Saturday, April 22, 2017
Friday, April 21, 2017
Thursday, April 13, 2017
Good Job, Script Writers of My Life
Olivia said " Hindi cinema'r heroine naki tui" and I could not be happier at the compliment. (Because Hello excuse me, yes Sir, Bollywood runs in the blood).
So this has to have a flashback!
Remember that creepy serial in Star Plus at 10 these days that will give off the end and then run each episode in flashback? Like that. (Because Hello excuse me, yes Sir, Star Plus plays on mute daily for hours together in the room).
So the story being, today happened to be a very busy day at work since the firangs would go for their Easter vacation and hence the obvious deadline for all the handover, clarification, review and approvals. Add that to the birthday of one of my Bangalore lifelines. Attending to all of this hustle bustle, I also had a flight today, for poila boishakh because last year I had promised to the Mother that nomatter what I would be home for poila boishakh. What I meant was permanently settling there and since there apparently is a permanent dung on my face on that line, I had to atleast go. Because ekbar jo Maine commitment de di toh main khud ki bhi nai sunti. (I did warn you about Bollywood)
So that's that. Last minute cake cutting delayed by almost an hour because yes Sir, every team has atleast one person who has all the work at the last moment and delays the world, and people like me never learn (I hope my lead never reads the second part because he will have a dramatic affirming nod at it, but that's a story for another day). Now, time in hand before take off, 3hours and 30minutes. Somehow somehow cutting short the come-soons and I left off. People who know me knows I dislike walking fast, plus I had luggage, plus it is shit hot these days, plus heels, plus cloak room procedures, plus office gate to main gate is little more than half a kilometer. When I reached the main gate, time in hand 3hours 15minutes.
Now my usual confusion to take the cab or vayuvajra was not even an option but well well, "NO CABS", again and again and again. Finally a cab was booked which showed "15minutes away" and there came a VayuVajra so I took that after getting fried in the sun for 15minutes. Time now in hand 3hours, which initially seemed like okay-ish. Now say hello to Bangalore traffic which can suddenly happen anytime, anywhere (except for the usual spots of course) and for some alien reason, nothing seemed to move. A fellow passenger (who surely had more Bollywood in blood than me) started yelling, followed by crying, followed by loud prayers ( insert dramatic ram ram Jai raja ram, ram ram Jai sita ram here, and believe that today, I saw Ekta Kapoor's inspiration truly). Time now in hand, 2hours and we had not even crossed KRPuram signal. I HAD to to web check-in which I had not done because the plan as usual was to beg for some window seat to the left at the airport. 15minutes gone, still at KR Puram. Web check-in would buy me 30mins, 30minutes!!!
Here comes Pocha. It is almost like the scene where Pandit Gangadhar becomes Shaktiman. So in a world where ALL of my friends were busy and I was technologically challenged and technologically unarmed at the same time, Pocha did my web-checkin. I finally knew why Pocha was born :P
Time now in hand 1.5hours and we left KR Puram. Roads looked clear till we reached Hebbal and wonder of wonders, Hebbal only had 5minutes traffic stop. Soon we left Hebbal and time now for the take off was exactly one hour. This is when the Shaktiman points that the boarding is in 15mins ( I wonder why suddenly the boarding time came down to 45minutes from 30) and I didn't even have printout of the boarding pass. If you've watched Boss Baby you will know, the corporate Boss would become a clingy baby without the power solution. So now Pocha'r Shaktiman-hood over and Gangadhar was back with all the stupid ideas and prolonged stress-the-world mantra. Exactly 45minutes to take off and dot when the boarding started I could see the airport but blame it on the Bollywood Kismat, traffic right there. So now I, in my my heroine-ism, took all the luggage and ran 500m long stretch till the gates. 30mins to take off and boarding started. I found a print booth outside while the line at the gate looked like about 15 people. Boarding gate would close in 10mins. Remember Ajay Devgan in Pyar Toh Hona Hi Tha? Ditto that with extensive bechara face to Kannada Aunties with and Tamil Uncles I somehow made it first in the line to the gate. Crossed that and landed for security check where a lady had 6kids. SIX! Boarding gate closes in? 2minutes exact! Here I be the Genelia, pushed the Aunty with million kids, almost pushed my way through security check-in to find Gate No 9 had no people. WHAT?
