I take the liberty to write this letter in English, unlike the last one I wrote to you- to keep you up to date with what was happening in my life- simply because I know you can never ever return to read this........

   As I sit here today, miles away from home, from family, from dearest of my friends and an unimagineably long distance away from you, a million things crowd my tiny little brain, a billion words are replayed in my mind, a zillion things remembered and even more sorely missed! And if I find it hard to recollect and relive those tough times, I find it even harder to think about the better, happier moments over and over again in my mind.

   I can't even begin to express my sense of loss, for you were always one of the 'constants' in my life, so finely, intricately and intimately ingrained in my life that I cringe at the thought of entering the house that I call my own, knowing fully well that I won't come in to see you sitting right there on the bed................

   I haven't seen hair silkier than yours or skin as fresh and radiant! Haven't known hands softer than yours or a face as beautiful as yours! I don't know if it was the characteristic touch you gave to the 'RamRaksha' or the warmth and affection in your your mere presense beside me that always had its magical way of putting me into a long blissful sleep! I don't know if it was your unconditional love or the helplessness in your voice that made simple things that you said like 'Jevlis ka?' or 'Daba ghetlas ka?' so touching and so important to me! I don't know what I will miss more, you feeding me or me serving you food! I don't know why I am mourning this loss so much when I feel I should be happy that you didn't have to endure the toture of dependance and pain any longer!

   I still remember the tingle of excitement at the sound of the Rickshaw at the door, every time you returned home with Aajoba, I remember your getting mad at him! I remember the complete state of disarray you were left in when he passed away, I remember the courage you still managed to gather! I remember getting amused when you told me stories about your marriage and then your studying afterwards, I remember the extra cup of tea, the extra serving of food specifically made for the maids in the house! Cooking was your forte, cooking was your pride, cooking was your life!

   And could life have gotten any more cruel than it did, 7 years back when that joy and satisfaction was taken away from you? So then the roles were reversed, positions exchanged and I tried my best to keep up with all the crap life was dishing out for you, I tried Maa, I really did!! And I sincerely hope to be forgiven for every little slip here and there! From then on the squeaking of the walker, the look of misery and pain in your eyes became hardwired into my own life! You didn't deserve this Aajji, you really didn't! And then I cursed you, I cursed myself, I cursed God, for life was just so so unfair, to me, to Aai-Baba and even more so .....to you! The one thing I always wanted to do Aaji, was to give you back the pleasure of being a mother of not one, not two, but five children who had grown up to be such successful, wonderful adults........ but I failed there, more miserably than ever! I hope you understand Aaji, I tried my best! I know I haven't been the ideal grandchild you'd have liked to have, but I tried!

   I just hope that somewhere in your death you find a brand new life full of things as wonderful as you were, and you still are to me! May you get all those little pleasures and joys life always took away from you for you deserved better Maa, much better!

   I wanted to speak to you just once Maa, just once, to let you know all of this and much much more, but now I know I can't! I just wanted to let you know.....but then Maybe you already do!

                                                                                                                                     Love,
                                                                                                                   Today and always,
                                                                                                                                 Madhura

DISCLAIMER: A lot of people who are cloest to me happen to be guys and this post is not intended to mean any kind of offense towards ANY of them or any of the other guys even!!! This phase is probably just temporary........... but still!!!

for the first time in my life, I am totally sick and tired of being with guys.........and so many of them at that!!! And I really surprise myself saying this, but I would be just sooo glad to have company of some girl-friends around! (Now please please for god's sake don't go around joking about this in the comments! That would be SUCH a guy-thing to do though!!!!)

Its not really a secret that I would rather have guys for company than the typically girly girls (no offense again....its just me there's nothing wrong with them!!!) and most of my friends (of course barring three or four exceptions......) are guys! But its just getting to me now, I am tired of listening to small-talk about girls ( it makes me feel like I am some kind of an 'entity' myself.....go figure what that means!!) I am fed up of people telling me that they don't really speak to me like I am a girl......I am one for God's sake!! true I used to kind of take that as a compliment but right now I don't!!!

So right now, I desperately want some girl-thing to do!!!! I know I'll be pretty bad at it, I know its not really me, (and this branding things as girl or guy thing to do is also such a guy-thing to do!! :) ) but I do want to!!!!!!!!!!! I hate this!!!

