Birthdays

Another year, and yet another birthday.. This time, I had almost forgotten that it was coming up, before being reminded my the ones most dear. Somehow, they manage to reach out to you well in advance; to call you and feel happy for your presence, which somehow validates your existence.

I remember the birthdays of long ago, looming with the anticipation of wearing a colorful dress to school . A couple of days before the birthday, I would go shopping with my mom to choose a box and fill it with the candy that everyone loved. (In India, you had to treat your friends on your birthday, not the other way around. It still puzzles me.). Compliments accepted graciously, I would distribute the candy to eager classmates after they sang the most popular song in the whole world. Closest ones would get two pieces, of course. Then there would be the birthday party, with the homemade egg less cake and favors.

As school days mutated into college days, the scene changed a bit. No more candy boxes. Surprise parties hosted by friends who somehow felt that the birthday cake was not a thing to eat, but rather a buttery face cream for the birthday girl. Sweet presents and good times. You had to treat your fiends to a birthday feast at a good restaurant though.

Birthdays here were not very different, except that the "treats" dwindled but the celebrations persisted. Wishes flew across the internet, doubling the total messages on my scrapbook or wall in a day. A myriad of wishes, sometimes a simple "happy birthday", sometimes a personal email, or a call from a close one at midnight, they made me feel happy, loved & wanted, especially when I was not too exited (it's not the twenty first one, you know)

I was also able to catch a Broadway show this time with a good friend. "Les Miserables". We were both taken in & mesmerized by the beautiful art direction which cleverly reflected the Paris of the Nineteenth century.

Overall, it was a wonderful day, making me feel nostalgic, happy and loved all at once. Thanks to all the wishes from everyone near and dear.

Another weekend

Has arrived and is almost over. I remember a time when Sunday nights would make me gloomy at the prospect of a long week ahead, after all those movie nights and game-filled days. These days the gloom is gone. So is the thrill on a Friday morning, over a highly anticipated weekend.

Of Course, Saturday mornings are always good, meaning that I can roll out of bed as late as possible and quietly sip a cup of coffee for a good half hour. But after that, is when I get restless. It is a new feeling, alien to me, something that I knew not when I was surrounded by friends.Somehow, in Boston, even a trip to the pharmacy or the grocer was fun. I loved my solo walk and back to the whole foods around the corner, now it seems rather like a mundane chore. I wonder why?

This Saturday was a lot of fun, as I spent it with my friends & their parents.. An otherwise long day became short thanks to the delightful company and interesting conversation...

I have gone back to my books, thanks to the graduation present I got from my friends. "Rebbecca" by Daphne Du Maurier.. This book was reminiscent of Jane Eyre, yet there was a mystique added to the well told story, a very English feel. Manderley remains in your mind long after you turn the last page. You are also left wondering about the elusive Rebbecca..

I am now reading "The Memory Keepers Daughter". It is extremely poignant and touching, bringing to your attention the joy and agony of parenting. To each of us, our offspring is simply the most precious.. Will you not want your precious child if she is not perfect? What if you were giving her up to protect another loved one? The book brings to life the truest of human feelings, loss, pain, regret, love... and redemption.

The world around me

Graduation day is fast approaching, and so is my enthusiasm rising.. I am looking forward to see dear Boston again, along with all of my friends; a chance to play yet another round of poker and giggle with friends..

Last weekend I saw a movie, "In the land of Women". My friend Jayshree was convinced that the movie basically sucked, but somehow I found that I enjoyed it. It was a simple but moving portrayal of a perfect looking family, good enough to put in a J. Crew catalogue, but still so dysfunctional. A stranger moves into the neighborhood, as he gets over a relationship that didn't quite make the name and to bond with his Grandma. Somehow, as we all know, it is a lot easier to talk about your deepest fears and insecurity with a relative stranger. Is it because you know it cannot hurt you or is it the other way around? You do not always say what you think to your loved ones, for fear of hurting their feelings.

Somehow all of us need that friend, someone to talk to, someone to confide with, someone who listens as we speak.. and for a mom of two stuck in a suburb, the stranger is of course the best companion. It was a very nice portrayal of a good friendship, not too many words, yet a lot said..

The weather is great these days.. the earliest shades of green are out, after the blossoms. It looks almost like a spray of green.. dandelions are everywhere and so are the tulips & hyacinth blossoms.. Spring is one of the prettiest seasons.. it does make the mind sing on your way to work..

