Of Hill stations with weird names and Animal cruelty that I can't comprehend!

The last weekend was a long one (surprisngly two long weekends in two consecutive months!! How awesome is THAT!!)
And we had Husband's cousin sisters over from Kolkata. Delhi is hot (and getting worse by the day), so it was decided that we shall take a trip to the hills. What was supposed to be a relaxing weekend for me and my husband turned out to be a super tiring affair.
In any case so we went to spend a night at Naukuchital and also saw the lake of Bhimtal. Naukuchiatal is a very very very small place, and to access it you have to drive via Bhimtal through a super narrow road! It is about 8 hours drive from Gurgaon, and the roads have become really awesome. I have of course visited the saat tals during my child hood and I was surprised that the usual stink that was associated with the lakes was not there any more.
We spent the night at small little 10 room boutique hotel called Spring Bird Hotel with an awesome staff and a cook who even though took 30 mins + to cook a meal would do an amazing job with the food!!
These guys (husband and the sisters) did para gliding and while I would have liked to attempt it, I just could not get around to do doing it. It may be because I was scared, or maybe because I thought that it was too much money and that it was not worth it.. or maybe because I just did not feel like it. So, these guys had a lot of fun gliding down while I sat down with some peace in sun and caught up on a few pages of my book. We then went down to Bhimtal and took a ride on the boat and visited their aquarium in middle of the lake, which was surprisingly very very well maintained!
Our lunch at the I Heart Cafe however  was the highlight of the trip before we returned home that night.

Next morning was brunch and shopping at Lajpat, the market was empty and it was eerie to say the least. Girls shopped like mad, and it was finally time to say bye to them.

In this entire trip I realised that these girls are sort of spoilt by their brother a.k.a my Husband and that when they say that they feel stifled at their house, it is their own fault. (This topic will require another analysis altogether, and I don't think that it will be appreciated, so I will leave it at this only!)
<3 11="" a="" absolutely="" affair="" amazing="" ambience="" american="" an="" and="" been="" bhimtal.="" breakfast="" but="" by="" cafe.="" cafe="" chill.="" conversation="" couple="" food="" for="" fun="" go="" great="" have="" heart="" hindi="" i="" in="" india="" is="" it="" just="" kids="" kind="" last="" menu="" nbsp="" of="" owners="" p="" pizza="" place="" read:="" regular="" run="" school="" speak="" staying="" the="" their="" to="" which="" who="" with="" years="">
On the other front, Shaktiman, the poor horse who got injured because at a protest organized by BJP passed away yesterday after battling with infections on his leg that was injured and later amputated. This was a police horse, and because the media really does need fodder they sensionalized it (which was good, otherwise the poor horse would not have received as much love and care as it got).
But everyday (and I am not even exaggertaing), on my news feed on FB, I see posts from the animal rescues and NGO's working towards the betterment of animals about how people just abandon their pets. Dogs are left on the roads and the people just drive away without even looking back. How in the world is that even fair?
Why are we as people so cruel towards these animals? Why can't we just let them be? If you don't like them then don't keep them. And for the sake of everything that makes you human, DO NOT hit them or instigate them.
Even human life has no big value any more (case in point that idiot minor who took his car out and ended up killing a 32 year old guy who was just walking on his side of the road), so it is impossible to even expect that they would be nice to voiceless animals who have nothing against them.
It is a weird world that we are staying in! 

The Weight Games!

This weekend we took a trip to Naukuchiya Tal and Bhimtal (with Husband's cousins), which meant that there was a lot of pictures and posting on the internet.
Younger Sis pinged me as soon as the pictures went up to tell me that it seems that I have shed some weight. While that pleased me to bits, I also realised that whole of last week I was hardly eating any crabs (Navratras and all) and that till about mid week I had no maid and I was doing a little bit extra house work.
Of cousrse the last two weeks the media has been going gaga about the whooping 108 kgs lost by the Ambani Scion in the last 18 months or so. While what he did is super inspiring especially (if the reports are to be believed) he has lost all that weight by controlling his diet and exercing. It is NO mean feat to lose so much of weight.
And while I give him all the credit that is due, I can't stop but criticise. Not the fact that he lost all the weight but the fact that he had all the time in the world to just do that. Lose weight.

