There's no place like home

This was written while waiting for my connecting flight to Bangalore at the Mumbai airport, in the wee hours of the morning , having just landed back from foreign shores. I was so excited and so unable to sit still that I needed something to occupy myself and I took out the laptop and started writing what I was feeling, it is incomplete of course, since I was more interested in hearing the call that 'The Bangalore flight is ready for boarding'.

The first thing that I see as soon as I land in India is the dis-obeyal of rules. Made me smile.Then there was the queue to get through migration and we had the usual jostling and 'breaking of queue', people slipping in left and right and the concept of personal space totally violated.There was this lady who seemed to think that shoving her bag into my back was a way to move faster.and hence my first irritated expression which I haven't felt in the last 10 months, at least not for the same reason.Then there was the airport security check, they had just one row for a few hundred passengers and having said that I must mention that it moved very fast.security did seem lax for there was a water bottle in my bag which almost always resulted in a personal human baggage check and me having to lose 15 mins extra coz of that, but here, the bag was just kept aside and I could just pick it up and go my way.The staff was helpful though, turns out the metal detectors that are used for the ladies, seem to pick up the back pocket buttons also! that was a little weird , the lady kept trying to check what made the beep and it was quite some time before I realised that the pockets had buttons on them.
and finally !! most importantly, the first thing I thought of when I landed was "Yeh jo desh hai mera , swades hai mera" and that put on the biggest smile on my face.There seemed to be not as much excitement as I expected considering that I spent the last 7 months waiting to get back home, but honestly , being in a flight full of Indians(I just typed desis and had to erase it and make it Indian, coz of obvious reasons). There is something that totally tugs at the heart strings, the feeling of being back in India, of being back home, seeing all ladies in sarees.. It doesn't seem anything like people warned, I was told there'll be a 2 month withdrawal period before you get back to accepting what I spent 23 years of my life in.Well, maybe early to say so considering all that I have seen is the airport only so far.
But baby, It feels great to be back home! I am loving it ! No more McD's , no more SUbways , plain old masala dosas and vadas and sambars and chutneys ... Yummmmmmmmy !!
Friends, family , familiar surroundings... sigh, what I have been pining for for the last 10 months, almost since the day that I left .... I am home . I keep saying that to myself as I sit here in this airport lounge and wait for the last flight that I want to take in a journey that started exactly on October 25 last year.I think outside of home and office, if there was a place that I spent time in , it was in airports.
I really do wonder if I achieved what I set out to do, a part of me wanted to explore more than the limited pond that I seemed to grow up in , another part of me wanted adventure and something new and exciting... a part that wanted something new ... I wonder if I found all that in the last couple of months, I know for sure that when I got my tickets in hand to return to Blore , the first thought that ran through my head was "Is it 10 months already, what have I done in all of these months, I am going to go back home and everything is going to be exactly the same, nothing has changed , nothing will, I am probably the same that I was 11 months ago, just feels like the page of a year of my life has gone by without much having happened" but then I also know that I have grown up, learnt to be a little more self-dependant, learnt to be my own person and have sort of formed an identity of my own, I have had to face all my shortcomings in the face, I had to face my worst fears, I had to learn to depend on myself, in the same breath, I also learnt that the actual independance that I was seeking is impossible,man is a social being, nothing can get done in the best possible way if you don't have the support or advice of someone who's been there before or done it.

A dime a dozen

I have been reading this past week and how.

The Da Vinci Code
Deception Point
The Prodigal Daughter
A Matter of Honour.
Dhammara
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's stone
and currently
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

I couldn't finish Dhammara though, it was really boring. I didn't know I had THAT much free time at hand.
(whoa, that's almost a book a day !!!)

