Jai Ho...

"I thought you only enjoy rock concerts and not the Bollywood ones"
"That's right"
"Then how come you are going for Rehman concert"
"Isn't he our own rock star"
Yes I think so... you can't put A.R.Rehman in the same category with likes of Anu Malick and Udit Narayan. He is class apart! And how on earth I can resist the opportunity to listen to the maestro live in concert ... Despite the hubby's protests against standing for hours together in cramped crowd with feeble possibility of getting a good look at the man, the wify made him attend the concert. I was sure Rehman would make him forget all the agony and oh boy ... ARR did that in most spectacular way !

As expected, there was huge young crowd and all Pune roads seemed like flowing towards the Balewadi stadium. But there were aunties and oldies too and even families attending with 2 year olds. Hats off to Pune's music lovers... they attend Sawai Gandharv and Rehman with equal enthusiasm !

Given our great time management, we reached the place dot on concert time. I had slightest hopes of catching any good view of the stage given my previous concert experiences (and my not so good height). So first thing we did was to find a good position in front of one of the screens and settled down on the ground. What I didn't expect was that I would be able to enjoy almost whole show sitting right there. People were more interested in sitting comfortably and watching the screen than jumping up and down to catch a view of the stage. I guess it only happens in Pune !

I really didn't have any choices for songs to be played given vast number of songs of him that I adore. He started with "Jage hai der tak" followed by a Tamil song. I thought ab toh gaya... people will boo him for playing Tamil song. They just waited patiently for next one to come. The patience was paid off very well when he started "Jiya se jiya". That song has enchanting beats which make it more enjoyable live.

There was Hariharan singing "Roja janeman", Rashid Ali singing "Kabhi kabhi aditi", Sadhana Sargam singing "Chupake Se"... all the Delhi6 songs were sung and so were "Kaise muze tum mil gayee" and "Maiyya Maiyya". No singers were introduced apart from Raja Hassan whose name flashed across the backstage. I really wish he doesn't sing again after the way he almost killed "Masakkali". Sivamani made a brief appearance. We were hoping to get a small solo peace from him but in vain. There were some dancers and light show but who had time to pay attention to them, while dancing to those songs and cheering our hearts out.

The man himself performed "Dil se", "Rehana Tu" and "Maula mere maula". What I loved most was that the man did less talking and played more music save a futile attempt to "interview" people from audience.

Turn offs of the show, RJ's who were anchoring as if they were on air...( RJ Shrikant you suck big time) and the winglis speech by Karad. Yes we saw Lata Mangeshkar and also one lady snoozing in the front row.

My verdict ... awesome show!!! Still have hangover of it. Afterall You don't get to listen Rehaman playing piano live with Hariharan singing "Tu hi re", Roop Kumar Rathod singing "Roshan Sama" "Bhini Bhini" (just awesome!) everyday...

ARR you ROCK !!!

There goes another one ...

Ahh.. here goes another weekend and I wait for the next one right from Monday with sleepy eyes. It takes really really long time for me to boot up on Mondays. First half is generally wasted in remembering what exactly I did last week. Have you seen the movie 'Fifty First Dates'? My situation is somewhat like the lead character. I need to learn my work with a blank mind every Monday ! I know how hard it is when my manger comes to on Monday morning and asks me something I look at his face with puzzled expressions and most of the times I cannot answer to his questions... the answer is sleeping somewhere in dark long corner in the mind and the processing speed of my mind gets terrible terribly slow. I have these Start-of-the week crisis all the time.

