Of Endings and New Beginnings

A blink of an eye was all it took for me to live a lifetime in a span of 18 months. The leaves turned and I had no clue…all that I saw was a whirlwind of people, emotions, madness and activities sweeping me up and taking me along with it. And suddenly there is silence…absolute blankness…I am older…poorer…richer…emptier…more fulfilled than I ever have been. These 18 months really have the best of times and the worst of times.

I have met some of the smartest people I know…made some of the closest friends I will ever have…learnt something new about the art of human deception…recalled something forgotten about the art of drinking :P and as this journey comes to an end met someone special who is teaching me to live each day as if its my last again.

Fabrice, My Meerkat <3 <3 Thank you for making me realize that its perfectly ok to be crazy and that 10 years from today I will still be a mad person J You made so many things just so much easier!! Also, thank you for teaching me that I should never answer my door wearing just a t-shirt – lesson well learnt – well almost (now I actually find out who is on the other side before I do so:P).

Ioannis, It has been a fabulous journey and you have made the ride all the more fun just by being there. Every moment I have spent with you since I met you has been priceless and I owe you for so so so much :P This MBA wouldn’t have been the same without you!

Anumeha, What can I say other than OMG I feel like we met just yesterday!!!! Vacations, exams, coffees, alcohol, shopping, long drives – all those things wouldn’t have been the same without you J  And the rest of things planned need your presence just as much – you have been a very big stabilizing force in the past months and I can’t thank you enough for being there.

Paul, hehe…I am so glad that you had the patience and will to hang around and wait for the show to end and the real me to come out :P It has been wonderful knowing you and learning with you and seeing a Paris that only you could have shown me. Every outing, every talk and most of all every birthday ( ;P ) has been better with you there. Here’s to more of the same and a lot lot more.

Mike, Big Daddy with teeny dog!!!!! Its been an awesomest partnership – right through the Jim Beams, Number crunching, Art and Blonde moments J You will forever be one the reasons I am glad I chose to come to HEC. Keep rocking that leather jacket and cigar look – no one can do that better than you my love!

Rohini, hahahhahah Damn Puppy-Gator – ain’t much I can say here that hasn’t been said in all the dumb videos and pictures and drunk nights. I am so glad you pissed me off the first time we met – I never would have bothered getting to know you otherwise :P Remember you are a fucking Rockstar and let no one tell you otherwise. Chumma for you!

Kauts, Ok then vulture lets just say that it took a long time for me to get around to giving you a chance as a friend but I am glad I did. I appreciate all the quiet nights spent drinking and staring into space, as well as all the runs we went for together :P Thanks for keeping me much needed company.

Antonin, now who would have thought the girl you thought was so rude would be writing this to you? Huh? :P You my friend have been one of my favoritist finds of late J I really love hanging out with you, talking to you, musing with you – I have to say all these things take a whole new meaning with a dirty French around :P (You know you are a gentleman though at the end of it all :P)

Erietta, Ma Belle!!!! You have been  so much fun and an amazing friend to have these past months! I am so happy I met you and we have had some great times We need to have some more crazy times now in the coming year J You are a wonderful person and deserve the very best in life.

Vivek, Saale ab tujhe kya boloon? Full amazing time pass you have been J We have had the craziest of times together and we will have some more. You have been a very very good friend and I feel very honored to have you as a frand :P Now we just need to work out a way for you to feed me prawn curry and for me to get you drunk the whole of next year (No, I will never let you keep that resolution ;) )

Alexandre, My baby Love!!!! I have not had even one boring moment since you have been a part of my life! You keep me on my toes (along with keeping me in the kitchen :P) and put up with all my hyper active craziness :* All that I can say to you is that I cannot wait for 2013 – to a new life J

So, all you wonderful people, as this year comes to an end I am thankful to Paris for having connected me to all of you. Paris has given me a lot but the best thing it has given me has been friends like you. I hope the new year brings with it complete awesomeness and that I get to be a part of all the wonderful things that are bound to happen in your lives this year. Kisses my lovelies :**

So Much For Me!!!!!

Now I know what Fabrice means when he says ‘Only You Kitten!’

So, a few days back I was minding my own business (getting a coca light from the new cafeteria) when I saw S sitting on one of the tables and decided to say hello. And here is how it went – Me: How you doin? S: good good and you? Me: Fine. Wow! You look like shit!!! S: Whaaaa???? (Looks down at his clothes) Me: Ohhh noo…as in you look soo tired. S: blah blah blah you should not say that to people…just say they look tired.

