Project 0811 – Page 3

Aug 02: Love Letter 101

Dear You,

You know who you are. I am not sure if you read this blog. Nah, you dont have to be ashamed of the fact. No one does. Its one of those pointless things that people love to engage in. Actually I am not sure if people blog anymore. After all its the twitter generation. If you cant say it in 140 characters, not even words, characters, you are taking too much time and your audience has already moved on to the next effervescent thing. Effervescent. I think that is the word that defines conversations and relationships in this generation. Side note. Its funny how within my lifetime, I have seen multiple generations come and go. From the days when chatting on yahoo used to be in vogue, to orkut, to blogs, to facebook, and now to twitter. Wow. Thats 5 generations. Within the last 10 or so years. Anyways, coming back to conversations and relationships. Split second decisions and short term view is the name of the game now a days. You decide on drop of a hat and you move in an instant.

I, however, am still an old timer. I still love the fuzzy feeling of holding hands while walking on a long road. I still want to send flowery and cute greeting cards. I still want to write letters. I still want to read out long narratives on life and living when I am with someone I love. I want to do all those things to you. And more.

I am the kinds who thinks that 140 characters are too short for professing love. For that matter, even 140 words, or 140 letters, or even 140 long walks are too short to express how I feel about you.

Come to think of it, you and I, its really funny. If I was to ever describe the kind of woman I would want to be with, I could have never ever thought of someone who would resemble you even a bit. And now that I know you for a while, I am sure if someone asked you for your kind of man, I would probably be the last man on this planet!

You know, it was not love at first sight. When I first saw you, I dismissed you as yet another woman who was different from the crowd. But then like all different women, you had something that was, different! Slowly but gradually I was hooked. To you. The way you talked. They way you dressed. The way got the sunshine to peek through the clouds. The way you made things simple. The way you reassured that things would be better. Eventually.

And once I realized that its you, I started making those foolish attempts at trying to woo you. And was it difficult? Phew!

I have dropped hazaar words, hints, gestures, things, all trying to get your attention. All in hopes of telling how much you mean to me. You, however, refuse to catch the line. Is it me who is trying too hard or is it you? Too smart for someone as hopelessly in love as I? Anyways I believe that hope floats and wishes do come true. They take time, but they do.

Pray tell me that you understand. Tell me that you are just acting up and acting pricey. Please give me that smile that can brighten the gloomiest of the days. Give me that touch that can make all the pain in the word go away. Give me that sign.

Your’s,
I

P.S.: Anyone is free to use this letter, in any form they deem fit. If you do use this letter, please let me know. Thank you.
This is day 02 in a series of 31 daily blogposts. Other posts are here.

Aug 02: On Samosa

Samosa, ladies and gentlemen, happens to be the best thing that has happened to mankind, since the discovery of fire. For the uninitiated, two things. One, if you dont know what a Samosa is and if you havent had one, you have wasted your life. Its divine. The crunchyness of the thick crisp shell, the smooth thick and hot potato paste, the tinge of chillies on your tongue as you bite in, the texture of the chutney inside your mouth, all of it is an experience par definition. Its actually a sin to try and capture it in words. I should be castrated for the sin. No kidding.

So, typically you buy a samosa from any of those million nukkad shops selling all kinds of savories and sweets. Invariably, the shop would be called Agarwal Sweets or Agarwal Corner. Or any other combination of words Agarwal and sweets. It looks like that all those Agarwals descended from some other planet and create a base on all the busy intersections and markets and now they have monopoly over them. I challenge that you goto any habituated locality in India and you would find at least one Agarwal doling out sweets and samosas by dozens.

Coming back to samosas, my love affair with samosas goes all the way back to my childhood. Ever since I can remember, I dint really have a sweet tooth (I could face a court-martial and can be charged with conduct unbecoming of a true Baniya, and disowned by my family, if my dad was to read this. Sweets and Baniya are like dagger and clock, like Batman and Robin, like Sherlock Holmes and Watson, like Razor and blade, unthinkable without each other). I liked things a little salty, a little tangy. And no wonder when all my friends were clamoring for that jalebi, I was happy with my samosas.

To put things in context, I dont really have the luxury of statistics here but I bet, India sells more samosas that America sells hot dogs. Per capita. A samosa infact has as much impact on the fabric of our country as much as a chai ka cup or a golgappa has had. Samosa transcends generations, genders, race, age, location, political inclinations, castes and all other such frivolous word that divide our society. Everyone loves samosa. There is no bias. Its like alcohol. If Harivansh Rai Bachchan was alive today, and if he was asked to pen a piece on samosas, the outcome would have been a more convincing case in favour samosa than his seminal Madhushala made for alcohol and bars. I am sure an entire generation would have converted into alcoholics after they would have read Madhushala.

Samosa, typically is made with potato but then there are people who innovate. They put in everything from peas to minced meat to eggs to even ice cream. Yes, ice cream. Apparently, the shell is that hard that the ice cream does not melt when the samosa is deep fried. To be honest, I havent had the icecream variety but I do not doubt for a single instant that the ice cream samosa exists, and is as good as its other, more famous and common cousins. I detest cooking to the extent of actually going without dinner, if there are no options, otherwise I would have tried making the ice cream one for sure.

Anyways the samosa rant has been stretched to the extent of becoming intolerable and its not even half funny. I wanted to write 500+ words and with this line, I am sure I have met the deadline.

But, next time you happen to be close to an Agarwal something, please do order a samosa and dig in. And do share your thoughts on what I think should be our national savory. Wait, do we even have a national savory?