Now came the best actor in side role award winner in my story who said boarding is not complete. I ran I ran. The muchhar uncle to check tickets gave me a look that said "You-kids-are-so-irresponsible". Somehow I made it to a packed flight with an annoying Mummy-child combo beside. I missed writing about panic calls from Maa but that would be a 10page write-up. The air hostess looked at my face and got me water immediately. So much for heroine-hood of mine. But I write this in my room, on my bed, beside the window from which moon can be seen while you sleep. The major inspiration to all the drama in the blood.
So now you know?
" Hindi cinema'r heroine naki tui"
Of course
:D
So this has to have a flashback!
Remember that creepy serial in Star Plus at 10 these days that will give off the end and then run each episode in flashback? Like that. (Because Hello excuse me, yes Sir, Star Plus plays on mute daily for hours together in the room).
So the story being, today happened to be a very busy day at work since the firangs would go for their Easter vacation and hence the obvious deadline for all the handover, clarification, review and approvals. Add that to the birthday of one of my Bangalore lifelines. Attending to all of this hustle bustle, I also had a flight today, for poila boishakh because last year I had promised to the Mother that nomatter what I would be home for poila boishakh. What I meant was permanently settling there and since there apparently is a permanent dung on my face on that line, I had to atleast go. Because ekbar jo Maine commitment de di toh main khud ki bhi nai sunti. (I did warn you about Bollywood)
So that's that. Last minute cake cutting delayed by almost an hour because yes Sir, every team has atleast one person who has all the work at the last moment and delays the world, and people like me never learn (I hope my lead never reads the second part because he will have a dramatic affirming nod at it, but that's a story for another day). Now, time in hand before take off, 3hours and 30minutes. Somehow somehow cutting short the come-soons and I left off. People who know me knows I dislike walking fast, plus I had luggage, plus it is shit hot these days, plus heels, plus cloak room procedures, plus office gate to main gate is little more than half a kilometer. When I reached the main gate, time in hand 3hours 15minutes.
Now my usual confusion to take the cab or vayuvajra was not even an option but well well, "NO CABS", again and again and again. Finally a cab was booked which showed "15minutes away" and there came a VayuVajra so I took that after getting fried in the sun for 15minutes. Time now in hand 3hours, which initially seemed like okay-ish. Now say hello to Bangalore traffic which can suddenly happen anytime, anywhere (except for the usual spots of course) and for some alien reason, nothing seemed to move. A fellow passenger (who surely had more Bollywood in blood than me) started yelling, followed by crying, followed by loud prayers ( insert dramatic ram ram Jai raja ram, ram ram Jai sita ram here, and believe that today, I saw Ekta Kapoor's inspiration truly). Time now in hand, 2hours and we had not even crossed KRPuram signal. I HAD to to web check-in which I had not done because the plan as usual was to beg for some window seat to the left at the airport. 15minutes gone, still at KR Puram. Web check-in would buy me 30mins, 30minutes!!!
