Of Sex Tapes and Banana Cakes

So our esteemed ministers in Karnataka have been caught watching porn during an assembly session. I’m not surprised; rather, I’m much more surprised at the outrage that has followed. I mean, what more did you expect from our ministers? That they would actually participate sincerely in an assembly session that is paid for by the taxpayer? Don’t be ridiculous!

On a serious note, I have three major issues with the whole controversy.

1.       I have no moral objections against pornography as long as the acts were performed by mutual consent. And I don’t think there is anything wrong with anyone, minister or not, watching porn. However, I do take issue with their watching porn while the assembly is in session. My firm isn’t going to be happy if they find out I am watching porn during office hours; for all I know, they may even be well within their legal rights to fire me if I am watching porn in office. Similarly, as a taxpayer, I am not happy to find out that my representative in assembly is watching porn instead of doing his job.

2.       More worrying is the fact that the minister is now trying to prevent all news from reaching his constituency – the cable lines have been blocked in the village; newspapers aren’t distributed there. Firstly, I am fairly sure this is unconstitutional because an MLA does not have the right to censor/filter the news that reaches his constituency. Secondly, this sets a very dangerous precedent – I can imagine other MLAs and MPs deciding to follow this tactic the next time they are in the limelight for all the wrong reasons.

3.       The hypocrisy of the ruling party (and its allies and associates), and of the ministers involved, infuriates me. They are all up in arms about the attack on our great Indian culture if couples want to celebrate Valentine’s Day. If women dare go to pubs, our lofty traditions are under threat. One of the ministers of the ruling party went ballistic when the topic of introducing sex education in schools was brought up, saying that it was ‘against Indian culture’ (of course!). But these arbitrary moral standards are only for the rest of the population apparently, while these gentlemen engage in behavior which would be considered amoral by their own standards.

That said and done, I’m more amused than angry by the whole rigmarole. I think it’s because I have reached a point where nothing our politicians do angers/shocks/upsets me anymore. I just shrug and move on with my life. I am now officially a cynic who believes there is no point in caring about what happens in the world around.

Meanwhile, it looks like the media is milking this for all its worth. And I am thoroughly sick of the media sensationalism these days – so much so that I never watch the news on television and barely read the paper anymore. It either makes me depressed, or it annoys the hell out of me or it makes me furious, and being aware and up-to-date isn’t compensation enough for all the anger, frustration and sorrow it causes (enough to shorten my life by a few years, I am sure!).

And so, as this news slowly gathers dust, and the media waits for the next grand controversy to come up, I have said my piece, and I too shall move on to better things. And so, I leave you with this, a banana cake I baked last week. Remember, one of my resolutions this year was to learn to cook? Well, last month I made coffee cake, and now this. Both of them came out alright, though they could have been much better (I am also apparently my sternest critic when it comes to cooking!) – nevertheless, I am very chuffed! What do you think?

Ding Dong Bell

Because that’s as good a title as any for the nonsensical post that is to follow.

So I’ve continued to be insanely busy through August too. My work has suddenly picked up pace. The distance learning course continues to be demanding – lots of readings, regular assignment submissions etc. On top of this, I have taken on two personal projects – both of which require significant investment of time, effort and money. And because we are no staying with the in-laws, we have all sorts of family obligations to fulfill. It’s a classic case of biting off way more than I can chew.

I like my days to be full and busy – but this is too much, I say. I constantly feel sleepy and exhausted. The sense of being hassled accompanies me all the time. My social life has come to a standstill. If I so much as plan to go out for dinner on a weekend, I start to feel guilty about the billion things on my to-do list. And to add salt to the wound, some of the things I have been working on fell through, and that put me in a blue funk for a while. The worst part is that this situation won’t change till November.

Alright, now I’m done with the whining.

