Guest Post & Tag

Vishal offered me to do a guest post for his blog around a month ago. I was very excited about writing for someone else's blog but I wasn't aware of the downsides. As I started, I began to feel a huge pressure, my writing being showcased on somebody's space was a little intimidating. Suddenly it felt as if I was back in school and had to meet the expectations set for me. I somehow managed to write something I thought could be readable and Vishal was very sweet to post it on both his blogs, here on blogspot and wordpress. Thanks to Vishal for giving a lovely introduction of me to his fellow wordpress-ers and appreciating my work. To see what I decided to write for my first ever guest post please check this or this

After taxing my brains for the post, I wanted something light and breezy. That came in the shape of this fabulous tag to which I was tagged by fellow blogger Sumit. Now tags used to be very popular when I started blogging some 3 years back. They are a very nice change from the monotonous post-on-post routine and also give your followers and friends a chance to know you better. Over the years the Tag somehow lot its charm and popularity, so I was pleasantly surprised when I got tagged with an interesting one. There are some rules to be followed, which are as below:

1. You may not remove any question.
2 If you don't wish to answer a question, you may leave it blank
3. No detailed description, for details people can connect separately.
4. Once you are done, you need to tag 5 people from the list of your followers
5. Leave a message to the people, stating they are tagged.

Read on for the interesting questions and my attempt to give interesting answers.

 

Vital Statistics:

Me: Sneha Bhat

Nicknames: Chunnu, Sonu, Sepo

Do you have a middle name? No

Birthday: 9^th Feb 1989

Place of Birth: Srinagar, Kashmir

Zodiac Sign: Aquarius

Male or Female: Female

Occupation: IT Sector

Residence: Mumbai

Screen Name: Sepo

Appearance:

Hair Colour: Brown

Hair Length: Medium

Eye colour: Dark Brown

Best Feature: Lips

Height: 5ft 4’

Braces?: No

Glasses?: No

Piercing: Yes, ears

Tattoos: No

Righty or Lefty: Righty

Your Firsts':

First best friend: Pratima Gupta, Class 4

First Award: Don’t remember

First Sport You Joined: Volley ball (for a week)

First Real Vacation: Port Blair

First Concert: None

First Love: *scratching head*

Favourites:

Movie: Too many to pen down

TV Show: F.R.I.E.N.D.S, all-time favourite

Colours: All colours are pretty

Song: Depends on my mood

Subject at school: English and Maths

Candy: I am more of a dark chocolate kinda girl

Restaurant: No favourites

Drink: Water!

Store: I love street shopping

Animal: No animals please.

Book: Thousand Splendid Suns, the Rendezvous

Magazine: I enjoyed reading Femina as a teenager

Shoes: All kinds! Bring ‘em on.

Currently:

Feeling: Sleepy

Eating: Nothing

Typing: This

Online: Nope

Listening To: Pressure cooker whistles

Thinking About: A dear friend

Wanting: To go home

Watching: The screen

Wearing: Clothes

Want Children? Yes please

What would you name your children? Need to start thinking on this.

Want to be married: Not really, maybe in future

Careers in Mind: Something with flexible timings and work from home facility

Where do you want to live? Someplace where rush and peace co-exist.

Do you speak any other Languages? I speak English, Hindi, Kashmiri and little bit of Marathi

Have you ever:

Kissed a Stranger: No

Had Alcohol: No but want to

Smoked: Tried once

Ran Away From Home: No

Broken a bone: Mine or Someone else’s?

Got an X-ray: Yes, Chest, shoulder, spine

Broken Someone's Heart: Yes

Cried When Someone Died: Yes

Cried At School: Yes

Been out of country: Yes, Thailand, Malaysia & Singapore

Bought something you’ve never worn: Yes, there is this dress, I have kept for special occasion. But that’s quite unlikely as I doubt I will fit into it anymore

Do You Believe In?

God: Immensely

Miracles: Yes

Love at First sight: No, but after three, four sightings.

Ghosts: Yes

Aliens: Yes

Soul Mates: Yes

Heaven: Yes

Hell: No

Kissing on the First Date: No

Yourself: J Yes

Finally:

What kind of style would you define yourself as having? I would like to believe that I am experimental.

