A Goan Experience!!

I'd been to Goa with 6 of my colleagues. It was awesome fun and I thought I should share it with all you guys! This happened around 7 months back, and we freshers had just finished our first ever project at work. Obviously all of us were excited, and whats more we had got a week off from office, as compensation for all the weekends of work that we had put in! So what do we do - we planned a trip to Goa, on the fly, and within a couple of days the plans were finalised and even the tickets were booked! Talk about plannin well in advance! :) We were scheduled to leave for Goa the next week and before we realised it, the day of departure had come! We had all been working for almost a year now, and even though we had been earning for a year, we never got a chance to really enjoy and spend the money!! This was our first opportunity at blowing up our own money, and boy were we excited! :D

And so, we left Chennai central by the 'Vasco-Da-Gama' express. We were 7 of us - close friends! The journey was fun, especially the rail route after the Londa Railway station. Londa is a station in Belgaum district.. From Londa to Goa, the train passes over the western ghats, studded with 20 odd tunnels. The view from some of the spots was breath-taking! We reached Vasco station around noon the next day. We were received at the station by Mr. Vishnu, he was my mom's old student in the school where she teaches!! We owe him so much... In fact the whole trip was possible partly due to him! He put us onto a Sumo (which we had hired for the entire stay, thru Vishnu), and we were taken to our hotel - The Miramar Residency. For those who dont know, Miramar is one of the many beaches in Goa. Must admit, Miramar is one of the more polished areas in Goa.. Nice place, nice crowd ;)
This is the gang that went to Goa :) From L to R - Venkat, Prakash, Ashok, Kumaresh, Murali, Myself.

We had booked 2 rooms at Miramar Residency from Chennai before leaving, and worth mentioning that the place we stayed was neat! Often, if the accomodation is not proper, it tends to pull down the joy of a vacation! Thankfully we had no room for complaint, in this regard.. The first day, we were already tired and thus we asked the driver to leave us at our own free will - anyway no long trips for the day! We jus walked down the roads, explored more into the city and then of course had a long lovely stroll on the miramar beach. Our cottage was right next to the beach ( In goa you need to search very hard to find a cottage, away from the beach :P ). Among the 7 of us, 3 were absolutely 'No' to drinking.. Me, well i would not say that I never drink :) But frankly i'm not a big fan of drinkin, donno why. I have never found it exciting. Me had beer, and of course i freaked out on the breezers!! I like the bacardi breezers a lot :) lol... My friends still pull my leg for that! 'Comin all the way to Goa and havin breezer, duh!' - was a sentence that my ears got accustomed to! :)
This was a pic my friend took, outside a church at night. Yes thats me standing next to the cross :)

