Friends!

The most underrated relationship in the world is the one between two girl friends. While male bonding has always been worshiped, the friendship between girls has always been made to sound too contrived and negative, or worse, silly. Really, boys are NOT all we talk about! Our media and pop culture too, hype up the relationship between two male friends about the longevity and depth of their friendship (yeh dosti hum nahi thodenge types) while it is always shown that friendship between girls get destroyed by their ego/jealousy/greed/boyfriends, etc. Our movies too, re-emphasize how brittle our friendship is, while the truth cannot be any farther. I really cannot think about a movie where the friendship between two girls has been the plot, around which the story revolves, can you?

Girl friends are the best because:

We can discuss anything with our friends that our male partners or even mothers won’t be able to understand. This includes work issues, problems with colleagues, health issues, relationship issues, or anything really.

We can still crack insensitive inside jokes about silly things that might or might not have any importance in the real world whatsoever. Try going on a long drive with your bestie and you will know what I mean!

Girlfriends make amazing babysitters. They are the best ones to trust your baby with if you and your better half want to escape away for a romantic dinner. Imagine how it would be if you were to leave your baby with a friend of your husband’s!

There is never a dull moment when you are with your girlfriend. There are always other people to gossip about. *wink wink*

Trouble in your paradise with your spouse/boyfriend? A good talk with your bestie is the best medicine. You could talk about it with her, get her ideas/solutions, or simply just vent it out of your system with a good long boo-hoo session and lots of wine.

I will save the best for the last. Girls are the best to shop with. Sorry guys, you don’t even stand a chance; you just cannot compete with girls in this one.

Eindhoven Times

Ok, so where do I start? With how crazy the place became when Netherlands won the semi-final match against Uruguay? Or how there are separate cycling lanes in all the cities? Or how punctual the buses/trains are? Or how I saw a few guys cry when Netherlands lost the final to Spain? Dressed in all Orange, blowing the vuvuzela thing, drinking beer by the barrel, the people are, needless to say, crazy about soccer – it is almost the same in India with cricket. I can totally relate to the madness.

I have been darn lucky to be in a country during a gorgeous summer, when the country’s national team is in the finals (after 32 long years) of the most celebrated tournament around the world, working under a really cool manager! And to think I was going to come here in January (that was the original plan) when it would have been freezing cold and no world cup was going on. I just love the people here (yes, it also includes hot guys who don’t care to wear a shirt ;) because it is too hot here – come on, anything beyond 35 degrees is impossible for them – which is one of the reasons summers are soooo good.)

While at Holland, I also go to do what I like to call “exploring the wilder side of me” (like I wasn’t already wild enough) – I spent a few sleepless nights exploring Eindhoven, having a barbeque dinner at my manager’s home, playing in the beach with friends, tasting some fine wine, watching the FIFA world cup semi-finals and finals at the city centrum, having a crazy dancing night with a total stranger, partying until the wee hours of the morning, listening to a live band perform, taking a lot of photos – I did all of that! I know a lot of you are really jealous of me now (as I could gather from the FaceBook messages I got). I admire the style in which they enjoy their lives – they work for nothing more than 8 hours a day, go promptly on their vacations, concentrate completely on their work when they are at office, enjoy totally once they are outside office!

I think I had the best manager one could ask for (no, I am NOT saying this to be on his good books, but because that is the truth). He took us to downtown Eindhoven for the semi-finals match and along with his friends took us to a party later that night. Then he invited us to his home for a barbeque dinner, introduced his family – his wife and his really beautiful 15-month old daughter, served us some really good food – I needed vegetarian food and they had made some corn and mushrooms and potato salad (it felt absolutely great that we were being taken care of so well). Then again he took us out for the finals match and not once did he talk/ask about anything related to work when we were outside the office.