What’s one thing most people probably don’t know about you? I am a huge SATC fan

One thing in your closet you cannot live without: There is this jumpsuit which will probably tear apart if you pull it hard. But it’s so comfy and I just love it.

Guilty Pleasures? Junk food. MacD. KFC. Dominoes. Bring it on!

I am not tagging anybody in particular to this. By the power bestowed on me, I declare this to be an open tag who anybody and copy and paste.

Love:
Sepo!

Book Review – And the Mountains Echoed.

I was looking forward to read this third book of my favorite author since a long time. I was still reading The Maximum City by Suketu Mehta (which by the way is a must read) when I bought And the mountains echoed... I was desperately trying hard to complete Suketu's book as fast as possible so that I could lay my hands on the new acquisition. After Kite Runner and The Thousand Splendid Suns, my expectations with the new book were naturally quite high. I was anticipating high emotional heart wrenching tale set in the backdrop of beautiful mountains of Afghanistan. So I braced myself with a big box of tissues for the beautiful journey ahead.

Photo Courtesy - patheos.com

The story started with a folklore. A story of how easily you can give up something you absolutely love and how far you can go to get it back. The book slowly progresses around the story of Pari and Abdullah, brother and sister closely tied together with the bond of love. How close their relation is, how each cannot live without the other and how finally destiny forces them to go apart into their separate sets of lives. Pari is four when she separated from her brother and quickly adjusts with her new family. The story rapidly moves from Kabul to Paris and America to Greece. Separated in childhood, do they remember each other and most importantly will they ever meet in their adult life is what the book is all about. 

The story telling is very beautiful as usual, the characters are very thoughtfully built. There are however too many parallel tracks of stories, it is the readers’ task to try and built a common link from all of them. The book is emotional but not overtly. I mean you will have that heart-sinking feeling at some places but there will be no tears. I found some portions of the story to be deliberate and unnecessary. And also disliked the idea of a mother and daughter dating the same guy.

When I was reading Thousand Splendid Suns, I was in a dilemma. On one hand I quickly wanted to keep reading the book to get to the end and on the other hand I somehow wanted to slow the process so that I could spend a little more time with Mariam and Laila. After reading the book Mariam and Laila have been constant companions in my life. I have forced, bullied and blackmailed people into reading this book and narrated the story myself to others who would not read. If you are a regular on this blog, you would know that I have also blabbered about the book on numerous occasions here, here and god knows where else. Naturally I had a lot to expect from the latest book of the author I love so much. But sadly I was hugely disappointed. Not that I did not like it, but then I have read better stuff.

Here’s hoping for a mind-blowing fourth book from Mr Hosseini.

Some of my favorite quotes from the book. 

“Out beyond ideas
of wrongdoing and right doing,
there is a field.
I’ll meet you there."

- These lines are written by Rumi, famous Persian poet. These lines were also included in Hindi movie Rockstar

“They say, Find a purpose in your life and live it. But, sometimes, it is only after you have lived that you recognize your life had a purpose, and likely one you never had in mind.” 

“You say you felt a presence, but I only sensed an absence. A vague pain without a source. I was like a patient who cannot tell the doctor where it hurts, only that it does.” 

“I have a theory about marriage, Monsieur Boustouler. And it's that nearly always you will know within two weeks if it's going to work. It's astonishing how many people remain shackled for years, decades even, in a protracted and mutual state of self-delusion and false hope when in fact they had their answer in those first two weeks.” 

Love:

Sepo!

Two's a Crowd

Staying away from family is an emotionally vulnerable state especially for first timers. It feels like life has suddenly thrown you from a five star hotel ambiance onto a self-service kinda place. The amount of stuff to be set-up and taken care of is so huge that it takes a toll on your emotional and social well-being. The support and understanding of your loved ones at this stage is of crucial importance. Without that your life is going to get an addition of drama with accusations like "You have changed" , " How can you have absolutely no time" and my favorite "You are not the only one staying away from home". Just one advice you can never really understand how it is going for a person unless you have been in their shoes.

