Kirik Party + Rakshit Shetty

In the morning, I told my friends that I would compensate for the 5 days of blogathon and only 2 posts so far....but hardly had any breather at work to do this.
This Kannada movie, Kirik Party released on 30th December. I actually tried to book tickets for the same day but alas! Most theatres around our area was either going almost full or sold out :-(. As I was off on a trip for New Year's Eve, I consoled myself saying I will watch it as soon as I get back to namma Bengalooru...
I got back from the trip on Monday night and started trying to book tickets on book my show but could hardly find tickets for Tuesday evening and the theatres were almost running full in the old Bangalore area comprising majority of Kannadigas. I was really sad and to top it all my daughter watched the movie on friday, my sister on Saturday and my friend on Sunday. But, I didn't let go of my quest for the tickets. Finally on Wednesday morning even before leaving for work, I searched again and finally booked the tickets for Thursday night that was yesterday....
This movie Kirik Party, directed by Rishabh Shetty is an absolutely brilliant "Masterpiece".
Rakshit Shetty is a such a versatile actor. He has been on the screen from 2010 till date. He has acted in 6 movies till now out of which I have watched 5. Now, Ricky has become a must watch for me....
Now coming back to the movie, I was wondering how the movie was going houseful for so many days continuously. The crux of the matter is, that the movie is about college days. So everyone who watches it is glimpsing themselves briefly and going into flashback mode of their own college days.
Two different looks of his-I loved!!!
All his movies have been very differently conceptualised  but somewhere reaches the deep recesses of your heart and you can connect to it on a base level.
That's Rakshit Shetty's Magic! You need to watch out for him in the near future coz I am sure he is going to churn out one super hit after another with that magical act of his!!!
Totally in love with him for his acting!!!

Travel Tryst

I was born bitten by wanderlust and my parents only nurtured it some more with the bi annual trips they took us on to far corners of the country! Thanks to them for putting the world at my feet. Some wise person once said, world is a book and those who do not travel read only a page. It's so true! I realised very early in life that I wasn't the kind to stay put at home for too long. Then the open road, the Tarmac leading away from the concrete jungle either to a beach, a mountain or a real jungle beckoned to me and shout out my name and I would just pack and go.

thankfully, my husband shares my interest of travel. We have done a lot of small trips and 1 trip to Singapore but I keep complaining in good humour that I am always stuck in the 5 states. Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and of course Goa. In the last year itself we did 2 Goa trips 5 months apart. December'15 Goa, April'16 Coorg, May'16 Yelagiri and Goa, July'16 Nilgiris, August'16 Gandikota and Belum Caves, October'16 Goa and Hampi, November'16 Munnar and Kochi and for New Year's Eve Mudigere, Chikkamagaluru.

My friends keep taunting me how I manage to get so many leaves for these trips :-)) but except for Goa in May, Nilgiris in July and Munnar Kochi in October, I have only taken a day off in a long weekend. But, I want to make it clear here that I still have 28 days of leave left. This is all that I had collated over the 5 years that I was in the earlier role at work.

Blogging again!!!

Hello all I came to the blog and I see that the last 2 posts of mine have started with- I just realised its been so long since my last post. The last post was in Nov'16 and one before that was in Jul'15. That's the gap between my last posts. I have almost become extinct in the blog land :-) and I wrote my 1st post 6 years ago. I feel I have always got inspiration at all the  wrong times....where I don't have any means to jot down, topic nor points. I wrote the last 2 blogs of mine with lots of good intention but now you know how it has played out....:-)!                                                                                                                                                   A few days ago, when my long time friend R told me about the blogathon, it set me thinking and I was finally convinced to give it another chance. So, here I am trying all over again. I don't want to disappoint myself this time.
I have a lot many topics to write about out of which I want to list a few of them here:
1. Year end Goa trip of 2015
2. Then 3 uneventful months
3. 8 odd trips I did over 2016
4. Reunion of us four besties
5. Our circle being complete with the arrival of the twin angels
6. All the upheavals in between
7. Our impending Goa trip in 2020- 16 years anniversary from when we did it first time ;-) oh yeah! I love the idea already
Thanks R for pushing me towards blogging again. I hope I do not disappoint.

Diwali destruction!

I just realized it has been more than a year and a half that I came here to pen down a little something.

I have seen so many Diwali festivals in my life... I could count the numbers though... But that would give away my age?? :-)  yeah! Exactly!

When we were younger Diwali was all about taking a head bath, wearing new clothes and bursting a few crackers.... Those days the crackers would be rationed and distributed between my siblings and me.  We would be happy with bursting a few small crackers and some bombs and then in the night,  light a lot of diyas and some sparklers, flowerpots and rockets. Those days that made our Diwali.

As we moved along our chosen path in life and grew up to be responsible adults and lost our childhood, we realized we had to repeat the same Diwali tradition with our kids.
But now the firecrackers had become bigger and better... We could afford to give it to our kids but at what cost? We are polluting the entire atmosphere. We are scaring animals and killing birds.

When will we understand the damage we are causing mother earth. Hope it's already not late!

Life's Little Lessons!!

What with life being hectic, my blogging has definitely taken a back seat. It doesn't mean I haven't been having a great time. It is just that I have not had enough time to just stand and stare at a beautiful scene or  smell the flowers. I have not had the time to take a breather. Not even to post pics of my recent travels on FB!!!! Yeah! Really! :-)
While I am yet formulate the rich experience I had on my first trip out of country, in a faraway foreign land into beautiful words and sentences, there is one experience that I would surely want to share here for the world to read!

Recently in May we went on our first trip abroad. I was all excited running around for the visa, last minute shopping and packing! Oh! But wait! All this is for another blog. I was talking about this experience??