The second day, we went on a 'churches' trip, visiting a number of the famous churches in Goa. Some of them were fabulous! Especially the St. Francis Cathedral.. Had lunch at one of the roadside hotels, and the one thing that we freaked out on, throughout our stay at Goa was the Sea food. It's truly awesome! Fish and prawns were alwez on our table, no matter where we had food!! And a breezer to go with it, yummmmm !!! :) Towards the evening, we were taken to the Colva beach.. And boy, this turned out to be the most exciting part of the trip! Little did we know that on the way back from Colva, we would be discussing about our para-sailing experiences!! Yeah, all of us went parasailing at Colva beach, for the first time in our lives.. It was some experience! The best thing, we got some awesome discounts for the parasailing trips. Indians had special prices and foreigners had to pay some 50% extra! Ridiculous, but then thats the way tourism works in our country.. :P Bargaining is the name of the game, no matter what you do in Goa. We went in pairs of 2, uppp into the sky and over the seas in the parachute pulled by a speedboat!! Awesome the view was.. That was not the end of it. After the parasailing experience, all of us got bolder and we were not in the mood to go home without a water jet-scooter ride! :) I found this much more thrilling (scary) than the parasailing thing! We were taken one by one, for a 400 feet ride deep into the sea along with a rider. He controlled the bike while all we had to do, was sit. This in itself was such a task! He rode the water-jet as rough as he possibly could, and on purpose he attacked every wave that came our way! Man, i really thought i would not make it to the shores!! Everytime the machine went up in the air and landed in the water with a jerk, my groin went for a 6 thanks to my sitting posture!! :P lol.. And in the middle of the sea, zipping at speeds of 80kmph, I had no option but to control my emotions and sit 'chup chaap se' :)
Thats my friend and I, suspended high in the air!! The View from there was awesome!! I liked the background of this snap too.
What an eventful day... With fantastic memories, we retired to our rooms and slept like logs. The next day, we went to a few more beaches - Calangute and Aguada... Some of the beaches were real naughty ;) Gave us a feeling of walking down the miami beach!! :) We went on a dolphin cruise too, on a speedboat at the Aguada beach! It was an hour long cruise right at noon, cos that was the time the dolphins surfaced.. Sighting the dolphins was a tough task, cos dolphins are really shy creatures! But for all our efforts, we did manage to sight a few dolphins within 10 feet from us! And one of them did a splash dive too, right in front of us!! So sweet of them! :) In the evening, we decided to go on the 'Santa Monica' cruise, which is a famous attration in Goa. This is a cruise, where they take you out into the sea in a small ship, with games, dance and traditional Goan stuff onboard! It was fun.. After returning from the cruise, we decided that we wernt jus gonna go and crash into bed, no matter how tiring the day had been, already! So what do we do - we book tickets at the INOX theatres, and watched the 23:15hrs show. The movie was 'Karam'.. Movie was only ok ok, but then, we had our own fun.. Very rarely were we actually watching the movie :P
The Goan folk dance being performed by artists, on board the Cruise! It was time to say Good bye to Goa as we were scheduled to leave the city the next morning.. Sad part was that we did not get direct return tickets by train, from Goa to Chennai. We had to come to Londa to catch the 12:30 train to Bangalore! What we did, we came from Goa to Londa by the same Sumo we had hired.. It was a 4hr drive but like I said, the journey was a nice one!

The wait, at Londa Railway Station, on the way back..

We reached Londa station on time for the train, reached Bangalore by 21:00, then took another train and reached Chennai the next day early morning! End of a wondeful trip!! Each one of us, still carry some lovely memories from the vacation!!

The Sri Lankan Lions, that never really were...

Been a while since I wrote about Cricket!! Cricket being one of my passions in life, well its quite unusual to find johnny boy not talkin about cricket for a long time :) Those who don follow cricket much, don run away yet.. This is nothing too deep into the technicalities of cricket or anything :) Its just a light post, for 'fun reading'. The India-Sri Lanka ODI series has just concluded and who would have ever predicted a 6-1 drubbing of the Lankan Lions?? Coming into the series as the second best ODI team, they return to their country without an identity for themself. Their ranking in world cricket right now, will be the last thing on their minds!

The Sri Lankans were totally outplayed in every department of the game. Whatever they tried backfired, and whatever the Indians tried, came out fantastic and this buried the Sri Lankan ship beneath the ocean floor. The best thing about this series from an Indian point of view, was the talent on display. Every match, a different guy would come and hammer the opposition. They dint know how to respond to the questions raised by the Indians. The trouble being that the questions were never repeated! Every match a new plan, new personnel, new batting order etc etc.. Only one thing was the same, the result - Sri Lanka were out thought!

Well, this is just one series, and lets not create too much hype, which the media is anyway bound to do! Give credit where its due, India played fantastic, agreed. But they aint a 'great' side yet. The series against South Africa will only give us a chance to confirm our faith in this team. For them to be really considered as world beaters, they have to beat England and Australia in their own backyards! Which is still a long way off. But atleast, the team is on its way up and right now, they are on a roll!

Let me throw the focus back to the Indian team of the 90's. Just a humorous flash back! :) I remember there used to be this bowler called Venkatapathy Raju. Quite a decent left arm spinner, but I just could'nt help laughing whenever he came out to bat! For those who remember, he had the tiniest of faces, and this guy would wear a helmet which would be slightly big for one Mr. Inzamam Ul Haq! We literally had to search for his face, inside the helmet!! :D

And who could forget Venkatesh Prasad! Once again, no doubting his abilities cos he was quite successful here and there :) He was one bowler who's speed while running in to bowl, was faster than the speed of the ball which he bowled! :D And whats more, he used to take most of his wickets by bowling the 'slower' ball!! How ironic! I alwez thought that if he bowled his 'slower' ball any slower, the ball might not have reached the batsman! And I have this strong feeling that most batsmen got out to his slower ball, cos they got bored waiting for it to arrive...