It was a great learning experience too – well, I am not referring to the KT sessions here; I want to leave work out of the entire post. I learnt that people like it when you are honest and are not faking your actions, I learnt that there is one person who is crazier than me in posing for photos (Believe me!!!), I learnt to be patient, I learnt that you can hit it off with a total stranger and end up having one of the best night outs ever, I learnt that I am going to make a great wife (well, how and why is beyond the scope of this blog), I learnt that I have more energy than I thought I did (although I lived on one meal per day)… All is well that ends well. It ended quite well J

And here I am, on my way back home to appreciate paani poori more than ever. And I will not complain about Bangalore food anymore. Talking about food, I am already hungry now. My flight is 7^th in the line for take-off from Istanbul airport and I will post this in about 7 hours when I have reached Mumbai and had a couple of samosas/vada paav (I can imagine the faces of my friends in Holland turning red with jealousy). But come on, I deserve so much!

Remember those times?

Life cannot be any better for me. Now, at this particular minute I am writing this, I am happy. I am a very happy person now. Finally, life at Bangalore and this office are becoming something to look forward to every morning. Until last week, Bangalore could not give me the kind of happiness that Chennai gave; my present office and my office-mates can never compare to the awesome friends I made at Wipro, Chennai; I couldn’t go to meet Baba here. And all that has changed now. I have made very good friends here at Philips Innovation Campus. Now, I can say I have a gang – as in a bunch of really cool people with a great sense of humour – that I can hang out with. A big welcome to my new friends to this blog and to my life! And now I am back to my normal self. I plan my weekends during my weekdays and write about my weekends on this space. I have got a bunch of friends to go around with now.

It has been a crazy couple of weeks now at work with trainings and meetings all day long. But otherwise it is so much fun here. Last weekend, I and my friends from work - Rama, Barath and Sreekanth - had been to Nandi Hills – a tourist destination about 45km from Bangalore and enjoyed Saturday afternoon there. We went there to see the sunset from atop the hill, but forgot about it as we sat there chatting and looking at the mommy monkeys carry their lil’ ones.

On Sunday, Sabal and I went to Forum and met up with Dhinu, who I was seeing after almost 3 months. He had been to Norway on an official trip. Then we went to Dhinu’s place and just as we were about to leave his house, we saw the most amazing black clouds ever. And it started pouring. It was one of the best rains I have ever witnessed and needless to say most of the roads on our way back home were clogged. Our cities NEED to be planned better! The auto in which we came had a radio and we listened so many of our favourite songs, singing along loudly and time just flew by and we reached our home back.

The day wasn’t over yet. It was Sunday and I HAD to meet Baba. Barath had come by and he took me to the temple although it was raining. There was not much crowd in the temple and I met Baba, spoke to Him for a few minutes and came back home. The weekend, unlike the umpteen boring weekends I have been having ever since I came to Bangalore, went off in a flash. For some time, I felt like I was in Chennai with my gang, hanging out and laughing and playing and simply jumping up and down with as much joy as the time when India won the World Cup (remember 3 years back, when Sreesanth actually used to bowl well and caught Misbah ul Haq in the T20 World Cup Finals against Pakistan? That’s what I am talking about). Sigh… That was a long time back, indeed!

I never thought I would pen this down!

I have always been a happy girl. I guess I have had a great childhood and was exposed to a pretty good lifestyle and education and had great parents. I was loved so much and was given so much freedom and knowledge by both my Amma and Appa. Amma insisted that I learn Hindi, while Appa was dead against it. But Amma had her way in this matter and both Gayathri (my sister) and I took to learning Hindi as our second language. So Appa somehow wanted us to learn Tamil and I was given comic books in Tamil to make me recognize letters and improve my reading speed. He also introduced me to the world of books, being an avid reader himself. He was an inspiration. He taught us to play Chess and taught us the rules of Cricket and Tennis and Football and Hockey. In all those school-going years, neither Amma nor Appa ever forced us to ‘sit and study’. Those were the happiest years – no tension, no worries, no idea about the financial situation of the family and in my case, no worries about tests and exams as well – I was a good student, duh… The biggest worry was eating – Amma and Appa and Paati and Athaipaati always forced food down my throat and well, it never stuck to my body. I was always underweight, still am.

