It all started with a three-digit bang. Well, to be entirely fair, it had started a week before, with him snooping around my IRCTC account, ruining my the surprise I had intended on giving him: interrupting his trip abruptly at the Dhanbad station, greeting him with a potla of Dhanbadi littis he seems to dote on. So, he knew I was about to manifest myself at the station. Cutting a lanky figure across the doorway of the train chugging slowly inside the Dhanbad station, there he was, his head absolutely disheveled from the 20 hour journey, vaguely resembling Jack Nicholson (which he would do often in the latter parts of the trip, almost every single time he would take off his glasses and stare wide-eyed and intently through his 15-cent coin sized eyes that he accuses me of possessing instead!) from his barmy-period in The Shining. His much backbroken-about GRE exam was due the next morning in Kolkata. He always complained we never had our "thing". Indubitably, it's got to be "The Rush". Our thing is "The Rush". We had rushed every darn time, to every darn place. To the GRE centre, to catch the trains at New Jalpaiguri, Kolkata and Delhi stations, every single time that we have been there, to catch the buses from every dusty bus-stand, to catch the Tata Sumo's so much a part of an average Indian traveling fleet, and it still somehow manages to evoke the same unrelenting panic inside us, which goes on to say, we still haven't got used to it.

Rotorized Motor Paneer at Hotel Moti

The Rang De Basanti dhaba at Salt Lake Kolkata was the place that got us to believe we have a fall-back career no matter what, a possibility that seems highly inviting given Major 331 will move on to greener pastures. :P

Too many people on the same boat. Time some one called it out.

It started with googling instances of emotional abuse and legality of forced marriages in India:

1.) https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/jan/31/letter-to-mother-forced-me-into-arranged-marriage
2.) Madh Mama's blog:
    a.) I am also in the exact same situation. To make it worse, my parents are looking into arranged marriages already! Today I was called a back stabber, untrustworthy, disappointment and an excuse for a daughter. I am completely drained. I have been fighting with my parents and trying to make them see for half a year now and I have very little energy left.
tambrahm girl's life!

    b.) AnonymousNovember 11, 2015 at 7:31 PM

I am a tamil brahmin girl aswell but my boyfriend isnt white...hes tamil but a different caste. when my parents found out they flipped shits and started threatening me saying they would kick me out, never speak to me again and completely cut all ties with any extended family aswell. they even went to the extreme of telling me that if i do go through with this marriage that they would never come near my future children because they would be of his caste and eat meat lol ive been in a relationship with my bf for 2 years now and i have been dealing with spurts of anger from my parents [especially my mom] for a long time now. they think im stupid and unable to make a level headed decision because he[my bf] is manipulating me and blinding me with love and only wants to be with me to better himself...how stupid. ive been called every name in the book from backstabber to slut, they even talk badly of him to make me feel like crap. at this point i just take it in one ear and out the other. they really need to stop caring about what the "community" says its not like they'll be feeding me or supporting me in the future lol .. its 2015 for God'sake compromise is key to any relationship and they have raised me to be an intelligent young women. i basically just listen to everything they say and not respond because its sooooo emotionally draining.

So here goes my story's not very verbose. The sentences are long and winding. Not very well formed either. Please excuse.

My mother is emotionally abusing me. I don’t think she realizes this. Maybe what she assumes she is doing is a way to express love/concern. Or a way to express her disapproval over my actions – and all my actions, irrespective of their original intentions. She has very conveniently forgotten all the beautiful precious moments she spent with me or she is simply choosing to ignore them due to this initial stage of shock. Shock over the fact that I am in a relationship with a guy who I intend to marry. In the entire course of convincing me to leave my boyfriend, she has tried her hand at everything that she thinks has a shot at working. These include but are not limited to issuing suicide threats, physically harming herself, verbally and physically abusing me, verbally abusing my boyfriend, teary coercion, angry coercion, abusing my boyfriend in front of me so that I feel bad about being with him and leave him merely due to the fact that he will never be respected in my family, asking my relatives to coerce me, emotional blackmail of the topmost notch, lying, driving her car into a wall, refusing to eat, blocking me from all social platforms like Facebook, Whatsapp, etc. and completely icing me out. All this because my boyfriend doesn’t belong to the same state to which I do back in India. Funnily enough, I wasn’t even raised in the said state back when I used to live in India. I recently broke up with my ex-boyfriend of three years. Instead of providing me with any emotional comfort, she had hounded me about she had been right about the guy all along (she never approved of him either). My current boyfriend used to be my best friend for a long time before we realized we have feelings for each other. So, my mother knows him. She has known him for almost two years. When I had to tell her about my boyfriend because of the fact that she was arranging to get me married to some guy whose parents she had met online through an arranged-marriage-enabling website in India (*rolls eyes*; don’t get me started), the idea of me being with him didn’t bide well with her at all too (*surprise surprise*). She was visiting me in Kentucky when I told her about my intention to get married to my boyfriend, she immediately strong-armed me into advancing her tickets back to India and left within a week by launching a hunger strike. She has made it impossible for me to talk to her or contact her in any way. She has made it clear she will only talk to me if I not only break up with my boyfriend immediately, but also agree to meet these random guys she had picked for me to get married to. Unless I agree to do that, she has sworn to not talk to me. Strangely, she expects me to do this, and wouldn’t extend the same courtesy to the guy who she has known for two years as my friend and have a rational discussion with him.

