SlishaCrazy

I wondered how come all the books I read claimed to be best sellers and wondered if there would be any good books that are not best sellers. Well, this is one. It is a good book. But it is not a best seller. And now I know the difference. It is a beautiful piece yet the style of writing is not that captivating. The idea was brilliant, the stories good, the writing not so much. Yet, it captivated me. It is a collection of short stories about different kinds of people in Mumbai by a man passionate about Mumbai called Murzban F. Shroff. It talks about how the city breaks the ethics of a Victoriawala and how it slaps a taxiwala in the face making him face his own unethicalness and how it makes a Parsi woman trust a Bihari labourer and how it traps a woman in an abusive relationship with schizophrenic. The title story talks about a man who rises from the slums to become rich and hit page 3 and yet he finds his peace out of the attention and finds love from a social worker. It’s ...

This year has been very eventful for me. January: Had a boring new year's party and felt bad about not being able to vote . February: Err. I acted in a play and walked down the ramp at the culfest. March: I read a lot of books . I almost read like a book a day during my wait for my UK visa. April: I went to Mumbai, stayed in Colaba and worked in Nariman for about 25 days which is almost like a dream come true ! (I promised a post and never wrote it) May: I went to the City of London , stayed at Tower Hill and worked on Liverpool Street which was way beyond my dreams ! This was also my first trip abroad. June: I went to Scotland . I got a job ! Followed FIFA from start to end for the first time (London inspired me). July: Nothing happened, including my birthday. I got my US visa. August: I went to Boston, MA to stay for the next 3 months. I enrolled in an all girls college which I have never done ! I heard I failed a course back at IIMCal. September: I went to my sister...

I fell in love with Bombay in 3 weeks, London in 4 weeks and New York in 3 weekends and half a week. I came back from London all romantic about it which wore off in time but I do still like the city a lot. I am currently still romantic about New York and will have to wait and watch if it will wear off. Boston is cute and nice and peaceful which I like but not at the moment designed for me. But Bombay … My heart leaps up every time I am to land/take off from Bombay at night time. I love it when I am landing in Boston during the day when you feel you are landing on water and just when you thought you would, the runway appears out of nowhere. No such airport stories about London and NY looks nice during the day with the Atlantic and everything but not half as wow-ing. Inspiring! That’s the word for NY though. London shows you memories of empires that stood through thick and thin for generations together. New York shows you empires that were built from scratch over a single lifetime....

My last few days spent in New York were fun, fast and fascinating. I ceased being a tourist and then, I fell in love with New York; its city lights, noisy crowds, dirty streets, obnoxious people and vibrant environment. Walked on the chilly streets of Manhattan, stared at the high rise empires built from scratch for inspiration, visited a Vegan restaurant, saw a few upper end (read, out-of-my-league) cars in real life, stopped by at Hoboken to view NY on the left and NJ on the right over the Hudson, drove past Edison Township, made more friends, submitted a final paper due for a course at Simmons, all in the middle of a ticket fiasco. On Wednesday morning, I left to the airport (without a ticket). A few airlines, few counters and few explanations later I got my ticket and hung around a bit before I got on my 14 hour flight to Delhi. On reaching Delhi, my India phone began to work and I had to make two phone calls and send two emails to let people know that I arrived safely (mind ...

If I may call it that! I took a bus on the afternoon of Saturday to reach NY in the evening. Funny, the wifi was working. The last time it worked on a bus for me was when I first arrived at Boston from NY by bus. On arriving at my friends place in Brooklyn they took me to this Diwali party hosted by people from the college that my friends are on exchange with. Well, Diwali is long gone. Yet it was a party and there was Bollywood music and Indian food. It was so long since I had good Indian food. It was a nice party Here is the ticket fiasco part. Err. it's too complicated to explain. Basically I thought I had a ticket but it looks like it is stuck in some pipeline and I can't seem to be able to push it through. But believing that I will come back to India I believe that it will somehow get resolved. Not on it's own though. I need to drop in some offices and refuse to move till I get a ticket. Or fly by some insanely complicated way. Hope it doesn't have to come to that.

Sarah was wonderful. Not only did she pick the card for me, she threw open her place for a party in my honor and a lovely cake that said "We will miss you, Pranava". How sweet can she be and how CAN i not LOVE her!!! I love all the girls who came today and danced Bollywood with me and salsa and Chinese and some random stuff and had like ridiculous fun with me. I love you all !!! So today is the absolute last day of my stay in Boston and it has not hit me yet. I will probably cry on my bus to NY. Love you all from Boston and love you Boston from making it my home for the past few months!!!

