A Home in Heaven

Far from the madding crowd, a visit home has become a craving nowadays.
A sojourn at home clears the mind from all the clutter and the toxins accumulated during the stay at Delhi.

Greeted by half a dozen species of birds in the morning, I realized that it is the best alarm to wake up to. I never realized the worth of this chirpy alarm in my school days. It's only now that I find it so special because I can't find even crows in the place I now live in.

Speaking of the place I live now, Quick Update :D The last six months have put me at the threshold of a new phase of life. Standing on the shore, with arms wide open, the world yet to be explored. Some major and minor changes have come up. The cab-waale bhaiya calls me Madam instead of the regular gudiya now, which felt awkward in the beginning. I have two white hair that I no longer pluck from my head and no longer make a big deal of, or write poetry about. Numerous circumstances gave me a taste of affection, betrayal, serendipity, cruelness and unconditional love as well. All in all - the sweet taste of life.  Having understood the importance of love and human connection, I have held my loved ones who still wanted to stick with me a bit tighter than before now.



Coming back to the topic, back here at home, the days are slow and light. The myth of a "productive day" is gone. We are immune to meaningless numbers and never-ending deadliness towards again, more meaningless work. The time, though not productive by accepted standards is very fulfilling for the soul. The morning is spent with the brother roaming around and being reminiscent of the memories of a dear childhood.

Remember we used to gather here and share ghost stories?

Remember there used to be a tree over there which we used to climb?

Remember that girl who lived in that house who used to cry a lot?

Remember you were stung by bees beneath this tree?

Remember you fell from there while flying a kite and broke your bone?

Remember after your foot was burnt in Diwali, I used to push you around on bicycle from here to here?

Remember how we used to hide up there and throw flowers and leaves on anyone who went by?

The sweet sunshine gives respite from the ice-cold winters. An afternoon nap under the blue sky is therapeutic. Falling asleep watching the romance of the clouds and the snow-capped mountains in the distance is a luxury.  No honk honk of the cars, no slam slam of anything else. You wake up from a deep sleep, totally relaxed, with an uncluttered mind. (But you have to be careful, the nap is susceptible to interruption by  monkeys, dogs, kittens, and occasionally mongooses.)
This is a place where I will be lovingly offered paranthas and I can lovingly refuse them and ask my brother to bring a new one for me because it had gotten half a degree colder while bringing from the kitchen. 

The evenings are pleasantly full of love and chit-chat, head massages, old Hindi music, teasing, and laughter. The nights are silent and shiny. Life slows down its pace. You have a lot of fun, do a lot of things. And still, it's only 7 pm. Whaaaat? Running out of things to do, you take out the old photo albums and take a walk down the Nostalgia Road. You discuss for hours the small, big, bittersweet events in your life captured in those pictures. That's how a regular day goes by.



Just like that, one of the nights, I boarded the bus back to Delhi. Waking up just in the time to directly reach the office, and finding myself robotically entering the metro surrounded by people on all sides, I tried to digest I was no longer in the mountains. No slow life, no playing with monkeys today, no limitless sky to lie underneath. Moving my neck in all the directions possible, the only and exact words that came out were:

"Yeh kya ho gaya mere saath Bhagwaan!"

Dream, dream - what do you mean?

After a long time, I welcome you to the blog still finding a name :P

I’m done with three-fourth of my college and back to the mountains for the monsoon :D Man! These days are passing slowly and lovely. It’s like a dream stay for a month.- Watching F.R.I.E.N.D.S, Gorging on food, sleeping, reading, and writing something different after newly acquiring taste for Shayari :D

The thing I’m writing about today is what haunted me three days back. So let’s begin:

I am at home. Happily enjoying my afternoon nap. La lalala. When suddenly out of nowhere, one person appears.
“What the hell is he doing in my dream?” I thought. If, out of all the people in the world, I know 100, then he would be probably the 98^th person I would expect to see during my REM.

He is a very nice person and a good friend of mine BUT someone who is unexpected to be seen like this. My classmate from 5^th class was fine, Dora the Explorer is also acceptable, maybe even Narendra Modi would do. NOT HIM. Again: He is a close friend, the kind where you want to break each other’s bones all the time, but NOT HIM.

So we are in my dream and we’re in our college and I have car keys in my hand. I hear the Dean of my college say to us, “Go there carefully and call me when you reach there”.

