kya style hai!

Teenage-That time of your life when you can look like a clown and still feel like an emperor!

Red pants, multi colored waist coat with floral prints, big red beaded necklace…oily face…oily hair-and aaaah the pose!!! What was I thinking???

I can give any 80’s South Indian heroine a run for her money!

I had burnt all my embarrassing pics...somehow this gem escaped. Now I'm finally in a place where I can look at myself and have no delusions about my looks! (There was a time when I used to blame the lighting/camera/angle for the way I looked in pics)

What amazes me is that…I was confident enough to pose in that get up!

I looked like this…and wondered why I never had any boy throwing himself at my feet!

Back then I had a lot of questions relating to my love life(or the lack of it).After looking at this pic...I know the answers to all of them.

Random facts about me...

Vasuki has tagged me to write 8 random facts about myself. So here it goes--


1) When I was a kid...if there was a song playing on the TV...I would get up and dance (so says my mom). I still have that great fondness for dancing. In my teenage years…I suffered from severe stage fright. But I would constantly dance in our family gathering. Deciding to join salsa classes and dancing with strangers was one of the toughest things I ever had to do. I am totally over that shyness now.

2) I love playing antakshari. In fact I was so crazy about it...that I could play it all by myself (left hand vs. right hand).I love singing. I tortured my brother with my constant renditions of soulful ghazals. Even now, I sing nonstop when we are on a long drive.

3) I cry a lot. As a kid I was called “ganga- jamuna”. I cry whenever I watch “Mughal-e-Azam” or read “Bridges of Madison County”. Full moon, a soulful poem, animals dying in movies, raised voice….everything makes me cry!

4) I was stood up on my first date.I got over it by reading a trashy M&B novel.I consider that the best thing to have ever happened to me.I taught me that I can either choose to laugh it off and move on..or whine and become bitter. Now,I can laugh at most of life's mean tricks. And whatever happens there are a lot of trashy novels to help you out.

5) I couldn’t read time for a very long time. I was very afraid someone would find out and make fun of it. For a very long time that was my dreaded secret. As a kid I also liked hiding under beds/tables and pretending to be invisible.

6) I am very easily startled. I am scared of sudden noises and sparks. I am very scared of crackers. . I am also very scared of crocodiles. I believe that in one of my past lives, I was an Egyptian who was devoured by a crocodile!

7) I love tea. I can drink a lot of tea and still wish for one more cup. Other than drinking tea the other things I do a lot are laughing, talking and reading. In fact you’ll never catch me without a book. I also have the habit of reading 5-7 books at any given time….

8) My most prized possessions are my blue diary and my brown diary. They are full of lines I liked from books or movies, thoughts…descriptions of sunsets, Zen poems…and dried flowers.

So do tell me what you think…and I invite all of you to pen random facts about yourselves.

weird things

Vasuki has tagged me to write 6 weird things about myself. He has no idea how tough a job it is. To pick from the multitude of my weird behaviors is a Herculean task.

Anyways...here are some things which I find unusual about myself.

The tortoise spell:

I walk slowly. What’s weird about that, you ask? Walk with me once and you will know! I don’t just walk slowly…I walk sloooooooooooooooooowly.

Over that, every few minutes, I will stop to look at the shape of some tree or some flower. I was called “gajagamini” by my friend Adlin!

Bidthoo-bidthoo:

This is one of my inherited (from my mom) weird traits. I am superstitious in a very weird way. I will stop my vehicle if a cat passes by, I never cross a pole when walking with a friend and if I stumble I will make someone hit me! But I will bend my belief to fit my convenience. If I am late, and a cat crosses my way, I will convince myself that spitting on the spot where it crossed is the antidote to the bad effect!And I say ‘touchwood’ after saying anything nice and ‘bidthoobidthoo’ after something bad!

When I was in school, I suddenly had this belief that if someone wishes you “best of luck” 5 times, you will do well in your exams/tests. In a matter of few days, the whole class would be going nuts with each other wishing “best of luck” 5 times.

