My first love letter

How many of us can still reach into the far recesses of the mind (or heart) and still relive the sweet and tender emotions of that first crush ? My childhood memories are filled with summer vacations ,trading comic books with friends, trips to my hometown kerala, a kid brother I bullied around, and those countless crushes I unrelentingly told myself was my true love... everytime. And yet, my first love letter was for someone who did'nt even matter to me.
The first love letter I wrote was a group effort. I was in the 5th grade and we were about 7-8 girls in our society. A couple of these girls considered themselves our 'elder sisters' and never missed an opportunity to boss us around. On the other side of the society, the guys had a similar group and the only time the two groups met, was during the annual festivals. We did'nt really get along very well and it was almost a war during holi and Ganesh Utsavs were sociable to say the least . Mysteriously, one of us developed a major crush on one of them and decided to profess her love in writing. But being a total wuss, she coud'nt do it alone. So she convinced us (I can't still figure out how ?? )that we also 'like' him , and we have to tell him about our feelings ...before it gets too late (yeah ...she was one scheming conniving little brat). I did'nt really care much for that boy, but joined the "love letter writing project" nevertheless. I was scared that if I refused , I would be excluded from playtime and sharing secrets...worse, those secrets would be about me :-O . I decided I would rather make a complete fool of myself, than become an outcast !!
Finally on a hot summer afternoon, armed with double-line notebook pages, pencil boxes overflowing with all imaginable sketch pen colors, we got down to work. I did'nt really provide any valuable input to the whole manuscript. I just hovered around in the background coz by then I was having my own fears of being caught and eventually disowned by my parents. You see, the guy's parents were very good friends of my folks, and so I was positive I was going to be in big trouble. I can't really remember what the exact contents of that letter were (and now I wish I did :-), except that it had sounded very filmy. In the end we all were to sign our names declaring our undying love to this chap. By now I was undergoing a full fledged panic-attack, that ironically distorted my "signature" so much that it was barely legible.
The next most important thing was to make sure the letter reached its destination. It could not under any circumstance land up in anyone else's hands ...and I vehemently seconded that. One smart-ass girl (maybe it was me:-D came up with the brain-wave that his bicycle seat was a great place to stash the letter, since he was the only one who used the cycle. After completing the whole operation, we retired to our homes. I could'nt sleep a wink all night. It did'nt care two hoots about the guy, his reaction ..blah nothing mattered , except what if my parents found out ??? I kept cursing myself all night for getting into this whole ridiculous 'love letter' business and vowed never to write one again. Not even if I actually fell in love ...it just was'nt worth it.
I can't remember what happened after that , except that I was pretty freaked out for atleast a month. I used to run for my life everytime I saw that guy's parents coming over. I am not sure if the letter was even read , but I did'nt care.

"I'm not rushing into being in love. I'm finding fourth grade hard enough." ...Regina, age 10

Blogoholics Anonymous ....

Hi ...my name is Sarita and I am a blogoholic !!!!
I am really beginning to get a hang of this blog thing so much ...its almost addictive (almost... coz i still have'nt got to the stage where I get up at 3 am just to blog my dream :-D
I think I am getting there though , I have all the symptoms:
I have been blogging everyday, which is freaky for someone like me ,
all my waking time is spent in just thinking of topics to blog about (even the hunk in the lab next to me does'nt help me anymore :-)
Blogger.com is now my homepage.
And right this moment, I am feverishly typing away 10 mins before I have to run for my eye appointment...hmmm i think i will blog of my doc's visit....Yikes !!! Oh my god ...I am addicted !!! This thing was supposed to be just a phase ...and now its not going :-O I am not used to this kind of consistency!!!. 12 blogs ....1 comment ...I mean who continues to blog with so much sincerity ???

Sometimes I even surprise me.

Maybe this is just a longer-than usual phase for me. I think I will wait another week and see how things go before I go around asking about the best shrinks in town :-)

Rain Rain Come Again ...

"Be careful what you wish for...it just might come true" .
Exactly . I started getting cold feet about the whole cricket thing, the moment I left lab friday evening. I was almost nauseous. But then that could also be that god-awful mushroom I bit into while devouring hunan chicken from CS (china star...thot it would be easier for me to abbreviate it, due to its excessive mention in my blogs).I don't know what came over me ...I should have just ordered my regular instead of trying something new. Even all the ice-cream in my fridge could'nt make me feel better ...c'mon there is only so much chocolate almond fudge can do.

