When In Love

I don’t hate you

I never did and never will
I just didn’t know it then
when I told you and still

I think of you
Yes, its true
Its hard I know
For both me and you

What can be done
Some things are not meant to be
You will always be the one
The only one for me

Cause love lasts longer
Than we can ever realize
We feel weak but get stronger
As foolishly we grow wise

'sick'ening

When you are sick and have to spend the entire day at home in bed, time stands still. All the free time makes you crazy. There are not enough shows on the TV and the books are not interesting enough either. The food isn’t good enough to eat and nobody has the time to talk to you. Oh I hate it!

All I can think of is how much work would be pending on my desk when I return to office. Somehow, I like to believe that I am one of those people who are very strong when it comes to getting sick. I avoid medicines for as long as possible and I like to stay outdoors and enjoy in both sickness and health. This is hard for me. I have been glued to the bed for the past 30 hours and life has been miserable.

I would give anything to get out of the house right now. The yucky taste of sickening fever is creeping though my throat down into my stomach. Why did I have to get sick?

I had freezing vanilla ice-cream and hot chocolate walnut pudding at the same time. The delicious flavors that were casting awesome magic spells on my taste buds were doing me some real harm at the same time. Also, getting soaked in the rain had its own side effects too.

I hate you, fever and sickness….. :[





HostGator promo codes

The Fools

One thousand things unsaid

Some letters remain unread

Those people think we are fools

They think the wise man rules

How silly can they be

That say but cannot see

What happens isn’t true

To foolishness they are new

Such fools as you and me

That know wise men aren’t free

Cause wisdom to them was sold

To rich men as they told

Who know what they can buy

Is a truth they know is a lie

That the ruler never was wise

Was always known to the fool’s eyes

The letters remain unread

A thousand things unsaid

The wise speak day and night

The fools laugh at the sight

BEING HAPPY

Every one of us is in search of happiness. We seek it in every little thing we do. We may wake up late or early depending on whatever makes us happy. We may study or not, play outside or sit at home with a book, eat or diet and so on and so forth.

Unfortunately, not all our efforts culminate at happiness. I feel that happiness depends on our attitude. If you want to be happy then you will be, no matter what the circumstance.

I know that not all of us are capable of it. Well, I am not for sure. I know that I am short tempered and I ruin my chances at remaining happy almost always. However, I do realize that at some exceptional moments, I have succeeded in maintaining my calm despite nerve wracking circumstances. I want to try and remain happy or at least normal for some longer period of time. I wish I can be that person always.

Who wants a frown when there is a possibility of smile?

There are these few people around us who never seem to get angry at all, they are always laughing, having fun and enjoying life. I like to be around such people. It gives me a chance to try to become more like them. Maybe it is true that we need to give vent to anger rather than keep it within us. Wouldn’t it be better to try not to develop that anger, thus, eliminating the ‘venting’?

I guess I should stop blaming everyone around me when things go wrong. Accepting reality and dealing with it should do the trick. I need to be happy and content with what I have; yet, I should never lose hope for attaining better things in life. I should laugh more and make others cry less. I should remain in the vicinity of positive energy for as long as possible. I should forgive more, thank more, admire more and crib and complain less. I know it is easier said than done. But, this time I don't want to be sad when I could have been happy.

:)

Old Diaries and Photographs

I remember how I used to stay inside the hostel all day long avoiding classes and classmates. I would sleep for hours and sometimes emerge out of the room only for lunch and dinner. Juniors did not know any senior called Shobhita!  Batch mates thought I was their junior. I wish I had spent a little more time outdoors. And its not just about 4 years at college, it’s about ‘always’.

Whenever I have had friends around me, I have avoided them. Today, suddenly I feel so alone. I miss friends. So much that I had to look for my old diaries and read every page to avoid loneliness. I went through old photographs too.

Life leads us to such moments in life where all we have is regret. No amount of consolation is enough.

The worst thing is that there is nothing I can do to change the past.

All we can do with time is to use it judiciously. There is no reverse gear in real life.

I miss all my friends.

THE CHANGE

Everything changes with time. And we are too busy to notice the gradual change.