The reports say that he exercised for 6 hours a day. Half of that much time is spent by me on the road every single day to travel back and forth to work. If I have 6 hours to exercise, I would probably become non-existent. Exercising in your personal gym, and having a cook dedicated to make the "diet" food prescribed by the dietician who must have charged a bomb will obviously yeild you results. But to do that while you have a full time job, where you have to travel for 3 hours a day, and also have a marriage and a house to look after, now that would be a mean feat.

It is not that I have not done this, I did manage to lose a lot of weight around the time I was getting married. I did spinning and power yoga for 6 days a week early in the morning. But then I did not have to worry about anything else. And my office was hardly 30 odd mins away and early nights by no measure meant not spending time with your beau (because the beau was not even in Delhi).

You may think that this is a puff piece about the reasons why I cannot lose any weight, and I will not argue about it. But this is the real deal. I am barely awake when I realise that I have to leave for work and after I am back, I just do not have any energy to change into work out clothes and go for a walk. Even if we say age is nothing but a number, the body does play catch up. The only time I have is in the early morning between 6-7.30 a.m. and that is VERY early. Because I love to sleep and would like to have at least 7-8 hours of solid sleep would mean that I need to be out maximum by 11 p.m.

Now working with the start time and the end time, if I have to lose some weight, this is how my day would look like:

6 am- Wake up
6.15-6.30 till 7.30 - Get ready and exercise
7.45 till 8.15- Get ready
8.30- Leave for work
Be in office till 7-7.15 p.m. (depending upon work, but mostly I get off by then)
8.45-9 p.m. - Reach home.
9.15-9.45 - Have dinner.

And then have about an hour with the Husband before I hit the bed at 11 p.m.
This looks good. A very long day indeed but getting about 2 hours in the morning to myself may be just the recipe for success in this long drawn battle with weightloss?

How exactly will this pan out? I have no idea. I have actually put aside an hour with the Husband without accounting for his time. This would also effectively mean that I get no time to read a book or watch a TV series (this may be a possibility, if the Husband is watching it with me and that makes it "our" time. But I doubt!)

So, how about I start this routine. I have heard that one requires 21 days for a routine to stick on, and revisit this after say about a month. And since this is public knowledge, I encourage you all to ask me about this too :)
Let the Weight Games Begin!

The Dinner Parties

The Husband and I have become "that kind of couple", you know the ones who just love to host a dinner party or two or three or maybe even more at our house. It is something that I have seen my parents doing through out my years at their house.

We would always have some one or the other over to our house couple of times in a month. There were at least two dinners a month. And as the accessibility of the restaurants etc became more the dinner parties were shifted outside the house to them or to our trusty club.
But, it was always the highlight of the year the lunches/ dinners and even high teas that we had at our house. The successful completion of that was a sense of euphoria.

Now that I am married, and we have our own space to call our friends, and in the last 3.5 years, that has been an exhilarating experience to say the least!
We had our first dinner party in March 2013 (Wow)! It was also to break into the friend circle once again, and to put ourselves on the social scene. And the rest like they say is history.

The whole process of selecting a menu appropriate for guests, to the drinks, to get the house in order and to ensure that everything on that day is perfect is like a personal project for me and I make sure that it becomes a project for the Husband as well.

We do have our disagreements, but at the end of the day when our guests leave happy, it makes it all worth it!

We actually hosted a couple of friends the last weekend and now we have a major project of hosting my family in the coming week. This is important because, yesterday, I finally opened the last box in the house (it was my own clothes) and it will be the first time since we have moved back that I will be having my family over. It is not that they have not come to my house before in Mumbai, or that they have not seen my hospitality.. but in Delhi, it is a different feel altogether. It is closer to home and my heart.
I am so proud to have my Husband on the same page for having friends and family over. We may have our differences but this is one thing that we both love and do it with all the team work and love that we have!!

