A wedding, some dancing and a lot of merry!

Its a journey to which I have been a part of. In a very small, tiny but (I would like to consider) important measure. Last weekend, one of my closest friend H got married to D. I have mentioned about them here.

The wedding had all the ingredients. A party , mehendi, sangeet, the wedding and the reception. I can go on and on describing it all, but there are a few things which I have to mention here.

- I danced away to glory on many days and had a lot of fun. I have never felt this happy for anyone in such a long time. I can vouch today that it would be very difficult to find nicer people than H & D.. and even more so as a couple.

- Everyone who came to the wedding had a lot of fun. Everyone was smiling / dancing/ laughing etc. I could see and feel why weddings are called joyous occasions. Literally.

- I felt totally welcome, so much so that I felt I belong there. The warmth of the families was felt by everyone who attended the wedding. I was unceremoniously reprimanded in full view of public by H's dad for being an hour late for the Sangeet. ( In my defence, I was following Gujju Standard time, and I did not miss anything :) )

- H & D have been working hard on organising everything about their wedding for the past one year. From cards, to the 'setup of the place' to the caterers to logistics.. everything. The 5 day event was flawless. Executed to perfection. It was classy in design, look and feel. D is a designer par excellence and from wedding clothes to to decorating the place to the cards, she designed it all. I am going to attach three pictures here.. first one of the wedding place, second of the mandap at night or rather evening time and third of the reception. I am not going to even try describing the beauty, elegance and panache.

- Finally, here is wishing them a great life together, forever!

Crossroad

I stand today at a junction in life,

where important decisions have to be taken.

Where the past has to be shrugged off,

and it may not be necessarily for a better furture.

He scribbles on a borrowed piece of paper which has Rama Stationery store printed in small at the top. His handwriting has periodic wavy pattern to it. He thinks it is because of the to and fro movement of the train. May be.

He sits alone in the compartment. A boy, around 12-13 years of age stands at the door, his body half inside the compartment, half outside.

There is vast emptiness around me,

but my mind feels cluttered.

I don't know to where I belong, to the emptiness or to the clutter,

or may be its half here and half there.

He laughs at his own desperate attempt to create poetry. He should stop trying to do things that he isn't good at. He tells himself.

Friday Musings

Om Shaanti Om ...I managed to catch that this week. Total timepass I tell you. Shahrukh had a reason to overact (I do like him, and his acting occasionally) and he did that pretty well. I enjoyed the song with 31 stars and was so excited when it was onscreen. I am such a fimli guy :) The music is pretty nice and I have been humming 'Om shaanti Om' and 'Ajab si' songs..and ofcourse how can I forget Deepika Padukone..

I have to let you in on a secret. I have a knack of spotting talent you see. I spotted Deepika Padukone 2-3 years ago and predicted that she would make it big. She was in my top 5 long ago.. oh and that is the other secret.. my top 5. I have this top 5 list which is periodically updated.. right now there is Kiera Knightley, Vidya Balan, Deepika Padukone, Asin and Shreya. And I tell you what they made it to my list long ago.. Kiera with Bend it like Beckham (long before the Pirates series or Arthur). Vidya balan made it there with Parineeta, Deepika with her Close Up ads, Asin- much before her Gajini movie and Shreya.. well yeah.. she made it there after Shivaji only..

I take my top 5 list very seriously. I am planning a trip to London in the next year.. hopefully and one of my agenda items it to track and meet Kiera Knightley. So I am searching for her calender and ways to meet her. If any of you could help.. I would be eternally grateful :). I learnt that Vidya Balan was a second cousin of a cousin of my friend. I did convince my mom to talk to my friends mom if she could talk to Vidya Balan or Vidya Balan's mom.. but I guess it got lost at the first or the second cousin stage, I think. But hey, I did try.

So you see, the top 5 is a priviledged place to be :)

--*--

I had mentioned two posts ago that I would be attending Archie's wedding or rather reception this week. I did that yesterday. And it was fun. Well, not in the literal sense of fun but I had a different experience. The wedding was in Chembur in the Murugan temple (Or the Madarasi temple as the Autowallahs call it). This gave me an opportunity to visit this temple, something I had been wanting to do for a long time now. Anywho, the interesting part of the evening was that there was only one person that I knew in the entire gathering, and that was the bride. I had met Archie through blog and orkut and her circle of people had never intersected my circle of people and hence I was alone in that hall. And boy, what fun it was. It was a typical tam-bram crowd which had gathered there

- There was a group of people of elderly disposition (see I am polite ) sitting in the rows behind me, and I heard the quintissential Tam brahm names - Raghu thatha, Kittu mama and Ramamurthy uncle. Guess only an 'Ambi mama' was missing.

