29 December 2006

Quick Update

Christmas over. Wasn't as bad as I expected it to be. It wasn't (still isn't) even cold so it didn't even feel like Christmas. Prevented me from dying from homesickness.

Eating Christmas 'vawksa' - oily, unhealthy, cholesterol-packed, full of artery-clogging fat. How could I not be satisfied? Spent the whole day at the church. I actually had fun.

Now time for me to brace myself. New Year coming up.
I'm going to a gambling party. Might be interesting. Everyone's going to sit and gamble the night away.
And I don't even play cards.

19 December 2006

Christmas Cheers and all that..

So Christmas is right around the corner, and here I am stuck in good ol' Hyderabad.

Christmas parties only make you feel worse...
Even the sky looks like Mizoram sky now. One of the most beautiful thing ever - the winter night skies of Mizoram during a power black out, the milky way visible in all its splendid glory, sitting out on the verandah with friends with a warm 'sikri' warding off the cold...

But anyway, nothing much to do. Except to try and enjoy and make the best of whatever's my lot. I'm thinking maybe I should go to Bangalore...at least there are human beings there.
I dream of Delhi every night, South Extension and Greater Kailash markets...Lajpat Nagar and Sarojini...I can just close my eyes and imagine I'm buying all the beautiful stuffs there. And here I am, with some money to spend and nothing to buy. NOTHING! I already know the few malls and their contents by heart, and I know they've got nothing I want. Would you believe the lingerie section at Hyderabad Central haven't had a new stock in more than a year? They still have exactly the same stuffs they had August last year. Nothing new, the laces have just frayed a little I guess. Maybe they could get more money out of them by passing them off as vintage items.
Lifestyle's lingerie section's a little better, they restock now and then. They were also showing off a new brand recently and I was excited because they were all pretty and cute and reasonably priced. But the funny thing is, every single bra of the new cute brand is so heavily padded I'm just guessing they're targeting 7 year olds. If anyone with 'breasts' wear those, they'd end up with something like Dolly Parton boobs. So again, you look around but never find a thing to buy. It is soo depressing!!
But Delhi..mmmmmmm! Clothes and shoes and chappals and junk jewellery and comic books (oh I think I haven't mentioned this before but there is NO place to buy X-men comic books here!). I'd go there if I was sure I'd be in the company of sane people there but there's very little chance of that so no go. :-)

12 December 2006

Composite Portraits of Scientific Men

Not Francis Galton's this time. These are my portraits - I don't know about the scientific part - but yeah, composite portraits of men!
(Also, I think this is what Rami wants and means by shouting 'update update' all the time :-))
Type I: Not much to say. Might surprise you in bed, though highly unlikely.
Type II: Very nice to look at. Tattoo on his shoulders looked sexy. Inked specimens not always healthy though.
Type III: Middle-heavy specimens = healthy for your nerves. You don't have to sit up nights wondering if he's got an affair with his secretary because most likely, he's not.
Type IV: I found type IV extremely interesting. Very quiet. Comes out for a walk every day at the same time at the same spot. Quiet, brooding, very mysterious, just like the hero of the books. In one word, very attractive.
...plus he's got terribly sexy feet!
Type V: What can I say? Type V is perfect...as far as visual assumptions go.
Type VI: Looks good but probably's a pain in the ass - male ego's in full bloom. Note the body posture..it's obvious isn't it?
Type VII: Nice to look at, probably's got a foul mouth.
Type VIII: The elusive specimen who comes out to hunt only in the twilight. Can't tell a lot about this type but he definitely sizzles in the dim light!

So what's your type?

