Return of the Friend

AT LAST I met my ILP friends.

Whats so special? Well, the fact that they all stay 300 km away (one of them stays in a differant country!), and that I rarely get to meet them. For the first time, I had planned, intricately planned their 1.5 day stay in Pune. Saturday night we would take to the city, dance the night off. Come back to my place, and chat away till the wee hours. Naturally, we have loads to catch up on... Sunday we could have the traditional 'sight-seeing' session. All this intersparsed with lunches and dinners and gobbleableas at Pune's choiciest eateries. (Sounds rather like a gen-x uptopia eh?)

Well, atleast this is all that was ringing in my head for the last 2 days. But as luck would have it (And it usually has it this way), the plan didn't work out. No one to blame for it. It just didn't work out.

So, I met S & Y for just about 5 hours today. And that is not much. We all went out for lunch, about 8 of us. Then on to Pravati, the famous peshwa palace in Pune. I had last been there about a decade back, so it was as good as new to me. Yet, we had a great time. The place is beautiful, and the weather luckily was on our side today. All in all, had a good time.

But now that they have left, I have this indescribably hollow feeling inside of me. I am suddenly missing them soooo much! Probably, in this whole rat-race (it's not a mouse race, mice are smart), I have left behind things that mean a lot to me, people that are worth more than a 5 figure salary, memories that mean much more than the humdrum of daily life. I guess these inadequacies of life are brought to the forefront by such incidences, and this realisation brings with it utter dissapointment that makes me want to tear this void apart, vent all that anger out in one massive blast. It also brings along a hope, a positive energy, that pushes me to pick up the peices, try and rebuild, kindle a new light. It makes me TRY... I'm trying... always will...

Pune's nightlife...

Whoa!!! Pune is supposed to have the most 'vibrant', 'happening', 'hip' (blah, blah, baaahhh...) nightlife, now isn't it??? I don't see it, for 3 obvious reasons...

1. More often than not, I live the part of a software professional, and work till late in office, which doesn;t leave me with much of a nightlife.
2. The poilce and the moral brigade have reportedly started a crackdown on the discs and pubs in Pune, enforcing a deadline of 12.30, at 10.00PM itself. (??? what???)
3. Lastly, cause there is NO authoritative guidebook, either in print, or on the net, giving some info for the uninitiated like me!!! Google turned up blank!!! (Well actually, I found a website, in which, under Nightclubs and Pubs, I find a place called 'Aahar Restaurant and Bar'!!! SHEESH????)

Tell me... is this Love? - cont.

I was off blogger for about 2 weeks, otherwise this updte would have come before.

Heard this from a friend, let's call her Z.

Z comes from a rather liberal family, and by liberal, I mean liberal by Indian standards. And well, she is in a relationship with this guy from her college, who is now studying abroad. As such, their love hangs by their daily phone calls and some rather short and infrequent meets. But the distance isn't their biggest problem. The guys family is damn conservative, and as far as my knowledge goes, so is he.

And this is something she said when she told me that he is rather conservative for her... Z says, "His familt is very conservative, and so is he, but thats ok, cause I love him so much".

Hmmmm... is this love?

The beauty and horrors of Lanavala

Had been to Lonavala for a 1 day trip on Saturday. For the uninitiated, Lonavala is a rather overcrowded hill station between Mumbai and Pune.

The road is quite pretty in the monsoons. The greens are all out, covering the mountain slopes. The waterfalls open their gates and you get to see some magnificent sights if you have the eye for them.

But overcrowded is the word!!! The place is swarming with the whole of Mumbai and Pune, especially in this season. All the usual scattering of 'points' are filled with parked cars and buses and their inmates. Among the more famous is the Bushy Dam (a misnomer), a small barrage across a smaller lake, that squirts out water over it's edge, with just enough force for people of all ages to safely wet their asses sitting on the concrete steps that form the downstream portion of the Dam wall. Enjoyable??? - Shmuck!!! That place is a veritable 'Kumbha Mela' of the west. It looks like a pilgrimage, with all the colourful people and the mess they leave behind sans any devotion or care. And it's disgusting to even think of getting into this melee. Fear of get jostled and falling is one, skin disease is the other! I'm sure it's a hotbed for germs, what with all those people bathing in it upstream. Yuck!!!!

So it's better to look for greener(or should I say, cleaner) pastures at Lonavala. Walk up a bit more and you will come across some less crowded and rather enticing waterfalls. Make some space, change, and get inside! And MY, it's a feeling hard to describe... sheer xtacy!!!!

And yeah, mind your footing there. It is mighty slippery. At one point we also saw a pair of small snakes. Now reptiles freak me out, and snakes? well, of course they do!! So I turned back, and slipped, lost my footing, and slammed my face into some cold hard rock. For a moment I thought, well, this is it. Either I'm gonna start 'floating' out to the abode above, or I'm gonna be horribly disfigured like Two-face or something. Fortunately, it was an inch long cut. I wrapped my shirt around it to stem the bleeding, and somehow made it back to the car. After some initial first-aid, we realised that Lonavala does not have a single approachable hospital, so off we drove to Pune. Basically, I ended up with some staples on my forehead and loads of bruising on my face. In fact, I thought I looked like some bhai who just same out of a fisticuffs with another goon. Not a very enticing description, but typical of my unearthly humor at such times. In fact, I have not put up my picture here for fear of inviting too much sympathy!!! [:)]

So, moral of the story - Go to Lonavala, get wet, but I won't be at your side...

I'M BACK!!!

Thats exactly what I want to convey... I'm back to the Blogger-sphere... (he he, not like I was a vital part of it), nevertheless, was a part of it.

The past 3 weeks off my blog have been, in a word, tumultous!!!

It includes everything from Rains, heavy rains, weekend Mumbai trips (which, btw, means no internet), a phone snatching incident, 1 night at the office (again!!!), insanely hectic work, and eventually, a gratifying recognition for all that hard work. Phewwwww...

So back to today, I need to catch up on lost time... I've already read up on A & N, now to get back to my other blogger brodah-hood...

Firstly, A, I'm gonna continue ur tag...
5 unusual things that have happened to me...

1. Had 2 B%*@$^DS try to snatch my beloved phone at 11 in the night, and I luckily managed to avoid it.
2. Had an absolutely INSANE dream last night, actually woke up totally shaken from it, and that does not usually happen to me.
3. Had 4 bomb-scares in my school where I studied for 13 years. We were evacuated to a nearby ground and taken home. The last time, these huge sniffer dogs made rounds of all our classrooms). It eventually turned out that they were crank calls by a student to delay the exams (Myyyy, were they ingeniuos back then!!!)
4. Been on the phone till 4 in the morning.
5. Cried... cried all alone when I saw 'Dil Chahta Hai' at 1am in the night... made me remember some friends...