22... in pictures!

The day could not be complete without a Fluoresce picture! :)

Sharan's Speech.

What could it be that made me so happy? Rasberry flavoured lipbalm! :P

We're really getting comfortable in sarees. So pretty...

...and so much scope for dramaqueening! :P

The deeeeelicious cake! :)

This is me being mildly embarrassed while my friends sang!

"The Birthday Mafia" :)

So a friend tagged us that and well, it's so true. Birthdays have been serious business for us for the past three years. We've had a good run ;)

Outside Atria mall where we went for lunch. The wind was so awesome!

Haha! Okay, funny story. We had this brilliant idea to take a photo on the lift mirror but the lift was so super fast that by the time we got the camera out it had already reached the ground floor so we actually went up again just so we stay in the lift and take this photo. So worth it, right? ;)

"Saptakshaara" (?) in concert. They were basically drummers who play on the Ghatam (like clay pots). It was amazing!
By the time we reached dinner, the batteries on Jo's camera died so here's one shot from mine. This was at a restaurant called Sundance in Churchgate.

The night is still young...

...in Honululu, where it is still only 21:04 on the 13th of February and so it's technically still my birthday. I know, I'm like a child who doesn't want to go to bed. You'd think once I hit 22, I'd leave childish things behind me? Ha!

Anyway, the reason why I don't want it to be not-my-birthday is because I gave myself an ultimatum... After my birthday, it's down to serious business. Classes are over, I don't have to go to college anymore and the only thing left is to study study study. Firstly for these things called "preliminary exams" which happen to start on Thursday (eeks!) and well, ultimately for my board exams which (as of now) start on the 8th of April and go on for... oh it's too painful to say. I'm still unrealistically hoping that them university people will see reason and they'll end the exams sooner than what the timetable says right now...

But forget that, it's still my birthday!! :P And well, I had the most awesome-to-the-power-of-(almost)-infinity day. It started off with the usual midnight conference call with my girls in Bombay and then I went to bed and was woken by my parents calling at 7am! :) Wasn't planning to wake up that early but just as well; it was nice to be woken up by them rather than my alarm clock!

In the morning, we headed to college to watch Sharan give a speech at this EXAP (Excellence in Arts Programme) prize distribution ceremony. She was brilliant - as usual.

And then there was cake!! A chocolate rum cake which Sonu and I had on our birthday in the first year and I really wanted to have that again so that's what I got! It was deeeeelicious!

After that we had to go for this "Sending Forth" in the chapel. Basically it's a little thing the college does for the final year students. It was nice. The Dean addressed us and we got little souvenirs and refreshments...

In the evening we headed out to Kala Ghoda! We wanted to catch this concert of the Symphony Orchestra of India but of course we were late but that turned out to be a blessing in disguise because we stayed for the next concert instead which was just... beautiful!!

And of course there was dinner after that!

See.. pretty much perfect day! And I am grateful. So very grateful. That I was here in Bombay because really, it's a pretty awesome place to be. And for all of you!

22 looks promising! :)

p.s. more pictures to come later! the one posted here was from the morning (we had to wear saris) and right before my classmates spontaneously burst into song! that was nice! the pic is taken by Shruti!

For my February-girl!

Today has been a long long day. We had our final presentation for the Research project we had to conduct as a requirement for our course. It went off beautifully and I'm so glad because we really did put in a lot of work and it's been so much fun! The whole thing started months ago and besides learning a whole lot, we've become closer friends! It's really been awesome and I loved all the busyness it brought into my life... getting questionnaires filled out by random strangers, brainstorming, tabulating and analyzing data, etc, etc. Not to mention all the crazy heated debates and late evenings at Monisha's place (mostly). Oh yes, and all the food! :) It hasn't quite hit me yet, but I can't believe it's over. That's so... sad. I'm really going to miss this!The busyness is not over though... We have a massive load of assignments due in in the next few days and a test on Monday... I'm actually dreading when it'll all STOP. When the classes are over and I don't have to go to college everyday, survive on 5-6 hours of sleep and canteen food. When I have to just stay at home and study. Yikes! Go slow, time! :(
On a less depressing note, it was Sonu's birthday today! She's my February-girl! :) And also the very first person I talked to on my very first day of college! Gosh, seems like aaaages ago now but I remember it so clearly and we've been pretty fast friends ever since! Since the last few days have been so crazy busy we never got around to planning anything at all for her birthday and weren't even sure we'd get to see her today but after we finished our presentation, Jo and Antu nipped out to a bakery close by and bought some cake and then we 'embarrassed' Sonu and made her cut it after class! And then we went out to Mocha (a very yummy but annoyingly pricey cafe in Churchgate) and stuffed our faces and did the usual - talked and laughed! I love that I can always count on laughing out loud with my girlfriends! What am I going to do without you guys?
Anyway, here are some pictures!