05 December 2006

Good Ole Boys Like 'Them'

...It all goes by so fast
There it goes, up in the sky
There it goes, beyond the clouds
For no reason why
I can't cry hard enough


John Conlee's singing 'As Long As I'm Rockin' With You...' on my iTunes radio, and it's 10:31 in the morning - usually my most productive hour of the day. I've had two cups of coffee already, enough to spur me on till lunch. But it's cold outside and it feels like Christmas and I miss home so much it hurts my ribs (Ouch!).
hmm now it's Dan Seals singing 'You Bring Out The Wild Side Of Me.' The person who sings this song best next to Dan himself is my brother.
The nicest thing in the whole world is to be a kid during Christmas. Even just being a kid with a truckload of homework during monsoon was better than being a sinning adult during the best season of the year.
Dolly Parton's 'Smoky Mountain Memories' pretty much sums up what I'm feeling right now -

..It's a stuggle keepin' sight of who you are
Ya know I've been thinkin' a whole lot lately
About what's been and what awaits me
It takes all I've got to give what life demands
You go insane if you give in to it
Life's a mill and I've been through it
I'm just thankful I'm creative with my hands

Oh and these northern nights are dreary
And my southern heart is weary
I wonder how the old folks are back home
But I'll keep leanin' on my Jesus
I know He'll love and guide and lead us
Appalachian memories keep me strong

I'll keep lookin' to the Father
Keep our heads above the water
Appalachian memories keep me strong...


Country music is the only music I truly enjoy listening to right now. And I'm in no mood to hear those comments about country music and artists..
No matter what you think or what people say, I'm just going to keep on loving this music....
...and all the artists who've meant so much to me over the years..
...and who've touched me with their songs.
I guess it takes a country bumpkin like to me to really appreciate country music.
So what does it matter where I work or what I wear or where I go?
It's all a world of pretense, inside I'm a country bumpkin and I'm happy being it!
I'd probably be happy living in a farm with cows and chicken and growing my own vegetables. Especially with horses and a cowboy husband around :-)
I love country music! I love all the emotions it stirs up in me.

Like Virgo's unc says, there's not a song with 'Mississippi' in its lyrics that's not beautiful! :-)

Well there’s just a little bit of magic
In the country music we’re singin’

So let’s begin
We’re bringin’ you back down home where the folks are happy
Sittin’ pickin’ and a-grinnin’
Casually, you and me
We’ll pick up the pieces

Somebody yelled out at me
Country music and company kind of makes it
On a sunday afternoon
Picnic lunches of yesterday
Should still have a place in your heart today
Think it over
’cause we’ll all be goin’ home so soon

Pickin' Up the pieces - Poco

26 November 2006

Going to Outer Space?

'..So at a hundred and fifty (Centigrade) below, I bet that if you touched an axe, not even with your tongue but just with your finger, you'd never see that finger again, if, of course, you happened to come across such a thing as an axe in outer space.'

The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky

[Just in case anyone's going to outer space, and just in case you happen to come across an axe while there :-)]

Sunday evening, bored out of my wits, also feeling funny and pukey. Decided to check my space on MySpace, hoping for some messages from one of the hot guys on there. Unread messages and comments! Yipee! And the first comment I saw read:
'Shall I shag you now or shall I shag you later?'
And first message opened read:
'wasssuppp?? would you like to be my secret naughty girl?'
Photo comment:
'Can I kiss your cleavage?'
Disillusioned by MySpace, I wandered off to Orkut. Now I have this picture of me 'picking my nose' on my profile, and somehow people just seem to love it. I get new people adding me all the time after this picture went up. Just shows how we all love picking our noses :-)
Messages and scraps from Orkut usually come with lots of 'Heyyyyyyyyys,' 'Hhiiiiiiiiiis,' and 'Haiiis.' It pisses the hell out of me. I would NEVER consider being friends with someone who uses any of the above salutations. Period.
I'm not at all active on either MySpace or Orkut. My friends list on both are pretty impressive though, cos' I almost always accept anyone who adds me because I just feel bad about clicking on the 'reject' button. I thought I was being nice but being nice has its downsides.
Especially on Orkut - people who just would not stop scrapping you with stupid poems, asking why you never reply, wanting to know your Yahoo messenger ID and what time you'd be able to 'meet them for a secret rendezvous' online. I would've thought it obvious that if someone don't send a reply, then someone obviously isn't interested. It's stupid badgering someone who isn't interested for a response, there are many things that can be read from silence. Annoying Orkut-ers should learn how to.
Whether it's a picture of me picking my nose or me displaying my fake tattoo, let it also be known that I look much worse in real life than my pictures - if by any chance you should think I look like a 'hot-secret-naughty-girl' type. So stop scrapping me! Especially with those corny lines like 'baby doll how can you forget me...You know I was the first person falling in love with you..'
And then there are your real friends who are your real friends but are undeniably also your real stupid friends. I hate it when someone talks about something personal on a public scrap book. Of course I'm gonna delete your stupid scrap as soon as I see it but how many people might've seen it before I do? Yes, I'm talking about you, you dumbhead from Bangalore. You should be arrested and jailed until you're considered Orkut-safe.
There was this guy who mailed me and said 'Jerusha, please call me, *his number* - important.' Well, I thought he was that friend of my friend who I've been doing some work-related stuff with. So I immediately called him, and I found out the guy was some guy from one of my Orkut communities. I was pissed, tried not to show, said I was kind of busy and tried to hang up, guy said 'please call again..,' didn't say anything but hung up anyway. Immediately wrote a very polite message in response to his email 'Sorry but not looking to make friends or meet new people. Am on Orkut soley to stay in touch with my old friends..blah blah'
Response? 'I understand but what's the harm we can try nah?'
No, we can NOT try.
God, it's so bloody dull around here I want to barf! I wish I had lots of cheap china so I can pass some time smashing them against the wall.
And oh yeah, if anyone's going to outer space, mind letting me tag along? I terribly need the diversion.