To make things catastrophic, we girls also decided to 'watch' the guys practice at the nets . Yah ...like that was going to make us feel all inspired and raring to go the next day. It does'nt help much either to know your fellow players themselves are in the pits. I don't know how hard I must have prayed...but lo and behold we were drenched in a sudden shower of rain, that threatened to go on all night. I was so elated, I could have danced in the rain ...except that my fav jeans would be totally spoiled in the slush. We still could have had the game yesterday, if it had'nt rained all night. He he he, but it rained cats and dogs all night .

Its crazy, but I could'nt help feeling a strange sense of relief. But who was I kidding ...this joy was going to last only until the next weekend .We would eventually have to play. I do have an escapist attitude and that coupled to procrastination, frankly, is a very deadly combination to possess. Nevertheless, pep-talked myself into developing a "jo hoga dekha jayega" attitude. Also , shopping helps a lot ...atleast for the girls. Post shopping we had a girls night at my place. Celebrated the "postponed match" with wine and hummus & chips sandwiches (awesome combination btw).

Last Heard : The pitch was inspected on saturday morning and declared unfit. The matches are postponed "indefinately" ....he he he ha ha ha.

TGIF

Phew !!! There goes another week , and this week I am reaaaally glad its friday . For one , we are going to have the cricket match tomorrow against the guys .So either we will get our asses kicked or who knows we might just win(hey why not ...don't underestimate the power of girls in shorts and tight tees ). And no ...its not going to be me in those...coz for someone who is ...well, "beautifully challenged" (huh ??? ) thats probably not going to help achieve anything :-D. I probably will have to actually play cricket.

Ok , and I am off early too today ....yipppeeee... China Star ...here I come :-D. Can't decide between the mixed vegetable with flied lice or curry chicken ...hmm this one's a toughie.

There are times when :

....I keep playing that disgusting ad jingle in my head .

....I am at my meanest behaviour, and I actually enjoy it :D

....I spend an entire day doing practically nothing and yet feel happy with myself.

....I survive the whole day on a cereal bar , and not even realise it (happens very rarely though :-)

....24hrs have gone by without me speaking a word to anyone. (you may not realise it, but if ur alone and a student , I don't think its uncommon :-)

....I wear makeup...foundation, eye-liner, mascara, lipstick , blush ...the works !!

....I have'nt checked my emails for a whole hour !

....I have watched the nth rerun of "Friends" and still ROTFL.

....I long to leave everything here and fly back to India right this moment.

....The simplest gesture can move me to tears...and yet I did'nt shed a tear, when I said goodbye to my husband on my way back here.

....I wonder how life would be without chocolates ????


Maybe I will add more of my idiosyncrasies later :-D

Lazy Days

I love my room to death but I am officially declaring it a pig-sty. This working hard at the lab thing is really taking a toll on my room . The poor soul has never seen such mess. I used to keep it spic and span (don't you open that closet !!! ). I have no idea when , but I think it all started out when I began spending more time at those evening cricket sessions (which are going great btw) . In between all this I totally ignored my pretty little bedroom, (and yet somehow I get the time to regularly post my blogs , hmmm wonder how ?? ) .

Technically, its not really a mess ...its just clothes all over the floor, and a big pile that gets kicked and thrown back and forth from the chair to the bed. The pile just keeps increasing, coz I have to try out atleast 3-4 of my t-shirts before I can make up my mind . I don't know what it is , but some days some clothes make me look slimmer ...and I can't say which one without wearing them !!

I am a pretty neat person . I do shove all the dirt and crumbs under the sofa while cleaning. But somehow along the way, I have developed this pile collecting habit that has kinda become chronic now. I remember having this pile of clothes around me right from my IIT days . But they were'nt mine ...they used to be my roomie's (name withheld to protect self from being thrashed up). But if I look at the bright side...I have only so many clothes to make a pile with . I do eventually have to de-pile (??) it . Unless I go shopping . Besides, I also have to unearth my floor from the pile and check if the carpet is ready for its monthly vacuuming !

Note: In dedication to my room, I named this blog "Lazy days", after my fav poster in the room. It has the face of the cutest lil puppy lazying in the shade.

Purpose of Life ?

This blog was triggered by an story I came across yesterday :

A lady driving on a highway, gets distracted for a brief moment and hits the gravel on the side and her car overturns and catches fire. She is stuck inside . Another car with a elderly couple was driving behind her . The man stops runs to help this lady , while the wife dials 911. The man manages to pull the lady out of her burning car. Lady is safe but right then the man has a heart attack and dies.