60!

Happy Birthday Papa! :)

Picture taken at my brother's wedding in Bangalore, 15th December, 2006. Love it!

For Sharan :)

**Okay, so I wrote this like about a week ago!! But thanks to my stupid laptop freaking out on me I haven't had a chance to log on to blogger so this is kinda old, but I just HAD to post it**

How/Where to start?

So, as you probably gathered from Fbook/here, our exams ended on the 9^th. Let's not even talk about how they went. The important thing is that they are now OVER and thankfully they don't count and if their only purpose was to at least get me started on studying if I'm counting on graduating in 2010, well they served their purpose :) and I will.

But moving on...

So my friends and I apparently get at our creative best during exam time. Seriously, you should read some of the smses sent between us on our study leave/exam days. They are hilarious albeit often absolutely nonsensical (For eg. From me to Jo: La la la la la la la la... Reply from Jo to me: La la dikchik dikchik la la la... (that's the remix version) You see what I mean?) And please please ask Vini to blog about the crazy things she does during exam-time :P

And one of the things we love to do is to plan what to do after exams. I mean, we have to have something to look forward to, right? (And it's definitely not the results :P) so when we're taking a break between studying (or perhaps more often, taking a break from taking a break :P) we'll be on the phone making plans...

This time though, we left Sharan out of the planning. Lol. Not because we don't love her (goodness knows we do!) but because it was her birthday on the 10^th and so we wanted to do something monumental and make it a surprise for her. A two-in-one 'after exams and birthday partay'! So we got to talking and somehow decided on turning up at her place on the night of the 9^th so we could be at her door wishing her 'Happy Birthday' at midnight and then we'd all just crash at her place for the night. Sounds pretty normal, right?

Sure. If she lives next door. But to really understand how freaking crazy this plan was you have to understand the dynamics between Bombay and New Bombay a little bit (see map). You see, Sharan lives in Vashi which is quite literally on another island. Sure, she comes to college from there everyday (I have so much admiration for the fact that you actually do that, btw) but we're talking going over to another island late at night. 5 girls and we have to figure out what to do with ourselves till midnight!

Anyway, so we coordinated with Sharan's mom (who is such a sweetheart!) and decided that we'd plan on reaching Vashi by around 9pm and then hang out and have dinner at one of the malls there (whichever one stayed open till at least 11pm!) and then head towards their apartment around 11:30pm.

To cut a long story short, it went off so beautifully! Words cannot fully describe...

We stayed up till almost 5am just talking, listening to music, laughing, moon-gazing from the balcony (they live on the 10^th floor, so awesome!!) and then finally we all sort of collapsed in the wee hours of the morning.

Only to wake up again to some awesome homemade filter coffee! :D And then we all went swimming in the pool in their complex. That was so awesome! The last time we stayed over at Sharan's place, it was just me and Vini in the pool because the rest didn't know how to swim/didn't have their swimming costume but then the summer holidays happened and somehow everyone got themselves enrolled in swimming classes and so we were all together in the pool this time! So awesome!!

...ate delicious idlis for breakfast, showered and then headed out to a delicious lunch at Basilico in Bandra.

Man, talk about life... in abundance!!

We do the darndest things.

It's 3:30am.

We're listening to Abba on Antu's Ipod and supercool speakers.

Exams are overrrrrrr :)

We're having a slumber partyyyy at Sharan's place.

(Sharan had no idea about it.)

I officially declare that we're the best in the business of surprise parties :P

And we just do the darndest things in the world. (More about that later)

I can't even BEGIN to describe how blessed and grateful I feel right about now.

Happy 20th Sharan!! :D

6th of October

-- Today is my mom's birthday. And I forgot. I know, shame on me right?! Now, I'm not making excuses here but in trying to figure out how I did this I came up with the following reasons:

1. I'm actually generally really bad with remembering birthdays and also names. Names of anything - places, movies, songs, bands, people. Just don't ask me.
2. All the associations are wrong this year. Everything is wrong this year in terms of schedule. I went home in August for two weeks. K'scope should've been over. I'm supposed to be having exams now but I'm not... Etc, etc.
3. Facebook didn't remind me. Neither did my phone. Or any other technical double-edged sword for that matter. If you think about it, thanks to phones and the internet - if you use them a lot (and I do) - you don't actually have to remember anything for yourself nowadays. I remember before the world of cellphones, I knew all my friends' phonenumbers off by heart. Ask me today and I'll be frantically looking for my phone and searching through my contacts! Heck, ask me for my own number and I'll probably stumble and give you a missed call instead so it gets directly saved on your phone :P And the same goes for birthdays, I usually rely on Facebook to tell me when somebody's birthday is which doesn't work when that person doesn't have a Facebook presence. Like my mother.

