Home - Diaries - Indipepal

Here are some poems for my friends:

Enveloping me in your soft folds of comfort.
Eyes closed, your gentle caress soothes my concerns
and carries my thoughts to a bed of pure contentment.

Completely satisfied, I lay in your sweet embrace,
longing to remain indefinitely…….This is Trust.

god has mysterious ways to tell us the wrong and right. but sometimes those mysterious ways are revealed much later after the sabotage is done! the result is regret,pain,hatred and suffering of the soul.they say fools rush in, but what about those who voluntarily take a plunge into it?? ! everybody experiences it ,but noone can rectify or explain this phenomena. i too not being an exception. am at loss about what to do?all i can do is watch the sun go down . its strange so enchanting that it allures me to be a fool and rrush in! valentines is nowhere around still i feel the cupid's pinch! ouch!it does not hurt!

 God has given us everything, we praise ourself for our rich culture,freedom, etc....but what is india now is one of the biggest mystery every. Life in india is far smooth and enjoyable if you stick to what you have. Never listen more than what you should listen and never see what more than what you are supposed to see. Indian has now a mixed culture of western and native. In future it will be like you will measured on how cool you are. Your style level will be the factors that define you. People will be less concerned about other. The changes have set their path and it is only waiting for us to walk it.

                                                   But the truth is more complicated as it is always. There is still people at large who are very native in their thought and who never can stop interfearing in other's no matter how complicated their own life be. 

I always searched for a pair of shoes that represented me! When ever i went shoe shopping I'd be in a fix not knowing which one to pick! The comfy ones looked ugly and the gorgeous ones hurt! ouch! I finally decided to customize my own pair! I spoke to two of my best friends and asked them to help me with ideas ! I wanted my shoes to represent me! Show who I really was instead of just merging in with all other feet on the city pavement. I wanted my shoes to be comfy , look fab and have an added dash of bling in them! I bought a pair of plain white COMFORTABLE tennis shoes and decided to work upon them to my satisfaction!

Since I loved gold and purple ,I decided to use them as my primary colours along with a hint of pink (yes I’m girly girl) . I also wanted my shoes to stand out from the rest and hence decided to add some glitz and glimmer by adding sequence and rhinestone (colored stones) I painted my shoes and worked on their intricacy and detailing . Once that was done I sequenced the regions I wanted to draw attention to . Using rhinestones I suffixed a tiara on the outer surface of both my shoes!! I interchanged the white laces for cute purple colored netted lace along with a hint of gold!

My shoes looked amazing- they not only looked great but were real comfortable too!! Since I started wearing them all I’ve been getting is comments and my friends wanting their shoes to be customized too! So I started customizing shoes for my friends too charging them a nominal amount for the requirements ! Once in a while I get clients( friend’s friends) who I charge a little more to make some money for myself!!

Vinita

If you want to place orders or come customize your shoes yourself you can email me on vinita_jayant@live.in. It's awesome fun and its way cheaper than buying a pair of funky sports shoes too!!

The road to Pakistan, betraying my imagination, is extraordinarily unremarkable. It looked much like a main road of any other medium-sized Indian town, littered with medical stores, roadside garbage, broken down rickshaws, mud-bathing street dogs and exposed brick buildings. It was only when I saw the signs for Attari Railway Station in Urdu that it hit me just how close we were to the alleged enemy nation. Though road signs in Urdu are not an entirely uncommon sight in India, for reasons I can't quite fathom, that sign, right there, filled me with an overwhelming sense of an emotion I couldn't quite decipher, but it sent shivers down my spine.

The celebrations at the Border Post started off with loud speakers blaring Bollywood songs of the patriotic kind. They eschewed the slower paced "Aiy mere Pyare Watans" and "Vande Matarams" in favour of newer, upbeat songs to adequately excite the audience.The 15,000-odd people were all maniacally waving the Indian flags that had been handed out to them, hoarsely singing along. The truly enthusiastic, with the security's blessings, poured onto the path where the final parade would eventually take place.

The proceedings were carefully co-ordinated by the Border Security Forces, in particular two dressed in civilian outfits whose job was much the same as the producers of Oprah, except with generous sprinklings of jingoistic zeal - they instructed the crowd when to clap, when to cheer, when to dance, when to ululate to drown out the Pakistani slogans emanating from the other side. If they noticed anyone who wasn't at least mouthing the words to the songs, they asked aggressively, "Arre! Muh latka ke kyu baite hon? Pakistani ho kya?" "Why the long face? Are you Pakistani or what?"

Very soon, the songs stopped having anything to do with India or Pakistan, freedom or prowess, beauty or fertility. The BSF were getting the audience on their side by harnessing the eternal power of "balle balle" - in a land where shoulders move with the thoughtless grace of eagles and hips sway with unapologetic confidence, getting people to their feet is like convincing an alcoholic to drink. About 10 Bollywood/Punjabi songs down, and people were so charged as to forget what they were celebrating in the first place. Before long, endorphin-fueled herd mentality had seized us all like some blood-thirsty emperor and slogans praising India were being chanted with frightening fervor. Unfortunately, but inevitably, there were also people chanting derisive rhymes about Pakistan.

Hearteningly, these were overall fairly muted and actively discouraged by the BSF. I wondered, though, how many people remembered that we were celebrating our independence from the British, not the Pakistanis. That the people who died at Jallianwala Bagh, not even 30 kms away from where we were, were both Indians and Pakistanis. That 61 years ago, on the very same grounds that were now witness to much revelry, millions were killed, families were amputated, people were suddenly stateless, women were brutally raped, men's lives were dependent on their foreskin status.

