hello awesome

Its 3:54 PM and its a Tuesday. The man of the house has been out for more than 24 hours and is now on his way back home. Like a good wife, I have soaked some dal in the water so that we can have it for dinner.

I got a job. Everybody will now have no content to talk to me. They will probably ask how is it going and I will be like its going fine. That will be the end of it. No more questioning. You know how liberating it feels. Okay not as empowering as Rahul gandhi in his interview with Arnab Goswami.

It is a good feeling and I think I am in my happy place. My usability week last week at San Fransisco was a great learning experience. You know I always used to take the phrase "a great learning experience" very lightly. I have now noticed its hidden depths. I am not ashamed. I am just 25 years old. Soon enough, I will be 26 and then 27 and then 45 and then 55 and then I am assuming it will all go downhill from there. I will have "great many learning experiences" with stories to tell to probably volunteers in the community center. The past of the future will be glorified but we do not want to be concerned about that any more.

How I turned invisible today and had the best rajma chawal ever!

It was 12:45 PM. I still had 15 minutes to kill before I would start walking to watch Cinderella at Century Cinemas. I watered the plants on all the three sides of the house  with the front including the joint project of Nikhil's and mine, the orange tree and the lemon tree. I also watered the second side which got always left out. I made it in exact 12 minutes and then washed off myself to start my 30 minute walk to the cinema.

I got my self some nachos and a coke(Nachos in India were 100 times better). The movie began. There was nothing new in the story and I guess Disney people could not violate the already known tale of Cinderella and her lost glass slipper. The seats were like the lounging types so I could put my feet very comfortably and just relax while sipping the cold drink.

The movie ended at 3:35. I checked the schedule of the Mountain View(MTV) Community Shuttle and ran towards the bus stop. This is a new bus for people to travel across MTV without any ticket to different locations. I had some difficulty finding the stop and reached there at around 3:49. The bus was was scheduled to arrive at 3:50. I then, sat down and thought that I have missed the bus. I gave myself 10 minutes to wait because I was not sure if the bus had left or not. The bus came at 3:57.

There were four persons in the bus including a female driver, a lady with a kid and an old man. Actually minus the white driver lady everybody seemed Indian to me. So you know how in India, a bus tends to stop at every point in its designated route, even when there is nobody waiting at the stop. In the U.S. it is quite the contrary. The bus driver stops only if he or she sees a passenger waiting at the stop or if the passenger inside the bus presses a button for the "stop request" or well tells the driver verbally.

After a while I could hear the Indian lady with the kid arguing with the driver to have stopped at a particular stop. The driver said that she could not remember each and everybody's stop like that.(Seriously three and half persons in the bus and you can't remember). Anyway after a heated argument the lady with the kid got off on the next stop which seemed like a good mile away from the lady's original stop.

The old man wearing a pin striped shirt then asked to get off Sylvan. As soon as he got off, the driver got off the bus and started lighting a smoke. I didn't know what to do. To be honest, I have been treated invisible many a times. I am hardly a looker  and the only reason I was noticed in my class was because I used to answer lots of questions during class participation.

I thought to myself that if this was India, it would have been very scary. A driver stopping the bus while you are sitting all alone in it, is not a very comfortable idea for an Indian girl. Should I get off the bus? I packed some courage and stepped outside the bus. She was still lighting the smoke(How much time does it take to light a cigarette?)

I asked her if there is a problem. The lady turned and was seemed flushed. She apologized and said she did not see me there. She thought the bus was empty and wanted to just chill for a few minutes. I was in no hurry so I asked her to take her time. This time I sat in the front instead of the second last row of the bus.

She, herself started talking to me and told me how she had broken her toe while being angry in her dream. I asked if it hurt. She said it does but she had taped it and the swelling was less. I asked her why she did not go to a doctor. To this she replied that she had hurt her same toe six years ago and knew how the doctor would do it. She asked me what I thought of Dreams. When I told her that feeling a dream as if its real is the best kind of therapy anybody can get, she was surprised. I told her that dreams give us that power to be anyone in them. You do not have to get judged in the dream world. I also told her that from where I come from, dreams which come in the morning were supposed to get true. She liked the idea and laughed that next time she is going to dream a happy dream during the morning.

