Happy Birthday Bloggie !!

My blog is six years old today. Named after the iconic Coffee House at College Street in Calcutta, I guess laziness was something that came in its DNA. Yet, 55 posts that averages to 9 posts a year is not that bad, considering that the author was recently diagnosed with chronic PAS or Posterior Adhesion Syndrome, a rare disorder that immobilizes all locomotory and sensory activities for considerable periods of time as soon as the posterior gets a resting place. Often this is diagnosed incorrectly as being a Bengali. (The symptoms may be similar but this disorder is far more severe.)

On this joyous occasion, I must also observe a minute's silence for those many thoughts that did crackle out of the brain with the enthusiasm of a Oliver Ridley hatchling, only to take the expression of a severely PMS affected woman and fizz out with a whimper without ever seeing the light of the blog. And there were very many of them. Let those fertile aborted thoughts rest in peace. Amen !

Meanwhile a quick month long trip to Scotland happened between the last post and this. The trip wasn't meant to be this quick but one can never truly qualify as being from the IT industry if he hasn't been part of a project that was scrapped when in full steam. So now here I am beaming with pride at the completeness of my mandatory IT credentials, as one fine Monday morning soon after completing a status call , we were all invited for a meeting that announced the immediate closure of the project. Just like that ! Not much work is done in the Western world when the birthday of Jesus is around the corner and when you have developments such as these, the people affected are left as directionless as a cow in a busy Indian thoroughfare. You can chew cud, you can stand in the middle of the road amidst honking cars wondering about how the universe was created or you can just smack the dog nearby with your tail for all anyone cares ! Such was my case too as no one had an idea of what to do with me. So I loitered around for some time before the think tanks realised that the financial impact of my liability was not helping the recessionary economy at all and decided to send me back. But not before I celebrated the 25th Dec birthday. And boy is the birthday celebrated with pomp and show !! Not a single shop was open, not a single house had any fancy lights hanging outside, not a single public transport vehicle on the streets !! Much similar to a curfew after a riot in our country ! Its a private celebration they say.. Wierd , we say considering this is the only thing close to a festival that these guys have !

Anyway a friend from yonder years had come over to share our mutual melancholy and with two more of her friends , we embarked on a climb up Arthur's Seat, a 825 feet hill in Edinburgh that provides some exotic views of the beautiful city. But planning and execution are two wicked step sisters who rarely see eye to eye. Nature that day was in the mood to play frisbee and typical to her playful nature, chose us humans as flying disks. So strong were the winds that it was next to impossible to stand aground and if you belong to the gender with not very heavy hanging organs then God save you on such days.

But we did manage to scale almost to the top where we met a not-very-cloth-friendly Canadian girl. In other circumstances, I may well have spent a moment admiring her visible contours but in those extreme chilly and windy conditions, where my features were slowly but surely turning Mongoloid as the photo to the left confirms, I just left the thought float away with the wind. Some people just don't like wearing clothes and that's that. We were led in this campaign by a very spunky lady of our group, who braving these extreme conditions was more than willing to lead us to the top. It seemed King Arthur's spirit had possessed this otherwise sweet lady and boy was she determined to go and check out the seat !! Her tresses, which kept swinging around like a lost compass needle in frantic search of the north, complimented her possessed state and dare we not have followed her ! Nature however intervened our glorious march and just a little distance from the summit, we decided that birthdays were better celebrated where Gods were not taking their Fluid Mechanics practical exams

The following day was Boxing day, a day traditionally meant to torture the male species. Comes camouflaged as Sales in Fashion stores ! With the friend from yonder years also in a mood to celebrate her womanhood, I had to tag along of course. Thankfully other than the one occasion when she managed to get lost in the crowd with the cellphone obviously left at home and her having no clue where that home was, it was not that torturous a day out. What I couldn't help noticing was an Indian gentlemen who cut a very sorry figure of himself in his desperate attempts to keep track of that wandering kid, the other one pooping in the trolley, those thirteen packets overflowing with female and kid clothing and the red water bottle. As consolation for all his effort , his wife had bought him a bright yellow T-Shirt that said "My wife cutest !" As the happy family made their way back home, with the wife cheerfully chattering away on the phone informing her mother in Ernakulum of the day's steals, the gentleman walked with an expression of having lost a lot more than a mere few hundred pounds on that cold Monday afternoon . "Honey I love you na", she said. He smiled. On his cell phone he opened the Facebook page of his only remaining bachelor friend who had just uploaded pictures of a Christmas in Goa with a few scantily clad Ukrainian ladies. He clicked the Like option and sighed.

I flew back to India in another couple of days and finally saw the T3 terminal which sure is a treat to watch. An Indian origin smart looking female bearing no signs of being married and carrying an American passport lamented about the fact that I being an Indian too had to queue in the common line for immigration clearance. When good looking females pass an opinion , I always agree and this one had an American passport !! Are you kidding me ...I nearly fell on my trolley trying to convey how much I agreed with her. Our paths were destined to diverge in a couple of minutes but her sad expectant eyes did convey to me how lonely she was ! Alas I had a connecting flight and she a kid !

A fortnight later, I am still put in India while my current bosses continue to figure out something that my previous ones have burnt much oil thinking over, but to not much avail ! How can they make any use of me ! Let them take their own sweet time. Its 2012. The world is coming to an end anyway so why bother much !

I had started this blog inspired by mydayzwithmyself, a blog maintained by a fellow IIMCian, which he in those days updated regularly with large doses of his typical humour. As I see his blog too hasn't seen much activity of late. Blame it all, we may on Blackberrys and Androids but then I'm sure every blogger wants to continue writing.

So here is raising a toast on my blog's sixth birthday.

I want to write more. I hope to write more. Maybe I will write more.

Cheers !

Photo Credit : The spunky lady - Divya Iyer