Saturday, June 18, 2005

Summers



When people ask me how my summers have been I inevitably reply ‘My summer project was awful but my summer was awesome’. And then I subject my victim to an hour long monologue on what exactly went wrong with my summer project. Well, I was working for the Training & Development team of my summers company and this team was called the Learning team. And my project was on ‘How to create value for Learning’!! As is obvious, there was nothing much I could do about such a project.

And my guide and manager was the head of the India Learning Team. He was a bigshot and a busy man so it was difficult for him to find time for me. And I myself did not make my requirements clear to him and did not seek him out aggressively. So the fault was both ways and the end result was that I went about the project in a very careless manner, not going to office for days, not doing much, my guide not bothered – there was absolutely no learning in it.

Well, I would have liked to do some work during my summer internship but the fact that I didnt have to go to office for everyday from 9 to 5 meant I could do so much more and thats what made my summers so much fun. I must however add that the company I did my summers in was really great and would be a good place to work in.

Well, so what else did I do in those 2 months? I ate out every single day. And tried to go to as many restaurants as possible. So I’m now a kind of expert on Bangalore eateries. I landed up at some amazing places and at some totally forgettable places. While we mostly looked at the right side of the menu when choosing a restaurant, we did try out a couple of different and interesting places too. We went to midnight buffets, weekend brunch buffest, midnight dinner at Empire, terrace restaurants for dinner, a tiny place where we got exotic south indian food...hmm,lots of amazing places.

Then books of course. Though I did not read too many books, I got to read an interesting selection. The best of the lot is William Dalrymple’s ‘White Mughals’ which I loved and have dedicated an entire post to. Then there was Frank McCourts ‘Angela’s Ashes’ which I did not care too much for. Anita Desai’s ‘Baumgartner’s Bombay’ which was also just okay. Khushwant Singh’s ‘Truth, Love and a little Malice’ – I didn’t like the book at all – it would have been fun if he was malicious but he is just very petty, is critical of everyone except himself and his writing is nothing exceptional. Then Jumpa Lahiri’s ‘Interpreter of Maladies’ which was a very interesting and exceptionally well written set of stories. Sudha Murthy’s ‘Wise and Other Wise’ – a book of short stories- simple, warm and thought provoking. I read a couple of old William stories,Asterix, Calvin and Hobbes and P G Wodehouse for a few laughs- my family finds this very frustrating because I laugh out when I am reading something funny and when it is one of these books, I become quite hysterical and end up falling off the bed laughing or getting a stomach ache coz I laughed too much and cant take it anymore!!! Well, I am right now reading a book called ‘The Ugly American’ and it was all in all a good summer for reading (though not comparable at all to the number of books I used to read during summer vacations in school and college but then the kind of books I read then were also like that) and it got me to use the IIMB library for the first time after coming here.

Saw lots of movies too...some in PVR, some in my room - Hindi, Telugu and English. And went to a couple of plays at Ranga Shankara – I got to see a really good play called ‘A Heap of Broken Images’ directed by Girish Karnad and a brilliant protagonist. Then a stand up comedy called ‘Mr.Funny Man’ which was decent and a really long and painful play called ‘Madness.

Did a lot of other stuff. I went to the International Dance Festival conducted by Alliance Francaise. Got lost quite often in the city. Travelled to Coorg, Kushal Nagar (which has a very impressive Buddhist monastery) and Mysore in a day. My sister was here for two weeks and that just added up to the fun factor. We would watch Scrubs/Friends/Joey/That 70’s Show and play cards till 6am and then sleep till late afternoon after which it was time to get up and go out. Ramya was here for a weekend so I took her out shopping. And then did a lot of shopping of my own for myself and my family with my money.

It was a summer of pure joy and happiness. Even the weather seemed to do all it could to make it perfect – it was sunny mostly, and only occasionally hot and it would rain ever so often. I’m always going to cherish this summer because with it comes the awareness that this might just be the last long vacation I am going to have in quite a while. And sine that is a thought I do not want to dwell upon, I shall sign off here.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

cant believe my summers were better than urs.. agreed u had all the fun in goin out to plays n movies n wot not..but me had the pleasure of not working at all for 2 months n still doing all tht u did.. best thing of all is tht i'm most probably gonna even get a PPO for all tht masti i had :P

Suganya said...

hmmm...gr8 summer eh? its gud tat u had some work to do amist the fun... its the way it gotta be..wat do u say??? :-)
without any work, it wud soon be boring...

Anonymous said...

Long time ... no scraps :( what happened ??

Anonymous said...

U NEED NOT B GR8 2 START BUT U NEED 2 START 2 B GR8.
" AIM FOR D STARS ATLEAST U LL LAND ON A TREE & B TALLER THAN THE TALLEST PERSON ON EARTH.
HOPE THESE HELP U

Post a Comment

Go on, make my day!