

Some decisions are hard to come by. But when enough is enough, one has to take drastic steps. The pointer on the weighing scale has been moving in the wrong direction for a few years now. Finally the realization came home that I had moved to the category of “Overweight” people. And who wants to be that.

Something had to be done.

And after a lot of tears, resolve was made. Say no to SWEETS. Yeah, you read that right, I decided to be off desserts.

But considering the fact that I have a major sweet tooth, I love eating out and most weekends are spent trying some or the other new restaurant, I knew this would be a difficult job.

So the clever me decided that I won’t order any desserts for myself. I will just take a bit or two from what others are having. This way my craving would be satiated and I wouldn’t be taking in all those calories. And so began the mighty sacrifice.

But, alas, it turned out to be quite something else. How you may ask. This is how - I am out with friends. Each one orders a dessert. I don’t. But I take a bite from each. So ultimately mu intake is more than theirs.

So my taking a bite or two turns out to be such a duh!!

Who ever said sharing is a mighty good thing to do??

Even Good guys make mistake - Post 8

This was my FB status message a few days back and a lot of my friends assumed it was about Aman. Fortunately it wasn’t. My guy usually doesn’t make mistakes and even if he did I wouldn’t talk about it on FB, would I?

This is about someone else. Let me explain.

Recently I met this newly wed couple. While I have known and respected the guy for a couple of years, it was the first time I was meeting the girl. The guy is a mature, intelligent and an extremely smart fellow. He is a good human being and overall a nice person to know. He is good at his work and quite ambitious. And when he announced marriage we were very happy. It was a marriage of choice and he had known the girl for a few months.

I am sure they are in love. And I am sure they are happy. But what shocked me was the “couple itself”. They were just so opposite. And not opposite in that nice way which makes one go all mush.

They were opposite in this very weird manner. While the guy is all sober and intelligent, the girl was all silly and full of giggles. I surely don’t mind people who laugh a lot, but laughing without a reason is such a put off. The girl was also definitely low on IQ, a bit of a show off and seemed like a brat. She certainly wasn’t someone I could manage a decent conversation with.

Which obviously made me think what my friend saw in her. She was good looking. But it ended at that. So did my friend get so floored by the way she looked that he didn’t bother to go beyond that? So is it that men still just want eye candy as wives? What happens when this initial fascination with looks dies down? Will then the stupidity start bothering him? And wont it be too late? What will he do when he wants to talk? Will he still enjoy the giggles as much? Well, that only time will tell, but as of now, I think he did make a mistake.

The monkey menace - Post 7

That’s the most recent phenomenon that has plagued the so called up market, posh apartment I stay in.

So the security guards had warned me and had asked me to keep the doors closed. Which, of course, I forgot about.

So it was Saturday and Aman and I

were sitting on the balcony enjoying some evening tea. Suddenly I see these 2 pair of eyes staring at me from the adjoining balcony which is attached to the bedroom. I shrieked and we ran in only to realize that the bedroom door was open. The monkeys were faster than us and before we could enter the bedroom to close the door, the monkeys were comfortably sitting on the threshold.

Panic struck the Bhatia – Malhotra household. And Aman, if not more, was at least as scared. We were standing at the entrance trying to hush the monkeys out. Aman was trying to make all these scary sounds but our monkeys were just not bothered. And slowly they entered the room and started scanning the place. I ran to get a stick, but before that I clicked this picture. The picture is not very clear, after all I could do only as much with Aman pushing me to get the stick, while he was holding the fort and protecting the house.

After running around the house I finally managed to find a curtain road which could be used as a weapon to chase these animals away. But before we could do anything, one of them grabbed the All Out {yes, the one we use for mosquitoes} and the other one clutched this Mobile phone box which had the warranty card and ear phones. Having their loot in place they ran. And we couldn’t do anything.

Huh. Even monkeys are getting the better of us!!

And if this was not enough, I saw then swimming in the apartment pool the next afternoon. It was sunny and what better way to cool themselves right??

The fall syndrome. Post 6

Yes, that’s what I have been suffering from since time immemorial. Ever since I can remember I have been this extremely fall prone person. As a kid, I could be often spotted with crape bandages on my ankles. My home back in Ranchi was a duplex. And I use to go up and down the stairs a number of times each day. And even then managed to trip or twist my ankle ever so often. This meant that I used to fall on the same set of staircase, which I knew like the back of my hand.