21 November 2006

The Dignified Cow's Turned 1!!

Yay! Happy birthday to Dignified cow. Exactly a year since she came into existence.
I think and I can't for the life of me grasp how 12 months could've gone by so fast without me knowing where those 12 months have gone. What exactly have I been doing for the past 365 days??
Man, I really need to stop my headless chicken impersonations. Gets too dizzy after awhile.
Anyway, it's kind of funny how things change. November last year, all I wanted was to be back in Delhi. I never thought I was the blogging type, but I was so bored I had to find something to do and voila, I gave birth to this little cow. My whole life revolved around the computer, internet down meant me losing my senses and praying all night for the day to come so I can get my next fix.
Now I hardly touch the computer when I'm at home. Now I have the choice of moving back to Delhi. But in the light of certain new developments, I've decided not to.
Seems a little crazy, but all my life I've always been trying to listen to my head and make all the right and practical and logical choices. Now for once I want to do something solely for sentimental reasons. I guess being a sentimental old fool for once won't kill me.
Got free tix for the Harlem Globetrotters match last week...grabbed my cam and rushed there. Had a good time.

Now I'm trying to find my Euphoria concert pictures but seems they've been gobbled up by the ugly green monster that resides somewhere in the deep recesses of my computer. Anyway, not important. It sucked.

I feel bogged down with work. I'm really starting to miss Goa. There are times when I'm seriously considering quitting everything and run off somewhere, do odd jobs here and there and just live - one day at a time. Might be fun. That picture was long overdue. When we were kids, I remember every person who went to Goa would come back with a picture just like this. Standing on the beach, with the ocean behind you. It's almost like a rule. You GOT to take a picture on the beach with the waves behind you! So there, that's me fulfilling my duty as an Indian citizen stuck on a beach. :-)

Old father winter is here and with this nip in the air, I smell Christmas everywhere I turn. There's only one thing I dream of doing this Christmas - no parties, no loud music but just to be at home with my mother, hot cups of tea and coffee in our hands, just talking and spending some time together. This is where I want to be for Christmas - my home in the hills!


...Where the folks are fine
And the world is mine
If I could only see
That familiar sunrise
Through sleepy eyes
How happy I'd be...

20 November 2006

Just cos it's so cute....

He kinds of look like my dad...When he was a baby himself, I'm guessing my father must've looked a lot like this.

16 November 2006

Answering Biteii's Prayer

Unreal, okay, okay, here's the pic you kept begging me for. Enjoy! :)
Now leave me in peace. Stop calling me up 10 times a day crying for one crummy picture!
Now you can save it on your computer, do whatever you want with it - screensaver? or wallpaper your desktop with it? get it printed on your bed sheet so you can take him to bed with you every night maybe? LOL! He's all yours!

Not a family-safe picture. But not really porn either so I guess that makes it okay to post it up here.

14 November 2006

No Kidding!

