Parijat Paanch

This post was written over a span of 2 months. Very soon (in fact too soon) PGP1 would come to an end and so would my stay at my current abode. New academic year would see me in a new residence too. Losing something has never been easy for me :| For all those who say ki hi kashavarhi senti hote...well, you may stop here. Thank you very much for stopping by.

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weird. Weird. WEIRD. That's exactly how I feel right now. Reclining on my two pillows (pink and red) at almost 145 degrees with a laptop on my tummy, my favourite rajai on top of me and my teddy bear by my side, it feels weird to write about something that one is going to lose very soon.

Last 2 weeks left and then I bid adieu to this haven that has been my home for almost a year. Room 5, Parijat Hostel. Yes, that same ground floor room whose door is so conveniently hidden behind a pillar. Standing at my door, I can see the entire hostel, even beyond straight till Amaltas without anyone knowing :)

There are very few things in our lives that make us their own from the very beginning. Parijat Paanch was one of them. A love at first sight..a relationship waiting to happen. Although I shared it with another Homo sapien, my bond with my side of the room will always remain special. My corner, my bed, my side of window, the view it offered, the one rare occasion when there was a pair of peacocks outside my window, my white wall, my table-chair-cupboard...everything!! :)
For the first time, I felt responsible for something. Small small things mattered.
Was my table cluttered?
Are there cob-webs in the corner of the room?
Is it time to change the mattress or can I go on for one more week?

I was playing my mom's role. It just happened naturally. Without being conscious about it, I was dusting, cleaning, re-arranging, de-cluttering stuff. And man, did it feel good!! I never thought I would say this but re-arranging the cupboard with some soft music in the background is the best stressbuster ever!! Now that I think of it this all seems like a grown-up simulated version of 'Ghar-ghar' that girls so commonly play in their childhood :P
Parijat Paanch comforted me in hard times..saw me through my 'phases'..my rare ups and the deplorable downs. The comforting bed and my all the more comforting rajai..I rarely missed home; such was Parijat Paanch to me. My neatly arranged study table, books stacked up to the left with my ceramic momentoes in the centre..4 of them..a Ganpati Bappa idol, a cute lil' kid with a ' My Best Friend' sign, a ceramic clock which looks like a toy-house and ceramic gift box with flowers inside and a heart that says 'Together Forever'. I know..too mushy. But I love them all :)
Of all the wonderful memories of PGP 1 at MICA, the times spent in Parijat Paanch would be one of the closest. These times...like the one today..the ones I spend with myself. The solitude in this room never for once made me feel lonely. We both embraced each other, shared silly moments together...you know ones, when no one's around to watch you and you are your realest self. I believe that its only your solitude that knows you the best..the way you really are..when you have thrown away the garb of pretence and the facade of being someone you aren't.

Parijat Paanch would always stir up unforgettable emotions in me. Of happiness. A tinge of sadness. Possession. Ownership. Responsibility. Motherly feelings. Of being a kid returning home after a hard day at school. Of taking care and been taken care.

To the times spent lazing and ceiling-gazing
To all the movies of which I lost count
To reading books before sleeping and sleeping with lights on
To snuggling inside my rajai on cold winter mornings
To those silly times of hiding inside the rajai and making STD calls
To waking up to a sleepy hostel..and sleeping again
To bunking classes and choosing my comfortable bed over education
To late-night assignments and submissions
To the tradition of marroing nights before exams
To friends coming over bed-crashing and not leaving for a long long time
To the laughter, to the tears, to my tantrums and my fears...

Cheers, Parijat Paanch...Hope you never forget me and keep embracing all those who find a home in you :)

With lots of love and a bundle of memories,
Rutuja (Batch of 2008-2010)

Poli-ticks!!:X

I am feeling pretty devilish right now. Hihihihehehhahaha !! Well you see..I have tricked someone. And it feels naaaice :D No, no..I am a kindred soul actually but I have to let out the devil in me sometime na.