Tell me, do you ever have such start of week crisis in office? I mean do you ever go blank and cannot work at all? Last week, my start week crisis continued till mid-week and when it got unable to bear any more, I ran away from office. And found a perfect place to unwind... the "Crossword". There is no better way to relax one's mind than reading books. They talk to you, they teach you, amuse you, excite you, they cry with you and they sooth you... they are the perfect companions!!! I ended up adding 5 more books to my library, the count now goes to solid 25! I wanted to buy my favorite book 'Love Story' but someone tells me romantic books should be gifted and not bought. As per him, getting a romantic book as gift is always good omen to your relationships. Funny beliefs, isn't it? (But I did gift 'Pride and Prejudice' to a friend :-) )
I was browsing through the Indian author section and one thing that strikes me is there are not many Marathi people writing in English. Its not that there are no good writers back home but it seems most of them prefer to express in Marathi. I wonder what all those NRI babies are doing… And I digress!

I should not forget to describe about my weekend. Did I tell you that it’s beautiful outside? It’s neither too hot nor rainy; it’s cloudy all the day and drizzles once in a while. At nights it’s just amazing to sit in my gallery with a book in hand. I finished ‘A walk to remember’ Friday night, beautiful book in beautiful might :-). Apart from that there was mad shopping spree. I recommend what Shrisha calls as ‘retail therapy’ for all as cure of all gloomy mood types. Walk through the buzzing shopping streets, peep through nicely decorated windows, wonder though rows of racks stacked racks, try on beautiful cloths or just look at the people shopping… little girls looking at stuffed toys with saucer eyes, fat lady drooling on short skirt, wife nagging husband to buy her the new appliance in market… your bad mood will vanish in no time. And if there is little money in pocket, there isn’t greater pleasure than coming home loaded with lots of shopping bags :-D. I bought one of those Abhishek Baccha styln hair-bands... people say it looks cool !!!

There was this friend met after a long time… and it couldn’t have been better :-)

Life gets hectic in office and I already wait for next weekend!!!


PS :- I am on Technorati Profile are you there too ?

Also, Have you checked the new windows version of Apple Safari browser. Its awsome !

Three movies, a concert and Rum Ice Roy

It’s been a long time since I have written a post about ‘how my weekend was?’ There were lame weekends or I was just lazy to write about them (Lazy is synonymous to me!) Weekends come and go away before I recount anyy details about it. This weekend was no different apart from the ‘Aerosmith’ concert that I have written about in previous post. Three rock-concerts old and I couldn’t be happier. DNA people please get ‘U2’ and ‘Linkin Park’ to Bangalore before I get old to jump in the concerts or lose interest in Rock music (who knows!). On the second thought, I wouldn’t mind listening to ‘GnR’, ‘Goo Goo Dolls’, ‘Metallica’ and ‘Bon Jovi’ live :-) (Human mind is greedy you see)

Though the weekend went insignificantly there was happening week for a change! Three movies watched in a week. It’s been a while since I watched movies during weekdays though my office is in the heart of the city and there are at least 3 theatres within 10 mins reach from here. It is always laziness plus too much of work and I can’t sit at a place for such a long time ;-). This week was definite change with three movies being watched.

Shrek 3:- For a change my company did this good deed of giving away free tickets for the movie it has provided technology for. How proud I feel to tell this!! If you are animation fan and you happen to watch Shrek series you will definitely appreciate the animation created by DreamWorks and rendered on servers provided by my dear company. Rendering for animation of this kind requires high end servers and we provide them! Moral of the story is, there was a contest to win free tickets for the movie and a colleague of mine got 4 tickets to the show in PVR cinema Europa screen. Can you beat that? First day show tickets that too in the most hep theatre of Bangalore! How can I miss such a golden chance? The tickets were collected bunking group wide meeting! The story is not that great, they have tried to add too much of senti-aap touch and made Shrek behave more human like. I adored him more in first two parts. But the animation is awesome! The new character Arthur looks damn cute!

