Dutch Truffle!

Happy Birthday Antu!!!

One World, Many Lives.

This is a very strange and difficult situation to be in. Life is far from normal right now. I haven't been to college for two days not because I am ill, or its raining too or simply because I couldn't wake up on time but because my city is almost in a state of war. War is a more appropriate term because when you say terrorist attack, you think bomb blasts or planes crashing into buildings. It happens for a few unbelievable minutes and then you have to move on to recovery. But this is different, its been more than 36 hours of shooting, grenade bombs and holding hostages. They have enough ammunition to last them for days.

Since the first time I blogged about this, the death toll has almost tripled and the injured have doubled. I didn't even mention anything about hostages -most of home were unsuspecting tourists- or how the chief of the Anti-Terrorist Squad is dead. How the General Manager of the Taj Hotel's entire family died in the mayhem.

And yet. And yet, life is going on as normal for most of the world. What's going on in Bombay might only be tucked in to some corner of the global news page of your daily newspaper along with all the other atrocities that are happening in the world today. People are just hearing about what is happening in my city. People are celebrating Thanksgiving. People are partying. People are working. People are going on with the mundane chores and duties of life.

There is no reason that you should not go on with your normal lives because it is possible. But its hard to have to accept and understand this skewed world sometimes. It happens all the time - people die when others are celebrating new life. People win, while there is a loser. Countries live in peace and security while others are ravaged by war and famine and illness...

I don't know how God does it. To be with you in your joy while He is also with us in our sorrow. I don't know how He does it, but I know He does and I am glad that He does.

And this may be a very long and dark night for Bombay, but joy will come in the morning. That is the essence of hope. And I refuse not to have hope.

Bombay Blues.

I hate this. I hate the fact that I must sit at home today because the choice of going to college has been taken away from me because of a bunch of assholes who think they are doing something noble and great by killing innocent people and destroying Bombay's heritage.

When will it stop?

The Taj hotel at the Gateway of India in Colaba taken 9 months ago when Niru came to visit.

The 'Best' For The Last?

I guess we knew it was coming.

Bombay has been attacked. Blasts, shooting, fire and they're still at it, it seems. It's 1:36am and the carnage is still going on in South Mumbai. I don't feel a thing here. It is as if nothing has happened and I probably would have finally pulled myself away from my laptop, turned off Grey's and gone to sleep so I can wake up in time to get to college. The milk van has come and delivered his milk to the distributor's who live across from our house. As usual. Oh the normality of it. Well nothing's normal.

At least 50 dead and hundreds injured. So far. God knows what will await us tomorrow morning if I ever do get to sleep.

I am angry. I am sad. I am frustrated. I've cried all those tears that I have held back for several months. One frustration over the other... all repressed in some corner of my mind.

Mostly I am pleading with God. Pleading with Him to let it stop. Pleading with Him to save us from ourselves.

Bombay. My Bombay, I cry with you this night. I pray for you this night.

Max-ed Out!

What happens when girls go shopping...Food is eaten - for energy. Must be highly calorific, preferably with chocolate... In this case the choice was doughnuts from the Donut Baker...photos are taken...
clothes are tried on...more photos are taken of all possible outfits and poses...and some more...there may be some squealing and utter excitement!!... And then we decide we don't really like all of them (but really we can't afford them but it just hurts less to say we don't like them!!) and end up buying like two out of the ten we tried out......but at least we have pictures ;) :D ;) :D

(these photos were taken in the changing room at MAX - a clothes shop in Bangalore while Jo was visiting during the holidays... I've been dying to post them for ages but due to technical difficulties, couldn't. So here they are now. If it's not obvious enough, we had a BLAST!)

Third Culture Kids.

Today is one of those bad internet days. My stupid usb modem is acting up and won’t let me do anything so if you can see this: yay!

Well, I’m back. In Bombay.