A week after I told her about my boyfriend, when she seemed to have calmed down a little bit after her initial bout of anger and tantrums, I casually asked her if she has blocked my boyfriend on Facebook, in response, she hit me on the face in a laundromat we were at near my house. She left for India the day after. My dad doesn’t stay with my mom. He works in Qatar. So back in India, there is no one to keep an eye on her. My relatives keep calling me and sending me on severe guilt trips of the top-notch quality about how my mother’s health is failing with each passing day because of my ‘antics’. Meanwhile, I am supposed to stay strong without asking for help and/or sympathy from any external agency. I have no siblings. My boyfriend’s siblings have been exceptionally kind to me which my dad appreciates. Because no one in my so-called family gives a damn about me. No one has bothered to ask me how I am. I will tell no one that I am slowly descending into such an abyss of depression and paranoia that I regularly google assisted suicide laws in this country. I have started keeping a track of when the grade crossing behind my apartment shuts down. I don’t want to extort any one, least of all my own parents, into letting me have my own way by making them feel guilty of my suicidal intentions. But I have begun to relapse into my childhood bouts of self-harming. There is a spot on the left tip of my forehead which when I cut, I feel assuaged of the guilt that these people are so intent on making me feel responsible for. Now that I am mature enough to know what it is called, I realize I had been emotionally abused as a child too. Apparently, how my mom is choosing to behave and what she is doing is considered socially acceptable, warranted and even reasonable. What I am doing is deplorable, abusive to my parents and inconsiderate. No one in my family bothers to call me up and ask how I am faring. They seem to think that once you are in a relationship which your parents disapprove of, you are automatically happy 24*7. They assume it takes no toll on you if your parents emotionally abuse and stop talking to you. All the hurt is felt by the parents alone. But that is okay, I don’t want to ride the pity train any way. Soaking in a pity bath to get my way will make my resolve look like something I decided to do just in order to be contrarian and to get on my parents’ nerves. Although, my father calls me up every day to check on me and make sure that I am as strong as ever and am not succumbing to any emotional trauma. I am making it appear as if I am, I am really trying very hard to not lose my mind over my mother’s behavior. Because I want to stay sane until the pair of them agree to talk to me. If I lose my sanity before that happens, it is an endless abyss. This behavior of her makes me sad. I know she is only doing all this to make me agree to marry a Bengali person. Meanwhile my father keeps sending me all these pictures, videos and quotations related to my childhood. When he talks to me on phone he respects my decision to not discuss about the issue until I take my PhD qualifiers. He even made it appear once as if he is ready to have a discussion about it (although he made it pretty clear what the end of the discussion is going to be like) by quoting Boromama’s example of needing an extraordinary amount of time to accept something which goes even slightly against what you took for granted as being default. But what exactly he aims to achieve by sending all these pointedly nostalgic pictures and video recordings I have no idea. Maybe his intentions are not all that sinister (or at least, not so obviously sinister as are my mom’s hysterics). Maybe they are. I have no way of knowing. Only because I am a glass half full kind of a person do I assume that he might be the one with a slightly sounder mind and an open rationale. It is my fault too to some extent I think. I have started over-analyzing everything that the pair of them does. I should probably not subject dad’s actions to such over analysis. Ugh, I don’t know. Maybe I should. Especially since I came to know that my parents are devising a plot to overthrow my relationship by dealing with it ‘tactfully’ (in their own words), I have stopped taking anything at face value. Meanwhile, my boyfriend’s sister, Nitya has provided me with heaps of advice that I never even asked for. She has got to be one of the most emotionally stable and supportive people I have ever come across in my life. She does not even know me that well and she has extended her unconditional support and love to me. She has opened her heart and her home to me in a way none of my friends ever have lately. Since I have started texting her, I have started to regain my stability and have developed a new vigor afresh to face my dad without over scrutinizing his actions and have started sending normal picture messages to my mom without caring a dime about if she replies. My mom ignoring me to make me feel like a filthy rat has started to not bother me so much since I started speaking to Nitya. She has provided me with a kind of self-assurance based on which other people’s approval has started meaning lesser to me with each passing moment. That is kind of saying a lot for a person like me. Maybe it is due to the fact that this is probably the first time in my life that someone has shown faith in me without expecting absolutely nothing in return and in the true sense of the word, sans-condition. It may look like I am over-adulating my boyfriend’s family but I am awed at the way Ganesh himself is handling the situation. I am astounded at his patience and the infinitesimal number of times he has flown into a temper given he is one of the most impatient people I have ever had the misfortune to meet in my life, let alone fall in love with. Prior to all this, I used to think that every action, act of coercion and whatever melodrama my mom subjects me to is all fueled by just one motive-seeing me happy. Maybe she goes overboard and towards borderline hysteria and resorts to unknowing abusive tactics to achieve just that one goal-a happy me. Now, I am not sure. I am not very proud of this, but I secretly go through my mom’s Facebook chats occasionally. She has been discussing with my dad how to handle this affair ‘tactfully’ and how to coerce me into genuinely believing that my boyfriend is indeed an inscrutably unscrupulous and evil guy. And how that is the only way to get me apart from my boyfriend. A few weeks ago, she wrote that by hook or by crook, she will get me married within 6 months by making me voluntarily leave my boyfriend. I don’t know how is that even possible and what that even entails. It might mean that she would frame him for something. I don’t even know if she meant what she wrote. But that makes me scared. More than that, it makes me sad. I have always believed that respect for anyone, even parents, is earned. And it is a child’s responsibility to value and respect his/her parents. But that sense of responsibility is now getting diluted into ever-diminishing proportions mixed with the plethora of evidence against her. I have always known my mom to be a very loving, genuine and generous person. She has always had everyone’s best interests at heart and is a very soft spoken lady who you would never believe would sink to such depths just because something is not going her way. You realize what a person is like by the way he/she reacts to or deals with situations that occur against their wishes. It is a shocking jolt to reality for me. I still don’t believe she wants to hurt me in any way but that’s not on the top of her priority list now. Getting me married to a guy of her choice is at the top of her priorities now. Everything is secondary. Once among all this hysteria, she has even gone so far as to tell me that I MUST get married to someone of her choice and that I am free to divorce him after a couple of months if I want to. That’s just a sampler of what truly is driving her now. After a certain time, I will not be able to listen to her abusing the love of my life. It is only going to be so much after which I will expect you to respect my man, at least show one tiny fraction of the respect to him as do I (and him too by the way, after listening to you abusing him at a length) to you. Incidentally, my boyfriend used to love my mother. Yes, love her, not just respect her, love her, before all this muck started taking place. It is indeed sad that the way she has maligned things, I don’t think he can ever go back to respecting her (, although it will be a mark of how much he loves me if he chooses not to mention how much he hates my mother). It is merely a war of ego and a desire of will to persist now. The trouble is that now that I have seen this side of hers it has become impossible for me to trust her any more. She has lied to me about how my boyfriend treated her when I was right there on a video chat with him when she had called him (to abuse him). How will I ever trust her again? She may choose to forget how much I love her and how much I want to see her happy, dent the car I gifted her, block me and the memories of the trip to the Smoky Mountains National Park that I took her to visit when she was here, but it is impossible for me to forget and ignore the endless backrubs she has given me over the years, the dresses she secretly used to buy for me when we were not so well off and the sleepless nights she spent for my benefits. She is my mother and no one can alter that fact, not even her, her emotionally abusive behavior or her crazy tantrums. So if she chooses to continue with it, it is her call. I don’t want a person in my life whose presence is dictated by the identity of my marital decisions. If she wants a repayment for all the love and care she has showered on me, I am not equipped enough to carry that out. No one can repay that; most of all, my decision to break up with my boyfriend to marry someone of her choice would be an exceptionally ugly currency of repayment as that would entail a lifelong period of embitterment and frequent distrust over the most innocent of her actions. Today, after she gave my number to another stranger she picked up at BengaliMatrimony.com, I was forced to google about laws concerning forced marriage in India. Apparently, emotionally blackmailing and issuing suicidal threats to your children to coerce them into marrying against their will is illegal to some extent. So, after this initial phase of shock and denial subsides, if she is still unaccepting of my life choices and decides to remove herself from my life, I will have to be okay with that. She has threatened to curse me into a life of hardships and marital discontentment (she believes a mother’s curse always works) if I decide to marry my boyfriend and if that stems from the mere bitterness of her wishes not getting fulfilled, so be it. The way I see it, I don’t think I would have ever striven well anyway if the blessings of my own parents were bound taut with conditions.

