There are good weekends, there are great weekends and then there are legendary weekends.

No prizes for guessing, my life has entered the zone of legendary weekends. 1 of my 5 girls is now engaged and all set to tie the knot in August. We always knew she'd be the 1st to get married and we were right. (unless one of us ties the knot in a jiffy in the next 3 months. naaah!) The news was revealed in our own style - the pictionary style. Yes we guessed looking at pictures and did not react out of sheer disbelief. There was this deafening silence to start with and then deafening shouts of Oh My God!! thereafter. Of course, there was unlimited alcohol and crazy drunkenness and dancing followed. Then there was the quiet time in the balcony where everyone was drunk beyond wits and we were letting those skeletons out of our closets.

Next morning was all about dealing with hangovers and planning for that day's lunch and all the lunches and dinners we would do before the big day. There is a designer visit for the sarees, the jewelry store trips and trying to figure what to gift the bride. And of course the bachelorette party which will be something no one has seen ever before. I wont give the details out because the bride is an occasional reader at this space! :)

There is also the saga of goosebumps and denial and acceptance and happiness and sadness that follows with the first wedding in a bunch of childhood/teenage friends. But all in all there is only one way to describe the mood of the season - Happyyyy!

Hearts bleed.

It is not always that a terror attack chokes your voice. An average human being almost never dies of a terror attack. It is perfectly normal to want to write slogans and feel empathetic towards a nation's loss. But how does one justify weird imaginations?

Those bastards planted bombs in my German bakery. In OUR German Bakery. There might be 20,000 other people writing about this right now but each one of us is going through a different feeling in a painfully similar way. I've spent umpteen weekends at German Bakery with the girls and with my sister. The coffee pot, the apple pie, the tiramisu cake and the mushroom omlette. The cigarette stall next door and the silver jewelery shops. Those handbags and embroidered t-shirts on the 1st floor. Those sign boards saying - Drugs and Pets not allowed. Those wooden stools and the cute chink waiters. Those men and women in white/maroon chogas. Those little kids coming in to sell flowers... that's German Bakery for all of us.

My German bakery is mindless laughter with the girls. That evening with Cams when his bike was towed away. That afternoon when we played 3-things-you-hate-about-me and fought like school children. Those celebrations for everything - from passing Physical Exam to French, buying scooters, cars, new cell phones, cameras, birthdays, break-ups, holidays, new jobs, joblessness. We've celebrated life in general at German bakery.

Somehow when I saw the video clippings on TV I kept imagining that one evening when we went after Gayu bought her car. It rained that evening. We clicked so many pictures and had so much fun it is inexplicable. Today I kept imagining all of us getting blown up in the midst of our giggle fits. I know, it is a sick imagination but the fact is it could've very well been us. If not for Budds' plan of coming to Bombay, I was supposed to be in Pune and we would, in all odds, be in German bakery on a Saturday evening.

Germany Bakery must pick itself up and get operational soon. I hope it is just a rumor that its shut for good. This Saturday we'll go see whatever is remaining of our German Bakery.

You bastards, you can kill us. Try killing our memories. Hah!

Twenty Five and Counting.

I always wanted a cake-less birthday. I always wanted a birthday without friends yelling for 24 hours straight and shoving alcohol down my throat and buying me flowers, gifts, balloons. I always wanted one birthday where I sleep until late in the morning, don't go anywhere out and read a lot. My 25th birthday is a landmark day for me. So what if I dont have any of the things I wanted to have on this day, but at least I willed silence hard enough to get some peace of mind through the day and 3 hours of absolute solitude in the night. It was nice to spend an hour over the phone having mindless conversation with someone just as mindless as me.

I gifted myself an external hard disc and an anti-virus. I did a quiet dinner with family. At the tick of 12 marking the end of that birthday, my best friend called me and I burst out laughing. 7 straight years and he still thinks it is on the 7th, not 6th.

I have always been quite excited about growing up. I still am. I like the way it makes me rigid and how I fight that rigidity. I like the way it makes me look forward to bigger, better, more elusive things in life. Growing up is a mystery that gets only more complex as time moves. It never simplifies the puzzle. And that's where the fun is. Growing up is not boring. It is difficult at times, yes, but there has never been a dull day in this process.

Of course, there is the painful drill of birthdays where you do an (un)reality check and assess what your net assets and net liabilities are. The balance sheet never tallies and the profits are not evident and you only hope you will see them in another 2 years. Birthdays are a sorry reminder of what you are not and what you don't have and a mocking solace of all the trivial things you've managed to stumble up on, carefully picked up and made them look like achievements. Birthdays are a date stamp against all the goods and bads of your life. I have never understood the need to mark red-letter days anyway. One day in a year (2 when you are married) to celebrate being who you are? Now that's being fucking low on self esteem. I'd rather celebrate being who I am each time I feel close to myself, on days I want to hug myself and say 'you'r a rock star', on days I smile at no one in particular while walking on the dirty bylanes of a stinking Bombay.

I don't hate birthdays. I can't deny the fact that its a logical celebration - to celebrate the precise moment you came into being and to thank your parents for having faith in you even before you were born and bringing you in the world knowing you will live.

I wonder if at the pretext of saying birthdays are trivial, I ended up giving it too much importance in this post and in my life in general.

On a side note, February is a beautiful month of the year to be born in.

Essay - My House

I wrote this essay when I was 5. And I spoke of all that I had in my house. 4 rooms, a lawn, a car, loving parents, a sibling. On the verge of 25, I write this essay again. And I realize I don't have a house yet. I have a few places with loved ones I can call home and go live at but I don't have a house. 


I don't have a house that's devoid of noise and that feels like me. I don't have a house with a reading room - a room with wall-to-wall mattresses on the floor with shelves on 4 walls that stock books. I don't have a house with a small living room. If only I had a house it would have had pictures in solid black frames. It would be a house with plants and without fish. If I had a house it'd smell of old books and lime. The house would have no extra racks. My house wouldn't have collections of antics. If I had a house, it wouldn't have a mini-bar. This hypothetical house of mine would be a purpose driven house, not aesthetics driven. It would have sunlight that I couldn't handle. It would have 2 long chairs. Just 2. The house would feel like me and have bright colors. 


If I had a house, it would have no calendars but would have a huge wall clock. You ask why? So I'd know how many hours more I could read in the room with the wall-to-wall mattresses and how many hours before I drew the curtains. The clock would tell me when to water the plants and when to step out to smile at random people on streets. I'd sleep well before the clock strikes 12 and guess what? I wouldn't have to bother about the ticking calendar.