Living on your own means you must get together with a few fellows and rent out a place you'd call  your temporary home unless ofcourse if you are super rich and a firm believer in soltitude. Either this or else if you don't have any company or the fat bank balance (like me) just put up with staying in a Paying Guest system. Now living in a PG has its own set of pros and cons. One good thing is that you have a set of people you know you can disturb incase the water purifier doesn't work or if there is leakage in the shower. Being on the receiving end of irritated monosyllabed answers has definitly some fun amount associated. Renting out thing means you are responsible for every little thing but yes it is way cheaper (and hussle free in terms of prying eyes) than the PG. Also in most of the cases the occupants actually know each other so there is no surprize element. 

In a PG on the other hand, you never know who you gotta put up with. If you are lucky, you may get to share what you call your temporary home with someone normal. But if you are not lucky then well, god save you. In the last 2.5 years I have met countless number of girls in my PG. The tatoo-ed ones, the hip-hop ones, the demure ones, the talkitive ones, the untidy ones, the too much cleaniness ones. You just name 'em, I have seen it all. And if I even begin to tell you a little something about each of them, I ll be an author of a book called The Crazy Girls. I have had my share of issues with some of the girls - from stolen money and clothes to stolen milk. Amongst the many girls that I have known, I have had the pleasure (or the displeasure) of sharing my room with 3 ladies. It has been an experience. Good and bad. Well honestly, it has mostly been just plain bad. So more about these 3 ladies now, for further references we shall call them P, G and B.
 

1. Miss P : March 2011 - September 2011

I got to know from my owners that my would be roomate is very keen on having the bed adjacent to the window, which by the way was mine and I was prepared to fight for it. But my resolve for my bed quickly evaporated when I met her. She was easily 15 years elder to me and had 13 years of experience. Definetly not matching the kind of roomate picture I was carrying with me. I was intimidated with her and her school of thought. And man was she disciplined or what, she was an early riser and a very early sleeper. She had issues with me talking on the phone at night and the fact that I kept my phone under the pillow which is dangerous because of the radiations and all. And also the fact that I talked for more than 15 mins using only one ear. Mostly she just had a lot of issues with my phone. Under her reign I actually became an early sleeper and no talker on the phone after 9 pm. If situation demanded I used to cover my face with a pillow, cover the pillow with a blanket and talk in hurried whispers from undercover. This continued for sometime until I made friends with the cool hall girls. I dragged my mattress out into the hall every night, where the girls had tea (and I drank Cola), they had namkeen ( and I had potato wafers). If incase I needed anything from my room, I made use of a torch instread of switching on the light and thereby awakening the devil. We girls slept on the floor, sang old songs and bitched about P and other girls.

Coming back to P, I never had any kinda relation with her. Just few cursory greetings and that's all. I used to suffer from a serious bout of sinusitis back then and my all night sneezing and snotting did invoke a lot of grunting and groaning noises from her. One peculiar thing about her was that for the 7 months I lived with her she ate nothing but oats and milk for dinner. Every night for 7 months. One good thing about her was that after her initial attempt at grooming me, she got it that I am past the age of grooming and let me be. No interference what so ever. She led her life and I led mine. But I missed some comarade between my roomy. I wished I had a roomy of my own age who I could talk to, have fun with and share stuff with. I used to get envious when my other friends used to share their stories of good times spent with the roomies. I did not know it back then but my wish was about to be granted.

Image courtesy - diylol.com

2. Miss G: October 2011 - July 2012

In P's absence me and the awesome hall girl S, kinda moved in together. We joined the 2 individual beds and spent our time wonderfully by talking, sleeping and mostly on our respective laptops. G arrived in between our afternoon nap one fine day. So in sleepy state S moved her stuff back to the the hall and thus the first set of emotion that G invoked was of strong hate. But that quickly changed when she helped me clean the mess I created by spilling cooking oil all over the kitchen. Secondly, she rescued me when I got locked in the washroom by unlocking the door with a scissor. She became the hero. Soon we became very close...sharing music and more. Singing to the tunes of Hotel California on the top of our voices. She was also very cool about my before-going-out-behaviour, which comprises of numerous outfit changes and same question asked in different postures. She never got bored of clicking my pics either, which meant that many profile pics were uploaded in her tenure. That said, she was also not without flaws. Infact there were many. She had this weird habit of setting her alarm at almost one hour before she was actually planning to wake up. She had very little regard for the other person in the room. But I made sure to change this habbit of her's by a direct confrontation. Also the joined beds provided me the opportunity to kick her at the start of alarm ringing. She took her own sweet time in the washroom and my door knocking/banging and shouting invoked no response whatsoever from her. That's because apparently she did not like to talk from inside there. Lamest excuse I have ever heard. She was also officially the first person in my life I saw using this app called wtsapp. She was soooo addicted to it, her day ended with it and started with it. She was spotted on the floor, phone on charging, eyes glued on the phone, no blinking, smile plastered across the face. I used to wake up sometimes in the middle of the night, find the bed next to me empty, look around and find her glued into the corner. With the lights off and her eyes and specs shinning with the light of the mobile, this sight used to creep the hell out of me. 

