Anything but blue on a saturday night

The best part of any week is a Saturday night. You have the whole emptiness of Saturday to look back on and the whole emptiness of Sunday to look forward to. Ever since I came to XL, weekends have lost the significance they used to have in my life. It is merely days which pass here with no clear distinction between the days of the week.
Saturdays in Bangalore used to go along the predictable lines- wake up late, eat a heavy lunch while watching mindless television, read a nice book while lying down and fall asleep with the book on my face, wake up to have tea and then finally venture out for some unplanned shopping or a drive followed by dinner at one of our usual places. The night inevitably used to end with us having Kulfi at Bowring and a maghai paan while we lazily drove back home discussing whether our Sunday morning breakfast plans would culminate at Koshys or Adigas.
They say change is the only constant and change did come to our saturday night routine at XL. :)
It was the alumni homecoming week so the atmosphere in college was a lot lighter than usual. The college was decked up and we had a cultural program and a bodhi tree performance to look forward to that evening. I had gone to Brindha athai's house to spend the evening there and came back to college around 10 very well-fed and content.
We stormed up to the empty common room while the whole batch was listening to Bodhi Tree and got the whole TT table to ourselves where we let Pandey fool us into thinking that he was a loser when it came to Table Tennis. Very soon, we discovered that he was just about smashing everything in our face and that Priya could play table tennis on a 'whole new level' :P
As Bodhi Tree wrapped up, we decided that change of game was 'on the cards' and slowly moved to my warm room to play Uno.

"Reverse"
"Draw 4. Red"
"Damn you, Pandey!"
"Uno"
"You forgot to say Uno. Draw one now."
"Actually the rule is: you draw 5 if you forget to say Uno"
"Shut up, Dixie"

Then began a session of Taboo. After briefing Priya and Sumesha with the rules we began the game.

"Where do babies come from?"
"Eh?"
"Things that are in the aquarium"
"Fish?"
"Yeah. Those babies"
"Fish babies?"
"Yeah!!"
"Eggs?"
"Really expensive!"
"Really expensive eggs? What? I don't get it!"
"Argh!! Never mind"

"What am I?"
"Loser" "Stud" "Monitor" "Class representative"
"What am I to all the girls in class?"
"Brother?"
"Aaaa! Never mind! Give me the next card"

Through all this madness, poor Astha was curled up quietly on her bed with the headphones on watching a movie amidst all the crazy loons gesticulating wildly. Finally at 4 we decided to call it a night.

For the first time in all these months, I went to bed on a Saturday night not missing Bangalore. Difficult achievement that! :)

Happy birthday!

November 10th and 11th have always been a special part of my life. Two people who make up all my childhood memories celebrate their birthdays today and tomorrow. Many years have gone by now and we never speak as often as we should but some relationships, I have always believed, never need to be reinforced by contact. These two days in the year always sets the clock back for me as I think of all the wonderfully ridiculous things that we have done and how there was never a dull moment thanks to three overactive imaginations always at work.

As my birthday gift to the two of you, here is a trip down memory lane…

• The summer school/crèche idea that we pioneered in Sri ram avenue with business foresight rare for such a young age and our absolutely brilliant pricing strategies for the school. “No, of course, we can give you a discount” “So do we give each child two erasers or one?” I still wonder why the plan fell through. :P
• Our trips to the ‘secret’ garden with lemonade and biscuits to discuss absolutely ‘critical’ matters sitting in a dark and dingy hut worrying what was going to crawl out of where and then being absolutely heart broken when we discovered our ‘secret’ garden was the most preferred walking trail of more than half the residents of the colony and that it wasn’t so secret after all.
• Playing hide and seek and all of us running to the terrace of Kleen systems and hiding there every single time.
• Making up secret languages and driving the third person mad by pretending it was a real language with one person begging to be taught the new code.
• Strutting around the colony refusing to socialise with any kid other than each other presuming we were the ‘elite’. 
• Swimming for 2 hours in Emperor's club and then eating Chilly Gobi and Panner manchurian like world starvation was at end.
• Making prank calls to half the world and finally being sheepish when we were busted by the telephone department.
  
• Solving elaborate detective mysteries with our heads full of Famous five and Secret seven.
• Playing WWF cards with a vengeance and grinning like idiots when we saw that our next card was going to be Hulk Hogan.
• Finding cow jaw bones during our many excavation sessions and then going into a tizzy of excitement because we were certain it was a dinosaur bone, and then spending an hour under the sheets with a torchlight to add to the ‘allure’ to discover which dinosaur it was by comparing the bone to each dinosaur in our dinosaur cards pack. It is only now I can understand why our mothers reacted the way they did when they saw us with bones of dead animals on the bed.
• Playing cricket with Kalavathi Ma'am's wall as the boundary line and arguing about who should scale the wall to get the ball from the farm.
  
• Making elaborate make believe dishes and making a reluctant boy pretend to eat them all.
• Hosting grand insect cum craft exhibitions and actually charging people to see our tomfoolery.
  
• Creating a new e-mail ID each week with no one to mail but each other but the excitement never ceased. “Put a dot between my initials.” “Put Cool after my name”
• Burying each dead pet with a grand ceremony and a funeral that most undertakers would be proud of.

And they go on…

It was not that our relationships ever lacked the numerous fights and the enormous tantrums but we still had one heck of a time and a childhood that most people would envy. People often ask me if I felt lonely as a single child. I always meet them squarely in the eye and say “Lonely? I grew up with a brother and a sister.”

Anjali and Govind, Happy birthday! Wishing you both the very best in life.

Surprise!