Here comes Pocha. It is almost like the scene where Pandit Gangadhar becomes Shaktiman. So in a world where ALL of my friends were busy and I was technologically challenged and technologically unarmed at the same time, Pocha did my web-checkin. I finally knew why Pocha was born :P
Time now in hand 1.5hours and we left KR Puram. Roads looked clear till we reached Hebbal and wonder of wonders, Hebbal only had 5minutes traffic stop. Soon we left Hebbal and time now for the take off was exactly one hour. This is when the Shaktiman points that the boarding is in 15mins ( I wonder why suddenly the boarding time came down to 45minutes from 30) and I didn't even have printout of the boarding pass. If you've watched Boss Baby you will know, the corporate Boss would become a clingy baby without the power solution. So now Pocha'r Shaktiman-hood over and Gangadhar was back with all the stupid ideas and prolonged stress-the-world mantra. Exactly 45minutes to take off and dot when the boarding started I could see the airport but blame it on the Bollywood Kismat, traffic right there. So now I, in my my heroine-ism, took all the luggage and ran 500m long stretch till the gates. 30mins to take off and boarding started. I found a print booth outside while the line at the gate looked like about 15 people. Boarding gate would close in 10mins. Remember Ajay Devgan in Pyar Toh Hona Hi Tha? Ditto that with extensive bechara face to Kannada Aunties with and Tamil Uncles I somehow made it first in the line to the gate. Crossed that and landed for security check where a lady had 6kids. SIX! Boarding gate closes in? 2minutes exact! Here I be the Genelia, pushed the Aunty with million kids, almost pushed my way through security check-in to find Gate No 9 had no people. WHAT?
Now came the best actor in side role award winner in my story who said boarding is not complete. I ran I ran. The muchhar uncle to check tickets gave me a look that said "You-kids-are-so-irresponsible". Somehow I made it to a packed flight with an annoying Mummy-child combo beside. I missed writing about panic calls from Maa but that would be a 10page write-up. The air hostess looked at my face and got me water immediately. So much for heroine-hood of mine. But I write this in my room, on my bed, beside the window from which moon can be seen while you sleep. The major inspiration to all the drama in the blood.
So now you know?
" Hindi cinema'r heroine naki tui"
Of course
:D
Wednesday, April 12, 2017
Monday, April 10, 2017
The Rock and The Star
To Be
The Rock!
Solid, Hard, Unbreakable,
With a mind so strong.
To Be
The Star!
Bright, Shining, Dependable,
With direction that never goes wrong.
To Be
The Rock and the Star!
And be constantly at war
With heart, mind, society, destiny
And everyone, everything else
That are.
So,
The luxury to be
The Rock and the Star!
Together or very far.
The self proclaimed/
The mass accepted/
The subtly announced
(or not)
To Be
The RockStar!
Wednesday, April 5, 2017
KodaiKanal- Closure
“The Gift of the Forest”! We decided to visit this place for
three significant reasons other than the perpetual reason of
Bangalore-has-such-nice-weekend-destinations.
1. New Year
2. Piyadi’s Spinster trip
3. Our last trip together (for the next 2-3 years atleast)
So that’s that, plans were made, tickets were booked quite
well in advance and we were ready to hit the roads again.
We started off on the 30th, Friday night to be
precise when entire Bangalore was leaving the town. Imagine the endless and
ever so popular Bangalore traffic which of course made P reach JUST IN TIME and
we, after like forever, HAD to eat at a place that looked like a posh slum from
outside and modern dhaba from inside. With that and last moment washroom visits,
started our trip on a bus that was pink and a fight that made us all sleep very
quickly!
We woke up to a late arrival possibility, on a road that looked like Shimla, at a town that looked like Darjeeling. Also, to mention N’s special nature’s call which was over in less than half a minute, to the shock of all of us and the driver uncle.
We woke up to a late arrival possibility, on a road that looked like Shimla, at a town that looked like Darjeeling. Also, to mention N’s special nature’s call which was over in less than half a minute, to the shock of all of us and the driver uncle.
Kodaikanal is this small little town, the smallness of which
will occur to you only after the local tour guides have already fooled you with
the ‘discounted’ packages (be wise!). You can almost walk the entire town and
still have time to chill (if there is an extended weekend). The hotel was a
surprise from R to all of us and we were majorly impressed with the location,
the walkable BIG garden (which we ended up not visiting, but that comes later,
if at all), the games, the people, the fire place and the VESPA! Yay! The room basically was a Honeymoon suite (R ka kamaal!) but we did not mind anyway. Just
when we were settling in with all this, we realized that we will have to go
commando (okay, inside joke I will not share).
