Mixture.

What have i been up to since New Years?

Well, i spent the 31st and 1st in Chennai with a bunch of friends, came back to Bangalore to spend a weekend at K's, then another at G's.

Finished a couple of pending tasks, fretted a lot about my missing marks cards and degree certificate (as an aside, Mom found it this morning, buried under her lesson plans from yesteryears; now i have to keep my part of the deal with God and do what i promised to do), made inquiries about yoga classes, swimming classes and gyms, finished other mundane jobs.

Spent two days as a beggar, with just 75 bucks in my bank account.

Maxed out my credit card after blowing up 10,000 bucks on sarees.

Have been shuttling between Hyderabad and Gulbarga since the 16th, catching up with aunts and relatives i thought were now folklore.

Spent the first birthday away from home. I'm officially 27 now - the idea that i'm growing steadily old hasn't hit as fast as the fact that there are so many things to do and see while there's so little time for all of it; that every moment, starting now, is precious and is going to be dedicated to living, to capturing the richness of life's joys and the relationships that it helps us create.

And a whole lot of other such philosophical BS.

Brat Pack threw me a faux surprise birthday party complete with decorations, two cakes (of which one was Mickey Mouse's head), samosas and Biryani. I also happened to talk to the boy - sorry, ex-boy - for an hour and a half at least. International, mind you.

Met more relatives today, all dressed up in a full-sleeved salwar kameez. Re-lived the old days when everybody was together and so...young and full of adventure. Figured that i was the point where the Old City of Hyderabad meets the New City, and that i live both lives with almost equal ease.

Wished, prayed, beseeched God to change the rules of the game - that people should never grow old, because it's very heartbreaking.

Decided to come back to Hyderabad for at least 15 days again in the near future, renew long-forgotten family ties, capture the relatives for posterity in photographs, learn interesting stories from their lives and compile all of it into one big family book.

Yeah, i'm in that kinda mood. Especially after being given an hour of intelligent lecturing on marriage, where i could do nothing but keep uttering the Old City equivalent of 'Arrey!' because every word spoken made absolute sense.

I discover now, that just when i thought i knew where i was headed to, i lost my bearing.

And to top it all, i think i'm gonna be one tooth short soon. Thank you, Ice Cubes. This is what i get for loving you so much.

Happy Birthday to me.

I now own this:

Image Courtesy: Nikon
(http://imaging.nikon.com/products/imaging/lineup/digitalcamera/slr/d3000/index.htm)

Pyar Impossible.

Uday: I'm Abhay, I'm a Geek who worked on the same software program for seven years and then ended up being the nanny to my college crush's 6-year old anal daughter.

Priyanka: I'm the crush, and i'm a divorced working mother. In case you didn't get it already, i'm a divorced working mother. I don't believe that looks are important - even if i didn't know of ghastly-looking Uday's existence back in college, and didn't know of this little fact till he told me at the end of the movie. But i should be forgiven for it because i'm a divorced working mother.

Dino Morea: I'm Sidhu, Varun, Bastard, Thief - call me what you like. I stole the software program from Uday, and then i stole his crush who is now a divorced working mother. And now i'm going to steal all his... wait a minute,what's going on here???

Priyanka: Ha! I love Uday. I'm going to announce that to the whole Apple Store, and then i'm going to announce to the world on Live Television that you stole his software program from him!

Uday: I love you too Priyanka! The password to access the software is your movie name - which of course Dino doesn't know because he didn't make the software! Eat dirt, you... you... you dirtbag!

AND THEY TOOK 3 HOURS TO TORTURE US WITH THIS! IN SLOW-MO!

I'm ready for Hara Kiri now.

The Nicest Person She Knows.

So, a friend had an NID entrance exam this Saturday morning. Like good friends, A and i gave her moral support after a whole night of snoring away and not helping her with her revisions.

Because we didn't have anything better to do, we scouted around for a Cafe Coffee Day near the college where the exam was happening. Rajajinagar is alien land to me, so we entrusted the task of finding one close to the college to the autowallah. Luckily for us, we found a chap who humoured us as we took him through roads that even we didn't know existed. Having managed to locate one on Dr. Rajkumar Raste, we then set about staring at a couple of pre-university primates going at each other's mouths like french kissing was going out of fashion. No no, we're not like the moral police. A was just staring at them because she was irritated that they were getting it and not her. I was staring because i like making happy-to-experiment-with-sex kids uncomfortable like that.

Shows i'm rude and mean and just plain uncouth, no? Apparently not, because K - in her exam paper - answered the question "Who's the nicest person alive you know of?" with my name.

Yeah. I laughed too. And then i laughed some more because she quoted in her paper that i was the only person she knew without a mean bone in my body.

That evening, though, we went out to Cirrus and i discovered that there was reason why she wrote my name: while she usually, successfully, manages to emotionally blackmail me into doing things, now she also had an added advantage of making me do things i didn't want to by saying, "Ey ey, i wrote your name as the nicest person no?"

Talk about niceness getting you into trouble. Still, i'm the nicest person she knows. I think i can live with that lie guilt-free for a long, long time.