true friends !!!!!

I read a hilarious post on Preeti's blog,sometime back on Orkut and all the X men that inhabit the land of the big O.I have to admit that since then, I too have kept an eye,if not a tag on who leaves his/her footprints on my profile.L.O.L.
BTW Preeti is a launching her book,in Bangalore in Oct.It's a big moment for her.I wish her all the best.
Coming back to Orkut.Sadly most friend requests are not from long lost friends,colleagues,classmates and cousins.In the beginning,I was scared about all the weird requests that poured in,but a lil research and conference proved that everybody received their share of these messengers!!!!Some worthy ones are listed below.(names not included for the sake of privacy)

1.Hi gazal,wanna friend ????!!!!!
(wanna friend...is this the new age language....or i am growing old??)

2.hiI've interest in making new fans bcaz I believe f'ndship is the topper relationship in world & u
(and i have to decode that message......)

3.hi......how r u ??i m ###***** u r name is gazal..its very attrective ..ilike it r u join me.......
(make up your mind man....pause a while....no grammar please,we are indian)

4.Aap Bhi Aayiye, Humko Bhi Bulate Rahiye..Dosti Buri Cheez Nahi, Dost Banaate Rahiye..!!
(no comments)

5.cool attitud eyou got there....
(attitude redefined.....how did he ever know)

6.Hi ...cute name....is that really your picture??
(should i take that as a compliment or an insult??)

BTW...am also curious to know if men too receive such creative and meaningful requests(from women of course)
any comments!!!!!

and why have I put it here....well as Preeti says..."I am a woman".

ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS A SUNDAY.......

Well, it doesn’t happen very often that I am assigned homework.Homework,in a good spirited ,jovial kind of way,though am well aware,that it seldom gets rated as GOOD AND SPIRITED ,ever.Am tagged by mampi,to work out what my perfect day would look like.

This teachers’ wish is another teacher's command,especially when it comes from someone,who I can say is the real English ki masterni.Well then ,a dose of my own medicine it shall be.
I must thank mampi for the dose though,for this tag has made me stop and think about what I really want from my perfect day.

The perfect day like the perfect man exists either in dreams or in someone elses life(of course in blogs as well).For many Sunday,is the precisely perfect day to do what they have been dying to all week long.I would probably be seeking a divorce lawyer,if I accept otherwise,and that on most Sundays,I wish for Mondays.There is a certain madness to Sundays that,I both love and hate.But still, it's difficult to dethrone it from the ‘best day of the week’.

So,the perfect day, would therefore be a Sunday, when
1.I could exercise to a point of achieving a negative calorie state,to compensate for all the sins of the past week.( My instructor says such technology is still unavailable)


2.If I could somehow win a game of badminton against my husband.sigh.


3.I could stop finding excuses and rejoin my guitar class,after a gap of errrr months.I have run out of excuses to give my guitar teacher,and he thankfully has stopped asking for any.


4.If only I had the luxury of cooking without the headache of cleaning up.


5.If only I could juggle the time to meet friends,spend a lazy afternoon,laughing ,discussing inane issues, which have been debated over a thousand times,before.For a few hours,keeping aside all the hats that I wear as wife,mother,daughter and just be MYSELF,without the pressures.


6.the same day,spend an entire afternoon watching a movie with my son and husband,that has been kept aside(by him) as ‘to be watched’ for months, now.

6.and finally the perfect day would be if I could stretch that Sunday evening,that flies off before you can say “It’s five o’clock”, indefinitely.
Just a few of my favourite things,(essentially in that order).sunset on the 11th floor,a cup of coffee and silence(very difficult considering the growing traffic)

7. If only there could be a Sunday after Sunday…….and till such time, I shall be content with that little bit of perfection in my Sunday.

Here's to many such small perfections and imperfections in each Sunday,which make me wake up every Sunday and say "What’s in store for me today?”

Sunday is just three days away.HURRAY !!!

TOM ME AUR WOH !!!

Am taking up a tag without being tagged !!!!

What does this reveal about my state of mind?A lot actually and will share that in another post.

The first time I read the tag on xh's blog(what's on your desktop...)I thought it meant "what was on your desk at work?".AHEM.You won't find many people who blatantly announce their absent mindedness.Let me first complete the tag and then the how and why explanation about why my creative bent of mind tends to bend things..... can go into YET another post.

My desktop contains a picture,which manages to make me smile,no matter how rough the day has been.It's a picture at Universal studios and the sudden display of affection was a last min addition(as my dear hubby was behind the camera...and his expression after he took the shot was worth a million dollars).