The Silent Spectator: A note on the Current Events

My country is in a turmoil.
The markets are in a free fall, the students are up in arms, and there are "Jats", who think that they are being short changed and not given equal opportunity.
There is also the annual budget, and the budget session of the Parliament, where as I write this, an uproar has already happened.

Let us start with JNU, and the politics of sedition. A handful of students felt that the country is going to the dogs (which it is) and they decide to do a protest inside the university campus, where they are just discussing and shouting (like how it happens on the News Channels these days); reports suggest that police is there and don't give a fuck (because at the end of the day it was just a bunch of kids going against the successive governments and how the country is going to the dogs). A news channel covers it, and in the fight of who sensationalizes it more calls it an anti national activity.

The feed is picked up the over zealous other new channels, and a small event of plain dissent is turned into a mob fury and a way to vent out the frustration at students who know a lot more (because they study and understand). The police because the content was anti-modi has to take cognizance (see, news channels trump the police and that becomes an ego issue) and arrest a person who is shouting hoarse that he did not say anything anti national.
More goons from BJP (who unfortunately happened to be the chatri wale do takke ke lawyers at the lower courts) bash up the guy inside the court premises (for the record: I am totally appalled and condemn the acts of these so called lawyers, and it is thanks to them that our name goes down the drain. Hence they should be barred permanently) and the spineless bar council of India (apex body for the lawyers), is hesitating to take any action.
The courts in the meanwhile have become wary of all the drama and tell two others who have been accused to follow the damn procedure. Which they do.

In all of the above, the social media has added fuel to fire. There are half truths, an overwhelming amount of half baked theories and analysis has been doing rounds. The country of the Mob Mentality has been given more food to fuel their mob mentality and pseudo nationalism.

It is sad that people have started reacting first, and reading later. Somehow, the national sentiment is never first priority when they pee and poop in public, demand dowry, kill and rape the women of their own and other countries, or commit female feticide, or when they deface the walls, the rivers and everything else that our country is made of. A few alleged slogans got their nationalism to a level of 100%.....!!!!!! MOB MENTALITY!

On the south west side of Delhi in the neighbouring city of Haryana, the Jats decided that fuck the economy, water, food and travel to the capital or other northern regions, let us just sit on the dharna. Let us hold the government at ransom. Burn the shops, kill people and smash the public transport. Also dam the canal so that Delhi doesn't have water. HA!
For what?
For asking the government to declare them as a backward class.
That they are. They do not respect their women. Or Men. Or anyone. They own lands and lands and pajeros and fortuners and havelis and cows.. BUT they are backward, and special, and should be given special treatment.
Now, the funny thing is that their actions, of holding the government, and the people for the ransom for reservations happens to be more anti national than a few alleged slogans in a university campus. But guess what? They may just get what they want, and a regular tax payer like you and me will be further suppressed because of these fucking reservations.

The Country is in turmoil. The so called strong PM of the masses, has not spoken a word when all of this is happening. The budget session is round the corner literally, and these distractions are going to help the NDA government which is probably going to present a totally lackluster budget without helping any one of the common man.

We are country swayed by slogans, and not by the work done by the Governments. We are being taken for a ride, and no one is seeing the storm building over our heads. 

State of Affairs

The year 2016 has started off in a bad mood (to put it mildly). And, I am not even talking about my personal or professional life (just imagine).

The whole of December, 2015, was taken up by the environmentalists who have very clearly stated that the air that we breathe in Delhi is nothing short of toxic, and that something should be done about it. The reasons given by them is that; apart from the fact that there are pollutants in the air, the absence of air movement and the cold weather has trapped the pollutants at  a level that makes the air noxious to say the least.
While this profound knowledge and the red flags associated with this were being raised the weather continued to be gloomy, and we had the brilliant "Mango Government" (Aam Aadmi Party) come with a brilliant plan: "The odd- even scheme". The scheme simply states that on dates which are even the NCT will allow even numbered cars and vice- versa. The exceptions were single women/ all women cars/ hybrid cars and two wheeler vehicles.
The scheme is now at the fag end, and to be honest, while I just read a headline that almost 3000 cars have been fined in the last 12 days (that too in South Delhi alone), there has been a drastic, drastic reduction in traffic. There are lesser traffic jams, and there are a lot of people who support this scheme in an earnest, and are also petitioning to the government for extending it.
Will it be extended? I doubt.
But, what I really hope is that for their own sakes and for the sake of their progeny, the people have learnt a lesson, and actually make an effort to themselves to curb the traffic menace. One of the suggestions that is doing rounds is to make it compulsory for the MNC's to provide for shared cabs/ small buses. Makes sense. This will reduce the burden on the Metro and on the roads (what a win- win situation).