The train journey turned out to be a lot of fun for me cause I made friends with a bunch of IB students studying in a boarding school just outside of Pune. At first it was kind of sad because it reminded me SO MUCH of us, back in school on the train, creating havoc and lots of noise on one of our school trips or relief projects. It all just looked so familiar – an improbable mix of people from all around the world. There was one girl from Spain, one from Norway, one guy from Denmark, one from S. Korea and the rest of the guys were Indian but had all at one point lived abroad like in the US, Canada, etc… So basically a whole bunch of TCKs (Third Culture Kids: If you don't know what it means, check out a pretty rough description here) and being one myself, I got on pretty well with them. They were a crazy bunch and I had a good laugh listening to their stories. They were just going back to school after a week of ‘working’ with an NGO in Bangalore. We also all read out one sentence each from Emile’s (the Danish guy) copy of the Da Vinci Code in… well, Danish. That was hilarious!

It's good to be back in college. Antu and I went stationery shopping after we left from college and my new notebooks are just dying to be written in ;)

I know I've passed in 5 of the exams I gave last Semester. Econ was a real shocker - I was seriously not expecting to do anything near to good. So I'm happy! YAY! We'll get the rest of the results tomorrow.

I have many other things to say but I'm really tired and I think I'd like to just curl up in bed and read my book (Jeffrey Archer's A Prisoner Of Birth).

Toodles!

Go With Me

Ten Things I will miss about Home:

• The TV automatically starting up on my favourites - the Hallmark channel.
• Turning on the TV. Fullstop.
• Broadband Internet.
• Mummy's food. (Even though I grumble about the fish curry sometimes, no one in the world can satisfy my taste-buds like ma does. I am confident about this)
• Free cold meat. (All thanks to a kind man I taught a little german to so he could go to Germany and learn how to make sausages.)
• Hot Showers thanks to solar power.
• Not having to use public transport.
• Candlelight conversations. (thanks to power-cuts)
• Having all the time in the world to read.
• No routine.
• Just staying home all day.
• Not going to the ATM or handling money at all.
• Grocery shopping at SPAR.
• T-shirt shopping at MAX!
• Experimenting with baking/cooking. (Thanks to family that will polish off anything I cook whether it tastes good or not!)
• Family.

Okay, so more than 10.

I thank God for these things.

Leaving for Bombay this evening on the Udyan Express train. Will reach tomorrow evening. And college starts Monday morning. Back to the grind.

My prayer is this: Send me anywhere Lord, just go with me.

The Last of Them (Ooty Trip Part 7)

These are the last of them. i promise ;)

my dear friends caught in the forbidden act of plucking flowers in the botanical gardens in ooty.

the tree-shot gone wrong.

blue skies, green fields!

plucking invisible apples from a not-apple tree.
posing for a photo in the middle of the road while almost getting run-over while our bus's tire got punctured on the way back to bangalore from ooty. gosh. women. :P
but it is a brilliant photo, don't you think? thanks to sonu! :)"oh right, cars drive on this road..."

Dark Days

We’ve been having a lot of power-cuts recently. At least 7 hours a day. The government in Karnataka is rubbish. They don’t have an idea about a thing. And I do. Of course. :P
Anyway, so I haven’t been spending all that much time online which is actually a good thing cause I’m getting more reading done. Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier is fabulous. But more on that later when I’m done with reading it... I vamped my ichoose bags a little. And dark evenings lend themselves beautifully to great conversation.
I just spent the last hour listening to my dad telling me stories about the grandfather I never met and countless other relatives that make up the history of my family. It’s all so fascinating really. All those stories. Real stories.
Sometimes I wish I could’ve been there.
I think I would’ve gotten on well with my grandfather. He was also keen on photography and books like I am. In fact he used to develop his own photographs and I’ve seen so many of them and also an ancient camera he used to use – ordered from the UK.
It’s just so crazy to imagine these days – when the British were still in India and the population was tiny. Back when your relatives were your friends and your friends were related to you…

Lulu-times!

I present to you --- LULU!

Yesterday we went to the in-laws' place (no, I'm not married; my brother's in-laws) and had a great time... I had my first own tiny glass of Bailey's Irish Cream and it was delicious!! And we also got to see Lulu!