Well, a rather chastised me apologized and went on my way (to smoke in the sun :P). On the way out I decided it might be a good time to have a conversation with myself about what a labyrinth the new building is! (It was an important conversation and it was about time I had that conversation with myself!) Anyway there I am walking along (rather standing in the middle of the walkway) and asking myself about the classroom locations when D walked up to me and said hello. Of course I had no clue that someone was talking to me and I kept on having said conversation with myself and then I noticed a person staring at me. I snapped out of it (of course I did doh!) said ummmm hiiii…whatever…and went back to my conversation (I am not rude enough to leave a conversation mid-way) only to watch D walk away with a pissed off look on his face. Damn I had been rude yet again L. Only this time I really did not mean it!

So I pulled myself together and started walking again and I bumped into R. She is so sweet and looked so tired (like everyone in a MBA)! So I said hello and here is what happened – Me: Wow! You look so tired! (Notice how I learn my lessons and try to be better and polite?). R: Ummm you could have just been honest and said I look like shit! Me: DAMMIT!!!!!!!

Why Me????!!!!

Lesson Of the Week: Just say whatever is on my mind – people will be offended anyway. Also if I take the trouble of noticing that a person looks like shit/looks tired I actually care and am concerned about the person. C’mon if I didn’t care you think I would bother to look at them at all...

Of Mustard Hilsa and Howrah Bridge

Roots. Everyone has some somewhere. With the world having shrunk, metaphorically, people are moving, living, breathing and fornicating everywhere. But every once in a while everybody wants to go home - to familiar streets, sounds and smells.

Being an army brat I have lived, for short periods of time, in a lot of cities. There have been so many landscapes that somewhere down the line all of them start looking the same. Cities blend into each other and each face is as indistinguishable as the next. Picking up the pieces of my life and setting them to rest until the next move has become second nature. No move is unsettling, no city a stranger and none to call home.

And yet, I found myself in a certain big-small city. The humid air prickling my skin, the smells so strong that they invaded my being, the human sea sucking me in! For the first time I understood what coming home meant.

Something put my wandering heart to rest; was it the comforting lilt of the language? The language that brought back childhood memories of my grandmother in her cotton sari and big round bindi. Or was it the languid laidbackness with which hundreds of people around me went nowhere in particular? I was in a city where I knew absolutely no one and yet it felt like I had come back to where I began!

On my first evening, standing on the corner of Park street, slightly damp, smoking a cigarette and nursing a black tea, I gave my heart to Calcutta, because you see my soul already belonged.

Good Girl gone Wild Or….?

It was the summer solstice, the world was beautiful and Paris even more so. On the longest day of the year what do Parisians do? – Dance and sing on the streets – but of course! And who was I to deny myself the pleasure of joining in :P

So, I take poor Fabrice and convince him to drive into Paris (a very good decision as we later found out). A very sober quiet evening commenced with a strange restaurant (read: walk into a large place where you are the only customer and you WILL be served bad food) and vinegary wine! Two glasses of wine later we were out of the door and on our way to Bastille when we came across a really nice band and decided to stick around. Jump to 10 minutes later and I asked Fabrice with all the innocence of a day old kitten why was it that everyone was drinking alcohol but us? Well of course then we had to go and buy a bottle of rhum and a can of beer for Fabrice!

And from there it was hop from band to band, sit on park benches and drink out of a bottle in a bag. a quarter of a bottle of alcohol had me wondering why am I not eating ice cream? Then of course it was off to buy ice cream…we walked out of the ice cream store and spotted a strange procession – a marching band doing what it does best – playing music and marching and people doing what they do best – following the marching band! So we proceeded to do what we do best – join the procession!! And then there were Fabrice and I running and dancing across the city, swigging from the bottle of rhum and giggling like fools when we found ourselves somewhere near the Notre Dame and decided to quit following the band and make our way back to the car – for some reason we wanted to go back early and sleep (oh yeah we were hung-over from the night before).  But of course on the way back Fabrice had to stop and listen to some DJs and I had to spot a Haribo stand :/ a liter of alcohol and then smurfs and smurfettes and lollipops that turned my tongue blue and sugar that turned up the crazy!!!