The best part of this month was that Nike and I took a short holiday to Cambodia. Yay! So we got engaged on August 15^th two years ago – and since we just need an excuse to travel and since this August 15^th holiday gave us a long weekend, we took another 3 days off and set off for Cambodia. I wanted to go to Kerala since I had already been to Cambodia, but Nike was keen on Cambodia, and because of all his dashed birthday travel plans, I graciously gave in to his wishes. I also made it very clear that next time, I get to decide our holiday destination, mutual agreement be damned. Ahem!

So Cambodia – which was just Siem Reap, actually – was all things fun and interesting. We stayed in this lovely little boutique hotel with a nice pool, and the most marvelous staff, and a four poster bed. It was wonderful. We had a really good guide who took us around the most important temples around the Angkor Park region for the first two days. And on the third day, we got this super-sweet and super-talkative driver who took us to the temples in the outskirts, and to the floating forest.

On the last day we just got long, luxurious massages, hung out with other travelers, shopped at the local markets, and just soaked in the very touristy atmosphere of Siem Reap. It was a lovely holiday, but it was also tiring and too short. And since I had a bad cold from the time my flight from Bangalore took off, I had pretty much drugged myself throughout the holiday, so when I came back home I was rather disoriented. I’ve been saying that I need a holiday from the holiday, but nobody listens to me.

Now I must be off, for tonight we are going to the old city area to check out the Ramzan festivities, and eat Haleem. 

Of This and That

My sister-in-law is expecting a baby girl (they live in the UK) and everyone is very excited because this is the first baby in the in-laws family. A couple of days ago, the mother-in-law was discussing what would be an appropriate gift for us to give the baby, and unsurprisingly, she suggested gold, only to be scoffed at by Nike. She then suggested we could take out a policy in the baby’s name.

“For what?” asked Nike, sounding rather horrified at the suggestion of so much money being spent on a little baby (since baby = vague concept in his mind)

“It will come in useful when the baby grows up and gets married” replied the MIL

Now, if my mum or any of my aunts had said that, I’d have bitten their heads off. But I don’t share that kind of a relationship with my MIL (yet?). So I had to deal with this with tact. I began doubtfully “Marriage? Really...”

My MIL immediately interrupted “Well, okay, not for marriage. But atleast it will come in useful for her higher education”.

I think I may yet make a feminist of my mother-in-law.

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Yesterday, while talking to Dad over the phone, I asked him what Amma and Samee were doing. “They are eating munjulu” says he.

“Ack! Munjulu!” For most people, the best part of the summer is mangoes. For me, it is munjulu. In my head, munjulu are tied up with memories of countless languid, carefree childhood summers spent at my grandparents’ farm.

“Yes. Samee buys two dozen everyday and they polish off the entire two dozen between the two of them. Every day!” he replies, oblivious to the fact that I’m turning green with envy over the phone.

“Nanna, I’m coming to Vizag next weekend” I announce.

Dad is taken aback. “Don’t be silly. Nobody travels 700 kilometres to eat munjulu.”

For now, he has dissuaded me. But one weekend before the summer is over, I am going home, and I am going to gorge on munjulu till I am sick. Ha!

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I have a long commute to work – 90 minutes one way. Which means I spend 3 hours in a day sitting in a car. Sigh! While going to work, I can’t talk to anyone over the phone because all my friends and family would be busy getting ready for work. It’s not so bad on the way back home, because I either talk on the phone or take a nap. But the commute has become so much more bearable ever since I hit upon the solution of listening to audio books. I was sceptical about whether I would enjoy listening to books, but it has been a surprisingly positive experience: I close my eyes and focus on the recording, and then I can imagine what is happening in the book in even more vivid detail, I can pause the recording at interesting moments to reflect upon it.

Unfortunately, the first audiobook I had downloaded was Anne Bronte’s ‘Agnes Grey’. It is a slow, dull, dreary book; and the heroine is so full of overwhelming and needless self-pity, so bloody self-righteous, such a Ms. Goody Two Shoes, so judgemental while pretending not to judge, and generally so boring that I felt like whacking her hard many times through the book. It was rather a test of patience finishing ‘Agnes Grey’. But now I am listening to ‘Anna Karenina’ (been many years since I first read it) and so far, I’ve been enjoying it.