There was this stage, when India tried out different combinations of openers in Test cricket and frankly, none of them worked! It was a sad phase. We had openers such as Debang Gandhi and S S Das, who made sure they they drove out whatever little crowd that came in to watch Test match cricket. They were boringly slow, and I never thought it served any purpose. One might argue that they took the 'shine' off the new ball. But I guess the only way these openers managed to take the shine off the ball, was by getting hit repeatedly on the helmet. Yes, believe me, we had opening batsmen who were capable of getting hit on the head, on Indian pitches - repeatedly :) Sometimes it made you wonder if a bat was really necessary in their hands.. The helmets which went into the cricket field blue in color, came back more red, than blue.... Do I need to explain more? :)

How could I forget Anil Kumble's dive? :) He's a great cricketer, no doubt but he seriously has to/had to work on his fielding. It was quiet sad to watch him dive at the boundary ropes. A dive would not be an appropriate word to use, bcos he used to literally skate his way to the boundary ropes, on his laps :) Whats more, the ball would have already crossed the ropes a few seconds earlier! Our man was only successful in getting the wrath of a few live grass, which were no longer 'live'.. Generally, the Indian diving standards were pretty poor in the 90's. Any India-South Africa match of the 90's would be testimony to whatever I have been talking about.

Ok, I guess the post is gettin too long, so I better curtail my thoughts.. All said and done, I am a Big Big fan of Indian cricket. I was just bringing out some really funny experiences and comments that we used to share, among us school friends.. Of course, it is exaggerated at some points, but only to bring out the funny side of things in a more laughable way.. In fact, I am a huge supporter of Indian cricket. Yup no doubts, Sachin Tendulkar is the person I look forward to, whenever India plays. He is master class.. I just go crazy when Sachin is in full flow... One of the most touching comments, which was reportedly made on the BBC a few years back - "Whenever Sachin Tendulkar goes out to bat, the whole of India switch off
their lives, and switch on their TV sets" -> Awesome, isnt it!!!

Wishing the Indian team good luck, for their forthcoming series aganst South Africa. I hope that their winning run continues and if that does, neither will the South Africans be number 2 in the world rankings for long! :)

'MAX'imum Affection !!

Heyyy ppl, work's been keepin me away from bloggin of late. But I'll still find some time to somehow drop in a post :-) And hey, of course I do keep track of my blog almost everyday! First of all, wish you all a HAPPY DIWALI! Ok, this one's been a long time pending post. Always wanted to write one on my sweetie pie, but it was kept on hold thanks to my laziness... So here goes... I'm gonna talk about our doggie - Max :)

In the pic shown above, the time is 6am, and Max has just finished reading the 'headlines' on todays newspaper. Only trouble is that after he reads, no one else can read the paper! :-) Unless of course, someone's in the mood to solve a jigsaw puzzle first thing in the morning! [Have a look at the sense of achievement on his face! He is one satisfied dog! :-) God Bless You, Max]

Max is a German Shepherd, and a big one at that! He's just 5 months old, but I guess he's reached full growth. Atleast we hope so :-) Cos if he gets any bigger, its gonna be hard work! My mom used to take him out for a walk every morning, but nowadays she refrains from doing so, cos it always ends up with Max taking my mom out for a walk :) He literally pulls her along to wherever he wants to go! We've reached a stage where only my dad, my brother or I, can can handle him. He looks very ferocious but trust me, he's a small kid inside! He'll bark like mad if he sees someone new entering the house, but whoever it is, if the person comes near him - our man will lie down and wait expectantly to be fondled! Like most dogs, he jus lovvves attention.