Nobody’s life is full of roses. We all have our share of bad days. I have mine too. No, I am not going to start cribbing about kosu again – I guess I have grown used to it and am slowly learning how to tackle this. As my Gurudev Swami Chinmayanandji said, “This too shall pass” and I totally believe in his words. Now more than ever before! My point is, in order to understand where you stand and who your real friends are and who is trustworthy and how tough you are, you have to go through the dark patches of life. I went through a couple of them. Well, right now, I don’t actually remember the first one. But hey, I am sure it was there. I felt bad; maybe I was too young to comprehend it or something. But the second one, I remember quite well.

I was in college. Right now, nobody will believe me if I said I was more of an outcast there. I was popular – hugely popular would be more appropriate – but for the wrong reasons. Now what reasons they were and why they made me popular is beyond the scope of this blog :D (Effect of reading training documents, you see) Well, to be frank, now it makes me laugh and I feel like an idiot for worrying so much about such a non-issue. But yes, back then it made me a bitter person – I went into my own shell and refused to come out of it or allow anyone inside it. Well, to tell you the truth, nobody wanted to come inside, hold my hand and take me out of the darkness and the sadness. Everyone was busy too with their own lives to find out what went wrong with me or to verify the facts and simply stuck to listening to made up stories. There was no one to listen to me. I thought how true these lines were,

"Iruttinile nee nadakkaiyile, un nizhalum unnai vittu odi vidum;

Nee mattum dhaan indha ulagithile, unakku thunai endru vilangi vidum"

(When you walk in darkness, even your shadow deserts you. It is then that you would realize that you are your only companion)

My only strength was my studies. No matter what happened, I never let it affect my studies.

I was all alone inside a dark room for so long and finally when light came, I was afraid of it. I was starting to be afraid of being happy. But slowly, the light grew on me and I started enjoying my day in the sun. It just felt right. I started feeling so light (NOT weight-wise) and slowly started becoming the same girl that I was during school.

I got into Wipro – 2008 was one of the happiest years of my life – my project at Wipro’s Chennai One office, my (rather big) gang of friends, weekend trips to Vandalur and beach resorts with the ‘gang’ – each day was filled with so much laughter that I felt that God was giving me the laughter that was long overdue. 2009, too, was a very happy year. I enjoyed my new project and the early morning shifts – the only time when Chennai’s heat was bearable :)

I still consider my college days to be the most productive years. I went through so much of trauma, but I came out stronger – much stronger than I ever was. I kept on telling myself, “God is putting you through it, because you are one of His favorite children and He wants to make sure you come out strong and tough. And don’t worry; He is doing this to you because He knows you will overcome it successfully. He is just trying to build your confidence.” Now I am happy and strong and know who my TRUE friends are and who is trust-worthy. Behind all that suffering was a learning process. :)

What have I gotten myself into!!!

Don’t do anything you can’t own up to. And that goes for all you back-stabbers out there. You have a problem with anyone, tell it to the concerned person or don’t tell it out at all. What is the point in complaining to a third person? That would make you a fool if the other person and the person you are complaining about are friends – did that thought ever cross your mind? No? What a hopeless idiot you are! I am sorry, but I really hope you read this blog!

Now, venting it out to a third person is totally different from complaining. What I am doing here on this blog is venting out. You got a problem with me? Come talk to me… Let’s talk and sort the shit out. Don’t be a coward! I don’t know what you are more of – a wuss or a fool. And frankly, I don’t give a damn about you. From now, it is full-on war, baby! And you are going to cry and regret your actions and run away. As Chandler says in F.R.I.E.N.D.S, the messers now become the messies… You messed with me? You messed with me? And you thought you could get away with it?