The header I made yesterday comes in the middle of a frustrated period when I was trying to finish up my presentation for a class within a few hours. It went well.So did today's morning economics class where we presented about the economies of US and Germany. After that I had a sumptuous meal at Bartol's the canteen for the residential campus which is my latest hangout for cheap good food (great French Vanilla and Ice-cream) along with Ivo. Then we had a stupid session by me for Bollywood dancing, where I made my friends (who were dancing great) for Bole Chudiyaan and I was a pathetic teacher. That's another thing I learnt, I can't break down dance into a 1-2 step process. Following me was a wonderful teacher of Greek dance my one of our classmates who is a second generation Greek. She taught us well and we learnt it well and all in all it was FUN! This is the first session of a set of sessions that are to follow organized by Ivo for our co-herd to share everyone'...

From all the lovely ladies at Simmons who I love and shall miss so much, I received:

I went to New York again. But little I have to say this time. I landed to run around shops on Black Friday. Saturday morning I had hot chocolate with marshmallows melting in them at the Max Brenner with Roomie (my roommate for two years and wingie for the next two years of my IITian life). She was sweet enough to book us a table there where people stand in every inch of space for the smell of chocolate. We then went to Jersey Gardens (New Jersey) for shopping. So I crossed state, bought some stuff and got them all to Boston. Now I need to figure out how to pack everything. And that's all there is for my NY trip. Highlights: 1. I got to meet Roomie 2. I got to have chocolate 3. I got some nice cheap boots that I know will not last but nevertheless I love them 4. We drove and I always thought that traffic sucks in Manhattan when I walked it, but it wasn't bad at all 5. Ivo and I got the same sweater

After my wonderful teaching experience and a great rating for a presentation in one of my classes the Thanksgiving break was up. Wednesday through Monday was my break. On Wednesday we (Ivo and I) walked again. We walked Beacon Hill. It was so freaking cold that we froze over and had to stop at every starbucks we found. But it was beautiful. Boston is a weird city. It's all college stuff everywhere and like a little town in between the college stuff. We saw places owned by some of the prominent Bostoners of the 1800s. It's all cute and nice. Like living out of the old times. All the architecture was 18th and 19th century. Some houses had so many creepers on them and there were hidden gardens too. Thursday was Thanksgiving. We (my Chinese undergrad friend, Ivo and I) had lunch at the school for Thanksgiving and we have Turkey and corn bread and mash potates with new people. It was all in my Chinese friend's dorm's living room. After that we went with another Chinese fr...

MIT conducts every year a little (actually a really huge) event called Splash (and one over the spring called Spark). During Splash, any grad/undergrad student can sign up to teach anything, absolutely anything. And who are the students? Middle school and high school students from all over, anywhere. It is up to the teacher to keep the students engages because there are walk-in seminars happening all the time and one could just walk out of a class into these seminars. So what has it got to do with me? I TAUGHT !!! What? (well it was supposed to come off as "what did I teach?", but if you read it as "waht? I don't believe you!" I won't hold it against you.) so I taught 5 classes of 3 courses. Introduction to Telugu: language and alphabet (2 classes) Incredible India: a crash course on Indian culture (2 classes) Blog Your Way: Blogging 101 (1 class) How was it? AWESOME! What did I learn about myself? That I know more about Telugu than I thought and my handwri...

So Ivo got a book from a friend about walking tours in Boston. It had a lot of tours but there was one part of town we have never ever been to: Charles Town. The freedom trail we walked was supposed to end in Charles Town but we stopped at the River Charles that day and we completed the trail now. We started by taking a ferry from Long Wharf to Navy Yard, reading the book all along. Walked around the Navy Yard and the USS Constitution, reading up the history. We then went up to the Bunker Hill Monument (on Beacon Hill, Bunker Hill is somewhere around) with the statue of William Prescott. We saw the Harvard Mall where Harvard and another guy decided to name this place Cambridge and start a great college which later on came into being named Harvard (except he didn't live to see it). We also ran into a little pub where all great leaders met to talk about politics and the Red Coats and somebody's house and somebody else's garden and the City Square and the little Harvard stree...

The whole trip to New York felt like a vacation you take when you are working and not a student, like working-people-taking-vacation. I woke up on Thursday morning to run to a meeting for a project, followed by another meeting for another project followed by a rush to the bus station to catch a bus to NY. See what I mean by working-people-taking-vacation? The journey to and fro sucks. Because Megabus sucks. I took my laptop with me just so I could use the wifi on Megabus to and fro and work on some stuff I needed to get done over the weekend and not really wanting to work during the weekend. Ultimately, I just carried 3 extra kgs of load to and fro with no use for it except a brief half hour to check mails check weather and register for courses at IIMC. But Manhattan rocks. My tour of New York started right from where I got off the bus. Madison Square and Times Square! The next day began with a little walk around the Fina ncial District: The New York Stock Exchange, The Bull and The Wa...