Of course, the voice of the person reading the book also adds to the overall experience. ‘Agnes Grey’ was read by four or five different women, and while I really enjoyed listening to some of them, some voices were just unsuited for the book, and made the listening tedious. For ‘Agnes Grey’, the voices I felt were best suited for the books were soft, young voices with a British accent. By that logic, Anna Karenina should ideally be read by someone with a Russian accent (!) but so far a young lady with an American accent and an expressive manner of reading has made the Anna Karenina experience very enjoyable.

Go to www.librivox.org to listen to and download audiobooks. It’s free and its legal. You can also volunteer to be a reader there. I’m thinking of volunteering too – it sounds interesting and fun!

Much Ado about Nothing

It’s been exactly four weeks since we moved to Hyderabad and my social life has gone from busy to incredibly hectic. In the last four weeks I have:

•  Met up with friends from my college gang thrice
•  Hung out with S, my best friend from college, about half a dozen times
•  Hung out with Gundu, my best friend from school, about half a dozen times, and     even met his friends here
•  Met KK for lunch
•  Hung out with Mahi, my cousin, quite a bit
•  Spent three Sundays at Pinni’s place, one of which was spent helping organise a suprise birthday party for Babai’s 50^th. Also spent time with cousins and Samee, who came down to Hyderabad for the party.
•  Saw five movies at the cinema – Ala Modalaindi, Rio, Teen Maar, Dum Maaro Dum and Shor in the City
•  Shopped lost – spent one day buying formal wear, another buying a desk and a bookshelf and finally a HTC Desire HD for Nike.
•  Helped the in-laws host a dinner at their place (by help I really mean I made conversation with the guests!). Also attended dinner at Nike’s Maami’s place once.
•  Went out for dinner alone with Nike twice.

Yes, all this in just four weeks. I also managed to see a couple of movies at home and read two books. Far from being tired, I thrive in the midst of so much social activity. On a day when I come home after meeting friends for coffee, I’m hyperactive. On a day when I come home directly from work, I’m all tired and need to take a short nap before I can bring myself to sit down for dinner and make conversation.

Now I have an equal number of friends, if not more, in Bangalore. But my life wasn’t a whirlwind of so much activity there, and generally, Nike and I spent a lot more time just by ourselves than we did with friends. The key difference here is that almost all my friends in Bangalore are married; in contrast I have only one married friend in Hyderabad. And in terms of ‘hanging out’ unmarried friends are much better than married friends, atleast in my experience (Like I keep telling my married friends, I’m just going to make friends only with younger, unmarried people from now on. The first question I will ask people is “Are you under 25 and unmarried”. If yes to both, only then will I consider the possibility of becoming friends with them. Of course, I’m aware that if everyone decided to use these criteria, I‘d be no one’s friend). 


I'm now ending this completely pointless post (because the rest of my posts were educative, informative and inspiring. Duh) here without even editing it because I want to put it up on the blog before midnight so that it shows that I've written TWO blog posts in April. Score!

Catching Up

So I’ve been pretty busy in the last two odd months that I’ve not posted. First, there was the exam to prepare for.  Those two months I had to prepare before the exam – they were two of the most miserable months I’ve had in recent years. The first one month was spent in a state of panic – “Oh my god! There is so much to study! I’m never going to finish this syllabus”. This state of panic led to a general sense of misery, which led to eating a lot of ice cream to cheer myself up, which led to a cold, which led to headache. It was a vicious cycle, dear reader, a very vicious cycle.

After a month of this, I told myself firmly that nothing was worth my happiness and health. And so what did I do? I more or less gave up on the preparation. No one can say I do things in half-measure, eh? But this didn’t lead to happiness and health either. Because when I told family and friends that I wasn’t preparing seriously, they would go “Yeah, we know, that’s what you always say, but you’ll get through, we believe in you”. This touching, but unfortunately misplaced, belief in my academic abilities led to guilt. So then guilt – ice cream – cold – headache.....you get the drift, right?