Blonde Teen: So I'm taking that religion class.
Brunette Teen: Oh yeah? The one where you read the Bible right?
Blonde teen: Yeah that one. And get this, we are about to start reading the Book of Proverbs.
Brunette Teen: Oh My God! I didn't know the Bible had a grammar section.
Blonde Teen: Me neither!!
Brunette Teen: Oh man, I bet it totally tells you how to speak like God... Except properly, you know?
Blonde Teen: [Gasp] I bet it totally does.
Brunette Teen: Ugh! I wish I had taken that class.
OverheardinNewYork.com

Yeah no kidding! Real people talking real crap. Next time I see a 'Dear the Third Worlds...' I'm gonna think of these 'First-Worlders' and thank God I'm not one of them - I'm gonna live and die a proud Third-Worlder :D

12 November 2006

Where Are They Now??

Do you suddenly remember names and 'insignificant' people in the middle of the night? Sometimes I remember names but can't remember the owner, sometimes I remember a face but can't find a name to connect it to. Usually happens when I can't sleep and I lie awake in my bed thinking of different things - family members, work, God, money, men, sex, or sometimes I'd just think about the breakfast I had that day, or the short conversation I had with a girl whose name I don't remember in the ladies room that day and suddenly, a name from nowhere would pop up in my head. I usually spend the next hour trying to figure out the face to whom the name belongs.
So I had one of those moments some nights back. I was lying there, thinking of nothing in particular when out of the blue, out popped the name 'Sarabjit Didi' in my head. She was someone I used to know quite well, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't remember where I knew her from, or where in India it was that I shared breathing space with her, or what she looked like. Maharashtrian? Was it in Pune? Ahmednagar maybe..? Nah..Punjabi. So Chandigarh? Delhi? I'm almost sure she was someone I knew in Chandigarh. Did we share a PG? If anyone knows Sarabjit didi, lemme know. And tell her Jerusha says hi!

Another name, or rather, nick name that came to me out of the blue was 'Uai-rit-a' which literally means 'heavy-leaner' in English. No problem figuring out who Uai-rita was. He's a guy whose real name I don't even remember. The minute I remembered him, I remembered high school and the dance practices where I learned to dance my Mizo traditional dances. Cheraw was good, Sarlamkai was fun, Chai scared me and my friends because of the likely chance that one of us might get partnered with Uai-rita. If that happened, he'd lean on you, it seemed, with all his weight (and he was a very well-built, muscled guy, and by no means light!) so that by the time the dance was over, you'd be totally pooped, which never happened when you're lucky enough to get a normal partner, which means, any of the other guys but not him. And even during the dance, dancing with his heavy arms slung around my shoulders, he dancing with ease because he's dancing on air, literally...supported by my frail self, I'd be panting and wheezing and praying I don't suddenly pass out on the floor and disrupt the whole dance class and be the butt of all my friends jokes for years. Wow! Something totally fantastic happened, as I was sitting here and typing those very lines about how I used to pant and wheeze, Uai-rita's real name suddenly came to me! Saia! His real name was Saia! That's a pretty common Mizo name but if anyone knows Saia who likes to torture his dance partners by leaning on them with all his torturous weight, well, tell him that I remember him. It's highly unlikely that he remembers me but that's not important. I never was a bad dance partner.