Cleaning out my cupboard

I did the darndest thing yesterday.
It started with me rolling up my sleeves(literally) to clean out my old lot of 'gifts/greeting cards'. I had three big bags of them to clear and started sifting through them and as was inevitable got into the flashback mode for many of them.
The oldest I had was from when I was in the 5th std. A friend had given me a 3D card of a sailor and a small boy waving to a ship at sea, move the card and the ship moves. This girl now has her own 2 year old daughter!
There were lots of birthday cards, best of luck for exam cards, festival greetings, a bunch of letters from a penpal, pocket sized telephone directories and birthday remindes.
I found a piece of paper that was torn off from a Hindi text book, the corner part, where I had written down the birthdays of 5 of my 12th std friends in about 1.5 inches of space.
I found a packed which had around 10-15 friendship bands from the 12th std, some from my college, some from my tuitions, and best of all, I still remembered who had given me which one.
There were of course many cards which had "All of us" signed at the bottom and no year, so I wasnt sure which gang this was nor which year I had gotten it on.
Another card that a couple had given to me saying that "This is the first time we are doing anything as a couple". It felt so good to see that.
Then there were a few lines of Shayari written on foolscap sheet by a friend, a budding poet 10 years ago, not sure if he still keeps at it. I wish he does though.
It was a nice walk down memory lane, one that brought back memories I hadnt raked up in years. Its nice to know that I havent forgotten so many of those incidents. But I do wonder how many I have indeed forgotten.
All these were the gifts of my school and then +2, I wonder what happened to all the gifts I got during my graduation and working period. I guess, they turned to be gifts that are in the showcase at home, at school, I guess a card is the most affordable, the older you get , the more you can spend, right.
Yup, coming right to the darndest thing point. I think I mentioned a phone directory stowed away in the midst of those cards, I was going through the name (I actually couldnt recall some of the people's faces even with their names and numbers in front of me).I saw a name , A, a friend from 12th, actually, my friend K's friend. K was a really good friend to me in those two years, we'd spent a lot of time in labs, lunch and after school hours, we'd end up in her house pretty often talking for hours. Probably my closest confidante of that time. We finished 12th, I moved to another college while she continued on in the same one for her graduation and somehow we never met after that. It is pretty surprising, now when I think of it. I lost of a close friend out of sheer negligence of keeping up a friendship.
Like my mom says, life always puts new people in your path, most of the old ones drop off with time and the new ones sort of fill up that gap till the next new one comes along. The few that stay with you are the ones for keeping.It isnt that they changed or like you lesser or any logical reason, things just happen. You live with it.
Sometime after I got onto Orkut, I tried searching for her , lots of times, but for the life of me , I couldnt remember her last name, I still sifted through hundreds of records with the first name and gave up thinking that she probably isnt on that website.
On a whim, I took the phone and dialed A's number, this being a landline, I hoped her parents would be able to tell me her current number and I could get to K through her at least.It really didnt register on my mind, that the number I had was 10 years old, that her parents might not live there anymore, that she could be married/working/studying somewhere continents away, that she may not be in touch with K. I guess I need to do things like that more often, just do it before I can think of all the reasons it will fail.
As luck would have it, she was there, (I am sure her father wondered why I called up on a landline and asked if a Ms A lives there and then introduced myself as a 12th standard classmate to him) but of course she had absolutely no idea who I was.
I tried giving some 'clues' about me, "I was on the college throwball team", "We used to sit in the cycle stand after classes and discuss Mrs. G's latest funny statements", "I used to hang out with K in labs". Absolutely no go, I rattled off a few other names from their group and she at least was convinced that I am not a total nut case and there's probably some authenticity.
But, bless her for this, she told me that K was on Orkut and gave me the mail ID.
I have shot off a friend request and have my fingers crossed that she at least remembers me :)

Writer ?

This is going to be true ramblings, I have been meaning to write something for over a week now and havent been able to think of a single thing to write about.If I were indeed a writer, I guess it would be a wonderful example of writer's block.
I wonder if I will ever be a writer, as in write something that I can think of as a piece of readable, interesting, well-put, well thought out litereary piece.
Maybe not. But then who knows, the future may need 'would-be-authors' like me.
There was this movie I forced myself to watch, just so I could get to the ending, where this writer has writer's block, she is trying to figure out how to kill the main character of her novel and ends up going to bizarre places and doing even more bizarre things just to get inspired.
She goes to a hospital emergency ward and realises that people are getting healed here inspite of the urgency and severity of the problems, so she asks one of the staff "Where are the people who are dying, who will die, where do you keep them?" and gets this weird look in return which could be interpreted to mean, "May be you want the psychiatry ward for yourself".
Then she rolls off her car into a lake in winter just to see how the dying person would feel and realises that she wouldn't like it either when she's shivering sodden wet and smoking her trademark cigarette.
Wow, it is so much easier to describe something that you have seen or read rather than to try and come up with something original isn't it?
For instance, lets say you can beautifully report something but you just don't have the creativity to invent characters and situations, does that make you less of a writer or does that just make you someone with limited creativity.
Hahahhhaaa, I like that word limited, it is such a wonderful way of saying almost none.
One wonders at all the words and phrases that are in use just to sugarcoat the actual essence - take for instance- vertically challenged, would you honestly be able to say that a person being called vertically challenged will take that description better than being called short? Won't s/he know the difference, rather, the lack of a difference?
We shouldn't call a spade a spade.
Isn't that a big part of writing, the more accomplished writer you are, the directly proportional the size and obscurity of words that you use.For a long time, I assumed that someone with a good command over the language and a vast collection of big words undoubtedly assured your position as a good writer.
Turns out, its not true. When I read something, I believe I need to feel the emotion being spelt out, understand the story and have fun while doing it.
It can be looked at from another angle where, if the reader is as educated as the author, then maybe he enjoys the finer nuances and higher intellect more. So, if I was an author, I would want all to read my stuff, so that would mean, the max length of words I use wouldn't probably cross 8 letters.
There was one occassion in Hindi class at School that I remember, where the teacher, after admonishing the class for lousy Hindi skills, called out my name, asked me to come to the front of the room and read out the answers I had written. I barely had time to wonder if mine really was the worst of the lot, when she said "Her answers are so well written, the simplest words possible but she gets the point across and thats all I need".
I know there was a compliment in there somewhere but at the 14 years of age - frame of mind - walking to the front of the class - mix, I wasn't sure.
But I take that as a compliment now. The point is to get the point across.
Hope you got the point.
Uahahahahhaaaa, if only she were here to see the mess I have made.