Leonine Luxury

Ah! The joys of a manicure! I am indulgently staring at my fingers while typing. I am touching and picking objects gently and not grabbing at them, to make my nail polish last longer. Alas! Even with new and improvised beauty products entering the market every other day, there is still not a single nail polish that would last even for 3 days without chipping. Anyway, right now my hands are glowing and my nails are shining. What more could a girl ask for? Apart from some Mac products and spa trips and new clothes and.... mmm guess I am getting carried away :)

While getting my manicure this evening, I let my thoughts wander. I was thinking how much I love pampering. I know everybody does, but with me, it goes to another level. It has a healing effect on my body, mind, and soul. It makes me so happy! I think it has a lot to do with me being a Leo :)

Okay, people who don't believe in sun-signs are now rolling their eyes. Roll 'em as much as you want dear non-believer, but every Leo loves luxury and pampering, and that's as good as a fact. There might be just different ways of being pampered that work for different people, but scratch the surface and you find that need for self-indulgence in every Big Cat.

These days I am too much into it. I have a set routine (yes, I count that as indulgence), I wake up at 6 AM, I do Yoga, I meditate, I listen to soothing lounge music during my shower, I eat only fruits for my dinner, all of which makes me feel as fresh as a baby. My mind is so relaxed, my body feels so light and I am so peaceful that I do imagine being just-out-of-the-womb kind of fresh. Alright maybe a just-out-of-the-womb baby isn't that happy. I should say a-day-old-baby kind of fresh. I believe in getting my facts right :)

I want to clarify here that I am not a diet and fitness freak, neither am I paranoid about my weight, and I call myself a 'foodie'. It is just a phase that I am in, but now I am seriously considering making it my lifestyle. However, I also know that all this is possible because presently I have more time on my hands than I can waste without feeling guilty. Once I get back into the grind of work or studies, it would be nearly impossible to afford such luxury. This gets me back to the L-word. Yep, that's the L-word of my life nowadays :)

Psst: I succeeded in not mentioning Vlerick even once in my post. Yayieee!! :D

Pub Going, Loose and Forward

This consortium is the perfect example of how a small snowball of an idea can gain momentum throughout the nation and grow into a giant, all-engulfing, avalanche of pink chaddis to the Ram Sene Office in Bangalore. For once, such a below-the-belt tactic seems totally fair and sensible. Hence, I am now a proud member of the Consortium of pub going, loose and forward women. I have joined their facebook group and asked all my friends, cousins and anybody whom I know to join the campaign. I read in the TOI today that the Ram Sene's Bangalore unit chief Vasanth Kumar Bhavani has said about the campaign that, "It's a free country. However, we would like to know the background of these people since nobody from good families would resort to such cheap steps". Yeah, you are right Mr. Bhavani. People from good families only beat up women and drag them by the hair.

I don't want to question how a celebration of love on a particular day can be a part of only western culture. I don't want to start discussions about why women should have the right to drink, go to pubs, and socialise without the fear of being beaten up by hooligans who want to sudharo every female in the country. I don't want to ask these hooligans that what happens to their moral policing when a woman is raped, abused or molested. All I want to say is, oppose them, stand against them, fight them back.

This Valentine's I am going to raise a toast for all the men I know, who are real gentlemen, and who support and take care of women around them. For my brother, who helps my sis-in-law around the house with every possible work, unasked; who took me out to celebrate in a pub when I got my first salary; who really respects women. For my Dad, who brings me a bottle of white wine whenever I ask him; who has never had a problem with my dressing sense; who really respects women. For my friend Amit, who pulls out chairs and holds open doors for women no matter what their age is; who would make any girl feel like a princess just because he thinks women deserve it; who really respects women. For GO, who accompanies me to pubs even when he is not much into drinking; who gladly lets me be the person I am even if he doesn't agree with me about something; who really respects women. I will a raise a toast to all of them not because I feel they are going out of their way for the women in their lives but because these men do it without the airs of doing women a favor. They do it because that was how they were brought up.

Go ahead, raise a toast this Valentine's to all such men in your life and to every woman on the planet :-)

Long Island Weekend......... Contd.

My last post (or should I say non-post) was unintentional. I accidentally posted just the title and hence the funny post without words happened. I would have removed it but when I got a couple of comments on that post I decided to let it stay.

Anyhow, this post is about what I did this past weekend and how does Long Island come into picture. I met GO (My George Orwell) on Saturday after a pretty long time. None of us remembers when was it that we last met, as if we have collectively lost that portion of our memories. I can guess that it must be close to 2 years but I am not sure. Its funny really how we don't remember when and where did we last meet. We have stayed in touch throughout, courtesy orkut and phone, probably that's why we never realised that time is flying by and it's probably 2 years that we haven't seen each other. Finally we met and I noticed that GO looks as cute as ever; the same smiling face, the same witty jokes, only this time GO had a car :-)

We wanted to catch a movie, or to be true, it was I who wanted to catch a movie because I usually don't get company in Gurgaon for the movies. The only available option was Chandni Chowk to China! GO warned me that it was a crap movie but I HAD to watch it, so we did. Crap was an understatement, the movie is outrageously bad. I don't even want to write about it. However, GO and I still had a good time by laughing at everybody and everything in the movie. After the movie it was time for TGIF, yeah whats a date without a couple of drinks!! Oh, didn't I tell you that it was a date? Well it was, seemed like it at least :-)

Whenever I want to try a new drink, I mostly end up getting confused and then I order what I love drinking, Long Island Iced Tea. I love its name (specially because Tea is the only beverage that's not in it), I love its color, I love its taste, I love its ingredients (gin, vodka, tequila, rum and triple sec) and I love it because its stronger than any other cocktail :-). So I had 2 LIITs and they were enough for me because I did not want to scare GO when I met him for the first time after soo long. The next time we meet, I am going to have more. You reading that GO?