Lemme explain. The Senior Placement Committee results are just out. And the one man the entire batch was rooting for didn't make it!! (Rahul Rajesh Bathija, you rock, come wat may!!) He was the backbone, clavicle, femur, humerus of the Junior PlaceComm and we came to blindly trust this Nestle IBP (Internal Brand Proprietor..duh!! People take some marketing course, will you.. our else our chatting ..err 'communicating' is gonna get increasingly difficult!) to paar karo our naiyya in this recession struck times. Life is anyway difficult, handing over my only chance of repaying the enormous student loan by getting a decent job after MBA to some foul-mouthed, jack-ass moron wasn't exactly my idea!! Our batch favourite Rahul aka Rony was a clear winner in terms of votes, but got rejected in the interviews (The probability of him not doing well in the interviews range from negative to zero). And now! After this setback, we are asked to gladly make our presence felt at a batch elections for SPAM - the Sports Committee!! :X Funny games, eh!

So when the karta-dharta mai-baap (MCSA..similar the General Secretary back in UD) of the batch started their regular routine of calling doors, banging people (Oops..Calling people, banging doors) I slyly waited till my roomie left the room and then switched off the lights!! See I am smart..that's why they took me at MICA :P No one came and banged on my door thereafter..shtoopidd phools!! Lolzz..they didnt even see that the door latch wasnt even..well, latched.

And now I sit here, in complete darkness, albeit the light from my lappie, and type out this post. It feels good not to participate in something you dont believe in. It feels good not being forced to vote for a bunch of free-riding goons who never turn up for group assignments but shamelessly campaign for you 'keemti' vote during elections. No wonder politics is so messed up in this country. The few good ones are removed like rotten fruits and the rotten ones are nurtured to spoil the basket. Hmmph!

Books!

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read. ~ Groucho Marx

Finished reading 'The White Tiger' by Aravind Adiga. The book has won The Booker Prize for 2008 and deservedly so. Just glad that I read it :) The author has another remarkable book to his credit, 'Between the Assassinations' and I plan to read it soon. For starters, here is a short story by Adiga which was published in The Guardian (where he writes frequently) which talks about a subject very similar to The White Tiger.

Started with another Booker Prize winner book, again by an Indian author. 'The God of Small Things' by Arundhati Roy (Ya ya go ahead, laugh at me..I am probably the last Indian alive who still hasnt read it :|) Done with some 60 pages and man! does it take time to get used to her writing style!!

More on books later. Oh btw, ever since I have gone back to books, the pre-reads have taken the proverbial backseat. Wish I could balance both :| Why cant I juggle a Blue Ocean Strategy/Marketing Myopia with some Sherlock Holmes and Fourth Estate?? :(

Lemme end with a quote which I find very true.

To read a book for the first time is to make an acquaintance with a new friend; to read it for a second time is to meet an old one. ~Chinese Saying

Touchwood! :)

Got through Yahoo! India. Sales profile.Location Mumbai. Dream job. Very happy. Thanks to the Big Guy up there. :)

A 24 hour trial

4:55 am

Have been working incessantly since 11. First case analysis for WAC then editing a friend's SOP for a b-school, followed by an online depth-interview, then a live one and now report-making. Why am I mentioning here? Well. Happy Mahashivratri!! Still confused? Lemme explain. Yesterday I was struck by a brilliant idea to hold an entire day's fast for this festival. My first fast ever!!! Don't get me all wrong..I have not committed sooo many paaps to suddenly turn religious. I don't even know which one of the 36 crores gods and goddesses am I doing this for! (Ok...I think the name Mahashivratri may be suggesting something;)) But the point is I am feeling very very hungry already!! Not even 5 hours into the fast and my tummy is growling ferociously!!