Life… in a Metro :- ‘I didn’t like the movie because it is too realistic’ was the first review I got in this movie and it made more that curious to watch it. It was running houseful for a while and finally we managed to get tickets for Wed 10 pm show. Getting ticket episode itself will make topic for another post! The movie is too realistic for sure. It feels like we are peeping into our neighbor’s life and sometimes our own too! The stories of love, betrayal, infidelity run parallel crossing each other every now and then. The movie handles a good topic but does not disturb you or make you think about the degrading morality in our modern lives. In the end, it goes the ‘happily ever after’ way. What disturbed me more was the writer didn’t allow the married women (Shilpa), to follow her heart and go against her cheating husband. Instead she became typical ‘Bhartiya Naari’ who sacrifices her love and self-respect for the sake of family. What nonsense!!! Do watch it for Irrfan Khan. He is not used much but he sure makes his presence felt in the movie.
I was telling my mother about this movie. I said I don’t think you would like to watch this movie; it would shatter the typical Indian mind like it did for my friend. She plainly says, ‘you know what these things have been there in our society since long. Aren’t there stories of infidelity even in our purana’s? It’s just that these days we have advanced media so the things are being discussed openly and women are getting strong to oppose/expose them’. Mom, you surprise me as always!

Cheeni Kum :- I liked this one more from previous two. Nice subject, good direction and cinematography and amazing actors made the movie worth watching. One dialogue that I remember right now is when Amitabh is trying to convince Tabu’s father about their relationship. He says “Why should you have problem when you daughter is not marrying someone younger than her?” It is generally said that women mature before guys do. They should marry guys at least couple of years older than them so they are on same page. We Indians go little overboard in this theory and consider it immoral when a woman marries a man younger than her. I say why we should have problem in that if two people are ready to spend their lives with each other and fine with the age difference. On the other hand, there are lot of girls who search for security, comfort in their husbands just like they received from their fathers. Just as a guy likes to compare his wife with his mother and expect her to cook, care like his mother did what is wrong if a girl searches for her father in terms of maturity and understanding.
What is your take on this?

And I should not forget to mention ‘Rum Ice Roy’, you are right it is name of ice cream which has rum in it and lot of rum for that matter. Sunday night was ‘Corner House’ time after a long time. I thought of trying this one as name sounded interesting and hoping it will have unrecognizable traces of liquor. But my-o-my, it lives up its name, had the rum taste for real (Don’t ask me how I know taste of Rum ;-))

… I am too bored with work today, hence all this blabbering!

When I go to Pune…

Yeah I was there again (Don’t ask me the reason why !!!) As I had said earlier Pune is a city which is expected to be loved by all Marathi people and it is assumed by all (including myself) that I will also be settling down there someday or other. The thought of going there scars me for no reason. My cousin claims once you go to Pune you can’t live anywhere. I used to think same for Mumbai. But I managed to survive in Bangalore, in fact I am practically in love with this city. I remember first six months of my stay here when I was frantically searching for opportunities to leave the city but the it hasn’t let me go yet :-). Who knows… I might like Pune, as well! Anyways who has seen the future!!! Let’s talk about things I did in Pune.

I had the whole afternoon to spare and was very very hungry till the time I was free. I asked cousin to take me to a place where I can have good Marathi food. I miss the food many times, you see. It’s not like I don’t like the food I have here but then … home food is after all home food. The taste you grow up will never leave you. Like for me, any dish is made perfectly when it tastes and smells just like mom’s. We went to this place called ‘Café Shreyas’ where they have dining hall. They have Marathi style thali with everything served unlimited.

Now the concept of typical Marathi food is vague. Like the language, Marathi food changes its taste every 10 miles. The western Maharashtrian food is the spiciest of all. Any thing prefixed with ‘Kolhapuri’ is the hottest food around. It is the kind of food that will heat up your ears and get water from your nose (That’s the kinda expression a friend uses; if a food items manages to heat up your senses particularly the ear lobes and make eyes and nose water it is hot; “Yaar yeh to kaan me dhua wala khana hai” she goes) The Kolhapuri mutton/chicken rassa (curry) is world famous in Maharashtra :-D. And Puneri food is the sweetest. They would put sugar in everything, from sabji to samabar. In the part of state where I come from, we like to put lot of garlic and onions in every dish. Ours is the region where sabjis are available only during rainy season, so we have habit of preserving vegetables year round. And the dried vegetables, lentils, different kinds of pickles are regulars in our food. My town being close to Andra and Karnataka border, the food has both the state influences. So the delicacies like ‘Bisi bele bhath’, ‘Puliogare’ were not complete strangers to me. The north Karnataka food is very close to the kinda food we have. In all, I feel specialty of Marathi food is that we preserve original taste of the ingredients and we use very less spices as compared to northie and southie food. I should actually try to put together simple recipes sometime.

