Serenity and Calamity.....

So then my Significant Other came up with this title (very original - surprisingly!!) one that pretty much describes the two of us and our states of mind very aptly! As I have mentioned before, the man is Serenity personified and I am a walking, talking disaster on legs! 

In fact, I think I'm going to mention a few notable people of my life in the city-that-wakes-up-early.... and I hereby christen the Significant Other "Serenity".... (which is what he shall be referred to in future posts). 

Blog # 2 has been quiet (re: audience feedback) because I'd kept this one under my hat... but I've decided to come out (grin!) and name some peeble that I know in the blogosphere. One of them is a blogger celebrity - Egg (I'm really hot on privacy, so I shall not name many-who-shall-not-be-named!) and he's on here and yup, I'm super proud to be his friend! The other one is Baby Bump, who I like a lot and her husband Tummy who are frequent dinner companions.  Tummy, Egg, Serenity and me (Calamity!!) have lots of balcony conversations that are usually elaborate leg-pulling enterprises! 

and thus the week begins.....

Three Weddings and a blog funeral....

Aah so yes, I'm in the city that never sleeps and I came here for three weddings ... and now a blog funeral... some written words have been erased from this page in an effort to keep this the way its meant to be, the way it was intended ... and not some sorry piece of outpouring that could have just as well been an email....
Therefore, this here, is a phoenix rising... goodday sunshine....
And coming back to the three weddings, yeah.... one down, two to go... AND ON THE SAME DAY!....sighhhh.... the thought of shuttling between 2 venues (thankfully close by) is tiring... but i've decided to divide my time (and me - literally.... mehndi on one hand at friend one's place and mehndi on the other at friend two's place!!!) between the two venues.
And then its away from the city that never sleeps to the city that wakes up early!!

Breathe.... breathe in the air.....

*siiiiiiiiigggggghhhhhhhhh*
so a long holiday has almost drawn to a close.... and as usual, one has NO clue where these last few weeks have gone! Its just sped by in a flurry of activity, meeting friends, dealing with some red tape and in general enjoying the feeling of being pampered, sleeping late.... being a brat! Its crazy, but this city moves on a rhythm that's so uniquely its own.... everywhere else I have lived, the slowed down pace has only amazed me more about how much more we cram into one day in the city that never sleeps! Some days it seems like the day is over before its even begun! (ahem, maybe that has to do with the fact that on some days I get up at noon!!!)

But yeah, after so many weeks of frenetic activity, it'll be nice to go back.... its been strange not having the significant other around - this is the longest we've ever been away... My very hectic life these past few weeks led him to ask me "Do you miss me only when you're alone?" n the only way I could explain was to say "Maybe I do so many things at a time to keep from thinking how much I miss you"....n I did.... n I do.....

The significant other and I have had numerous ups and downs since we walked into each other's lives...and we have a thread on gmail, that goes back to the very first email he ever wrote me and traces the way our relationship wrote its story... mush, gush and angry flush - its got all the makings of a potboiler!! Last night, I was re-reading some of the old communication, and it struck me that taken chronologically, our communication would make good reading! If it were possible to never EVER reveal identities, I'm sure my devilish mind would do it too... :) but my boy, he's a shy one... :) complete antipode of the dangerous mind.... his mind is as serene as it gets.... no idiot schemes brew in this one. And for his sake, and because I love him, you'll just have to do without! :D

Here's to a quiet thoughtful boy with a big rucksack and a big nose... :) your wife loves you.

books.....

The books (novels) in blue I have read. You are supposed to italicise books that are on your reading list. I am not sure if at the end I'm going to be ashamed about my reading list!! Many of these are classics. Try this one out for yourselves too!

P.S I don't know who came up with the list and on what basis.... I would take out some and add a few more!

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (books 1,2 &3.. finis!)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible (not fully, yes i know im bad)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (in progress!!)
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton (another favorite!)
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (one of my favourites!)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Rant, rant. RANT!

what am i to do? this is not going to get easier on either of us this way....

i've moved here, and yeah, i dont like it much....would you blame me?

if you were in a place where you had no friends (well, there are 3 i think of, but thats it)

you dont speak the language (and people stare blankly at you and you stare blankly at them)

and yeah, you dont have a job..... hmmm.... would that drive you nuts, i wonder?

and well you might say go out and meet people, learn the language, and its not like you dont work...

dont expect me to fall in love with this city overnight.... i come from a place where autowalas are good people who go by the meter, where they dont tell you to take a hike if the distance is too short..... where the minimum fare is NINE rupees, not twenty... and where they return that ONE rupee to you instead of saying "no change"...

its funny that you'd expect me to find wings in a place where i cant find wheels...

its funny that even GUYS who've been here all their lives blog about how difficult autos are in this part of the country..... so i lock myself up here.... maybe thats because i feel safe here..... bored, definitely, but safe.

Cogito Ergo Sum.... I think, therefore I am...

I am: outspoken to a fault!... also easy to get along with...also mad as a hatter!!
I think: too much for my own good... overanalysis will be the death of me...
I know: that this too shall pass.... that what goes around comes around... and that a kind word or act will always find its way back to you if you bother to expend it on someone else...
I want: lots of books, lots of travel and enough money to help me do that!
I have: finally found the man i want to be with for ever.
I wish: fights didnt have to happen
I hate: cockroaches top the list.... spongers come a close second... bitches and pseuds tie for third place....
I miss: my friends in Bombay and Ahmedabad and all the ones scattered over the world..i miss being 6 years old....
I fear: that i will lose my vision.... that i will have no ideas left one day....
I feel: very strongly about certain things and im not afraid of saying so...
I hear: very little when im on a bike.... its a constant source of irritation to my husband that im a space puppy pillion rider!!
I smell: the first rain... good most of the time!! (hehehhe!)
I crave: all things illegal, immoral and calorific! :D
I search: for important things that i have put away and cant remember where i've put them!
I wonder: if i will be mourned if i died tomorrow
I regret: some of the biggest harshest decisions i have had to take...
I love: my husband to bits, my friends to the ends of the earth, my family... the colour blue....
I ache: when i feel like im being judged... when someone misunderstands me..
I am not: as tough as i make out to be...
I dance: with great abandon.... :) i dance like im all alone and the music is mine...
I sing: loudly and lustily to some really silly songs...
I cry: when im sad or so angry that i cant say anything anymore...
I don't always: answer my phone. (i have that in common with the person whose blog i took these questions off!!)
I fight: with as much passion as i do anything else... life is no fun with no argument!
I write: better than i speak, sometimes.... long letters to people i love....
I win: when i complete something to my satisfaction
I lose: my temper ... faaar too easily sometimes....
I never: want to deal with loss of any kind.... yes, i am an ostrich in that respect...
I always: dream of utopian situations....worst case scenarios get me down...
I confuse: days, dates and times... i live on a different time zone :)
I listen: to my loved one's heartbeat every night before i sleep.
I can usually be found: sitting in front of my computer, cooking up a storm or laughing like an idiot!
I need: to know that im loved and will always be loved, no matter what.
I am happy about: the way my life has changed for the better, to my satisfaction.
I imagine: being successful and happy..and more than anything else, being at peace with myself.

mixed feelings.....

Solo trip to somewhere.... i'm thrilled to bits, but very anxious too....
i somehow have a feeling all is not well, and hasnt been for a while....
feels like it'll get worse....
anxious me....
help.