Tea & Dark Chocolate

  As a responsible adult with many teenaged nieces and nephews, I know I will have to face these questions a zillion times in future - Why the need to permanently ink yourself? What is that pressing a need that you needed to express yourself so loud, permanently? What were you thinking?  I love the design I got inked with. It means a lot to me that what it looks like. And this is entirely the reason I went ahead with the tattoo. But there is a slightly deeper reason to it. I might mince words, smile and pass off the questions or break out the honest answer depending on who asks these questions, but this is one place where I can be honest – Yes, I got myself inked because I wanted to. Simple. If I don’t want it in future, then I will still accept full responsibility to what I did, and deal with it the way I want to. And no, I am not a rebel. I do not hate this world. I am not questioning the ways of the world. On the contrary, I love the world and my life and everything in i...

After having built, maintained and tested huge and complex systems for almost 5 years now, the first thought that enters my mind when I see any design is – Can it be rolled back? How much of an effort it is to roll this back? Can we make the rollback easier? What is the damage to the system when we rollback? Call it a personality trait or work-seeping-way-too-much-into-life , I have started thinking about a rollback strategy for most of the things I do in my life too. A small change to the house layout or design, and I go ahead on thinking about it only after I am assured that it can be rolled-back. A change to the way I dress up or get my dresses is also considered only after my mind quickly calculates how to roll it back if it were to go wrong. Any item of furniture that I even consider buying would be thought about after I find out multiple uses of the same, and I know that the look it gives to the house can be rolled back! Even the ear and nose piercings I have had, I got th...

  Permanently! Yes! :-D And as my friend A puts it, I am now The Girl with the Music Tattoo! :-) I finally mustered the guts, got over the initial cold feet (little did I know what real cold feet mean! More on that later!) and went to the next most famous tattoo studio in Hyderabad (Hakim’s Aalim) and spoke to the artist there about getting this tattoo. I spoke to him about the design, location, the price he’d charge, and the safety measures he would take, and thought about it for 5 full minutes, standing right there, in his studio. I figured out I was confused about the location, and did not want to do this in a hurry. I told him I’d get back to in exactly two days, and came back home, thinking all the while if I can do it at all. I SMSed/Mailed all my girl-friends asking them what they thought of a tattoo. Some said they hated it, some said they have always wanted to get one done, and some said its not worth the pain. I then threw the option of me getting it done, and like tr...

They say registering for a run is half the job done. I sincerely hope so! Coz, I’ve decided to train for the Bangalore Ultra Marathon , and to the 25KM run in it! Partly because I badly need to lose those few (or not really few!) extra kilos off myself, and partly to self-discipline myself. Training for a 25K would mean that I have to wake up early in the morning, sleep early at night and in general be watchful of what I eat, and how I run. Another major reason is to self-justify those extra-expensive running Sketchers I got for myself last month! :) Assuming that the race would be in mid-Nov, I still have ~18 weeks for the 25K run. And going by what majority of the fitness websites tell me, a sincere 10 weeks should be enough to do a half-marathon. But since I have never run before, I will mostly certainly need atleast 16 weeks. Let us see how I sustain, I certainly intend to blog about my weekly routine. And please pray that I don’t drop off this in the middle and thus disgust m...

  As far as friends are concerned, this has to be the best period in my life. Actually, I'll reword this sentence. This feels like the best period of my life, contrary to what I always thought - about life coming to a standstill once you are 30. No, trust me, it doesn't. I know I sound like one of those zillion women who tell you that age is just a number, and they feel no different before and after 30. Well, it is, and it isn't. It still pinches when I have to check a different box in application forms, or read articles like 'Life gets better after 30' or when I spot a new grey hair or two. But its a different feeling now. I feel much more liberated, much more at ease with everything around, so much more at peace with myself. May be it all comes from accepting things as they are, or atleast the trial to do so. Back to the friends topic, the last time I met anyone new or had great friends was in college. And that was a long time ago. Barring for one or two peop...

Link to the original comic .

Yes. And hence the blog. But still with a pseudonym! ;-)