The M(D)anavathey Project.

There are projects, and then there are projects. This one doesn’t qualify under either.

Sohumming 35,000 kannada speaking brats, free of cost, under adverse conditions, in 15 days is not a project. It is a tsunami.
But I got through my part of the big jigsaw more or less smoothly. Thanks to all the love that I was filled up to the brim with in manipal. I am convinced I have some karma with that place. I feel so much at home there, more like a spiked pseudo ashram feel. Spike being the PDA, the smoke rings and the drunken stupor.;)

A bundle of us camped with our yoga mats in our minimalistic (mirror free) YES!+ manipal abode. The main course was Danavathey but the mocktails, starters and dessert stole the show.
We watched patanjali yog sutra in the morning, which for me was like a daily dose of red bull. Few of us did a fullon kadak upvaas, minus H2O even, on Shivratri. The group tapa made it fun and thick.
Bawa’s board games were hackneyed followed by tremendous varieties of massages that embodied pleasure and beyond.
World cup in random small hang outs with flat screen tv was super fun too.
Long kriya was performed on the terrace after which a cute candle lit barbecue happened thanks to Sam and Arun. These 2 are like amaron batteries, last long very long;);)Phew, insane energy they are endowed with.
One day, a dip in temple pond was also taken. This pond is situated in an eeriely romantic green place filled with pedicuring fish. We lost ourselves there until an uninvited guest- the water snake chose to share the water body with us.
Desperately tasty south indian home cooked food was consumed (standing ovation to preeti and deepti) and was ravenously consumed by us pondies. Midnight pasta that was manifested was mostly freakking tasty too;)

The daytimes weren’t oh-so-rosy however. I had to unleash my vocal chords in a language alien to the asuras i was teaching in the 4 government colleges i was assigned. With utter lack of electricity, a strong presence of the lord of heat was experienced. Each sweat pore of my surface area cried tears of agony. This is beside my insides which were anyway wailing at my helpless condition.

So the days and nights were long, woefully and gleefully respectively.
Names must be taken, people must be thanked for the gleeful part of the equation.

1] Nikhil; for being the original roomie without even a mirror in the house. he’s enlightened.!

2] Rohit; for being the smartest descendent of meerut.

3] Kulprit; for being there, “waqt se pehle, jarurath se jyada”, like all good things.

4] Aseem; for the nights filled with mindless laughter.

5] Abhinav; for making me feel precious about myself.

6] Arun; for being my guardian angel.

7] Arun’s car for being my non-living guardian angel.

8] The patanjali gang for appearing at 6am (approximately;)) for all of 11 days.

9] Guruji, for getting the above 8 in my life.

I can welcome death this very moment. I feel so full in every way.
Regret free, untouched, happy bird type…
Jai guru dev

JUST ANOTHER DAY IN THE LIFE OF VENKAT-part I

Who is Venkat?
A dear friend.

Who is his Guru?
His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar aka guruji (mine too for the record)

What about him (Venkat)?
This guy gets blatantly pampered by ‘our’ guru every single day in the ashram. Now you have to have done truck loads of good in a lot of your past lives or you have to be in a whirlpool of mess/tragedy to get your cheeks pulled/ get patted lovingly in the back/ tapped with a rose by guruji every other day!

Which category does Venkat fall in?
Clearly the 1st. Cos he smiles so bad, that your jaws hurt; he helps so heartfully, that you will want to hide behind a bush and cry out loud about your laziness; his face shines so bright that it can light up a light house. In essence, he is far from being remotely unhappy and the likes.

Why all this explanation?
7th jan is my birthday. And I got treated like Venkat! Over and over. And it felt so gooood! Basically, in my case, guruji glancing at me is as frequent as a crow singing a lullaby. Yes, I whine. A lot.

What really happened?
My day began at 7 am with a good hour of blissful meditation. Mostly my nights begin like this. I am the taller version of an owl with long hair. 10 am I begin conjuring dahi wada for the very 1st time in 25 yrs praying feverishly cos it is meant for the consumption of the guru in question. you kinda don’t taste when you cook for the divine. and guruji is divine as far as intelligent people are concerned. so the salt and spice was all a wild difficult guess much like the answers to BQC when i was way younger.;) By 12 noon, the dahi wada was ambitiously decorated to conceal its dubious taste.

Being a friday, Devi puja was scheduled with guruji at noon. It was purely mesmerising and my heart was full by the end of it. To help my heart overflow further with gratefulness, Bhanumaa (the guru in question’s sister) put me a garland and kumkum, blessing me on my birthday. The dahi wada’s gallivanted to guruji through her. In the meanwhile, i downed some decent ashram kitchen food following which i did some seva to collect Venkatlike punyaa.

