New year in Singara chennai

After a long journey, here i'm, posting this from my home in chennai, on the new year's day. The clock struck 12, the new year was born in chennai and i landed at the airport at the same time. That was a joyous moment and the whole plane broke into celebrations. 

Happy new year to all. 

I'm back with my family at chennai now after a year. Another three weeks and i should get back to Dallas. I had two briefcases (almost) full of electronic items that i'd bought for family, friends and relatives, with hardly any space in them for my clothes !! There are so many things that i don't get in chennai or i'm not happy about. Yet with all due respect to the city that i grew up with, no other place on earth can match it. Chennai is my abode....Chennai is heaven....It is THE-HAPPENING-PLACE for me. I Love Chennai...... To be back here is my new year's present to myself. There are so many things in life that we take for granted and do not realize their significance in life until a noted absence of it. Chennai has been conspicuous by its absence in my life. Chennai or the lack of it has played a major role in the transformation of my lifestyle in the last half a dozen years. 

How much i missed chennai in the last one year..... 

Priorities do shake a bit of some of our lives, whether we like it or not. I'm no exception.

Ta

P.S - Will get back more on my escapades in chennai(that i have planned) in the ensuing weeks 

Or if i was not able to !!

Vacation ahoy !!

This week's flying faster than any other in this year. Thanks to the christmas holidays, jus three working days in this week. Come this weekend i'll be ready for what i've been waiting for the whole time since i came here. In a week's time from now, i'll be breathing the dirty polluted chennai air again which as a matter of fact was my regular dose of oxygen for a quarter century before coming to the US. Give this a thought !! Landing at the dawn of the new year in chennai !! How cool is that ! I'm off to chennai for a vacation of 20+ days and have to catch up with a lot. Family, friends, colleagues, relatives, hangouts........... what not!! Feels nice to think about being in chennai albeit for a short time.......might jus be enough !! 

No matter what place on earth you go to, returning home is a pleasant experience and worthless. I can hardly wait to be back in chennai. 

The one thing i hate about this travel is the packing and having to go through all the immigration procedures. Its a serious pain in your butt !! As if packing was not treacherous enough, having to keep in mind the baggage rules and the allowance limits while packing is the icing on the cake. You always end up packing in more than the allowance weight and you're left making a choice between what you should carry and what you should REALLY carry !! Jesus, save us all !!

Happy new year to you all !!

Ta

I love this. I really love the way i spent this weekend. I didn't have a single moment this weekend that i thought i was not occupied with. I want all my weekends to be this way, but they are not to be. I feel pretty satisfied with this one. 

Pretty early saturday morning we (I and a couple of my colleagues) set off for an outlets mall that's about 80 miles from my place and it was a cool hour and half's drive in my car. Spent all day in the mall, at the outlets of GAP, Tommy Hilfiger, Levi's, Aeroposthale, Fossil, Nike, Reebok, Nautica and their likes.  I was happy with a couple of T(shirt)s and bought them. Once we were done with all the outlets, we returned home at about 10 and hit the bed rightaway. 

                                    Sunday (which is still today at the time of this post taking shape) dawned well, but was freezingly cold. Didn't suck the spirits out of us though. We had our lunch and braved the sub-zero hostile weather to go shopping again at a local mall. And what a way to end the day and the weekend with. A good movie. Rab ne bana di jodi - this is very well made movie and a must recommend wacth. Hope everyone's had a visit to the local theater to watch the movie. If not, please do immediately. This is one movie you wouldn't want to miss. Had nice songs and a really soothing effect, it has on you.

Ta

Being single.......

How tough or easy it is to be a single ? I wonder. Oh and i don't want to walk through the realms of being a single but there are a few aspects of being single (and not being in a relationship) and be the next one in line ready for marriage, that have me occupied. Occupied in my mind, that is. Not visible to others. 

                              Long since the number of people (in my close relatives) that were to get married came down to zero, this has been a problem. Marriages, wedding receptions, birthday parties, other family functions........Wherever you go, however you hide...... some interested-in-your-well-being-relative will find you and load you with all the crap about when yours truly would get into a wedlock !! You are next in line !!  

All that you feel is, Oh thank you for the timely reminder. what would i have done without you. Holy s*&# !! If this keeps happening to me, i'll not think twice before saying you are next in line, when i see you in a funeral. 

