Teardrops

Your tears are so precious
Hold them close.
Like pearls of wisdom-
Should never be exposed
To him who has the power to misuse them,
for it is in retrospection that you shall behold
That the one who elicits those tears in you
Is the one for whom your heart shall quiver alone.

A cold heart

As she watched him, the words died on her lips. Everything he said seemed to swirl around her head yet there she sat, cold as stone watching his heart break.
She resisted the urge to utter those words, some cruel, some comforting but she remained silent.
There was nothing else to do but to kill his love for her for she knew she could never return his.

Murphy get a life! Stop screwing around with everyone else's!

Recently I figured its not your fault that things go wrong or do not happen at the time that they are meant to.  Especially those times when you have tried really hard to do something right but at that last moment, it went terribly wrong...like when you are running oh-so-late for your WIP meeting on Monday morning and you rush out, not only does it take you ten mins more than usual to get an auto who will take you to office, but it will also be the one that takes you through the longest and (inevitably) the most jammed route ever...and wait! There's more! Just now, when you are thinking, 'Oh not bad! Only fifteen mins late and I can still make it there in 5 without being noticed', this same auto will also need to get re-fueled which means you are now gonna make it into office only after ten-odd minutes!

Think about it...the last time you wanted to do something really bad...I'm sure it din't work out quite as planned!

I think the worst is when the ad that has to be sent for release tomorrow, is almost done, and the computer crashes...yeah it happens..and it happens only on days when the client did not plan for the release in advance, so you had to go from briefing to artworking all in a day, which means that you're probably quite late for artwork submission already and are an inch away from losing the client's ad space anyway!

And no it doesn't limit itself to the work sphere... it insists on ruining personal life too... you just decide one day to dress up and put on a fine pair of heels and strut around in an open space, and out of nowhere, suddenly it will start to rain, just like in the Hindi movies! You just think of going on a date, making one evening special and either you will end up having to work late, or falling sick, or having to do something that either completely irrelevant or extremely time consuming.

The instances that come to mind range from maid falling sick the day your dishes have been stacked up so high they could compete with the Eifel Tower, car breaking down during a road trip just when you have left behind all semblances of civilization (and therefore, any hopes of getting help), getting to the airport 2 hours early just so could avoid the traffic, only to realise that you have left the credit card on which you bought the ticket back at home (only now someone from home is gonna have to bear the brunt of the traffic!), a power cut just when you figured out what you wanted to wear to dinner and were going to iron it...and the list goes on....

But there's someone to blame for all of this and its not you...its not your maid...believe it or not, its not that auto-wallah either...
When things don't quite turn out quite the way they should, well, it is Murphy's fault...I don't even know the guy..yet he is hell bent on ruining my life!

Whatever I did to bring your wrath on me, Murphy, I promise I won't do it again! Just leave me alone. Alternatively you could also try getting a life...it might give you somehting better to do with your time than just screwing around with everyone else's lives!

Wild horses

The thundering of a hundred hooves,
gathering up a storm of dust.
Wild horses loom into view-
a herd of mares following their lord.

The stallion screeches to a halt,
as though sensing danger.
The mares follow his lead,
respectful of the alpha male.

In a spectacular show of pure power, the black stallion
rears and neighs, baring his teeth.
A brilliant ripple of muscles portraying sheer strength,
yet exuding grace beyond compare.

A warning, clearly to be feared.

Turns around, throwing his head back with a snort
And in seconds, the herd
kicking up a storm of dust
-followed him into oblivion.

Christmas..