I like to consider I am fairly practical person and find the concept of destiny, spirituality, sometimes even God a little hard to digest. Maybe I would have just dismissed the death of the guy , as a mere stress induced response he had during the whole event. There is a sense of comfort in that statement for me . But if I want to look at it from a whole other perspective, its pretty darn disturbing for me ...even scary . Are we all here with predestined scripts written or just random events happen based on our decisions ? How does one explain this complex dynamics of one person's life (and death), affecting another person ? What would have happened to the lady if the couple had waited another 10 mins at the rest area ?

I have read enough of thoughts and writings on such topics , but not one of them has convinced me till date , about my purpose in life....the big picture remains blurred even today.

Of cucumber face packs and afternoon siestas

I have been cured of my monday blues . I guess you don't have any when you work your butt off all seven days of the week !! Yeah my massive claims of never working on a sunday , coz that was my well deserved (ahem !) R&R day has gone kaput :-(.

Once upon a time (ok 3 weeks back !! )an ideal R&R for me was sleeping in ,an 11 am chai , then a 'vatika' tel maalish (and freak out about all the hair i was losing), a cool cucumber face pack. This would then be accompanied by my mandatory india call. I would hang up in exactly twenty minutes ...coz thats exactly how long the face pack took to dry up and shut me up !.
And accompanying the two dudes while they croon "Dhaani", I would then whisk up a quick dal (or sambar), rice and sabzi ...maybe throw in a raita if the curd looked fit for human consumption.
Amidst all this there would be the usual sunday morning phone calls from friends planning out the evening. With hajaar phone calls to and fro we would be debating over a movie or the mall or dinner. And this discussion never ends ...if its the movies , then there is the whole other talk about movie ratings . Do the critics really mean it when they rate a movie C- ??? Some movies qualify as a $7.50 worth , others are the matinee show worth: $5. C'mon I am not going to shell out 1.50 extra for a C- movie ! Some disagree , and so it goes on .
Yeah and all this while I am concocting that meal I was talking about . Thank god for inventions like the cordless and glue sticks . Glue Sticks ...nothing to do with cooking but they are so cool. I used to hate those big blue bottles of camel glue dripping from all sides . It was such a yucky mess ! Ok here I go off on a tangent again . Btw, have i told you about my infinitesimally small attention span ??? Ahem ...maybe i don't need to anymore :-D.
Yeah so after a really long long bath (sometimes even a bubble bath ;-), and a nice hot meal it was time to hit the sack again for an afternoon siesta. Evenings were usually very morose. Not because we ended up watching that movie and figured why it was rated a C- after all, but thats when the monday blues used to hit me !. Hmmm I guess those were the happy days . Now there is no face pack , no tel maalish (and my hair is still falling :-O , no dal-chawal. The road to PhD is a long and winding one alright not to mention one ugly stinking mess I will end up being.

Bhaage re mann kahin !

"Behta hein mann kahin ...kahan jaanti nahi , koi rok le yahin ...bhaage re mann kahin , aage hi mann chala jaane , kidhar jaanu na"

Don't know why , but I am simply crazy about this song . Its from the movie "Chameli" starring that bimboo, Kareena . Gawd she gets on my nerves like nothing else can . I hate her sooooo much that I could'nt get around to even watching that movie ,she would so kill the song for me !

Ok gotta go get some grub from the hospital cafeteria before they close . I used to read about the bland food and cold coffee served in hospital cafe's in Robin Cook books. And now I am actually forcing the same food down my throat ! I miss home...the heavy morning breakfasts , special sunday lunch feasts, evening chai and snacks ...awwww :-((

Cricket:101

I am not really a very morning person...and that did really get me into a soup today . I got up with a start at 9 in the morning...pretty sure I had heard a tornado warning siren , only to realise the phone was ringing !!!

Friend: "hey ...still sleeping ..its 9 already ..yada yada yada ."
Me: "hmmmmm...no not sleepin..... zzzzzzzzz"
Friend : "blah blah blah ....so u game ???"
Me : "ya ok ...sure ...zzzzzzzzz."
Friend: "Great, see ya in 20 mins...byeeee " (click)
Me:"hey wait ...what for " ????