Corporate life

It is so tough to digest that you are not a student anymore, getting up when you please and working late into the night and watching the crack of dawn beckon to you from your windowsill. These days my alarm is set to early morn, and yet I always get up before it rings. Then comes the obsession to clean everything in the apartment before I jump in the shower; a few minutes checking messages and then setting off to work.. a crowded PATH train, where it has never been possible to read the book that I carry.. unlike the typical New Yorker who balances his paper so perfectly as he checks the headlines. Ten minutes and the train sails into the World trade center, and up the flights of stairs along with a thousand others, who are in such a hurry that they push past you. Then comes the ten minute walk to work.. and then a busy day that goes on until six for me, mostly later for the rest.

The sun has set when I step out in the evening. As I pass the church and the Borders store, it is so tempting to just step into a blissful world of books and silent readers, but I hurry on, back to the PATH and then home. Then it's a quickly made meal, which just suits my taste, unlike the ones I made in Boston, according to my friends preferences.

I switch on the DVD player & TV and get into bed with F.R.I.E.N.D.S, until I get my comcast connection. Then sleep takes over, until tomorrow.

Life is so fast, and the days are short. A month has gone by before I realize it. Time moved faster in Boston as well, but over there it was measured by company and never ending trips and laughter over Poker.

I have been visiting Boston for the past two weekends, to catch up with my friends and Gala night at the ISSI. It always feels great to be back there, as the city is filled with the most wonderful memories of beautiful days and happy faces.

Of Couture and more

Last weeked I dragged my friend to the Fashion show exhibit at the MFA. It showcased ten designers' looks for the season, the likes of Valentino,Chanel and Dior. I was mesmerized by what I saw. Most of my life, I have viewed poetry, painting and writing as art. The exhibit showcased a new dimension to high art. Most of the outfits took between 800 to 900 hours of work. It was beauty and more. Fashion is something that holds some appeal to all of us. It is a way of expression, like all art is. But It was really nice to see what goes into creating the perfect outfit. I was watching project runway, the reality show on DVD and quite frankly, I was taken in by what I saw.

These weeks I have become quite a movie buff, averaging 2-3 movies a week! There were the ones I loved (Deja-Vu, Babel), Liked (You, me and Dupree, Casino Royale) and hated (Rendu (Tamil)). It was fun to watch Casino.. as we have been playing a lot of poker recently and the game made total sense.

Two weeks ago, we had gone camping in RV's (or Caravans, as I knew them before) in the Rangeley lake region in western Maine. The barbeque and the bonfire were really fun and the campsite with the frozen lake did appeal to our inner serenity, but boy, was it cold! A part of the lake was frozen, but the ice was not thick enough to skate. But the Ice did not crack as we threw pebbles on it, and we had a lot of fun.

As the night dawned, we checked in to our two RVs'. I woke up at midnight, shivering. Then we realized the power was out in our RV. we lay there shivering, and at daybreak we went to get the ranger. It seemed that we had tripped the power, so he fixed it and got us coffee and doughnuts as a surprise! That did improve the scene a bit. So we had the coffee, and then I went back to blissful sleep, till we had to check out :-)

Day to day

The days just gallop by, with speeding weekends and work filled weekdays. Diwali came & went. But this time it was more satisfying as I got to speak to a lot of family members. We had a really good potluck, and played poker. Then we went over to the Virgin megastore & bought some stuff to make us all happy.

I am watching a lot of F.R.I.E.N.D.S these days and Joey has me laughing out loud. It sometimes saddens me to think that my so far academic life is coming to a bend in the road. Maybe I will return (which I seriously hope to). Maybe I will not. A new career beckons, along with the delightful thought of making money & acting responsibly, yet I do not know If i want to accept them right away. Given a choice, backpacking around the world would be a fine option, but I guess I will have to put that on hold.

Boston is turning colder. Winter beckons. I took myself on a stroll alongside the Pru yesterday. The wind chilled my cheeks, and the hazel leaves danced around my feet. I felt happy and at home. It would be nice to feel that way always. Here's hoping.

Change

The one factor that governs our lives, be it a new lifestyle, new job or just the new clothes you got yesterday. While some changes are preferable, nice & good, some can be quite unintended, fast or unexpected. They can leave you wondering if life's moving too fast for you to catch up with it.