After all the blogging I do, I always have more to blog about. I am living life faster, everyday ! Here are a list of things to blog about ... Books: Unaccustomed Earth Interpreter of Maladies Breathless in Bombay (when I finish) Movies: Amelie My Sister's Keeper (already blogged on another site) NY I Love You (But I think I'll get a different perspective after going to NY this weekend :P ) The Day I Became a Woman Rajneeti Tum Milo To Sahi Veronica Mars (it's actually a series) Random things: Like Boston and NY have a lot of rats Like I am not worried about traveling by T after dark anymore because it gets dark by 4.30 now Like how the fact that i finally know what day light savings is and how freaked out I got about it :P Like how I had a discussion with a blogger who believes I am a different "type" and the weekend awakening conversation was not expected out of me and how I reacted very violently to it. (ah well, may be I won't blog about it). Like how I ca...

In one of my courses last week, we had a guest lecture. The guest was this wonderful woman who in her 50s decided to start a nonprofit organization to help women to come away from violent homes. During the course of her lecture, she made us write our "Dream Proposal". Your dream proposal consisted of the your biggest dream, steps and goals to reach it and the estimated cost of the first step to reach the dream.The dream could be a picture including your life, you home, your car, the color of your curtains and so on. As I put pen to paper I tried to recollect my dreams. The first time I dreamed of doing something was when I was in class 3. I wanted to be the first Indian woman in space and when I was about 10 years old, Kalpana Chawla beat me to it so I tore up all my newspaper cuttings of articles about space, nasa research, meteor showers, etc and gave up that dream. The first time I put pen on paper and wrote down a pictorial life style dream was about 9 years ago, in cla...

"You'll find it very different." "Excuse me?" "Once you have been here, India will be very different." "Different?" "It won't be like this. Once you get used to this, it's so, so different." "I like it back home!" (stone faced) This was the conversation that ensued after I told someone that I am an exchange student and that I have been here for 2 months and I am going back in a month (precisely a month actually). What kind of a conversation is that? He could have said he likes it here, he could have asked where I feel better, he could have. But how can he tell me I am not going to like my country? Because I have had a "life changing" experience staying here !? Duh! Just to clarify. I did not have a life changing experience here. And I like my country. I like London too. But I like my country more. I know it has limitations. I know it has it's issues. But I like my country. And I don't think that e...

Some how, I seemed to have missed the post on Halloween weekend. Oh well because there was nothing to it. I was supposed to go to NY and meet my undergrad friends (one being bard). But it got cancelled in the last minute! After my extremely eventful Thursday, I spent a quite Friday cleaning. This is the first I ever used a vacuum cleaner. :) I always thought vacuum was spelled as vaccuum. Is it not? Is it American vs British or am I plain wrong ? (don't Google it). So, on Saturday, the bard , who's researching in Tufts, and I decided to spend the day around Tufts and Harvard and we did. We went to the Harvard Art Museum and saw so many paintings, I barely remember any at all. In fact, I remember only one. It was a Picasso painting . It was amazing and it stuck in my memory. It was funny actually. I was standing in front of it and I was like what the hell? What's so great about it? And I moved away. I just happened to turn around and then it caught it. It's not beautifu...

I had a wonderful Thursday! A class in the morning, a pitch contest in the afternoon and a trip MIT in the evening! A pitch is a business pitch. This contest did not require a b-plan in place. I anyway participated, just for the fun of it. I didn't win anything. But I thought I did good and it was fun! I did get goodies for participating. A coffee and a book . The author was one of the judges! And then I went to MIT to get training for Splash (a weekend when anyone can teach anything :) ) So the training happened in a class room which had heat transfer equations all the black board that I had used for my BTech Project I so loved doing , and I felt bad the left my engineering track. It was sad, really sad!

The first weekend I was here, I cried. Because I was alone and I didn't know anyone but also because it was so strange that I didn't see many people on the street and I could sit on a bus with a bunch of people who never talk to you at all and your neighbors didn't care that you existed. A couple of months later, I know, Bostonians are chivalrous, smile and nod at strangers, wish a good morning and pat their neighbors dogs and strike up a sentence or two once in a while. Last weekend when I was walking home from Ivo's house to mine, I had a perplexed expression on my face trying to figure out my path (no, I am never lost, I always find my way), when a stranger said to me "Smile, Honey! It isn't that bad". And out of nowhere I burst into a smile. "See. That was easy. Keep it going" he quipped and walked away. A complete stranger he was. Bostonians huh?

This weekend was fun as well. Started out on Friday when Ivo wanted to check out Halloween Costumes! We went to the biggest costume shop in Boston. Yet! We found nothing. OK not nothing! I got rainbow socks and she got a moose headband and fake eyelashes. But not costumes. We then went out to join a few girlfriends. And I ended up crashing over at ivo's place. We woke up to a lazy lazy Saturday and we went out for lunch. And when I say out I mena we walked out and kept walking and walking till we did not find any place to have a nice lunch and finally settled for Starbucks ! We then managed to buy out the entirity of Stop and Shop and carried a million bags back to her house. I walked back home and she went to school to study. I had to pick up a friend who was coming from NY. So I cooked and went to pick her up. I picked her up at South Station and showed her Downtown by night. On Sunday, I took her in an ad-hoc manner down the freedom trail. We had lunch at Quincy and sat down by ...