Well, we finally left the DJs and tried to make our way back when I saw the cutest little puppy tied to a strange Afro-American with luscious long hair and grey eyes and I stopped to play with the puppy. The man touches my hair and tells me OMG you have the most amazing hair – please let me ‘sculpt’ it!!! And the lil high me says hey why not? And there I was standing in the middle of the street (soon surrounded by a crowd of spectators with cameras – seriously tourists film anything) and getting my hair sculpted (read: cut – and yes after a haircut last week I got high and got my hair cut again). We were soon all ‘sculpted’ out and Fabrice was all laughed out and then we tried yet again to make our way to the car, this time stopping at the Pompidou to drink some more and put to rest my lil freaked head about the hair (I had not seen it yet). And then off we went – trying to get to the car and finally succeeding without any distractions (well there was that little elephant graffiti that I stopped to look at).

Guess what happened the next morning – No, I did not get scared (hah!) – I woke up with – OMG what the hell did I do last night? Trust me it was worse that waking up in a strange bed and wondering – OMG who the hell did I do last night!

Hair Raising Tales

After a lot of trepidation yours truly decided to hop and skip her way to Republique and get a new haircut (Yaayyy!!!) and thus the adventure commenced in a car without a GPS! As they say a good driver never asks for directions – and ask I did not…landed myself in some strange parking lot (luckily) after cursing half of Paris and their poodles…and made my way over to all time favorite hair stylist – BTW Dom rocks (He compared my shampoo sud filled ear to a champagne flute :P)

Anyway, after the haircut and a couple of kiss faced pictures we headed out to buy shoes – Epic fail – its disturbing that I can barely find shoes my size L , especially on a day I have convinced myself that 200 Euros for a pair of shoes is a good deal. And just when I was about to give up on the idea of having any kind of luck beyond a good haircut a very good friend decided that taking me out for an impulsive dinner is a good idea (I might add its one of the better ideas he has had :P). So I got to discover some amazing, spicy Chinese food and drove back to HEC sans GPS – this time without cursing fluffy dogs or old women.

Back home I decided ta new haircut calls for a celebration (and well there should be at least one day in the week when there is a real reason to drink)!  To cut a long story short – I got wasted and went to sleep without drama (GASP!!!). woke up today to a beautiful rainy day (not) and lay in bed chatting to people about random things…got out of bed to brush my teeth and got a little heart attack when I looked in the mirror – My hair was soooooooo weird :/ And then there was that moment of clarity – I got it cut the night before! Yes, I forgot that I had a haircut and got scared when I looked in the mirror the next day. Moral of the story? After a new haircut I should write on my mirror that I got a new haircut :P (Did you think I would say I should not drink???!!!!).

Cat in a Ringer

There is such a thing as a catch 22 and then there is that situation you get yourself into just because. A few weeks of running on a mix of adrenaline and strange hormonal activity has left me with a head rush that keeps me up and brings me crashing down in phases – like a roller coaster only not of the physical or emotional kind – just the kind that makes me want to throw up!

There is a creature that I want to tame and take home with me but I feel that if I were to leave it wouldn’t care. Its nerve wracking when I see him suddenly in places I never expect and it’s ridiculous that his eyes change color! I have a fever – the kind that is called a crush… Yes you heard it here – Kitten has a crush and she is perdu dans je ne sais quai :/

Panic In The Streets of JOUY!

The past two days have been – well – panic filled – the kind that pumps you with so much adrenaline that you can’t sleep or eat or breathe sometimes – a lot like falling in love without the commitment.

Aside from the huge huge ‘MBAT 2012’, which seems to be driving all of us up the wall, there has been intense drama regarding my French Visa renewal process (Student services conveniently leaves out details) and I managed to drop my phone (read lifeline) in the toilet (we will not discuss details) just before the damn MBAT!!!

Long story cut short I ‘fished’ the phone out of the toilet bowl AND managed to dry the phone out by keeping it in a bowl of rice for 24 hours – this works really well for the iPhone since it even beat the water damage sensor – got the phone working only to find out that the fall had damaged the chip holder. I took out an hour from a crazy $#@&%* schedule to go to the apple store and found a (cute) dude hanging out in a black staff T-shirt who looked like he had absolutely nothing to do. So, I pulled my cutest kitten-in-distress look and asked him ‘parlez vous anglez?’ and well took it on to a complete lost/innocent flirt level – let’s just say that I came away with a new phone (despite water damage which rice grains cured) and the phone number of a cute guy :P BTW it turned out he looked like he had nothing to do because he is the business head of the area lol. So, ladies next time you drop your iPhone in water try rice grains and if that does not work try flirting with a bored looking business manager :P

As for Visa renewal – that’s coming along – after all the wonderful confusion and delays I did manage to get the documents! And as for the MBAT – well Ready. Set. Game On!!!!!!!!!!