Did guruji eat the dahi wadas’?
We shall discuss that tomorrow. Same place, same time.

my fattee buddies-Part 5

often, shishyas are proud of their teacher/guru..
but there are some shishyas who the teacher feels so lucky to have..
i am filled with immense pride when i say i know of 2 such cutie pies’ {abt their superb teachers, shipa & srivi; some other time!}
i present to u: abhiram and gauri shankar
their focus sometimes stirs me;
their faith often gives me direction;
their love for the master always mists my eyes..

FYI- this is exactly how they don't look nowadays

here is the work of their genius;
http://www.youtube.com/user/yesplustv

my favourite is the ‘summer magic promo’ which u shud check out right away and praise.

abhi and gaudi, i say this from the bottom of my heart…u guys are worth a million bucks ;);););) (some ugly inside jokes are so killer!! means la’that!!)

god bless you both
jai guru dev
much love

my fattee buddies-Part 4

this one’s for a real real spcl pal i hv the pleasure of knowing for eons. to be precise; 9 and a half yrs. siddharth raman!! yippeeeee. *applause* he’s a cutie pie who i feel so comfortable being around even though we meet as often as the indian cricket team loses a match these days

this metaphor is used on extreme purpose cos this dude of mine and his entire family suffers from obsessive complusive disorder wrt CRICKET. his bro is (krishnamachari) Srikant (cutie pie again). i meant it when i said obsessive complusive.

in his MICA (which is my alma mater, smiles & tears) interview, sid was questioned abt cricket. duh! they were shown their place i am sure. this post -u’r amazing siddharth, was long over due, but today i read sid’s MICA life blog and i broke into a small dance. i felt i was back there, back in that gorgeous blissful MICA campus. my agyatvaas was in MICA for 6 months of last yr. its a superb idea to go read his stuff, more so if ur a MICAN.

i vaguely remember the 1st time i met sid. he ran across the road, munching on a samosa, and told me a colloquial hi, we are from the same college u know. and then we never spoke for 3 yrs. dont connect the 2 sentences shameless ones . but today i cud totally pour my heart out to this fellow knowing that he wud intently hear every word of it. and perhaps even given super sensible advice if asked. a perfect 4am pal who i hvnt ever dared to call at 4am.

sid keeps assuming i hv a bank a/c fat enuf to buy an ipl team (ufff, i dont!); but this bugger visits usa like i visit the banglore ashram; besides his idea of general travel includes flying to south africa to watch a cricket match. girls, are u listening- teetotaller, rich, tam bram boy for sale. only that he’s taken….by a sachin tendulkar.

i am known to not wish people on their birthdays’ becos i am utterly forgetful abt these things. but when it comes to sid; I HV FREAKKING NOT WISHED HIM EVERY SINGLE OF THOSE 9 YRS. its insanely irritating. once tho was heights. he called me on the very day of this birth and we spoke n spoke and i still forget. sorry boy. perhaps next time. perhaps. ?

sid, but i know u know i adoree u bigtime anyway..!

i am gona make sure i get sachin tendulkar on ur 50th birthday (if i remember that is) or ur marriage; whichever happens first;);)

BIG FAT HUG SID

my fattee buddies-Part 3

how drastically we change. its strange for me to even look at my school pics. ‘Embaressed’ isn’t word enough to describe the feeling.

my school pals would nod in agreement if u asked them if nerd and priya were synonyms. Man, i was so utterly out there to impress the whole darn world during my ICSE school days. specially cos i was in a very very simple innocent set up before that where the worst abuse i knew was ‘stupid’. i failed over n over in showcasing my non-existant coolness. and this coolness wanted to widen its spectrum by the time i entered college!(pls tell me u were like this too?pls pls)

i was skillfully talked into joining a mega dravidian( read south-indian, drowned in the aroma of sambar and coconut chutney) institute which provided a platform for more showoffing as i was from an ICSE background. yeah, CBSE walas are lesser mortals and SSC janta come just about close to qualifying as amphibians. come on, we read shakespeare dude!

this is the background u need to know to appreciate wat i really want to share. which begins from here;

in college, for the 1st time ever, i met a bunch of these well mannered, eloquent, intellectually funny, checked-shirted/salwaar-kameezed, girls-mustn’t-abuse type dravidian amphibians. some 10-15 of them who i totally fell in love with.

they were my earthing wires. i say so cos thanks to them i started respecting my language and hence mad tamil music, beautiful prayers n rituals we did at home, parachute oil, bindi and so on. these 15 odd earthings, all in and around being tambrams ( i hear people screaming racist racist racist in the background;););)) , were  really really so adorable and innocent. some still are.

all of us went on to doom ourselves in the unforgiving whirlpool of suffering and torture worse than the horcrux curse i.e. Engineering.

point being, every sem end, after successfully screwing up in our respective exams, we would go for a pilgrimage/picnic to Titwala(house of our very own super powerful ganpathi).

