Home, sweet and sweaty....

At home after one of my longest periods of absence. The kid is finally in sync with India now and is happy. He took to my mother almost immediately and that gives me some free time now.
This place is extremely sultry and dusty now, being at the peak of summer. All the trees look brown with inches of dust on them. Even the usual pre-monsoon showers that used to clean them up are absconding. It seems they visited Bangalore recently.
My customary vists are not yet over. Hope I can finish at least one more before leaving.Mother thinks I hardly care for all those people(mostly her friends) while they dote on me. I care, I know but visiting them all when I hardly get to stay at home is unfair. I've had enough arguments with her on this one and I've given up. Now I go like a poor lamb everywhere, try to avoid eating but mostly end up making my stomach a junkyard and make them all happy.
It's hardly worth going to BCR these days. It reminds me very much of Bangalore with its teeming crowd and the blocked roads. Ever since they gave permit to these private buses(blast RR!), one can hardly cross the road or have a normal conversation in front of the bus-stop. Private buses are all the time honking and their conductors shouting( as if one can't see them!) and it all makes one want to escape from the place immediately.

Phir Bhi Dil Hai...

Back to where I belong! An eventful and painful journey brought me to Bangalore and all the associated problems. The kid is refusing to own the place, actually. He hardly finds anything familiar and it's been quite confusing for him.

People around are quite eager to know about the great country. My neighbour was under the impression that there were hardly any trees in Washington(Don't know why!) and when I enlightened her that it had quite many exotic and beautiful trees, she was quite disappointed and didn't want to hear anymore about the place. Many thought I should've put on at least 10 kgs and were disappointed again. I would love to hear from an American his/her impression of India. I hope they don't think of us as snake charmers still!

India plays Pakistan again today in Abu Dhabi. Brings back the memories of the (in)famous Sharjah encounters. I do respect the present Pakistani team but I don't dread them anymore. A coward as I am when it comes to watching cricket matches, I could hardly watch those matches without a pounding heart. It was as if every Tom,Dick and Harry in Pakistan team would be a hero while playing against us!Nowadays they are only mere mortals, just like us. I don't know whether the retirement of Akram and Wakhar or the newly sprung friendship between us has more to do with this...

The mean reds....

It's almost time to say goodbye to Rosslyn but as the day is approaching I don't find myself celebrating at all. All the eagerness that was overflowing a month ago is reduced to just a trickle now. P almost got angry with me for this 'lack of feeling'! I don't know what exactly makes me sad. May be it's the fact that I hardly did anything in these four months. It's always been my dream to travel to places and to see and know new things. So here I was, in a brand-new place with so much of free time and what did I do? Probably with the kid around, it was wrong of me to have expected anything. Alright, some day I'll return to this place and do what I like!
Oh, I'll miss the library too. Hope British Library won't let me down.
Yet, I am glad to go home! Glad to be among the known faces, with the loved ones, along the familiar lanes and roads....I do have a lot to look forward to...

So what will it be finally?

So long, farewell, I hate to say goodbye....or.... I'm glad to go, I cannot tell a lie..?

My views...

Read "A Room with a View" by E.M.Forster and re-read it thrice already. Like it a lot. As is my wont, I tend to miss out a lot of details and subtle meanings when I read it the first time and every new reading gives me something to wonder at. Liked Freddy, George and Bartlett in that order. Watched the movie too but didn't like it much. The 'muddle' which runs throughout the book is somehow not conveyed well in the movie. And there are a lot of significant incidents in the novel which don't appear on the screen at all - like George calling out Lucy's name in that pond scene and Miss Bartlett's letter to Lucy etc. George, Lucy and Mr.Beebe all sound better in the book but the only exception is Maggie Smith . She was fantastic.
Coming to think of it, I've hardly liked any movie adaptation of a novel. "Pride and Prejudice" (BBC Series - I haven't seen the 2005 version) is as good as the novel probably because the length was 6 hours. It's a splendid work. Bram Stoker's Dracula is the worst I guess. I have seen three versions of it but each one made me somehow feel sorry for the book. The book is so splendid and all they had to do was following it faithfully. And for all that, none of them is half as scary as the book!

Numb....

That's what I feel still, even after two weeks of hearing it. Oh, she looked so fine when I saw her last! Who would expect suicide from a person who talked so enthusiastically about settling down in Bangalore, a new job and things? It's the third death in my family and the worst as far as I'm concerned because I still can't believe it. Why did she have to do it? They say somebody tortured her mentally when she was in Australia and she underwent therapy etc but still couldn't come out of it. But how could she let herself into such a state? Somebody could've done something, somebody should've done something! Her husband, father, sisters, anybody! It's like a riddle and I don't think I can ever solve it. I wish I could just get into her mind at that point and know exactly what went wrong!
Thinking of my cousin, the first thing I remember is what my mother said when I was in class 2 (she was in 8th then) ,that she could solve 10th std Maths problems with ease. Mother sounded so proud of her and she was my rolemodel as I grew up.Our families met twice a year in our grandparents' place. She and her two elder sisters were very close to each other. They had devised a way of talking - Ramesh would be called Meshra and Hanuman would be Numanha and so on... And they used to talk this way so fast that I could hardly make anything out of it. I remember many nights in summer, lying on the terrace looking at the starlit sky and begging them to tell me a story. It used be a movie story most of the times with all the romantic elements cut ( I knew by the way they used to giggle). And I would doze off listening to it aided by the cool breeze ....Lovely days! Oh, why did she have to die? These are the times I feel God is not there but desperately hope and pray that he's there somewhere....

It looks so beautiful all around in Rosslyn! It's a pity that we have to leave now when we could've enjoyed our stay here...