Dreams!

Yes. And hence the blog. But still with a pseudonym! ;-)

Murphy’s favourite day!

 

Oh yes, if Murphy had to pick one day in my life that is his favourite, he would pick today! Totally! I would even go a step further and say he planned it so he can have a good laugh :)

Nothing else can explain today’s events…

As the guys were changing the flat tyre of a colleague’s car this afternoon when we returned from lunch, I stood there wondering what I would do if I were to have a flat tyre.

I knew all the stuff about changing the tyre and putting a new one , but only in theory.
But then if I were to have a flat tyre this very day, I would literally be stranded, because I had forgotten my phone at home, and the husband is not in town too.
Oh, I did not even know how to recognize a flat tyre or how it feels if you drive with one for a while.
Oops,  I did not even have the backup tyre in the car.

To assure myself that I can still do good if I were to be in a situation like that, I asked the colleague how I would identify a flat tyre, and he explained how different the driving experience would be. Thinking I got it all, again in theory, I nodded my head, taking mental notes on when I should get down the car if I were to be in a similar situation.

And it happened! All the above, at the same time! :)
Oh, and there was an icing on the whole cake, the unexpected rain, and the fact that I did not have an umbrella.
Of course, it had to happen, because today is Murphy’s favourite day, remember? And I hate getting wet in the rain!

Some realizations through the 90 minutes I spent on the road all by myself, driving for a good 2km before realizing that I had a flat tyre, getting wet in the rain, without a phone to call a friend, looking for an auto for a ride to the nearest tyre shop, talking to the auto-wala and the tyre repair shop guys…

Gentlemen are not the ones who wear those ties and formal shoes and look all dumb. The real gentlemen today were the guys I met at the tyre repair shop and the auto-wala. And yes, I did see/meet a pig or two on the road!

I have taken the words ‘Don’t Panic’ way too seriously.

‘The Secret’ funda actually works. :|

Never get out of the house without as much as a 100/- on you! This is the only place where Murphy did not have his full laugh, coz for once, I had some cash on me! :)

If you always look for an adventure/story/experience/learning in everything that happens around you, you bloody well will get it! :)

So there, with the wisdom halo all bright and sharp after this evening’s experience, I feel one step closer to Murphy! :P

One down!

 

So that’s one item off the bucket list! Yeah, putting an item as silly as this on The List is downright silly, I agree. But it still means a lot, for someone who grew up in a small town and could not step out of the house without male company. (Most times it was my brother and we thoroughly enjoyed that short time off from studies, but then Dad once sent his watchman along with me and my friends to the movie, he was plain scared that some harm would befall his precious daughter, you see!)

And the item was – Watching a movie alone.

And yes, I did it today! :D

Well, I watched a movie all by myself quite a while before , during my stay in Hong Kong, but then, that was HK, and I literally went every place by myself (blame the ever-busy-not-today-I-have-a-call-why-don’t-you-go-by-yourself-here-take-a-100-HKD husband!). So one afternoon I get out of the apartment to walk two blocks to the nearest movie hall showing, guess which movie – Twilight New Moon (Twilight is my only literary guilty pleasure, please forgive me!). Turns out it wasn’t just me watching the movie by myself, I was also the only one in the entire movie hall watching the movie, if you can ignore the presence of two necking teenagers in one corner of the hall, and then, they weren’t really watching the movie, right? I digress, the point of the matter is – Yes, I watched a movie all by myself, albeit in a different country.

That was when the doubt struck my head, would I be able to do a similar feat in India? With stories abuzz about how men misbehave with women if they find them alone (*touchwood* never ever happened with me) , I wanted to see how the whole experience would be. Like many other things that I wanted to do, this one also went into The Never Ending List Of Things I Would Do Someday But Will Never Do!

With the husband not being in town, and with me getting plenty of much-wanted-anticipated me-time which I am thoroughly enjoying (oh don’t ask what I’ve been doing – amidst all the work, I still found time to listen to all my pending music, watch mind-numbing TV shows, read a book or two and oh, sit pointlessly in the balcony wondering about Life, Universe and Everything, and the Answer, of course!), and with the weather today being absolutely fantastic, I decided today is the day I would watch a movie by myself, and who else by Captain Jack Sparrow it should be!

Oh, who am I kidding. I knew that the husband would never watch this one with me, and with most of my friends having watched it already, and my love for the Captain beckoning me, I had to watch this one myself!

Now, even this one did not come without its share of challenges. First, there was work, tonnes of it, which I had to finish today. And then, the damned BookMyShow site does not allow any internet bookings for movie halls in Hyd which means I was never sure if I would get the tickets at all, and the last of all, I have never stood in the movie ticket queue to buy a ticket. Yes. Never. I had a deprived childhood and teenage. (For this, blame the Dad and the Internet!)