The lady driver was from Las Vegas and had moved here because she thought Vegas was no place to raise a child with most of the adults being addicted to gambling, alcohol, drugs etc. We agreed that the glitterati was too overbearing for us.

She asked me about what I was doing here. I told her about my home in Chandigarh and how I have recently gotten married.

It seemed as if she could understand the pangs of separation I feel after leaving my birthplace. We discussed how she should just go to the beach and leave everything aside for some time. I heard her longing for a vacation. It made me feel the value of this current time where I have no job responsibilities and tons of time to do whatever I feel like. It made me feel that I have something unique here and should try to make every moment of my present life count. Who knows I might just turn out to be a stone in my next life!

I went home and made some awesome rajma chawal which turned out to be one of the best meals I had ever prepared by now. I also smiled how I could easily connect with a white lady bus driver as compared to some other persons whom I seem to have nothing to talk about.


PS: Have you ever rubbed your eyes so hard that you felt that the eyeballs wills pop out?

Low points

I turned 25 on 8 February 2015. It was my first birthday outside India. Nikhil got a chocolate cake with some margarita. He gave me a card and teddy bear with a bouquet. We went to the mall and then I bought things. My birthday started at midnight IST and ended at midnight PST.

Anyway, thats that. Let me be honest. I am in possibly the worst mood tonight. My room is in a mess. I feel dishonorable and utterly useless. I am listening to old songs of Mahesh Bhatt movies. I have reached my lowest point where I want to shut everybody out and just roast in my own apathy.

I have desisted to write but I guess I have to for I have no choice but to write it all down. The thing is that nobody likes a sad person. The question is why am I sick of everything.

I do not have a job I hate doing. I have zero responsibility. I am supposed to have the time of my life but I just want to run. The problem is I can't run that much because my iron levels are running really low. I am not even feigning interest in whatever others are saying. You know that feeling when you are in a party with friends but do not feel like talking to anybody? You don't get it, right?

Too bad! I am not in a mood to elaborate.

Grab a Doughnut

Probably the only person who would be happy enough to read my blogpost today would be my husband. I am married. Yes, I am.

The months, which went by, made me feel a lot of emotions such as love, nostalgia, sadness, excitement, adventure and happiness. It also gave me a realization more than ever, that life gives you different opportunities to start over, to begin a new story in its own twisted ways.

There is something else I realized, everyday when we wake up we have two choices. The choices being to "love" and to "fear". It bottles down to these two feelings. I won't say "hope". I feel that hope is too much of a beggar. It wants others to do a favor. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't but between our choice of "love" and "fear", there is no dependence on the outside. I want us to value that choice. Between both, I choose "love".

I have a reason. I want to confess. I don't want to choose "fear" because it has this uncanny ability to engulf you up. I have a purely metaphorical scientific reason behind it. We all have eyes. They certainly help us see, but they also act as "projectors". We project the world in a certain way and if you choose "fear", get ready to get more of it. The feeling of "fear" not only creates a ripple of unprecedented scare but it also makes you somebody who makes decisions based on it. It makes you want to do a job you do not like doing. It makes you want to marry for convenience. It makes you want to steal the happiness of others for no reason at all. It is like being that character on the stage who is scared of taking chances, who is scared of taking risks. The sad truth about that is that nobody in the audience likes that man, they merely tolerate it and wait for that moment when that person becomes bold. While you are on your death bed, you will have your dreams, your talents coming to you and asking you, that "we came to you. Why did you show us the door? We wanted you to make us alive? Why did you pull away? Now with you we will die too, but a death far more morose than you because no one is going to moan for us."

