Fragments of Insanity

I have more to say about my office, and why I am considering leaving it. This reason has, sort of, been hanging there in the background. But for the past two weeks, it has grossed me out so much that I feel like I can’t work there even if they offered me all what I’m demanding. I don’t know whether every office works this way or only some of them.

I don’t have that many friends in the office. I have many acquaintances, but only one good friend. She’s two years older than me, married, has two small kids, and has been working there for over an year now. She’s all ears to all my problems, and she gives a lot of valuable advice too. I totally admire her for how whole-heartedly she can stand by her friends and can help them with all her effort at any time. I long for time alone with her, although it’s not possible these days. For future reference, let’s call her ACP.

And the others at the office, who have tried to be friendly with me, have spent a lot of time together, are the ones who are a problem now. Like most human beings, I find my comfort level with only a few people, and it’s only with these people that I can talk about anything under the sky. But it seems that’s not the case with these people. They have assumed that they can speak about anything to me, or while I’m around. ‘They’ consists of two guys and a girl, who are rather good friends of my friend, ACP.

They talk about things which I find to be unbearable, which primarily includes really bad adult-jokes [which are too twisted for my (in?)sanity sometimes and therefore I don't even get them] and what’s even worse is that, the first few times, they even went to the extend of explaining them to me for crying out loud! Having been grossed out so many a time, I have chosen to be stern enough to tell them, “Y’know what? I can live without knowing what it means. So don’t bother”. So they’ve stopped explaining it, for God’s grace! Nowadays, I pretend not to get these jokes even if I do, just to escape from the uneasiness that I feel, listening to it from people I don’t want to hear it from, among a crowd I wish was different. When I pretend not to get it, or really don’t get it, these guys will burst into a laughter as though I’m missing out on so much by not getting the joke. The indecent laughter, it’s so disgusting, that I feel like puking all over my keyboard right now! I mean, is it the ignorance or the immense knowledge about sex, which makes the joke so funny to them? Or just plain immaturity? How does a pun on one word become funnier when sex is involved? And those guys I talked about.. What kind of miserable lowlifes are they, to read adult-jokes together from their cell-phones(not aloud, but to themselves) in front of girls and break into loud and uncontrollable laughter? It’s really humiliating, especially because they are nowhere near the ‘friend’ zone to me, and also because I, kind of, despise them.

Adult jokes are just one thing that I’ve mentioned.. The list goes on to cover topics like menstruation, viagra, random sleazy experiences etc etc.. I like being the innocent girl, and I want people to treat me that way. People who are close to me are either very childish themselves :P or are fond of children!! hehe!! :D I find it shocking that some people develop romantic interest in me too, especially at the office. Isn’t that paedophilia? :O Well.. Except for my Ex who was as childish as me, so it was ok!!! :P Anyway, I had an ardent admirer till a few weeks back, who was stalking me for days, insisted on me loving him back :D and I had to bunk office some mornings just to avoid running into this guy! I had it sorted out by involving a common friend/acquaintance, not proud to say this, but a local gangster sort of guy, who’s studying in our institute. :O He got involved because, this admirer got my number from my own student, who’s a common friend of the gangster too[Now I find myself consorting with gangster types? :O Realized it just now!] But thanks to the admirer, around 8 or 9 unknown guys know my name now, and where I work too, and they kept calling and giving missed-calls like crazy. I simply stopped attending calls from unknown numbers and ignored them completely, and the calling has stopped, as expected. Goodness! Students who betray me? Where did he get my number from?? Damn it, I’ve GOT to leave this place!!

So that’s a lot of reasons for me to quit, yes? I still feel there’re more.. And when I can remember them, I’ll come up with more revelations!

“Ex tells her that he wont love any one else in his life till he gets married. Ex does not know whether that act can be called love afterwards!”

Crazy Girl thinks:

Well, crazily thinking, there are endless possibilities!