However, when we do get time to look up from our busy lives, we realize that we are in a completely different place with strangers all around. Strangers who were friends or people we knew well at one point of time. We are forced to strain our memory and try to think of the reason behind it all.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I distinctly remember this happening to me. I have always loved my friends and I know that they are the best friends any one could ever have. I believed that we were inseparable. I had never ever imagined that things could ever go wrong with us. I guess I was wrong. I got so busy with so many other things that I don’t even know when exactly the rift began. And it was too late by the time I did.

This post is dedicated to my oldest and bestest friends.

I know that things will never be the same for our group. However, I will always cherish our friendship that made the school worth attending, life worth living and so many other things worth doing!

Beyond Living Room Conversations

On my way back from office, I saw social activists holding candles and protesting peacefully against corruption..

It is moments such as these, that make me think in a completely different direction. We get super excited about a cricket match. Spend an entire day glued to the TV set and burn crackers with joy at India's victory. The entire nation unites for a game and celebrates as the Indian team brings home the World Cup and we return to our normal routines. Don't get me wrong.. I was one of the revelers too. The question is whether that same unity will be available now when it is actually required. Our support for a noble cause sparks in a conversation, where we express our strong opinions and the sparks die off as soon as the conversation is over. How many of us will  actually go out there and do what we preach and strongly approve of? Hopefully, this protest will unite India like never before and the sparks will last beyond conversations, thus putting an end to corruption.

IN TURN

Let me sketch my thoughts on the sand
Watch as the waves destroy

Let me close my eyes for a while

Hear the best moments pass by

Let me know what it is to be dead

To enjoy being alive

Let me justify my existence

By doing something worthwhile

Let me find the difference

My life is supposed to make

Let me be a coward

Prepare for risks I need to take

Let me do things my way

Let me fail repeatedly and learn

Let me watch success go by

I will know it all, in turn

THE PRICE TAG

I have a job now. I am in Lucknow, my hometown. I don't have to worry about cooking anymore! My parents are happy, they couldn't have been happier. This is what they had always wanted.
This  life is so different from what I expected. What I had expected has already occurred and ended.

I lived my dream for five months. I was away from home. I had fun. I was cooking for myself. I was  happily worried about lots of things. I was living life my way and I loved it. Don't get me wrong. I like this job too. I like living with my parents. I am glad I don't have to cook. 

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had continued to live my dream. Why did I give up all that? Why did I choose to return? Why??? I wish I knew why. 

I'm lying, I know why. Its just too hard to accept. I gave it all up for my family. I had everything I wanted minus my family. It was the hardest decision I ever made. Too bad, everything comes with a price tag attached. If you have everything you always wanted and never had to give up anything in exchange for anything, then I envy you with all my heart. I didn't want to barter but I fell short of choices. In fact, I had none. I had to give up my dream for something I always had. Its so amazingly confusing. I like my decision but I hate the fact that I had to give up my dream in exchange.

"Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." Sir Winston Churchill 

All the best decisions come with an enormous amount of sadness and with a promise of happiness in the end. I am not as happy as I would have liked to be, but then, this is not the end.  

SUGAR

Hi friends,

SUGAR is a blog I have recently created. I have posted pics of a few of the cards Iv made in it.
http://sugarcubeshoneybee.blogspot.com/

:)

25

Tomorrow is my parents' 25th wedding anniversary. My sister and I want to do something special for them. There is a family reunion for the event. We tried to be a little creative by making a big silver 25 inside a circle and also some silver bells. It did not turn out be the beautiful thing that we had imagined. We have not inherited any creativity from mom.

There is also a little slide show that my sister has prepared. Some nice music plays in the background as we are  taken through the 25 years via photographs. It is actually the only good surprise we have for them.

I was supposed to get a few lines ready to be spoken at the occasion. However, I have not come up with anything till now and instead of composing some I am here.. blogging.

I will have it ready by tomorrow. It will not take that long. A few minutes is all I need to pen it down. It all comes down to the first line. Once I have the first line ready in my mind, the rest flows into place.

There has to be something special for them..  the 25 years they have spent together, the love and care with which they have built this home. 

Things have not always been good. There have been ups and downs every now and then. However, if I were to go back in time and change a thing or two, I wouldn't change anything. 

DON'T ASK ME WHY

There is something that is holding me back from getting a job. And I know what it is... I am not trying hard enough. And I know why... Because I don't want to.