Poor fellow has been having a very tough time of late. Guess why ?? Cos its Diwali! :-) He jus cant stand the sound of crackers. Now thats a very tough demand, keeping in mind the festival and the amount of fireworks that go into it. Max has to live with it, and best we could do for him, was allow him to stay and sleep indoors till the diwali mood kinda eased! :) Yeah he stays indoors these days. But even inside, he gets restless when the neighbours burst crackers. When he used to be outside, Max got into a frenzy everytime a cracker went off! We felt sad for the poor fellow.. You know what, Max 'used' to love the small kids stayin near our house, but the last few days he's been trying to avoid them, and he barks madly at them when they try to approach him. Guess why, bcos he knew that it were the kids who bursted the crackers, and that was reason enough for him to keep a distance! :-) With all the noise around, I wonder what all would be running thru the canine's mind. He must be thinking 'what the **** is wrong with the world suddenly' :) 'It was all silent and calm till a few days back, all of a sudden people just go mad and burn/burst everything! Sigh, Its a Man's world' :-) If only dogs could speak - we @ home, would have been introduced to a new range of bad words for sure... You guys wont believe, even when he is inside the house - when someone outside lights up those 'rockets', Max's head follows the 'whizzing' sound upwards, and he looks up and barks at the ceiling! One thing's for sure - if at all we just leave Max loose on the street tonight, 100% sure there will not be a single soul bursting crackers in our area :) All said and done, its diwali today, and he wont have to suffer the torture for much longer.. Wish he knew that!

I dont wanna delve into the loving nature of Max, cos like all animals - he's very attached and possesive! But some really peculiar traits that Max exhibits - The way he drinks water. Max just cannot stand or sit, and drink water. He has to lie down! Its a very sweet sight. The moment you pour water into his bowl, he goes down to his customary sleepin position, places the bowl exactly between his outstretched paws, and laps the water. Another thing, is that Max just cannot stand people wearing headgear! Lol... Yes its true, he gets mad when he sees people wearing caps, bandanas, or any sort of thing on their head. Don ask me why! :-) The people who suffer because of this -> the 'gas' guy who brings the gas cylinder on his shoulders, the 'vegetables' lady who carries the basket on her head, my brother's friends who wear 'cool' caps, and most importantly - everyone during the rainy season (cos of the umbrella) :-) He is a character for sure!

We have 3 kittens stayind behind our house, and you should see the way Max plays with them! He's so so fond of them. But sometimes he gets soo fond of them that he gives them a smallll nibble, which sends them scampering in all directions! Little do they know that Big brother is just playin with them! There is especially this one kitten - Dark grey in colour, and he's Max's best friend. The way he cuddles around Max is a sight to watch. Its very cute, and this guy is only as tall as Max's knee. The grey kitten sleeps on Max's lap whenever given an opportunity. Unfortunately I could not click a snap when the kittens were playing with Max :( they are scared of us, cos they are too small. Well if you ask me how come they aint scared of big and ferocious Max, search me!

In this pic, Max is seen with his 'best friend' kitten. Our man is busy trying to peel off the coconut skin, and his friend is giving him moral support I guess!
Max is a very disobedient and naughty, but thats cos we have not trained him. Know what my mom says? 'The children in the house aint obedient, how will poor Max be obedient??'.. My brother and I jus stare at her.. :-) And yes, that was just a joke! Another bad habit that Max has developed of late - These days he eats dinner only if he is hand fed by my Mom or Dad!! Talk about babies.. Hope you guys found it worthwhile, getting to know Max a lil better :) Next time you plan a visit to our house, you guys know what to do, and what not to do :-) hehe, jus kidding... Have fun!

Tagged !!! 7 things that I.......

The lean spell, as far as my blogging is concerned, has come to an end. I have been tagged by Shalz. Something had to wake me up, and guess this was just what I needed.. Its not that I do not have anything to write about! So many things in my head that I wanna pen down, but time jus doesn’t allow.. Hopefully I’ll be more frequent from here on!
Ok, here goes.....