They could make a pact. If either of them does not get married in 4 or 5 years, they could marry each other. In CG’s opinion, since it cannot be called love afterwards, what difference does it make? They are already quarelling like married couples and this would take lesser time in understanding Ex’s war strategies and coming up with CG’s new ideas for counter-attack!!! :D

Been a long time since I blogged. Wow I donno how many entries of mine start with this line!! :P

Well… My life is certainly a mess right now. Especially my career. I deviated into the area of my choice and still ended up with a job that sucks! LOL!! How in the world did I manage to do that???

My job sucks. Really.

Is it too hard to find the right job? Or atleast something that’s just not vaguely related to the field I want? Am I asking for too much here?

I send my resume to every part of the country and still do not get a single reply from anyone. I am tired, fed up and unhappy all the time.

I don’t think that I have been this unhappy for this long ever! Been five months of toil now and I feel as unsure of this job as I was on the day I joined.

Post graduation is another option for me. But I don’t know what I wanna post-graduate in, so I am giving myself some time to figure that out before making wrong choices.

I just wonder how much longer I have to put up with this before I flip out completely or get a good job! I mean, I spoke angrily to my manager the other day. Maybe I’ll get fired before I flip out! LOL!!!

Anila, Aravind, Bindu, Cris, Srijith and I got inside the gate by 3:30pm. A little later, Sreenath joined us. We had embellished ourselves with the TIDYCITY badges[I assume that's how Aravind found us in the first place!] We got ready to start the procedure by applying Odomos, wearing gloves and distributing the sacks.

The lawns and the sand were almost clean. In my opinion, Veli was comparatively cleaner than the dirty museum premises. Most of the litter was near the food vendors and the deserted construction areas. The waste bins, although very aesthetically made, was rather useless since most people wouldn’t understand that it is, in fact, a waste-bin.

There were people from the public who inquired about our activities. We dumped the waste that was collected from the premises into the misleadingly-shaped waste-bins each time the sacks got full. We used gloves and tongs this time, which made the work easier. But the gloves needed to be removed and worn in intervals since our hands were perspiring like anything inside them. The plastic covers which we used last time, though messy, were better compared to gloves because of this one drawback.

By 4:30, we completed a great deal of the cleaning process by cleaning up to the park area. We needed some rest since there has been a lot of waste to collect and a lot of area to cover for 7 people. While we were taking rest, we discussed the next steps to take and the feedback from today’s work. Cris noted down everything that we were discussing. The discussion ended with some good suggestions for our next day’s activities, and Bindu had to go in order to attend a seminar on POTA [I presume..] as we had almost finished our day’s work. But soon, Anoop, Hari and Joshua joined us. They were in full vigor to contribute their share to TIDYCITY’s tidying efforts of the day!

The 9 of us dispersed inside the park area, which was apparently the dirtiest place inside Veli. There were ice-cream cups and covers and sticks everywhere. It needed some serious cleaning. There was a small hill which was covered with soft-drink bottles and ice-cream covers and cups. We cleaned up the whole mess while people were watching.

The beach area was the ugliest! It was pointless cleaning it up. We picked up the ice-cream covers and the big pieces of paper ad plastic waste. But what are we supposed to do about small bits of paper and wrappers that, sort of, covered the whole sand layer? Like Sreenath said, this place couldn’t be cleaned even if you used a strainer!

I don’t know much about the shopkeepers’ opinions on this. Srijith can definitely throw some light on that, so find it out in his post. All I know is that, they were unaware of the fact that plastic shouldn’t be burned and that it creates toxic matter that pollutes air when burned. But I still don’t think that they have any other solution to avoid burning plastic material or that they’ll stop burning it from today onwards. Nevertheless, the message has been spread to them, and we’ll keep doing that.

So we’ve said the magic words again today and are just waiting for the magic to begin.