We spent a lot of dollars on taxi fare. On one such taxi ride, we rode in a neat looking Bentley which is a luxury vehicle there. When we flagged it down and sat in it, I saw that the driver was very smartly dressed in a suit and did complete justice to the car! He was a encyclopaedia of information about the local place and was full of knowledge. He said he was 51 but nowhere looked a day over 25. He said he had a son who was 21. I am like really?? Then he showed us the famous landmarks in the 4-5 mile stretch and a mall where we could shop for electronics. He said he had seen a lot of life and the best part he had learnt was to keep his wife like a queen and his daughter like a princess. He said if you take ur wife into your confidence- life would be a super sail.
Happy wife= happy life. He said you need to live life to the fullest otherwise, the life will leave you.

It was a very enriching experience and we never got to know his name even but I am sure i came away from it a lot richer than I was earlier!

First Official Bike Ride- Nandi Hills

My brother has been doing it for 2yrs now. I got a chance to do it this last Sunday...
Yeah! Go on a bike ride with my hubby and his mean machine.
We were 23 of us who went on a bike ride to Nandi hills which is about 60kms from Bangalore.
We left the house at 4am and met up with the rest of the gang in front of Town hall. There were 11 bikes and 2 cars.
We gunned our mean machines and took off burning the tarmac and rubber. It was a good ride and the roads were empty. There was a chilly nip in the wind and we did good time till the foot hills, parked the car and took the passengers as pillions on the bike for the climb uphill.
The view was very scenic and beautiful on our ride and there was a light drizzle as well adding to the serenity and setting the mood for an early Saturday morning!
We saw quite a few vehicles going uphill and just about 2kms to the top, there was a traffic jam! Yes! Even there :-) By the time we made it up to the top, looked like Bangaloreans had thought that there was no better place to be early in the morning than here! Murphy's law in action here! The thick fog actually saved us from the crowd as we couldn't see anything a few feet ahead of us... We bought tickets and climbed up- it was a good early morning, energising trip and fantastic company with our group keeping up light banter and a lot of laughter!
The boys and girls, the ride, the climb, the chocolates shared, the photos clicked all made this one hell of an awesome trip!
Thank you guys!! Looking forward to more......

Cool Carmelites Reunion 20!!

so...

A lot of thought has gone into this post. I had to prod my mind for the 20year old memories to get these details from my 16year old mind. There is also a disclaimer- this is just view of how I saw myself and my classmates all those years ago...this is not to hurt anyone's sentiments. I a sure we have all come a long way from then...we have matured, bloomed into  beautiful flowers from little colourful buds. When I created the whatsapp group almost 2 years ago...I never knew we would up here some day...it was just friendly banter and information exchange for a long time. One day, suddenly we realised that we can all be much more to each other than just virtual friends- we can be a great support system too.. Emotional and sentimental!!                                                                                                   So, thus started our virtual journey which ended in the real world!!                                                            When Nithin suggested we all get together as he was flying down to India for some personal work, we thought why not? This gave us an opportunity to meet up face to face.                                                    The date and time was for our meeting. Saturday, 14th March @ UB City.                                                 We were all so excited that most of us could only manage just about 40 winks for the night!! All in all it was 14 of us who met. Nithin, Hari, Santosh, Bharath, Vicky, Anil, Gokul, Manju, Sunil, Navada, Prasad, Usha, tej and me!!!!                                                                                                                      I am sure all of us had a little apprehensions and trepidations for meeting.                                                A summary of all of us then and now: Nithin and Hari were always friends. Hari has been like this for ever, cracking jokes with a straight face and when we double up laughing he looks so serious that people think we are mad. Now, Nithin is the type who was behind every colourful girl in school, who was kind of a Casanova of our class. We didn't have much to say to each other in school but post school and during college days, we became good friends and so it continues...       And then there was Manju, who was the silent types in school whom I have observed more during PU when he used to roam the corridors with his best friend. May be we did not talk much in school at all except in Sanskrit classes. I met him only now after almost 18yrs for the first time after school.       There is Sunil, who stayed very close to our house. We all used to walk back home together talking about sometimes, important and sometimes very inconsequential topics.     Santosh---again not much interaction during school as he was a back-bencher only spoke in the last few years when we bumped into to each other on and off in the banashankari  area.      Gokul was also a distant guy in school twirling a notebook on his finger all the time, was a relative of mine...he kept to himself much and already had a celebrity status due to his dancing skills. Now, Anil was one of those naughty boys always making trouble and getting into trouble himself... Teachers first choice during a commotion. The way he used to regale us with his renditions of what the whole deal was about and why everyone was after him.          Bhatta was my best friends biggest admirer. Coz of him, we have had some best chocolate parties in school. He and Vaithy had bought me nutties as the kismi toffee bars were over! Vicky now, I should say  is a very pleasant surprise packet- have never spoken to him at all in school as he had this arrogant air about him. The only time I started talking to him was after the group was created. And the girls, I have been meeting on and off for the last six years or so...Prasad: is the same hehehe Prasad! Tej, I met for the 1st time after school some 5yrs ago...she was transformed from a tomboy to a beautiful woman and a gorgeous mother of 2.....Usha: came out from her hiding a few years ago and got us girls together with her enthusiasm. Thanks Usha....Navada: now I can write a separate post for her but I will suffice it to say she did a 360degree turn from PU to college and then from there to MCA. And she lost our earlier Rashmi in the United Kingdom---I was just telling her on the way back home today that she earlier couldn't stand people who enjoyed life!!! Really Navs?????                                                         Folks, this is just my take on the entire episode!! But I will suffice it to say a very good time was had by all!!! Whoever don't like the summary please try not to kill me!! Love you all!!!!