life welcoming me back ...

Am happy as a puppy this very moment , reflect a little back and i have been in this mode for quite some time now ! * grinning and nodding my head* at the same time.

For quite some time now my life took a trip down the "dull regular lane" and when i looked around , i used to wonder what happened, rather when did it happen ... is god or lets say fate mistaking me for someone else, cause this wasn't the plan, life was so pepped up with happiness big and small so uummm... is it a wrong turn or a misread direction that happened to me ...?!

But wwwooowww what a come back, as i was kind of enduring to it, life patted me on my shoulder and when i looked around 'whoa' my old way found me ! it was hunky Dory once again !! Just a step away when i went , it seemed the wrong turn never happened, as if i was holding a eraser all along.. just forgot which pocket i kept it !

And so i went from being a tiny food critic to a big girl all alone in the oldest part of Delhi to a traveler and a bag packer !

Whoa Whoa !!! hold on, thats a lot of "first timer" together for me .... i guess life was just taking a tiny nap, stretching a little... and all that i missed was given back to me. I somehow like the collection of all these small packages together as one.

1. ) INTERCONTINENTAL GRAND - So there i was, walking on my office floor ... chatting and laughing, when a colleague of mine (Nachiketa) walked up to me and proposed me this offer, it took me a couple of seconds to seep it through. But once i got it, am sure there was a twinkle in my eye ... thanks to my Blogs, i was being invited to Intercontinental Grand for lunch in their Chinese restaurant "Empress of China" as a food critic, who could talk about them ; and it dosent end here, after gorging on some truly delicious and authentic Chinese food we were given dim-sum making classes ... and all for free !!! absolutely right .. you heard me ! Not only was it an experience of a kind, but also a truly unexpected and joyful honor for me, which i am going to cherish for always.

2.) JAMAMASJID, Delhi 6 - The most yummiest food ! Living in Delhi since my child hood and for the first time i went there, a couple of Sundays back. Heard so much about the food and i must say every word of it was true, the company the ambiance and the oh so mouth watering aroma of the food that we ate. A wholesome treat in itself.

3.) KAMPLAND (Sigri Nanital) - Sigh ! the place would make you melt like a butter, it sure was one fun filled trip . A little painful, but nonetheless quite a change from office life (irony - with office people hahaha)! nothing better then a relaxing weekend in such a beautiful place with nature enveloping you from all around. And the best part about being surrounded with natural beauty is that its so unpredictable! one day its sunny, and suddenly the black clouds whhooosshh down to you and it rains! It had all - lovely scenic beauty, trekking, photography, good food, bonfire and a lovely two days with friends.

4.) SAHRANPUR, down the memory lane - the cliché fits in well here "last but not the least" :P after so many years after my grandparents passed away i went to Sahranpur this weekend, and trust you me till Saturday night i didn't knew i was going. But by golly , trips as unplanned as this one hold the maximum amount of joy, where my darling mom next to me was as excited as a little five year old narrating me every turn and twist of the lanes of her home town, happily showing me her journey from her school to college to her first clinic there! What can i say, i never thought i could forget Delhi at a place Like Sahranpur. Though went there to attend a wedding ( the son of the lady who hooked my parent together !!!!! I had to write this); and it indeed was a fabulous weeding, as good as a one that you would witness in Delhi. The preparations was stunning, so was the menu ! :D Within a short span of time (of one day) i did things i never did before (or did in some BC long forgotten) :

- ate mangoes on road, with many onlookers staring ... recognizing the different types and slurping on the tastes !

- walked in dingy old lanes, with 3 inches heels.

- Slept under a perfectly moonlight sky with cool soothing breeze brushing past me.

- ate pure butter !

- had the rain wake me up at 4 am !

Mountains and much more…

As I set off towards srinagar( in uttrakhand, not Kashmir.. mind it ;) ! ) , in a sudden ( you will know why I said “sudden”) and a hot summer afternoon from Delhi the only thing that occupied my mind was .. Please oh please ‘mera kam ho jaye, for which I am travelling so far’ … but who knew this would turn out to be such a treat, a well deserved and long awaited break from work and Delhi.

A new road … new people … new journey … unplanned excitement!

And as we moved along … it took us ten hours and couple of thousand pictures to reach here, but sometimes the journey is far more pleasurable then the destination itself. And what can I say … cool breeze in your hair, pleasurable company, nice smooth road, long trees on one side and Ganges on the other side … what more could I ask for!! Some part of me just wanted to carry on this way endlessly. The canal that had ganga water ran parallel to us for almost to a 12km stretch, and the water level was so high it seemed as if we were strolling on the bank of the river… just a few steps and you could actually touch the water.