Anyway, those two miserable months finally got over, though I didn’t think they ever would. The weather in Bangalore was fantastic, there was just that light nip in the air to indicate that winter was starting. And oh, it was festival time too, what with Vinakaya Chaturthi and Dussera and Deepavali. And through all this I wallowed in my misery. See, my life is actually very smooth and easy and problem free – its quite the perfect life actually – and so when I come across even the slightest little bump, I make a big deal out of it and behave as if the world is coming to an end.

So anyway, the exams finally, finally got over, and brought an end to my misery. I went home to Vizag for a week after that. This time, Nike came and stayed the whole week too – this was the first time he was spending so much time at home – he’d come only once before, and then for just 2-3 days – so I was excited that he would get a taste of life at my home.

I had a lovely time at home. During the day, while Nike worked, I went out and met friends. In the evenings I pottered around the house. And dinner time and later was family time. Every time I’m home, the days just fly by. I had so many plans for this week I was going to be home, but none of them got done, and I don’t remember what I did either, because the days just pleasantly merged into one another.

Well, we went to Hyderabad from Vizag, and from there commenced our Grand Trip. What Grand Trip, you ask? I wanted to do a whole post about it, dramatically announcing the Grand Trip. Instead, I end up doing it at the end of a rambling post about nothing! Huh! Anyway. So like I said, Nike and I are now on our Grand Trip. The GT is a two and a half month trip across South East Asia. In these two and a half months, we will be spending time in Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia.

It’s been 10 days since we set out, and right now, we are in the Philippines, where we will be till the end of the month before we head out to Thailand. We've been having a fantastic time so far. Maybe another day, I will do a post on how and why we are doing this. But for now, let me just say it’s our way of celebrating one wonderful year of being married (our first wedding anniversary is this Thursday!). 

Till then, bahala na!

Things You REALLY Don't Want to Know

The last two weeks have been fantastic in terms of all the things I’ve got to do. So I’m going to put it all down here to read the next time I moan about how I’m so bored, or how I want a change. Then I can be reminded of how full my life is in Bangalore.

Two weeks ago, went home for Ma’s 50^th. The day I came back to Bangalore, I fell ill. Nike very sweetly worked from home the whole week, so I would have someone to moan to about how sick I was and how I was going to just die. Of course, my impending death did not stop me from devouring the Millennium Trilogy that week.

Just as I got better, Nike’s mother was admitted to the hospital and we had to rush to Hyderabad. In a hospital, all my hitherto deeply buried masochistic tendencies come out in full force – I look at every suffering patient and try to imagine how I would feel in their position – and since I am a total wuss, the vision that emerges is far from pretty. Anyway, since this isn’t all about me (ahem!)  - Nike’s mother responded well to the medicines and was discharged.

Once back in Bangalore, we saw Udaan, a beautiful movie, with very interesting characterisation (with the exception of the Dad, who was painted all black). It is a ‘follow your dreams’ story but told with its sense of humour and light-heartedness very much intact so it never gets preachy. The movie was at PVR so we had dinner at Bombay Blues at Transit after that, and the food was AWFUL.

The next day, had lunch with the girls at Grill Room. The place is right opposite the Gurudwara on Ulsoor, and has a great lunch buffet. Do try it if you are around that area. The Friday before last we had a girl’s night out at Vids place. Lux, Eku, Vids and I. We had a blast, eating and drinking and singing and dancing and chatting.

Saturday was spent recovering from the excesses of the previous night. Girish was in Bangalore on Sunday, so went with Kat and Girish to the Chancery Pavillion for Sunday Brunch. 1200 bucks for unlimited food and drinks – fantastic spread – worth every single paisa. Go! All that eating and drinking business left us too exhausted to do anything for two days, after which we went to Inception. What. A. Movie. Stayed up all night discussing it; and started where we left off the next morning. It’s going to require some more viewings before I can decide on what I think happened.