Right now, after disconnecting me from her in every way, she is trying to give me a taste of what my life would be like if she is absent from it in the hope that it drives me morose and sad, and I consequently dump my boyfriend and agree to do as she says. Sadly, what she doesn’t realize is that what is not killing me is making me stronger. Unknowingly, she is digging a hole for herself. She is making me get used to surviving without her, I wake up every morning and weep for about 15 minutes before getting out of my bed. If she keeps up this charade, soon, I will stop weeping for her because that part of my brain which is used to feelings of affections from her will turn stoic. It is like breaking up with a boyfriend, except that this would take a little more time to get over from as this is my mother. I have had a relationship with her for 24 years. And usually break ups are caused by mutual faults. The way I see it, I have been abused by my own mother, so maybe this breakup may even be a little easier to get over. What she doesn’t realize is that even if I do give in and marry someone of her choice, my relationship with my mother will never return to what it used to be and no daughter who has ever loved her mother would want to hate her for the rest of her life. But if she continues this, she will make building a world without her in it that much easier for me. The mere thought of this turns me into a weeping ball of mess. She honestly believes all these tantrums work and are even healthy and pardonable if she is able to achieve what she thinks is the correct course of action for my life. A few years ago, my aunt and uncle did almost the same with my cousin after they found out she had a boyfriend in college. They had iced her out completely and stopped interacting with her at all. She was not even allowed to pick her younger brother up. The result as they know it was a happy ending for them. She broke up with her boyfriend for her parents’ sake and made sure they knew it. Everything returned back to normal. She was welcomed with open arms and was showered with adulation, love and admiration over her decision to break up with her boyfriend. For them, it was the end of the story and they never bothered to find out what happened to her next. She had started living two different lives. She lost the compass of her morality and started sleeping around. She has claimed on multiple occasions that she is not courageous enough to tolerate that kind of behavior from her parents. She came back to her senses after she found out that she was pregnant before she turned 21. She had to get an abortion on her own and not let anyone in the family know about it. What is remarkable is that she didn’t even break up with her boyfriend because she had any semblance of love or respect for her parents, not once, even to her closest confidante, did she claim that respect or love was what drove her decision to break up with her boyfriend. She has always maintained it was her inability to take a stand and fight back. The absence of her resolve to stand up against her parents’ emotionally abusive behavior was what turned her into what she became.

Mom and especially Dad, who is the only one I trust any more to give my rant an iota of rational thought, I request just one thing of you. Don’t make me lose my integrity and my resolve. Don’t push me to the brink of turning into a remorseless warrior who has lost every facade of moral correctness. The fact that I am courageous enough to stand up for what is right and strong enough that I am not threatening to kill myself like mom is and who I am, in every respect of the term is a mark of what you raised. Please learn to be proud of it rather than trying to belittle it like how mom is doing. She has made it appear like it is my ethical responsibility to sacrifice my love, my life, my morals and my principles to repay what I owe you for raising me by just one act – marrying a Bengali. Every other act of my respect and love for you people is inconsequential for her. I disagree. I can only repay you by being a completely honest version of myself before you. That’s the only thing which separates my identity from anarchy, which helps me distinguish wrong from right. In my mom’s eyes, icing out your kids, and emotionally abusing them by sending them on regular guilt trips is justified because it brings results (cue: my cousin’s story) because she is so confident that her upbringing has resulted in an incredibly moral and righteous kid (whom she feels she needs to protect and save from the big bad world) who will never betray her husband once she is forced into matrimony by any means possible. I too believe I am that person. I will never betray my husband and my values once I marry. But it’s a two-way train. I will never betray myself too. The resolve to stay true to my rectitude and virtue is not selective. Don’t test it and least of all, please don’t force me to be someone I am not. This would completely ruin everything you have sought to see in your daughter. You have already raised me. Now it is time to trust me.