Its pitch dark all around!! No ray of hope, no bright spots!!
Its DARK...pitch dark all around!!

P.S.: Alright, Alright, How dare I say no bright spots?? No ray of hope alright, but I shall definitely find one thanks to this wonderful set of people I call my family and friends, Love you all!! :-)
And yeah, just when I start thinking that words of encouragement don't really work, they do!! :-)

          I LOVED it...........absolutely loved it!!! :-)

          I am sure there would a thousand reviews out there and I can guarantee each one of them would be a thousand times better than the one I can write, but I had to write about the movie and the things that I liked about it, so here I go:

- Chocolate of course.......... for a hard core chocolate lover like me seeing all those 'Wonka bars' with a golden ticket or without, all those candies, and oh...the chocolate waterfall and the chocolate river.... was it a treat or what...........uuummmmmmm it looked irresistible!!!! :-) Right from the opening sequence the abundant screen-presence of chocolate is something that would have made me fall in love with the movie anyway!!

- The dialogues.........witty, spontaneous and honest! The one I loved the most however, was this peace of conversation in the Glass Elevator:
         The TV crazy guy (I didn't really catch the name and all properly): Why is everything here completely pointless??
         Charlie: Candy doesn't have to have a point! That's why its candy!
LOVED it!! :-)

- The Oompa-Loompas! Oh My God!! Their wicked sense of humor, their height, their agility, the song and dance sequences, their facial expressions...........out of this world!! :-)

- The songs...... couldn't find the lyrics online! :-( Guess will have to get hold of the book for that!

- And that reminds me, this is probably the first movie that I saw, based on a book, without having read the book! I wonder if I'd have liked the movie as much, had I been an ardent fan of this Roald Dahl classic.

- Grandpa Joe.......his zeal, his enthusiasm in spite of his age.....he is the real scene stealer on more than one occasions! Charlie, interestingly, is the least colorful of all the characters in the movie! Maybe that's because he is all good and that could definitely get boring! :-)

- Johnny Deep......well, if I liked him in 'Finding Neverland', I fell head over heels in love with his Willy Wonka! The posture, the gestures, the perverse mind, the whims of this resourceful millionaire, his love for chocolate, his reluctance in asking those kids to back off for he believes they need to be punished, his slight absent-mindedness..........except for the childhood flashbacks and a melodramatic reunion in the end (which people tell me is the only part of the movie, that's not faithful to the book) I can't really decide which one I like more, Johnny Depp or the Willy Wonka played by Johnny Depp!

         But right now as I look back on those 116 minutes, I can clearly see the reason why I liked the movie so much! There, for the first time in quite a few days, I was able to forget everything and I mean everything, just sit there, watch, get totally absorbed in what was happening on the screen and what's more.........LAUGH!! :-)

          Something funny occurred to me today while sitting in the light rail staring at nothing out of the window. remember those scenes in movies? Whenever they want to show rejection, continuous effort, long time span filled with similar things and incidents, multiple attempts resulting in a similar manner...........what do they do!! There is some sad-ish music going on in the background or even some beautifully intense lyrics thrown in maybe and most importantly the whole thing happens in a Fast Forward style. The whole period is shrunk to make it as small as is possible without losing the impact. Why, do you ask? Simple...coz its boring! So if at all anyone was to make a movie about this whole mess, me sitting in the LRT like that, would have made a perfect shot, most apt setting for that kind of a sequence!! :-)
       
          Only I wish these times were fast forwarded in real life like they are in the movies!!

So, there......I have been book tagged by Ashutosh!! I have read this Meme post on numerous blogs that I read regularly and it has been acting as a cruel reminder of the fact that I haven't read half the number of books that I wish I had, I haven't touched books on half the numer of topics that I wish I had read something about and I am not half as knowledeable as I would have liked to be when it comes to books!! I wish there would be some time in the future when I rewrite this post and feel really happy about it!! However, thisone will have to do for the time being! :-)

          * Total number of books that I own:
I don't really have an exact count, but it would come to a shameful figure of 50 or so I think! I remember this huge collection of books that my Ajoba had acquired over the years and I remember just pulling out something and reading books during summer vacation in school days, was never much of an outdoor person you see!! :-) However, most books I have read as a tinking(?) adult(??) mostly belonged to the liabraries, or one or the other of my friends, or to the awesome collection at Neets' place.