So that was the week before last. This Friday, went to Kat’s place. We then met up with Hetro and Yola for drinks and dinner, and then went to Hetro place where we saw a marathon session of ‘Coupling’. On Saturday, we had Indu and Kumara over for lunch. But since we didn’t wake up when the cook came, rang the bell endlessly and left, Nike had to rush and buy the chicken and do the cooking himself, while I restored the house to some semblance of order. After they left, we saw ‘Body of Lies’ on television, went shopping at Lifestyle (my loots: maroon skirt, black waistcoat, blue and red checked top and two pairs of shoes), and finished with dinner at Chakum Chakum.

On Sunday, went for a haircut. Actually went in thinking of a trim, but I don’t know what got into me once I sat in the chair, but I made her chop it all off! I’m going to Hyderabad again next week, and am already dreading the reaction from the family. Anyway, Lux had invited the whole gang over for a traditional south Indian dinner at her place on Sunday night, so we all dressed up in Sarees (the women did; the men wore kurtas). Played some really weird games, laughed uproariously at Lux’s expense, thulped yummy food till I thought I would burst, and came home with gifts the girl had got us from Rajasthan.

The last  3 days have been super super busy at work. So all I’ve had the time for till now is Aisha with the girls. Maybe I went in with really low expectations, but the movie wasn’t so bad. It was actually fun watching it with the girls – oohhing over the outfits and shoes, rolling our eyes together at all the nonsense some of the characters do, aahhing over Abhay Deol – it’s great fun to watch a chick flick with your girlfriends.

Phew! That’s been the scene in my universe for the last two weeks. Tomorrow I’m off on a holiday. A girls needs time off from all this socialising. Tata.

Brothers and Sisters

You are travelling in a train and your co-passengers strike up a conversation with you, and if they happen to be aunty – uncle types, they start asking all sorts of varied details about your family. And if you happen to be travelling from Hyderabad to Vizag, the questions are asked in even more detail in the hope of finding some tenuous connection (because, you know, all Vizagites know one another) and then bafflingly, delighting in it.

Well, a lot of times when I say I have a sister and no other siblings, they respond with ‘Just two sisters? No brothers?’ in a tone of mingled surprise and pity. Since I also felt sorry for myself for not having a brother and being stuck with a little sister instead, I actually appreciated their sympathy, and vaguely assumed they felt sorry simply because we were missing out on the fun that comes with having a brother. As a natural corollary, I thought they would feel pity and surprise for male siblings without any sisters.

A couple of days ago, I was ruminating over this, and I wondered if my theory that it was equally applicable to male and female siblings was right. So I carried out a small survey – I asked six guy friends and six girl friends, all of whom only had siblings of the same sex, if they were ever met with a ‘Oh! No brothers/sisters?’ in that tone of surprise and pity. All but one of the girls said they had faced this – either very occasionally or several times. Not a single one of the guys said they had faced such a question, and found it rather funny – three of the guys also added that usually there is a sense of appreciation/ envy that it’s just boys (but these guys could very likely be saying that just to irritate me so I won’t really take that into consideration).

Clearly a significant section of middle class (though middle aged / elderly) urban Indians still consider a male child more desirable than a female child (do note that I am just saying preferable – doesn’t mean they don’t want any girl children at all). Not that I’m surprised in the least bit, because there are definite historic, economic and social reasons which have formed this bias, and it’s hard to easily shake off something that has been so ingrained.

So while it is a little sad, it’s not something that makes me particularly surprised or angry or indignant. I just thought it was an interesting snippet, and wanted to share it.

Yeah, that’s all, that is the end of it!