Another name that used to mean a lot to me but which I haven't thought of in years - Sangzuala. I was reading stuffs on misual where there was some discussion going on about a news reporter - Sangzuala Tlau. Everytime I read his name, I felt kind of weird...well, that's not the right way to put it but I felt something funny everytime I saw his name. And then I remembered! The Sangzuala of my girlhood dreams. St. Paul's High School and my never-ending crush on my classmate with the same name. Well, not exactly never-ending but it did seem like a lo-o-o-ng time that everytime I saw him, my knees would turn to jelly and butterflies would flap crazily inside my stomach. Fun days! I was so shy and so awkward around him I wonder now - could he tell? I always thought no one knew, I didn't tell anyone for a whole year but on the start of my 9th standard year, when I thought I was over him because I hadn't seen him during the long Christmas vacation and so hadn't thought of him so much but then realised that I was not on the first day of school when he walked into the classroom and my stomach started doing flip flops again. I swore a friend to secrecy and told her. Thought no one else knew for months. But then one day in school, we were eating lunch when he suddenly walked in and I, responding in my usual 'manner,' immediately dropped my spoon. And one girl laughing said to me 'So he walks in and everything goes hayware eh?' I was livid. The friend I trusted had told somebody else my biggest secret. A secret I'd lived with for a year. I refused to speak to her for quite some time :-) It all seems so silly now. I wonder what he's doing now. The last I heard, he was in medical school. So in all likelihood, my old crush is a doctor now! Cool isn't it? The last time I saw him was several years back. I was in college and I'd gone home for my summer vacation. I was out shopping with a friend, we were going home and were riding on a very crowded bus. It was really packed but as is the norm back home, us being ladies, were offered a seat. I sat down and suddenly saw the hand of the guy standing next to me, holding on to the seat in front of me. Nice hands, and his tattoo! Would you believe even after all those years my heart skipped a beat just seeing that hand with that tattoo! I traced the hand back to its owner and there he was, handsome as ever. I immediately pointed out the hand and its owner to my friend and we resolved to follow them - both hand and owner to wherever they went. Just to get extra glimpses. It was too crowded inside the bus and we couldn't see as well as we wanted to. But there was a lot of shuffling and moving so we couldn't follow him as we were not sure which stop exactly he got off. Hmmmm..wonder if he's married now.
Such a silly thing, feeling all that much for someone and the most important thing was to NEVER let that person know. I was ugly and awkward and gawky...maybe still am but now at least I have the confidence to TRY and do something when I like a guy.
If anyone knows Sangzuala of Mission Veng, tell him Jerusha used to have a major, colossal crush on him, and that she still have that old fountain pen of his that he swapped with hers :-)

06 November 2006

Wear Sunscreen, Rami!

Okay, let's try chasing these nasty Monday blues away by dispensing some second-hand advice. Don't scoff because it's second0-hand. It's easy to listen to, and there seems to be some truth in some of it. There's one lady in particular who I want to make sure reads this. Virgo, cross yourself and start reading! Okay, I'll make it easy and copy paste it, or maybe delete bits and pieces, I think it's going to be too much advice. Anyway, here it is, ladies and gentlemen - Baz Luhrman's 'Sunscreen'!

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh never mind...you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded. But trust me, in 20 years you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked...You're not as fat as you imagine. (I love this part :-)!)

Don't worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4 PM on some idle Tuesday. (Shouldn't be too hard to do if you can stay drunk all the time. One never worry when one's drunk)

Do one thing everyday that scares you. (In a way, yes! There are certain aspects of my work that still scares me but still have to do everyday. But I don't think that's the idea here, I think he means scary like ask-that-hot-guy-out-for-a-cup-of-coffee, swim-with-sharks, surf-a-10-foot-wave kind of scary scary..)

Sing (Gladly, every chance I get to be alone)

Don't be reckless with other people's hearts, don't put up with people who are reckless with yours. (Ummmm...)

Floss (YES!)

Don't waste your time on jealousy; sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind...the race is long, and in the end it's only with yourself. (Not possible!)

Remember the compliments you receive, forget the insults; if you succeed in doing this, tell me how. (I remember compliments, almost as well as I remember insults..)

Keep your old love letters, throw away your old bank statements. (Love old love letters, don't much like bank account statements. So a hearty YES to both!)

Stretch (All the time. Every cabinet is lofty for vertically challenged girls like me. Reaching for the smallest thing requires a lot of stretching!)

Don't feel guilty if you don't know what to do with your life...the most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don't. (HAHA I so absolutely love this piece of advice. I have NO idea what I want to do with my life. And all these smugs 40 years olds, acting like they've done all the right things. Or is it because I know only dull 40 year olds?

Get plenty of calcium (B-O-R-I-N-G advice!)

Be kind to your knees, you'll miss them when they're gone. (I love my kness, I pamper them :P)

Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't, maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't, maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary...whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either - your choices are half chance, so are everybody else's. (I love congratulating myself. And I also get some kind of sick pleasure out of berating myself :()

Enjoy your body, use it every way you can...don't be afraid of it, or what other people think of it, it's the greatest instrument you'll ever own. (I try)

Dance...even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room.
(All the time. Love dancing as much as I love singing. And the nice thing about dancing's that I can be the only one dancing in a room full of people and I'm okay with that. I'll never sing in front of an audience of more than 2 people.)