          * Last book I bought:
That would be Brilliant Origami by David Brill (Awesome folding diagrams, I must say!!) or Contemporary Class Piano by Elyse Mach (That's my stint with the Piano classes at the University!!) Wish I could say something fancier!!! ;) Oh and by the way, technically it could even be Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince!! can't wait for it!!! Hope its not as disappointing as the fifth book though!

          * Last book I read:
Yugandhara by Shivaji Sawant! Guess I would be one of the very few bloggers to have a Marathi book featuring in the book Tag! ;)

        * One book I couldn't finish:
Hhhhhmmmm, now there would be quite a few in this list! I would start reading reading a book on someone else's recommendation and could never get through to the end. Was stuck on page 50 of Atlas Shrugged, however eventually managed to put myself into the group of people who have read it and further liked it!! :) But the one book which I tried to read on multiple occasions and miserably failed to finish must be Illusions and its quite weird because I have in fact liked some of the other Richard Bach books a LOT!

          * Five books which mean a lot to me:
Mine is probably going to be very 'Oh-everyone-likes-those books' kind of a list! Simply because I haven't got a wide range as far as topics, authors and kinds of books are concerned. But these books do mean a LOT to me and that remains a fact! :)

      -- Mrityinjaya by Shivaji Sawant:
The first book that triggered off my interest in Mahabharata. I was obsessed with it when I read it first in 6th or 7th! I even remember fantasizing about Karna..........now how childish is that!!! :-)

      -- 'Ek Hota Carver' translated by Veena Gavankar
its a biography of George Washington Carver. It was inspiring to say the least and I still can feel the impact it had had on my mind!

      --  Anything and everything written by Pu la. His totally unbelievable style of humour is unbeatable anyway. But I am particularly of the opinion that nothing can ever come close to his way of perfectly and beautifully bringing out the subtle shade of sadness, misery nostalgia in this immaculate backdrop of satire and humour only to emphasize the triumph of human spirit and the desire to smile!! Read 'Chitale Master' if you don't know what I mean!!

      -- Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach:
The first ever English Book I read, in 11th! Small in size it gave me the confidence to venture further into this terriroty! :-) But more than that, It appealed to me like nothing else before! The simple yet powerful tale about following your dreams struck a chord with me. What amazes me about this book is the fact that it means something different to me every time I read it and its in such perfect harmony with whatever I am going through in life!!

      -- The Lord Of The Rings:by JRR Tolkien
Do I really have to say anything about this Tolkien Classic...........maybe I do!!!
Ruj, Neets, go, run, fetch a copy and start reading!!!!! :)

          * And I am going to Tag:
Almost all the blogs I religiously read have already seen Book Tags.........however I would love it if these people could write this on their blogs:

Rujuta
Upasna
Aditya
Sushrut
Neets and Mukta........I know, I know you don't have blogs! But I would love it if you could do it for me in my comments section!! :-) 
    
P.S.: Oh by the way, I don't see how I could forget to tag them (maybe because all of those that I tagged belonged to one section of my friend's circle! ) but I would love it if 'I-hate-the-comments-on-Madhura's-blog' Dileepan' and 'I-had-the-guts-to-leave-Infy-simply-because-that's-not-what-I-want-to-do-all-my-life' Aditya could write their Book Posts!! Please Please Please!!!
BTW, what's with me and 'I-like-defining-words-or-people-this-way' mode!!!!
P.S.2: and now that he has promised me to write, I would tag Chaitanya as well. Well that's a lot of people I have tagged along now! :)

   I never let myself live in a delusion about my writing skills, nor did I want this place to be my personal diary! My aim in starting this blog was not to write stuff that people could find interesting, nor was I ever going to write thoroughly researched articles about the world around! I didn't want to make this space a platform for heated discussions on politics, religion, sport or anything for that matter, nor did I intend to express opinions or find solutions through this blog! All that this web-space was supposed to be was a PENSIEVE!
   