P.S: Do try to come up with some thing more original than 'burn burn burn' if you are going to comment (You know I'm looking at you guys :p)

P.P.S: Just like I predicted, it was a MI – CSK final. I thought MI would win, though I didn’t really care who finally won. Meanwhile, is it just me or is anyone else thoroughly sick of the IPL tamasha and the random, hyper media coverage?

Weekend Diary

So ArmyBoy came down to Hyderabad from London for a month long holiday. This was his first visit back home after he left for the UK almost two years ago, and I was dying to meet him but I was reluctant to travel to Hyderabad, what with my exam hardly a month away, and another trip to Hyderabad anyway scheduled in the 2^nd week of May for Samee’s graduation. So the gang very sweetly planned a trip to Bangalore to visit me. Yayyy for my awesome college friends! 

They landed here early on Friday morning and the rest of the day was spent lazing around the house. It was a cool and pleasant day, and the guys chugged away the beers. Swetha made Chicken Manchurian and Prawn Something, both of which were gobbled up in a couple of minutes flat. Army boy made some spicy chicken, which we ate along with dal and rice. After that lunch, everyone just lay around on the carpet and dozed off. It was a great way to spend the day with old friends.

In the evening, we dressed up (the girls, that is) and headed out to Opus. We were imagining a pub/club kind of place with a big screen where we hoped to catch the DC – KXIP match, but it turned out to be more of a rather quiet, sedate lounge kind of place. We were initially disappointed with the atmosphere but the service more than made up for it and we ended up cheering them before we left. They have some great value unlimited food and drink packages, and they kept both coming even before we finished what was on the table.

Now biryani was part of the package we had ordered but we didn’t get around to it since we were all so busy dancing. The wait staff very generously packed the biryani for us to take away, without us even asking for it! How is that for service to please? So here is a shout put for Opus! So we finished the day with midnight ice-cream at BR (slurp slurp) and a late night game of Taboo! If you know Nike at all, you will also know that there will never be a time when we don’t play Taboo if there are more than 4 people in the house.

The gang left early Saturday morning to Coorg. It took me a great amount of willpower to refuse to go with them, but the darned exam! L Like I always say, a girl’s got to do what a girl’s got to do! So Saturday was largely spent with my books – I was feeling so sorry for myself for not being in Coorg that I thought I might as well make it worth it by really studying, and so I did study longer that I have for a while now.

Sunday was spent cleaning up by me (since our maid has gone AWOL and we are desperately looking for a new maid) and cooking (by Nike). It drizzled and was really pleasant in the evening so we went to an open-air CCD and spent a couple of hours there playing Ingenious. Tomorrow is ArmyBoy’s birthday so it is party time, before they leave for Hyderabad tomorrow night.

Sunday ended on a good note with the DD – DC match, which DC won. :-) Now my top two teams – RCB and DC – are in the semis, and I’m a happy girl! (My Dad is being randomly regionalist and is happy that all the 3 south Indian teams are in the semis) I will be cheering madly for RCB and DC in the semis, but I have a feeling that it will be a MI – CSK final this year. RCB is performing rather disappointingly despite their amazing batting line up, they have been losing wickets way too easily, and have lost matches that should have been theirs (memories of the match against DC are especially painful). 


I’m not too happy that RCB is playing against MI in the semis – it’s less to do with MI’s invincibility and more to do with my suspicions that Lalit Modi will ensure that the home team will play in the finals. It’s also sad that RCB won’t be playing at home during the semis, but given they won the away match against MI and lost the home match, it could be a good sign (yes, we are vague and random and superstitious about IPL). Whatever, it’s going to be a very exciting IPL week ahead.
 

New Beginnings

Happy Ugadi! May it herald a year in which all your dreams come true, a year which is filled with good health, and lots of love, laughter and happiness.

On the occasion of Ugadi, and on account of boredom, I have decided to redo the blog. I was really looking for a more edgy, sophisticated template, but when I saw this template, it was SO me, that I just didn’t like anything else after this. I like to think of myself as that girl, sitting next to a shelf full of books waiting to be opened. It’s also girly, bright and cheerful – me, me, me!