Exploits de` Dragonular December----Part 2: THE ARRIVING, THE STAY

MOOD INDIGO

Before starting to expound on this particular and incessant yin-provider chapter of my trip, I would like to make a declaration. This expanse of four days happen to be one, if not the most memorable time of my life as on this day of 1st January, 2012. Therefore any instance of dramatization and exaggeration should by compassionately forgiven and not accounted for.

I, whose word power has already declined to alarmingly sloppy levels, will surely not be able to string it all up in words...so first things first...I think I'll have to invent a whole new lexicon to describe precisely how I categorically feel about the whole thing...just almost like that impossible girl "RAAGA" did in DIL KABADDI to arrive at a precise, descriptive word about "husbands"... (yes, totally laughable!)

I (we) reach Mumbai, after the two-hour lone travelling siesta, we finally alighted at the Kalyaan station, on the dubious and purely sheer guesses of a "respected" senior who had absolutely nothing listed to his credit about Mumbai to guarantee a righteous decision...but on the occasion of a complete void of any other suggestion provider, we religiously subverted to his advice. After another half an hour of aimless wandering about the station, and asking local tea vendors about the much-needed advice on local-train conveyance in and around Mumbai, which made us look almost like a bunch of lost, hapless, third-world tourist contingent, we managed to gather that a certain station called Kanjurmarg is the aptest station to go, for reaching Powai Vihar. Incidentally, Aman had also mentioned the same when asked, but the fact being, I could not remember this overtly Marathi name at all, (I actually ended up mumbling Kodaikanal, thankfully, only to myself :P) I had kept mum throughout this excruciatingly embarrassing session of ignoble questioning.

One of the chief reasons I was farthest looking forward to this trip was, I had a painfully grinding fortnight at my own college, just before emplaning. I don't fancy my bragging about exactly what I did, but 

really looked fwd to take a break after the hectic fortnyt at my own college after organizing two mini literarure n quizzing fests...do din se kuchh khaaya nahi tha n mom claimed by face looked like that of an underfed sparrow...yes it did...i gathered after looking at the auto-rikshaw mirror....after encountering a mirror after 4 days flat!!!

Standing at the entrance of India's best college, watching a humongous rush of students, all impatiently trying to get inside the gates of an institute they all, at some or the other point of their lives, with different magnitudes of desire, wanted to get admitted into, in itself answered the plethora of doubts that topsy-turvied my intestines throughout the journey. This is the place I had yearned to be in, although agreeably, not with the desired amount of ardour that would have forced me to work harder than I did in those seemingly impossible couple of years, had tortured myself poring over subjects that were beyond me, had gained 30 kilos of extra weight doing absolutely nothing (yes, I was almost 80 kgs when I started my college, those extra pounds have thankfully vanished owing to the magnanimous size of my campus, and the forgo-able food served in our mess, where, for some strange, undeciphered reason, we pay to be fed in) and forgot to look attractive with braces adorning my geeky appearance. This was the place, I would have been, if all had gone right, if on that fateful day, I had not stepped inside the kitchen trying to satiate my ever-growing hunger for anything edible ,and if the rice starch would not have burnt my back, and if there would have been enough aloe vera inside the fridge, and if our house would not have been so far from the hospital, and if I had not missed the couple of months of organic chemistry whiling away precious time on a queen-size bed all the way down in Chennai. Arghhhh...horrible remeiniscences never ornamented any blog, and I feel too lazy delete the wordiness of what's written above. Honestly, this was a place to BE in.
Anyways, Aman (The Techfest Guy, dude..this nick is going to take major proportions later in the story) comes to meet at the Gate. Honestly, when an old and super-eminent friend meets you at the end of a 29 hour long Indian train journey, you feel everything, the whole caboodle of profligacy and courageousness was totally worth the pain.
Quite unexpectedly, I am still having trouble believing this actually happened and the fact that I don't possess a  single photograph of the trip doesn't help either. One particularly jocular friend whose nick is unfit to be publicly declared actually took advantage of this fact trying to trick me into believing that none of this  happened  de facto and I was merely suffering from another of my drastic-daydreaming-bouts, only a particularly major one this time.