-- Anyway, thankfully my dad reminded me and my mom forgave me ;)

-- While I was out forgetting my mom's birthday, Antu, Jo and I went to watch Wake Up Sid! which is the movie that got caught up in the "controversy" mentioned in my previous post. And I figured that maybe the reason they had to pick a fight on this film (because I'm pretty sure that MOST characters in most films based in Bombay still call it Bombay) is because it's a HAPPY movie and they don't really come off as a happy bunch of people. They're more into violence and havoc. Because I mean, they didn't make a big deal out of Kaminey and in that, they're actually portrayed negatively but then again, maybe they weren't intelligent enough to figure that out. Just my twopence.

-- The movie was great. I enjoyed it to the core. It's one of the those sit-back-and-relax stories told clean and simple. Fun fun! Some really good photography in the film and Ranbir carries around this awesome camera which had me going "I WANT!!" Konkona is gorgeous and brilliant as usual. Ranbir was impressive. And the other guy - so cute! :P Also, we spotted a couple (two) girls from our college acting as extras in the film!

-- Going home again in 8 days! :D

September!

I should be more careful what I ask for. Since the beginning of the this academic year I've been complaining about college is not challenging enough and I don't FEEL like I'm in college and I want to be able to say things exaggerated things like, "there are not enough hours in the day!", "I have TOO MUCH TO DO!" and of course experience the guilty pleasure of facebooking and blogging when I should be reading or writing something (like now! :P)

Well, I got my wish. My goodness. I've only been back about 6 days and it feels like it's been two weeks or atleast I think we've probably achieved two weeks worth of work in these few days. The boundaries between one day and the next are beginning to blur... You know what I mean? Like I'm not sure where one day ends and the next starts it just seems like they just sort of flow into each other and you keep going!

Besides having to stay back in college for extended classes (till 4:00pm on some days!), there are assignments and projects which all sort of piled up during the madness of the strike and the H1N1 days when nobody was motivated to do anything. So all in all, LOTS TO DO!

But I'm not complaining! I am a tired but happy girl :)

Besides, it's September and I have things to look forward to!

For starters, it's this girl's birthday on Friday!Joyee, before another programme at the NCPA last month

And she's going to be performing in a dance/drama called Chitrangada on Friday night. It's an annual programme by Shahana which is a Centre for Tagore Music and Culture here in Bombay. There was a little picture of her in the Bombay Times yesterday! So proud of her! :D

Raz-ma-Taz!

Hey!

Guess whose birthday it is today?

Guest-writer on Compelle Intrare and fabulous friend, Taryn!!

Happy Birthday Raz-ma-Taz!!!

Gosh, I'm having the best last week in Bangalore possible! Today we went over to one of my other cousin's place for lunch and pretty much every night till I leave is another dinner get-together with family! What fun! :)

Also, if all goes according to plan - another micro-mini reunion is on the cards on Friday! This time it will be with Grace and Taryn! Grace just flew in on Monday night from South Korea so she's just in time for a rendezvous before I fly back to Mumbai on Sunday...

The last time the three of us met in January 2007.(Thank goodness for archives ;))

Has this been the awesomest holiday ever or what?! :)

Birthday Blueberry Cheesecake!

Sonu and I had a joint birthday 'party'. She turned 20 on the 4th of February and I turned 21 on the 13th of February. So on the 13th we took our best friends from college out to "Dips and Desserts" at a great little restaurant called Moshes in South Mumbai. The place is a little pricey for a bunch of regular, non-earning college girls so we decided not to do proper lunch and concentrate on desserts because desserts are often too expensive for us to buy one for each!
So we ordered hummus, harissa and tapenade with some pita bread. Some mocktails, tea for Sharan and then then dove into the desserts - blueberry cheesecake, philadelphia baked cheesecake, tiramisu and chocolate mudpiee. Mmmmmdelicious!

Vini, Jo and Tina

Sonu and Gauri

bong babes :P

out with the old!

Our desserts

pile on! :)

oooh! a goodie bag! I got:
- new chappals
- a new diary for the 21st year of my life!
- lots of stationery!
- a gorgeous desi bag
- a poem from Vini
- a card made by Sharan

yummy dips!

dreaming of my blueberry cheesecake (caught by Sharan)