I have no reasons to choose "love". It is probably because it helps in the process of taking a leap of "faith" and not "hope". It probably wants you think of the difference you want to make to this world. It probably makes you do things you did not know you were capable of. I was scared of cooking. When I entered US, I simply was rattled by the fact that I will have to cook on my own now. When I started out, I was terrible. I treated it like a chore, not something we like to do everyday. After a while I decided to not hate it and embrace it. I started looking at YouTube videos and blogs about Indian cooking. My relationship has somewhat changed with cooking. I have started liking it very much and now I laugh at my cooking disasters. It has become a friend in this foreign world which gets messed up many times but is the most delightful company many a times. Love helps to bring the choice of "acceptance" to another level. You don't accept or tolerate things anymore. You begin to embrace them and look them in to the eye and say "I will not leave you because you are complicated. Let me learn about you a little everyday and understand you better. Who knows, we might end up having a relationship with each other forever." 

Just like the fact we cannot forcefully start loving somebody its the same with things. I am not saying start doing what you love. It is irrational but isn't that a flaw in every Economic theory one will ever read. 

So in the end I have not taken any choice, but I have put my trust in a leap of faith. Catch me if I fall or well, at least get a doughnut by then.  

Six Days Two Continents--Madness Unplugged

It was an ordinary Monday, 24 May 2014.I got married to one of the best persons I know of. May be the link will help. http://www.quora.com/Who-is-Nikhil-Garg (I am so sorry Nik to put up a link here but I thought its so damn cool to have people asking as well as answering it on Quora).

Our wedding was supposed to happen in Spring 2015 but due to some hassles it got preponed to Fall 2014. I am so sorry to all our family and friends who had by then booked their tickets to India in February. 

It was nice. Everything seemed a bit rushed but due to the organising skills of our parents, nothing went wrong. Most of my cousins couldn't make it. This void was anyway filled up my best friends who stepped in on the stage and made us look better. A few of my friends cancelled their trains to be my side for the big moment and I shall forever be indebted to them for offering me so much love.

The seven promises were pretty much designed by the family pandit skewed towards me and Nikhil promised to honor each one of them. 

We went to Bhiwani, Nik's hometown. In those two days, I had been visited by many people who could not attend our wedding in Chandigarh. We went for a slight detour to Andaman and and had the best time at Havelock Islands. It was fantastic and so beautiful. Our resort Munjoh had a private beach and had the most exciting setup. This is however for a story next time. It was an enchanting experience where we did not have access to the Internet which worked out to be fine in the end.

We then flew to San Fransisco and then reached Mountain View. Instead of the ladies who welcomed us at Bhiwani, the house which welcomed us at Mountain View was silent and seemed different from the reception we got at Bhiwani. After getting some Mysore Masala Dosa from the Madras Restaurant, we came home. 

I slept while Nikhil worked from home that day. It is funny because within a span of 7 days we had been to 2 continents and 7 cities. I was tired and Nikhil was busy working.

I am settling in here and have been trying my level best to learn cooking. We have also started looking for jobs for me. 

This a rather dry account of what has happened by far. I shall tell you some glorious details later. Till then Take care and Happy Holidays!:)

Spoken unspoken

There are many things which are better unspoken of. One of them is that nobody wants to be a part of your pain every time you feel sad. Nobody wants to listen to your tirade of the glorious past you had and nobody wants to know why you cried.

What do you do then?

You simply start ingesting your sorrow and pray that the future is bright and in a moment of privacy, relish the golden life you had before.

Nothing much

Its the oldest story in the world. You are sixteen one day getting ready for your first board exam and the next you are just resigning from your first job trying to figure out better avenues to go to.

In between you meet so many people. Some become friends from strangers and some become strangers from friends.

I can't say there are no regrets, but I can say that few unsettling days can make your track go in a different way all together. A little distance away can turn into millions of kilometers leaving just a whiff of a memory of the journey.

There are so many places to go as yet. Will it be as smooth as it has been? Questions such as these are answered by time, only if we are patient enough.

Lots of roles, lots of dialogue and then plain silence. That's life!