Yes, we were aware that he said that there would be a quiz in the 6th or 7th session.
And yes, we knew that we had no classes all morning and we could've read those chapters.
And yes, we still woke up at 10 after our thumbs started hurting from pressing Snooze.
And no, we were undettered by the number of people studying around us. 'Paranoid' ,we told them, 'He said only after he completes the 3rd chapter'

I am sorry I saw Diwakar sleeping in class and decided to do some social service by keeping him awake with an exciting game of Hollywood ergo not listening to a word of what was said in class thereby ensuring that both of us missed out on atleast 3 questions.
I am sorry Priya and I avoided studying all night with lame promises of getting up 'really early' in the morning.
I am even sorrier that we didn't open the pretty green book and took the shortcut thanks to Microsoft powerpoint.

I am happy I could atleast pretend to write answers for 25 out of 30 questions.
I am happy that the faces around me had the same expression as me.

Ah. The element of surprise.

XLing in everything

I miss…

• Amma’s shoulder in the night
• Lazing around on the brown couch with dish tv
• Fighting with Appa to watch F.R.I.E.N.D.S despite seeing that episode a million times
• Playing every game in Amoeba with S
• Vathakuzhambu and Keera mulagootal
• Signing into google talk and connecting
• Blossom browsing trips with Teletubby and Medusa
• Waking up in the night without realising your t-shirt is soaked in sweat
• Arguing with Pras about everything from deployments to food.
• My Saturday night dinner outings with Amma and Appa
• Discussing arbit facebook gossip with Kiks
• Conversations about everything under the sun with D
• My balcony when the rains arrive
• Bangalore
• You-tube-ing random rubbish with Nav.
• My Blanket, book shelf & bean bag

I’ve learnt to…

• Share a bathroom with 16 other girls
• Loosen up a little and enjoy everything around me
• Make my own bed
• Operate a washing machine
• Eat chapathi for two meals in a day
• Live without internet access 24 hours of the day
• Sleep for 3 hours and still function normally the next day
• Not suffer Ver Se withdrawal symptoms
• Manage Dhobi and Maid schedules

I love…

• The pampering I get from everyone because I am away from home
• Our girl talk sessions in the room at 1 in the morning
• The dosa guy who stands right outside the building
• Waking up hoping for rain every single day
• Random conversations with S at 2 30 in the morning
• The blast of air conditioner when I walk into the class from the heat
• Having a power nap and waking up all refreshed
• Going to the mailing office and seeing Amma’s handwriting on the courier
• Astha adjusting my fan right after I lie down such that I don’t feel hot
• Being singled out in class for being a psychology student
• How project discussions suddenly turn into pictionary games
• The Nimboo Paani at Dadus.
  

Looking ahead. Behind. All at the same time.

Back to the stars!

I finally went to the planetarium again yesterday. I last visited the planetarium when I was 12 and was just as excited about going in as I was that day!
S and I walked around and read all those charts like good children and then I insisted we take a print-out of our weights in different planets which S vehemently refused. Then we waited in a long line till we could go in to the auditorium. I was expecting a dank, dingy place but the auditorium took me by surprise. It looked quite comfortable and state of the art.
We settled in our seats and complained for a few minutes about the army of noisy kids who sat next to us but when the lights went off and the starry sky was seen, we were stunned into silence.

I cannot even describe how absolutely brilliant it was to just lie back and see that sky. The show we saw was titled 'Celestial Fireworks' so we got to see shooting stars, meteors and asteroids. I must admit, I stopped paying attention to the commentary after a while and was too lost in the beauty of the sky. I sheepishly admitted this fact to S after the show only to find out he had done the same himself.

For that 30 minutes, we both were just a couple of 10 year olds again, fervently whispering 'Look at that' and 'That was awesome!'

Go find the closest planetarium today.

I'm back!

Every time Mumu updates her blog, I make a silent note to myself to update mine too. It has been one and a half months now of making silent notes.

A few days back, I could never imagine what my life would be like without CAT. H would begin every conversation with "Did you clear the Quant cut off this time?" and Mu would begin with "Meow".

It feels like yesterday that I called H after the exam and told her that I had done well but I was so scared it wasn't good enough. Both she and I were surprised at the lack of tears at my end especially after the buckets of tears I cried last time.

2 months passed in a blur with dull hope and XAT thrown in between. Then came the day of the results. Amma was in a train, restless and annoyed that she was missing the results.

I woke up at 4 45 in the morning with Appa walking around restlessly. I told him to lie down and let me sleep for atleast half an hour. He asked me to atleast tell him to how to check it. I mumbled "Its there in the Bookmarks. Go click on that link"

Few seconds later "What are Bookmarks ma?"

I woke up and shuffled irritatedly to the computer and showed it to him with a smug look on my face, so sure that the page wouldn't load. And then in two minutes, both of us were yelling the place down! I had got the much coveted IIM call finally. He started messaging and calling the whole world while I gently reminded him that it was 5 in the morning and that most sane people would be in bed. Amma continued to cry on the phone all the while. "Happiness" she said. "Relief" I said.

Then began the next leg of preparation, for group discussion and personal interviews. I always presumed before that this would be the easy step. Once I got rid of maths, I would live happily ever after. Proven wrong completely.

Suddenly I was in a class filled with people amongst whom a 97 percentiler was treated with sympathy for his marks. They knew about fiscal deficit and the issues in Syria. They did not hesitate to cut you off in the middle of a discussion or to speak loudly till they were heard.

I hated it intensely the first few weeks. Everything from the "I agree with my friend" to "Adding on to his point..." irritated me. I was sure that I wasn't going to make it. Then, CL happened. 13 group discussions back to back with no time to think would make anybody come out of their shell. It wasn't so difficult after that.

The D-day came and went. Before I even digested what happened it was over.

Nail biting phase now.