Marriages are MADE in heaven. And Shopping FEELS like heaven.

D-Day – 20 feb. The day when I step into 50% merger. It’s the kind of merger, where you cease to own 100% rights to your own organization and have 50% rights, each, over 2 organizations. So effective is 100%. But in the end it is damn confusing as to who owns whom. Period.
I will get into gynagiri of Marriages(merger) later. Now, to a by product of the merger, Shopping!
Here is trailer of my list:
Saris: 5 from my parents 5 from his. Plus all the other oh-i-have-to-have-this saris.
My sub conscience: What can a girl, who lives denims, and the previously owner of just a single sari, do with so many saris?
Me: 1 for my wedding, 1 for my reception. 1 for the first day in sasural. I will have to wear a sari for first few days at my sasural. I have to look like a new bride.
My sub conscience: How many first few days are there at sasural?
Me: Ummm.. 2 maybe 3….
My sub conscience: the remaining 7 sari will look excellent in your wardrobe. (Snort) Me: But I am the new bride.
At the next sari shop: Oh-i-have-to-have-this sari.
Footwear: 1,2,3,4….. What was the last count????
My sub conscience: WTF, why do you need so many?
Me: I definitely need a black, and with that sari golden is the right match. And that other dress, blue is so perfect.
My sub conscience: But this sari, when will you wear?
Me: Some or the other time. I can’t go hunting for footwear then.
My sub conscience: What about all the others?
Me: I might just need a white, and green is such a common color. Brown is a must have. And red is my favorite color. I am planning to buy something that goes with red footwear.
My sub conscience: (About to faint). Wtf!!!
At the next footwear shop: Oh-i-have-to-have-this footwear.
Punjabi Suits: 15 plus 2 heavy plus 2 medium heavy( whatever does that mean)
My sub conscience: You hardly wear Punjabi suits. Why did you buy so many?
Me: You know I am getting married. I should look like a new bride for the first month at least. Plus, if I have to go out and do not feel like wearing a sari, then I should have a heavy dress.
My sub conscience: But u got so many saris. And what is medium heavy?
Me: You know that is a little better than daily wears and a little sober than the heavy ones. My sub conscience: Where do you plan to use them? Me: Some occasion might come up.
My sub conscience: So you wouldn’t be wearing western anymore , is it? With so many Indian outfits.
Me: Are you crazy? I won’t survive. But I am a new bride; I have to look like one for the first few days…
My sub conscience: Blah Blah Blah… And what after the first few days of ur bride-hood?
Me: I can’t change myself forever, can I? And my hubby loves western too. So I can get back to wearing them.
My sub conscience: God help this girl!!! So all this hassle for “one month”?

My sub conscience:
This is just a trailer of THE SHOPPING LIST. It runs into pages, which is all needed for the “new bride” look, which remains for 15 days. Out of which 10 days she is on honeymoon, which barely needs clothes. Lol. But guess what, nightwears for every single day (which costs close to 1k). Plus, if and when they go out, she needs new western clothes (new for every single day)
Ya like the saying goes, “She is the new bride. She can’t wear old clothes”.

Me:
Yes! It is crazy. The whole marriage drama is crazy. My fiancée shopped for 1 suit, 1 sherwani and 1 new pair for 1 day to visit my home. That’s it. Rest he says, he has loads of clothes and doesn’t need new ones. I do not have place in my wardrobe too. But still I am not able to resist “new bride” look.
This is when I believe the shopaholism (it’s a self-made word) in every women comes out with full boom. It feels holy to go and shop. No one stops you from doing it. Since you are going to be the new bride. In fact parents are the ones to join you in the holy endeavor.
Apart from the other entire wedding extravaganza that wipes out parents bank balance, this one is my favorite.
But believe me when I say, I am the most sober shopping bride. I have shopped hardly anything.

My sub conscience: Amen!!!