I hastily walked in once the doors slided open. I didn’t expect to see any familiar face in there. For almost an year, I’ve been walking through these doors, but never have I encountered anyone who looked even remotely close to anyone I know. I was most disinterested and the thought of going back home no more cheers me up like it used to an year ago. It was a completely new place. I think I had gotten adjusted to this life the very second I got here. That is, if spending every single day that’s not a tad different from the previous one, living in sheer monotony, can possibly come up with something to adjust to, which it never has. Well, never until today. Today was different. As I walked through the doors, I had nothing much to think about. hmm.. Not true. The overwhelming thought of getting a seat, which was an indispensible part of my routine, never fails me. It takes more than skill or luck to slide your way through, sans pushing or foot-stamping, and finally obtain that empty seat. Today also, I got to win! It is amazing how the shallow, fleeting excitement from these little things constitute an integral contribution to my daily dose of adrenalin rush. For a person who used to live on the edge, this ought to be hell. Surprisingly, I did not care enough. My life had become this. And I will live it till my last breath, no matter what. This, I say after eradicating all traces of optimism that could be contained in or between those words. I say it only because of the numbness that the cruelty of my own past has imposed on me.

The numbness didn’t keep me from smiling at her. As she smiled back, I noticed that her eyes were not as wide as mine. Neither was she drunk with awe like me. She seemed composed, even when I was sitting right next to her. But I was getting the greatest adrenalin rush than any that I had gotten in the last one year, or all of them combined. It was probably like saving all the seats in that goddamn metro train before anyone sits on any of them. I tried to see whether she was looking at me. She wasn’t. She was looking down. There is nothing more emotionally hurting than a break up that didn’t go well, especially when you were the only one who didn’t want it. I asked her how she was. She was pressing buttons on her PDA, and her answer was nothing more than a casual facial expression and shoulder-shrug that conveyed “What can I say..”. I told her that I moved here an year ago, and that I’ve been taking this train everyday to my office and back. I also said that I’ve never chanced upon anyone I knew, although I had been living here for an year. Well that wouldn’t have actually happened if I hadn’t left it to chance to meet them. I was shut off from all sorts of communication with my friends. I talk to my family, not often though. I don’t have friends at the office. I kept myself aloof from the mingling. I said that the weather over here is very nice, and that I’ve started to really like it here. I mentioned my favorite restaurant and the place I go to buy groceries from. I mentioned the places in the city which I thought were simply beautiful. I glanced around and said that the rush was lesser that evening, and that’s when I realized that I have to stop babbling. She didn’t respond to anything, not even a tiny twitch of a facial muscle. She kept pressing the buttons. I saw the guy who was sitting next to her. He was sleeping. How can you possibly sleep next to a girl who looks as pretty as her? And here I am, on the other side, trying to build up a conversation with the only girl I’ve ever loved, and who at some point of time, did love me too. I told her that it has not been the same since we broke up, that the break-up made a major change in my lifestyle. I told her that she looked really good that day. Then, I told her that I’ve missed her.

Approximately ten minutes later, words finally stopped coming out of my mouth. And after about two minutes of silence, silence pertaining to my mouth and hers alone, I asked her whether she was never gonna reply. And she stopped pressing the buttons. She looked at me, the same way she looked at me an year ago, before walking out on me. I craved to hear her say, “I’ve missed you”. Like always, she let me down. She said, “This is my stop” and got up. For one moment, I thought she stopped pressing those buttons because of me; to answer my questions; to satisfy my cravings. To know right now whether I would have asked her if I could see her again, or whether she’s living in the same city, or any other hopeful questions, I should have needed sufficent time in between her “This is my stop” and another unexpected gesture. My mind went totally blank with that last gesture. She awakened the man who was sleeping next to her, by gently patting on his cheek. As soon as the doors slided open, both of them walked out of the train, leaving a miserable me inside, still sitting on the seat that I saved, with two empty ones next to me. She did not say goodbye, and she did not turn back to look. Now I know why he could sleep sitting next to her. She belonged to him, that’s why he can sleep so peacefully, even inside a crowded metro train. The doors slided close again.

Prelude

Vids: yep!! good old school days!!

Vids: 8->

Friend: and college was totally different :)

Vids: i like school days better, though…

Vids: enthannariyilla… [Donno why..]

Vids: oru unity undayirunnathe pole… [Like there was some kind of a unity..]

