"Interesting" People

Sometimes, you become a part of a conversation you so want to avoid. You look here and there, feel so damn awkward and embarrassed, even angry sometimes; but you cannot escape. Such a thing happened with me too today.

I have taken part in an intra college competition. I am a part of a team of four. We have been given a case study and have to prepare our case on the basis of that case study. My group has two juniors and one peer. We are expected to take the lead and guide them (ah!). Now, my law school is going to host a national moot court competition. For that purpose a few more juniors came where we were preparing for our case.

Now, these juniors had a few posters made by them. They were to stick them on the wall so that people could have a look at them. The theme was global warming. And I must say, they had done a brilliant job with the paint brush. One junior started the topic of marriage. She was shocked to know that I was married for almost six years and my friend was married for 2 years. The bigger shocker came when she said that I looked more interesting and the other one boring! I don't know why she said so, what made her believe so and why she had to be so upfront about it! I didn't know where to look! Ah, Girls!!

Now, the above stanzas were typed last night. I didn't feel like editing them. The update is that we didn't win the competition (that's ok), though we did a brilliant job even though we had not prepared for it much.

I have been crazy busy. But the irony is that the output is less compare to the time I have been giving to a particular assignment. I have been visiting a Government office as one of our important documents is with them. I have been spending the whole day out there, waiting for the officer to oblige me with some calculation so that I pay the fine and get my document released. Yesterday while doing so, I spotted a boy doing shoe polish for 5 Rs. 

While he was doing "his work", I was talking to him. He stays in slums, has 6 siblings and no money to even eat a full meal twice a day. This shoe polishing at least gives him enough money to buy a vada paav for his siblings. I know it is a story of many people around me, who lead such a life. I have spoken with them, I try to do whatever I can for them, but still the number of such kids is not ready to come down. Each day I spot at least 2-3 children doing some or the other kind of labour at the time when they are supposed to be in school. only because they do not have money to study. Labour will at least provide them regular meals. Will we ever be doing anything about it to stop this in any way and at any point? This question always haunts me!

And I know the answer too!

Too much of ranting and serious discussions scare me sometimes. Here is another picture I clicked in the auto I was travelling by.

Interesting indeed! :)

The finicky me!

"I don't have a heart" - my mother usually says this to me. Well, this statement is made when she does not have anything else to say about my "logical" reasoning :P. My mom loves to win the argument against me, but she seldom succeeds. Well, that's altogether another story and post.

I have this habit of analyzing people and thing around me. I love to know them, observe about them, their behaviour in different situation, their reactions to certain things, their love and hate for the same thing at different time, the list goes on and on. Now I don't only observe people, but I even try to find logic behind their behaviour and reactions. And no, I am not vella in life, I love to do it. This answers why I usually win argument against my mom - I KNOW her well, rather more than she knows herself :P

And I have my weird traits too. More than one!

Last evening, I was talking to a friend of mine. He is going out of town for a business meeting. Now, when it comes to packing, I can be VERY irritating about the cross checking part. I check and recheck each and everything at least ten times. Clothes, extra clothes, brush, comb, deo, perfume, facewash, towel (yes, I carry that too :P), torch, charger, plastic cards, book and fifty other things. I do not keep anything to be packed the next day. I have a separate toothbrush and toothpaste kit for travel. Coming back to my friend, I controlled myself a lot not to keep poking him with my mindless questions about packing. But he kept probing me about what he should be packing. I sent him 2 smses late night and early morning about reminders of what he should be taking which he maybe likely to forget!

That's his story. But people who are travelling with me get so very irritated with my constant nagging about such things. I keep thinking about what I have packed and what I forgot till the time I return home. Yes, as the packing part does not end once I leave for the trip. When I am staying somewhere, and a day before the check out, I am again the finicky self, looking for stuff in all possible places, opening each drawer 5-6 times - PHEW!! I would not have tolerated myself for such a thing!

Second thing that triggers my panic button is extra clean rooms! I cannot stand that. I feel sick and get the hospital room feeling when I see clean rooms. A couple of years back, I went to Pune with a friend. She is a cleanliness freak. Her wardrobe is also arranged in colour coordinated manner! We stayed together for five days and only we know how it was for both of us. She even arranged my stuff thanks to her weirdity, and I kept creating a bit of mess here and there!

There are many more weird traits in me. But more on that, later :)

Childhood Musings

Does it happen with you when you read a post by a fellow blogger, you remember something similar, or you want to blog about the same subject too expressing your views about that topic? It happens with me all the times. Most of the times, I rant on their blogs and use the comment form for my post, or simply write a post on my blog. Today is one of such times.

Last week, Kavi wrote a post about Harihareshwar and that post reminded me of my childhood I spent at Umbergaon. I mailed him a few pictures of that place. But my fingers itched to type out the memories and publish them here. Though in my various posts, I have mentioned about my childhood and Umbergaon, but when my childhood friend Jigisha shared an album with me, I immediately smsed her to take her permission so that I could share those images on my blog.

Umbergaon is a small town located near Gujarat Maharashtra border. Not too crowded town with majority Gujarati population, it welcomes you with a warm village feeling minus the huts. Huts are there too, quite a few of them in the interiors of this small town. But rest of the things remain the same. Narrow lanes, kachi sadak (dirt road), wells, temples at every 100 yards, rangoli outside every house, neighbours talking to each other while cooking or working and such. each and every person has time to at least wish you good morning. Almost everyone knows everyone. 

I spent my childhood there. I was born to my parents, but was brought up by the neighbours. Now, that's how it works there. My parents have parented so many kids too but their own. My brother and I even had our meals with neighbours. And it was considered very normal.

