Not To Be Left Out

This week, it’s all about Osama’s death of course. I cannot rejoice – I simply cannot bring myself to celebrate somebody’s death. At the same time, this death was necessary. I hear people say he shouldn’t have been shot but should have been captured and sent to prison to rot instead. I don’t agree. We’ve seen what happens when convicted terrorists are sent to prison instead of being executed - hijacking, kidnapping, hostage taking – innocent lives put on the line in return for the release of a terrorist so that he can unleash more terror.

That said and done, while the US has finally got its revenge, I am convinced that Osama’s death will not significantly curb terrorist activities across the world. My belief is that Osama’s influence has waned over the past few years – his activities and movements had to be severely curtailed, his public appearances and fiery speeches had to come to an end, his exchanges with others had to be necessarily limited even as newer terrorist organisations were forming and new would-be-terrorists were joining these outfits – all this has led to a scenario where he is not as important a figure in the terrorist world today as he was a few years ago.

And let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that his death is going to make India safer. Al Qaeda’s traditional focus has been much more on the US, Europe and the Middle East. In India, it is the Jaish-e-Mohammed and the Laskhar-e-Toiba which are the most active terrorist organisations, and I assume they will continue to be so. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they are able to use Osama’s death to step up their activities and attract more recruits.

Meanwhile, I am convinced that the Pakistani establishment knew about Osama’s presence in their country. Maybe they helped hide him, or maybe they just decided to turn a blind eye to his presence and be discreet about it, but there is no way they did not know. Come on, he stays in a town not very far from the capital, in a town with a large military presence, and seems to have been leading a very comfortable and normal life. I’m assuming Abbottabad is like any small town in India – you know everything that is going on in the house of everyone in your street – so how could the renting of a mansion by a stranger in the town go unnoticed and unobserved?

My theory is that the Pakistani establishment knew – maybe they provided active help to Osama in hiding or maybe they decided to just turn a blind eye and let him be. Two things may have led to Pakistan finally letting the US in on Osama’s whereabouts –one, Osama was no longer as important to Pakistan as he was a few years ago when he was a much more active terrorist leader and fundraiser; two, the US may has stepped up pressure on Pakistan (for reasons related to domestic politics in the US).

So no, I don’t buy that Pakistan didn’t know about the US operation beforehand. Even if they didn’t disclose information on Osama’s whereabouts, they atleast knew what the US was going to do. I mean, the US was flying many miles into Pakistani airspace, and over an area with significant military presence and lands up at the mansion of the most wanted terrorist of all time to find him unprotected and unarmed. Right! Again, I believe the Pakistani establishment knew beforehand about the US operations (even if they didn’t themselves help the US in the hunt for Osama) – but it is of course in their best interest to pretend that they didn’t know the first thing about it, lodge a weak protest with the US, and then wag fingers at India.

This isn’t the end of it. There’s more to come. And I am curious to see how it all unfolds!

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!

Out with the Old, In with the New

So the BIG NEWS is that I have joined an NGO! I am working in the India office of a US based public charity which does work in the area of public health. I am handling a very interesting project, and I am extremely excited about the role and the work involved.

So we got back in the first week of February from our South East Asia trip, and it was time for me to get back to a full time job. I was very keen on joining an NGO; even in my previous job, I was working in the development sector, but now I wanted to work on the field. But I’m as materialistic as they come, and I wasn’t sure if I was ready to take the pay cut involved (since I was earning millions in my previous job, NOT!). After much agonising, I decided to take the plunge and by mid-Feb I had started applying for NGO jobs.

Fortunately, things moved very quickly, and within two weeks I had a job offer. And it was a role I was very keen to work on. And so I said yes. The cherry on the cake was that the salary was much better that what I had been preparing myself for. Once that was final, we went off to Rajasthan for a holiday, came back to Bangalore, and after two lovely weeks in Bangalore, moved to Hyderabad in time for Ugadi and my joining date.

And that brings us to the bad news. The office is in Hyderabad. A week ago, we packed bag and baggage, and moved to Hyderabad. The bad news isn’t that I’m moving to Hyderabad, the bad news is that I have to leave Bangalore. I’ve lived for four years in Hyderabad and it’s a city I’m very familiar with and very comfortable in. A city I have very fond memories of. It means Nike and I are both closer to our families. It means I can now spend more time with some of my closest friends. In many ways, moving to Hyderabad is a good thing – and yet, I pine for Bangalore!