I am just miserable, aren’t I? Sigh… I need more energy than ever and I don’t even have time to eat anything. I am losing so much weight that soon I am going to go invisible. And this messer is like the worst thing that could happen to me at this time. I feel it is too cowardly to say “I quit” and get the heck out of here; I feel it is too much stress to take upon myself; I feel I am talking too much nonsense (and I am sure you agree with me on this one).

I believe in God. Is it okay to give it right back to the person (because he/she totally deserves to be hit back at) or should we leave it to God and let Him take His own sweet time to do the needful? Because for now, I am sure He has His hands full with people from Haiti and may not find time in the coming days to resolve my problem. Is this nonsense too? I need help… Any professional psychologists out there?

Confused and shattered,

Me.

Anjana - my twin soul...

I am sure everyone has their tough times and everyone cries – no, I am not talking about guys/girls who are cowards enough to say, “I never cry”. What is the deal with people that want others to believe that they don’t cry in any situation? Anyways, I am a normal person and yes, I do cry when I am sad. So, as all of you know, I have been quite down and depressed for the last one month or so – ever since I left Chennai. I have been trying to lift myself up, make new friends and stuff and to be honest I don’t feel all that lonely or pathetic now! Yes, there are those small periods of time when I still feel lonely and left out. It was at one such time that my best friend Anjana called me.

Anjana

If God decided to make a rough draft of me before making the better and more sophisticated me - sorry, Anju, I had to tell this. It is my blog, after all ;-) - it would have to be Anju. She is less than a year older than me. So, that means she’s 17. Yes, don’t ask any questions. I met Anju at my Wipro office in Chennai. She was leaving a project and I was replacing her and she was supposed to give ‘KT’ (Knowledge Transfer) to me and until then I hadn’t known KT meant sipping coffee and chatting away whatever time we got to spend at work and sometimes bunking office and going to movies or going to my home and watching F.R.I.E.N.D.S. Sigh… Those were the best days of my life! I mean it.

She was my twin soul. Both of us liked to watch same kind of movies, both of us liked to read books, both of us thought only dumb ones work like donkeys while the smart ones just sneak out and avoid work and still get paid the same amount of money, both of us were lazy, both of us were vegetarians, both of us liked the same kind of guys – well, I know most of you think that two girls can never be as close friends as two guys and I had the same opinion as well (I admit to that. Blame it on my college) – until I met her. She was my other half, she was my mentor, she was my friend and she got as confused as me at times and let me sort it out for her.

Our KT sessions came to an end as she left Wipro with an offer to work at Singapore. We still kept in touch through phone and internet. It was during one of my most difficult times (yesterday) that she called me and we spoke for about an hour and a half – excuse me, we are girls, talkative ones at that! At the end of it - after we had discussed which movies should be watched, which guys were hot and what business we should start once we get bored of our IT jobs - I felt so light (no, it has nothing to do with my weight. If that were the case, I’d feel light eternally) – my depression, my hatred for life, my loneliness, my self-pity – everything vanished. It was as if we were back at Wipro office, sipping coffee and talking about everything and nothing – just like one of our KT sessions. I miss you, Anju! I miss you so much!

Kandaramanickam!!!

Well, I came back from Kandaramanickam after attending Nitsy’s wedding and what a wedding it was!!! I mean wooooooow…. I have rarely been to a wedding that is not a typical Tamil Brahmin affair and if I had been to one, I don’t seem to remember it that well. This one was just out of the world. Although the wedding lasted for a much lesser time period than a Tamil Brahmin wedding, the rituals were just as interesting and meaningful (now do not come back asking what is the significance of the ‘Oonjal’ thing that we have in our weddings. I seriously don’t know. If you know, you could write it in the comments section).