Seven Things I want to do before I die:
1. Become really really good at my profession - software. I really admire my superiors at work, who have fantastic technical knowledge.
2. Travel almost all around the world! Most of u might know that i am travel freak :) Wanna go to some specific places - New Zealand, Rome, Cairo, New York City (Rama are u listening), London, Switzerland, Sydney, Paris, Johannesburg and one of the Himalayan hill stations!
3. Watch Sachin Tendulkar score a century from less than 80 balls, against a full strength aussie bowling attack, in front of a packed cricket stadium in India!
4. Do something really worthwhile in music. Maybe bring out my own album, or help in composing music, something of the sort. I know its far fetched, but its a dream i cherish! Music is very close to my heart.
5. Drive a ferrari. If things go my way, maybe even own a ferrari!
6. Find that special person whom I can share all the love with!
7. Hold my baby(as in, child) in my arms....

Seven Things I can do : (Tho there are a lot more!)
1. Put my head down and fight through the rough patches, no matter how tough it gets. Sometimes being thrown into the deep end, tends to bring out the best in me.
2. Make people smile, even if it means that i have to make myself look like a fool, sometimes :) (obv applies only to my friends ) hehe
3. Play any sport, and become quite good at it.
4. Live without food for a day, without even knowing it
5. Keep myself awake through the night, either chattin, browsing, bloggin,working, studying, blah blah blah, etc etc etc :)
6. Say something sarcastic, or tell a lie, and still have an innocent look on the face :) Unless I tell it out, the listener will not know :) lol..
7. Look at the bright side, of even the worst possible things, once it has happened and nothing can be done about it.

Seven Things I say most :
1. Whats wrong with u ?
2. How?
3. Hmmmmmmm
4. Suthom ( Tamil for 'Gone!')
5. Chance ay ille (Tamil for 'no chance')
6. Fooooool
7. What the.... ( I say this to myself, I speak a lot to myself)

Seven Things I can't do:
1. Sit idle for more than 10 mins!
2. Tolerate people who boast. Some people have stuff and they show it out. Thats quite tolerable. Some can only mouth, and that really pisses me off. Never miss a chance to give one back, to such people :)
3. Be without my mobile phone
4. Hurt an animal
5. Leave somethin halfway through, and have a peaceful night's sleep
6. Restrain myself from temptation! I get easily tempted, a lot...
7. Do things without any goal, or do somethin just for the sake of doing it. If i play, i play to win :)

Seven Things that attract me to the opposite sex:
1. Straight forward and frank women.
2. Nice hair
3. Attractive eyes. Girls who look into the eye when they talk!
4. 'Pretty' ranks much much higher than 'beautiful', in my book. I donno , but i differentiate between cute/pretty and beautiful, quite easily...
5.Dress sense! This is quite a major factor. The way she presents herself, matters!
6. Sense of humor. No jokes, no fun! :)
7. Simplicity. Come on, already there are enough complicated things in life! A simple, loving n caring girl - who wont fall for her? :)

Seven Celebrity crushes:
1. Alicia Silverstone
2. Sonali Bendre
3. Steffi Graf
4. Jennifer Anniston
5. Sania Mirza
6. Preity Zinta
7. Catherine Zeta Jones

Well thats about it! About passing the tag onto my fellow bloggers - I do not have 7 torch bearers, but i would like these people to take up this tag post!
1. Vinay
2. Divya
3. Rama
4. Monu

Happy tagging! :)

Bangkok - The City Of Angels

I have always been someone who would get excited at the very mention of the word 'travelling'! I love to see new places, new cultures, how people differ all around the world, and stuff like that. Its so fascinating, to understand the differences in the way people live their lives. Two months back I had been to Thailand and Sri Lanka. It was a kind of an overseas tour, with my family. Yeah, my family loves to travel too! I am gonna talk about some memories about my trip, of course I wont be able to pen down the entire experience, cos that would put you all to sleep :) This post is entirely on the Bangkok part of the tour. Sri Lankan bit, will follow in my next post! :)

Bangkok is a bustling city, although pretty small. The core city is very well developed with hi-tech stuff and lotsa hi-rise buildings, but you move away from the city, and its barren land. We flew Sri Lankan, and frankly speaking, I was not too impressed with their flight. Food would just pass off as O.K, and their air-hotesses were pretty sad ! :-) All over-aged, and over-weight ladies! Anyway, leave that aside, we reached Bangkok international airport by noon, and checked into "D'Ma Pavilion". The hotel was fabulous - luxurious and the service was really impressive. Though it was not exactly 5 star by Thai standards, it would compare to an Indian 7 star! Serious, jokes aside. Below is a snap of 2 Thai warriors I took on my phone... :) kidddingg, thats me on the right, but we have similar expressions on our faces tho :-)