Without realising it, Bangalore has become home for me now. Vizag is, and always will, be home for me first and foremost. But Bangalore was home too. And I’m going to miss the lovely weather, the billions of wonderful weekend getaways, the quirky things to do in the city, the sense of laidbackness, my friends, my familiar haunts, that indefinable spirit of the city. I will, however, NOT miss the auto-wallahs. I;m also disappointed that I have had to move out before the Metro finally started - all that traffic and headache I withstood staunchly, thinking of a future in which I zip around in the Metro - and now I don't get the fruits of my labour. Gah!

Maybe if I was moving to a city I had never lived in before, like Delhi or Bombay, the excitement of living in a new city might have overshadowed the sorrow of leaving Bangalore. But there is no excitement at moving back to a familiar old place like Hyderabad, and so there is much sorrow at leaving Bangalore. Some of my happiest years have been in Bangalore – almost all my memories and associations of the city are incredibly happy ones – and it makes it so much harder to let go of a place that has given me so much love and joy.

People talk about how Bangalore has no ‘character’ when compared to older cities like Bombay, Calcutta, Delhi, Madras or Hyderabad. And I have to reluctantly agree with them. Yet, there is something in that city that slowly, slowly, sneaks upon you and makes you think ‘this is home’. It’s a very comfortable city, a city that graciously lets you be, a city that lets you become a part of it without you having to make any effort whatsoever to fit in. I’m convinced that once one gets used to living in Bangalore, it is going to be very difficult to move to any other major Indian city – life will get that much tougher.

Okay, now I’ve gone and made myself all sad and misty-eyed and nostalgic about Bangalore! I’m going to end this post here before I talk myself into buying tickets to head off to Bangalore this weekend. Ciao!

Holiday Travails

A Desert Sunset

So I got back from Rajasthan the Sunday before last. Rajasthan was fabulous. Spent two lovely days in Jaisalmer and then headed out to a desert safari (also known as ride a camel in the desert for two days straight till your arse is sore; all for the glory of being called a traveller, rather than a tourist). Then a quick stop at Jodhpur to visit the Meherangarh Fort and the retiring rooms of the railway station, and onwards to Udaipur, with stops at the fantastic Ranakpur temples and the majestic Kumbalgarh Fort on the way.

Proof of Visit: Me at the Gadisar Lake in Jaisalmer

Udaipur was a lovely place, and after two leisurely days there, we headed off to Ranthambore to spot tigers. Alas and alack, the tigers refused to be spotted, despite me being up and about at 5am. I also learned in Ranthambore that it is not in trains and flights that one needs to fear children, but on safaris. No, no, no, I shall not speak more of that traumatic experience! Finally to Jaipur, where I morphed into crazy shopaholic buying up everything in sight, with Nike valiantly, but unsuccessfully, trying to bring in the element of moderation.

On the last day, Nike left early morning on the flight to Bangalore. I was flying to Hyderabad on work, and my flight wasn’t until later that day, so I wandered off to visit the Hawa Mahal and the Jantar Mantar. At the Jantar Mantar, a stout, moustachioed man comes across to me and asks ‘Are you local?’ I briefly consider responding “Non. Je suis Française. Je ne comprends pas l’anglais’ but I’m no Kalki Koechlin so I just walked away instead. This man goes up to his companion (another stout but non-moustachioed man) and whispers to him while they both stare at me and then start following me around the Jantar Mantar, which was very distracting because one needed to really concentrate to understand what all those instruments were for, and one can’t concentrate very well when one is being followed around.

I was beginning to feel rather uncomfortable, though not worried (it was broad daylight, there were loads of people around, and police just a few feet away). Finally non-moustachioed man comes up to me and says “Can I snap with you?” Needless to say, I was taken aback, so I sternly said “No” and walked away. He followed me some more and repeated the question, and was rewarded with an exasperated “No”. At this point, I seriously considered showing him my phone and saying “I’ll ask my husband and see if it’s okay with him” – I’m sure that would have shut him up, but I didn’t want to use the bogeyman of a husband, and I was done with the Jantar Mantar anyway and it was time to head back for the airport, so I just left.