Now that it's vacation time, I have been kinda relaxed, before I start work again next month. Watching 2 movies per day with my newly purchased Blockbuster rental ticket( Stepmom, Mona Lisa smile(loved it!), Brokeback mountain, Anne Frank, Mission Impossible, F.R.I.E.N.D.S, Guess who, the wedding crashers, to name a few) has become a daily routine, along with my part time jobs. But in the middle of the night, there are those days when you get a sudden jerk as like speeds past you & you wonder if you missed something.

Insomnia has become a good companion now, coupled with sleeping sessions till 11 AM as a result, and cynicism is what comes naturally to you at the end of the day. But optimism blooms again, early in the morning & it's what keeps you going till the night.

Graduation day & fork bombs!

Yesterday was commencement day. I was at the stands, as three of my friends were graduating. The music was wonderful, and after the ceremony we had a fun lunch at the Pizzeria Uno. Then we went to watch MI3. Pretty good, pretty unbelieveable. But if you are
the kind that likes the 007 kind of flicks, and if you like Cruise, don't miss this one.

Just a couple of days ago I had watched United 93 and left the theatre with that heavy feeling. That was a well made movie. It read like a documentary but did bring out every one's feelings. Though we will never know what Really happened during those last moments, this movie did bring us scary close to the stark reality. That they did not show the crash was something I liked.

Speaking of fork bombs, I did mange to set one off on my department's very important server during our Netsec competition. I ran the code at the wrong SSH shell. Here's the link to what I did. They were kinda pissed, of course :-(.

Semester end

As the end of the semester approaches, I find myself caught admist zillions of lines of code; those 200 things to do, and the annoying
tax forms which i hate filling (as they seem to take almost all my money anyways). But there are those blissful moments in the middle
of a not so quiet night (as my roomies find this time bliss too!) when you just prop up cushions on your bed in your apartment watching
a nice movie or reading a book.
I have been watching a couple of movies, taking as much as a week to watch one.
I saw the fourty year old virgin, which was just a lower grade crass comedy flick with ten thousand four letter words thrown in for effect.
People find sex and the city vulgar, but I feel it is one of the best expressions of a woman's feelings in any kind of relationship. All four
of the girls are so different but yet so similar. You feel that you have a bit of each one of them in you, Carrries independance, Miranda's
practicality, Charlottes' romanticisms and Sams' brazen outside with the soft inside. Yes, it does have some of the scenes that give the show its name, but mostly it is simply as Samantha puts it, "a valentine to being single".
The second one is an arabic movie, "Weddinng in Gaillee, which is so far, so good.
For books, i have been "Goodwill hunting". The Goodwill stores sell used books for 75 cents per book. I usually pick up ten of these
paperbacks & then circulate it with my friends collection of books.
I read Bridget Jones diary, which was hilarious, and I have got one of Rohald Dahls books to follow. I love his illustrations.
These days, there is more of the "me time" and It is one of the things I love this country for: Your total freedom when it comes to anything you:-)

30th September

More than a month past. Time I started to pen (or keyboard) something down. It's a friday and I had gone out for lunch, as per the customary practice. I had a good buffet lunch at Chennai Woodlands, with Bisibela bath and Kovakai. Reminded me of amma's great cooking back in India.
Our topic of discussion was the Indian gods, and I was saying that I like lord Krishna better than Rama. Rama was too Idealistic for my taste. And I can never get around to forgiving him for his "so called duty" of testing/ Banishng his wife when he felt like it. It sounded too chauvinistic, and was therefore (I Guess) cherished by our Junta. Obviously, none of the desis there shared my feelings on the topic.
Then our conversation moved on to Harry potter; and there came the inevitable comment; "It's a children's book!"
As always, this kind of comment comes from someone who has not read one book of Harry Potter in his entirity. People always express their opinions very strongly when they have no idea about the subject. I challenge one of those "children's book" opinion holders to read the 6 books and then give me the same verdict!!
Another thing to note, some of the best works in Literature have been children's books. To date my favourite books like Heidi, Alice in Wonderland and Dickens' David copperfield were written with children in mind, but they retain their classic appeal among childen and adults alike after all these years!!
Speaking of books, I bought the Chronicles of Narnia (A major motion picture for the holiday season). Must see if matches Hogwart's Standards!!

- Mithra