I think one of my biggest learnings this year has been to find my own company enjoyable. It's not that I don't like being alone. In fact there are times when I love being alone since it gives me the freedom to mould my day as I wish. But what I mean here is that there are certain things which I can never do on my own, like going for a movie on my own. But there was a time when even travelling on my own was added to that list and I would think of ways to fill up my evenings after work, judiciously noting down phone numbers of friends whom I planned to call after work. But it all changed this year. Forced to fall back on my own companies in far-away lands I have gradually come to a phase where I can even begin to think of roaming around unknown cities on my own and take pleasure in it.
I remember spending three days in Bangalore sometime in April this year, and taking off to Brigade Road in the evenings to explore bookshops and pick up stuff from KFC because no company was available except my own. I found much pleasure gallivanting on my own in Ghana. In Johannesburg, I booked on on sight-seeing trips, and I surprised myself by having a lot of fun while learning about the city and its history in the process. In Uganda, I took off on my own again to trace the origin of the White Nile and to see the gorgeous Bujagali Falls on Lake Victoria slowly being killed by the dam being bult on it. I am already preparing myself for a tor of Frankfurt (provided I get the visa) by reading up on the internet about places of historical and cultural interest.
This is a welcome change. I remember last year when I was in Nairobi I e-mailed a barely known acquaintance just to help me see the city in the night, and how I anxiously waited to hear back from him. I even decided not to do Masai Mara since I was sure that I would not enjoy it on my own.
I am glad that things have changed, and now before leaving for any new or old place I don't have to pour over e-mail lists or phone books just to make sure that I have a good time. I know I'll enjoy myself as long as I have places to see, food to eat and money enough to support my travel.
But going to a movie on my own? Nah. Not yet.

I have a deadline breathing down my neck. I have to submit my paper to University of Hildesheim by 31st August and then do one more important deadline. So how do I deal with it? I bunk office to go the library and the next day I sit at work and read blogs. Not mine of course. But blogs of other women, many of whom have surprisingly turned out to be fellow she-bongs. And right now thanks to so much of wanking around, my mind is totally like an empty slate. I can't even make sense of the paper that I have written so far. And to think that this is an international conference! I am already breaking into sweat thinking how mine will be the most worst-written paper around, which will prove that I know next to nothing about my subject and I sent it in just because I wanted a free trip to Germany. Concentrate, concentrate.
So today we pick up Baba from Gurgaon in the evening. I plan to cook my wonderful chicken curry tomorrow morning. Then after dropping baba off to the airport, I plan to take A by force to watch "Shob Charitro Kalponik". Not that I am big fan of Rituporno, but one chance for me to feel Bengali.
and I cycled today for half an hour inside the sprawling IIT campus. I was rudely awakened by A at 5.30 am for this. And I am so sleepy now that I don't know how to concentrate on my paper. If my paper turns out to be all shit, you'll know whose fault it is.

I learnt in horror from my cousin's update on Facebook that Vedic Village resort has been burnt down. However,as more and more details of what actually happened there emerged, my horror has turned into fascination, reading up in Kolkata newspapers about how the resort changed the lives of the poor villagers living around it, as some turned into owners of land-mafia syndicates, and ensured that other villagers parted with their land or paid for non-compliance through other means. I worry constantly that my state is becoming ungoverned and ungovernable. Greed, corruption and criminalisation will be the its final undoing. And no, Didi is certainly not the great big hope. If anything, her party has its own set of local thugs, who have built up their resistance to the Party, by studying very carefully about what made the Party stay on power for 30 years ( much of it by violence and intimidation) and then using the same techniques against the Party that invented them.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1090825/jsp/frontpage/story_11405407.jsp

My customary one-liner from Kampala, Uganda

Also I have completed one year of being a blogger. Amazing feat, given how inconsistent I am about other things. My father was surprised to learn that I write a lonely blog, i.e. one that is read by only 3 people on earth. But I like it this way. My blog is not meant to reach out to a lot of people. In fact, hardly anybody knows that I have a blog and I have intentionally not spread the word, though I have often debated whether I should put it up on FB or Orkut but on final analysis have decided against it. I am not sure I want too many people to read what I write here. It's not about writing a famous blog. It's just about getting back in touch with my love of writing,a place for expressing myself, it's about creating an identity in my increasingly uni-dimensional life.

So my fourth dwelling place in three and half years and many many more to come. My beginning to stay on IIT campus has returned me back to my childhood days of long power-cuts. So here's what I am doing on a hot and humid evening with no lights on: sitting on the balcony and blogging while listening to FM. This house is so small that the two of us can barely squeeze ourselves together but what the heck..this is ours. Also, the tiny two room student accommodation has a lovely balcony, spacious, with leafy green branches of neem tree so close that you can reach out and touch them.