All right, may be i'm taking this a bit too far. With all due respect to marriage as a holy institution and these constant naggings being a part of your life till you are finished in the name of marriage[Marriage completes a man, some one said], i began to think about the kind of person that i would like to marry and spend the rest of my life with. My parents asked me this simple question, for which i hadn't an answer. Not that i didn't have a silhouette of the woman/girl that i would want to marry, just that it was not something that i could tell my parents about. For long (read since i was in high school) i've been impressed by 'Iyer aathu Ponn's and Mallu girls. There were a few desperate occasions when i vowed to marry a mallu girl or an Iyer aathu girl, when its time !!  As a matter of fact, most of the girls that i've liked so far in my life have either been a mallu or a typical iyer girl [I dont want to get into any caste discretions here, just trying to keep it simple] .  who is to worry about me not being a mallu guy or an iyer boy ? I wouldn't. Is this a problem even in today's age ? C'mon people, why do these things still have to be part of bride/groom searches ? It'll be amazing to see 'caste no bar, religion no bar' on every matrimonial listing. That'll make things easy for lesser blessed souls like me !! he hee hehe 

Enough for today i guess, will return with this topic another day. Time will have the answer to all my questions. Hopefully.

Ta

Love is god.... (Contd)

Something that i wanted to say in my previous post, but forgot. Its something i've heard someone say..can't remember who or where.....Goes like this...

If someone hits you, you must not hit them back.

If someone hates you, you must not hate them back.

If someone does something wrong to you, you must not do the same to them.

But if someone loves you, you MUST love them back.

Was quiet heartening. I kinda started practicing it since the day i heard this. 

Ta

Love is god, God is love

He walked across the room and stood near him. His friend didn't look up. His friend looked worried. It was like all the joy was sucked out of his friend. He sat next to him and looked at him. Nothing again from his friend. Not even a pause in what he was doing. Looks like his friend is deeply focused on his work. Why wouldn't he look up ? why wouldn't his friend speak to him anymore ?  Was it something he said ? It must be something he said. He regretted being indifferent to his friend earlier. He thought he should have treated his friend with due respect. 

For all he had been and for all that he had not, he wanted to apologize to his friend, he wanted to erase everything from the face of his life like they never happened and wanted to start afresh.

Would his friend forgive him ? He knew he must take the step forward. He touched his friend's hand. His hand just melted like mist while the friend's hand remained intact. He didn't know what was happening. He couldn't touch his friend. If he tried to do so, his hand just went through his friend's body. Was this a dream ? No it wasn't. It looked like he was not for real. 

There was a newspaper lying besides his friend. He noticed a photo on it. He immediately recognized it. It was his.  When he went close to it and read the lines above the photo - "Boy loses life in a freak accident", he was stunned. It all came to him now. He did not live any more. He was a ghost !! A spirit or a soul !! He now had not a life where he can shower love and receive love. All the love and affection that he got from his family & friends, he ought to have returned them. He hadn't. He'd missed a life time. He cried out loud, no one would hear him.

Love your near and dear ones. You'll not get to do so when you are no more near them.

Ta

I was driving my car to Subway for lunch and i switched on the music on my iPod like i always do. I always have the songs on it played at random (or 'shuffle' as it would have it) and it opened with the song 'Manmadhane' from the movie of the same name. Somehow it felt nice today to hear that song..... I had rediscovered the song.....it rejuvenated me today. Nice melody, nice rhythm, neat lyrics and a wonderful voice to top it off. Often music directors/singers talk of their hit songs having everything falling into place and this is definitely one of them. This has been one of my favourite songs, but today truly was a revelation.

At that moment i realized how driving in solitude could help relish the music on my car...... To think that i've been feeling lonely when i drive to office alone in the car, it really looks stupid now. Never thought travelling in a car alone would have its own advantages. There were so many instances when i would drive my car to/back from office, with music on and other people in the car would have something to talk about, unmindful of the music. Rather than putting up with it, i would turn the music down or increase the volume. Inspite of increasing the volume, people would talk on top of that making it all the more cacaphonic.  Most of the time i would find myself playing a mute audience.

                                                              Too much of listening to radio turned me into a 'Random/shuffle' fan. I prefer songs playing in random fashion from various movies, to songs playing from the same album. Okay, Looks like i'm babbling a little over my quota today !! Just can't help this pleasant feeling today.....Hope it stays a little longer, though it may not extend onto eternity. 

Oh yeah and so many questions pop up in my mind right now, before i end this mini scrap.

why am i still single ? No i don't want to get married yet. But i could do with some company.

Pretty looking girls.....hmmm......

where am i ? (like, in life) . Should i be doing what i'm doing in life now ? Or should i look for a change ? Yeah, strange questions before sleep engulfs me !! That's all for today...

Ta