12B

My trip to my friend's place was almost symmetrical. I had to take two buses from my place to reach his. The first one was to Majestic (to which I happened to get 108B) and from there I had to take 12B to reach his place. The bus number brought back memories of the tamil movie 12B that me and my 4 other friends had gone to see back in Engineering days. Although I understood little of tamil back then, the movie was well rated and I could follow it by the sequence rather than by the dialogues. The movie was about the Hero trying to catch the bus 12B to go to an interview. The movie splits at the point he misses the bus - One part of the story shows what would have happened if he did catch the bus and the part if he didn't. The movie was pretty interesting and Shyam did a decent job. I think the heroine was Jyothika who is one of my favorites when it comes to acting. As I sat in the bus, I tried to recollect some moments of when we went to watch that movie. It was 5 of us - 3 guys and 2 gals. We could have been called as the Famous Five back then - but then as circumstances change, the group is no longer a group but we still keep in touch with each other directly or indirectly. 2 of us in the group couldn't understand tamil but still ended up watching the movie by force of the other 3 or 2 rather since one person hardly forces anyone to do anything. So coming back to this trip, I went to his place, met another 3 friends there, we played cricket in his room on second floor. It was fun playing cricket after a loooooooooong time as well as playing with them. We then went out for a walk in the dark (since there was no power), drank tender coconut and then went to Cane-O-La to drink Sugarcane juice. I was surprised to see the cleanliness they maintained in this little shop. It seems this is a new chain of stores that has come up recently providing quality sugar cane juice. There were even choices as in Salt-pepper, ginger, lemon, masala. We all had a glass and then they walked me to the bus stop to get back. All along we spoke of past, present and future and some rubbish too!.. As I waited at the bus stop, there it was again 12B taking me back to Majestic. The bus was pretty empty, took a seat towards the end of the bus, looking outside the window, I was thinking "How quickly time flies by...". I got down at majestic and 108B was ready to leave, hopped in. Midway the bus broke down because of jammed brakes. Waited for a few more minutes for another bus and reached home.. This was my 12B story, no second part to it....

Back to Reality!

The last time I blogged - it said 11 more days to go... and now its already 1 day gone :-( after coming back! Got back after 3 awesome weeks back home... one of the best trips I have had in years (gone back about 6 times now). Almost everything went well, got to spend so much time with Parents (visited Coorg, Mysore with them), got to spend time with friends, got to spend time at home.. and best of all didn't get sick at all which helped throughout. Guess I was sick enough before going home..

Well, coming back was even more difficult this time - for once, I didn't have one bit of a mood to come back. I had all my necessary documents to stay back - all that was left behind was material possessions which I could have let go anyway, but thats not whats in store for now I guess :(.. Add to this, mood back here wasn't that good either.. I get into the cab from the airport and check my voicemail - the first one is from my boss, saying not to get worried when I get in next morning since 20 ppl got laid off! oh well how unlucky ME - I am not one of them.. on the contrary - more work for me because others are leaving :(... If I should go by the latest book I read "God Does Not Play Dice" - this is the way it should happen and I should not think of alternatives happening, if I should go by my horoscope which I happened to read a bit while I was in India - I would not be able to settle back home for the time being; I would be travelling or staying away from home is what that said, If I should go by my own decision - even then I will have to wait here until next August (which is when my parents would be heading back after their trip here). So like it or not, atleast for the next 8-10 months, I am stuck here in this challenging economy with still a job on hand... oh well, i will tell myself if I get through this, I would have learnt something more in life

It was a dream for last 3 weeks, waking up to coffee and nice South Indian breakfast (Idli, Dose, Avalakki, sometimes obbattu), great weather, watch cricket match for a few hours, head out for sometime, come back for awesome adige (see kootu, saaru, pongal, all types of huli, etc).. please note - these are a daily thing and nothing specially cooked because I was there.. and now the first day I get back, I had to settle for Bagel, somehow forced myself to cook some cabbage sabzi for dinner at night.

Ok, enough of feeling bad that I am back, let me just tell myself - all's for good and get on with life.. woke up at 4:30 since I went to bed at 9 - didn't know what to do so wrote this, found a couple friends from India to share my feelings..

My next few blogs will be about some of the trips I made in India and in Bengaluru!