Well, there were a lot of do’s as part of this excursion for good marks. Namely;

u gotto feed the temple dog

u gotto check out the tortoise in the temple well

u gotto wait for a train to pass by when ur doing the pradakshina

u gotto eat misal pav in a shabby lil’ restaurant just outside the temple

u gotto walk back to the railway station from the temple (hell why?????)

thats a fun list of ‘u gotto’s’ to bribe god for a 1st class no?

an atheist wud simply say, ‘go study man!’….well what a boring life they lead! tsk tsk..

must say all this worked though, cos if i cud get a 1st class in each of the 8 semesters with no KT’s; god exists. he soooooo does!

see this comes from a person who detests engineering more than the taste of fungus infected, maggot filled brownies.

for proof i recommend my older post, to read which, u can click here.

culturally sound,

as much showoffy,

priya mani

my fattee buddies-part 2

madhuri is a dear dear pal. who houses me and pampers me and praises me. shes a hot journalist and a cool yes!+ teacher with a pleasant personality and a warm smile! she’s written really nice things about karpagavalli and me. karpagavalli is another cutie pie. she cooks and feeds and cooks and cleans and then cooks some more all with a big bright smile. to knw more abt her and read abt me being praised visit madhuri’s blog – ephemeralflower.blogspot.com
hv a crazy day!
adios.

my fattee buddies

i hv 2 pals to praise.

srividya, a pal for yrs now, a beauudyy YES!+ teacher, who is unbelievely good at everything she takes up. from topping her university witout attending a day,, to learning and performing bharatnatyam and kathak and jive and salsa. from representing India in the youth UN meet to looking frekking pretty in absoulutely any attire. she has made me experience crazy levels of jealousy! i am learning to go beyond being jealous though and take inspiration from her instead. so she was interviewed for an article on ‘women and voting which featured in the main issue of DNA. Here’s the link. You need to click on ’2′ when the page opens.

this is wat she has to say about it. “Most of what I said has been cut out(surprise surprise!) but some of it is manipulated very little and still there. But hey, my pic looks great!enjoy..love you all.”

check it out:

http://epaper.dnaindia.com/epapermain.aspx?queryed=40&username=&useremailid=&parenteditioncode=40&eddate=4%2f18%2f2009

Another amazing new pal i made recently is suniti. soon to be YES!+ teacher! this gurlie in just 4 yrs of learning and playing snooker is now Nationally ranked 4th!! guruji sure does his bit- samai se pehle an jarurat se jyaada! she was sharing with me of how she was super busy arranging utsav in kolkota to empower 2000 youth and hence dint hv time to practice at all for her national snooker championship. she said she practiced only for 10 days and was rather tensed. she called dinesh bhaiyaa,, yeah some people have the luck to knw him…and he told her to chant om namah shivaya everyday.. she did just that and stood 8th in the championship.the deal was, every year the top 3 winners get shortlisted to play internationally. but GUESS WAT!!! THIS YEAR THE TOP 8 GOT SELECTED TO REPRESENT INDIA INTERNATIONALLY!!! super crazy right??/ not 5, not 10…JUST 8!…! this guruji no!! so cutie he is!! lou him for all his spcl effects!!

check this out for proof:

http://www.cuesportsindia/myweb/profile/suniti.htm

i am so glad i m perennially surrounded by highly interesting people. i tell u again, do the yes!+ to knw wat i am talking about!

Parting is painful

today is my last nite at MICA… the 7 month sabbatical from the speedy life i lead back home. wat i will miss most among many things is the MICAN greenery and the lake in the nearby village where i wud often spot peacocks coming to quench their thirst and buffalos who wud come in for a swim. these are sites that one possibly cant find even in the borivali national park back in busy bombay.. or shud i say mad mad mumbai!!

i had all the time in the world to spend wit myself… catching up on movies, music, meditation.. just doing nearly nothing definitely felt beautiful! nites went onto become days and when the sun came up.. we came out of our precious Imac lab and absorbed the morning rays. after this we all died in our beds until dusk!.. funny.. we lived like U.S citizens. all of us were pretty much zoned out, dint know which day of the week it was, absolutely high on life. no questions. no answers. 100% living.

The pic is that of our convocation. My first and last i am guessing… see how chic we look!! My course in MICA was made extra spcl simply becos of my 23 fellow mates.. we had a louly emo party today for which my roomie and i wrote few lines for each one of them! I am gona put it down here, though its rather private…but those of u who read my blog are private to me too !!

LOU U GUYS SO MUCH!!

