Alien

She was new to the place..
different country, strange faces, new culture, unknown places..
Everything seemed alien, Still she was excited..
After all she was newly married in a new country.
With a tinge of sadness , home-sickness and loads of hope .. One fine day she sat waiting for her husband to be back from work..
They were to go shopping, to an "Indian" shop and he had promised her that she ll miss home even lesser when she sees all the goodies there..From pickles to Papadums..
from Sambar masala to Santoor Soap.. Just everything to make her more at home in a foreign land..
He came home at the time he promised and together they took the train,They were to met a friend before that and then go to the Indian shop on their way back!
As she entered the Indian shop, she felt here husband had described it right..
With lots of excitement she took a shopping basket and started filling it with spices, pickles, powders, lentils.. and soon she was contented to leave to home.
As they took the train back, a very happy girl went thorough the stuff she had bought again as though to re-confirm they are all there..
Soon her husband started chatting with her about this and that as stations came by and passed by.
Suddenly,they realise their stop had come and the train has stopped for quite some time now.
In a quick moment,her husband grabs and bag and runs to the door just to make it out,when the door closes with the beeep and slams shut!!
As the train starts moving, the poor girl is stuck with her 'happy bag' and that too alone!!
Note:I had drafted this an year back, added a bit today and posting this story in 2 parts :
Part 2 - tomorrow

A long story- Part 2 - shock!

Story so far

“I am fine, so how s the day been so far” the person wrote.

“Not bad for a conversation”- she thought as she wrote “been boring, nothing much to do”

“Really, have you watched “tum” another question was thrown at her referring to a recent released movie?

“Hmm, yes.I liked the songs especially “she replied and thus they chatted for some more time till she read “so, you are a girl, I presume” on her screen.

“Does it matter? I am here just to meet and chat, not discuss my life or anything to do with it” she wrote angrily.

Immediately there was a pause in the random flow of conversation and as she thought” well, there goes another person, this time chased off quite late” when the screen read “Sorry for a late reply, But I could not help laughing over this. I can bet my life over the fact that you are a girl and a very sensible one too. Anyway, you have a choice of saying yes or keeping quiet, But let me say this, I am a guy and honestly I don’t think I need to lie to you. I can trust you”

‘What nerve’ – she thought as she wrote “Hey Mr., you should not trust anyone so soon these days. Anyway, how has your day been “she asked?.

His reply came and she gasped as she read “I work as an engineer in Z & Z industries. Having second shift, so came to check if I have got any e-mails, I usually never chat but somehow today logged in &……..” He went on...

Z & Z industries was a stone’s throw to her college hostel. As her house was a decent 3 hour drive from her college, she used to stay in the hostel during classes and go home during weekends and vacations. She gasped at the thought of the dangerous waters she was treading in and decided to log off when he asked her” what do you do”

She lied without a hesitation “I am doing my B.A. in abc college” naming a famous college with more than 5000 students near her house.

- to be conitnued

gotch me!!

As I dug into banana Halwa, my mum had sent this time from home, I felt a wave of nostalgia sweeping through me. Moreover, reading through the childhood (read as not- so -childlike) episodes from avi's blog made me go back to my childhood too.

Speaking of which, though I am his cousin.. I was known to be errrr...calm (* people who know me from the later years, please refrain yourself from falling off your chairs and laughing aloud like lunatics in office. Stay calm..) , yes I said CALM, sensible, ideal kid who dint indulge in devilish acts like her famous cousins.(I swear, Ask my parents, poor souls! little did they know the devil behind the angelic child, Anyway.)So I have a handful of my mischief bhare karname( mischievous stories) which I or anyone can recall from the golden times.

It so happened that one fine day my Mum and my grandma decided to make this yummy halwa. After boiling it to the right cosistency, they poured it into a plate for cooling off and left it on the table. Mum later left for work while granny went about her other chores. It was all during our summer holidays, so my neighbor cum assistant(ahem!) cum friend cum cousin Ms.R ( a reputed mischief maker of the area) and A-again our cousin cum friend cum visitor and finally, yours truly were already having a post breakfast,pre-bath playing time on the swing and riding cycles all along the road. We kept walking into the house to have a drink of water and continued playing till we heard “Can we have all of you here?"

That was my grandmother, standing at the doorway with raised eyebrows which in other words meant “we are in trouble".

Anyway, we walked to her and assembled decently. After all, our experience had taught us "atleast pretend to be innocent till proven guilty ";)

Granny (with unusually calm voice) - 'who touched the halwa?"

Us (shaking our heads) - "not me"

G:" are you sure?"

Us: "yes"

G (pointing to me) - “how about you? "

Me ( looking down) - *silent…. then... softly "yes"

Rest of them with eyes wide open" how did you know granny?"