Friend: enikku nere thiricha :D [For me, it's the opposite]

Friend: i made better friends at college :-?

Vids: hehe!! ente ippolathe close buds school pals ane!! :P [My close pals are still the ones from school!]

Vids: college-il ake oraal ane real close… baaki ellam shallow.. [I have only one close friend from college.. Rest all are shallow..]

Vids: athentha? [Why so?]

Vids: u studied there for 12 yrs rt?

Friend: no no….5 years in one class, next year in another, next 2 in another

Vids: eh??

Vids: vere school? [another school?]

Friend: +2 *name_of_school* :D

Friend: till 4 th *name_of_school* :D

Vids: hmm… so u studied longer in engg coll

Vids: mebbe that’s y

Friend: yeah kinda :)

Friend: school friends kept changing

Vids: hmm..

Vids: i studied in my school for 12 long years

Vids: :)

Vids: u can imagine the depth of friendship i had with my school pals

Friend: yep !! :)

Friend: 12 years is a loooooong time :)

Vids: more than a decade :o

Vids: wow!! i realized that only now!!!

Friend: hehe :D

Friend: yes ~! one decade of same set of friends :)

Vids: oh my god!!!

Vids: i am gonna blog about this!! :D

Friend: ;)

Friend: go ahead ;)

Vids: thanks!! :P

I realized only last night that I’ve known my close buds for over ten years!! I mean, it’s really astonishing to realize that some of the people I talk to today came into my life more than ten years back, considering I’m only 22 now! How many people have been there in my life for more than ten years? Besides parents, bro and relatives, of course.. hmm..

My neighbors.. They’ve known me for twenty one years so far, I think! My first year was spent at the rented house we had, which I have no memory of living in.. Anyway, in this neighborhood, I was the only girl; the other houses were populated with a father, mother and two sons. So I was pampered a lot, obviously, by the mommies of all these sons! I remember something funny that I used to do when I was small. Every time I bought a new dress, hair-clip, bangle or whatsoever fancy, I used to take a trip to all these houses to show it off! Thankfully, I don’t do that now!!! :D Anyway, one more female member joined us some time later; she was the eldest and most respectable one out of the lot! We were a battalion of eleven, two girls and nine guys, in which two of them were younger than me, one guy of my same age and six of them older than me. I remember all the Deepawalis, Onams, Vishus and Karthikas that were spent together. It was one hell of a bonding :-) It does feel like a two decade long relationship…

My school-van-driver.. hmm.. Not really a decade, but nine years is long enough. His name is Madhu, maybe over 55 years old when I was in tenth standard. He was not actually the driver, he was the owner. The driver was another guy. Madhu Uncle used to sit inside to take care of the kids to see that all of us behave properly inside the van! I remember only a few things about him though. He had a beard which was longer than usual; some of the hairs gone grey. His voice when raised, scared the hell out of quarreling, noisy children!! There were some kids who behaved properly all the time, at whom he never yelled. I was one of them! [I used to be a quiet girl till tenth standard] I was the first person to get into the Mahindra van named ‘Kannan Travels‘ every morning, mine being the first stop. This means I get to sit wherever I please to sit every morning! Sometimes, I used to walk to the place where the van was parked, and get inside rightaway to avoid standing and waiting at the stop. Everyday, at sharp 7:45 AM, the driver will start the van and my journey to school thus begins! For almost half an hour, Madhu Uncle will be chanting prayers and that time, only devotional songs will be played inside the van. He used to keep a couple of pictures of Hindu Gods on the dashboard, light incense, and hang a small garland of fresh jasmine flowers on the pictures. He goes to Sabarimala every year, and that’s the time all the children used to monkey around in the van, unable to be controlled by the substitute! The last time I saw him was two years back near my school. After a few minutes of chit-chatting [because he had a van full of kids to be dropped at their respective homes!], well after chit-chatting, I must have gone where I was going. I don’t remember. Anyway, I don’t know where he is now or what he is doing either. But that’s a person who I’ve talked to, almost everyday for nearly a decade!