   An outlet to a hundred different things that keep going through my mind every second, a simple way of letting my parents and my friends know what I was really upto, an easy way to communicate with a lot of my friends about things which seemed quite insignificant in many ways but still were extremely important to me. But more than anything else this blog was suppoed to keep a record of 'me' for my own self to read and relive, right now or say ten years down the line! I wished to preserve, freeze a part of myself in these words for me to revisit whenever I wanted! And I must say it was serving its purpose quite well, till about six months back! And that brings to the title of this post..........my explaination as to why I have started hating this blog and just about everything about it.......and howmuchever I tried not to, I am going to have to resort to my original way of making lists, the same way I used to when I was quite in love with this blog, writing here and everything! :-)

So here it goes........a list of ten things I hate about my blog, in no specific order of preference actually:

- I don't update it often enough!
- What's worse, I don't feel like updating it often enough!
- There are things about which I want to write but can't bring myself to!
- I think a hundred times before actually posting a simple two line post even!
- The number of written but unpublished posts is ever-increasing!
- The meaningless jargon that I try to keep putting up here as futile attempts to keep this blog alive!
- Unknown people reading this and calling it just a bunch of words with no meaning! Agreed it might be just that right now, but it hurts, I guess more so because it is!
- Reading my earlier posts further makes me realize the changes I have undergone, the impact things have had on me and that sucks.......big time!!
- As I write every word, even in this post, The truth hits me in the face! I am not as frank, honest and fearless with myself as I was, say about six months back!
- Thanks to all these.......this blog isn't 'ME' any more!! :-(

        As I do very often, for the sake of nostalgia, inspiration, reassurance....a bit of everything, I was going through my treasure.......old b'day cards, letters, emails and all such stuff! It was something that Rujuta had written to me on my Birthday last year that made me think,

         "What goes around..... comes around! Be it love, help, a kind word, absolutely anything! Only don't expect it to come from the same quarter you gave it to! It comes back from anywhere, anybody.....even a stranger! Just Wait and watch! Most importantly Recognize It!"

      Guess my fault was that I did expect it to come from the same quarter! And miserably failed to recognize what was coming my way, not from strangers, but from friends!!! I think I might just be able to put things in perspective, somehow betrayal doesn't hurt any more, in fact it doesn't even seem like betrayal any more! :-) And a smile on my own face, a genuine one at that, is something I would die for right now!!! ;)

      And by the way, did I mention there was a "You dare not change!!" at the end of it all???? :-)

   This happened to me a couple of time in the past few days!!! 
   
   The setting is simple........someone visits you at your place, you engage in a nice little conversation, do whatever was the purpose of that meeting and the other person/s get/s up........ready to leave.......simple enough????? NO WAY!!! The following, is what invariably happens..............
   
   you too get up to escort the person to the door (as if your apartment is sooooo big that the person might get lost!), then again you think of something to say just as that person/s is/are about to leave, turns out that its a terribly interesting thing to talk about, so there....everyone just stands in quite uncomfortable positions (simply bcause one has to stop and share a word about this terribly interesting topic, right???), after a long time when someone thinks its been discussed enough, words indicating the end of conversation are uttered (something like, "Ok then, see you later" or "I will give you a call when I am done"), the scene is all set for the exit and then again...... there somes a " Oh by the way,............" and there starts another terribly interesting conversation!!! :-)............Its crazy when you realize by the end of it all that the time spent on the GoodBye conversations was at least twice as much as the actual time spent in discussing/doing whatever was supposed to be done/discussed!!!!

    And then funnily enough, just found out that its called "The Minnesota Goodbye" :-) 

            Actually Prahlad Beats me at posting this!! But what the heck!!! I have to post about it myself!!! There is nothing more enjoyable in life than eating a Chocolate Ice Cream!!! And you know what, its even more so, when temperatures suddenly drop down to middle 30's in the middle of what is supposed to be spring!!! :-) Nothing compares to that!!!

            And guess hwat made this one trip to Ben and Jerry's even more worthwhile! its the back of the card that you can see in that snap! guess what it says................ 10% off on all purchases made at Ben and Jerry's till the end of this year!! YAY!!!!! gives me all the more reason to increase my frequency of visits to the shop by a factor of 10/9 (or would it be 11/10??????............will think about it later........ :-) )