Granny (with a tiny smile) just walked in and I could hear her laughing over the phone talking to mum.

Are you curious to know what happened?

Well... me - the smart person -had walked in, seen the halwa which was almost cooled, so tried to cut it like a cake but with a blunt butter knife, hence could not. So I started itching out shapes and doodles onto the halwa and satisfied also wrote "S" before running out..: P : P

Of-course, I got caught! :)

two minutes of my life...

In our very busy and getting-more- busier world, where one really has just the optimum time to share stories and have a few laughs together and that too with limited group of people, Often coming across the otherwise makes me keep that smile a little longer in my head and my days becomes more beautiful.

Every morning, when I decide to get lazy and leave for office just in time to catch the 8.24 train, Aj drives me off to a station before the regular one as its more towards his office and I am early for the train due, hence this works well for catching the 8.24.

Anyway, this station is right next to a school zone and during school opening times, there will be a person at allocated crossings on road to assist the kids cross. This person moves to the centre of the street with a stop sign and a whistle to catch attention of the traffic and stop the vehicles, thus letting children cross the road. **

And I always cross the road at this children crossing, Not because all the vehicles will stop to let “her-majesty” or yours truly cross, But because I get to say hello to the person standing there (To make it easier let’s call her C. C is one such person, who truly enjoys what she does .Not just that, She always has a big Hi with a still wider smile to every person, kids and adults alike crossing here.

Initially I would just respond back with a hello and now we have a small conversation too. I noticed that she spreads her enthusiasm in life to quite a few of us at that crossing. Wish I could do my job with so much joy and enthusiasm every moment.

Just 2 minutes of my day spent with C, but as I said, the big grin of C keeps that smile a little longer in my head, through the busy day.

**This system is followed all thought the school zones here.

A cup of joy or misery??

As I mentioned yesterday, Today was Melbourne cup day.And like any English Oriented country, This is a time for Horse race,fashion,food, wine and betting.

As much as as the first four sounds appealing,I feel there needs to be some serious thought about the last one.. betting or in simple words Gambling. As someone I know said, Melbourne Cup isn't just a race stopping the nation,It is also a big gambling addiction spreading its claws further and wider through the people.

I may sound quite rude here, But seeing the importance these people give to horse racing makes me literally puke. As much as the horse races are thrilling , the tremendous amount of money spent around it is absolutely shocking.This very own state which is still coming out of the nature's wrath through Bush-fires not long ago has managed to spend 90 million dollars in betting. if cup day is a tradition, Is this how horrendously expensive this tradition is?

Anyway, All that money 'wasted' as I would say is as good as throwing that in the ocean because all it made was rich more richer and probably showed glimpses of fast wealth to the rest which is as good as melting ice in the poles..It will disappear anyway.

Hope atleast someone will see the light before this rubbish gets bigger sucking in more people and their hard earned money. Tell me what you think, I would love to hear.

And thanks for quick comments I am getting, Will reply tomorrow to each one, once back to routine.

P.S: We had an amazing time at Otway Forests along the Great Ocean road.

More pics and updates in the next travel blog.

Till then,

Chao..

Round trip

This is really a bigger challenge than I thought.Especially with the long weekend, I am absolulty shocked at the way I am running around doing chores to have a 'nice' 'long weekend'! Phew....

Well,every year the first Tuesday of November is the 'Melbourne cup day' or in simple terms 'cup day'. As they say, the race that stops the nation.But dint stop of us from doing all our chores on Saturday, Go to celebrate 'Kannada rajyotsava' with fellow Kannadigas last evening followed by a long 'round trip' (literally) around the bay from Melbourne to Queens cliff, then a Ferry ride to Sorranto and back to Melbourne via Mornington Peninsular.Poor Aj, Had a tiring time driving so long though.

And again tomorrow is a long day.have planned another trip, this time, more friends and much more fun...

So more pics tomorrow.This blog Marathon is proving to be tougher than I thought.But surely making my CPU work hard!

:) Smiles Smiles..

Day 1 - clueless me :(

A blog that began
without the slightest hesitation
had nothing much to pen this time,
Hence this inspiration

Hope this does not sound
oh, too desperate
Something nice , well written is
right way to operate.