Another set of discussions and court cases that are making headlines is the ban on the women at the various temples across India. The fun part is that no one, no one is spared in this controversy. From the women (of course), to the media and even the poor lawyers who are fighting this case in the court. Everyone is (in some way or the other) being threatened for championing the rights of women (who apparently are goddesses Durga, Saraswati, Kali, Laxmi etc in the very Hindu Religion). The people continue to berate the non- understanding of the Hindu Religion by the modern human entities and how that modern human entity is influenced by the west. Though, I wonder what kind of Hindu Religion are they talking about because, Hindu- ism is not a religion at all.
Why can't we just be at peace with each other?? Accept each other for the limitations, eccentricities and for the individual person that we are. Why the need of an collective acceptance?

From the refugee crisis, to bomb blasts in the name of a God, is nothing more than a mass murder for whatever reasons that the murderer may have. Human life is a gift of God (or science) and all those who have killed in the name of that very God will hopefully pay for their sins, because Karma is definitely a bitch.

It is the times like these that make me wonder where we all are heading.   

The Saga of Death: Year End Saga (II)

I just did not want to write another post about death.
Death is about loss, something that I had experienced a lot (losing my loved ones, one after the other) and I had hoped that it would be a long time before this happened again.

To be fair, it was more than 10 years. It has been me who has been trying to hold time, and hoping that time doesn't affect me.

My grandmother (Dadi), the glue of my family left us for heavenly abode last week. It has been a tremendous loss to our family and while we know and understand that she was almost 85, that she had seen and lived her life fully, the emptiness of not having her around to constantly remind us to have breakfast, or to wake up, or in general being snarky is going to take a lot of time to get used to.

While we were just getting out of this shock, we received the news of my father's childhood friend just collapsing while on a walk. He was in Australia and he was not very old.

While we cope with our loss, we are also made to think, and made to realise how precious life is, that how important it is to let go of our egos and hold on to the things that just make us angry.

It is so important that we think about what is it that we would want in our life, whether it is accumulation of wealth or accumulation of loving relationships, with family and friends that would last us beyond our days of partying and drinking.

Dadi has left behind a family that is cohesive but also pretty fragile. Our inner strengths and power plays are going to be tested, and eventually (mostly willfully) some of us would have to compromise on the behaviour of the other. It is a long road ahead, and all of us can only hope.

The lessons in life, often, are not restricted to life alone. Even in death the wise leave behind the lessons that we most hold on to. 

Winter is Coming: The Year End Saga

This Saga Starts again.
After a hiatus of about an year, I re start the report on the year that has gone by.

This year has been extremely interesting.
I have travelled, from one end of Mumbai to the other. With the amount of travelling that constituted each of my day (on an average 60 kms a day), I would have probably seen more of the world than the slums of Mumbai.

I have learnt several other hard lessons this year. The most important being the ones related to making the wrong career decisions, about money (or the lack of it), about loving my Dog, and missing my husband, about learning to enjoy personal walks in a city where the personal space is no bigger than where the peak of your nose is.

This year has been about a lot of churning. About how time waits for none, and about, how you think and perceive about the time that has gone by.

This year has also made me learn about Friends and Friendships. And that thing about "out of sight is out of mind". I learnt about, how good friends just move. Move away, and then they are different. And even though we will pick up from where we left, there are very few friendships that stick by you despite the distance.
I found a friend and a confidant in the most unexpected person ever. And, though he is Husband's BFF, the discovery of our ease with each other now ensures that I disturb him at the most in appropriate times.

