On the outside, looking in.

I don’t usually go out too much. Ever since I came back 4 years ago I use to abhor going out simply because I had a different definition of fun.

Going out and having fun for me was always being surrounded by a reasonably large group of people and more often than once being the centre of attention ( I was a different person back then). But ever since I came back not according to my own will I believe I’ve changed. For the good or bad I really don’t know, but I’ve changed and some people reinforce that.

Change is inevitable. Its only when its in your face that you start to think about it.

Take this weekend for example. After 5 jack n cokes, I can be a good conversationalist, be a good listener, amusing and in some sense of the word, charming (I hope that hasn’t changed).But all that can work differently when you encounter someone from the past. I left and then she did and now we’re back in the same city. I use to be someone else with her and even though the both of us know I’ve changed, I feel strange coz I had something good going on back then. Ironic as it may seem I realized this a long time ago.

This used to be my thing. I send myself in, I come out having no regrets.

But with her I dont quite know how to act around her maybe because she already has a preconceived impression.I can never be the person that I was and she’ll never know the person that I am(its not an assumption). So maybe it’s best left where it was.

I’ve also noticed that I’m beginning to start a bit of a trend. Every opportunity that comes by me I keep passing up. Whether its reestablishing past connections or maintaining new ones. I keep messing them up. During the production of a play I once did, I met someone new. At first I dint think to much of it. That’s exactly how I think at first. Seeing as we had a couple of scenes together we were mildly social. I’ve always been a slow starter when it comes to these things. I’ve got my guard up and only let it down only when I’m comfortable. But all that changed over the whole production at the end of which there was some connection we made. I’m not talking about getting into a relationship with her, but just two people who enjoy each others company have a nice laugh and you know something’s running deep. We found it really comfortable to be around each other there was that similar wavelength happening and well I take pride in being able to make a girl smile. I made an impression not consciously but just being me and being me after my 5 drinks. The play got over and I dint keep in touch. I feel bad about the whole thing and wished I had. Why do I feel bad? Coz she was smart, really pretty, two years older than me and she told me she found me charming.

Damn, I need to erase and rewind.

I’ve always believed that everything happens for a reason. May be you wont understand that reason now and somewhere down the line it’ll make sense. Some of it I get, the rest well “what a load of crock”!

There are so many more instances and relationships that have left me scarred. I tell myself not to have any regrets. I don’t think I do (maybe some minor ones).

But maybe I need to say “Abre Los Ojos ScarS”, coz every passing minute is another chance to turn it all around.

Lucid Dream

Ive been dreaming an exceptional amount this year. Courtesy of quitting a couple of things. But by the time I get to the afternoon, I cant remember them and it pisses me off.
Last night after a couple of bc cokes and then bl sodas i came back and crashed. I must've dreamt for like 3 hours strait.
I always used to think that the best part about dreaming is you dont have control of them. So your just pretty much sittin back n watchin the fun. Kinda like a movie.
Then again you must also realize that they may not eventually end up the way you want them to.
For example there was a girl in my dream. Some one who i'd known a while ago. Someone who was mentally stimulating and on the same wave length who I absolutely enjoyed talking to. But I wasnt attracted to her. Thats besides the point. So when I see her after a really long time in my dream I sort imagined a response Id probably get in todays scenario.
Which just means that it was a bit of a nightmare really not a dream coz i dint end up having it the way I want.

I dont think ive made my point. Or maybe I have. I probably just needed a couple more bl sodas to have it my way.

Parallel Universe

Apparently today marked the day when St.Valentine was killed for marrying lovers secretly because it was against the law. Way back in the 3^rd century, under the rule of Emperor Claudius II Rome was involved in many bloody and unpopular campaigns. Claudius the Cruel was having a difficult time getting soldiers to join his military leagues. He believed that the reason was that roman men did not want to leave their loves or families. As a result, Claudius cancelled all marriages and engagements in Rome. St.Valentine use to therefore marry people secretly and when they found out they had him beaten to death and his head cut off. How many of us actually know this story? I dint actually until google told me about it.

Well that’s really quite irrelevant considering that I wont be bothered about it today simply because there are no girls in my life in this city that I could possibly share it with. Sad apparently… but true.

So I thought id take the opportunity to think about some of the girls that have been a part of my life, my parallel universe theory and a weird but strange link between 3 of them.

November, 1999. My first project week out of UWC I really wasn’t sure where I was going to go and whom with. There was this really sweet Sri Lankan girl who befriended me and said there was a whole group of people going to see the Taj Mahal and then head out to Rajashtan. I thought why not? After all the last time I saw the Taj I was literally half my size in height and id never seen Rajasthan. Besides I hadn’t made very many friends by then and it seemed like the perfect opportunity.

