Sudipta's Life

I am in my apartment right now, typing away on my laptop. While I am here, I thought I'd write about where I live. You might be wondering about whats so interesting about somebody's living quarters? Well, read on... When I arrived here, I was left at the door of the apartment by the driver of the taxi, and he said, "Go on in". I bid him goodbye, and then walked to the door. It was a wood-panelled glass double-door, something where after you open one door, there is another one inside right after which you open to get into the lobby. And it was then that I discovered that the first door was locked --- woops! The only other thing you could see there was a steel board on the wall beside with loads of smooth circular buttons that had numbers marked 11 through 48, and a little wire-mesh on top covering a speaker. Hmm... so this was just like in the movies: you press a button, and you can talk directly to the person in the apartment whose number you pressed. Now the question...

Dear readers, This post is going to be about how my trip was like from Mumbai till Edinburgh. But there is a little problem here: I will not be so frequent in posting replies to your comments or even visitng your blogs. Internet access is a problem here and I am posting this as a copy-paste from something I noted on a Notepad :) Ok, lets start. When I was leaving my room in Mumbai, I had my share of feel-good and feel-bad moments. As someone who has travelled out can confirm, you usually wear the heaviest set of clothing you've got when you travel, so that the baggage weight is reduced. In my case, it was a suit. So there I came out of my room, wearing a suit with a nice shirt, shining shoes, prim and proper shaved face... you get the picture. Now, it was about 9:30-10:00 at night and almost all our neighbours were in the open area just in front of the housing society, having their share of end-of-the-day chit-chat. So here I come out, in a fully suave outfit, with a majestic Arist...

Yups... onsite!! *Claps, dances about, does a jig on the polished floor, tumbles because he cannot control himself, squeals and shouts 'Yay-yay-yayyyy'!!* Yes, dear reader, yours truly is going onsite to Scotland, Edinburgh. Prerona , if you are reading this, please check your hotmail and gmail mailboxes and let me know when you will be back. I am scheduled to fly on the night of the 18th of January (yes, it is that close), British Airways. This assignment is supposed to last till the end of March, and so I hope to taste a very cold UK Winter in the 2-3 months in the time that I am there. While I am all kicked about going there, let me tell you what has been happening here in the past few weeks. After I was asked to submit my passport's and other information, the sudden feeling of "Yess!! I'm going onsite" grabbed me. Initially, 6 people were asked to submit the documents and we were told that any one or two people would be sent. So, all of us here were a bit ...

Ok, people, since you all have commented so much on my last post , I think you deserve to know about the phone call and its details as well, or rather, why I could not speak the following evening (never mind to or with whom ;). Our college is located at a place called ' Ichchhanath ' in Surat, and it derives its name from a temple located just outside the college gate, dedicated to Lord Shiva. One of his various names is 'Ichchhanath', meaning The Lord Of Will. It is a different matter that our college is an IIT (Ichchhanath Institute of Technology ;) ). But we digress... Most people from our college go to this temple at least once a day. Sometimes, when they rise early and go for the morning tea, people visit the temple. Most people go and visit it in the evening, just after the college is over, sometime between incessant 'bakar', badam-mixture and tea. Also, some people visit it just after or before a big journey, maybe a travel home on a vacation, etc. I hope...

Readers, thank you so much for all those cheer-up comments on my last post about being homesick. So here is something to prove that I am in good humour now. Some people have been pestering me if I have ever paid any compliments to a girl. I keep telling them that I don't like to pay compliments unless they are worth mentioning and remembering. Ok-ok, I know that your radars are now at full alert. So before I go further, let me clarify a few things. The 'some people' are friends. The 'worth mentioning' part comes into the picture because if you are a girl reading this post, and I have not paid you a proper compliment as yet, then you must wait for that worth-mentioning idea to strike me (try wooing me, if you want that quick ;). Now, again, what qualifies as a worth-mentioning compliment? Did you watch the Ponds' googly-woogly ads recently? Or maybe you heard them on the radio? Well, they are the ones I am talking about. I was in my final year at my engineering c...

I usually pride myself on the number of years I have spent in hostels. To be precise, I have been in hostels since Class VII ... 4 years at Purulia, then a couple of years at Durgapur, and then 4 years at Surat followed by the last 2 years approximately at Mumbai. Yes, that adds up to close to 12 years. It is not that I have not met my family in this interval, but these breaks have been such treasured intervals that I think I have come to realise the importance of living at home, with family more and more. However, this has also caused a little queer notion to develop in my mind --- anytime I am at home, even between hostels and institutions, I feel like I am on vacation. As for example, when I passed Class XII and was waiting for the reporting date at my engineering college, the whole time went past just like another long vacation, and not like I was back at home. It is a queer thing to explain, I guess people who have been in hostels for some time will understand. However, this one h...