We left off for the ever so popular lake and let me announce
it to the world that riding double cycle is NOT easy. I could not for that
matter and hence, R had to wait in turns with one of us while others
whooooooped. Oh and okay, the tourists could be very VERY weird and ogle at
your red dress and make you very uncomfortable so do not hesitate to give them
dirty looks and run the cycle over them (serves them just right). The paddle
boats on the lake is utter waste of time and please make sure you try it ONLY after
the sun goes down.
Kodai is a town with most amazing food joint names. Every
place you see will make you want to enter and EAT! Yes we should not judge
places by the names but NONE of the places will disappoint you, especially the
bakeries. We had to order cake and in that excuse, we tried bakeries with all
the cake varieties and I probably had the best food on the last day of the
year. Now comes the part that most people should know, Kodai has very few
liquor shops (there is definitely one on the line of Domino’s near the ATM but
zero variety) and if you even stand (forget buying) near it, you will have
random strangers passing horrendous comments like “Madam this is not a bar,
only men allowed”. You may also be lucky
to find few people from abroad asking for help with currency exchange at a liquor
shop and they help you buy the liquor in return. However, such comments and “help”
had pissed me big time and thank God I was busy earring shopping while all of
this was actually happening.
Our evening party was as epic as it can get, I would not
even dare to explain or elaborate.
The only glitch being, we missed the bonfire,
all thanks to high uncles outside and unnecessary attention to our dress. With
a big discussion over room heaters, nobody remembers when that night ended and
the first day of the year kicked off with BIIIIIG spread of south Indian breakfast!
This followed by side scene over pine forests (where monkeys take your bhutta),
shooting spots (where boys will be heroes and try to ‘rescue' you), distant
villages (which is perfect like picture postcard), historical hills (which I
did not get), small church (some thankfulness on the Day 1 of the year, yeah),
and of course SHOPPING (no not clothes, you get all masala and tea and aloevera and pain oils and what not!) We finished all by evening and us hungry
kids, finally started off for lunch at 4 sharp on one of those MANY great food
joints with epic names. Our first set of orders over, we asked, in full style “repeat”
(also, we were all completely FULL), at 4:45. I don’t know which one of us had
the sanity to check the tickets to realize, bus is at 5! Good Lord.
Madam P announced “arre 5ta bollei ki r 5ta, khai aage” :D
Then we called them and defying all Bangali norms they said, “Bus will leave at 5:10 max”
So now, N and R rushed to collect the luggage (which was inside the car and the driver was driving it somewhere else, because we told him not to disturb us before 6) and P and I stayed back, WHY????
To collect the food we ordered man. WHAT ELSE!!!
Then we called them and defying all Bangali norms they said, “Bus will leave at 5:10 max”
So now, N and R rushed to collect the luggage (which was inside the car and the driver was driving it somewhere else, because we told him not to disturb us before 6) and P and I stayed back, WHY????
To collect the food we ordered man. WHAT ELSE!!!
The aunty of the cafĂ© got scared for us and packed all food quickly and we rushed towards the main road to find, our superman driver bhaiya has come. Somehow we managed to reach the bus stop at 5:13 to find the bus in ignition. Like an angry Principal, the conductor scolded us and we finally started off. But the overdose of nutella pan cakes, running for the bus and millions of hair pin loops made us all (when I say all, I mean ALL) extremely nauseous. Result? Nobody could eat dinner, forget about the food we stayed back and packed. We somehow wanted that night to end. Tip to anyone who visits Kodai, NEVER book anything but sleeper bus (DON’T go is the original suggestion). The beauty that you see is definitely not worth the pain you get (even if you are a pro) or, stay a little longer. I HAD to go to work an hour after I reach Bangalore but I had not felt so sickly in a long long time. P took a long time to recover and we were worried N will faint away as usual after reaching. Somehow somehow, with a fight with the Ola wala, we ended the trip, and I end this post abruptly here, just like THAT!.
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