Then the obvious question that people throw at me is "Why Btech?".

I have been asked this question every day since the occurrence of B-tech and the non -occurrence of a job so that I was forced to prepare 365 different answers for every day of the year. Sometimes the answer is as simple as "Get Lost". 

I used to ask myself the same question and finally quit pondering over the obviously unanswerable..  

It may have been the wrongest decision I ever made but I don't want to think about things I cannot change.

I have been looking for all sorts of career opportunities...from something as sophisticated as a software developer to something as sweet/strict as a teacher. I even tried technical writing.

When I get selected, I feel if they could select me that easily... how good could the job be... maybe I am too good for the job? When I don't get selected, I don't think at all. ;)

A little more than a quarter of me says, "B-Tech and You are the wrongest match ever". Another quarter sincerely sticks to B-tech. The rest of me is diplomatic..... Get a job which is not very technical and not completely non technical either. Work with people who will recognize the Gem that you are!!!!!!

Yes, I am confused as you may have guessed...

Conclusion:

Don't ask me "Why B tech?" It is a humble request for those who care. For those who don't ,well, I have the 365 answers prepared.

ALL IS WELL

You finish college. You have a job that you know will pay you enough to live in Noida. You tell your parents 101 reasons why you must join.You stay home for a month after college. Then you pack your bags and run off to Noida. You somehow convince dad that staying with relatives is not a good idea. Then you spend another day trying to explain why staying at a PG close to relative's house is not so good either. Then you win and get to stay at a PG not so close to relative's house. You smile at your victory. You start working. You make friends. You get a SIM that offers free local calls. You get a tiffin wala to bring you lunch. You work at night and sleep through the day. Gradually you stop having breakfast because its too much pain and also because breakfast and lunch almost always coincide. You enjoy life. You enjoy weekends with your only best friend. Shift changes. Your life goes all topsy turvy. You eat at odd times. Lose track of time. Stop having dinner because you are unable to decide if that would actually be dinner or lunch. You get bored of your job. Your team changes. Your friends move to another team. You wish you could take a day off. You take a day off. Tell your boss you are dying of fever. You pay one fourth of your salary as rent. You sulk. You still go out and enjoy weekends and spend like you earn millions. You wish you could see your family. You visit home. You come back. Life gets normally abnormal. You discover that your job actually sucks. You fight with a colleague. You get super bored. You tell everyone the 101 reasons why you hate your job. You quit job. You stay at Noida for another month. You explore NCR. You hang out with best friend. You enjoy life like never before. Then its time for you to return home. Sadly and unwillingly, you pack your bags. Repack. Repack. Repack. Repack. Finally you buy another bag as you have more stuff than you imagined. Repack. You wish you had not quit job. You wish you could stay. You wonder what would have happened if you had not quit job. You promise to return to this wonderful place again.You board the train. You shed tears as your best friend waves at you and the train moves on. You hate to go away.You close your eyes and hope the journey would end soon. Next thing you know is that the train has halted at a dark, unknown station and will remain there for the next 4 hours. You sulk. Your phone battery is down from all the song hearing you did in the previous 2-3 hours. Your phone balance is low. You have big ugly men waiting to snatch your reserved seat. You fight with those men. You are scared to death.You have nothing to eat. You get sulkier. You reach home at 4 am. You cry for some time and wonder what would have happened otherwise. You whisper to yourself , "All is Well" and go to sleep.

AWFULLY TRUE

I can sketch willingly

I can paint unwillingly

I can write imaginatively

I can think creatively

I can cook loathfully

I can eat gladly

I can sing nervously

I can dance badly

I can laugh hysterically

I can cry unstoppably

I can smile sweetly

I can sob softly

I can love deeply

I can hate savagely

I can wait patiently

I can mock wickedly

I can get irritated easily

I can hope miserably

I can shout rudely

I can terrify brutally

I can work insanely

I can quit suddenly

I can explain bluntly

I can be unbelievably friendly, honestly blunt, surprisingly fun-loving, smilingly unhappy, busily free, enthusiastically confused, mournfully lazy, successfully unsuccessful, sincerely willing, eerily crazy, wrongly understood and thankfully unperturbed by it.

A REASON TO GO ON

This is what I feel about life... my life to be more exact. Sometimes when I am trying to find answers to things unknown, I come up with my own versions and answers. Some may be true, others may not. The important thing is to never give up and I am not giving up. 