Things haven’t changed much. I walk extremely carefully as I am well aware of this tendency and yet I manage to do the mighty fall every now and then.

The most recent one was where I fell in the PVR cinemas. I was walking up the stairs, very carefully, and yet I managed to do the unthinkable. The on lookers were shocked and all I could do was laugh. You might think that my footwear choice is bad, but what will you say if I tell you that I fall even while I am wearing those Nikes. Just the other day Aman and I were at this cool restaurant having a romantic candle lit dinner. It was the beautiful Banglore night and we felt like going for a walk across the pool. So we got up, Aman was standing tall and I was on the floor. I really had no clue how I fell while getting up from the chair but I did. Don’t even ask me about the level of embarrassment.

There are way too many of such instances. Like recently when I was in Melbourne for the launch of our new centre I decided to save my company some dollars. So I doubled up as the event Emcee as well. I was wearing these awesome stilettos and was extremely careful while walking up the stage and just as I put my left foot on the stage it slipped. I felt the world come crashing. There were dignitaries, my company’s leadership, employees and media. Last place to fall you would agree. Right at that moment my hand held the podium and I stabled myself. Some people did notice what had happened but the mighty fall had been saved.

I trip and fall while walking on the plainest of the surfaces. People close to me know this well and there is always a helping hand nearby.

I think it’s time I go visit some astrologer, or maybe add another A or I to my name. Or maybe wear some precious stones. But I really need to find a solution.

Finally, I think I have arrived – Post 5

In the bylanes of beautiful Bangalore, with rains in the background and cool breeze in the hair, sat a girl, sipping coffee, nibbling on a croissant, engrossed in a book. Oblivious of the surrounding. Not bothered by the stares.

Enjoying her own company.

Well, your truly has finally learnt to enjoy herself when her better half slogs hard at work. For a while I am sure I won’t be complaining!!

The wedding story - Post 4

Girl: my parents agreed

Boy: mine did too

What??

No eloping, no drama, no blackmailing, no Bollywood moments??

Well that’s exactly what happened. When Aman and I decided to get married our parents were more than happy. They took charge of the situation as if they had gone all the way to find me a groom and him a bride!! No one complained. Not even that vague mammi or that chacha who loves conflicts!! Huh. What dampener.

So all my hopes of having some thrill during my wedding was gone. Now what stories would I tell my grand children? I wanted to be seen as this cool grand mom who had to fight all odds to win her prince charming. All my dreams were crushed by these ever understanding set of parents??

A day before the wedding both his and mine relatives danced away all night. I felt like going and reminding them that this was a love marriage? But they were in some different state of euphoria. Even the fact that both Aman and I were the first ones to get married in respective families and all younger cousins would follow suit did not deter them.

So much so that on the eve of the wedding I almost wanted to run away with Aman. That would have been the first of its kind? Where the bride and the groom elope with each other, while the relatives are busy dancing!!!

Now every time I meet these couples who have braved all odds to get married I feel like kicking them. They will have these lovely stories to tell. How her father house arrested her. How he was kicked out of the house. How the brother threatened the guy etc etc. and all I can do is smile!!

Of books and some thought - Post 3

An evening well spent, browsing books, and then picking up a few. A couple of Jodi Picoult and one Shashi Tharoor to be precise.

Nothing works more to lift my spirits more than buying books {Well actually a few other things do too} but lets concentrate on books for the sake of this post.

So Mon and I met over coffee, browsed books, picked a few, ambled around the beautiful Indra Nagar, hogged on some delicious rolls at this quaint little eatery and spoke and spoke a lot.

And then it suddenly struck me, about bloggers, blogs and their personalities. For in Monika, you get what you read. No pretence what so ever. I have met a few other people too with whom I have interacted over blogs. Some have been a personification of their writings or rather I should say that their blogs are part of their personalities.

And then again there are people whose blog’s reek of something way too artificial. They choose to be anonymous and the picture they present is clearly of a wannabe. There are many such examples all around and since I don’t believe in conflicts I won’t mention them here.

So what drives such people? And don’t they get confused between being themselves and impersonating an image? In the longer run does the “real them” and “the put up them” gets intermingled? I won’t call all this a lie. Its aspiration I guess. And nothing wrong in aspiring, right?

Some of you who read me, know me from before. Some have come to know me after reading me. So guys, do you think there is a match between me and my blog? Honesty will help!!