Friday, December 18, 2009

The best of '09

Shop where you spent most of your money.

Shallow as it sounds, I think it'll have to be on shoes. This year I discovered the shoe stores of Bandra and Irla and went at them with a vengeance. I even blogged about them effusively here. But aren't shoes just marvelous? The look pretty, their designs can be incredibly inventive and I for one, can spend hours effusing on them.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

The best of '09

A word that encapsulates your year.

Restless

Rush

I did a few adventurous things this year. I got dumped in the ocean in Goa and had to be rescued. I climbed mountains and stepped on a snake. But the biggest rush I got was when I stood before an audience of poets and writers and recited my hastily cobbled verse.
It was at the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival, in February. The event was called Poetry Slam and we had to recite our poems. One girl acted her poem ouy, while wearing her collar mike. Another guy recited a haiku that had me clapping till my hands stung. Then it was my turn. I could see the sheet of paper I held trembling as I took the mike and butterflies were fluttering about frantically in my stomach. I took a deep breath and recited my tepid verse. Somehow, the moment I began, my voice magically firmed, my hand stilled and I felt eerily out of my body.
I didn't win that day, but it didn't matter. The poets that did were far better. For me, getting on that stage was enough.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

The best of '09

The best tea

I'm not much of a tea drinker. K's dark premonitions about addictive substances made me wary of even something as innocent as tea. But it was August and it was raining like it would never stop and I had a bad case of the sniffles. So I ordered myself a glass of elaichi chai. It came in a glass tumbler with froth on the top. And boy, did it taste good.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

The best of '09

The best packaging.

This one I remembered immediately. It was a tiny heart shaped box that A gave me, for no reason, just like that. It was covered in red gauze with gold-wrapped chocolates inside. I still have the box, it survived even my minimalist streak.

Sunday, December 13, 2009

The best of '09

Q. What's the best change you made to the place you live
I moved back into my hostel room this August, after six weeks away. I used to drive 20 kilometers everyday to work during that internship on a very old but determined scooty. It gave me a lot of time for thinking. I returned to IIT determined to de-clutter my life and that's just what I did. I threw away all the flummery, no wall decorations, no posters, no tubes of moisturizer I never use, no stacks of papers and old movie tickets preserved for sentiment's sake. It felt good. 

Saturday, December 12, 2009

The best of '09

I'm participating in Gwen Bell's Best of 2009 Blog Challenge. It's an opportunity to look back and appreciate the year gone by. I'm getting into the game a little late, but don't intend to miss any more of it than I can. Do join in on the action if you like. I think it's a brilliant idea and it's very cool of Gwen to host this.
Today's question: New food: You're now in love with Lebanese food and you didn't even know what it was in January of this year.

I can't claim knowledge of Lebanese food yet, but the cuisine I sampled this year for the first time was Goan. N, P and I jetted in from different parts of the country to meet up with our BITS friends for three days of mad, merry fun in Goa in May. Compulsive as I am, I had cobbled together about forty pages of research about Goa, a map with all the locations I wanted to visit marked out in colour and a checklist of thinks I wanted to do before leaving. I wanted to see forts and beaches and perhaps work in a waterfall. I also wanted to visit the floating casinos, sit at a shack and try adventure sports. Pappu had other ideas. When I dug out my 40 pages, he looked stunned for a minute then said, "I thought we'd get high, Re." Turns out, it was possible to do it all, simply sacrificing a little sleep.


I had read a great deal about Goan cuisine and was eager to try it. The thing was, the food there is mostly seafood based and we vegetarians have pitifully few options. Seriously, in most menus, there were perhaps two vegetarian dishes, thrown in at the end like palpable afterthoughts. Still, I managed to sample the Xanuti: boiled vegetables in a mouth-burningly spicy coconut curry. Goa's traditional sweet, the Bebinca wasn't available in any of the restaurants we visited on those first two days.

Finally, on the day we were to leave, N and I marched out in the 11 am sun, in a quest for breakfast, brightly coloured dresses and Bebinca. The breakfast place we went to didn't stock it, though they did have thickly buttered and crackly paranthas which ate dipped in thick curd. The nice waiter there told us of a bakery about a kilometre away though, that did. So we trudged through the blistering May sunshine, pausing often in cloth covered stalls to ogle beach coverups and chunky jewelry.

Finally we reached the Imperial Bakery, a pretty little place on the main road with potted plants and marble tables. There we ordered ourselves a slice of Bebinca. It came on a pretty glass plate with two silver forks. Such ceremony seemed apt. It was delicious, at least I thought so. N, sweet as she is, isn't much of a dessert person, but I had no problems demolishing that slice, layer by sticky layer. We trudged back afterwards and though the sun had only risen higher, I was thoroughly satisfied. I could tick the last box off my checklist.

Monday, December 07, 2009

Written snapshots

In creative writing class, we discussed an essay by Margaret Atwood where she points out that one can never actually meet the writer of a book one has read and loved. By the time the book has been edited, published and distributed, the writer has moved on. He has evolved and grown older and changed into someone else.
It's a fascinating thought isn't it? That every piece you write is like a polaroid snapshot of you, as you are then and never will be again.
I've realised lately, that the written word is my favourite method of preserving memories. So, I've started a new blog, here. The whole point of the new blog is written snapshots, of everyday moments that made me happy, that I want to squirrel away. The point of Colours is different. I wondered once, why it was I blogged. I know now, that the point of Colours at least, is analysis. It's a place to capture a few of the hundreds of little epiphanies that happen to us each day, thoughts that are often felt rather than voiced. Ans while my new blog is about chronicling experiences, Colours is and will always be a place for thoughts and for watching them change.