I like my money right where I can see it: hanging in my closet. -- Carrie from Sex and the City
Shopping is a woman thing. It's a contact sport like football. Women enjoy the scrimmage, the noisy crowds, the danger of being trampled to death, and the ecstasy of the purchase. -- Erma Bombeck
Shopping is better than sex. If you're not satisfied after shopping you can make an exchange for something you really like.-- Adrienne Gusoff

Stepping into 2009

Today, when I am thinking as to what to wear for the new year bash , I zero down upon the same skirt that I wore last year. And the year reflects by.

I remembered the exact post “Miracle” I wrote and the forecast that Me and My GOD would have a brilliant year. Well, I can definitely take up astrology , considering this case.

I read all my posts. Honestly, right at this moment writing them seem to be a great idea since it is acting as a catalyst in reflecting the bygone year. Today I could go on with the post. But I am being gutsy and honest here and reflecting my year, which I claimed would be a cloud-9 year.

1. I read all my posts, and I realized lately I have come up with “CRAP”. My earlier posts seem to be coming straight from the heart, and quite a few recent ones seem like show-off. (I guess the self-obsession, got to my head). “One day, your life will flash in front of your eyes... Make it worth watching.” This was my first quote on blogosphere. This year is definitely worth watching. Partly coz of the things I made an effort to do and partly because My GOD was determined to make it worth it. I made new and definitely long lasting friends. My workplace seems like heaven. I have had super fun this year. Did a lot of dancing. Read quite a few books (which includes 3 MnB’s.. Snort) Although I slipped a bit, but stuck to blogging(its fun to write). Went out for trips. My emotions stuck to the upper level for most part of the year.

2. “Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe." - I used this in “Miracle”. My faith paid off its dividends heavily even in the time of recession. (Its better to rely on faith than on money... lol) I believed in getting what I wanted. I got all that I deserved. I believed I would find someone who will love me profusely. I met NISHIT. I believed my job is going to be the best so far. I got great work, amazing collegues, superb manager and awesome friends at work. I believed I am going to put on weight at wrong places. The tyre is bloating by the day. (never think negative… lol). I believed I would have great hair days. For most part of the year, it was so. I guess, that’s end of bragging. (TOUCHWOOD). In case of SHAHID KAPUR no help with faith, haven’t met him yet. (But I fell in love with even better – NISHIT.. so I guess that balances itself) 3. “With dreams begin responsibilities” – This one is the toughest. It takes more than just dedication or motivation, it needs discipline. I am barely 25% ahead than what I was. I dreamt of flattening the tyre. I woke up and ran a few days, rested another more days. Doesn’t work, the tyre is bloating. I dreamt of completing my certifications. Made it through one. Still 2 to go, friends are still trying to motivate me (Thanks Sharad and Roshni). I dreamt of eating timely. Bingo, I kinda achieved this. Tuned my body to get hungry at right times. I dreamt of learning and giving my best to work. Bulls-eye.

4. “Lost Touch” – Made quite an effort this year to stay in touch. Simple “hi’s”, forwards, wishing on birthdays’ (though I missed quite a few). But definitely took steps in this direction. No point, most of them don’t bother to keep in touch. But alas, the GREAT ME, still tries. (Self-obsessed) . But my closer friends complain that I am not in touch enough. (True maybe)

5. “My Crushathon” – found 4 TCG’s (THE CUTE GUY). Beat that, 4 in one year. Hurray!!! 3 in office, (yeah my workplace rocks) and 1 cutest – NISHIT. But haven’t done anything foolish for any of the 3. I guess MATURE RAJI. (rather fattu RAJI and not-nemore-single RAJI).

6. “My DEVIL” – She has been in coma for most part of the year. Although, I am yet searching for the vaccination. She did strike hard a couple of times. Disheveled me, but got back on track. Thanks to MY GOD.

8. “Day Dreams” – The time I spend on day dreaming has reduced exponentially. I guess 2 things played the part, 1. MATURE RAJI and 2. Quite a few of my dreams got fulfilled and I got busy trying to fulfill the others.

9. "Mathslexia" - It still gets to my nerves. See I jumped striaght from 6 to 8, missed point number 7. Damn this MATHS. lol.