There were 13 of us. The group seemed nice and very diverse. After all the ratio of boys to girls was 5:8. So I had absolutely nothing to complain about. Fortunately I knew a couple of the guys already so that made things a whole lot easier. As for the others I was a total and complete stranger. So we set out from Pune to Agra. I’ve been on trips before. Class excursions that were teacher supervised and everything organized. In this case it was a wee bit different. No teachers to supervise and nothing organized. I realized of course that was the best part coz I was 16. I don’t want to write too much about the trip coz then id jus be straying away from what I was originally aiming at.

She was Austrian. Id noticed her on our way and she was kinda quiet and reserved but every time she smiled the scales on the infatuation and attraction meters in my head were going up a notch. Being me, what did I do? Well I dint say much to her. Really because I find it hard to talk to people I’m attracted to. Not because I don’t have the balls but because I fear ill say something that wont make the impression I want to.

All that changed a couple of days later when were in Jaipur one evening. I was in one corner of the supposed garden of the hotel having a smoke when she comes up to me. We start talking. Lots of people have starting problems, but once you get the engine started you know your going to get a lotta mileage. We called it a day at a half past 3 the next morning. Knowing that both of us had struck some cords. Coz towards the end of the night things were getting intimate. Not physically, at least not yet though.

We spent the next day seeing the sights and sounds of what Jaipur had to offer and then the group split up. 4 of us headed strait to Jaisalmer and the others headed to Pushkar to catch the camel fair. The plan was to meet up on the desert safari. Which was a blessing in disguise really. It gave me sometime to think about the situation I was in, where it was heading and what was to become of it.

They joined us that evening in the desert. One thing just led to another and well it was extremely cold in the night so we shared a sleeping bag and star gazed at those copious numbers of stars that enclosed us……………….paradise

Im not going to emphasize how the next 2 situations came to be unlike the previous coz there was a lot more involved....

March, 2001. I found myself in one of the most serious relationships id ever been in. She was from Bombay and she made me feel at the tender age of 17 that she was ‘the one’.
I remember this one night where I found it really hard to sleep. She had these glow stars on the ceiling. Funny thing about glow stars they make the ceiling disappear. I felt a little too elated to sleep. So I opened this little window on her bedside, which let the moonlight in on her face and then I watched her sleep…. .…paradise.

July, 2004. At the end of one month of my Euro-Trip I fell for someone real hard again. We were in Zurich where there was this huge celebration they have once in 2 years. Fortunately I felt like I was in the right place at the right time. I planned everything perfectly. The timing, how I was going to ask her out and what I was going to give her. All at the end of which she said yes and exactly then, we witnessed the biggest fireworks display we’d ever seen in our lives in each others arms……..paradise.

So what’s the connection? According to my parallel universe theory, since the Universe is infinite there are infinite worlds out there were anything that can happen does happen. You realize that in the eternity of space, there is a planet, just like this one. So basically you could be anything from a movie star to a murderer.

Unlike today where i wish otherwise, I remember on all those 3 occasions I felt like I was on the right planet at the right place at the right time in the right universe. Im sure St.Valentine felt the same way for himself.

I still believe in paradise but now at least I know it's not some place you can look for coz it's not where you go it's how you feel for a moment in your life and if you find that moment it lasts forever……………

Happy Valentines Day to all those people in Paradise.........

Random Acquaintances

Its funny how we meet so many people in this world. We end up having so many random conversations with so many random people that it seems really quite insignificant.
Im talking about people, the odds of whom we'll see again being slim to none.
The nice part however about blogging is that we can actually make some of it significant by putting it down. Simply because it was a day in your life you'd have completely forgotten about otherwise.

Ill cut to the chase. On one of my work related trips to Pondicherry I happened to sit next to a young man named Manuel on our big Volvo bus. I’m usually the kind of person who listens to my ipod or reads a book. Never really one to indulge in petty small talk. I noticed him before I got onto the bus and he seemed like the traveler type. Fast forward a little bit and he's sitting next to me on the bus. He seemed like a nice guy with no hang ups.... so I just popped the question of "where you from "? The next thing I know we started talking about all sorts of stuff. Which actually reminds me of a girl back in school.
In my 2 years there we'd only say hi n bye and were formal with each other. But 1 day before she had to graduate and leave I found her sitting alone on some steps at the wee hours of the morning right after our end of year party. Intoxicated and inhibition less the next thing I know we started talking and 3 n half hours had gone by. We realized that we could have been really good friends. We kept in touch for a while after she left....but that’s a different story.