I do wish I could get rid of those rather ugly ‘Advertise Here’ boxes, but I am unable to figure out how to. I’m also thinking of uploading pictures where my face is semi-obscure, or partially covered. No, not because I am not good looking! Nor am I trying to become anonymous. But I’ve taken the absurd notion into my head that it will add an air of mystery to me (!) and so we shall persist with the effort till laziness overcomes vanity.


You can now share my posts on twitter or Facebook. I am sure my 3.71 readers are delirious with joy at this stimulating prospect. I have also added a site meter – my need for honesty having finally overcome my sense of pride. Clearly, the only way the darned site meter is going to show any activity is if I click on blog every day like a woman possessed.

I added this feature where you can react to a post with a simple click, if you are feeling too lazy to comment. I am rather excited about it, so go and click on it! Pretty please. But to clarify, I still love comments more – every 0.09 comments I receive per post. I have also updated my blog roll, and if you want me to add your blog to this list, let me know (I can so hear you snigger and say “yeah, of course, since this is totally a celebrity blog that will drive crazy amounts of traffic and make me a millionaire entirely from ad sense revenues”).

Well, so do you like the blog’s new look? 

Hallo blog

Dear blog,

I’m sorry I have neglected you completely for the last two months. It’s not that I don’t care about you anymore. I do! Truly, I do.

The reason for creating you was to keep a record of my life – the places I go to, the people I meet, the things I do, the experiences I have, and so on. So when I’m 50 and I have ungrateful bloody children, who dismiss me as a whiny, prudish old bore, I can come to this space and relive my twenties and think of what an awesome life I had, how much fun I was and what my life was like before the ungrateful bloody children took it over. Of course, I could also simply not have children at all, and spare myself all the insecurity.

So that’s the reason you were created - to keep track of my life. Unfortunately, I’m usually so busy living the life that I don’t have the time to keep a written record of it. I’m not gloating, really I’m not! Now coming back to the point, I’ve just been too busy most of the time to write. And when I find the time to write, my mind goes blank. Like a clean slate. Which explains why I haven’t visited you in the last two months. But now stop sulking, and listen to all the things I’ve been upto in the last two months:

Went on a weekend trip to Hampi and fell in love the place. Seriously, why didn’t I take up history in my undergraduate course and become and archeologist? I could spend days and days looking around ruins, and not get bored. Anyway, the weather in Hampi was perfect, cool and breezy, the sun was barely there but it didn’t rain either. And since it was monsoon season, there were barely any tourists and everything was quite cheap. It was a perfect break.

Samee and I went to Eastern Europe for a 9 day trip. We flew to Budapest, spend two days in Budapest, then spent a day in the Tatras mountains in Slovakia, then went on to Prague for two days. We returned to Budapest from Prague, spent another day in Budapest, and the next day in Szentendre and Visegrad. It was a great trip, and we had a very exciting time. We also fought and sulked, and were very tired by the end of it, but it was an awesome trip.

I got engaged. Yes! I wasn’t too excited about it in the beginning, with ‘ohmigod, my single days are over’ being the prevailing sentiment, but then I slowly got into the groove of things, so I did enjoy myself. Actually, all the attention, the compliments and the flattery, generally being treated like a queen, having people buy you expensive gifts – what’s not to like? Bring on the wedding I say! But I now wear my engagement ring on the right hand because – (1) I’m used to wearing a ring on my right hand so I just removed the old one and replaced it with the new one (2) Since most people wear their wedding/engagement rings on their left hand, wearing it on my right hand means people wont just have to look at my hand to figure out my marital status. :p

I’ve also been partying like there’s no tomorrow. I’ve been watching lots of movies. And I have unfortunately discovered television.

So that, dear blog, is what I have been upto in the last two months! It’s been a busy couple of months, what with all the travelling, and missing flights in between and shopping for the engagement, and partying on Saturday nights, and recovering from Saturday nights on Sundays.