There were other revelations as well, like, how I always felt that my parents need to really grow up and let go, and how I had thought that post marriage, they had.. well that is not true. Parents, are always that. And surprisingly, while my Dad is becoming rigid in terms of change, it has been my Mother, who is slowly learning to let go. Slowly being the key word. [She has accepted the Dog in the house, albeit only under strict supervision and guidelines, but they are a few meters apart, and are in peace with each other.. or so I hope]. There is a thirst of adventure that has taken over my Mom, and the fact that she wants to live the grand life through us is slightly unnerving, but then I need to show her things, refine her taste, and maybe in the whole scheme of things get her satisfaction quotient up a bit more.

The lessons in love and marriage never cease. It is amazing that even when you live with someone day in and day out you find something new about your partner, on an average in about every 2 odd days. For husband and me, it has been almost 11 years of being together, and he still doesn't take the hints. He still doesn't realise that I am on my phone most of the time, after I see that he is more interested in his! Or for that matter, the fun of watching a TV Series for me is watching it together with him, and for him it is, watching it as soon as it is out. So, yeah, finding the new things..


If there is a reason as why things happen, and so on and so forth, then I really hope to God, that three years after the first round of over haul, when we are back to the NCR, things change for the better for us. No, they were not bad in Mumbai. But yes, they can be better. Career-wise for both us, family wise, and of course general happiness wise.

As, I end this post, in anticipation to the next few ones about the year that flew by us, it has just rained outside, and while I know a certain friend of mine who also moved back to Delhi after a hiatus is going to curse the spell of rain, I see that the Winter is Coming! 

The Thanksgiving update

So many things have been happening around me and to me that I haven't had the time, nor have I had the energy to write about it.

Things have changed.
Yet again.

As I write this update on my blog, I am sitting in an office in Delhi. Yes, you read that right. The Husband and I have moved back to the Dil walon ki Dilli. He got a new job, I took a transfer. This decision was taken a long time ago, however, we were planning to take it a little bit slowly, and had hoped to move back here with a little bit more mental preparation and emotional stability.
But life has a way of throwing curve balls and the timing is always wrong.

So, instead of moving with our timelines, we ended up moving much much earlier. We have managed to finalise a house in the NCR region, and since I will the victim of long travel again, I shall be writing about the ever amazing failed public transport system in this city. [If you have stayed in Delhi all your life, you know for a fact that the Auto walla bhaiyas have perfected the art of ignoring your presence when you try to flag them for a ride, and the buses may be used at your own risk and lastly, even though Delhi Metro is the BEST, there is still a lot to be desired].

We did the most epic road trip to Delhi, since we wanted to get the car and Sugar along with us. We drove from Mumbai to Delhi via Ahemdabad and Pushkar (Rajasthan) over period of 2 nights and 3 days. We had our friend, Mr. Mad Cap Loony, who on my insistence flew down to Mumbai to do the Road trip with us. There was thus never a lull of conversation, weird songs and amazing time on the trip. We were on a timeline to reach Delhi and therefore, we could not really see much of the cities that we passed through, but yes, we did stop over at Mount Abu for Lunch.
The other epic part of the journey was us getting trampled by a bunch of cows on the national Highway. We are all okay, the car, is a different story altogether (It is not as bad as I am making it sound!).

The fact that we have moved back still hasn't sunk in. There are those butterflies and nervous episodes that make me feel that this is just another vacation that may get over any time.

The biggest thing that has happened after our moving to Delhi, was a distinct change in everyone's attitude towards Sugar. While my Mom still stays away from her physically, I get an update about Sugar's day down to the T. From how much did she play to with who all did she play and how much did she sleep and all that jazz. Sugar has somehow gotten hurt on her knee, and has therefore been limping, and before I could make that out, I got a report from my Mom, that there is something wrong with her, and that she has been licking her paw constantly. Of course, there is still a lot of apprehension around Sugar, but it is still better than having a wall in my house.

And this is how we marked our 3rd Marriage Anniversary. In middle of finding houses, staying out of a suitcase and rediscovering the joys and constraints of having the entire family hounding you day and night..

Here is thanking everyone who has helped me in this journey and here is hoping for the best in the coming challenges!