What would be my idea of a perfect thali…?? Hmmm… let me think. It can be either Jowar roti (jolda roti as they call it in Karnataka), peanut chutney mixed with curd (aka yogurt), raw onion; that’s the ‘gaon ka treat’ or just aamras (mangoes from our farm are better than those five star alphansos) and roti or poori; or the elaborate festive food. The plate has sixteen vegetables (dry and gravy), at least 5-6 kinds of chutneys, 3-4 kinds of papads, bhajiyas, sweet rice, plain rice, aamti (marathi version of rasam), sambar type dal, plain daal and most important of all... weak point of every Marathi manus, the puran poli with loads of ghee on it. And yes every food item has to be served on defined place in the plate, and in defined order. So first and foremost there has to be a pinch of salt put in the dish. Vegetables are served on the right hand side and chutneys/salads on the left hand side of the dish. Ahhh… you should just see the way it is served, the site itself is fulfilling. Well I can go on and on about it, but lets get back to the description of food I had :-D

There was aloo curry, another curry (I donno name of the sabji in English or Hindi), aamti, daal with tamrind, dry sabji, cucumber raita (koshimbir), 2 types of bhajiyas, papad, masala poories, plain poories, phulkas, dal-rice, star of the plate unlimited dahiwadas aaaaand aamras (yummmm!!!). Wow… we must have hogged like anything. It didn’t digest for whole day. It all culminated with sweeet natural watermelon ice crème. To add to the foodie pleasures, I bought myself pack of bakharwadis and kaju katalis from the Chitale Bandhu. I had to walk back home from the airport to make a little room in my tummy.

I want more journeys like that !!!

Another good weekend goes by…

Alas!!! The weekend comes and swooshes away without even letting us sink completely in the pleasures of being away from office and all the work related crap. And you realize importance of weekend even more when you have to drag yourself and your bike, off course for close to 2 km in the noisy, crawling traffic (I was literally walking) and then climb flight of stairs all the way to 4th floor because all lifts decide to take a Monday morning break.

It feels like I am dragging life with the hope of getting good weekends :-D. The perfect weekend should start with perfect Saturday. For me, it’s a day when you finish all your weeks pending quota of sleep. I like to get up at late afternoon, get fresh, eat something and then again doze off. Maximum would be to go out somewhere for dinner. My lazy bone takes over completely this day (I think all my bones are affected by this lazy bone). I don’t even take the effort to cook if there is none at home. Earlier mom used to call me up on Saturday mornings and try to wake me up without any success. Now she has accepted it as one those ‘bad habits’ I have picked up as a result of staying away from home. But this Saturday was not one these perfect Saturdays (for my sleep). I had to get up early in the morning to finish some work by 12. So I was officially up by 8am but allowed myself to steal long naps till 12. Apart from that it was goooood weekend.

There were lots of movies watched. First one to be mentioned is ‘The Pursuit of Happyness’ (with a ‘y’ and not ‘i’). This has been on my to-watch list since long, strongly recommended by A. And I must say it was worth it. The only other movie of Will Smith I have seen is ‘Hitch’ where he is good. I have seen ‘MIB’ in bits and pieces and there was a series called ‘Fresh prince of Bell air’ made during start of his career. So basically I didn’t have too many prejudices apart from the fact that this is his Oscar nominated performance. It’s a story of transition of an ordinary guy from declared loser to topper in his class equipped with nothing but believe in himself, hardwork and dedication to his dreams. I love this dialog when he preaches to his son ‘If you have a dream. You got to protect it. Don’t even let anyone tell you that you can’t do this. Not even me’. Will Smith excels in portraying agony of helpless father, smitten by situation still hanging on to his dreams and working his way up. It has touchy father-son angle.