Wait till you hear the worst part. This assignment is actually a Consumer Behaviour report on CHOCOLATES!!!! (^$%$#@#@$#@) I mean of all the days..I have to deal with chocolates on the very day I go on a fast!! Life is so cruel at times :(

Oh wait..the worst is still yet to come..This report basically delves into consumer perceptions of Hershey Kisses vis-a-vis Cadbury Dairymilk. There is a projective technique in which we give a chocolate to the respondent and ask what they feel about it. Yes, you guessed it right...I have around 10 Hershey Kisses in my bag!! Freaking 10 kisses with me and I cant have one!! How could I be soo unfortunate!! :(

This is going to be the worst test of my patience and will power (friggin' 10 kisses...right there on my table..what am I thinking !?!?!) I hope I sail through and keep up the promise..not for anyone else..but for myself :)

For what happens next..tune in at night when I tell you gleefully/shamefully about the outcome of this day. And yes, don't you dare wish me Happy Mahashivratri! :X

Edit 1: 4.30 pm

Hello folks! I am happy to inform you all that I am still alive and kicking!
1 cuppa coffee + 1 mosambi juice + 2 bottles of water = Rutuja alive for 17 hours since her last meal!! :)

With the WAC assignment postponed and Consumer Behaviour report presented, life was slightly back to normalcy. Or so I thought!! The PlaceComm obviously had different plans for me. They simply love... no wait....luuuurvvee to see us palpitate, sweat out buckets and curse them under our breathe! (Go PlaceComm!! you are still my favourite committee on campus...hows does it matter that I curse you the most? You guys totally rock (us)). So at 2.29 pm I was informed that I had a telephonic interview with some guy from Yahoo! India at 3.00 pm. Now this guy and I not being exactly chuddy-buddies, the prospect of maaroing jargon-laden answers to his totally irrelevant questions wasn'y my idea of an idyllic afternoon. So like a stove under my..well, you know where..I began some secondary research (You see what I mean? Just give us a chance and we maaro jargon at the drop of the hats ;)) So after some googling..err secondary research, I was all set to face the interview except for the teeny-meeny detail that I still didn't know what Yahoo! did!! I was more concerned about my GMail id on my CV fwded to the Yahoo guy :P 5 mins were all that they could endure me for. So here I am..back to the comforts of last row bench..nicely tucked (and ducked) behind my lappie screen, awaiting the elusive sleep goddess to smile upon me.

This day is turning more interesting than I ever thought! Stay tuned (coz you don't have life!).
Tada!! :)

Taddaaa!!!

So finally my blog gets a new avatar. After having changed more templates than publishing posts, I realised that I was fed up of the regular templates offered by blogspot. After much secondary research, I landed on a few sites that would help out this damsel in distress.
For those who came in late (in my life), yours truly is self-proclaimed and much acclaimed technically-challenged entity. Given a chance, I would bring back the golden days of type-writers and telegrams. I prefer a life which is simple and comes without a user manual. I have been much derided by close ones for this who fail to see my point that life can be equally good, even better without beeps, spams, blue screens and virus :|
Anyways.
After a big help from Nisha (aakhir work-ex kaam aa hi gaya :P) to fight maaro the html code, the results are there for all to see. Doesnt it look gorgeous? Its cute no? Leave a comment..the blog would feel so nice ;)

As luck would have it...

Hello dahlings!!

I love spontaneity! If anyone ever wrote a biography of yours truly, please make sure you write an entire chapter on 'How Rutuja Got Spontaneous, Got Wild and Had a Life!' :) Most of my wonderful memories till date gather around making plans out-of-the-blue and going for them. Movies..treks..dinners..even elocution competitions and eventually winning 1st prize (Okay! Enough show-off!)

So. The other day a group of us extremely bored girls decided, at the spur of the moment, to go out for a movie. Now let me give you an idea..these girls are not one of those who go 'Shit ya! I am sooo bored' as soon as they wake up, they are the go-getters, first-benchers of the class, glasses/lenses wearing, oily haired ladies with huge fines on their names in college libraries and on whom their groups shamelessly free-ride! (Okay!..One of them just died laughing). Anyway, the point is these girls are the hardworking kinds who were slogging out for days and had reached their saturation point. A few frantic phone calls to the friendly neighbourhood rickshawala - Pappu bhai and we were all set.