I am carrying forward the dream of a flat tyre. And the deadline to reach the half of it is feb 20.

I am carrying forward the dream of completing my certification. And the deadline is feb 20.

New year and I have new dreams.

Few in rhythm with the fact that I am stepping into wedlock.

Few related to finances this year. Hopefully I will fair better than the people running the banks in America.

That’s the gist of it.

Cheers to 2008!!! Welcome 2009!!! (lights, camera , action!!!)

Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man. ~Benjamin Franklin

Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right. ~Oprah Winfrey

Drop the last year into the silent limbo of the past. Let it go, for it was imperfect, and thank God that it can go. ~Brooks Atkinson

My First Feeling of LOVE

Woke up to the rays of the sun;

Bubbling inside with an anxious emotion.

An unknown feeling rising within;

I was nervous of what was coming.

I had heard people call it love.

It made me crazy by the day ;

Sometimes sad and sometimes gay.

The world started to look different .

I was looking like my new version.

These were the signs of love.

The wind flew like before;

The sun still shone to the core.

Didn’t feel like violins were played;

In the same way the breeze still swayed.

Did it really feel like love?

But I tossed and turned in my sleep;

At times all I wanted to do was; weep.

The next moment I burst out laughing.

Sometimes it was anger; solace I found in yelling.

These symptoms definitely meant love.

Havoc; it was with my hormones.

Crazy; it was with my mind.

Different; I was physically.

Confused; I was totally.

I had to confirm if it was love.

I rushed to my mom; my friend;

Narrated all the incidents;

She looked at me and beamed.

Is it love; I screamed.

Was it love?

She took me in her cover;

The answer I was ready to discover.

What I heard; shocked me.

Love it was not; she told me.

It was just PMS; PMS and not love.

That my friends was : My first Feeling of PMS.
P.s : PMS - Pre Menstruaal Syndrome.. lol

Dance-o-mania

Get together a bunch of dance-crazy people, a dance guru, weekends and a wedding sangeet. Tadaaaa!!! You can smell chaos in the breeze.
It starts with one of us getting ready to spend their parents’ hard earned money (I mean ready to get married). And we done our dancing shoes, gear up and lo and behold, there we are all ready to set the stage on fire.
Ok..maybe ..not that ready… The irreplaceable dance guru, “The Akash”, enters and now we are ready. Totally. Period.

One classically trained guru.
A bunch of jumpy kids, who can wriggle in the music in pubs. Basically those people who put their hands in the air and can sway with music. Left Right Left. (They think they are the best dancers in the world… Self obsessed…) And the training commences.

Akash goes , 1 2 3 4. We follow 1 2 3 4.
But wait a minute, from a third persons perspective it seems like he did 1 2 3 4 and we followed 4 3 2 1.
Just for the sake of analogy, he starts to teach “paneer butter masala” and we end up cooking “paneer tikka masala”. There is a definite similarity but hell its not the same.

When “The Akash” is doing a step, he brings it to life. When we do that same step, we kinda send it to coma. We are definitely good, we try not to kill it. At least “The Akash” appreciates our efforts.( He has no other choice)

The 1 2 3 4’s stretch long into the nights. Along with the counting and the song, the distinct noises are “aah…” , “ooh” , “ouch”. All the lazy limbs and muscles stretch to their peak during the dance-o-mania times. In all we definitely loose a couple of kilos (not individually..but in total)

Then comes the finale. The moment to bring the stage alive. The rock performers in all of us awaken and we put up quite a show. We definitely raise the TRP of the sangeet. The crowd breaks into applause. The cheering results in our self-obsession rising up to the peak.

“The Akash” stands there his heart overwhelemed, clapping away incessantly. Thinking “This was not what I taught them.”
Well I did mention, we end up cooking paneer tikka masala. But the point is the crowd does not know that it was supposed to be paneer butter masala in the first place. Lol.