At some point, there was a brief march past but the path was promptly reclaimed by the revellers. Everyone was dancing: college students performing co-ordinated dance steps, newly married women still donning chudas on their mehendi-stained arms, school-going children, 50-something housewives. Everyone, that is, who wasn't an adult male. The few men who did attempt to disobey the BSF,gaining their courage from alcohol, were dragged away and pushed back into the stands.

Finally, the pathway was cleared for the "Border Retreat" ceremony, marking the closure of the gates at the international border. It started off with Indian soldiers, who looked much like mobile edifices, marching rapidly. Their exaggerated speed made their bellicose demeanour appear farcical, and while everyone watched with rapt attention, I felt a fit of giggles overpowering me.

 But I soon sobered down - watching the gates that link the two countries opening, knowing that the guards on both sides were shaking hands, hearing the Pakistanis chant "Ji Le, Ji Le, Pakistan!", seeing both countries' flags dipping, I felt my throat tightening and tears threatening to spill out.  I was simply overwhelmed by the fact that I was peeking into forbidden territory. Pakistan, the much-discussed, much-abhorred, much-feared Pakistan, was right there, its green flag a few feet away from the tricolour, its verdant fields sliced from India's by electrified fencing. I am well-aware that the ceremony on both sides of the fence is less military procedure and more a spectacle catering to the audience, but still, the fervent chanting and the relentless efforts to drown out the other side seemed like more than just innocent, cricket match type rivalry.

Given the mercurial nature of the diplomatic relations between the two countries, there is a fair chance that my dream of someday visiting Pakistan will never be fulfilled. But at least I can say I saw the country,even if from a distance. At least I can say, you know, it's really not that far from home.

I have never worn a bikini and known how it would feel on a nice hot summer day at the beach to laze around in it!

When you’re headed out of the city with a group of friends, you’re game for anything. Five guys and two girls, me included, were headed to IIT Kanpur for an architecture study visit. For some strange reason, we were carrying lesser money than we should have, with the result that we could only afford to buy general class tickets or travel ticketless (which we did while returning). We got off at Jhansi in UP for a train to Kanpur, which was scheduled to reach Jhansi at 5 am. We had gotten off at 8 pm so we decided to spend the night in the waiting rooms. However, with two trains already cancelled, the waiting rooms were packed two deep with disgruntled passengers and bags as far as the eye could reach. So what did we do? We set out bedsheets on a relatively clean patch of platform, kept our bags in the centre, posted one guy as night sentry, and slept in a circle around our bags. When we woke up at 4.50 am, our sentry was sleeping some distance away with a scrawny dog for company and our train to Kanpur was standing right in front of us. A mad dash to the train resulted, and to this day, I’m not sure if we got all our bags on board.

 

So I was about five, and it was my sisters’ (I have two, they’re twins) birthday. As usual I was up early, and decided to light them candles to mark the occasion. I made my way to their room, found some matches, candles, and a large lego brick to put it all in. I can’t remember if they were around or not, but this much is clear: I happily put the candles in the brick, lit them, and then, presumably did a little dance around the miniscule flames. The next thing I knew, the candles had burned to the bottoms, the brick was melting, and the plastic-based floor coating was on fire too. I panicked, turning the fan on, which only made the situation worse. Yelling for the maid, I headed to the bathroom to get some water, and doused the flames. They had left a nice, charred, oval mark in the floor, and I had to wake my parents up with words I thought I’d never say—“Mom, I started a fire.” Good times.

College projects can be pretty fun. If you have a good group to work with, you end up learning while having a good time too. However, one of my projects was to volunteer with an NGO for 60 hours. It might not have been such a bad thing really, if my college had understood the concept of a ‘volunteer’, except that they didn’t. This was compulsory. We were being forced to volunteer! Obviously everyone grumbled, including me, since this had just taken away two hours from me, twice a week, outside of regular college hours!

I chose to volunteer with Akanksha, teaching street children, and as was inevitable, I hated my first day. I kept getting texts from my friends who were going for coffee then a movie and I had to miss all of that because I was stuck in this school, listening to the teacher explain addition to these kids. And then, as if to add insult to injury, at the end of my session, I was given a book and told to write a log about what had gone on in the two hours that I was there!

I eventually warmed up towards my volunteer work; the kids were pretty awesome and kept me totally entertained. Soon, I even stopped making up stuff to write in the dreaded log. I genuinely started to enjoy my time there and having been initially forced, it was time well-spent. Sometimes you have to immerse yourself in an unknown world to understand your own, that’s what volunteering at Akanksha taught me. Everyone should try it out.

Part 1: I don’t do Bollywood
I have never been a Bollywood fan, at least not a die-hard one. So at a multiplex my friend and I broke into an argument as she insisted we see a Hindi film and I would rather watch a Hollywood comic caper.  As I emerged the winner, we bought our tickets and headed towards our screen.

Part 2: The waiting period
 In the lobby, both of us were quite surprised to see a huge crowd gathered and the paparazzi lined up on the other side. “Waiting for some celebrity o what,” I sneered to my friend.  The word celebrity must have ticked some of her brain cells, as she quickly joined the fans side. Left with no choice, I followed and started eyeing the nearest elevator.

Part 3: Almost like an out of the body and out of mind experience
Just as my patience was running out, I hear a gush of excited voices and walks in Abhishek Bachchan, (promoting some movie called Delhi-6, didn’t I just decline to watch the film, I asked myself).  And just then, there I was all blushing, and jumping (not exaggerating) and screaming Abhishek Bachchan’s name as if my life depended on it. “I want a picture with you,” I yelled.  My friend merely looked at me shocked (more jealous, I would say), as Junior AB (yeah, I know the Bollywood lingo now) walked towards me, took my 2MP phone camera in his hand and clicked a picture of us together.

Part4: The Aftermath
 It’s the screensaver of my computer and my cell phone and my display picture on Facebook. Need I say more, I was star-struck!