My brother, D and Lulu

We got Lulu as a tiny little puppy last year when I was living in Bangalore for a couple of months and she used to pee everywhere and eat cerelac and then she moved to D's parents place... She's absolutely adorable!!

D's mom and Lulu
My momsy and I

And last but not the least -- Yours truly and Lulu!

Once, Once, Once

I watched it FINALLY! Once is such a beautiful, simple, non-exaggerated, real movie. And what a brilliant soundtrack. Watch it, if you haven't already. You simply must.

I've finished reading Nineteen Minutes and it is now second on my favourite JodiPicoultList. Yup, it has bumped off Salem Falls. I finally found the PicoultTwist like at the end of My Sister's Keeper again. YAY!

Whenever I finish a book though, it takes a while to get into a new one so I've been watching movie's instead:
Bowling For Columbine: A documentary made by Michael Moore trying to figure out why things like the shooting at Columbine High School happen in America.
A Room With A View: Based on the book by the same name by E.M. Forster. Ah, brilliant!
August Rush: It has the cute little kid who playes Peter in Finding Neverland. And the hot guy from Bend It Like Bekham - Jonathon Rhys Meyer. The movie is not technical genius or anything like that but its a beautiful tale with a beautiful soundtrack with a happy ending. The best kinda feel-good movie! ;)
Definitely, Maybe: Again movie with cute kid - this time, the brilliant girl from Little Miss Sunshine. I really liked this movie.
Stolen Summer: This was really interesting. Its about two kids; one from a Jewish family and one from an Irish Catholic family. Sometimes, I think that we like to think that we know all the answers but really we don't know squat - we ought to be more like children...
Once: Haven't I said enough about this already? Just watch it!

I Want A Baby!

He he he. I like that title. Don't worry, I know that there is a time under the sun for everything and I'm not going to go making babies right now.

I had a GREAT day today. D and I went to Max (AGAIN!) which is a new clothes-store in Bangalore which is pretty reasonable and they have a nice collection which does get a little old when you go there too many times though as D and I discovered today. Anyway, so I got myself a pair of jeans and another t-shirt (which I seriously lack - I'm usually seen comfortable in my kurtas/kurtis).

And then I went to lunch at my cousin's place who was a 8-month old little boy and he is just SO adorable!! The last I saw him in Kolkata he was just 1 or 2 months old and well he didn't do much but sleep, eat and cry but now he's crawling and stands with support and loves to jump and SMILES - oh how he smiles!! Absolutely adorable. I'm usually not great with kids but I'm proud to say ladies and gentlemen, that he DID NOT cry when he came to me and I had a ball playing with him!! I do have a few photos but am too lazy to upload them right now.

After that my Pops and I went to buy a camera-case for the handycam and then went book-shopping! Our favourite. If there is such a thing as a book-worm or book-buying gene - I got it from my dad. Although I gotta admit he's better at actually READING everything he buys than I am. Sometimes a book will sit for years on my shelf until I actually get around to reading it. And sometimes if I don't really like a book or even the first chapter, I just cannot finish it. I know its not a good thing cause many a book with a painfully boring start actually turns out to be pretty good... Anyway I bought three books today:

• Persuasion by Jane Austen: I've been wanting to read this for a while now. The only Jane Austen I've read is Emma and that I HAD to read cause it was in our syllabus for EngLit in A'levels. I actually have many fond memories related to this book - phone convesations that invariably led to the question "So have you read Emma yet?" during the summer holidays cause we didn't really know what else to talk about... :)
  I know, I know, shame on me - I haven't read Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility yet but let's see how I get through this one first cause I really struggle to read classics unless I'm forced to like for Lit classes! ;)
• Marley and Me by John Grogan: I've heard good things about this book and I keep seeing it whenever I enter a book-shop and have been wanting to read it for a while. Its about a dog who reminds me a lot of Joey (not the FRIENDS Joey; the beautiful Labrador Joey who came to live with us for a while but we couldn't handle his boisterous and extremely hyper nature so had to send him back).
• Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier: I read the abridged version of this a long time ago in Zambia (I think I borrowed it from the tiny library at my school) when fat books scared me and I loved it. I figured well I've read Gone With The Wind (which is a MIGHTY FAT novel) I can definitely handle this now and I have been wanting the read the WHOLE story for a while now.