Well,he thanked his stars,it was just a cut out while I cursed my luck,that it wasn't.

but the picture doesn't remain long on the desktop.I know he's used my laptop ,when i find the picture replaced by other innocent pictures.When asked why(sometimes i love to ask questions,even though am dead sure of the answers,already),his reply is "it's nothing, but love when viewed from the right angle,".Ahem.

"It's nothing but an ACUTE case and angle of jealously,I tell myself ,proudly".

(The halo around my head is suddenly replaced by horns and an evil grin to match)

The picture's on the desktop AGAIN,and how long it will remain there,is anybody's guess.

No prizes for that,please.

tagging all those who will believe in the noble cause of blogging !!!

ZOO

(was going through the pictures of our three week old visit to Bannergatta national park.It's better to post and preserve,than never to do so)
“Oh no ,it’s Sunday”,groaned Mr.Bear to Mrs.B.
“This means I have to brush my teeth and comb my hair,and take that walk,and pretend to be busy sniffing at grass,HUMMPH.”
”Well,isn’t it fun to watch a bus full of caged humans,all owwwing and awwwwing, dear.They do look so cute,”she consoled him. The little cubs eagerly followed daddy B,for a live demo.


At other end of the forest, an anxious tiger paced up and down.The cause for concern seemed to be the new entrant, the white tiger.”Damn!!! These fair skinned ones.They seem to be grabbing all the limited female attention.Sigh!”
Well,it was a fact known to all that the poor guy had stuck to an exhaustive abs routine and a low fat -only -lean -deer diet,for more than six months now. However, yet another tiger felt there were other matters more important than those of the heart and the meat. He wasn’t the least bit amused at this intrusion of privacy.”Don’t we have any laws of the jungle here?”
“Well, this is the jungle right.”Except a few flies no one had responded to his statements.”Maybe we need a new government,and a change of the King,err animal.Maybe a no- confidence motion,he asked the grass and the trees.
“There’s more wilderness in the human parliament than here.”He sighed and went to drown his sorrows in the next watering hole.




The Bannergatta national park
1. High expectations will ruin your visit. Please remember you are visiting an Indian zoo and you shall be more than pleased with what you find and see.
2. Despite all the discouraging reviews,it was a pleasant surprise,and if you have a child in you somewhere,you will def enjoy seeing the animals at close quarters.
3. A particular reviewer on a travel site,said that the animals looked bored.Well,what do expect from life that has been caged.Remember that the animals are in the jungle and not in a circus.
4. The zoo’s policy and effort at keeping plastics at bay is quite laudable.(they empty out all plastic wrappers into paper bags,right at the entrance itself. It’s amazing how much plastic they had gathered in a few minutes)
5. The safari is bumpy but good(but since we were quite used to Bangalore roads,it didn’t feel very different),as you really get to see a variety of animals.The conductor is really helpful in pointing out and taking pictures for you(err for a tip of rs.20,he deserved it)
6. The cages are quite well kept and neat.The snake exhibit is amazing. Don’t miss it.
7. The butterfly park is definitely the high point of the park.The feeling is magical. As you enter the enchanted door,hundreds of butterflies come to kiss you with their feathery wings.


8. TIP OF THE DAY
Start early in the day,if you wish to visit on a Sunday,for the crowd that builds up,makes you wonder and pray about the security of the animals and thank god that they were caged.

five to go

“I’ve got five minutes,!”.I console myself(convincingly) rather than threaten.Five minutes and I have to juggle both breakfast and lipstick,both into dangerously close quartered areas.The few initial attempts taught me that the former should go first..Experience is a good teacher.The past two and a half months ,have taught me the value of all small things in life.Five min,never seemed more precious,and its amazing how much of reading I can squeeze into those five min,while whizzing off in a noisy auto,along with half a dozen of other noisy autos,over J.P Nagar’s dirt tracked roads(it’s amazing to see the number of ORTHO docs mushrooming in the neighbourhood)on my way to pick up a colleague.I cherish those five min of solitude with my book. The progress is slow,(targeted)at 2 pages a day.I have made considerable progress,since I began.From half a page,I have inched to two a day.Slow but satisfying.After all, Five min is all I have,and…..I don’t want to get too ambitious.


the only bright spot,in the near perfect gloomy day of the almost- on -the -fag- end-of the monsoons,weather.Mr.Bindra,you have proved a proverb COOL LIKE A CUCUMBER,true and a nation proud.

SILENCE IS BLISS

It's amazing how easy it has become to pick up a fight,about the most insanely silliest of things these days.

So,says my dear Husband.