SAC-The Student Activity Center of IITB was reached by adopting one of their heftily efficacious modes of transport, the bus. The entrance to the place featured a stupendous multitude of PEOPLE. I mean, sooooo many same-aged people, all huddled up in a place clearly dissident to handle such crowds, waiting for accommodation, (now THAT alarmed me...after a 29 hour journey, any commonplace female concerned about preserving her sanity, would be completely stumped at the prospect of waiting for another 10 hours, just to get a place for slumbering their clearly-not-meant-for-any-more-exertion-body). The place was teeming with pioneering food stalls with terrifyingly exorbitant rates. After another couple of hours of idleness and eventlessness (as the Techfest Guy was catering to his indispensable duty at The Techfest organization) I discovered the presence of a Bath at the SAC, and much to add to my joy,it was clean. Leaving my things (AND a Manchester United original merchandise "Black Jacket") with a girly-gang clearly not meant for handling other people's stuffs, I hurried to melt down 29 hours worth of grime collected over a vast expanse of 5 states. Having managed to find a great pastime at last, which lasted for an hour, I was jigsawed at a certain hostel 8. Portraying great time management skills, The Techfest Guy reached exactly at the same moment (I fancy giving myself the liberty of saying that as I am unaware of the exact amount of time Aman spent standing outside the SAC). Following another painfully boring hour of waiting to get fitted at the hostel, we finally embarked where I would first taste the unrestricted and supposedly addictive Mumbai air. Aman promised to take me to a "Stud-maxx" place, where he said, the world's greatest garlic breads are served, and that the ambiance is "God"...After a fatal wait near the much coveted gate once again, where the auto-wallahs were more choosy than the kids, nowadays, are with their food, we managed to reach Pop Tates..the "unrestaurant"..where again we were duped by an unavailingly long queue, which remaindered enough time for  a quick coffee at a nearby CCD..How I missed my hard earned coupons following the precedent tiring week isn't exactly what I would like to launch into a discussion about at this late hour. Yes, it is 3:35 in the morning...n its drizzling here in Ranchi...my hands have almost frozen from typing, I am UNBELIEVABLY sleepy, and the only reason I am still struggling here with my eponymously delayed article is that I undertake such petty challenges a bit too seriously than presumed.
The Pop Tates tale was another unforgettable stretch of two hours indeed..after warming the seats at the bar for about 20 short minutes, that mostly comprised of us altercating between the random-est things under the moon, no breezers (or anything loftier in the hierarchy) needed to provide any kick whatsoever, gazing at the framed posters of Rolling Stones list of top 50 bands of all times, with live telecast of "The Hard Rock Cafe" blaring mutely in the background, and Aman finally declaring the place to be closest to his preposed Heaven (read Goa), we helped ourselves to a particularly sumptuous (veggie) meal, to kick start Mood I and it didn't harm either that the dessert at the end was free, fit for manic gluttons, totally exclusive to the fact that we were so full we could not complete the paid-for pizza, leaving which unfinished had no otherwise legitimate reason whatsoever. Followed the visit to the almost boarded up R-city (which, believe me, was the need of the hour, as I had foolhardily not brought any of my summer clothes owing to the infamous sub-zero temperatures at Mesra and my complete inability at predicting a stark contrast somewhere within the same country), the pointless and crazy reverberation between an affordable and a chic cinema, finally ending on the chic one (you can always expect such happy and coincidental endings to dilemmas with the Techfest Guy around) for the nail-biting, seat-shifting and O-mouthed movie MI4 (not, aptronymically, to be confused with MoodI). Interrupted by a shifty phone call claiming to have discovered my lost ManU jacket made by one of my own college seniors and the fabricated conversation extending teeteringly dangerously into the night, I could not wait to snuggle up inside my sheets and finally call it a day.
The next morning (technically just a few hours away) was inaugurated by a failed attempt to get up at the crack of dawn for a ride on the Hot Air Balloon scheduled to be queued for at 4:30 AM, calling up Ravi and explaining to her in length (and in roaming) about the events happened yet, trying to make her feel jealous and guilty about abandoning the trip altogether and a disastrous discovery of my arms being carelessly left unwaxed. Using a sworn-never-to-be-used cream, and skipping the sleeping bodies of many unrecognized silhouettes, breakfast was had at the canteen, which would cater to the cuisine needs of almost all the guests at campus for the next four days, after The Techfest Guy was done with his Techfest Thingy. No quizzing events were lined up for the first day of the fest, and I, with Aman, bursting with energy appeared for Word Games, which at the end of it, were a serious blow to my supposed braggadocio and the fact that we were late by 40 minutes didn't exactly made us jump with happiness either.
Moksha, my oldest friend, in true sense, my "Diaper Buddy" entered the scene here. She made a dramatic entry into the Lecture Hall where the verbose Wordy Games were going on, and was received by me with a great show of plain, raw anticlimax. The fact was that, I could still not drink on the fact that I was decisively meeting her, after a gap of more than 3 years. And Dude, did she change, being completely metamorphosed into a Manipal girl..like an MIT girl and all..slim beyond recognition, tanned, lensed, with a girlish purse dangling from her arm, a flashy cellphone somewhat remotely similar to Aman's (My Karbonn seriously needed space to breathe at this point of time...it was enjoying a peculiar sense of exclusive superiority like baby rabbits do in the presence of growling bards), brace-free teeth, she was hardly the erroneously aptronymed Miniiiiiii...I mean, you get the hang right, like CHANGED.
Moksha and I loitered around, trying our luck unsuccessfully first at the Fish Pedicure Tank, at the Karaoke, and at the non-veg food stalls, finally hitting gold at the Fresh Face award, and getting treated to a Lux Gift Hamper...the package was massive enough to make me happy. Six struck surprisingly early that day, and Moksha was supposed to be let gone off. Struggling again with the autowallahs, pleading them to drop us off at the lucklessly close Kanjurmarg station, me making a complete ass of myself at the local ticket reservation counter (no, sorry I am not expounding on this), us girls quite conveniently helping ourselves to the first class compartment without tickets, Aman calling to suggest me the measure of trying to weep off the ticket checker in case he confronted us for the "offense", and the three of us disembarking at the Marine Lines station, Moksha was saw off at a taxi and we wandered away to the outstretched expanse of the phenomenal Marine Drive. The exit to the station was teemed with a great multitude of hawkers, vendors and musk-smelling horses, another sight that has etched stubbornly on my mind, ironically followed by an Ambling aimlessly does give you those pangs of tingling pleasure Ravi keeps mentioning about and I had never really believed her to turn out true at this, but at my own expense that day, I found out, the immense truth of her words. With not one worry to hammer your head (Yes, I would like to reminisce about it that way inspite of it not being exhaustively true; the incessant worry about flunking my Basic Electronics paper always exasperatingly lurked about in the background) you really do feel Red-Bull-ified (wing-ified) without actually being so. Bugghy rides were yearned for, which in Aman's words were "infy" expensive, talked, stared into infinity, talked, looked at the famous skyline of Mumbai, talked, fancied buying the Worli-Bandra Sealink, talked. I ended up concluding that Mumbai was absolutely a livable city, provided you have enough rokda in your pockets, to fulfill all your desires, all those rosy dreams into the future which, for me, definitely included buying a place at Lavasa, and for him, going on a world tour, (Anshul reckons Aman would be the first one amongst us to buy a flashy car, and geeky gadgets being the outrageous spendthrift he is) and what not. Chowpatty flanked this, and the experience was a true definition of being poles apart from the one, the night before. The fun quotient remaining expectantly the same as of the night before, if not more, and the components included the devouring of Pav Bhaji, Aloo Chat, Meethe-Mirchi Golgappe and sitting on the "Chataai" with my four inch high heels off for the first time in the last 18 hours, which in itself was a memorable moment. Icecream (not at the chowpatty) followed the Great Indian Chowpatty and I tried out my first ever Coconut Flavor, which was praised quite sarcastically about in Two States by CB. It was thoroughly worth my money, no offences meant to CB. Gateway, and the grandiose view of Taj, so close up and aggravatingly magnified in front of my disbelieving eyes were doubtlessly a treat for them, and I would not be exaggerating things if I choose to mention that somethings are far more beautiful when not caught inside the domains of bromide. The sight of the Victorian paved road, the boarded up exhibition shops, the renaissance lighting of the streets and the marauding clicks of my heels past all of them are again something not to be forgotten in a hurry. We could not think of anything better than watching a movie again this time round called something that really made the gentleman in A man seek insidious resort (Ladiezz versus Ricky Behl) in a more important-to-be-mentioned hall, The Regal Cinema, one of the oldest cinemas of India...I googled it out..the Britishers made it and it was here that they had infamously written "Dogs and Indians not allowed". Totally getting into the groove with the musty smell of past and the shared love of Vintage, we annihilated the movie, in the middle of which I had tirefully dozed off. In another tyky turn of events, we happened to miss our last local which resembled a stunt straight out of a Bollywood movie, which was again, thankfully avoided into completely being made so by shelling out copious amount of waterproof, green semiotics from the tight budget I was SUPPOSED to follow.