We were just so determined to catch 'Luck by Chance' at the nearest theatre that we really didnt mind missing the first 15 mins of the movie and the entire scene of Aamir Khan. (Oops..Plot spoilers ahead!!) The movie was fresh..the cast was surprising and it seemed as though the entire film industry dropped on to the sets of LBC to say a hi and were offered a complimentary scene :P But it certainly didnt look out of place.

Lemme start off by jotting down a few things that I remember from the movie:

• Farhan 'WoW' Akhtar: What's with this guy? He has this mesmerizing charm that you cant keep your eyes off him. He's just your regular guy but there is something as delectable as a choco-chip ice cream (double scoop topped with nuts and chocolate sauce..yumm!) about him, that you cant have enough of him! You want him in each scene, in each frame..and gawd! his smile makes you go totally 'Aaaaawwwww' :') He acts naturally - be it comedy, romance or heavy drama and even manages to pull off the regular 'running around the trees' sequence with unbelievable ease!
  

• Konkana Sharma: Now they don't make them like these any more, do they? :) She is sensuous, she is sensitive and she is real. As real as life. This lady warms my heart in each of her movies by her sheer presence. She emotes the way you and I would in the drawing rooms of our home. She reacts like us. She talks like us. And the best part, she looks just like us. Only in better clothes ;) To call her art 'acting' would be an insult, she seems to live that character. And most importantly, she makes us live that character.
  

• Hrithik 'Greek-God' Roshan (Can I please have him as my birthday gift?)
  Gawd!! What looks! What physique! What dancing skills! What acting! Why-o-why does he entice us this way? He makes women take one hard look at their husbands/boyfriends and shake their heads in dejection. He makes girls lose their sleep and sanity. He makes guys burn out of jealousy as their girlfriends lech at him with hungry eyes :P Enough said :D
  

• Isha Sharvani's figure: I hate her for being so slim :( But not feeling too bad, coz she cant act, I would have died of complex otherwise. And yes, she can do rope-malkhamb as well, but so can those tiny lil' things at Samarth Vyayam Mandir at Shivaji Park :P

The rest of the cast..well, they certainly dont deserve being called 'the rest of the cast' :D
Dimple Kapadia, Juhi Chawla and Rishi Kapoor have all performed their roles to the hilt. The one scene when Dimple Kapadia's character lashes out at her daughter, saying that she as a child never got the luxuries that her daughter was enjoying..how she was forced to act in movies by her parents, is a beautifully shocking one which requires special mention. It offers a rare glimpse to the new generation on what acting was all about in that bygone era and all the good things we have missed :)

But then how can you talk about a movie without mentioning the true star of the movie?? Zoya Akhtar..Take a bow! The film industry is paradoxically seeing a surge in talent during the economic downswing. For the efforts she has taken and are visible. For the script that is interesting. For the characters she etched on paper and brought to life. For sharing the stereotypes and idiosyncrasies of film industry she probably grew up with. But mostly, I thank her for the beautiful end of the movie. Human beings are selfish in real life. Its time we accept it. Our dhishoom-dhishoom Hindi film hero is also human and can be a selfish, self-centered moron who wants people coz he needs them. Vikram isnt a bad guy. But its high time we stop glorifying our heroes. Sona's decision to live for herself and not become a drawing room fixture in Vikram's life very subtly brings out the director's sensitivity. Sona is a woman of today coz Zoya is one. A thinking, daring, ambitious woman who has her own dreams and wants to fulfill them herself. Is she any different from the girls of today? Then why has it taken such a long time and a lady director like Zoya to depict this in reel life?

To be honest, the entire movie would have been a disappointment if Sona would have gladly become a part of Vikram's life. More so if she would have given up on her dreams.

Zoya Akhtar and more like her, hope you guys are here to stay! :) and yes, one more dance number by Hrithik wouldn't hurt next time ;)