Another father-son movie, I watched was ‘Finding Nemo’, one of the best animation movies ever made. The father ‘Marlin’ is totally different from Will Smith’s father character ‘Chris’. He is over protective, over cautious towards his son ‘Nemo’. But finally he breaks all the fears to save him. Ahh… these my-dady-strongest type movies appeal me a lot :-). I love the character Dory in ‘Finding Nemo’. This is a must watch movie for all animation lovers. And so is ‘Cars’, another animation movie I watched this weekend. Its my third time and the more I see it the more I love it.

Been to Forum (‘the’ mall of Bangalore) after so many days. Once upon a time it was the place, I was found practically every weekend. Now it has lost its charm with too much of crowd. Nevertheless we had good time hanging around, shopping for cute stuff and watching the crowd.

This was a gooood weekend and Sunday morning encounter with expectedly unexpected (or was it unexpectedly expected) people didn’t hamper the fun a bit!

The main to-buy this weekend was ‘Kandisa’ CD. Indian Ocean is the music of season for me. They make amazing music. Interestingly I had to search 3-4 music shop before I finally got hold of the album. This is one CD worth having in my collection. The song ‘Kandisa’ rocks as always. ‘Ma Rewa’ is equally amazing. Now I am searching for ‘Jhini’. You can see the song video on youtube (Check it out here http://youtube.com/watch?v=NhKYn0dg-K4 ) but not able to get the complete mp3 version. Please pass on the complete song if you have it. I sing along with them whole day today
‘Ma rewa sssssss… tharo paani nirmal khal khal bahata jaye re…’

Lazy me...

Today I was checking my blog activity statistics and realized that it has gone down this month. Last couple of months I was posting practically everyday and this month all I am able to manage is writing about my weekends. If you know me very well you will say, ‘Oh… this is very typical of you, Ashley!!!’ There are so many things (and people) that fascinate me and I tend to take up that activity with lots of vigor. But also tend to abandon many of them once I lose interest in them (or when people start acting too smart). The graph curve changes its direction exponentially. Though there are lots of other things, I have been doing despite all the problems. Anyways… I won’t make blogging one of the things I give up. Recently, I have been getting quite many complements for my writing and who doesn’t like praise you see :-D. Consider it just as lazy lapse in productivity :-).

These days I am so badly stuck in work that all I can see is blue screen, crash dump, even in dreams. By the time I reach home, my mind is totally exhausted to think of anything. It just goes blank. I don’t even remember what I did last week or even during the weekend. It was the long weekend, and I wanted to celebrate New Year, ‘Gudi Padwa’ in total Marathi style and wanted to invite friends for lunch. But our maid ran away and I ended up making aloo-parathas and Shira (Suji Halwa in Hindi), which was not that bad menu for holiday :-). Apart from that there were lots movies watched. First the epic ‘300’, fundu story and great presentation, then ‘You have got mail’, I can watch this one thousand times and the sweetest movie ‘Sound of Music’. I watched this one for the first time and I loved it. All the praise I have heard about it is just right. Also finished watching FRIENDS season one and half of season two. I am obsessed with the series these days. Hmm… by this time you must have realized that I was glued to my room all three days. Yes, you are right. I didn’t feel like going out and seeing other people. Now you know exactly why I like Garfield so much!!!

But I was not in total seclusion after all... been to my favorite coffee place ‘Inch’ after so many days. I just love the ambience and beverages they serve, Mint and hazelnut flavored hot chocolate being my all time favorite :-). The food is also not bad though they have very less veggie options :-(. But we tried food at a different restaurant called ‘Hot Walk’ (or was it ‘Hot Wok’ ??), a Chinese place near CMH road, Nice cosy place with good food and good ambience.