My friends from school.. My close buddies from school, they are the ones who I still hang out with. And I can’t believe that I’ve been knowing them for ten whole years, well, actually sixteen years! I remember my first day in school. I joined a little late in first standard, only in the second term. I had a bad leg accident a few days before the class started. My bro’s friend was riding the cycle, me sitting in front, on the bar on which the cycle’s seat is fixed. My foot was caught between the cycle’s spokes. That did a lot of damage to my foot, me being a small five year old kid. It took a lot of time to heal, leaving a scar that’s visible even now! I couldn’t walk for a long time and I had to stay away from school even without attending the first official day! My first day was the first day of the second term. My class teacher, Ms. Gladys, made me sit on the second bench, out of consideration [:-|] with a girl named Rekha, whose pink plastic earrings I still remember!! I don’t know whether it was the big plastic earrings or the neatly brown-paper-bound and plastic laminated books that made me uneasy. Well, I think the primary reason was that she kept stamping my wound which had not healed yet. On complaining [I was a small kid, forgive me!], Gladys Teacher moved me to the back bench where only a girl and a boy were sitting. Gladys Teacher also asked the girl to help me catch up with my studies. So, the first girl I talked to in first standard was Minu. [I remember the boy, Thomas, who was sitting in between us! We soon chucked him out to the end of the bench, for Minu and me to sit together!] We still call each other up, hang out together, and she never forgets to wish me on my b’day! I studied for twelve years with her, and then two more years at college. She became my senior in college as I joined a year late! She was the only familiar face for a while, until I made some new friends from my batch. Was that history repeating or something? :P Another great friend who I met in school is Maria, one of my best friends, who gives me advices that actually work! The good thing about such a long friendship is that, even if we don’t call each other up frequently [maybe only thrice a month or even less], every time that ‘hello’ is heard over the phone, I feel a certain comfort and warmth, and never feel that we’ve not talked for that long! I find my true comfort level only with a few people, and these great ones I found in school are some of them. Everyone from my batch, during the learning phase of our lives must have built up a common wavelength or something, which got only better with time and that too, a whopping twelve years! When I talk to Maria or any of the others, I do not feel that we were talking everyday for over a decade, and kept talking with the same fervor even after school. I feel like I’ve known them ever since the day I was born! If all the talking were represented by a line, I would neither see the beginning of it, since time has effaced it as it grew, nor the end, since we are never gonna fall away! I’m not gonna say how many times that line would circle the earth, since that line’s tacky(-ier.. hehe!)!!

I had to sit with this blog entry for a long time. I intented only to mention the astonishingly interesting discovery and realization of a decade of friendship. I never thought that it would turn out to be a probe into my life instead! I had to clear out a lot that I wrote, since it was just too many details! I’ve said what I needed to say. Gonna keep the rest to myself! ;-)

I do blog.

62 posts in four years say that I don’t blog AT ALL?

No way!!

I have no idea why I started blogging. None why I keep blogging either.

Most people I know, keep updating their blog everyday, and that does make me feel a little uneasy.

Really.

The ones who used to read my blog has started forgetting about it now.

Can’t blame them either.

How can I sustain their interest if I take so much time to update my blog?

Anyways, none of this will make me write more than what I do now!

A time will come when nobody reads my blog.

Even then, I wouldn’t have any idea why I started blogging.

Let my blog be forgotten

Let my words not be read

Let my thoughts never be expressed

And let me never exist

First of all, the people who kept their words and came for the Orkut Meet are Sampath, Srijith, Sajith, Vivek, Cris, Drisya and me.

I got there at 2:15pm, and Srijith and Sampath were already there. :-) We went inside and Srijith told me that Sajith was already there wandering around somewhere inside! I think he had spent the whole day inside the museum premises, attending the TDF meeting in the morning and the Orkut Meet afternoon! :-P By 2:30, Vivek also came in, with his priced possession, his camera, clasped in his hands! Inseparable beings… :-P We waited there till 2:45, and starting to sense that it couldn’t go anymore beyond the 5 of us, we proceeded to the next step, i.e, Ice-creams!! :-D

When we were halfway through to the KTDC Restaurant, Srijith received a call in his mobile. It was none other than Cris! :-) So now we became a decent 6, until things got even better! Cris had bought a friend along, Drisya, or rather, Dr. Drisya! :-P Yay!! Now we were 7 in number!!!