The next scene I remember is me driving on a beautiful road. Both of us are enjoying the journey so much that it’s evident from our eyes sparkling with excitement of traveling to a new place. Good Road-Trip songs are playing loud and we stop to have some food at a roadside Dhaba.

That’s when I woke up. Confused at what happened just now and surprised that my dream catcher couldn't capture this nightmare. Weird. But it was over. I thought so :P

The dream continued when I finally slept at night. This time we were at my town. And I was searching for the person. I was calling out his name loud!

Too bad, what happened as the dream progressed was that my shouting was not limited to the dream and that I actually started shouting while sleeping. I woke up at 1am in the middle of the process of calling his name loudly.

My mother, who was sleeping beside me also woke up from the noise and started staring. Now I had to explain to her why I was shouting the name of a random person while sleeping. AWKWARD.

Good question. No answer.

This was too much. I took my phone and texted him “WHAT ARE YOU DOING PARESHANIFY-ING ME AT THIS TIME IN MY SLEEP? !@#$%”, and sunao-ed him everything.

Then the beautiful thing happened:

He remembered, and pointed out that exactly 1 year ago at this time on this day we were together in a train going somewhere :O

Oh Wow! Mood swinging. :D I suddenly started laughing. 
My little brain is very good at remembering trivial things, I know. But it’s strange that it periodically recollects memories when I haven’t thought about the journey or that time after that.

Getting this kind of dream one year after something happened amused me and made me remember everything good about that trip, How good the time was, how indifferent we were about each other and how we explored an entirely new place together.

And now, having known the reason for dream-invasion, I happily slipped into sleep again.

Needless to say, the dream continued once again, where I was shaping his teeth with a chisel ... and I kept smiling throughout my sleep (probably) Like this :D

Nemo- Part 2

My hostel makes sure that whenever I'm having a bad day, a dinner worse than my day should be served to me.Today we had baingan for dinner. The word is derived from 'begun' (बेगुणं ) which means without any qualities, because earlier it was thought to have no nutritive value. It is one of the few things I wish, should cease to exist. If I had to make a list of 10 things I hate the most, brinjal would occupy the list from number 3 to 10.

My father had once asked me very forcefully to eat it. And I did. And I vomited after that. Even my stomach doesn't accept this nasty specie.

Sulky mode apart, let's talk about Nemo Part 2!! :D
I just realized that today is the first monthly anniversary of the  adventure, so what better day than today to remember the amazing surprise!

Recap:
So, me and Joshi had planned a surprise home visit, and we were actually quite scared, worried that it would join the long list of misadventures that we did.
Nevertheless, Dhingru also joined our mission.
The day came. We were mentally preparing ourselves, to be scolded, and thrown away from our homes. 

Spoiler Alert: I did NOT transform into a beautiful ice cream. In fact, I enjoyed the cool weather instead.

The rest of the story:
Well, well. I would cut this story real short. Because everyone complains that I don't get to the point soon enough!
As expected, we left from college - late than we planned.
And that is where our story started- late than we planned
The metro stopped working for sometime. Everything was late than what we planned.
Interestingly, Joshi's mother, who never calls her at this time, had to call her today, because... (obviously!!)
And just when she told her mother that she's just going down for dinner, the train started shouting, "Next station: Adarsh Nagar."
"This is Adarsh Nagar Station. The doors will open to the right. Please mind the gap"
They talked  till Vishwavidyalaya. It was very interesting to see the way she was talking, and how her expressions changed, every time the announcement was made.. we laughed till tears came out of our eyes. :'D
They left me at ISBT at 8pm. I had 2 hours to kill. So I found a place in the waiting area. Too much crowded because of the Diwali rush. I started reading Danielle Steel. Five Days in Paris. I met another lady going to my town. and I played with her little baby. She was extremely
bothered as to why I was studying in Delhi, too far from home, and not in Mandi!!! :'P

My journey partner :D

This, and many other unimportant doubts. Actually, answering her questions was more interesting than reading, at the moment, so I saved the rest of the book for the journey.
My bus had to arrive at 9:30pm and leave at 9:50!
And my wrist watch stopped working precisely at 8:54pm because... (obviously!!)
It was 9:45pm (the bus was about to leave), and I was sad, that time was passing slowwwwly!!! counting that I still had more than an hour to go, when suddenly... (and I thank the Gods for this) Joshi called me. It was THEN that I realized that I better run.
Thankfully I didn't miss it.