And how can I forget the most important thing, the makeover that my hair have got. Sunday afternoon, my roomie declared that I must get a haircut. I thought of trying this hep salon a friend had suggested long time ago. We needed to take appointment to get a hair cut there! With the money I paid for my hair-cut, I could have bought myself round trip train tickets to my home. I know Mom is gonna freak out when she sees my shorter hair. But with all the compliments I am getting, I think the money is worth spent.

I have picked up Shirsha’s blog habit of describing about ‘how my weekend was?’ Here comes description of another one :-).
This weekend was the ‘movie weekend’, I watched close to 5 movies and a music show (yes!!!). I say close to 5 because I left the theatre in between for movie because it was too horrible to watch… Mel Gibson’s movie ‘Apocalypto’. I donno what has made him to make a movie like that; least he should not call it a movie and sell is a documentary on primitive human beings. It was the first movie I started the weekend with and made my cousin to leave the theatre within 40 minutes after they started to dissect human parts one by one (Ewwww!!!). But back home watched better movies. My friend’s husband is a great movie fan and has nice collection of cds/dvds. Oooh… I forgot to mention, I was in Pune this weekend… Yayy!!!
I had some work in the city so had flown in for the weekend and stayed with this friend of mine... a little bit of work to be finished on Friday morning and then lot of fun with friends, cousins and most important with dearest sis. She came down all the way to meet me. There were so many people to meet. Most of our time was spent in going from one place to another. We must have traveled complete length of Pune for more than once. The city is supposed to be a dream place for every Marathi person but somehow I never took much liking for it. The roads are pathetic and so is traffic and pollution. I felt like a total stranger there and missed Bangalore buzz. The friend said I have bad habit of getting attached to things. I guess she is right. I used to feel same when I left Mumbai.
This friend I stayed with, was my roomie in Mumbai and one of those caring roomies I am always blessed with. Those were the days when all I knew was to go to office and come back home and sleep. I couldn’t cook or clean, couldn’t even make a cuppa tea. Those two gals pampered me like a baby. The story of how good (totally burnt) rice I had made for a sick friend is still popular with Mumbai friends group. So when I went to her place this time, I so much wanted to demonstrate my cooking skills. After all the plans, we settled down on making aloo-parathas. They were yummy as usual.

Apart from ‘Apocalypto’, other movies I watched were (in the order of watching) ‘My Super Ex-Girl Friend’ (Funny concept), ‘Hitch’ (Can watch this one again and again), ‘HTPL’ (The kids wanted to watch it once again), ‘Remember the Titans’ (Really good one). And last but not the least was the song extravaganza ‘Ayushyawar Bolu Kahi’ (translated as ‘Lets talk something about life’), as innovative program started by two young musicians Salil Kulkarni and Sandip Khare. The man Sandip Khare is miracle with words. Its been really long since I have listened to such beautiful Marathi poems and songs. I missed attending it when they had come to Bangalore. I can’t help but recite this poem ‘Evdhach Na’.
“Evdhach na… Ekte jagu
Amach hasa, amach rad
Gheun samore ektech baghu

Ratrial kon duparla kon
Janmaala avghya ya purlay kon
Shwaasaala shwaas kshanaala kshanaala kshaan
Diwsaala diwas jodat jagu
Evdhach na…

Anganala kumpan hotach kadhi
Gharala aangan hotach kadhi
Gharaache bhaas, Anagnaache bhaas
Kupanache bhaasach bhogat jagu…
Evdhach na…

Aalaat aalat tar aalaat tumchech paay
Gelaat tar gelat konaala kaay
Swatach paay swatach waat
Swtach sobat houn jagu
Evdhach na…

Maatiche ghar maatiche daar
Maatich ghar maatich daar
Maatichya dehala maatche waar
Maatich khari maatich bari
Maatit maati mislat jagu
Evdhach na… “

I will try to translate it some time… Will have to use my linguistic skills at the best :-).

Evening to remember....