The wedding rituals started with a ‘Nitchayadhartham’ – the official engagement ceremony on Sunday. That day, they also did this ritual where in they bring few small, tender branches of a banyan tree and tie it to a very long pole and fix it to the ground. I asked a relative of Nitsy’s what the significance of that is. She said, “These branches would be removed after the wedding gets over and would be planted in a different place. And the saplings would start growing there. It is similar to our girl – she is being taken from a big family and given to another place, to a new family. When she goes there, she would be a part of the new place and grow there and help their family to grow, just the way the saplings do!” I was amazed by the amount of thought their ancestors have put into the ritual (Now, somebody please tell me the significance of our ‘Oonjal’ ritual).



The next day was the day of wedding. Early morning, Nitsy had gottena red ribbon and a yellow rope tied around a piece of turmeric – together called a “Kaapu” on her hand. Unlike our weddings, “Maapillai Azhaippu” (inviting the bride groom and his family) happens on the day of the wedding. Once the groom came, he was also made to tie the “Kaapu” in his hand. This “Kaapu” is supposed to be removed after the knot is tied around her neck and she becomes a part of his family (again, unlike in our marriages, Nitsy is allowed to eat well even when she has the kaapu ties. Our brides are poor things; they don’t get anything to eat until well after 2pm – main reason why I am NOT going to get married!). After this, the guy ties the knot around her neck and in a matter of less than half an hour, she is the groom’s wife and from that point onwards she is bound by the rules and regulations of her in-laws and they would take all her decisions for her.





I can’t forget how they all cried – Nitsy, her mom, dad, sister, grandma, grandpa, Kavi, Divya – when she was leaving home, to be officially inducted into the bridegroom’s house (Another reason why don’t want to get married). It was so painful to watch her go.

More than all the rituals and the colorful dresses and the warm people and even warmer climate, one thing I enjoyed the most was the food. I had authentic Chettinad food for 2 days. For a person who gets hungry once in every 2 hours, the place was heaven. Whenever I met anyone, the first question they would ask is, “Saaptiya?” If you thought I’d shamelessly have told, “Not yet” and went for “pandhi” after “pandhi” of pure bliss, you are wrong. I had two “close” friends (close pannama vida maataanga) – Yals and Kavi who were always beside me reminding me, “Sandy, control…” And now, a full meal at our office cafeteria isn’t enough to fill my stomach!!! God, what is with me?

Alvida, Nitsy!

Come Monday and my roomie and one of my best friends will be a married lady. Feels like yesterday when we attended Engineering counseling at Amrita on the same day, same time slot, joined the same course, sat in the same (last) bench for four years, studied together for every semester, saw movies together, shared books and study materials, got placed in the same company, left Coimbatore on the same day, stayed in the same hostel for 6 months, moved to a 2BHK together and lived in the same house for almost 2 years. She has always been there to cheer me up, to wake me up from sleep and force me to have dinner, to offer a shoulder to cry on, to be an older sister I never had – all this despite the fact that I yak nonstop and she is patience and silence personified. I know all this is already written in the testimonials she has received. But I didn’t want to write this there – because I am not writing this for her, I am writing this for myself.

Tomorrow night I am leaving Chennai for Karaikudi - a small town in Southern Tamil Nadu - and from there to a small village around 20kms away. I know the place is going to be enchanting given the active monsoon at this time of the year and I will be meeting my best pals from college there, but still I feel like a part of my life is being torn off me to be given to another fantastically lucky person. Although there is some consolation that she would continue to live in Chennai and would continue to work in the same office as me, I feel like I am losing someone whose preciousness I was fool enough not to appreciate when she was with me.

To my dearest Nitsy,

Thank you for being there for me whenever I needed a friend – you have done everything from being a class mate (who made extra-ordinarily detailed notes) to a teacher (with too much patience) to a sister (who has truck loads of love to give away) to an amazing friend. You are simply the best of us all! I wish you a super-happy and successful married life. Take good care of yourself and your husband ;-) I love you so much!!!

To everyone else: Sorry I got a little too senti; but the thought that she is getting married is too overwhelming to control. I had to vent it out and as usual, this is my way of doing that.