The crux is that we have fun. Those weekends, have live energy in the air. The house comes alive. Dance and music do it. They bring out the best in us. We loose ourselves. There are no other thoughts lingering.
For those hours the mind is free of any worries.
It has to be, you need all the concentration in the universe, to do a step that remotely looks like "The Akash’s" step. Lol.

There are short-cuts to happiness, and dancing is one of them. ~Vicki Baum
To dance is to be out of yourself. Larger, more beautiful, more powerful. ~Agnes De Mille
We're fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance.

Meter-o-logy

Just imagine if were born with the following measuring instruments kinda things suck to the forehead or any other body part.
((These are the definition given in Raji’s dictionary)

Feel-o-meter: An instrument for measuring, how what you are really feeling for the person you are talking to.

The units: Love, like, buzz-off, i-so-wanna-kill-you, neutral, added-to-my-crush-list, lusting-you, respect, impressed.

The meter flashes the words on the forehead. This can be a great energy saver and could very much make the heavens crowded. People would not lie and will not have to pretend about what they feel about each other. This could really spell Disaster too.

Jerk-o-meter: An instrument that displays the percentage of jerkiness running within you. The synonym for this is: ass-hole-o-meter.

Pleasure-o-meter: An instrument for measuring how satisfied you are after you-know-what ;). Displays only after the act is over. Lol

Units: Satisfied, want-more, Duh!! , i-will-have-to-do-it-myself, ecstatic.

Can kinda be a revelation! You are feeling like ohh-wow and you look at your partner and the meter flashes “Duh..” Freaky huh! Maybe it will affect the egos a lot and people might take efforts and not be complacent. It might save a few relations ;)

Look-o-meter: An instrument that displays what you feel, when somebody asks “How is this or How do I Look”. It also has a detector that displays what you feel when you are giving a false compliment.

Units: Hot, gorgeous, eeks, horrible,,, (you know the words)

Frustrate-o-meter: An instrument that display your level of frustration.

Units: range from 0 to back-off.

Will save a lot of energy, expended during shouting at others. And others would know what to expect.

Cheat-o-meter: An instrument that displays when one is cheating on their partner. Units: Simple flashes a red light. It would be quite a scene to see people walking around with a bright red light flashing. Haa!!!

Single-o-meter: An instrument that displays the current status.

Units: Single, Committed

Will preserve a lot of energy expended by people devising plan to hook up with someone, finally coming to know that they are committed. Will save quite a few heartbreaks. And might put the cheat-o-meter out of use.

If GOD reads, and SHE likes my design, maybe someday kids will be born with similar meters. (I personally recommend Pleasure-o-meter and feel-o-meter) Imagining it in reality, I am not sure how much fun it would be or will it spell disaster. But since it’s a fragment of my imagination, sounds kinda cool. (maybe my imagination sounds dumb...but I am loving it)

There is an inverse relationship between how good something is for you, and how much fun it is.

Tashan

Tashan for me is personified by:

Anshu Mordia:
For a bony geeky kid (any guesses who??.. Bingo..thats me), Anshu Mordia was Tashan personified. I studied in one of the most happening schools in my town. People came in their BEST. Among the entire population around me, that female left a mark on my mind and on my tastes. Me and Neha, her younger sis, used to sit around her all the time when she got up to get ready. Anshu Mordia getting ready created the same kind of sparks that a festivity would create in the house. Like a festival involves everybody in the house, her me-getting-ready time was an involvement for everyone. But what an end result! Breath taking to be precise.
Her taste for everything was absolutely perfect, magnificent and eye catching. Her style and taste are deeply etched into my mind. Although I am one of those lazy people who can never take an extra effort for style and I drift more towards tom boyishness, but I know I have taste and that too a good one. Thanks to Anshu.

Pashmin Shah:
Tashan at its very best. Well another sister, of my best friend Sejal (I guess I have a thing for elder sisters). This women’s got class and she has that whacky touch to her. For me she reflects the girl who can be as sporty as she wants and as serene as she desires. A girl with ambition , dreams and energy. She radiates energy. She has innate style.