The Perfect Crush : Its All Coming Back To Me Now

##SATISFACTION##

This article has been posted here because www.rashoney.blogspot.com is a known blog and this article has the potential to hurt personal sentiments as people don't dedicate mere songs to the person discussed (whose nick, by the way, is the random amalgamation of four keys picked arbitrarily from the first row of keys of the keyboars while "playfully" attempting to mask self-identity in a pseudo-chat) let alone blogposts, which may seem a bit over-the-top and a bountiful mass of rashness. I only wax-free-fuly hope this post does make it to Honey_Ras someday.

##KOI NAHIN HAI##

I am about to introduce a new feature to all blogposts of Honey_Ras and Lipstick Chronicles(except the poetries....it would then become too cheesy to be of any practicality). I hereby swear I will mention at each respective point here, the soundtrack playing in the background while I write my blog. Being a strawberry-lover and thereby, according to many ice-cream-analogous-tarot-card-readers, an eternal pessimist, before stating the reasons why I chose to introduce this seemingly barmy idea, I will try to clear the reader's possible and very much justified qualms about my sudden surge of self-obsession and narcissism. No, my idea is NOT letting on the negligible amount of readers(with completely non-negligible magnitude of respect nevertheless)my vivaciously vibrant and crazily arranged playlist, nor exuding any sort of non-existent undeciphered intellect associated with it. The idea is to justify the imbalance and mispropriety of the placement of different paragraphs which have no other reasonable clause abiding their existence. I myself am yet to collect any ciphers connecting the songs to the paragraphs or lines following them and therefore hardly expect the readers to make anything tangible out of them either. Nevertheless, if you do believe you finally ended up assigning any pattern whatsoever with the inputs, your ideas will be met with a complete unscornful gesture of gratitude, nullified nitwitty non-skeptism and an abundant amount of awe.

##HOTEL CALIFORNIA##

Yes. I agree this article is being written at an insane period of time. Precisely 11 hours after the end of my 3rd semester exams..also coincidentally exactly ONE semester after this blog had been created for, as mentioned in the stale description bar above, the sole purpose of whiling away my last couple of days after the fateful end of the Second semester. If I can get away with me being a bit over-the-top-girlish for what I am about to say next, I shall be indebted to the reader for, well lets be rational here , about two weeks. I think I can aptly celebrate the "Yayy-my-blog-is-a-semester-old!!!!!" party at Arambaghs here in Lalpur, Ranchi. All my coochi-coo friends are invited for an afternoon of self-paid, self-served and self-tiring bout of plesantry-exchangings thusly.
Getting started:
The 14th of Feb, 2010. How the day started, I remember not; there was nothing very eventful about its commencement. Though I would not say the uneventfulness of the day was unpredicted. A great hoopla had been created mere weeks before my first Valentine Day at college through a highly-hyped-by-sucky-at-relationships-engineering-sophomores-Facebook-page, which called itself "we will be busy killing mosquitos on Valentine's Day". I had haplessly clicked the like button as  I frequently used to, at that time to a HUMONGOUS number of pages. At the last count, my likes were at an almost unsurpassable high of 100000. I had decided to wear black for the day: a no-mourning-no-protest black, just as an ode to an insane colour code created by a viral pre-valentine sms, which assigned codes-of-conduct for dressing up for the occasion according to your relationship status. I, of course, don't remember the full code (even if I would have, I would say the same as a pathetic attempt of saving myself from the juvenile facial expression of the "respected-reader" for remembering trivias amounting to such unaccountable aftermaths).

##FROM THIS MOMENT##

but what I do remember is that black stood for "single and uninterested".

##TUMBLING DICE##

I and my then future roommate were tirelessly roaming about the campus for attaining the bejewelled signature of a certain Mrs. Someone, the details of that endeavor could be searched for in the blogpost "Spo(o)ils of KIIT" if interested. We were supposed to meet a certain SOMEONE at the ticket counter. What I had not realised on that day, that second was the strategic timing of the encounter.

