Néen Oru Kaadal Sangeetam

Ever wondered how a song you hear on the radio, see on television seems to perfectly what you are going through in life.. No, None ? Hmm.. Do give it a thought, you'll probably realize a tune, some lyrics seem exactly cut of some situation in your life and present itself in the form of music.

Well, now why this thought suddenly after 1 year and 3 months since my last post. Hmm, I can say it in short and finish. But then, that's not my style here. 

There are times when life sweeps you off your feet, when priorities change more often than changing outfits and when the bells ring. Ghanti, Dil waali yaar.. Wedding bells!  

Don't start off now, saying, "Ah, look there goes one more guy who changed after marriage". The hiatus from blogging is attributed more to the pressures of work and lesser to the pleasures of laziness, which you may want to call "marital bliss". 

Coming back to the point, the title of this blog post - 'Neen Oru kaadal Sangeetham', a famous track from Mani Rathnam's "Nayagan" is the song that seems to be playing non-stop in my mind. It literally means you are a love song. I always thought when I'd meet my to-be wife, it would be some psychedelic Pink Floyd number that would play in the background in my mind, contrarily meeting her felt nothing short of a beautiful sonnet Ilayaraja would score music for, hence the title. The feeling felt so natural and smooth, that we never realized we were falling in love. 

Our wedding Invitation

For me the feeling of loving, being loved has always been some sort of music, which turned out sad many a times, but this time happy, very happy.  Energy levels suddenly surged, time became a premium, and the surroundings blurred like it does when you use a camera lens with a F-value of 1.4 or lesser. (Agreed, that was a bad one). But then that's what love does to you, makes your heart go wild and head crazy. 

The fact that I'm writing about this feeling should be proof enough to indicate how well the cupid succeeded when he struck me with his bow, which had my wife's name written on it.

@Wifey, Cheesy-Max eh ? Guess this is pretty much, the long and short of the post. 

Dedicated to My Love - The Missus

Sanju

Two-Wheeler chronicles

Whats that one amazing possession at an age of 19-20 yrs? For kids of these days it those flashy gizmo's, your apple iPhone, iTouch, you touch and what not !!! I know I'm sounding old, just making it sound so ;). Not very long ago for us it used to be graduation from a bicycle to a two wheeler. Looking back at the first time I ever rode on a two wheeler which was a TVS 50 brought by a painter while on work at our house. That day i remember riding like a prince with the air gently caressing my face, with all daughters of my neighborhood aunties overlooking. I must have been 4th or 5th, but that was when I felt the essence of growing up.

Sis started early on the 'Enfield-Explorer'

My dad was a proud owner of a suave looking Enfield explorer since 1985 which he had until 2003, and apart from sitting on it when dad used to ferry all the four of us around and fantasy riding it, naming it 'Sanjuna' hadn't done much with it. This was until 7th standard, when i had this fetish to sit on it sans the key and push the bike around. Thanks to Bangalore's roads, burnt a lot of calories pushing it back up to balance it on the road downwards. Then one day dad forgot the key and that day it happened. I pushed it around like always and then suddenly saw the ignition key. And the rest like you can imagine, i kick started and set the explorer in motion on the first gear, and it remained in first gear that day to be honest. That was the moment which turned the schoolboy into a dreamy youth.


Next three years of our stay in Dandeli gave me some of the amazing memories that I could only dream of in Bangalore. An accessibility to the jungles anytime i wished, a town with no traffic police and fewer main roads, could i ask for anything else?? It was time to zoom. 49.5 cc seemed awesome in those days. Soon, it was time for us to shift back to Bangalore and the city that is made us realize we'd suddenly grown up now to be too big for the explorer that once ferried four of us. What a bike it was! I think for the India then, which was more into Bajaj Chetak, this bike was an affordable option. And then one fine day as i grew older, so did it and just like that, it was gone.


Talking about Bajaj Chetak, during 12th my uncle's scooter came to me because he moved out of the country. Cant recollect the no. of times I've made it lie down on the road when there was no fuel and then that one quick kick start to get it going. "Welcome to college days"", I'd said to myself and before i could realize, the passion of possessing a bike again, proved too much pressure for my dad to withstand. That was when he got me a TVS Victor. Nothing beats the freedom you have with a bike at your disposal. Freedom and all by the way is secondary. More important then were the reasons like the daily trips to the dhaba, national park or the coffee shop around the corner. OK, alright! I agree the most important of all was to impress the girls. Can't remember how many firsts it was with my Victor.


While I am usually not very emotional, somehow the feeling was a little confusing. No feeling of loss though, while signing the handover forms, I was blank. All i could muster asking the new buyer was, "Can i take her for a last ride"?


Thinking about it, isn't it actually like breaking up with somebody for no reason? Only, make sure you have a reason as good as mine.

Royal Enfield!!!

Birthdays like this too...

Feb 13th when the clock had just ticked 23:57, Akhil called up to wish me Happy Birthday. He sure flagged off a day that held so much for me, now when I look back.

Turning 25 makes people think differently about various things. But a sad feeling of growing older is one commonality in all this variety.

Well, it was definitely memorable as it turned out for me.

Birthdays are usually meant to be memorable and eventful in some way or another. However over the last few years (can't remember since when), one thing I absolutely cherish about my birthday is the fact that Mom wakes me up with a kiss on my foreheadJ and dad always manages to wish and shake hands when I'm still not completely awake.

Thinking about the proceedings of the day, wondering what made it memorable, let me take you back to Thursday, Feb 12^th.

I get this stupendously written e-mail from a lady 'Neeta Parikh', about how she found my profile online and how she just couldn't keep herself from writing in to me. Some 3-4 mails exchanged and I was up and running, psyching myself to believe that I would soon be rendezvousing with the chic girl.

The mails written to me in this regard seemed so genuine and I thought the fallacy of blind dating, might after all be not really false. If it was only the mails, then the conversation would've never grown, the g-chat session proved a winner for the connivers.

The stage was set for a show down on 15^th Feb, the Sunday over Thursday's chat session just before the EOD. Friday created new tensions for Neeta Parikh, which made it difficult for her to meet me on Sunday, and she advanced the meeting to Saturday the 14^th February. Like anybody who would have fallen for smooth talk/chat, I did too and agreed to spend some time on my Birthday. 

Also the picture helped them in a really big way for their plot.

Considering the fact that Neeta who was doing her fulltime MBA from NY, originally from Indore, vacationing in Bangalore staying at Koramangala, FORUM Mall was mutually agreed upon as the place where we would meet. How considerate I was … sob sob :( !!!

Panning back to the day, answering wishes on phone, and in parallel storing all the contacts on my cell phone was the order of the day. Of course I was majorly helped by my Laptop, which had the recently synched version of the whole contact list from my stolen N72 phone.

By 2PM I reached Forum and waited for her to show up in front of McDonald's as decided, show up … well the girl in the center didn't, these all sure did. 

The main conspirers in bold, and the rest able accomplices!

From L to R: Yogi, Sangeeta, Umashankar,Shweta, Adarsh and Vinay. 

What followed next is anybody's guess. At 25 years and 14 hours, i was bakra :P

Would love to thank each one of you who made my day so special! I guess Valentine's Day for people like me; will always be this way with so many beautiful people around.

Cheers

Sanju