It was refreshment if I put it in one word. Beautiful terrains, lovely music, chit chat and twilight. People often say that these mountains are standing here for so many years silently … I disagree, who said they are silent... infact I would say they know multiple languages …. They speak spooky, they speak beauty, they speak life, they speak height, they speak surprise, they speak whisper… a whisper in their own language... Different for different people and they speak change … change, the one thing everyone needs every now and then.

As we bypassed the cities one by one... and started on Rishikesh, that’s when I realized rather woke up to the fact that nature had a lot more then the boundaries of my imagination and anticipation. The long unwinding snake like mountain roads were like a treat to me … especially when you come from a city full of red lights, honks, and traffic jams! As for the roads … ya it was like a snake... but might I say a rather disfigured twisted snake (which by the way was goooooooddd)!

Stopped for dinner at 11 at a road side dhaba, nothing fancy at all … yet the only thing I would say was superb, perfectly simple fresh home cooked food, with a rhythmic background music of gushing running river behind you, blinking sparkling fireflies across the road and you perched on top of mountain in between all this… WOW!!!

Finally we all arrived in Srinagar at 2 am with a sleepy head. What followed after was like I said “unexpected”… honestly I liked Srinagar. Though I won’t say its every tourist dream destination, but the route was awesome and so is this ‘unplanned-trip-change-stay’. Today I went to see the lovely temple ‘tara devi mandir’ here…. Really pretty one must visit here, Alaknanda River being the second on the list.

… One of my favorite parts about this trip would be clicking pictures... Which I shall SOON UPLOAD so watch out. Though I caught some of the most amazing landscapes behind my lenses... but there are a few things I would never be able to capture… like the joy I am feeling right now being here, the thousands of twinkling stars outside my window smiling at me … lol if I put it in words of someone I know here “it looks like the sky has got chicken pox” , the gushing wind singing to me, the sparkling flowing water which I can listen to out here in the balcony, the random light covering the mountain here and there, suddenly running panther on the road from our car, the relaxation that has enveloped me here and much more ….. Sigh.

What more do I say, will have to be back tomorrow once my job is done here, but oh wow … its nothing like I thought… it’s more... Much more.

Journey so far... then and now ...

time has surely changed to a great extent .... it is rightly said that "man proposes and God disposes" so is what is happening with me .. never did i thought i would be here at this point in my life right after college, and what startles me most is that i am not sure should i be happy or surprised upon it ! "?"

Was a kid in school when all i wanted to do was have fun.. which is more or less what did !! :)
growing up increased my impatience and eagerness to get into college, it sure was pictured rose colored to all of us !! Routine was never me ... i was always capable of finding ways to somehow alter my everyday life ... to bring something new .. even if it were as small as a new sticker for my copy lol !

Two years of working .. and more or less in a stagnated fashion has bought me to this post of mine. The alters now would be a occasional outing, or a new movie ... dosent really excite me anymore. At times i find myself talking and behaving like my parents ... craving for weekends to come and all i want to do on my weekend is to rest .. maybe catch up on lost sleep! I remember how me and my sister would get on their nerves to take us out on weekends, and they would react as if a catastrophe hit them ... and we would just stand there stubborn and puzzled .. why would any one want to spend a nice holiday at home resting !!!?? lol ... now i get the answer !

when i was living my school life college was a "oh - so - wow" dream that i was looking forward to, and when came college ... i never realized when and how those three years past by ... and one day i am sitting in an office giving my interview, and then comes my first day at work ... lol was so excited i arrived at 8 am when office starts at 9:30 ! and today i sit here exactly 1 year and 10 months later .. revising my life! (at least a recent part of it).
.. No am not really complaining.. rather just stating.

those 19 years of life are surely the most treasured and blissful heavenly state one can have ... even a small achievement like completing holiday homework a month before school would give the feeling such immense triumph as if i just won myself an Oscar ! to think of it ... it came down to -
benches to a cubicle
notebooks to a pc
sneaking bites of lunch during the periods to short coffee breaks
pocket money to salaries
pencils and erasers to keyboard and notepads
wild bunch of friends to office colleagues
timetables to work reports
evening play grounds to facebook and gtalk
exam (phone) preparations to excel sheets and presentations
and much more ... which i really miss now. i guess somewhere all of us does.

... Now that i come to think of it, this sure is a good path to lead on but cant deny that dullness has occupied most of the space in my today's life. what can i say.. i could have fancied it up a little to maybe disguise the fact but then again ... wont really make much of a difference.

treading on ... somewhere knowing that this will change .. smiling and now thinking of the work that i have to get back to !