I finally overcome all these challenges and the temptation to eat an ice cream to which I succumbed by treating myself to an Oreo Shot (just a fancy name to a whole load of vanilla ice cream with Oreos and fudge but which tasted exceptionally awesome!) and get to the movie hall, only to find that my seat was surrounded by a bunch of men, no boys - All college boys, who wondered what this single woman was doing there at all. It was certainly not what I wanted/expected out of the evening. After the movie started, I got up to see if there were vacant seats in the hall, I found that more than half the movie hall was empty (ah, the perks of movie-watching-on-weekdays! Must remember for next time)
That’s it, I found myself one solitary corner, put on my 3D glasses and enjoyed the movie - giggling to myself at Jack’s jokes and hugging myself when the objects on the screen flew towards me. And boy, what fun it was! And this is just the beginning, am gonna watch many movies like this by myself! :D

And now am back, typing this as a reminder to how I felt when I did something for the first time, and getting ready for a night full of work!

XKCD Love

Hehehhee… How I love this one! My ever-fave!

Image Source – XKCD

What is it with me!

 

Recycling an old post – I wrote this back in 2008 when I was going through a phase, and words just flowed. I’ve written quite some stuff after this , but this somehow still remains close to my heart…

Sometimes I sit & wonder
what's with the grass on the yonder!
Does my heart just crave
Or is it just another wave!

Great my life looks from a different eye
But whats wrong with my rye!
What do I want, will I ever realize?
Till then, will I let the boredom capsize?
Filled with the never-ending apprehension
Will I let my life taken over by depression!

Thoughts like this make me feel strange
Never ever had I seen in this range!
What’s wrong in my life is the question?
Bored, Depressed, Blues have crept into my diction
Thoughts like this make me feel sad!
Not knowing what it is makes me feel bad!

Love makes me feel great
But even that doesn’t let the down-feeling abate
Life is not just about love
Without you knowing, it throws you into a stove
Do I need satisfaction at the job?
Even that does not make my heart throb

This brain of mine wants to learn
But for time I yearn
Guitar, Tai-Chi or French
But then I am never able to cross the trench!

It wants to travel the countries
People are ready to dance by my whimsies
Want to visit Shanghai
Singapore or be it Sinai!
I go about the roaming
But when back, the heart again starts aching

Is this just mid-life crisis?
Or am I going into an endless abyss?

A new start…

Its going to be 6 years that I started blogging. Mostly casual blogging, I have had my ups and downs, bloggers blocks, and many many blogs. Each of the blog urls and blogger nicknames would be based on what the flavour in my life was, at that point. So I have had blogs as juvenile as having the word ‘Smiling’ in them, to as weird as ‘Chocolate’ and also some related to Ayn Rand!

All of them were personal blogs, I’ve written about various aspects of my life, about various stages I was going through then and about all the people I’ve come across during those phases. And they were not for public consumption :)

After all these years, I’ve felt the need to have an open blog, where I could/would write about what I love that day , the song of the season, the crushes I am having and in general the different moods. Like a expanded version of my FaceBook wall :)

And here it is…

The Muppathne List!

I know this is a food-blog, and I intend to keep it that way, although the past couple of posts didn’t exactly live up to it, but as I am running towards the end of the most defining decade of my life faster that I hoped I would, I cant help but think of a few things. Few things I’ve done over the past 10 years. Few mistakes. Few good things. Few memories. Few friends. Fewer foes. And some really good times. Since this is the only active blog I have, here it goes…

The first 10 years of my life have been boring. I was the nerd in school, someone whom even I would hate, if I were to see her now. I read all the time, books way above my age, and didn’t play many of the games kids played back then. Scrabble, Tin Tin and Mills & Boon were some of the words I learnt after I turned 25, and am not proud of it.

The second 10 years were spent trying to make something out of my life. Everything I wanted to do was always punctuated with ‘When I grow up’. Now that I have actually grown up, I realize that I should’ve done them all then, instead of being a silly serious teenager. Yes, none of the teenage girl tantrums, pyjama parties, sleepovers, girl giggles over crushes. Zilch. I grew up in a serious town where there was no place for any of this, and all we had to do everyday was to study, because getting into a good college was tough! Study I did, but got into a good college, I doubt. :P But then, life has turned out well after that, thankfully!