- I heard a mami telling her husband at 7.45pm ' Vango, kalambalam, naazhi aachu'

- I saw a group of mama's discussing the some article in 'The Hindu' and politics and staunchly supporting the BJP

- Some maami's sitting in a row just ahead of me had started their 'maami' work. 'Adhu Lalitha ponnu thaanai. avullukku pakkaralaa'. (But I tell you, weddings are great places to meet members of the opposite sex.. personal experience you see. )

- A mama was telling his group.. 'Maami, pannarai dosai odai bettera irukku'.

But something was missing.. it wasn't feeling complete till I heard one of the women say- 'Kolangal paathelono' . Thats it. How come a gaggle of women and no mention of soap operas or rather mega serials. I silently clenched my fist and muttered 'adhu!'

I had now had a almost complete tam-bram social event experience.. (well ofcourse I missed the filter coffee among a few other elements..but it was as good as it gets kinda thing)

--- **---

Tomorrow, saturday, I am going river rafting. So I am looking at an action packed weekend. Hope its fun. If I get some pics, I will put them up.

Being 'cool'

So this is how it feels to be independent. Having a house to yourself. No one to tell you how to keep it. No one tell you that you need to fold the newspaper back once you have read it or that you can't walk all around the house in your shoes. No one tell you that all things need to have a place to keep. No one to tell you, why you bought that extra pair of shoes or why you are gorging away on those potato wafers lying on the sofa. Shreya wondered why her mother couldn't be cool.

She had called home after buying a new leather clutch purse for herself with her first salary. It was a touch expensive and was worried how her mother would react. But her mother did not pass any comment on the price. Nothing at all. Shreya hung up the call, but was surprised. Her mom seemed excited that she had bought something for herself with her own money. That was it. It was her own money now. Shreya suddenly felt liberated.

--*--

Shreya had settled into her new job, new city and new environs comfortably over the past 6 months. But one thing that she had not settled into was sharing her apartment with her current flatmate. She could not understand why, the newspaper could not be folded back after it was read or why one could not remove their shoes before walking all over the house. The fans and lights would always be left on and the sofa would contain food pieces once her flatmate had finished snacking. Shreya wondered, why her flatmate couldn't be cool.

Anniversary - Another day

Today I celebrate my blog's second anniversary. Thank you. Thank you ! So I guess it is a time for a lot of reflection and contemplation. (So well, whats new about that on this blog, right?)

If you ask me today, why I write a blog, the honest answer is I don't know. May be I like a parallel existence. I think I started it because it was cool and quite a few of my friends were doing it. And as I started to surf, I figured out that blogs like people have a character and it needn't be an online diary. So, as I did some thinking about the identity of my blog, 'In perpetual transition' came to me instantly. I am that and a lot more. However, the name of the blog, Have-no-fullstops, is inspired by a book by Sir Mark Tully of the same name ' Have No full stops in India' which is a collection of 10 essays on India. I read that in my class 10, I think. It was then that I was drawn to non-fiction and I have remained a non-fiction loyalist ever since. Have-no-fullstops also symbolises what I believe in - there are no fullstops, some commas, some exclamation marks, some hyphens but full stops.. naa..

Anyways, if you guys think that I am going to say that its been one long journey over two years, where I have grown up, changed , matured, developed a world view and all that. Sorry. I am a little more pessimistic. Yes my life stage has changed and hence my experiences and world views have accordingly. But I do not think that I have changed, grown up, matured and all that. Its not that I have been perfect or totally mature that I did not have the need to grow up or mature further. Its just that I have stagnated at the place where I was and I still am.

Look at the themes in my post. I am an eternal optimist, or so I would like to believe, yet there is a distinct strand of melancholy. There are so many different forms of relationship that I experience first hand or see people in - like husband wife, boss reportee, brother sister, best friends, father son, and yet I have explored only one of them boy friend - girl friend. I feel that the posts in the first year of my blogs existence had some form of energy, which I guess, fizzled away. I think it is a reflection of whats happening in the real world too, I guess.

So, I set out on a mission to bring about change. Get my life to be more active, break the routine, the monotony. I made plans to do one new thing this year, or see two new places, read three new authors and so on. But every time I took two steps forward, I retraced three. And in these tries, you learn a harsh reality. The biggest and the toughest battles are those which you fight with yourself. And in contrast to this, it is so simple to overcome the biggest challenge the external world throws up in your direction.

But you know what. The very fact that I have realised what battles I need to fight within myself, is the first step. The fact that I am willing to fight means that I have a foot in the door, already. And trust me, this is just a comma, or at max a semi colon and if that has to change, it will be to an exclamation mark! :)

So much for an anniversary celebration, right? There have been a few of you I guess who have been reading my blog since its creation and a few who have hopped on somewhere in between and a few who just peek in occasionally and a few who have dropped off on the way. Well, whoever you guys are, and from wherever you are - Thank you.

By the way, I have some great news. Through this blog, I met a great friend and my circle of people expanded by one more nice person. And coincidentally, she is getting married this week. So 'Archie' a.k.a '@' - here is wishing you a very happy married life!