Well anyways he was basically a free lance sound engineer who lives in Amsterdam. His first time in India he was down in Andhra Pradesh to shoot a documentary on farmer women. In his experience of 10 days there he told me more about our agricultural culture than I would expect to come to know living here for the rest of my life. It was interesting to have a foreigner tell me the upsides and downsides of the situation in rural farmer villages. I of course had to ask him your typical stereo-type question of "what’s it like seeing India for the first time" ... he wasn’t your typical culture shocked traveler and could relate to because I came to see that he'd traveled an extensive part of the globe including parts of Africa, Latin America a lot of Europe and here n there in the East. Like a lot of Europeans I’ve met he dint fancy the west too much, particularly 'America' . Although his view did change when we went to see his ex-girlfriend. He met some people and got to know them and I guess that influenced his change.
How we started talking about his ex-girlfriend and then mine, I’m still not quite sure. But I’m guessing I should leave that out. Its strange what extents you can reach meeting someone for the first time.

I told him about my Corporate Social Responsibility project and we talked about how so much stuff was affected by the Tsunami. It’s always nice to hear an outsider’s point of view. On a lighter note we found out that both of us had made New Year resolutions. Mine to quit smoking and his to quit drinking. Different life styles, but a lot we could relate to...

One of the interesting aspects of the conversation was him living in Amsterdam. I took it for granted that he smoked the greens. But he simply responded with " not all people who live in Amsterdam smoke"! When we think of Amsterdam there are only a couple of thoughts that come to our head. The red light areas, the cafes and so on n so forth.. but actually thinking about living there n earning a living. I mean I would consider living there paradise, considering I could walk into a cafe and order a toke of a menu. But how long can you do that for? Considering that most people think of the place has a holiday destination, and well all holidays come to an end.
Well he said that fortunately he lived a little outside the main part of the city which was more quiet and with a bit of country side and all the trouble makers kept to their touristy zones.But it seems to me that living there would be well....ethereal... of course I wouldn’t know.

I pop out my phone coz I've got a message. Next thing I know we're talking about how dependent we are on them and that we couldn’t imagine a world without it....
He narrated a funny incident to me.... he was filming a documentary in Africa with TheMasai.. a tribal group which most people relate to with the drinking of cows blood... so theywere traveling with a bunch of them.. when they suddenly reached a water source... and voila... one of them pops out a cell phone.... only to let the rest of the tribe know where else they can get water.

It was by far one of the most interesting of my many trips to our known French Colony...
At the end of the journey we parted ways without email addresses or phone numbers but with big smiles on our faces knowing that it was one of the better 2 hour bus journey's we've had. Only to wonder whether our paths will ever cross again....

Whats Your Poison?

Most people already have a set drink. They go out and they know what want. Simply because they wouldnt want it any other way. I on the other hand have found myself in a dilemma pointing out what exactly i fancy.

Beer is a standard. I live by it and dont know what i would do without it. I started with it and sure as hell am gonna end with it ...Most people who dont have a taste for beer really dont know what they're missing out on... Im just glad it was the first form of alcohol i ever got drunk on at 15!






But in terms of hard liquor im really not sure.


At 16 I was the complete whiskey addict. I swore by a certain Royal Stag until I was 18 and it was my standard. I thought from there on I was pretty much the whiskey person. From drinking it strait out to a 3/4th to mixing it with tang .. i lived by it and had the best times with it. I wouldnt change anything only to say that I dont think Ill be able to drink Royal Stag at 22 the way I did when i was 16....


Suddenly theres bacardi . Which ive had a total and complete blast with...
How would i describe it.....well maybe it goes a lil somethin like this.....
"Be, what you wanna be,taking things the way, they come,
nothing is as nice as finding paradise andSippin' on Bacardi Rum.
Living live the easy way,got your way to let it run,nothing is as cool as drifting in the sun light, Sippin' on Bacardi Rum. "
Which I have to admit is an awesome party drink and goes easy on the hangovers.... n ofcourse... like Curtis said..
"Go, go, go, go Go, go, go shortty It's your birthday We gon' party like it's yo birthday We gon' sip Bacardi like it's your birthday And you know we don't give a fuck It's not your birthday!"


there are times i still fancy whiskey, because whiskey is whiskey and once uve developed a taste for it, it'll always come back to haunt you.





Then theres the wine.... white...preferably.....which is a darn good high as well...but it doesnt come in the same category and I just had to add it coz id choose the high any given day.

So basically i start of with a couple of beers, then maybe a redbull vodka to get pumped up n then bacardi n coke to get in the mood.. or whiskey if its scotch or Jack..... and then back to beer coz otherwise ure afraid ure going to get hammered... and well...inevitably.... i never fail to stop wondering how i got back home the next day.



So whats my drink?
Im still trying to figure it out.......