Thankfully, those two morons didn’t trouble me any further, beyond morosely staring at the auto. I was wondering if they would follow me to the hotel (which wouldn’t have mattered in these circumstances because I had checked out and was leaving, but which could have been dangerous if I was staying at that hotel for a few more days).  Thinking about it now, I hope he said ‘snap’ and not ‘sleep’, because if it was the latter, I would have been pissed off and would have been calling the police and complaining about harassment.

So that was my ‘Adventures in Rajasthan’ in a nutshell. I had a great two days in Hyderabad, and am finally home in Bangalore after what seems an eternity (five months actually). The weather is dreadful, and I just spent the last two days sleeping, eating, reading and watching two seasons of Full House because I’ve exhausted everything else on my hard disk and its taking forever to download Grey’s Anatomy.

That’s all for now, my dear, patient reader. Thank you for putting up with my nonsense. More shall follow soon.

Turning 27

One week ago I turned 27, and turning 27 isn't always a bad thing, I've come to realise. Now anyone who knows me well, and even those who don't, know that my birthday is a BIG DEAL for me. I start planning for my birthday from Jan 2nd itself, and all this hyper-ness leads to major expectations building up for the day, and major disappointment when such unreasonable expectations don't get fulfilled. It's a vicious cycle. Yet, despite the sky high expectations I have, my family and friends have time and again managed to exceed even those expectations, and for that, I am truly blessed. (Alas, the same cannot be said of Nike, but that's grist for another post)."?.p

This year I wanted to be home, in Vizag, for my birthday. The last time I was home on my birthday was exactly 10 years ago, so being home was a special way of celebrating my birthday. Somehow, I managed to have no expectations at all this year, made no plans, and as a consequence, I was rewarded with a very pleasant day that brought me much joy and love.

My parents and Samee were of course home. Nike came down to Vizag a week earlier, and Mahi (more my own brother than a first cousin) too joined us on the 25th. They blew balloons and put up streamers and invited a few friends over at midnight; I cut a yummy chocolate cake, which was ordered from Food-ex for old times sake.

My parents gifted me a lovely watch which I'd been craving for the last few months - its a white strap with a purple dial studded with white stones, and it's from Fossil, and I couldn't find it in any of the stores in India, Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore or Vietnam. (Okay, I couldn't find it in any of the stores I looked in; and yes, this is a digression to just show off about my recent holiday). So Amma actually ordered it from the US on Amazon, and my Mama got it along with him to India. Samee bought me a board game, and we've been playing that every night at home since. A dear friend sent me a bouquet with 27 roses. How sweet was that!

I spent the morning taking calls. All my family and friends called to wish, and their wishes left me feeling super kicked and happy all day. (And Sakku, if you're reading this, I did note that you did not call). Nike offered to cook my favourite chicken curry for lunch. Alas, it was a Saturday so despite roaming around for an hour, he couldn't find any open chicken shops so that plan had to be discarded. After lunch, Nike took me along to buy me my surprise gift - an iPad! Yes, I got an iPad for my birthday, and I'm super duper thrilled with it, and cant stop shouting about it from the rooftops. In fact, I'm typing this post from my iPad. I'm absolutely loving the iPad, and wondering how I've lived without it for so long. Oh, and Mahi is buying me the iPad case as a gift.

After we picked up the iPad, Nike dropped me off at my favourite spa for a pedicure. Later, Samee, Mahi, Nike and I went to the beach at Bheemli, where a few friends joined us. After a nice time at the beach, we headed home, changed, and then left for dinner with the parents. At the restaurant, I was given another surprise as more family friends joined us for dinner. Thus ended what was a very pleasant birthday.

And that, my dear readers, is how I turned 27!

P.S: Unfortunately, there are no pics of the day because Nike doesn't like taking out the SLR for 'casual' occasions, and I don't have a point-and-shoot. It's time I got myself one, or I'll forever remain without pictures of small but memorable occasions, thanks to that useless man's photography hangups!

P.P.S: I'm typing this on a train from Delhi to Jsisalmer; the start of a 9 day holiday in Rajasthan. Nike doesn't know it yet, but this is also his birthday gift to me - I'm simply going to refuse to pay for the trip expenses.