Life is a beautiful mystery. At times we feel annoyed and frustrated, however as the mystery unfolds, we are bound to find a reason to smile. Every little sadness and tear makes sense as the picture gets completed. Every brush stroke however insignificant contributes to a lovely portrait. When things don't seem to make sense and all appears to be against us, we cry and complain and pose a series of whys to whoever would care to listen and answer. Does anybody really care? A jig-saw puzzle, that is what life is,.. too many bits here and there.. we try to fit one bit here and another there. Sometimes when everything gets jumbled up and we are about to give up, suddenly a bit falls into place and all that did not make any sense earlier now starts to make sense. The mystery gets unfolded in bits... just enough to keep us going. Blindfolded, we move on... we don't know whats next in store for us. Had we known... life would not have been mysterious and we wouldn't have a single reason to go on.

THE WHYs

Why is it that when we look back into time, it is only then that we realize that those were the best days of our life..
Why do we forget to show our love to the people we love the most, when they are around..
Why do we never follow our dreams and end up with regrets later..
Why can't we erase certain portions of our memory..
Why can't we make certain portions of our memory permanent..
Why don't things always happen the way we want them to..
Why does the phone battery/balance go low every time we need to make THE most important call ever..
Why do we fall sick on holidays..
Why is it so difficult to plan a friends' reunion..
Why is it that we can never say the right words at the right time..
Why do loved ones hurt us the most..
Why can't we be happy always..
.
.
.
Why is it so difficult to answer the above WHYs..?

OBSERVATION

I have this habit of observing people, unconsciously of course. Most of the times I find myself staring at complete strangers, carefully making a note of their every move in my memory. The sudden jolt into reality from my frequent unconscious observations leaves a permanent impression. At times, it is actually quite interesting. When I speak to people, I am able to recall funny incidents and facts I had silently observed at some point of time and I cannot help but smile when their words contradict their deeds. According to me, there are no dumb people on this earth. If there appear to be some, they are actually cleverly pretending or hiding something for some good reason. All sweet, chubby, gullible, stupid, innocent, smiling for no reason people are a shade cleverer than you would believe they are. Trust me, sometimes, they would be much smarter than you. Driven by pity at their low IQ, you would try to help them overcome their dumbness and would end up realizing your own level. Of course you can disagree!

CROSSROADS

The road gets divided into two. One leads me to a life I am most familiar with. It is the kind of life where I will have no worries, no stress. The other road leads me to a life I have always wanted for myself. This is the road that leads me to independence in all aspects of life. I don't  know if its the right choice but what I do know is that I would hate to give up once I choose this particular kind of life for myself. To give up and accept failure is not on the list. As a matter of fact, I have already chosen this road for myself. There are hurdles at every step. Nothing seems to go right at the moment. Every little hurdle reminds me of the road I did not follow. Every time I stumble, I am tempted to turn back and take the other road. It is easy to decide what is right and what is wrong when you are the spectator, but much harder when you have to decide for yourself.

A CUP OF TEA

I can write an article on anything related to it.. but when it comes to actually cooking something, I simply CANNOT. I dont mind it, but then everybody else seems to.
Preparing tea was also a big cannot for me until the last month. A few years ago, when I was about 18, an embarrassing incident took place. My parents were out and I was in the house with my grandmother. A few guests unfortunately crash landed. Somebody had to sit with them and the other somebody had to prepare tea. My grandmother decided to sit with them and asked me to bring in tea. I was in a fix. What could I do? I tried to plead with her from behind the curtain to come and help. She was not even looking in that direction. I even tried calling her but she chose to ignore. I also tried to make eye contact to somehow remind her that I cannot. I was hoping for an eye to eye communication that failed miserably when she asked me, " Kya hua beta?". As if I was in a position to answer. I chose to enter the kitchen. I did not know from where to begin. Should I boil water first or put in tea leaves.. or was it milk??? How much of each was another problem. I stood staring at the ceiling as if waiting for a divine intervention. I did not realize that a good fifteen minutes had come to an end. Suddenly I heard my grandmother exclaim from the living room, "Shobhita chai lao beta, arre tumko to chai banani nahi aati na..mujhe bulaya kyu nahi... isko chai banani nahi aati( to the guests), mai abhi aati hu". I wanted to disappear. The anouncement was a nightmare. My secret had been revealed. It seemed to me as if the entire world had come to know that Shobhita doesnt know how to make tea. The guests added to my plight, "Arre nahi aunty please aap pareshaan na hoyiye, hum log chai pi ke aaye hain ".
Finally, here at Noida, I had to make tea for myself since there was no alternative. Somehow I manage to make a decent cup of tea for myself. It was a big achievment when I made that first cup of tea. Inspired and motivated, I decided to cook as well. I announced this to my family and friends, brought in all required utensils and also bought vegetables to last a month. Everybody was excited. Me too. Afterall I was going to COOK. I explained to everybody how badly I needed to learn to cook. "Arre agar abhi nahi seekha to kab seekhungi. Akhir tiffin ka khana kab tak khaungi... ". My exciting venture lasted a week. It had started with excitement and ended in despair. I switched back to the tiffin system. I needed to eat food and not the ashes of the vegetables. Conclusion: COOKING and CANNOT are synonyms for me.