anyways ...literally dragged myself off my cosy warm bed , washed and changed (did i brush ??? can't remember)..to cut a long story short ...turned out I had okayed to be a part of the "ladiez criket team" :-O
The desi student association here has cricket tournaments every year ...and this year the gals wanted to be a part of it too !! (now if only I can lay my hands on that gal !!) Not that I had a problem with the sport ...I just did'nt know a freakin thing abt it, other then the fact that the players on TV got to drink pepsi during the break :-). Ok...I do love to exaggerate :-) I can tell the difference between the ball and the bat , and which one can be thrown and which one should'nt.
So the games are in two weeks , and we needed to "learn" it asap. The last time I remember I had batted was during our dept sports day in IIT. First ball ...i smacked it real high into the air...ended up quacking back to the pavilion !!! But this time I was determined to learn a thing or two about this game ...heck...if those villagers in "Lagaan" could do it , I sure as hell could too ! One of the "guys" had graciously volounteered to teach us some "basic survival skills" needed to atleast last a couple of overs . Turned out not one but three of the guys took time off from their busy schedules to coach us :-))...and we were 4 girls there !
We huffed and panted our way thru the 2 hr long gruelling schedule (hey, its not easy for us girls to stand there with that heavy bat in our hands and even hit that ball shooting down towards us ). Frankly, it was not all that bad ...we did do a pretty decent job today , although the boys did not agree . Turns out we have to report to practice everyday at 7 in the evening...damn ...I will have to miss all my favourite sitcoms till the games now ...well I guess if you really want to achieve something , you have to be willing to sacrifice :-)
So today I learnt quite a bit about the game ...
...that I should wear a cap .
...get my water bottle .
...and when fielding, you cannot chat about food receipes or sunscreen lotions with other fielder gals.
..."I could have chipped my nails" is not a valid excuse for missing a catch !

I think its going to be great !!

:-D

Fly back in time

Guess what I ended up learning yesterday ??? (drumroll please ) ...Origami cranes ! After a few futile attempts ...(which were surprisingly quite few ;-) and crumpled newspaper sheets all over the floor , I finally succeeded in making one...tadaaaaa ! It was so cool . That thing even looked like one (to me atleast :-). My friend had made this really awesome wall hanging out of them ...cranes hanging down from chopsticks (courtesy ...cheapo china star...awwww now I am hungry ! ) . It looked so beautiful I had to learn it . And today morning I just could'nt resist making one, when I saw those big square colorful post-its sitting on my lab bench. I made the cutest yellow crane , that I gifted to my lab-mate , who took it with a very amused look on his face. He's getting used to it , while it sits on his monitor staring down at him ...he he he.
Yeah , guess that goes without saying that is my new calling ...paper cranes ! I even googled for them today . The art of paper folding actually originated in China , and eventually found its way into Japan. Origami in Japanese means to fold "ori" paper "gami" .As I was surfing those sites (My experiments are going on , I just had some free time ok ? ) , it took me back to the days when as a kid, I used to read japanese , chinese and russian stories (and of course those amar chitra kathas, chandamamas and oh yes champaks :-). It was all so magical ... beautiful girls with whom handsome princes fell in love and killed fire-spitting dragons to prove their love , and then they got married and lived happily ever after ...hmmm. Its amazing when just pure memories can bring back all the feelings and lets you relive it anytime you want to !

An excerpt detailing the journey and history of Origami makes an interesting read for those who wanna know about this wonderful art.

Also posting one of their fairy tales here ;-)
Once upon a time, there was a poor hunter. One day, he came across a trapped crane. He took pity on the crane and released it. A few days later, a lovely woman visited his house, and asked him to shelter her for the night. The next day she didn't go, and eventually the two got married. As well as being beautiful, the bride had a good disposition, so they lived happily. But the hunter couldn't afford to support his new wife. One day, she said that she would weave cloth so that he could sell it to make money (weaving was common as a woman's side job in those days). But she told him that he was never to see her weaving. She stayed in a weaving hut for three days. When the weaving sound stopped, she came out with a beautiful fabric. The hunter took the fabric to a town, where Merchants were surprised and paid gold for it. The fabric was a very rare one called Tsuru-no-senba-ori (thousand feathers of crane). After that, the wife wove the valuable fabric several times. The hunter came to live in comfort. However, little by little, his wife grew thinner. One day, she said that she could weave the fabric no longer. She was so consumed. However, her husband had learned greed, and asked her to weave once more. At last she was persuaded to do so and started to weave again. That time, she didn't come out on the third day. Three more three days passed. He became worried, and finally broke his promise, peeping in at her weaving. To his surprise, it was not a woman but a crane that was weaving. On the next morning, his wife came out from the weaving hut, with the last fabric in her hands. She said "You have seen my true form, so I can stay with you any no longer." And then, she turned into a crane and flew away, leaving the hunter cryng.

Later Gator !