We laughed, discussed drinks, friends, old times, new times and later GO helped me walk to the parking lot, even 2 LIITs make me need support while walking. He dropped me home and I have to say now that I really had a great time. Would look forward to the next time you come here GO :-)

Sunday was another thrilling day. I met another great friend, Karan. We attended an MBA fair where some Australian Business Schools were participating. Karan had come with some friends and three of us who had taken the GMAT (all 3 of us have decent scores), got on the spot offer of admission from University of Technology, Sydney. Now, how cool is that?? You go to an MBA fair, you are not even interested to study in that country and you are offered admission in a University that's ranked 9th in Australia. None of us was delighted however, because we have gone through gruelling days and nights to apply in couple of universities in US and we are still not sure whether we would be offered an interview, let alone admission, and here we get a straight admission offer with the only condition that we need to submit our documents. I mean wasn't that too easy?? Still, I GOT AN ADMISSION OFFER FOLKS!!!! In August, probably I would be writing from Australia about how much I love Sydney and how cool my university is :-)

When 3 of us had admission offers, that called for a celebration. Since we were in Vasant Vihar we went to RPM, the only disc in the vicinity. It was time for LIIT again :-). The LIIT in RPM was stronger than it was in TGIF. We drank and danced, 5 guys and me, all of them sweet and decent guys, and had a great time. So this past weekend was my Long Island Weekend and I still feel that I just can't have enough of LIIT :-)

Of Drinks, and Cigarettes, and Books

Okay, so last night I went out with my cousin Chummu and had two cocktails and five cigarettes. I needed it, the break I mean; the break from monotony. Yesterday I tried a Gin cocktail for the first time; usually I am a Vodka or Wine person. To tell you the truth, I could hardly tell the difference between Vodka and Gin. Probably because the Gin was mixed with other things to make my cocktail. I wanted to have more drinks but did not, since we had to come home later and I did not want Dad to suspect that we had been up to some mischief when according to him I had taken Chummu to check out an awesome new Pizza place.

Last night was fun. I smoked for the first time and smoked five cigarettes in a row, which later made me feel that all my innards are on fire and that my intestines have turned to ashes. I have tried to smoke twice before but could never suck it in. Last night I managed to achieve that feat and in amazement mixed with a sense of achievement stopped only after five cigarettes and when I had started feeling queasy. However, I am not going to have a smoke again, never. I had a very disturbed sleep last night because of those five bloody cigarettes.

Anyhow, I and Chummu had a sort of reunion yesterday. It had been a reeaallly long time since we talked like that. It was good, everything, the drinks, the gossip, the sleeping together, even those cigarettes in some way. I also had a talk with GO (My George Orwell) after having my drinks and cigarettes, and it was fun too. I giggled a lot while talking to him. Usually I don't giggle, I laugh. Was I flirting? Naaah. GO is an old friend, I can't flirt with him after all these years. I don't think so!!! However, I know I usually am a big flirt after a couple of drinks. But no, I wasn't flirting with GO. Oh well, I sense some confusion here :-)

Oh, the best part of last evening was that I bought two books. GO was after my life to read Nineteen Eighty-Four, so I finally bought that and another GO-recommended book, in fact his favourite, To Kill A Mockingbird. That makes me a rich book lover for sometime. I and GO have plans of catching up this Saturday. Its been a long time since we met, so GO would drive all the way from Noida to Gurgaon to meet me. That's sweet of him, ain't it?? :-)

You Will Always Be My Friend

This weekend I went shopping with Mom and Dad and while Dad was going through greeting cards in Archie's Gallery, I was going through the T-Shirts they had on display. They had a nice collection of Tees with some really witty statements. I don't remember any of them now, except one. This one caught my eye and I immeadiately thought of NV. It said, "You will always be my friend. You know too much!" It made me smile and brought forth a cascade of thoughts.
I pondered over it that night. Come to think of it among my friends we all know so much about each other that if we decide to ruin each other's life, we can easily do that. Ye!! Gives me that evil power over them, but then they possess the same power over me. If I try to recall what all I know about all the close frends I have ever had, I can list some pretty nasty details. :-) Multiple affairs (not at the same time, all my frends are decent), drinking, gambling, a wedding in a temple (I and NV signed the marriage certificate as witnesses), and other things which I would not list here (this isn't that kind of blog) :-) Superb!!!!
If we assume the statement on the Tee to be true (my engineering language), it implies that we will all stay friends forever. Our dark secrets bond us together. On a serious note, I love all my friends. Dark secrets or no, I do hope we always stay bonded.

Sweet Surrender

Raksha Bandhan was fun this year. Since last few years I have been celebrating it in Noida in comparative isolation. This year the day was busy since morning, cousins visiting us, celebration, eating goodies, collecting money from brothers etcetera. I have been eating like a famine victim at home because I know that once I go back to Noida, meals would mean maggi noodles, macaroni, soups, fried rice and the usual bread-omelette. Not that I don't know how to cook. I don't want anybody to get wrong ideas. I know how to cook, infact I love cooking, but it's so boring cooking for nobody else but for your own little tummy.

The latest news is that I have surrendered myself to intense lethargy these days. I do nothing, absolutely nothing, from the time I am up to the time I drop back on bed. I surf and surf on the internet, I spend hours talking on phone, and I sleep. Yeah, I doze for sinfully long hours, curling up on bed with a pillow under my head and another under my arm, the window open and the monsoon breeze drifting into the room, carrying with it the faint smell of fresh earth and the fragrance of flowers from our lawn. Ah, I am turning poetic, but that's what a lethargic mood, the monsson and an overdoze of sleep and food does to one.
I would call this phase - Sweet Surrender :-)