It doesn't take too much(too long) to disagree,but a lot to make the other person to agree and see the logic in what you have to say.But,love and logic are difficult to explain,especially when you have to explain the logic in love.Unfortunately,by then both of us can only see red,and matters of the heart are dealt without the head and only with the tongue.The amazing thing is that most married couple agree with this.There is so much of similarity in the way couples fight.Not just in the way they fight,but also what they fight about.......for each one of us,has our own style....trademarked and copyrighted.The issues however rarely differ from family to family.

It's amazing how we blame everything and everyone around us,whenever the marital thermostat, surges.Stress,traffic,no water,no maid,leftovers from last night,re re re run of a movie,bathroom lights left on(by mistake),kids,their report card,forgotten birthdays......everything but,ourselves.

The A B C'S of a marriage change before and after .They are transformed in the few months of marriage and deformed by the time,you reach the first decade.You start analysing and
counting the years in decades and after 10,the counter just leaps by the tens.

TRUTH changes like the weather,before and after.Once upon a time, truth was the fact that "I can't live without you",now the fact of the matter is that"It's so difficult to live with you".Sweet nothings change to bitter everythings.A lot of times,I feel that wisdom lies in accepting that you(me) are wrong and you(he) is right.Check out the expression on their faces when you do that right in the middle of a heated conversation.......(what?? you can't(don't want to fight anymore !!!).I do that often,these days,Coz I'm told....I often start the fight !!!!!Merely ,not because,you are the man(right)and I'm the woman(wrong).But,because silence is my weapon of conveying the truth,across to you.So,is this wisdom submissiveness,or giving up without a fight?Most people would debate that,I'm sure.

Can we fight when there's just one person in the conversation?NO.It's amazing how easy it is to bring the temperature down,without saying a word.I have discovered the power of silence and the fact that it is a weapon that ignites the other,while helps you to ignore.

BLISS IS IN IGNORE..(HENCE)

a little bit of dash

Yet another promise broken.
A new post goes up today,when it should have last week just like the numerous "promises of walks",every evening.The week seems to be on roller blades ,these days barely leaving me gasping for air err time.
Just like the sentences that my students make,no commas no full stops,in short no sense at all.So,apart from injecting some grammatical sense,in my students,i decided to insert a little dash,in my schedule,before the sentence..week...me...lost complete sense and I lost my balance.




and this dash is called "Yercaud".A little town,tucked away between 20 hair pin bends and a little lake.Just four and a half hours from Bangalore,it often loses out to it's fairer cousin Ooty.The town has just the thing that you need to break away from the monotony of hectic weeks.......SIMPLICITY.A lazy town that closes at seven,a pond of a lake,a beautiful viewpoint,no crowds to fear,(just monkeys) and just a handful of hotels,which leave no space for comparison.Farthest is one km and feast is a buffet of left over 'chinese veg pulao and gulab jamun'.And you don't complain.You know,you are really chilling out,when at the end of three days,watching monkeys too feels so relaxing.















"The dash is a handy device, informal and essentially playful, telling you that you're about to take off on a different track but still in some way connected with the present course — only you have to remember that the dash is there"
found it in an old grammar textbook


so don't take your grammar lessons lightly !!!!!

JAB WE MET !!!!!

The setting was perfect and so was the timing.Sunday.....Barista...3 30 p.m and no trace of rain in an extremely overcast Bangalore sky.The rain gods were more than generous in holding back the rains,so as to allow the much awaited bloggers meet.With absolutely no corporate initiate,to back it,and after bumping and raiding and hectic commenting on each others blogs.It was time to say"LET'S MEET".For once, the blogs took a back seat and the authors stepped forward and met.The 50 odd confirmatory and introductory mails,set the tone and broke most of the (non existent)ice between us.

Anoop got the early bird prize,(i don know if he found a worm).The rest of us patriotically followed the IST (no offence meant).Since I knew only Anoop,it was fun trying to predict if the next person entering the door would be THE BLOGGER ,or not.(and mostly we were bang on).Being the only MAN in the group I wonder if he felt like the odd man out or awkward or responsible !!!!Once in most of us ,did what we were best at.......TALKING.... resting only to sip the coffee and the iced teas.

It was interesting to finally meet the faces behind the words and the thoughts and the funny thing was that at the end of it,it didn't feel like a first meeting at all.

those who made it......(in order of appearance)

Anoop,Me,Sushma,Prats,Madhu,Sairekha,Mallika.

Here's to many such meets and a big thank you to everyone who turned up.

Hope we can keep it going.

For those who missed it,we missed you too(esp suma).....there's always a next time and in case anybody was left out and wants to join in.Please drop me a line @misragazal123@gmail.com

for some more pics(by xh)

http://picasaweb.google.co.in/anoop.anoopkumar/Barista_Meet?authkey=cVbvDMMbQLg