A year of strangeness over...

I planned on doing a post before the 1st - a sort of round up of the year that went by - well its still officially New Year season so I guess it's not too late. Besides my MTNL dial-up seems to be behaving somewhat so I'll probably take the chance and try to pen (What's the electronic equivalent of a pen? A keyboard? Can I use that as a verb?) this while being on line.

Last year, or rather just before the beginning of last year I uprooted my life from the city I have called home for the past three decades (well, nearly three anyway) and moved to another city, country and continent, all in one day. If I ever had cribbed about lack of strangeness in my life - here was God - being most generous - for I landed in a land of strange people, filled with strange languages and strange food, and something that would take any Dilli-waala by complete surprise, clean air!

Since then nothing has seemed to be unachievable - not a climb up the Alps (on a cable car though), not cooking daily and not killing anybody in the process, not sharing a house with two cats, a charming old lady who doesn't speak a word of any language I know, a hot Austrian babe, a gentle Korean dude and a very eccentric Dutch guy. This in addition to a very happening professional life but then that is off limits for the blog.

A very good thing about staying alone, far away from anything you have known all your life, is that it clears up your head about a lot of things. Who one cares about, who one can't live without and who one can, what kind of work does one want to do, what does one want to work for, what is one afraid of, how much stress can one handle alone and how well can one cook (this one is actually a sensational discovery).

One is happy to be financially self-sufficient enough to be able to deport one self home, once annually, and to have been able to satisfy one's desire of having a sterling silver Mac as a first laptop and a Canon DSLR as a first camera. Now I am not boasting here, for one also went bankrupt for a day - a pure zilch in the bank account - before one started getting the salary. As a result of that of course, now one is better planned.

There is much more happening in life about which I can only write in cryptic verse.

Familiar smells in a movie hall,
Being at someones beck and call,
Beds, such welcoming, generous hosts,
Empty houses filled with ghosts,
Of rare visitors and waiting that,
Never ends, dollops of uncouth fat,
Dressed to kill with two left feet,
Mystery work causing the colour of beet,
Confusion reigning unchecked, supreme,
There are many uses of whipped cream.


To put it in one word, one has survived. About nine more months of survival training left. After that we deliver the baby (I am telling you clean air causes such genetic mutations).

So, Happy New Year everyone. Keep visiting, because the year promises to be choc-a-bloc full of more strangeness.

Cheers.

PS: The arcane reference to MTNL in the beginning was to indicate that I am visiting home for sometime, before I become Alice again.