There was a time when I too believed that Santa came from the North Pole and I have to give credit to my folks and all the uncles & aunties at the tea estates for the effort they made to keep that belief going for a substantial number of years!
I'd say some of the most fun things we did as a family were during the Xmas break. Chalkhoowa Club and the parties there were particularly cool even though the format remained the same for as long as I can remember -We'd all go there, dressed in our best, at 4 in the afternoon and the games would begin-there was something for everyone from musical chairs to3 legged races and fancy dress competitions and goodies going around aplenty.
This would be followed by the awesome high-tea that the ladies would painstakingly prepared... and the cakes, oh! those cakes! Mum and her friends sure knew how to bake them good... delicious looking elves, Christmas trees, sleighs, bells, you name it! accompanied by a host other goodies like gingerbread men, candies etc.
But we kids just dint do justice to those goodies cos we'd all have our sights set on the big event...Santa's arrival of course! And while we ate, we'd keep our ears open for those jinglin' bells!
Hats off to the Committee at the Club for thinking up of the most innovative modes of transport for Santa who obviously couldn't travel in his sleigh to lands that had fog & mist at best in the winter! If you ever thought that this year Santa will just arrive on foot with his bag of goodies, well your wrong cos OUR Santa can travel in a Fire Engine, jeeps, bullock cart, basically anything that had wheels...Santa's job was to delight... and he took his job seriously...very very seriously!
Carrying his famous red bag of goodies, he'd walk in, flocked by all of us kids, while we sang Xmas carols, usually in a pretty decent chorus and after a good deal of 'Ho! Ho! Ho!'-ing, he'd get down to business... the business of handing out gifts one by one.
I particularly remember the Christmas before I was to go away to boarding school for the first time. Pretty much everyone had gotten their gifts, and I had a sinking feeling in my tummy as I watched the big red bag get empty. I dint want to be the only kid Santa had forgotten. I dint want to be forgotten even before I had gone away to a boarding school that was far away from home-from family and friends.
But Santa doesn't forget lil children, especially lil girls in pink lacy dresses with matching pink bows and matching pink shoes! Santa called out my name last with the biggest gift in his hand and I, being a shy kid, almost died in embarrassment as he quickly guessed out loud what had been going through my mind...and then he went on to tell his rapt audience about how I had managed to sail through the entrance exam for Mayo, while I sat on his lap!
Most poeple who know me now might laugh if they heard the word 'shy' being associated with me but then those days I squirmed under any kind of attention. So that Christmas, I was a bag of mixed emotions, both agonized and pleased by the attention.
I basked in the glory of this Christmas for one whole year, glowing with joy everytime I remembered the way it had panned out and looked forward to the next one with great cheer. Except, when the next one came, and we all welcomed Santa in the usual fashion, my dear friend, Ronu, being a few years older than us, took it upon himself to educate us and burst our bubble with a single comment, " These kids are so dumb, they actually think that Santa exists and that he has come down from the North Pole for them especially! I am just wondering which Uncle it is this time!"

~A few of my favourite things~

1. The kick from your morning cup of coffee 
2. The smell of tea being manufactured in the factory
3. That lovely carpet of green that symbolises a tea estate!
4. Wilderness
5. The uncomplicated love showered on you by pets
6. The clickety - clack of approaching horses
7. Dewdrops on a winter day
8. Oreo cookie cheesecake from Spiga
9. The warmth of a tight hug
10. Also, the warmth of a nice quilt especially when accompanied by the favourite stuffed toy :)
11. Steaming hot chocolate on a rainy evening
12. Surprises
13. That Burberry bag that I will never own
14. Dancing in heels
15. The colour red
16. Window shopping
17. Actually shopping!!!
18. Chatting late into the night with my best friends
19. Chilling with Kenny Rogers crooning away in the background
20. Tears of joy
21. Chocolates
22. Giggle (the sound itself as well as the way the word sounds)
23. Scrabble 
24. A smile
25. Mom's black forest cake....yummmmmm

Bangalored!

Yeah so my understanding of the word Bangalored may vary slightly from the conventional. It has nothing to do with the beauty that was once associated with the city, or the IT hub that it has slowly become. And it has absolutely nothing to do with 'workers getting laid off because their jobs have moved to India', which is the sense in which it is used in the U.S.

This is just a post about things that I see here that I haven't ever seen happen anywhere else! Some funny, some not, some outrageous, some completely disgusting! Well, everyday I seem to witness something that falls into atleast one of the above categories, so I thought why not jot them down. So here goes...

1. Viewed from the reception at Silhouette (a beauty salon at the Sony World crossroad, Koramangala) - A pack of 10 camels(the animals, if you please, not the cigarettes!) taking a right turn towards the Ring Road without any missing the signal!

2. Its been a month since Ganesh Chaturthi, but everyday there are processions amongst much merriment on the busiest city streets with Lord Ganesha idols headed for immersion. And I thought this was the Durga Puja month!!

3. Yes! There's a new store opening on 100ft road! GUESS how noticed it! On my way to work, stuck in a jam just outside, notice interiors being set up... a lot of labourers working day & night, I suppose, because of which the workers stay there... so the showroom is their bedroom for now and the footpath their loo! I actually saw one guy his teeth and spitting out on the pavement! Seriously, are there no rules against such things?

4. There are lots of benefits, having an office in an IT Park...there are buses which not only take you there directly, but also stop in front of each building and let you get off. Since there are buses that start from really far at very early hours, its only natural that the driver/conductor might feel the need to empty his bladder at the end of the ride... and what better place to do than in front of the last office, after all passengers have been offloaded.. I mean some architect must have planned the storm-drains all through the IT Park solely for the convenience of weary bus conductors to relieve themselves right? (I am not kidding.. the bus number was KA-01 FA 1683... took it down but don't even know whom to report it to!)

5. The road in front of Garuda mall which is possibly the only road in the whole country to defy the Left-hand side drive rule. This road actually has oncoming traffic on the left!!!!

6. The Richmond flyover- Another first... who puts a traffic signal and a crossroad on an elevated flyover?

There's more to come but that's it for now...