The ice-cream session was really fun, though I think both Srijith’s and my earnestness to get the food and drinks from the counter was clear mistaken, as we were affectionately addressed as ‘Suppliers’ by the team!!! :-D Btw Sajith, Sampath and Vivek decided to be bujis and opted tea ;-) Of course, it was for other reasons that they wanted to deprive themselves of ice-creams!! We all know!! :-P There was some questionable ‘pazhampori‘ too, one for each, though us, the girls, didn’t eat any. I think there was only one remaining by the time we left.. hmm.. I think someone was really hungry!! Wonder who.. :-P Srijith?? Maybe!!!

After a second round of ice-creams, we moved to the Kanakakkunnu Ground, towards all those rides, the giant wheel, the boat etc etc.. I persuaded everyone to get into a particular ride, which I never liked for a single moment while I was in it, especially after hearing from Cris that she’s scared of such rides too!! :-P We all got in with much expectations, Vivek sitting behind me exactly like he said he would, so that he can throw up perfectly all over me!!!! :-D But the thing stopped working all of a sudden to our disappointment, especially mine, since I so wanted Cris and Drisya to go through what I had gone through the previous day!!!!! Anyway, we got the ticket back and we decided to get into the giant wheel instead. Srijith, Sampath and I were in one cage(cage? gondola? cabin? what’s it called, btw??), Vivek in the next one, and Sajith, Cris and Drisya in another one. Once the thing gained speed, I started making hysterical noises, Sampath keeping (apparently :P) cool, and Srijith, I think, was trying to dislodge the cage off the hook.. X-( Anyways, after much horrific anticipation, the wheel stopped spinning at last.. whew!!!

Well, it was almost 5pm by then. Cris and Drisya had to go somewhere, and I think Sajith had gotten tired by then. We all started saying our byes and dispersed slowly. That was an end to an amazing day of fun.. :-)

I’ve wondered why.. But I donno why.. How is it possible that every time I stand below the shower, with water falling on my head, I become lost in intense thoughts? When my friend asked me why I returned from bath every time with so many ideas about how to do my art-plates and other assignments when I was in hostel, I’ve wondered why that was happening too!! I think non-stop when I’m taking a shower!!! All complicated problems of mine are solved magically beneath the shower!! Isn’t that funny? Really funny? It is, to me! Not just problems, I think about things that are in no way related to me… Like today, I was thinking about carboxyl group and carboxylic acids!

HCOOH however found it’s way into my mind.. I forgot the name of this acid, though.. I was trying to figure out it’s structure.. I knew that Carbon had 4 valence electrons, Hydrogen had 1 and Oxygen had 2.. Even if I assigned a hydrogen, oxygen and hydroxyl to the carbon atom, it still had one more place left, and so did oxygen :-( That’s when double bond hit me! Oxygen and carbon shares a double bond, problem solved!! I didn’t know whether I was right though, coz it’s been a long time since I’ve said the words, ‘carbon’, ‘hydrogen’ or ‘oxygen’ and even more time since I’ve used ‘carboxyl’, ‘valence electron’, ‘hydroxyl’ and ‘double bond’ in a sentence!! hehe!!