This was the bungalow with five houses where I was brought up. It is just the half portion that you can see. The other half was demolished when this picture was clicked. Now it is fully demolished. My house is very much there, right opposite to it; but for me, this was home. And I will always miss it as my entire childhood was spent here. These poles witnessed so many games played by us. Old people sat on that bench in the far corner in the evening. My first ever friend stayed in the house you can see now. All the houses had swings.

This is my school. The ground that you can see, it was our volleyball ground. There are corridors on the both sides of the main gates. That's where I usually stayed during school time. I never did my homework, and my usual punishment was to stand outside the classroom. But well, it still never changed anything. There was not a single day on which I must have done my homework.

On the left hand side of the volleyball ground, we had our drawing class, which is of course not visible in this picture. I loved to paint and I always managed to score pretty decent in the subject. Another advantage I had was that my mama (maternal uncle) stayed bang opposite to my school. Many times, I went there for lunch or just to show off at the time of lunch break. People envied me as I got to eat hot and fresh lunch. Ah, I have always been a show off :P

Now comes the most beautiful part of the town - the beach. Umbergaon has a wonderful beach. And it is right behind my school. Each day, we enjoyed the beach view from our classroom windows. In the picture above, you can spot the photographer and another girl who was brought up by me. She is my first friend's cousin. That's how it goes.

Ah, I miss this place. It's been 12 years since I shifted to Mumbai. I love this city and those who read me regularly know that very well. But somewhere deep inside me, I am still a small town girl. Given a choice, I will settle in one of the small towns of India. Umbergaon is definitely an option, but most of the places with which my memories are associated are no longer there or even if they are there, they are modified or renovated. But still, it is an option. Maybe when I retire (if at all I do! I am a workaholic!), I will settle in one of the small towns. Do I have any company in my neighbourhood? Any bloggers? :)

I am tired

I am tired

Tired of the words they say

They please you, they praise you, they win your heart

They admire you all the time, making you blind;

They make sure you trust them from the start.

I am tired

Tired of the games they play

They catch you, they push you, they rip you apart

you lose faith, you lose friends, you lose it all you have

They leave you all alone, with a broken heart

I am tired

Tired of the things they do

they stab you in your back and come to console you

They command you, they possess you

you are left at their mercy, they have the last laugh.

You are all alone, nowhere to go

You cannot run, you cannot hide

they make sure you are not even left with the option to die

you are in total darkness, scared of yourself

they have won! won the game they played

Yes I am tired

Tired of losing all over again..

Tweet it out loud

Two days, three posts and one discussion inspired me to write this post on Twitter - a famous social networking site. Saroj wrote about how models and actresses are inspiring ladies in their 40s to have a perfect body by using their pictures in a bikini as a background; while Sammy's post spoke mainly about the new twitter's (less) pros and (more) cons. 

I have been on twitter since April 2009. I joined it as a friend from Sydenham sent me an invite. Now, it is an unsaid rule that any invite sent by a Sydenhamite must be accepted. Nobody made the rule, but everybody follows it. So, there I was, on this site when I didn't even know what was it all about. Slowly I realized that all you have to do here is update status. You don't have to share anything else. Just write what's happening with you and that's that! As if facebook was not enough for people, that twitter started to write about "what's on your mind?"!

Now, bloggers have phases too when it comes to networking. There was this time when bloggers suddenly appeared on facebook. Each day, I got at least 3-4 new friends' requests even from bloggers I had never read or heard of. Then came the era of making fan pages for blogs. That phase is still going strong. It is a ritual to have a fan page of your blog and make all the bloggers join those pages.

These days, people follow you on twitter. You will find many bloggers contacting you ONLY to read their posts and comment. I even get tweets which is a kind of USP for their posts. The tweets say things like - "do you know why girls find Brad Pitt hot?" or "what to do when your account is hacked". Yes, no exaggeration here at all! I can send you a snapshot of those tweets and you will know exactly what I am trying to say.

Why should I drag only bloggers here? Our famous bollywood and hollywood celebs are on twitter too, that too, they are very regular there. More regular than they appear on screen. They give you information like what time they usually brush their teeth, or when their burp sounds the loudest, or just a plain and simple promotion of their upcoming movie or project! There are those who even retweet such tweets. Retweeting simply means posting their tweets on your personal profile.

Some people post good one liners too. I follow a few people who post one liners. I enjoy reading those more than about the ankle sprain of a film star. But as they say, you have weirdos in all the breeds. You will find many just tweeting profanity to gain popularity and mind you, they are pretty much successful at that.

The dumb me so far thought that only bloggers are mad about followers. But the same trend is on twitter too. Here as well, people die for followers. They will do anything and everything to please their followers. From posting cool one liners to abusing ten people to writing about sex or other provocative topics. They get dead depressed if one person unfollows them. They celebrate when they get 100, 500, 1000 followers. Some even want twitter to notify the names of those who unfollow them!

Now, if you like a guy/girl and want to stalk them, then follow them on twitter. Here, people update things like what they are eating, what's their favourite colour, which movie they are watching and which song they are listening to, how their mood is, what time they get up and go to bed - everything you will know about a person at one place.

For me, it comes to the same thing again - unless I am madly in love with you, I would definitely not like to know about your gas problem or no traffic on your blog problem. It's your choice - you can update such things and I have the liberty to block you. And I will do so soon, as a couple of tweeple have been getting on my nerves with their constant nagging about reading their blogs. I am a mean person and I will never ever read you if you are going to irritate me. Now all I am doing is praying that those people read this post :P

Now let's see how many unfollow me!! (like I really care :P)