Have you ever thought that whenever you become too proudly life brings little surprises or shocks to bring you back to earth (it is for nothing that it is said “Life is a great leveller”)? Well I had quite a few of these shocks or surprises. Some days I am darn too proud of my own work thinking that every f***ing person working with me is an idiot (well partly its true) but then you are made to look pretty idiot yourself. I guess bad habits have tendency to rub-on to others :-P. There is a quote in Hindi: “Koyle ki dalaali mein muh kaala”.
Another thing I am really proud of is my cooking. People say that I CAN cook and cook well. Well I do not want to boast about myself but my friends say that I make one of the best parathas. People also say I am the most irritating and dominating person when I am cooking. I want to do everything my way and on my own; I don’t want anybody to even touch the cooking dishes. But that is another story.
Well keeping my expertise in this aspect of the life in mind, heating up a pizza and garlic bread in the microwave should have been a cake walk, right???? Well first things first I think cake walk is really tough. It’s a very slippery road indeed. It turns out that my pride had to be punctured today.

The story goes like this:
I went to my friend’s place. I had to help him set up his home (He is newly married. His wife has gone to her “maika” and the stuff he is supposed to get it done before she comes back home, he is diligently doing it.) We were supposed to put up a full-length mirror in his bedroom, so that his wife can take a proud look at herself every time she sees her reflection in the mirror. Well it took us an hour and a half and 8 holes (supposed to be four, but we did the first four wrongly. They were in really weird directions. I don't know how, but I will blame my friend.) to get the mirror up is another story. Well we anticipated that after this strenuous exercise we will be tired and hungry; so we decided to order pizza beforehand and got our estimates of finishing the task wrong... yeah again, the pizza became cold. We decided to heat it up and make some garlic bread in his brand new microwave. So after struggling to find a power plug point in the whole house; which we found that there is only one; we switched the micro on.

Now neither of us knew what to do with it. So after fiddling with a few keys here and there, we both looked at each other bewildered not daring to say the most dreaded thing for a male ego. After a few minutes of staring in disbelief at each other I decided that I have to eat my ego and said to my friend: “I guess we should consult the user’s manual.”
Come on guys, accept it, it is a dent to a male ego when you do not know how to operate something that runs with electricity. We are supposed to master it.
Coming back to the story, after a big quest for the user’s manual which my friend thought he will never need in this lifetime at least, we turned that dreaded thing in our hand page to page without understanding what to do with it. Then finally my eagle-eye vision found a keyword in the manual “Pizza”. We read the steps mentioned in the manual and decided to follow them to the code. We planned that we should heat the garlic bread first. So we put the bread in the oven and started it. When the oven beeped and we saw the bread, my trained eye and all the expertise kicked me in my posteriors and made me say that this bread is not cooked properly and we should put it in the grill mode which will make the bread soft from “inside”.
Now my never suspecting friend didn’t know that I had no idea what the “inside” of that bread is. So, after few more struggles to find the keyword grill in the manual (now now we are experts in the keyword based search thanks to Google) we put the bread in grill mode. After few minutes we saw some fumes coming from the oven. My worried and terrified friend asked me, “Is it supposed to do this?” I said expertly: “Yes. Isn’t that obvious? All the moisture from the bread is escaping.” When finally the poor oven beeped and we opened its door, to our horror there was no yummy garlic bread waiting for us to munch on. But what we saw in front of us was the remains of now completely burnt down pieces of what earlier used to be bread. We said together wisely, “It’s alright! Thankfully we didn’t put the pizza in first.” But we never knew what all tragic things were waiting for happening to us.

Now my friend took the responsibility of heating the pizza up. He put the pizza in, set the timer to Pizza mode and started the oven. Fingers crossed we waited for the oven to beep before the fumes starts to come from the oven top. Thankfully that didn’t happen. My friend tasted the pizza and said it’s not properly heated up. We both looked at each other and decided wisely against the grill mode. We decide we will just heat it up for 2 more minutes. We decided to approach this professionally. We made a list of tasks. Pizza in oven? Check. Timer set to 2 minutes? Check. Fingers crossed? Double check. Push the start button. 10 seconds passed no fumes, so far so good. 30 seconds no fumes, this is definitely good. Quarter to two minutes no fumes, we are definitely hopeful. 2 minutes no fumes and the musical beep of the oven. We have definitely mastered this beast called oven, finally. Or we thought so. My friend took the first bite of the pizza. Well, he certainly did try to bite it. Thankfully I wasn’t the first one;
The pizza was as hard to bite into as getting the screw inside the wall for the mirror. Somehow we managed to eat through it. Consoling each other saying after chewing it becomes better and tasty, and at least we can eat it right unlike the poor garlic breads?
We decided to make banana milk shake for both of us and help gulping the pizza down our throat. I decided to take the matter in my own expert hands. I made the milk shake and thankfully I didn’t need the manual to operate the mixer. So I made the milk shake, but after opening the lid of the mixer I saw some alien things floating on the milk shake. After researching, read touching and tasting, through the alien bodies we came to know that I churned the milk to butter. Now at that exact point we decided that the gods are playing games with us.
No matter how hard we try we cannot even get the water to boil without burning the whole house down. So, we thought better to put rest to our miseries and our cooking intentions for the day and wait for day when our lady luck, read his wife, will decide to smile upon us.