Anyway, I got interested about organic chemistry suddenly. I searched for my old textbooks from school. I got hold of the K.L.Chugh ISC Chemistry textbook, which I seriously used as a pillow one night before the model exam. It’s three and a half inches thick, everything that had to be known written in boring small letters, making it seem unworthy of spending time with!! Anyways, this book seems pretty interesting now! I flipped through the pages that were once Greek and Latin to me, which reminded me of the bad days I had to spend with this book, trying to understand it, trying to like it. I put in a lot of effort into it, to make the relationship work. But some are just too difficult to put up with. I spent days and nights listening to what it has got to say to me. Some things were pretty boring that I fell asleep in between. I know that’s not how relationships work. But I got tired, because it was an endless ramble of things that I could never picture, or relate to.. Our relationship ended forever, the day after the Chemistry Board Examination! And I can’t say how relieved I was… :-)

Uhm.. I think I should shower less :|

They called me on 30th morning. It was around 9:30 AM, and I was still sleeping! I’ve divided almost all my contacts in my phone into groups and has assigned ringtones for each group. So when my phone goes ‘You donno how you met me, you donno why you can’t turn around..”, most of the time, it means that some stranger is calling. I thought it was the Airtel guys, calling to ask me to pay my phone bill. But this was a landline number, so I was eager to find out who it was. I cleared my throat to seem a little less cranky and attended the call. A female voice asked me whether she is talking to Vidya Gopalakrishnan. Upon affirmation, she told me that she is calling me from an institute called ‘Figurelines’. I remember the name, my dad had gone there once to leave my resume for a lecturer’s post. I couldn’t go, since I was having my dentist’s appointment everyday, and couldn’t talk.. They told him that they’ll call me if something comes up. So I was thinking that something had come up. I listened more carefully to what she was saying.. She told me that she found my resume in her office, and asked if I was working anywhere now. I said I wasn’t, and she asked me to go to her office as soon as I can. Before hanging up, she also asked whether I was willing to work outside Trivandrum.

I jumped out from my bed after I hung up! I had to get there before 10:30 atleast, lest they think I was sleeping!! When I reached there, it took a bit of time to start the interview, since the Institute owner had gone out. The owner was a woman, who presented a warm smile as she came into the room. A little later, her husband came in too. And the talking began. I don’t remember much of the conversation, but I do remember the important parts. They told me that they are not only running a school, but also a boutique. The school provided Diploma in Fashion Design, and it was a one-year course. Some of the students chose to work in the boutique, while some of them choose to start their own. Right now, the offer that came to me was not from the school. It was from the boutique. Not their boutique, it was from one that one of their friends in Kozhikkode was starting. This friend was starting a boutique in a town called Kottakkal, between Thrissur and Kozhikode. It was a small town, but a town full of NRIs, ready to spend whatsoever it takes to buy clothes without having to go too far into the city! Ample opportunity, if you ask me! This guy, the friend needed a degree holder as their designer, and that’s how I was called upon.

I had to relocate to this town. That’s the only thing that scared me. It’s a small town after all.. And I won’t be making much money :-( But during the interview, due to an unexpected turn of events, I was offered a good pay and also, an ASSISTANT!!! :D For a fresher like me, this was absolute bliss!!! I was floating up there, somewhere, for the rest of the day!! :P God! This was my first job, I finished my course two months before, and I get to be a FASHION DESIGNER, I had to run the boutique, had my own assistant, got the best salary ever out of everyone who had studied BFT in my college!! Making good money out of something that I love!! Now that’s some achievement!!! :D

I didn’t pinch myself to see if I was dreaming, coz if I was, I didn’t wanna wake up! There are simply no words to express my endless happiness or gratitude to all my friends who’ve been praying for me, especially three of my friends, one who I asked to pray for me [her prayers work everytime, therefore I save it for special occasions! :P], another friend who I didn’t ask, but prayed for me out of pure concern :-) and another friend, who couldn’t call me on my b’day because she had no balance, so prayed to God for me instead :-)

But after I had came down from cloud nine, I began thinking about it. I mean, this all happened too easy and it’s too good to be true! Neither have I paid my dues, nor have I sacrificed anything that perfect for something like this to happen. I do believe, though faintly, in the doctrine of Karma! I don’t believe in many lives and all, but I do believe that deeds are rewarded or punished in this life itself.. Maybe I’m being stupid, but come on.. Do I deserve this? Is this some kind of a trap? Yet to see.. As of now, I’m going back to cloud nine and stay there! :P