##BEAST OF BURDEN##

Now that I have ended up developing a lasting-longer-than-three-weeks-crush on that SOMEONE do I decide to peek into the plethora of hovering flashbacks of all past sightings and scrutinising them to the point of killing my cronies of boredom. The other day I tried assigning a "first-saw-date" to this crush and ended up realising I did not even have to cook up any discreetly vicodified date. The day was in itself was haute enough.

##RUBY TUESDAY##

So what DID he say to me the first time we met?! I distinctly remember him asking in his characteristic baritone,"Sneha?! Right?!"

##STREET FIGHTING MAN##

To which I had replied in my overtly-rusted-from-lack-of-usage voice, "Yeah. Right." Some random dscussion about reservations later, he was a blissfully forgotten five-minute-period from the toe-tiring day.

##AASHIYANA##

I had fallen asleep yesternight writing this article, as Ashiaana started playing. So I resume not literally from where I had hung up last night but from today, when I finally sat down and jotted down reminiscences; in the true snse of the word. I LOATHE myself from doing this and further minimise myself owing to the fact that I am actually writig this. I jot this down only because I swore to myself before penning down this particular post that I would be TOTALLY honest while mentioning facts. So here I am.

##JIYEIN KYU##

I opened my Gmail and like an innocent-and-overtly-curious puppy, clicked the "View past chats" button. Right from the first chat ever, which, by the way was Way before I actually met NEWNICK (Yes, thats what I refer to him as amongst my friends, as he is so damn sharp, witty, Robert-Langdonish and with so many ears attached to his innumerable friends spread throughout the cyberspace that I don't find any other nick more saturated with propriety, secrecy, and codified honesty that could truly represent him.) The past chat viewing option is something I plentily resent, because they are like cyber foorprints, always poised with fearsome readiness to blab out your long-forgotten words, like a judicial alibi. But I did make use of it all the same because money and to some extent, crush makes my world spin.

##I WILL BE ON MY WAY##

HOLY CRAP!!! was exactly what came out of my mouth when I finished reading the first few chats.

##GUESS THINGS HAPPEN THAT WAY##

I was like a slimy leach, not a lot different from those in Lemony Snicket's A Series Of Unfortunate Events, whenever I chatted with in those days. Tot!! If any of my juniors ever bored me to such torturous sessions of Gtalking, I would have reflexively blocked them from my chatlist forever, for their own good, lest I would end up reprimanding them over their joblessness.

##THE DREAM##

I kept pestering him over his explicit excellance in quizzes, blogging, and I even considered his Facebook DP self-portrayed. I am definitely not going to delve into the exact contents of the conversations as that would be equivalent to idiomatic paradigms like "Eating one's own hat", "Hyper-hypocrisy" and "Bray-bragging".

##WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS##

What wouldn't I have given the song "To know her is to love her" to play at this particular juncture, only with the subject priviledged to be known being changed to "him". :)

##BABY'S IN BLACK##

As I have left no stone unturned to deviate from the topic in hand as much as bloggably possible, I would not
restrain myself from mentioning my little doubt here. Has this BIB song got to do absolutely ANYTHING with LBD?!

##TILL THERE WAS YOU##

Now I have thrown the chronology of events out of the window to the winds and  will write about anything that strikes the parallel-universe-theory-believing-mind of mine, which has zilch respect for time, and would call the coveted dilation theory to come to my rescue and save me from the wrath of Brahma!!!
$$love was there all along but till now I never heard it sing$$.... woow!!!

##NAI NAI E AADHAR THEKE##

Following will be some completely random pieces of trivia. Bear with me.
1.) Only the other day, the narcissist in me took a backseat and I googled out someone's else's name for a change, NEWNICK, precisely and got hold of some really ZAZZY and UNUSUAL pictures, pieces and diary-cum-scrapbook blog that NEWNICK used to maintain when he was in class 9th or 10th I presume. Sweet !

##DON'T IT MAKE MY BROWN EYES BLUE##

2.) The blog was served by some certain "Multiply". Quite understandable. My first blog too used to be on a nothing-resembling server called "Wetpaint". AH! Wetpaint...one of the few people on earth NEWNICK is who has actually taken the pains to go through www.tulip4u.wetpaint.com , and had called it "good". How insulting and wannabe that blog is, only I and my murky board exam days know.

##DEKHA TOH MERA SAAYA BHI MUJHSE JUDA MILA##

3.) He is so deep, bound-to-family, down-to-earth, multi-talented, friend-caring, inspiring, Victorian-age-romantic, self-restraining, spontaneous, well-read, sensitive, fun-n-people-loving, true-to-himself, respectful, aspiring, high-willed, an impossibly-and-thus-painful perfect combination of docility and anchor-attitude, practically sane and impractically fabulous, OH DARN!!!!!Whatever happens to my words whenever I try to describe him in full proportions. The word is just there in my gut, or maybe at the bottom of my tongue but gets lost, diluted, reduced to proportionless dimensions while travelling down to my fingers for getting typed. I officially leave the endeavor of describing him and in finality render myself unable to accomplish the undoable.

##NAHI SAAMNE TU##

Just one, last hapless attempt....
4.) He is so imperviously sure and crystal-clear about what he wants from himself and the world that it makes him inapproachable and sometimes feared, even despised by people, weaklings, who get intimidated by his painfully perfect demeanour. Strikingly similar to The Howard Roark I always fantasized about though it would be an act of sheer immodesty to call oneself The Dominique. He is a raw artwork of piercing clarity, unveiled and indispensible absoluteness. His stare resembles the dark epiphany of an X-ray machine, as if he has the capability of seeing right through you. He is non-judgemental, self-believing, ungullible, and adorably laconic. How can one know him and not fall in an infinite bout of irrevocable admiration(exactly that) with him?!
Finally, a cornucopia of vibrant possibilties :D as thanksgiving was just about the corner.