Well don't go judging we by this one bad day in kitchen. I am actually a really good cook! I hadn't put a wrong foot in kitchen till now, but as they say "There is always a first time." I seriously hope it was the last time, coz it’s something that I really enjoy. :-)

And she kept looking at me from the corner of those eyes,
She wanted to laugh out loud on the jokes that I cracked,
but the fate had it that she was surrounded by so many
people she thought of not laughing than be embarrassed.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

And I thought she would be different, not like all others girls whom I have met,
playing with my heart, using me and throwing me away and forgetting about me like I never existed.
people say that I've got a strong heart, but they just forget that what looks hard from above can be very brittle from inside.
I m completely lost, I don't know what to do. I don't know god how much you wanna see me cry, you know that even if I don't shed tears,
that doesn't mean I am not crying. I'm feeling like all the tears are stopped by a Dam. a dam that have developed cracks in it.
It will crack someday, and the day it cracks, I don't know what will happen of me. I don't know who'll be there to stop me from breaking.
I don't know anything. I tried to guard myself from everything, but every time I believed this girl would be different, she won't hurt me.
I lower my guard, and each time they end up hurting me more. Is that what you want God???? for me to be hurt, I don't question whatever
you have written for me. But to tell you it really hurts. I think there must be something wrong with me. in my attitude, I don't know what.
But why don't anybody tell me whats wrong with me, why am I every time left with more questions than answers. maybe someday I'll get my answers
and I'll wait. only thing I'll be hoping is that the dam don't break by that time.

I m confused, very much confused. does she like me or not.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yesterday I made one of the biggest mistakes in my life. once again I misinterpreted the plain talk of her, and ended up being wounded. should have never done that.I think I have lost a good friend. whatever fire was there between us, yesterday I put water or petrol on it. so it burnt whatever small cute relationship we had. I can never learn anything, I'm lost. But I've decided today that from now onwards I have separate ways than girls. Its over for me. I can't take it any more. I'm fed up of rejection, I'm fed up of being just "Good Friends" I'm really fed up. That's what I m going to be "good friend", nothing more. nobody is gonna love me. thats ok. Now I'm not looking for the special one as well. Even if there is one, I think its just my good friend, and I'm gonna end up being that only. so its better I being a friend than just getting hurt.

So after a thousand days of scorching heat finally it rained today.................................
It was not a torrential rain, but still something is better than nothing. Finally some respite from the heat. I had the option of wearing the raincoat, but I decided against it and thought of feeling the rain.....
I am a rain person. I have always liked the rains. There is something magical about the First rain of the season... Something very romantic...... Something really pure about it.
Suddenly the long bike ride back home seems like a thing to relish. Suddenly the songs on your ipod become more melodious. suddenly the traffic vows seems the thing of the past. Suddenly you feel carefree.
The rain drops on your face are the most soothing feeling. You forget all the tensions of the world. Every pain and tiredness of the office is forgotten and only thing you care about is the very drops of rain falling on your face.

I got reminded of the childhood days, when I use to play in the rain without any damn care in the world. I use to hear from others that they became sick after playing in rain, and use to get motivated from it to play in rain. J thats another thing that we never became sick by playing in rain. Water clogging in front of our home use to be a blessing in disguise for us. I use to float paper-boats of different sizes and designs in the rain water and race against each other that whose boat will cover the largest distance. I still remember my father's long raincoat and how he use to hide me and my sister inside it so that we do not get wet in the rain, but as naughty we were we use to get our hands or legs out to feel the rain. I remember the struggles of finding dry spots in the ground to play football or cricket and playing the game even if we fail to find any dry spots. How mom use to scold us for spoiling the school dress? How we use to promise we won't spoil it again, and the next day the same story was repeated. We use to pray on the days of class tests let there be rain so that we don’t have to go to school and face the crooked faced teachers.
Today I felt like I was small again.......

इस बार नहीं,
इस बार जब वोह छोटी सी बच्ची मेरे पास अपनी खरोंच ले कर आएगी,
मैं उसे फु फु कर नहीं बहलाऊँगा,
पनपने दूँगा उसकी तीस को,
इस बार नहीं.

इस बार नहीं चेहरों पर दर्द लिखा देखूँगा,
नहीं गाऊंगा गीत पीड़ा भुला देने वाले,
दर्द को रिसने दूँगा, उतरने दूँगा अन्दर गहरे,
इस बार नहीं.

इस बार मैं न मरहम लगाऊंगा,
ना ही उठाऊंगा रुई के फाहे,
और न ही कहूँगा की तुम आँखें बंद कार्लो, गर्दन उधर कर लो मैं दवा लगा देता हूँ.
देखने दूँगा सबको हम सबके खुले नंगे घाव,
इस बार नहीं.

इस बार जब उलझने देखूँगा, चटपटाहट देखूँगा,
नहीं दौडूंगा उलझी डोर लपेटने,
उलझने दूँगा जब तक उलझ सके,
इस बार नहीं.

इस बार कर्म का हवाला दे कर नहीं उठाऊँगा औज़ार,
नहीं करूंगा फिर से एक नयी शुरुआत,
नहीं बनूँगा मिसाल एक कर्मयोगी की,
नहीं आने दूँगा ज़िन्दगी को आसानी से पटरी पे,
उतरने दूँगा उसे कीचड में, टेढे मेढे रास्तों पे,
नहीं सूखने दूँगा दीवारों पर लगा खून,
हल्का नहीं पड़ने दूँगा उसका रंग,
इस बार नहीं बनने दूँगा उसे इतना लाचार,
कि पान की पीक और खून का फर्क ही खत्म हो जाए,
इस बार नहीं.

इस बार घावों को देखना है,
गौर से,
थोड़ा लंबे वक़्त तक,
कुछ फैसले,
और उसके बाद हौसले,
कहीं तोह शुरुआत करनी ही होगी,
इस बार यही तय किया है.

Did you know that??????

Read more and you'll understand.

I guess these days compliment don't go fine with girls. Another addition in the "Things not to say to your girl friend" correction, "Things not to say to your girl friend when she is cynical."