These two women I salute, not for the clothes they wear or their tastes. But, for the confidence that is apparent.
I may not know these people as a good friend would do. But they both live life like they have always wanted. Women, who have a mind of their own. A strength they exude which is amiss in most of the women.
They are the powerful women for me.
They are women who know how to LIVE life. Independence being a primary ethos.
Women who can be great daughters, marvelous sisters, maintain all relations without compromising on their desires.
Women, who are fun.

They are the women, who live life QUEEN Size.

Well the whole post may portray them as old women, naah naah… girls my age.
And total sweethearts.

Being a lady is an attitude. ~Chuck Woolery, Love Connection

MathsLexia...

Once upon a time every child that was born was to be sent to a kingdom called “Studies”.
The truth being that the parents were given an irresistible offer of a healthy life after the visit to Studies.

So, a petite child of 3 yrs, Raji, was sent away everyday to “Studies”. But the kingdom had an underlying rule. Every person who came to Studies had to visit every princely state under its jurisdiction.

So, Raji first walked into the state named “English”. She immediately fell in love with the people there. There were only 26 people. They all mingled with each other to form different groups. Those 26 people immediately registered in Raji’s mind, so she never had a problem understanding what each group meant. All the 26 people pampered Raji. They followed only two traditions, “Grammar” and “Vocabulary”. Which she started to understand well.

One windy afternoon Raji was summoned to visit a far princely state called “MathsLand”. Excited about getting to know more people and traditions she packed her bag and marched into MathsLand. For the first time she was excited because there she met only ten people. Funny people they were, as they spoke a language other than that from in English. But being a dedicated girl she tried to understand their language. During her first visits she was introduced to only 4 customs, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. She happily learnt about them.

But the truth was however hard she tried; she could not comprehend their language.
She smelled trouble one fine day. A new clan of 9 people had come to live in Mathsland. The trouble was they looked exactly the same as the original 9 people but had exactly opposite traits. She kept getting confused as to who was who The clan called itself “negative numbers”. They spoke a slightly different language than the positive clan. This was when Raji realized that it was going to spell doom for her.

The inclusion of the new people led to many changes in the 4 traditions to accommodate the traits of negative clan. Raji was left dumbfounded. She began attending carefully all the traditions. But when people of the opposite clan came together in one, she started getting confused. That was the start of Raji’s woes in Mathsland.

The “numbers”, as the people fondly called themselves, believed in innovation. Raji found it difficult to keep up with them. They kept introducing her to new clans. She met clan called brackets.

The different clans led to casteism. In order to survive she had to keep in mind the order of importance of every caste before performing any tradition. Brackets enjoyed the highest priority. Gradually Raji started loosing interest.
Visitng English land was her get away to happiness. But she had to keep coming back to Mathsland.

Every time she revisited they would have introduced another new custom, which she had to adhere too. She had to follow algebra, arithmetic, and geometry. She believed in Geometry a lot. But all other customs were imposed upon her. Arithmacy was the worse. It had too many rituals that she could not comprehend. Speed, time, distance, work, people, percentage etc.
Sobbing in her bed, she decided to stop visiting MathsLand. But she was struck with horror when she read the fine print in the pact with Studies, she would never be able to leave Studies till she was aware of all the customs in every princely state.

For 22 years she was tormented, tortured whenever she visited MathsLand. But she dragged along to serve the pact with Studies.
The impact was so horrendous that the petite girl always remained that way. Petite!
The sun rose and happiness bloomed one beautiful morning when the pact was coming to an end.
She had enjoyed her stay in Studies though. Although Mathsland tortured her but all other states treated her with care and love.
She was tempted by an offer from Studies that by serving Studies for another few years she could live a more happy life.
For a few days she gave in to the temptation. But then the fear of MathsLand was so deeply etched in her mind that she never came to terms with extending the pact.

2005 was the end of that pact.
Raji lived happily everafter.

After watching TZP happy realization struck me – I might have (or rather I still possibly) suffer from Mathslexia!!! (yeah! I made up the word)

Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your head. ~Carl Sandburg,