OUR MOMENT

I looked for it all around

Here and there and everywhere

I tried to seek it within myself

Digging up time and walking up the stair

I even went down the well of my thoughts

And opened the suitcases of past

With a microscope I analyzed the dots

For as long as my energy could last

I did all that I could to look for that moment

That I had so safely kept aside

For times when life would be a torment

When troubles would come in a high tide

What I didn’t realize was that the moment had grown

In a feeling that was deep and true

And which came with a promise to keep me safe forever

By introducing me to you

 (28th august '09)

MY SMALL MINDEDNESS

I sat still waiting for something to happen. Something that was not going to happen for the next half an hour. The alarm was set at 5:30 and it was only 5:00. I was staring at the wall, wondering how my life had changed in the past few days. A month and a half ago I was always late for college and now I wake up at 5:30 to reach office on time. Time is a strict teacher and does not give up on its students. I do enjoy my work but waking up at an hour as early as 5:30 is something I can never enjoy. So, at 5:30 I decided that I had had enough of this 'early to rise' crap. I decided to take the day off, texted one of my colleagues that I wasn't well and  went back to sleep.
The office.
I don't talk much, instead I prefer listening to people around me. This is probably the one reason why my colleagues consider me an introvert. My friends know better. Sometimes I feel sick of all the gossip. This is something my friend, Rakhi and I used to quote a lot back at college "Great minds discuss Ideas, Average minds discuss Events and Small minds discuss People". We would say it aloud together, call ourselves people with 'small minds' and laugh. After a small group discussion at one training session, somebody told me that I should not pretend to be sweet and innocent because I am not. This very person had called me an introvert an hour ago. I smiled and thought to myself that out of so many people at the office, there is at least one who knows that behind all the silence is a sea of thoughts. I don't pretend anything. I just don't like to share my views with people, who I feel wont agree. However, there are times when it is difficult for me to shut up, but naturally under different circumstances.
Colleagues.
We are still under training and our batch and batch-mates keep changing every now and then. My colleagues from my first batch had vowed to keep in touch and nobody really did. Everyone wants to keep in touch but not everyone has got the time and money for it. Sometimes, we meet in the cafeteria and shake hands. There is this wonderful piece of advice my trainer once gave us "Be friendly, don't be friends". There are no friends where you work. I will always remember this.

YET ANOTHER DAY

Its 5:33 in the morning. I am writing at this hour as I have nothing better to do right now. I was awake all night and was looking out of the window. I noticed the black of the night turn into the blue of the early morning. I can stay up all night if I want to. However waking up early in the morning is a big NO. If I happened to wake up early or stay up all night, back at home or even at the hostel, I used to hear the chirping birds. Its quiet out here. In fact, I haven't even seen many birds around, except for the pigeons that haunt the washroom at night.

I wish I could get a pup to play with. Few days ago, I went to a pet shop to play with one. He was such a sweet little thing.......... I miss my pet, Candy. Nobody to lick my hands when I return from work. I could play with the street dogs too, but then again I haven't seen many. 

I think I will go out for a walk ...