The hotel we stayed in, was located flush in the middle of the city and thus we had no trouble venturing out by foot, to explore more about the city. It was a nice experience. If not by walk, we used to take tuk-tuk's to reach wherever we wanted to go. A 'Tuk-tuk' is how an 'auto' is referred to, in Bangkok :-) To be pronounced as 'took-took'.... Hey you guys might remember the James Bond movie, where he drives one of those tuk-tuks in a frantic chase, all over the crowded Bangkok streets! This was one such Tuk-Tuk, which we took :)

Obviously, we had done our homework before leaving India - with respect to the shopping malls and other important places to visit. One whole day was dedicated to temple visits and boy that was truly awesome. Bangkok is a buddhist country, and there are infinite monasteries and buddhist temples there. Every corner you can see a statue of Lord Buddha. We went to the famous temple, where there was this 100feet long Golden statue of the Reclining Buddha. It was fabulous, the entire statue was made of gold, and to walk around the statue took us a good 15 minutes. Trust me, it was massive. This snap covers just a portion of the golden statue.

The temple visits took place on the second day of our stay. Of course yes, the first day was spent at shopping malls :) My mom was with us, so it had to be that way :) Tourism is one of the biggest sources of income here, and its pretty evident too. You can see people from all over the world, within a radius of 1 or 2 kms! Bangkok has a lot of Huge malls - Big See, Indira Square, MBK Centre to name a few. These places are really massive and if you do not stay together, chances are that you'll get lost. We did not do any major shopping, as in no big time buys. Jus bought a mobile phone (panasonic X200), a few panels for my Nokia Phone, and then of course - clothes!! :) I did buy a few tees and jeans from there :-) Shown below is the snap of a floating market. Floating markets are very common in Bangkok, cos there are lots of canals and waterways, all over the country! People make a living, by selling stuff on boats - usually its just aimed at tourists. And boy, the westerners are fascinated by such things! Most of them bought stuff like crazy, and these people do not know that something called 'bargaining' exists!! We Indians bargain bargain n bargain, till our thoats become dry, and finally at times we end up not buying it, cos we might have felt its 20Rs too much!! :)) The spending power of Europeans and Americans can really be witnessed, in such circumstances..

Thai food, is pretty bland. That too being accustomed to the spicy south Indian food, one really finds Thai food quite bland. At restaurants, we spent most of the time looking for salt n pepper containers :) but generally, the food there tastes goood. We took every opportunity to have food, as it was, in Thailand :) No use going to Thailand, and still having Indian food!! But one thing we just could not stand, was their fish varieties! Man these people do not believe in cooking fish fully :-) Its partly raw and i dint take the risk of having fish, even once, in Thailand. If you are someone who hates the smell of raw fish (most of us do), you will most definitely hate the aroma around Thailand! :-) The whole country, i thought smelt of fish.... Every 15 metres there will be a roadside stall, cooking and selling fish delicacies! Thai people love sea food, have no doubts! Bar the 'fish' stench, everything else was nice... Oh boy, how could I forget the Thai Foot Massage therapy! Every second shop in Bangkok is a foot massage centre !! Yeah there were these lovely ladies standing outside every shop, enticing the tourists inside! What happens inside, I seriously do not know! Before any guesses crop up, no I did not go for a 'foot' massage... hehe

Overall, a lovely country to spend a vacation! Lots of places to visit, and the lifestyle there is totally different from ours. So it really makes for a fascinating experience. We could not go to Pattaya, a famous beachside town, cos we were short of time. I've heard its a lovely part of Thailand too! If u guys get a chance to visit, dont miss it!

Just When You Think That...........

Just when you think
- that you got all the time in the world,
- that the days ahead are rosy and pink

Just when you think
- that no more hurdles you will find,
- that your dog days are way behind

Just when you think
- that the sky suddenly looks supremely blue,
- that dark and gloomy days are gonna be far and few.