Read the directions, even if you don't follow them. (80% of the time - Yes)

Do NOT read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly. (I know. Let's burn all beauty mags!)

Get to know your parents, you'll never know when they'll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings; they are the best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future. (I think I know my mom pretty well, I don't 'know' my dad at all. Still, I guess 1 out of 2 ain't bad.)
Understand that friends come and go, but for the precious few, you should hold on.(Or try to be the friend your friends would want to hold on to..)

Travel. (Even if second class's all I can afford..)

Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund, maybe you have a wealthy spouse; but you never know when either one might run out. (Don't have a trust fund, don't have a wealthy spouse. So that makes it kind of easy. When that's the only choice you have, you just have to do it whether you like it or not. And you'll end up liking it if you're lucky even if it means hard work. I got lucky :-))

Don't mess too much with your hair, or by the time it's 40, it will look 85. (TRULY scary piece of advice! You can come find me when I turn 40 and see if it's true or not.)

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than its worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen...

Oww, my eyes are burning! This post came at a very high price so you better take it seriously...or else....

...or I'll tell your mom where the underwear you wore at the Mizo Kut the other night ended up! :D

02 November 2006

The bakery and all the bakers on Halloween

I still got some Goa pictures here that I want to share with y'all. I know you're all probably sick of those. I don't want to make you barf but I'm still going to subject you poor people to more Goa pictures, but here's a breather...pictures of my office and all its happy people celebrating Halloween.






My previous employer's really got something to learn from my current employer. Lesson #1 would be on how chillin' out once in a while sure don't hurt, that jeans and T-shirts are NOT evil! But mostly, I think they need to know that it's important to keep your employees happy, not just plain exploit them.
(...and to think Unreal and my own dear sister are still working there :D!)
Keep us happy and we'll happily offer ourselves up to be exploited out of our own free will :D

30 October 2006

Chicken Soup for the Soul - My Version!

Goan sunsets - Sitting there on the beach, watching the sun go down, casting its dying lights on the water, the soft breeze on my face....I felt as close to heaven as it's possible for a sinning human being to feel close to heaven.
Pictures are untouched, no photoshop, no picasa, nothing. Uploaded straight from the camera as they are. Pretty aren't they?



27 October 2006

Enter The Dragon!

I'm back - with a not-very-flattering-tan and a new tattoo. Check out my new tan and my new tattoo.
So what do you think? The tattoo was supposed to be a dragon. It, however, came out looking like a very fierce seahorse!
Goa is beautiful! It's lovely, the people are marvelous.
Things are CHEAP!
I'm already planning my next Goa trip.
There are plenty of hot men so if you plan on going you better go alone or with other girl friends. Do NOT bring a male friend with you. All those hot guys with their hot bodies....and all they'll do is smile at you and wave when your friend is not looking :( That was all I got - furtive, flirtatious smiles and nothing else. Bummer!
But despite the unwanted tan and insufficient male activity, the trip was still worth it. Girls, wanna join me on my next trip?

19 October 2006

Cosmos, Goa & Ophelia

Diwali! I looove this time of the year!!! I'm going away for the next 6 days. I'm going to Goa. Imagine that...6 days of not being woken up by the alarm, six days of sun and sea and sand, 6 days of no work. I'm going to have fun. We plan to rent bicycles and pedal everywhere so hopefully, we'll get a lot of exercise as well.
I remember Diwalis in Delhi and right now, I'm thanking my stars that I won't be in Delhi this Diwali.

