Once a Sydenhamite, Always a Sydenhamite!

Disclaimer: This post is about my College and my love for it - Sydenham. You must have already read some part of it on my blog if you read me regularly. For the others, it may be boring and dragging. You can simply skip to read it. It does not have a single sarcastic statement about you!

I hate it when I don't have time to do nothing. It is very important for me to waste at least half an hour to an hour a day doing nothing, but it's not happening these days. Before I realize, I already have a backlog for many things. There are so many posts I have not read, so many people I have not spoken with, so many documents pending for review, so many queries unanswered, so much so that I feel I need more than 24 hours a day. Next month is going to be the same for me with teaching deadlines to meet as the exams are approaching, then I will be busy with my Masters exams. PHEW!!

But what disturbs me the most is that I do not find time to blog. And it's not only about writing, but reading too. It disturbs me when I don't even find half an hour each day to do something I have a passion for. Ah, I hope some restless people don't attack me again for this post :P

Coming back to the title of this post - my regular readers know (and already bored and irritated by now) about my love for Sydenham college and Tea centre. Since my lectures are at South Mumbai, I do get a bit of time to take a walk on my favourite roads there. Now, I happened to take a walk on B road where Sydenham is located. Ah, the memories, the time, the people - nostalgia all over again! Nostalgia is a kind of feeling that makes you happy and sad at the same time, and you want to share your experience with people who are associated with that place or memory you are feeling nostalgic about.

I did the same thing. I uploaded a status on facebook. And to my greatest surprise, at least 15-18 sydenhamites commented and liked the status. We all could relate to what I mentioned there. We all got nostalgic and remember our time spent there.

For most Sydenhamites, Sydenham was our first home. We reached there at 8 in the morning and left not before 8 or 9. We spent most of our times either in our society rooms, or common rooms or canteen. Likes like me even spent hours sitting on car bumpers. Morning started with a yell of "JK, chai lao" in the first year. Then the names kept changing from Lancy to Nagesh, to Manju to chotu. I loved to interact with the canteen people. They always had interesting stories to share. I so wish I was blogging at that time. I could have preserved all those memories then.

For commerce students, college is five years of pure fun. For us, it's not a big deal to score minimum passing marks, percentile matters only in the last year and one week study is more than enough to score a first class. This was the reason we indulged more into other activities like organizing festivals and various events, taking part in script/skit writing, discussing guys (lol) and any other activity which could help us stay in college from morning to evening.

I have very fond memories of Sydenham. I remember watching so many cricket matches in Canteen, staring at S who used to be a football player and crush of most of us :P, having 7-8 cups of chai (that's quite normal, during exams, I never even counted the number of cups!), solving crosswords, preparing posters and doing so many other useful and useless things.

Sydenham canteen is very famous for the Chinese food we get there; typical Indian Chinese (which tastes a lot better than an authentic one!). Every single day I survived on Schezwan rice or veg/chicken chilly dry with bread slices. Even students and professors from other colleges came to Sydenham canteen to eat. For years and years down the line and even today, the taste still remains the same.

Today, I teach students. When I come across a Sydenhamite, I cannot stop myself from asking that student questions about the college, canteen, people, events, festivals, alumnis, magazines and ten other things. This is not the case only with me. Pick any Sydenhamite from my list, and you will see them going crazy about it the same way! We are too connected with it. Maybe everyone is with one's college; but Sydenhamites are a bit crazier than others. You can get anything done from them in the name of Sydenham and they will do that with a broad smile on their face. And it will not be considered foolish :)

We all use this tag-line for ourselves - Once a Sydenhamite, always a Sydenhamite!

PS: I can in fact write 10 posts on my love for Sydenham and not get tired. But I will spare you guys. :)

What's in a name?

No I am not a Shakespeare junkie like many people close to me are. I never even tried to read him. I can be too biased at times. Or maybe I am biased when it comes to Shakespeare as his statement "What's in a name" according to me is not a wise thing to say :P

I have my own reasons to believe so. My name is way too common. You call out Neha and 6 out of 10 girls will turn around. Out of remaining four, three will be Poojas! In my phone book, I have 8 Nehas stored. I sometimes get confused too about their identity. I forget their faces and cannot recollect them when they call me. I have to talk to them for 5 minutes to actually recognize which Neha called me! I am sure this must be happening with you as well.

Worst thing: When someone does not have my number stored and I happen to call up that person, I literally have to remind them about my past encounters with them as unfortunately, my surname is too common as well! My college had 3 Nehas with the same surname.

I so feel like whacking the person whoever says what's in a name. Damn, have my name and you will know what's in a name. The only advantage I have with my name is that every second client I meet has a daughter/sister/mother/wife/niece/any other relative whose name is Neha. I usually crack that deal. But I am capable enough to crack it otherwise too people! It is not a "wow" thing for me when you say that I am your xyz's namesake!

I know people who love this name. My neighbour Uncle is very fond of me. He named his Russian daughter in law Neha because of that reason. She is the 4th one in my building!

But one thing is there. After seeing the image below, Shakespeare would have changed his statement for sure!

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..