I don't even know what was I thinking , when I decided to wander into the lab in the morning. Like I have ever got any work done on a sunday ! Well maybe ,the one time when I had a conference abstract due and I had to get atleast one experiment done , so I could write and send something by 5 pm on monday :-D

Yeah procrastination : thats what I do for a living ! For me , if anything that needs to be done can wait ...then let it wait !. I actually have one of those magnetic stickers that says " I do my work at the same time, everytime; the last minute " :-)I even put it up on my work bench in the lab , until my adviser came across it one day and gave me one of those 'no-wonder' looks . I have moved it to my room since .

Somehow I get the general impression that procrastination is a very common desi fever . Have seen the symptoms in almost all my friends. Its always dilly-dallying till the last day (or even hrs amongst the most (over)confident junta) and then there is a delirious scampering to finish the assigned task. I have to say I have'nt come across many non-desi junta who share my excitement for the last minute adrenalin pumping thrill I get scurrying around with one eye on the watch.

Be it to attend the dreaded 8.30 am Immunology class back in IIT (that class deserves a whole blog by itself...but later ! ) , or the 9.40 pm movie at the mall on a friday night in Iowa city.

I guess some things just don't change. To my credit , I was on time for my wedding (did'nt miss the muhurat there ) :-D


"Only Robinson Crusoe had everything done by Friday. ~Author Unknown"

Whats in a name ?

Yesterday I just happened to think about my name ...now you ask , whats in a name ??? But you see , I don't really like my name . Like Sri says, it sounds so archiac :-( oh yeah ...my blogs will have a constant reference to this person , who btw is my adorable, loving and simply wonderful hubby of 3 months.

So speaking of names , remember back in school when there were 5 pooja's, 10 priya's , 15 Amits , and infinite sachins in every class ?? Yeah ...I was the only Sarita in the whole of high school :-O. And there was this other sarita in 3rd grade , who I never met the whole time I was in school ! That was the beginning of my dislike to the name, which only increased , when dad told me proudly that he choose this name over their other choice : Nisha !! What were they thinking ? I love that name . I still think I could pull off a Nisha rather than a Sarita :-(

I really have given serious thought to changing it at times , but then its too much work ! Remember Phoebe in the Friends episode where she changes her name to Princess Consuela Bananahammock ??? (Weird, I could still remember that name , it rolled right off my tongue :-)And her hubby changes it to 'crapbag'...it was hilarious when she had to introduce him :-D

So just to come to terms with the fact that I am stuck with this name till the day I die, I actually googled my name to check out what hits it came up with . ( you done that anytime , its fun ) And boy oh boy, I actually got hits ...yippeeee. It was pretty cool . Aside from the numerous nude pic links of a certain name-a-like, I was surprised to know that there is a town in Texas with my name (complete with a local area guide online ) . Also came to know Sarita in spanish means "princess" . Now maybe dad was not all that off naming me sarita ;-). So I have finally made peace with myself, hoping I have a daughter some day I will name Pooja :-D

The weekend is here again and I will be doing nothing fun . Major plans of driving to Chicago to meet up with Sniggsie (who is interning there ) and have blast downtown , have been ditched. Just no money to even eat out at our cheapo 'china star' for this month :-( . I tell you china star is total pyasa vasool , if you are ok with encountering an occasional used bandage or pork in your "flied lice" (thats chinese for fried rice :-D

I guess its back to the lab and get some work done .

Let the blogs begin !!!

Ok so finally I jumped on the bloggers bandwagon too. I must admit , I am one of those who do things just coz everyone does it (hey atleast I am being frank). Maybe its just to satisfy my curiosity about just what the hell people find interesting about it anyway . But then soon enuf (infact very soon enuf :-) I realise its not my cuppa tea , and then thats the last you will ever hear from me :-D I move on to more interesting 'pastures'.
So to the list of 'initiated-with-great-enthu-but-never-saw-the-dawn-of-completion projects' I officially add my blogs to it.
Atleast I can boast that:
I have my (incomplete) webpage,
A(unused)tennis racket,
$20 bucks worth of Glass painting stuff lying around my house
A whole folder of yummy receipes on my comp
I know whats a haiku (i suck at it :-(
A whole shelf of books i got on sale (ok that was just to show off , I mean who reads "How to buy and sell stocks" ???
A scrapbook with only a page complete (well , atleast I stuck the pictures )
I did try gardening (a plant), but plants don't respond very well if you ignore them !

So you get the picture huh ?? Welll ...We'll just have to wait and see now how long this infatuation lasts.

:-D