Lemme present my picture of the day - Somewhere in the deep recesses of KBR Park again. Reminded me of Shakespeare's Ophelia. I can just see her there in the water. All we need are flowers to complete the picture and of course, Ophelia. We'd have a pretty nice picture, like so -
Well, my flower fascination continues...I was talking with Sloppy S the other day, and well yes...about flowers. We both agreed our favorite flower of all is the 'hnahsin,' and how we haven't seen those in years because they only grow wild (I think). Anyway, feeling a little nostalgic, I decided to pull up images of hnahsins, opened Google images and sat there dumb - I'd forgotten what they're called in English! And I knew for sure 'hnahsin' wasn't going to work. I wracked my brain but couldn't come up with anything. All I remembered was that they've got this Universe/Space-sounding name :)
I asked Sloppy if she knew...
'Ummm..carnations?'
Duh!:p
I think that's the only flower name she knows.
Anyway, I decided to blindly grope through Google in the hope that I might come across the right flower and the right name.
'Universe+flowers' I typed. Nothing.
'Space+flowers' Again nothing.
'Stellar flowers'
'Astral flowers'
'Star flowers'
I even tried 'Quasi-stellar flowers.' :D
All zilch. I couldn't rest for two days because this little flower bugged me so much. I don't remember all the fancy search terms I came up with but nothing, no query gave me the result I wanted. It was so frustrating I wanted to tear my hair out of my head.
Then finally, second day late afternoon, I found it!
I had moved on to broader terms - wildflowers! I should've started with that.
Thanks to the internet and this site, the name I'd been so diligently trying to find I know now is Cosmos! Hallelujah! So these are cosmos, if you don't know what they look like - Beautiful, aren't they? If I were God, I'd replace every cultured rose on this earth with cosmos. I'd do away with cultured flowers altogether and fill this planet with wildflowers. I remember this hill we used to go to when we were kids. It was high up above the town - always green and always breezy, one rickety windmill and that's all, rolling green hills and the sun and the breeze and us..and cosmos..thousands of them! I think heaven would be a little like that. Everytime I think of heaven, that's how I picture it. I can't think of golden streets and golden robes. I see green mountains and hills and wildflowers and fruit trees. And T-shirts and jeans.

16 October 2006

Therapy For The Soul

I'm trying to think peaceful thoughts...
More pictures from my jaunts across my most favorite place in all of Hyderabad. I'm not a flower person, but one can always try and learn to be something that's good to be :D. I'm going to try and be more feminine and lady-like and gentle and flower-loving and all that!

Anyone know what these flowers are called? In Mizo, we used to call them 'Isua Hlinglukhum' (Jesus' crown of thorns) or something like that. In any case, I think that was something that some wise-ass friend just made up and convinced the rest of us that that's what it's really called!
I like this purple flower, looks a lot like the flower of passion fruit. I LOVE passion fruits!

This little 'lake' is so well hidden I'll bet there are people who walk in the park everyday but don't even know it's there. I have to crawl around under mean thickets and break some rules and climb across an iron barbed-wire fence. So I always have to make sure no one's around when I take a trip this way. You'll end up with dead leaves and twigs in your hair and torn jeans and dirty shoes but it's so beautiful and peaceful out there it's always worth it.
Kind of funny, these flowers remind me of Dilwale Dunhaniya Le Jayenge.
I don't know the difference between violet and purple. Is this flower violet or purple??? :) It looks pretty, violet, purple or whatever.
Now this is pink. Not a big fan of the color.
Mary says this flower looks like an animal! Of all the things for a flower to resemble!

I've been a real pain in the ass, I've become so 'anti-social.'
I lose my temper for all the wrong reasons - taking the lift to the 9th floor every morning and for all the people who keep coming in and getting off in between..as if I own the elevator :D
Restaurants, the family with newly born twins bawling their hearts out (I always wonder why some people drag their fragile infants out to all these polluted, public places. Look at how much these poor babies howl in disgust, I think mothers with young children just should not eat out, and those babies cries gets to you like no other thing does, and if it goes on for a long time, it grinds on you like a painless root canal surgery, not necessarily good - lack of physical pain, yeah but everything else is there, including the mental torment!), the noisy teenagers on the next table, the lewd, moustached, pot-bellied men...not very good for the blood pressure, especially for someone like me who eats out as much as I do.
So I spend a lot of time at the park walking. Taking pictures. And I always feel great except when people I don't want to spend time with insists on tagging along.
So anyway, I have a hard time telling people no so I try to remain calm. I'm thinking flowers and butterflies, white fluffy clouds, colorful butterflies. Maybe I should just enjoy my anger. Wouldn't hurt to raise my blood pressure, come to think of it. Doctor told me couple of weeks back that my BP's 'alarmingly low.' Fancy that! A girl can't even diet in peace anymore.