And yes just so you know, the joined beds thing did not go on for long. Her hands moved a lot in the night and hit me across the face many a times. Also wasn't quite a fan of what she blabbered during the night in her sleep. But by far she remains the only roomate who actually knows me. My likes, dislikes, the mood swings, she cooperated a lot during my morning shifts, prepared coffee for me when I was sick, took me to CCD for coffee dates and introduced me to dirty English songs. There are many other things that I would want to talk about but the thing is that she knows about the blog and does drop by sometimes.

Miss B: July 2012 - till date.

Till now B is the person topping the charts of the weirdo quotient. She wakes up in the middle of the night to wash clothes and wakes up really early to do the same. Well, she is extremely fond of washing clothes.She finishes atleast 4 packets of detergent every month. And the weird quotient doesn’t end here.She does not even acknowledge my presence in our room. She enters without any pleasantries or greetings. I tried being nice on many occasions like waving when spotting her coming out of the lift, but she looked away and I was caught off-guard with a raised hand and a number of onlookers. She enters and leaves the room as if she owns it. When I am sleeping early, tired from my morning shift she makes sure to bang the doors and keep the lights on for no apparent reason. She also loves to iron her clothes on my bed and in the process throws my things and soft toys here and there. She doesn’t talk to me but does not think twice before using my charger without my permission and even removing my phone from charging. She keeps numerous items under her pillow which vary from scissors to weirdly shaped stones and red and yellow pieces of cloths. She leaves the washroom smelling very incense-y and red with the sindoor (vermilion) which she apparently smears her head with. Thanks to the weird quotient I am very happy staying as far as possible from her. Both physically (the beds couldn't be any farther) and emotionally (No hi's no Hellos).

Recently I did took an initiative of extending the hand of friendship towards her by getting cake for her birthday (I came to know of her birthday by overhearing her conversations on the phone). So we cut the cake, celebrated her birthday very nicely. She was happy, surprised, well very surprised and mostly very thankful. So I thought that OK, now finally we may have a normal kind of roommate relation with one another. But the morning after I wake up and spot her sitting up, I smiled my sweet-just-woken-up-smile and get that godforsaken blank expression in return. I wanted to punch her but I did what I do the best to show the other person that I am angry ~ woke up hastily and banged the washroom door.

All things said, I must admit that when it comes to me, I ain't no saint. I am not an easy person to live with. I hate when someone uses my stuff, especially without asking. I get crazy when I come home and don't find the things in my bed in the same order I left them. And I absolutely hate those people who leave the door open while they leave (and B just loves to do that). The moment I spot the door open, I just can't get back to what I am doing. I get this uncontrollable urge to shut it, even if I know that the other person is coming back. I just  have to close it and that too in my signature door banging style! There are also some random issues like place to dry the clothes and keeping the fan on in mildly cold weather (I come from the mountains, how can I not want the fan). And I tend to make a very big deal out of my morning shifts, I expect everyone else in the house to cooperate. Nothing much actually just expect little noise and timely closing of the doors and lights. In-case this is not granted, I make sure to get even in the morning by disturbing their sleep. Every time I go to gossip about my roomy to the cool hall girl S, she is like "I am so happy we don't stay in the same room". Other than this and a few more things I am totally fun to live with.

Well, then that's all. Please feel free to bitch about your roomies here.

P.S On a totally different note, dear blog-o-friend Vishal had nominated me for a bunch of awards long back. However due to N number of reasons I was unable to respond or acknowledge his lovely gesture.
Thanks a lot Vishal.