They say… everything that starts well should end well…

So was true about my weekend. It started with the most amazing musical performance I have attended yet! If you know me you know that I am the biggest music lover… any kind of music be it rock or classical is good for me. There always song playing my head. Do all people have song of the day… like my today’s song is Numb/Encore- Lynkin Park!
So my roomie wanted to go for this show “Concert for Bangalore” (or something like that)… I agreed because my favorite musician of all times… Ustad Zakir Husain was going to play. All my study hours(though they were not too long :D) in school were spent with his music playing on the background. The man is pure magic on tabla!!! There used to other classical music performances in house too. Dad being big fan of classical music, most of our mornings used to start with Bismilla Khan’s sanai or Ravi Shankar’s sitar. But after leaving home, I was more oriented towards vocals than instrumental music.

So when I decided to go for this concert it was more of, ‘ok I can give her company…’ we managed to drag one more friend along with us (big time rock fan like me). Oh I forgot to mention the other musician, legendary Ustad Amjad Ali khan. Apparently they were playing together after more than a decade in Bangalore.

The evening started late due the traffic jams and all chaos. The ground was more or less full and I was surprised to see young crowd outnumbering uncles and aunties. We were sitting far far away from the stage. Everything there looked like colored dots moving around. Amjad Ali khan started the concert with the note ‘we haven’t even talked about what we will be playing tonight. Everything we play is decided as the mood sets and cannot be repeated again. Call it simplicity, magic or difficulty of our music. This performance is especially for you Bangalore!’ Wow… How amazing is that! And his fingers started moving smoothly on the sarod. The music was so enchanting that I never felt the need to stand up and ‘see’ them perform. It’s the kind of music that touched the heart and enlightens your senses… you can actually ‘feel’ it. There was kinda smile on everyone’s face that tells you are absolutely delighted, through out the performance and the heads were nodding automatically with every twist in the symphony. I have zero understanding of the ragas to tell what all they played. There was some evening ragas, holi raga and prayer to Ganesha. And there was the full moon to witness it all.

I have been to couple of live music performances… mostly rock. They were mind blowing. But the rock music bangs in the head, and this music plays softly with your heart. Ahhh… I am so happy that I was there. I still have that smile on my face. And the thought that I might not be able to attend the ‘Iron Maiden’ conert, hurts less :-).

The weekend ended with laugh riot called ‘Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd’ a.k.a HTPL. I haven’t heard people talking too good things about it but I liked it. It’s a nice concept, could have been better, but still… a good try. There was this scene which I should not miss to mention:

Background: They are the perfect couple. Been together for 16 years and never had a single fight. They have choices, likes dislikes, cloths and even bags too! Too sweet to digest!! One morning the gal discovers that her man has been absconding for hours. She get angry and they have their first fight. After lot of convincing, the guy agrees to tell her the secret. He takes her to a lonely place at wee hours.

Guy: Dekho, abhi job hi kuch tum dekhegi usase darna nahi. Always remember that I love you.
Gal: What are you saying ? You are freaking me out.
Guy: This has to come out one day. Please say that you won’t get angry with me.
Gal: Please tell me what is it? I am freaking.
Gal: Dekho sambhalke.
(He stands up and zooooooom. He is a super hero!)
Gal: Oh I am so happy.
Guy is puzzled. She stands up and zooooooom. She is the super gal too ! Bravo !!!

Gal: Isiliye hum logon me aaj tak zagada nahi hua. Super man aur super women 16 saal me sirf ek baar zagadate hai

Me was ROTFL :-) :-) :-)

In between there was Jalebi and Baigna ka bharta (yummy!), at ‘Chilly Pepper’. Though it has Chinese name, the place serves amazing northie food… truly ‘exceptional food’ as their tag line goes. And the huge soooper scooper at corner house… I just can’t get enough of ice-cream these days :-). Friends and F.R.I.E.N.D.S. were there all along to keep nice company. Though I missed a trekking trip… but will make that soon:-).