Leftovers (Ooty Trip Part 6)

In our hotel room - after eating the worst room service meal of our entire trip. You needed two people to rip the naans, it was that bad!

Sharan and Antu watching some of the video clips taken on the handycam which are a) too embarrassing, b) too big to upload on the WWW

Ooty Coffee House - BEST dosa place EVER. And delicious filter-coffee too.Meal at Brooklands Guesthouse in Coonoor which we went to visit... Hmm, pretty expensive - it wasn't a bad meal - just I think, a bit of a shock.

Cafe Coffee Day, Ooty - perhaps one too many times but it was conveniently located and close to school and Modern Stores!

Our visitor passes for Hebron (my school)

Snooping around in the Hebron Staff room after school hours after I showed them around school - Mr. Reid (the principal) was pretty surprised to see us but was welcoming (as usual!)

With the Georges who graciously fed us yummy dinner at their place on Wednesday night. We ate, we drank tea, we laughed and generally had a lot of fun and then they dropped us back at the hotel where we (girls only) ummm... let's just say we got a little hyper!

Our (almost) last meal in Ooty at Sidewalk Cafe - we ordered more than we could eat and paid a LOT of money.

A Chance for Change?

Barack Obama - the 44th president of the USA.
I pray that you will do good.

Well he won! And everyone is talking about it:
Tint
An Idle Mind
Trick Mirror
Strange Times, My Dear
...and I'm sure there will be many many more posts on this issue on various blogs but I'm guessing they're all sleeping now.

That man sure can give a good speech. How do they do it? Millions of people watching and they don't seem to even have it written down anywhere. I freak out just thinking about it - I have the worst case of stage-fright the world has ever seen. I.kid.you.not.

Anyway, that's about all I'm going to say on it cause honestly, I don't KNOW enough actual facts to make any sweeping statements about how glad I am about Obama winning. Sure he says he'll do many things that the world is so desperate for - ending the war in the middle-east being the key issue here, I guess - and yes, the US has come a long way from when a black woman had to fight for a seat on a public bus to now. But hey, at the end of the day - he's still human. Human, raw, real, imperfect human like all of us. So, let's not idolize him. Let's not sit back and wait for him to change the world.

I have to say - of all the blog posts, articles, news channels, etc I've been following throughout the whole election drama this has got to be the most interesting:
Mark Riddle's Blog

Signing off:

With an uber-cool photo that Jo took of me while we were driving to a shopping mall in Bangalore a few days ago.

Today's The Big Day

...well, I'm guessing by the time we hear it'll already be tomorrow for us.

America is barely waking up now and today - 4th of November, 2008 - she will get her new president. Or to put it the other way round - the world will get its new American President.

Who's it gonna be?

In other news:

I was watching 'Bowling for Columbine' last night before the electricity went out - it's... chilling to say the least. Its scary to even think about what must be going through a teenager's mind to be able to KILL. Related to that, I'm reading Jodi Picoult's Nineteen Minutes at the moment which is based on a similar situation. She is a talented woman that woman. If you haven't read any of her books - you SHOULD! Here's a list of the one's I've read in order of preference:

Jodi Picoult

• My Sister's Keeper: So far, still the BEST. Niru recommended this one to me about two years ago; it was the first Jodi Picoult I read and obviously not the last.
• Salem Falls
• Nineteen Minutes (still reading it but it's already here on the list!)
• The Pact
• Perfect Match
• Change of Heart
• Vanishing Acts

And now I'm bored and they're showing Grey's Anatomy re-run on TV so I'm gonna go!

Miles To Go (Ooty Trip Part 5)

There's something about Sepia that colour photography can't do. I'm not sure what it is - but I LOVE it!

At Cafe Coffee Day, Ooty - we were having an animated conversation about something; no idea what!

These beautiful benches were placed outside the tea factory
"the woods are lovely, dark and deep"

ring a bell?? if not - read the poem below.

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound's the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.