BEAUTY LIES IN THE EYES OF THE BEHOLDER

Life is beautiful only if we know how to live it to the fullest. Nothing is perfect. Its all about making the right choices at the right time. When people make mistakes, we can either shout at them and make a big deal out of it or we can simply accept people with their mistakes, perhaps explain to them calmly why it was a mistake. Also, when things go wrong, we can either sit and cry over spilt milk or we can be optimistic and face the situation bravely. It all depends on our reaction. We will find ways and means of staying happy in the worst of situations, if we want to.

No doubt there are moments when you cannot help, but feel sad or angry, however, the important thing is whether you know how to overcome those feelings or not. I myself have wasted all these years of my life ignoring the beauty of everything around me. As a result, I haven't been able to enjoy life as I should have. However, better late than never. I have started realizing that life is too short to curse and complain. Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. Let us live a beautiful life and savour every moment of it.

FOR BETTER

B-tech is finally over and I missed the class photograph (actually bunked it on purpose with friends.. don't ask me why). Now I am at home. I am trying to feel good about being at home and I am trying to feel bad about college being over and I am failing at both. Not even the good food at home is making me feel better, which is very strange. But the stranger part is that I am not feeling bad either.Its as if I am indifferent to whatever is happening right now. Yes, of course the 'future' is a relief and I am so looking forward to it. 'College being over' is so overrated!
Last few days were spent at hostel, reconciling with everybody and writing good things in everybody's diaries, so that they may remember the good in us. We even tried staying together, chatting, eating together, living life with friends the way we always wanted to. We also spent lots of time reminding one another of funny incidents from all the 4 years spent almost together, staying up late and teasing one another and telling each other we would miss them.
Things don't always happen the way we want them to. The day before returning home I witnessed a heart rending fight between two of my friends. Of course two months hence nobody would remember nobody, but this fight would certainly be hard to forget for some time to come.
Sure made things a bit ugly!!
When two of your friends fight, you are in the most uncomfortable position. You have to decide which side to take specially when you are not aware of the actual cause and also when you have been spending time, trying hard to reconcile with everyone..so staying indifferent doesn't help much either.
So, the four years ended with a melodrama. When one of my friends left Bareilly, I cried. Somebody reminded me that she and I belong to the same city and can meet any time we want. That wasn't very comforting. Soon others left too, but this time no tears came. They are all from Lucknow, my home town! We were all returning to the same place!
Mom, dad and sis arrived. We somehow stuffed my things into the car and made space for the four of us too and drove back home... away from 'my' room no. 31, away from my hostel, away from my college, away from Bareilly, away from those four years...... towards something better.

RESTORE POINT

All I can think of now is that I will be leaving Bareilly in four days.

Four days and the end of this four year long journey. This is all that I can write about because this is all that I think of these days. So many emotions and feelings are swirling within that I feel an urgent desire to jot them down before I go crazy and yet I seem not to find proper words to frame my thoughts.

I went to visit my friend, Rakhi, yesterday and stayed over. This place has been my refuge for the last four years. Every time I felt I could not take in any more of the hostel and college bullshit, I would rush over to her place. Besides, aunty always cooks some really nice food for me.

This time, I was really sad while walking out of the front door, because I thought that this was probably my last visit to her place while I am still here. Of course we plan to keep in touch. While returning to the hostel, I looked outside the tempo and I tried to take a picture of everything I could see and store it in my mind for future reference. I want to remember everything the way it is now, so that I can rollback whenever I miss my friends. I don’t really know what else to write.

BEYOND B-TECH

Tomorrow is my last examination of B-tech - 'the four year journey comprising 39 end semester examinations and several unit tests and practicals'. I finally get to become an engineer.. 'Er. Shobhita Singh'.

The end of four years. This college was my first attempt at independence. Trying to live on my own, away from home. I had always wanted to live at a hostel. It wouldn't have been that bad had the food been good, which never was.

I'm not so concerned about tomorrow's examination as I am of what comes next.. beyond B-tech.

What will that life be like? So maybe B-Tech was never my first choice and I had always wanted to make a career elsewhere, but there is always a purpose behind everything that happens. The kind of job I will probably be getting into hasn't got much to do with my 4 year B-Tech and the kind of job I want to do won't either but surely God has some plans for me and much better than mine too. 