I still remember the night before my 20th b’day, I was talking to a best friend about what I wanted for a gift and my plans for the next 10 years, and my brother jumped into the room, partly to threaten me for talking on the phone in that ungodly hour, and partly to make me cut my first ever birthday cake. It still feels like yday, and it still is hard to believe that its been 10 years. 10 Good years! :)

List-making is a compulsive habit I have cultivated over the past decade, and how can I not make one at a time like this. :)

Over the past 10 years, I have -

1. Fallen in love and got married purely for love. Interestingly, I didn’t believe in neither marriage nor love back then, but when it happened, it sure did feel good :)
2. Found my Mr.Right. Yes, its a pleasant surprise that a man like that existed, for me :)
3. Changed my name. Of course, after my wedding. :) It was a big decision given the number of documents I had to get it changed on. And the process is still not 100% done! Phew!
4. Contemplated suicide just once. Yes, and I was damn serious then. When I look back now, I know it was the stupidest thought process ever. :)
5. Owned my first ever Barbie for my 25th b’day. Even I felt bad for the little girl that was me! :(
6. Lost the ability to trust people. Totally. In fact, trust issues are something I battle on a daily basis! :|
7. Given farewells to many friends. Some good. Some bad. Both friends and farewells. And it hurt every single time.
8. Got betrayed once, in a friendship. I still don’t talk to her, but I sometimes think may be I should! :|
9. Wept with joy only once. That too, when a best friend’s life long dream got fulfilled. Wondered ever since why these tears haven’t visited again. The friend sure did mean a lot, there were happier occasions but I think I grew up to be a more balanced person :)
10. Taken a decision, of which I am still proud of, that I will not join college if it means my Dad would have to take up a loan for my MBA college fee.
11. Was jobless for 6 months, during which I even walked 6-7km every day to save money! Tough tough times, they were, crossing them wouldn’t have been possible without a few friends.
12. Lost a pet. And resolved to never have pets. Finally a foster pet had to come after 8 yrs to get me out of the pain of losing the first one! Also, changed a complete non-dog-person to a total-dog-person. Yes, I loved what I did to the husband!
13. Bargained for a salary of 10K with the CEO of a company, and lost the bargain! :) Got my first job entirely by fluke, in spite of telling I never even wanted to work there! And changed four jobs thereafter. All found through plain networking and friends and of course, some good interviews.
14. Spent my first few salaries on a good deed, something that is doing good even now. *touchwood* :)
15. Had one wonderful closure. Yes, closures are important for us to live on.
16. Moved out of a city totally on an impulse. One moment I was sitting by the steps of a temple in Rajaji Nagar, Bangalore, and the next moment, I got up, packed my bags and moved back to Hyderabad. :)
17. Grown philosophical – practising Yoga & Vipasana and reading Aghora-1 included!
18. Read a lot of books. Lots of them, and unlike the past two decades which I spent reading Shakespeare and the likes, these were books for people my age. Except of course, Harry Potter and Twilight. ;)
19. Seen my mantra of detachment being put to good test. And I think I have almost mastered it, atleast on a human level :)
20. Almost broke the back once, and constantly have the neck in danger. And few such health disasters in the past 5 yrs. This came as a sudden jolt to me, then a 26 yr old who didn’t even have as much as a fever, and pushed me to an extent of being a maniac about healthy eating.
21. Had the most stupidest break up ever. Stupid because the affair was one-sided. :P (Anil Kumble never knew he had an affair with the 20 yr old me, you see! ;))
22. Written my first ever blog post, and continued writing for a little more than 5 yrs now. Discovered the joy of writing! (Don’t ask me the link to the blogs, they are anonymous :) )
23. Travelled a bit, though not as much as I would have loved to, but then, I got another 4 decades to do it all, right? :) Also, had the pleasure of living in a foreign country for a while, like a local.
24. Bought a house! :-D
25. Discovered the interest in cooking, and baking and some gardening.
26. Discovered my love of dark chocolates. Yes, this is important enough to go down in this list :)
27. Gone through various phases – a sentimental romantic person to a wee-bit-cynical, practical and a spiritual(not religious) person and I hope to stay this way.
28. Changed from being a complete extrovert to what I now think is a closet emotional and introvert person
29. Sprouted a few grey hairs :). Now dreaming of growing old and being as beautiful and graceful as Meryl Streep. ;)
30. As a last attempt to do something drastic in this decade, went on a road trip by myself and completed it successfully last weekend, in spite of the car almost giving up on me, and resistance on the home front. The husband was completely supportive that I should do this, Dad and Mom obviously weren’t but they got to know only after I reached their place. Yes, I drove from Hyd to my parent’s place, 230 kms in 2.5 hrs flat, and at an average speed of 90 kmph. And am mighty proud of it! :)

Yaay, and the list has exactly 30 items in it ! :)

And yes, given a chance to live these 10 yrs again, I wouldn’t change anything in the above! They make me what I am today!

[The title literally means – The Thirtieth list. Muppa is Thirty in my mother tongue, Tulu :)]