(But I had already thought of alternatives had I missed the bus, which was highly expected.)
Plan B: I would wait till the morning and come back to college, and stay there. And since my family didn't know that I was coming,
Number of hearts broken = 0 (Woohoo!)

I had a very interesting co-passenger with me, who reminded me of Cinderella's stepmother. I went back to Danielle Steel. hoping the next 12 hours to pass soon!

I woke up, with neck pain. I had reached familiar territory once again! Yeehaw! I mentally danced around!
Aah!! And when I felt the cool wind in my hair, I decided I would walk till home. Not too far. It took me some 20 minutes.


Now HERE'S when the best part starts:
I walked into the house very normally.. like I had only come back from Aanchal's home.. :P

• My fathers reaction: He stared at me for some 5 seconds, like he had seen a ghost! :D He then hugged me and I told him the entire master plan and the story. I was expecting him to scold me, but he didn't (Phew!) I guess he was too happy to see me!
• My mother's reaction: I generally don't expect anything.. but I had expected her to behave like this. She hugged me and started crying. Tears of happiness :') Huhuhu. She then fed me all my favourite things. And she didn't scold me either!

 Now, supposing, for a moment that the amount of happiness they get from my coming home is X, the happiness I was witnessing that time was X+10. Because they weren't expecting this.
Ha! This is why I love giving surprises to people. Good and bad :P

 I would like to end the story with the thing about this entire experience that I would remember the most, and never forget. It was:

• My brother's reaction: He came back in the evening. Saw me sitting, cutting onions. He said 'Hi!', and continued his work and went away :'O

I was expecting at least a smile. Or a tiniest hint that he's glad to see me. And I got none. Which is a  little sad. But it's okay. I know he loves me the most. And it's not necessary to show it all the time. Is it? 

Meet us. We're Nemo- Part 1

BOOM! CLAP!

The sound of my heart.
The beat goes on and on and on and on and...

And I wonder what kind of evil telepathy exists between the two of us, me and Joshi. It so happened this fine day that I sent her a song which, after lots of thinking, I had concluded to exactly fit tomorrow's adventure. Coincidentally, she had been listening to the same song for half an hour. It's not just this. It happens very often that we both would say the same thing at the same time, and we would always be thinking the same thing. We would understand code language even by the blink of an eye.
I mean to say we can read each other inside out. Well, almost. This is scary (and awkward) at times.
So, coming to the main thing.
What's going to happen tomorrow? We'll come to know.
Holidays, holidays. I never got enough of those after I came here. Even this Diwali, only 4. What would you do in 4 days? :'(
Reach home, say Hi! to your family and come back?
This is the only reason I had told my parents in clear words, that I won't be coming home for Diwali. I heard "Ok" in reply.
But Amma was too sad as she wanted me to come home.
Then only because she wanted me to, I thought I would give a little surprise to everyone. Well, I would not like to take all the credits to myself, as it was Anurag, who plotted the entire master plan, to which I added the surprise part.
And seeing me, my dear friend has also made one similar plan. One little thing to worry is that if I reach home like that, my parents might throw me out of the house, or worse, instead of them, I might get some surprise :P
But what's life without a little risk?
And tomorrow is the day. :P
The only trouble is. We both are too scared to go alone. I wish I could take her with me. But my reservation is for the worst time I could possibly get.
Actually, we had a plan where some of our friends would come and I'll be on way, to hopefully reach alive the next morning. I would have to wait for some 3 hours, with me and myself, and my boredom, and me. But my goody nicey classmates backed out. And now there's just the two of us.
(Actually I knew it and expected that there would be just two of us even before the plan was made. The  people in my college are THAT amazing and predictable)
See. Here I would want to make one thing very clear.
We are a little scared and worried NOT because we're cowards. BUT because we're Nemo.
But. We just have to reach home. Big deal? No!
Just 17 hours. And I'll be at familiar territory to be yelled at :P
I want to write sooooo much more.
This doesn't explain even a fraction of our story at the moment. But it's too late and I think I should sleep, and pack bags, maybe? Some warm clothes? It's going to be chilly and frosty and I'm going to undergo metamorphosis and transform and come out as a beautiful butterfly ice cream.

So this was basically an introduction and generation of "platform". My VAP mates would understand what I mean.
The actual thrill will be there in Part 2, which is going to be amazing, for sure :D
Heaven here I come :D
P.S. I like surprises a lot, you know that!