And Just when you think
that this was the phase of your life you were yearning for,
Well thats exactly when,
you actually realise that the 'phase' just got over!!

Why does all this happen,
Just when you think that..............................

Sometimes we think too much, and try to save all the fun for the 'last'. And it often happens that we rarely get to enjoy the good times we had actually planned for! Dont ever make the mistake of not having fun, when you get the chance to have fun!!! If u keep delaying it, the only thing which accumulates is 'expectation', and you end up having no fun at all...
Dance while the music lasts!! :-)

Shades Of Life....

What’s in a person's color or complexion? This question might be one of the most clichéd topics ever, in any discussion or debate! Forget all that, I just wanna share my own views here :-) First of all, have no doubts, I am dark and I have no regrets about it (even if I did regret, wouldn’t make much of a difference would it? hehe ). I've released quite a few things as far as attitude towards 'looks' go. You hear people say that 'looks don’t matter', and its just 'how beautiful you are in your heart, that matters', and lotsa crap like that... I call it 'crap' cos only a handful actually mean what they really say in this regard. "Beauty is only skin deep", “It really doesn’t matter how you look", are all feel-good sentences, used most of the time, just to escape a tricky situation!

Do you think how you look, your complexion, and your features, just do not matter? I tend to disagree, mate. The first sign of attraction is always how you look. The inner beauty, your character, what you really are, and stuff come later! That’s the truth, so face it.. This holds true with 'first impressions' only, mind you. People, who already are your friends, will of course know you. It’s quite obvious that at any given point of time, lots of people are looking at you, and framing opinions, without even you knowing it. Some might be liking you, some might find you repulsive, and so on. These impressions are being formed, just based on how good/bad you look. People don’t know what kind of a person u are at heart, they don’t know your 'lovely character', but they can only see how u look from the outside, plain as that. It is your look, which will make people notice you and make them want to know you in the first place. It’s only after this, that they get to know the inner, 'real' you. And this might be where all the above mentioned 'quotes' hold true. Thus for the wise men’s sayings to make sense, a lot of things have to happen, as a precursor!

Let me share a very funny incident that happened, when I was 5 years old. My mom had just given birth to my brother, and he was this Fair, chubby veryyyyy sweeet baby. Like any small kid, I could not tolerate the attention that he was getting, from all the guests, and sometimes even my parents! Very natural, a baby needs much more attention, than a 5yr old. But how was I supposed to understand all that then? I used to ask my mom, why I was not 'white' like George (my brother's name). She used to pacify me with some answer which I don really remember ( cos I was not really intent on her reply, I was busy wondering how I could become 'white') One fine day, my parents realized that I was missing for an hour or so, and thus a search was launched, to find 'naughty' me. Everyone grew quite anxious when a few minutes of frantic searching did not yield any results. After sometime, my mom found an empty Talcum Powder tin lying on the ground. It was emptied to the last bit of powder! And she could see a small trail of white powder leading to a bedroom. When she opened it, there I was, standing at the corner of the room, all smiles! Yours truly had a 'sense of accomplishment' written in Bold, all over his face! I had applied the talcum powder, all over my body! I dint spare my eyes, legs, toes, ears.... I stood there with a barely visible smile, a genuinely innocent face, and slowly asked my mom these very words "Amma, now do I look like George?" Even now, my mom tells me she could see how much I really meant those words! That tells a story in itself doesn’t it? :-) I look back and laugh at all those memories! Truly fascinating, this mind of ours.

All said and done, its been a long 17 years since that happened and I have been through many experiences and situations in life! But all these had just one thing in common, and all my experiences taught me just one thing - to be really happy and proud, that I was 'ME'! If you don’t feel good about yourself, no point in living! How will someone feel good about you, when you yourself doubt the very person you have been all your life! I have no regrets whatsoever... How a person looks, is a totally individual and independent opinion. Someone might have a face that 100 people find 'not-so-interesting', but the same person and the same face, might be the reason why someone else wakes up everyday with a smile on his/her face! Life has a lot to offer, if we care to look around.... :-)