This is day 02 in a series of 31 daily blogposts. Other posts are here.

Aug 01: Of Writing, Reasons and Promises

Like I promised myself, that this month, each day, I shall update this blog. Here is the first post.

And guess what! I am stuck on line 1. I thought writing came pretty naturally to me and I could write more than the longest epic of our times but I was wrong. I have been staring at this page for more than twenty minutes now and I have no clue what to write. In fact as I write, I have not even filled up the title of the post, apart from the customary “Aug 01:”. Once I finish writing this, I would get down to the title – which in my humble opinion should not be that difficult to pull off.

So let me talk about why I want to do the 31 day challenge. Quite a few reasons actually. The single biggest reason being that I want to create some discipline in my otherwise haphazard life. There are some things that are under my control and there are some that I cant control. Over the past few months, I have tried to work on things and have seen some good results. Not that I am a changed man but I do believe that taking baby steps does help become that giant that you always wanted to become.

Second, I realized that writing de-stresses me. Even though I am belting crap that no one in the world would care for, I still find pleasure in writing. I love the feeling when my fingers dance by themselves on the keyboard (I have used the finger dance metaphor at-least thirty times in past five years) and they end up producing a piece that is coherent. The piece may be grammatically flawed and factually incorrect but then I dont mind it. After all, no ones reading it. Not even you anymore.

Third, more I write, better I get. Like everyone who can speak English, even I have a budding author hidden somewhere inside me, amongst a hidden cricketer, commentator, guitarist, businessman, film maker, philanthropist, teacher, polymath etc. Writing is something that I can work on and improve. Of course story telling is a gift that you are born with, writing on the other hand, you can work on it. Did I come with the gift, time shall tell. But I will ensure that by the time I hang my ~~boots~~ pen, I would be an accomplished writer.

Fourth, once I start writing, my otherwise dead brain, the vegetable bit of me, starts functioning. I get ideas that I never thought I could come up with. Well, most of the times. Like right now, I dont really have any ideas that can potentially make that dent but most of the times, I do get those ideas. And I park them in another document. Or scribble them on a piece of paper. Its funny how our brain operates. In terms of creating new things, I dont think it can. I think it can only link up things that it had processed earlier and then make new links and then tell us on the surface about the new idea.

Five. There is no five! I mean I am sure there is a five but I cant think of it right now. May be some other day.

So what all would I be writing about in the coming days? I do not want it to be boring. I do not want it all to be too similar to each other. Although I suck at it, I would try my hand at writing different genres. Humor, Fiction, Non-Fiction (I think this piece may qualify for non-fiction), Personal, Rant, Review etc. I would try changing the way I write. I want to write something in third person (most of the things I write are in first person). I want to write something like a letter (I did try my hand at a fictional letter once up on a time. It was that bad that my friend had to drop the damn project!). Actually now that I am writing about writing letters, I realize that I want to write a lot of those. A love letter, a hate mail, a ransom letter amongst other things.

I think thats about it for the day. The wants got too much no?

And, the title. I will call this post, Of Writing, Reasons and Wishlists. Why? Go figure!

This is day 01 in a series of 31 daily blogposts. Other posts are here.

August – 2011

August 01, 2011

Beginning of a new month. And like all new months (and years), something inside me tells me to create a goal list. Goals and I go back very long. I have been making lists since 1947 and I haven’t been able to finish a single list, since 1947! What a coincidence. Anyways, as they say, “koshish karne wale ki kabhi haar nahi hoti“, today while driving to work, I decided that I would make a goal list for this month. Rather than making long plans that never fructify, I will make small, measurable

So here are the goals for August.

Write at least one blog post each day on this blog. I do maintain a few other blogs (all of them as not famous as this one) and though I do update them occasionally, they dont give me as much pleasure as this one does. So the goal is, to update this blog, atleast once each day, for rest of the month.
Stop eating out. I have been maintaining a rather complex excel sheet that keeps track of where my money is going. My top three expenses each month, month on month, have been Misc (this is where all my gadgets, gifts etc go), Petrol and Eating Out. I know I cant stop buying gadgets. I know I have to buy fuel to be able to reach office (my office does not pay for my travel. Boss, are you reading this?). And I can easily cut down on the Eating Out bit. It will save me some money (which I desperately need) and help me reduce weight (again, I desperately need to do that as well). All the coffee shops in and around Delhi would hate me for this but a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do.
Travel. Thankfully, my work makes me travel a lot. But then travel is one of those things that a man cant have enough of. If all goes as planned, I am supposed to goto Goa and Mumbai this month. Both trips are for work but I will try and squeeze in some bit of personal travel post the Mumbai trip. So anyways, the resolution is that each month, I have to have to make one trip (of at least two nights) somewhere that is not related to work.
Secret. Jevgr n obbx ol raq bs guvf zbagu. Gbbx vafcvengvba sebz uggc://jjj.anabjevzb.bet/ naq znxr Nhthfg zl Abiry Jevgvat Zbagu. Gb or ubarfg, ba qnl 1, V qbag ernyyl unir n fpevcg be n cyna. Ohg V jvyy jevgr n 50, 000 jbeqf. Naq yvxr Zngg (Phggf, bs gur Tbbtyr snzr), fnlf, qb rirelguvat va fznyy fgrcf naq V jvyy jevgr 1650 jbeqf rirelqnl. Hint: Rot13.

And thats about it. If there is more, I shall add on here. Or maybe push them to September. Right now, let me try and close these 4.