Observations.

Some observations about the week that was:

Training is a nice throwback to your school and college days, including the girl obsessed with personal hygiene sitting next to you, who will NOT rest till all available orifices are sparkling clean while she listens to the instructor. So there she would sit every day barely a foot away from me and first clean one ear with her pinky until opportunities for amusement were exhausted...then move on to the next, then clean her fingernails, and flick it all every which way. While I cringed in horror beside her thinking of strong dettol baths when I got home. (if this grossed you out, think of how grossed out I must've been this last week.)

The cab system is pretty damn awesome, no auto drivers to want to murder, no one and a half charge, air conditioned comfort, door to door service. But should you live in a slightly unconventional place that involves bumping for a kilometer or two over precarious kuccha roads, you might feel a mite uncomfortable about the tight-lipped cab mates who sit around you and glance at each other occasionally as if to say 'who is this b*&^%??? What did our organization see in her?' You pretty much spend your entire ride home feeling defensive and orritable and you get off at the mouth of your street because you would rather not put them through another five minutes of bumpy roads and walk the rest of it instead. Even if it means walking past the place where a drowned guy was hauled out of the lake a couple of weeks ago in the dark. Better the restless soul of a drowned indigent than the dark looks of cabmates I say. The conversation is easier.

Happy Birthday to me.

You know what the best thing about birthdays is?

The cake you say? The gifts? The calls at midnight? The calls all day through? The cards, e-cards, mails? Orkut and facebook scraps? I hear you, I hear you. They’re great. You might be absolutely swimming in self-pity…luxuriating in the stuff, until a b-day turns up one day and forces you out of your self-indulgent misery. And part of the reason is all of the above that you mentioned.

However, I would say the best bit is something quite the opposite. I wait till about 10-ish on a birthday night to see whom among my friends and relatives have remembered my birthday. And then, after a tot up of the people who did and a quick soul search about why the others didn’t, I put phase two of my yearly birthday plan into action.

I systematically write, scrap, and send facebook message-thingies to all the people who forgot. Guilt is my source of sustenance, like a chubby Dementor out of Harry Potter. Along with a love for the arts and wavy hair, I inherited this talent from my great-grand aunt on my mother’s side. Give me a reason to make a person feel guilty and you give me the greatest gift of all. Needless to say, birthdays are prime occasions for a guilt-fest and cheer me up enormously.

My family was rather disappointing this year, with every single person in the immediate tree calling or writing. My husband very annoyingly pulled out all the stops and silenced me for a whole year. Seven years of my company has tipped him off, and he didn’t give me even the slightest fodder for a future “I can see I’m not important” mini-guilt-trip. Damn it.

But some of my friends…hehe…you know who you are!(pointing an accusing chubby finger) Had it been that I was really in doubt as to whether you liked me or not, I would’ve been actually upset. But at the risk of being presumptuous, I shall say, that since I’m fairly secure on that count, and am well aware that you simply forgot, (because we’re all busy people and at some point or the other I’ve forgotten yours too) it’s just fun to write emails that say “You forgot my BIRTHDAY!” (frowny face). And wait for the guilty replies to line up in my inbox.

And now if you’ll excuse me, there are a few phone calls I have to make, since one or two of my emails haven’t been replied to.

…And so the festivities continue!:)

P.S - For those who plan to point out how bad I am with birthdays and how many times you've had to remind me that 'its so-and-so's birthday please call him' (yes, Haimanti I can read you like a book), all I can say is...sod off. It's my birthday and my blog and I shall say what I like.

waah.

waaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaah.....

I hope to write more cheerful posts soon.

The Chain-Reaction that is Life.

Rather than destiny, I believe the direction of one’s life is entirely influenced by a sum of all the people and events (big and small) that one has encountered along the way. One tiny event that you mightn’t even feel is significant, and the trajectory of your life is sent careening off-course in a completely new direction, like a snooker ball on the billiards table of Time.

Let me explain. Till school Chance didn’t play much of a role in my life. Which school I was sent to and spent 12 years in was my parent’s decision. Even entry into University was more by plan than chance. But once in -- Coincidence and Chance kicked in big time, and the chain reaction thus triggered is still ruling every waking moment of my life.

When I say this, you must think I mean some HUGE thing that happened while I was in college. Perhaps my marks, or some professor who inspired me to be a great thinker, a second Mahatma. (I am, but credit goes entirely to me).

Au contraire my dear friends.

I had a GREAT gang of friends who would sit in trees on campus, eat fish and aloo chops, and while away the hours discussing the Meaning of life. Life was sweet. Then one day one of these friends (who I only hung out with because of the others) called me a poo-poo head. I asked him to piss off. That ONE thing…which we all forgot soon enough including me and the potty-mouthed friend, set my life firmly on one course unbeknownst (cool word, eh?) to me or anyone else.

Why, you ask? Because that gang of friends (who are still my closest friends, despite that little hiccup) chided me about my reaction. (What if he called you a poo-poo head? They said.) Things cooled distinctly between me and the group …and I struck up a friendship with a senior who I would never have talked to if things hadn’t been awkward between me and my existing friends. Just because I hung out with him now I started seeing a lot of a skinny guy with a guitar fetish who studied all the way across the campus in the Engineering department. Four years later I married him.

Having hooked up with HIM, I went to Hyderabad and am now in Bangalore, sitting in this office, writing this blog. Had I not married him…(and had that &^%$face not called me a poo-poo head four years before that) I would most certainly have been somewhere else. Maybe in Calcutta, still living with my parents. Maybe abroad married to an NRI doctor (a girl can dream, can’t she? Quit laughing!). Never here.

And had I not been here I wouldn’t have made myself the most wonderful life with my husband, had the best ever two years in a little company I’ll always adore, and met and worked with some pretty wonderful people. Two of these people in particular, have in turn enriched the fabric of my life, and who knows, maybe sent the snooker ball spinning off into a direction I will only realize in retrospect a decade from now.

So to Mr. *&^%face (who’s the poo-poohead now?) --Thank you for calling me names that day, I am eternally, undeniably indebted to you.