About alphabets and fruits:

I relate to things by giving them a gender and certain character traits. So ‘A’ is a very good looking guy, ‘B’ his unattractive wife, ‘C’ a selfish woman, ‘D’ –her loud husband, ‘E’ and ‘F ‘–the kids of ‘C’ and ‘D’ etc. So Mango is a very proud snobbish woman and jackfruit was fat jovial man etc...

I would talk to trees, my scooty (I would apologize to it, if I braked hard), my laptop etc.

No, I am not nuts…just weird!

Daydreaming bolywood style:

My daydreaming is full of songs and dance sequences. I love listening to some hindi music and to imagine myself singing them. So if there is a song from DDLJ, I will be the one crooning with SRK not Kajol…sigh!

Love affair with inanimate things:

I am unimaginably possessive about my material things. I don’t like someone else touching my laptop…or using my comb. I never lend books or CDs. I am emotionally attached to them .They are like an extension of me-so it makes me very uncomfortable to lend my stuff. (Wouldn’t want someone else falling asleep with my book on their chest;) )

Err…I forgot your name

I can remember a whole lot of details. I can remember the lyrics if I listen to a song once

..I can remember in detail about what happened in 4^th standard…and all the talk I had with Vasuki…but cant for the love of God remember where I left my keys or what the name of the lady was whom I met yesterday.

I have a problem recalling names or faces. The problem is I am day dreaming almost always. When I meet a person, I am thinking what animal this person resembles, whether tippu sultan costume would look good on him etc etc, that I fail to recall the name of the man who looks like a sickly giraffe!

I know...you all have a lot of observations about me which you think is weird but then who is to say what is considered “WEIRD”?

“I am a stranger I meet often!”

I recently turned 24…and I still feel that I am a gift unraveled…A gift given 24 years ago..I am still trying to unpack the gift…I do not know the person inside me..

I am amused, shocked, delighted, bewildered..amazed at her..but if you ask me to describe what she is really like..I can only shrug my shoulders and look at the sky!

Now don’t get me wrong…I don’t suffer from any multiple-personality disorders…its just that I don’t really know the person I am..

I catch glimpses of me…see my reflection in things I love…but what I am …or who I am..or why I do the things I do..the way I do them…I have no clue!

The reason I am writing this is that there is a constant thirst…I cannot seem to ignore the urge to know more about this person who resides in me and still manages to evade me! Sometimes I meet myself amidst having a perfectly reasonable argument about what “simplicity” means…sometimes I meet me in the soft wind which causes the leaves to flutter…or sometimes a sad country song creates the perfect background music to meet myself.

This is all getting a little confusing so I will refer to the person I am trying to discover as another person.

Back to the discussion, her favorite haunts seem to be books ; old books..books of poetry..pages filled with someone else’s thoughts and hopes seem to reflect the real me!

Its been a constant hide n seek..and she is a difficult person to play against…All I know about her is that she loves colors..she loves words..and she loves the feel of water…she is moved by sunsets…and likes the sounds of silence…but she loves moonlight the best.

She looks at me indulgently when I work myself into a frenzy about silly things…and I can feel her disapproval when I indulge in self doubt or on the times when I give in to the urge to brag (which as most people know..is pretty often;) )

She loves to feel the texture of things…and has a simple understanding of things around and seems untouched by the emotional tempests which hold me in their fervor..At times such as those..she walks off refusing to talk to me into green pastures at the back of my mind.

We are friends in a way…her aloofness sometimes hurt me..and I wish she would stick around when I ought to make decisions. She sleeps gazing at a star filled sky while get bored stuck in a dreary conversation….and when we listen to a song she is transported into the realm of that song..while I stuck in this physical body feel left back..

She sometimes goes on a sail….or just lazes around…She never leaves my side as long as I am reading…and many a time..when I thought any article of mine was not good enough to exist in words…she has insisted on my not destroying them.

Sometimes she angers me with her laid back nature…her ability to say the other person is right than sticking to my side…and when she makes me repent and apologize. But overall I feel she is not the bad sort.

She is a nymph..who lives in the far reaches my mind…who visits me often…whom my friends see in a smile or a word..and many read in the nonsense I write!

Just now..she found out I am writing about her..she seemed curious…read the stuff I had to say..and smiled at me mysteriously.

Oh yeah,I am a stranger I meet often!