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!!
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!!
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!!
And no its not the Sunfeast 10K kinds, the one that a dear friend recently took and I am so proud of her. This one is more intellectual (ahhmmm..) in nature. It’s the blog Marathon.
I have decided to get onto the blogging Marathon. And no I haven’t taken the break that I was planning to. So you might wonder what gave me this gigantic idea?? Even I don’t know.
Taking this up is like adding a bit more to my already crazy days. But then what’s life without challenges.
Also, my regularity on blog has been highly sporadic so what better than a marathon to get me all writing, eh?
Monika had done this earlier and I was highly impressed. So its now time to impress myself with some consistency. She is doing it again this month along with a few other folks so I decided to join the party!!
So guys, motivate me, leave comments, and be nice. It’s no mean feat, so I need all the good wishes.
On that note ready steady go!!!
Yup that’s the kinda constant feeling up there!! At least twice a week. And when enough was enough, Aman dragged me to the hospital. And when I say drag it actually was that. For the simple universal truth holds true for me as well. “I hate Hospitals”. Yes I do. Immensely. They are the most depressing places possible. The smell, the ambience, the faces, everything. It’s bad enough to even make a healthy person feel SICK.
And the doctor after all the checkup and tests confirmed what I always knew but kept pushing out of my mind. I suffer from migraine. Terrible one at that. So another feather to my unhealthy hat. Grrrr.
Looks like everything around me is getting the better of me. Doctor asked me to relax. Pray, explain how one does that? He asked me to take less stress. Again, who in the world takes stress. Isn’t that something that happens on its own?
Whatever, but I am seriously contemplating taking a month off from work. Going on a sabbatical. Going home to mum. Doing nothing. Maybe it will help, maybe it won’t. It’s not a solution for sure. But maybe its worth a try.
On another note - I am also suffering from the empty nest syndrome, although of a different kind. Younger sister has moved up north. After being together for the last year it’s very difficult to be in the house without her. We still address the room as “her room”. I really hope and pray that sooner than later we shift to the same part of the country where she is. People send in your good wishes.
When smile can do? No really, why?
This is why I say so:
My return flight from Singapore to Bangalore was completely full. For obvious reasons I couldn’t do e check in, which meant that my getting a good seat was left to chance. And when one leaves things to chance, the worse usually happens. So I was given the center seat in the middle aisle. I was tired and all I could think of was reaching home on time.
So I boarded and settled down with a book. On one side was a middle aged gentleman. The other seat was empty but not for too long. After a few seconds, a huge middle aged woman walked in. When I say huge I mean really huge. I am not being judgmental here. Her size was really really big. Big enough to ensure that half her shoulder was on my seat, her legs were in-front of my foot rest, and the center arm rest was lifted up to accommodate her.
She looked visibly uncomfortable in settling in. And like any other person I too felt bad for her. So I decided to make as much space for her as I could. Just after we had taken off, she suddenly turned to me asking me to keep my hands to myself. I was shocked. I really couldn’t believe my ears. I smiled and said I was on my seat, to which she replied that my elbows were jamming into her. I was stunned enough to forgo a reply.
Now if you are so fat to be on half the seat of your co-passenger, how can you even complain? Here I was, mighty uncomfortable, but still sitting politely to ensure that she was all right. And that’s what I get. Grrrrr.
Now what happens when you are stranded in a place like Bangkok in between 2 flights? Add to it the fact that you are all alone, the Laptop refuses to start, the hotel looks totally uninviting and the head is buzzing with ideas.
So what if you have just landed after a 9 hours flight? So what if you haven’t slept for 3 nights? So what if all your body needs is sleep and rest. So what if the heat and humidity is completely unbearable. When have all these been a deterrent to a “lady on mission”?
That’s exactly what happened last week. On my way back from Melbourne to Bangalore, I had more than a 10 hours halt at Bangkok. Landed, cleared immigration, took a visa, reached the hotel, slept for 1 hour and lo behold, I was all set to undergo the therapy that works like none.
After a quick round of investigation I closed down on 3 shopping destinations. After all there is only as much one can cover in half a day. Well fed and armed with the essentials i.e. lots of Thai Bhat, a cold water of bottle, sun glasses, flat footwear, and focused mind, I was raring to go.
What transpired in between is any girls guess. 8 pair of footwear, 5 Bags, 5 skirts, 30 plus tops, 2 dozen odd accessories, few jackets, some sleepwear, a empty pocket and really heavy bags.
And I am not kiddin’ when I say heavy. Heavy to the extent that my fingers were swollen after a while. I had to remove my rings to give way to the swelling. But when the heart is determined who cares about a bit of pain.
Finally, I had to get back to the airport, not because I thought I had shopped enough but because I didn’t want to miss my flight back home. By now my fingers were as thick at sausages, numb with pain and totally lifeless. So the only way to carry the bags was on my fore arms. Yes, I looked demented, a spectacle worth a laugh. But who cares, behind the layer of pain was a very happy heart.
Writing this today, as fingers took a while to get back to normal. Happy and content and the pain is now gone, but the gain is there to stay!!!