                                        -----------------------------X---------------------------                                                              

LIPS DON'T LIE

1.____word 1_____ Software was founded in January 1998 in order to develop 3D modeling and animation software.
­­­­­___word 1_____ is Latin for "­­­­­___word 2_____". We chose the name for the ­­­­____word 1___ Fir, a rainforest tree native to British Columbia, Canada. It also grows in the US, where it is called the Pacific Silver Fir.­­­­___word 1____Software is located in the Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada.
BEFORE GOING ANY FURTHER, READ THE WHOLE THING, THEN COME BACK AGAIN IFF (the double f is not a typo) U WANT TO.
2. The bearer of >>

 in terms of

Now... there's a bit of information for you, my name is "khan and i'm not a terrorist"....
cheeking!
I M
(word1=word2)in hindi  + answer 2.

now now, this NOT a wannabe attempt at divulging my name...its just that I had a bet with a girlfriend of mine who challenged me with 3 pairs of Grampians slippers (u dunno how serious matters became after the lager) that I somehow reveal my name to you. You are absolutely free to chuck dis down the drain or feed it to the pigs.
(personally, I would rather you DO chuck this down the drain and that you did not waste too much time solving this stupid puzzle, as :
1.)this is not exactly the way I want you to know me!!
2.)This is too easy for you to solve!!)
yippeee!!! there u r!!! ur a genius...
hope u wont stuff this piece of paper in some "use me"s in this campus again.... pls do solve (at least when no one is around).
(HAD TO write this because of the lager...believe me!)

CONFESSIONS OF A CLINGING-CUSPY-CANCERIAN

THE RING CIRCLE


"They say, unless you taste the bitterness of failure, you can't appreciate the sweetness of success. But I say, when you finally do taste the sweetness of success, you grow ever apprehensive of the embitterments of the past to come and ruin your present. You cling cancer-like to your  beautiful present, in turn, hurting and maligning it beyond repairs. I too have fallen prey to the ghosts of my past, fearing their return, instigating to come back and mock and jeer at my present. I am losing my present. I am scared. I confess, thusly."















Circle. The first shape that comes into our mind when we say "symmetry"...a perfect round body, symmetric from any helluvan angle u look from. The shape of earth, the shape of the world, the shape of earth, the shape of life...and everything that constitutes it.
Lives are supposed to take a full circle, everyone's, and hence, so did mine. A self-centered comment that I would like to make on mine is that it seems to move in a cycle. So many rotations in such a short span of time, that as soon as I find myself getting accustomed to a particular frequency, it suddenly decides to change its time period, AND amplitude.
So one fine Sunday morning which was characterised by an early rise, and an expectant day ahead, I reluctantly withdrew myself from my cozy cozy sheets, banged open my laptop characteristically (I AM harsh wit it inspite of the infinte solace i find in its realms), and looked at the right-bottom corner towards the date and time tab. Its a routine. My eyes automatically dart towards that area as soon as I switch on my system, as I don't happen to possess any other source of time-date teller machine in my room (barring, of course, my cellphone, which is usually discharged, much to the anger of my mom and the resigned displeasure of my dad). My heart gave a little leap of joyous-anxiety and forgot to beat a couple of times...(ie. if I can manage to get away with the above sentence without sounding overtly oxymoronic). It seemed as if the bass-harp, that The Mighty Sheldore very much despises in the second episode of the fifth season of BBT, started playing in the background to supposedly transfer me to the same day , a year ago.
The day, as my personal diary, that doesn't possess any entry after the 4th of january, 2011, reckons, started as any other normal day, without giving away any premonitions of the capers to follow. I quickly skim through the 6 page long entry in my diary and jot down the essential and forgettable bullet-points.
1030 hours: I chop down my left thumb with a jack-planer in the engg workshop, get rushed to the college-dispensary.
1230 hours: I realise my extremely prized Android goes missing.
1300 hours: After returning to the hostel in a completely dishevelled physical n mental state, I realise my Longines is missing.
1400 hours: The warden comes knocking at my door, with a contingent of grumpy looking people, downright ordering me to present my room for a  routine check.
1415 hours: Some strangely familiar bottles are found in my room, containing liquids that oddly resembled pee.
1500 hours: I m taken away for a gruelling questionnaire by the warden, the superintendent and the hostel-caretaker. Accused of being a schizophrenic and an unsocial element with a disturbed state of mind and highly amnesic.
1700 hours: I finally break down.
1900 hours: I give away all the ghory and gruesome details about the people I suspect have a hand in all this.
2000 hours: The named-famed people are taken away for alcohol-check. Test positive.
2300 hours: A sorry note and a bar of chocoalte later, I go back to sleep.

Seems a happy ending to a terrible day. Doesn't it? The day ended but the cleavage-showing, bum-dancing and honey-serving words of the namies don't end here. After receiving a black dot and a couple of reprimands each, the named's finally get down to action again. The semester was all theirs now.
How long have you gone without listening to the sound of your own voice? How many days have you spent at a stretch with people melting away at your sight? How many stories have you heard about yourself whose origin was somewhere approximately near Uranus, the orbit that of Pluto and the end near the Andromeda galaxy...light years away from your own existence?
No, life is not a circle. Its a spiral. A closing spiral for some, an infinitely increasing for the other few. I started small, bumped, stumbled over some pretty thickety rocks, Grew, and seem to have fallen again. This time, on a broader chasm than before.
 They say, unless you taste the bitterness of failure, you can't appreciate the sweetness of success. But I say, when you finally do taste the sweetness of success, you grow ever apprehensive of the embitterments of the past to come and ruin your present. You cling cancer-like to your  beautiful present, in turn, hurting and maligning it beyond repairs. I too have fallen prey to the ghosts of my past, fearing their return, instigating to come back and mock and jeer at my present. I am losing my present. I am scared. I confess, thusly.