What I am looking forward to most is that feeling of being financially independent. I just want to be able to earn and make my parents feel proud of me for it. I want to be able to get for them all that they couldn't because of the expenses of my studies, though this will probably take some time.

I want to live a happy and very simple life. I want to relish every moment of my life and I don't want to regret anything later in my life. I want to wake up in the morning and  be glad about going to work. I want to cook for myself ( when I do learn to cook). I want to go shopping with money that I have earned. I am super excited about this 'about to happen' change in my life and can't wait to begin, as I am sure is quite evident from all that I have written above.

With God and my parents blessings, I know that I will do just fine.

CHERISH

This is a picture of my little neice, Cherish. She will be a year old on the 17th of the next month. Quite obviously I am crazy about her.. :)
She already loves cell phones and cars as you can see. A little beat is enough music for her to dance! Somehow she can operate the cell phone to get it to play her favorite song and she loves chicken....... just like me!! I am one proud maasi !!!
I cant wait to meet her on her 1st birthday

THE ELEPHANTS

How many huge elephants did Lucknow have a few years back? I am talking about the ones in stone.

Haathi Park had one, kids loved to get inside the stomach of the elephant and crawl out at the top. The Haathi Park… may be you have been there too. I don’t know if people still go there and if it still has the elephant.

I loved to go to the Haathi Park when I was little, the elephant being my favorite animal.

Seems like there’s somebody who likes elephants so much more than me!!

The entire city has elephants carved all over now! I would have been jumping in excitement had not the red sandstone particles entered my eye as I was gazing at the many elephant heads, besides it was too hot for me to enjoy looking at the statues of my favorite animal, thanks to the ‘now’ tree-less area. But obviously the trees had to be cut down brutally and all of them too so that there was enough space for the elephants to be installed. So now there is no cool breeze to feel across your face while driving your bike, there is no lush greenery to admire, there is no ground for ‘melas’ to happen and there is very little oxygen left too, but let us not forget that there are so many elephant statues to look at in awe, there are other statues to admire too, there is red sandstone in the air for you to inhale as much as you want and there are rows and rows of beautiful white and blue lights to replace the lush greenery and cool breeze at night. Oh and I forgot to mention the machinery that now adorns the roads as a permanent prop and make such a pretty sight and of course their loud music for the passersby as an added advantage!

THE BUS RIDE

The college bus takes us to our examination centre. It is a one hour journey that makes my head spin and I would rather walk the distance. To make things worse, the bumpy ride topples the stomach upside down. Today we had the opportunity to experience the worst bus ride ever, where every little turn and hole in the road was a ghoulish nightmare. The driver was probably too drunk to slow down where necessary. He merrily took us on a roller coaster ride while I was repeating prayers in order to reach the hostel alive.
He merely laughed as us poor frightened souls shouted at him to slow down the bus..the shouts then got transformed into louder shouts. Finally we pleaded with him to slow down as everybody got thrown high into the air as the bus flew over a rocky and bumpy area and we crash landed. The driver chose to ignore. We concluded unanimously that he had just found out that his wife was cheating on him and so chose to forgive him as he brought the bus to a sudden halt.

AVOID

Examz are round the corner..

I'm busy not preparing but trying to avoid the unavoidable.. miles away from college I am happily gourging and dozing. When somebody mentions books, which they do once in a while.. I turn to them lazily and look at them with such indifference they wonder why they even cared to mention. I avoid chatting with friends who sickeningly mention 'books' and 'exams' and 'studies' and talk gibberish like "how much have you studied" and "OMG how will we ever finish that subject" and "what book are you studying from" eeeeeehhhhh!!!!

But then yes, I went to buy myself a few pens for the D day! Love to buy stuff even if its pens for exams. Unfortunately the shopkeeper chose to give me an extensive and unending lecture on how one pen is better than the other and why I should purchase the expensive one for exams exclusively. I tried to explain that this was not my class 10 boards that I was purchasing pens for, however he chose not to understand.. until I couldn't take in any more and loudly proclaimed that I wasn't as little a girl as I may have appeared to him who would need such a lecture on "how to purchase the best pen for exams".
Then he understood and carefully changed the topic to "what is the latest and best pen available". huhh!
I rushed out of the shop.


So here I am, at home, eating, watching TV, chatting, strolling around, doing some tree watching, talking to my dog.. avoiding the unavoidable.