AND THANKS A MILLION!!

pyar, ishq aur mohabbat

while i was getting myself a bachelor’s degree, i made sure i was busy doing everything except romancing my fat engineering books. luckily on the first few days of a 4yr college life, my eyes fell upon a guy who made me go week in my knees. when i mentioned it to a few pals, they equalled him to a lot of ugly things.. including vomit.  but i cudnt stop blushing when i thot of him. i wud tolerate a horrible ST bus ride of an hour with a big smile, all excited only to catch one glimpse of him in the treacherous day of college. i even brain washed those mean pals to think that he’s a dude of substance.. and thus we started a club in his name. a virtual club. we sent him reallyy funny rose cards on rose days and sneaked into his class to check his reaction. bascially did a whole lot of horribly, atrociously silly things to catch his eye. those amazing deep eyes…

i remember dedicating my daily meditation practice ka energy to him when he was very sick  in hospital.. i went to visit him at the hospi which was the very first time i every really spoke to him.. believe me my legs were shaking all the while. and i remember so well that i spoke utter shit when i got my chance. for those who knw me, knw that i can make interesting convo wit brad pitt also wit ease.. but this dude was so much more..

so one day i gathered the guts to take his only note book for some work.. hehe .. this is really funny guys..(promise u wont laugh!!)…i took the note book, n last page mein i wrote him a poem.. my 1st ever poem.. man!!! i thot this happend only in the movies.. wrong!

it was perhaps the cheeziest things i hv ever done when hit by cupid real bad! next day i waited anxiously for him to talk to me.. well.. he dint really.. but hes the one who inspired me to write.. i dint even know until then that i cud write decent poetry,, and today its a different story.. u cud check the poetry section on my blog to understand wat i am talking of ( so much for humility:))

so coming back to this heart of mine;  he never gave me even one milligram of bhaav; but i later realised that my love was utterly unconditional.. fully amazing it feels even today to have loved someone so innocently expecting nothing at all.. not even an occasional ‘hi’. infact i used to get an adrenalin rush even when he walked through me,, which he often did! weird eh?

in the past few minutes, i feel i hv lived those 3-4yrs of romance! thanx blog!

thanx boy. ur a permanent in my heart!

here is the poem on his note book;

you are burning.. let go

catastropic, metamorphic, caustrophobic,

get a cusion, get a life.

slump it all, rise

end the drama, behold

act this scene, play this play

I’ll get you a cusion, please get a life.

you are famished, fill the void

crack the nut, create noise

stuck in the head, you’ve left no choice,

let go , let go.

gimme a cushion, I’ll get me a life!

the big and small of things

i made a young friend yesterday in the bus. He should be around 9yrs. Dhanesh. It was so refreshing to spend time with this over enthu kid who played game after game with me from the time i said hi till he boarded off the bus. I wonder where all this enthu vansihes 20 yrs down the line among us youth!

dhansh spoke to me as freely as he was speakign with his mom! his innocence and wit amazed me and makes me smile even now. i asked him, so wat do u do ? to which he replied promptly ” i study”. i said, ” ya thats ok. but wat else do u really enjoy doing, some sport maybe?” and pat came the reply ” chor police”. haha! i happily burst out laughing! HE EXEMPLIFIED UTTER CUTENESS GUYS!

after 10 min of conversation , we realised that we live just a building apart. a twisted cliche, but the world seems like the size of a peanut sometimes. among the many cool things i learnt about my pal was that he sports a ‘one of a kind’ SPY watch, has lovely dimples on his happy face, and he often confuses the words tiger and trigger! he and his pals hide in a haunted house while playing  hide and seek. And sometimes when his pals arn’t around, in his own words “its just me and my torch” hiding with no fear! when i told him  i am a copywriter, dhanesh said i was a copy cat…eerr no a COPY HUMAN!

His mom n i got talking, and its decided that we will be spending this summer vacation together. I wonder if i will be able to match his high spirits even for an hour. and this is coming from someone who is highly zealous herself, or so they say! so dont underestimate my little buddy here.

when it was time to get off, his mum took my fone no. , but my dear fellow comes up and asks me for my email address. dear o dear, our leaders of tomorrow are going to be people to reckon with. people like dhanesh.

we struck such a beautiful chord, it seemed almost surreal. our loud convos and games definately entertained the entire bus population. feels so strange; on one side there is so much violence and greed and on the other side there is so much innocence and joy. and both of these on the same side of the planet… i wonder why i slipped into this ‘philo’/ ‘emo’ mode suddenly. u add 15 to dhanesh’s age and this is wat u wil get:)

along with meditation, i am going to make it a point to spend some time with kids everyday. Kudos and thanks to all those people who make my life more bright, fulfilling and enterprising than it already is!

I owe u one buddy!