Don't now for how long,
seems do hard, but true
Hence this silly poem
to hell with 'writing blues'**

** with due respects to Monday morning blues which attacks poor me, every Mondays..sigh!!!

This is the first of my blogs as a part of November Blogroll in NaBloPoMo .
Wish me luck !!
And ya, I just ranted something off in this first one.But I hope I ll be more productive in the forthecoming blogs.
And also ..Today being November 1 is Kannada Rajyotsava,

"ಉದಯವಾಗಲಿ ನಮ್ಮ ಚೆಲುವ ಕನ್ನಡ ನಡು "

"ಸಿರಿಗನ್ನದಂ ಗೆಲ್ಗೆ "

ಕನ್ನಡ ರಾಜ್ಯೋತ್ಸವದ ಹಾರ್ದಿಕ ಶುಭಾಶಯಗಳು

quick bite

A quick bite is a kind of kick I have decided to give myself to keep blog spirit live .Something, short, quick and spontaneous.First one of them:

10.30PM:

After all the random kitchen chores post dinner,I decided it was time to call it a day(rather night) and get some sleep. Going towards the bedroom,my thought bubble at this instance "oh, it is weekend ,tomorrow - colour dress!***" :)

While the actual thought bubble should have been "Oh, it is weekend, it is CASUAL WEAR tomorrow"!!! :P

*** While in school,we used to be allowed to wear any dress we want on the last working day of the week which was called colour dress as it was not the normal uniform.haha!

I wondered how this phrase came to my mind after so many years,smiled and went off to sleep.

P.S: Picture: I clicked this at HongKong during our stopover. Nothing Spectacular but it seemed to me that the man made concrete jungle was trying its level best at competing with the natural set out.

A long story - Part 1 -Chat

Another lazy day of her college vacations. A late breakfast of maggi noodles with loads of water, she ignores the usual ranting of her mum about how she should not be eating this and have a more healthier breakfast.

Gulping through the last bit of Maggi and a quick shower later, she sat in front of her computer.

Checked her mails, had nothing interesting except one of 2 mails from her friends wishing her happy valentines! That cheered her up a bit and then she went on to write a few e-mails to her friends .

A hello here, a hug there, She really dint have much to write about. Sigh! She thought as her eyes fell on the ‘shortcut to a local chat room’. ‘When did this come?’ she wondered and then thought it must have been her neighbor who had been in to fix the system a week ago. Grumbling about that guy loading things on without asking ,she went back to her e-mails.Stifling a yawn, she again noticed the chat room link.’ Well, should I enter?’ a voice in her head spoke.Having heard a million stories from her friends about all sorts of weirdoes’, she had never ventured into this.But curiosity soon won and she decided she will log in and at the first instance of imbecility from anyone,she would log off.Another thing,she reminded herself “ I won’t reveal anything about me”.

She clicked on the link and waited for the chat windows to show up.After Initial logging in as ‘S’ and no more information she saw a few pop ups from other chat room users.

First one shamelessly asked for age and sex even before a hi. She cancelled and blocked him off. Her instinct told it has to be a him. ‘Idiot’ she mumbled till another few similar chat requests came. She religiously blocked them off deciding she had quite enough.

The cursor almost reached the cross on the right end top corner when a request came in saying “Hi there, how are you? How s your day?”

She gasped and contemplated whether to ignore or chat. ‘Not one, but this person is chatting just as she wanted to chat, But may be this is some sort of smart pervert with a decent mask’ she thought when another line popped up “Hello, you there, I thought we were here for a chat”.

“Well, 2 whole sentences and not one sign of asking age and gender, here I reply” she thought as she wrote “hi there, I am fine. How are you?”

…. To be continued.

Ganesh (contd)

As I mentioned in my previous post, our trip home was every moment worth it.And this time I got an opportunity to meet new people (both extended family and otherwise).

Aj’s native place Honnavar is an abode of nature at its best and most affectionate people, that I could not help but fall in love with this small town . Resting along the Arabian sea on one side and huge green mountains bordering it from the other side, this place has still managed to be pollution free and almost calm inspite of NH17 cutting right across. We stayed there for 5 days and I learnt, admired, enjoyed countless tiny moments and knew...My first Ganesh festival with my husband’s family is going to be memorable for my whole life to come.

We went to get our ‘Ganesh’ a very cute one, I must say sitting royally over a ‘shankha’(conch shell) (see the picture above).And while we were there- I, for the first time in my life had a glimpse at the life of people who have dedicated their lives to making these idols year after year. As I entered their house cum studio, there was an enormous sea of Ganesh idols(picture 2).each one different from the other, every expression beautifully drawn and some incomplete with the master himself giving finishing touches and make these idols come alive, well… almost.

Probably no words or pictures can completly appreciate the creative work of these people ,But nevertheless, I am just posting a few frozen moments .Hope you will like it.:)

This post is dedicated to those talented people I am sure, exist in countless un-known town and villages all over our country.

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Well, Another Important thing is Swaram has been kind enought to award me with my very first blog award(s).

I ve added them to my page and Thank you so much for them.

This appreciation means a lot to me. :) :)

Till next time,

Bye.