One year on…. lot of water under the bridge. I came here posing as a seattle liberal looking to spread the good word and work from within to reform….. Hmm…. looking back feels like a plan too grand….

The culture, people, society that exists is strongly typed conservative and guess what it has begun to rub off on me… I am in a wierd ideological zone… a “conservative liberal” I call it….  Still trying hard to fit in, searching for the comfort zone that I can call my own…

 I have learnt a lot about myself… about how naive I used to be…. but  for better or for worse, I am still proud of one thing…, I am the “decider” (as bush would say )

Couple of weekends ago I was back in Mumbai and  happened to meet up with the IITB gang. Most of them turned out to be batchmates of Sunil. 5 out of the 6 folks I met had done their US stint and were back here to do their bit for the future of this part of this world.

It was the most inspiring gang I have met in a while. Their courage and conviction in their little ideas was refreshing and has been pulling on me to take the plunge…we will see.

In the meantime, the world markets are melting, but on the upside Sarah Palin will make a hot VeeP!

NFL season is on and it is not on the menu this part of the world. ANy online live streams available?

  It is very to easy to get caught up in little botherations that makes my life less than perfect and raise angst and fury over it. Then I see the news and it makes me feel petty for worrying about trivialities.

Kashmir is burning, Orrisa is burning, Bihar is flooded and might need the biggest human evacuation in history, Singur is ready to become toast, bomb-blasts for no good reason….

Yet I am upset about a bean-counting manager, why my windows mobile phone does not run mesh yet and why I can’t find the girl I dreamt about the other night…

The Seattle Monorail was a 3 blocks away from my apartment but I never rode it in five years since I always doubted its realiability. Turns out it got stuck again last saturday http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008135114_monorail24m.html

Btw, Seattle city owes me  273 dollars that they collected in the name of monorail tax.

Hectic month. I have been sick again, hunted down by bean counters and harassed by suitors. Gald to be able post again….

Lot happened in a month…(Manmohan) Singh is King…so is snoop…Bindra is golden… Mendis is evil… bolt is lightening….phelps won gold for silverlight…

Couple of weeks ago, I was supposed to fly from here to Pune for a dear friend’s engagement. As luck would have it the folks at Jetlite cancelled the flight, did not care to inform the poor passengers and did not make any alternate arrangements. I had to get into Pune no matter what and immediately started negotiating with the ground staff. The rest of the passengers, who had been sitting quitely thus far also joined in the pitch and soon we were a crowd demading our rights. After half an hour of deal making, I got JetLite to agree to something that I thought was fair and good enough for me. They would put us on a flight to Mumbai. I had talked to Rai and NT in the meantime and decided meet up with them in Mumbai instead.  Rest of the passengers were still not satisfied and wanted a deal that put them in Pune.

I broke from the crowd, took my Mumbai ticket and checked in for the flight. Two hours later at the gate I was greeted by few of the pune passengers and they looked at me with disdain. They accused me of breaking the unity and not having stood up for their rights. I was too occupied with appreciating the Kingfisher staff to take note of their comments.

It was only later that I thought about it. Had I betrayed anyone or had I simply behaved as any usually self-centered product of the western civilization would.

I will request my audience of 2 to kindly comment.

Darkness fast approached, and I used up the last remaining ounce of battery on my blackberry. The screen went dark and I was now cut off from rest of the world.  I was stranded on the highest point on the terrain and the nearest help would be a while away. A romp in the Bombay rains, earlier in the week, had left my body exposed and I was nursing a bad cold and high fever. The watch said 6:30 PM and I sat considering my options. I thought about climbing down but the weak body refused to cooperate. I looked back at what had put me in my current situation. I could trace it back to the events in april which had set the ball rolling. I had even paid 3 thousand rupees to ensure comfort. I had been sitting there for 10 hours now and had enough time to rue, but strangely I felt no regret.

I had cash, water and medicines on me.  I needed food rations and needed to get to a doctor. I forced my body to get up and take the long hike down. Slowly but steadily I made my way down. I could hear voices as I approached the last turn, “saved” I thought.

Just as I reached ground floor, all the machines in the vicinity whirred into life, finally the power was back on in the building! I took a sigh of relief. I crossed the patio to Ali’s store and bought milk, bread and maggi. On the way back I stopped by Dr Ruchi’s place (yeah can’t escape them … this one is better and actually helpful) She checked my pulse and tongue and declared I should be taking rest over the weekend.  I took the elevator to my 11th floor apartment, ate maggi, wrote this blog and went to sleep 

Epilogue:

The only person I could think of cursing this evening is Mr Karat and his friends. FU sir.

It had to happen someday and no better man than Rafa, who denied Federer his sixth consecutive wimbledon title. This is spain’s year, they beat germany for the Euro and then Rafa captures french open and wimbledon back to back in the same year (first man since borg I think).

There is a void in the sporting world till the olympics start.

I changed apartments 3 weeks ago, which meant going into the internet dark age. After 2 weeks of hand-twisting with local ISP providers, I am finally back online again. I am using WiMax solution and so far it has been as promised. Setting up a home is a lot of work and finding a reliable domestic help is an NP-Hard problem.

I will be taking a break next weekend, it has been an long, emotional roller coaster, 7 months for me. I took some hard, life-changing decisions, rescinded one of them, but still hanging in there