2012 - The year of friends, family and turning points.

I was going through my facebook timeline and I found this wonderful message, which I would like to share with all of you. It says:

"Here’s to 2011:
The year where friends became strangers and strangers became friends. Where lovers became haters and haters became lovers. The year where mistakes were made and lessons were learnt.Where stories were shared and memories were created. Where people hit rock bottom and where people raised back up.
Here’s to 2011: the drama, the fights, the memories, the laughter, the tears, and the craziness.Bring on 2012!!! :)"

Today is the last day of this year. The year "2012" was good to me and I am very grateful to God for that. A big "Thank You" to God. It was a year of friends, family and new relationships. It was the year of more joy and less drama , more happiness and less tears for me. Here is the quick recap of my life in 2012: 

Jan - The month of making and breaking resolutions.
I had made two resolutions in 2012. First, resolution was to spend a portion of whatever amount I‘d saved last year in learning something. Like every year, I did not want to spend it on Make Up and Clothes. Therefore, I enrolled my name in Ashoka Motor Training School near my house to learn driving. I drove a 100 years old Maruti 800 during my training. I left my driving school after getting my learner license and that is how I broke my first resolution.

My second resolution was to quite alcohol, as I was scared of gaining alcoholic fat. 

Feb - The month of party.

Juhu Beach @ Mumbai

My room

I went to Mumbai with my uncle to appear for an Interview. However, I could not crack that interview but the overall experience was good. I always wanted to visit Mumbai –the financial capital of India since my childhood. God also granted my childhood wish to visit king khan’s place “Mannat”in Mumbai. I had also seen houses of other stars of Bollywood like Salman khan, Amitabh Bachhan, Hema Malini, Rekha etc.

In the middle of Feb , one of my best friend who had left city 2 years back came from London to stay here for  15 days. We spent most of the time with her whenever she was free. I broke my second resolution when I heard the news that she is tying the knot in 2013 with her Slovakian boyfriend. It was celebration time for us and I could not resist myself from sharing my best friend’s happiness. 

I don't remember what I did on Valentine's Day. Either I was with my friends or else I was at home.

March & April - The month of nothing.

Well , nothing worth mentioning happened in these two months. Life was boring but I am not complaining. Like Paulo Coelho has rightly said that ,"to enjoy rainbow , one must enjoy the rain first".  

May - The month of family.

My niece completed her six months and we had gathered to celebrate her "anno prashon". She had rice for the first time. Anno Prashon is done on an auspicious day when a child is 6 months old. Senior members of the family bless the child after feeding her rice. 

June - The month of matrimony.

I started looking for my Mr Right and I met my future husband in an online matrimony site on 10th June :-D

July - The month of blogging.
I had been to Puri for two days with my friends. It was my first trip with friends. I had my last wild party there and after that, I had never touched alcohol again . A piece of SHE was born on July. I got my inspiration from my boy friend to pen down my thoughts . He writes really well. While reading his blog suddenly I had decided to open my own blog. 

Aug - The month of Love.
I was falling in love with my Mr. Right. I did not know it that time. Later in this month he informed me that he would be coming to my city on Sep.

Sep - Turning point of my life.
I met my future husband for the first time on 4 Sep 2012. After 3-4 dates, we decided to tie the knot. 

Oct - The month of celebration.
My fiancé and me celebrated our first durga pujo (which is the most important festival of Bengalis) together. We really had good time. 

Mr. Right busy taking pictures.

Durga Puja @ Kolkata

Nov - The month of waiting, waiting & waiting ...
I did nothing except missing and waiting for him :-D and I am still waiting for him :( :-D :-p

December - The month of happy ending.

I met my boyfriend's grandmother and other family members for the first time. Second trip with friends to Behrampore happened this month. 

On Christmas Eve @ South City Mall, Kolkata

@ South City Mall, Kolkata

I wish all of you a happy , healthy and safe 2013 !!! Good Bye to 2012 and my dear  readers ,see you next year :) 

Its hard to say GOOD BYE ;-(

First, my heart goes out to the parents and teachers of sandy hook school. I just cannot shake this tragic incident off from my mind. Their sorrow is haunting me every time especially when Christmas is just few days away. I would pray to God to give enough strength to those parents, so that they are able to deal with their tremendous lose. Life is so cruel. I am speechless, numb, and helpless. Mr. Obama please make amendments in US constitution regarding arms . Your own kids are in danger. We don't need your tears . We want ACTION. When will you wake up and take action? WHEN?

Rest In Peace ( Picture Source: Google Image)

Dear Children of sandy hook school,

We are extremely sorry. We could not save you. We could not make earth a better place for you to live. Sorry, we are busy killing each other. Your life is not important to us than our arms and ammunition and our political interests . 

Little angels please come back again on earth  again and we promise to save you next time. Please give us second chance. We are ashamed of ourselves. 

Love

People from all over the world 

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I am  feeling bit  low today. So, thought I might feel better, if I just vomit my emotions here. According to me ,the toughest job on this earth is to be father or mother of girl child. I live with my parents since my birth. I have spent my 25 years with them. I am getting married next year. I will be leaving my parents house next year. Although, I love my fiancée very much and can not even imagine my life without him but the thought of  leaving my family behind is very heart breaking. It will be tough for my parents too. I don't know how they will cope with it. I am starting a new life. I will have many things to divert my mind but what will they do. I will miss my grandma , uncle and my niece. I will miss my grandfather , great grand ma and my uncle on my wedding day. Hope they shower their blessing on each one of us from heaven. Just want to say to them that we all miss you and love you a lot.  Someday we will again meet somewhere, until then keep watching us from there. 

I will miss Kolkata (City where I live). I have love-hate relationship with Kolkata. I came here in 2003 with my ma and papa and since then I am living here. Before that, I lived in many otherIndian towns and cities and studied in 4-5 different school as my father was in army. Kolkata has taught me many things. It has made me independent and matured. Therefore, it is more special to me than any other city. I feel like I know this place in and out. I can feel its pulse. I can read expressions and mind of everyone here. 

I will miss my group of friends from university. I feel blessed to have friends like them in my life. I don't have cousins . So. they are like my extended family. They always accept me the way I am. Each of them is unique in their own way. Wherever life and love takes me, I will miss them badly as I would miss my family. I would miss their PJs, nigh outs and every little thing about them.  I will miss their weirdness and awesomeness. 

My gloomy post on good byes ends here and there is something to cheer me up this weekend. I am staying at my uncle's place tomorrow with my friends. Then, On Friday, we will catch early morning train to Behrampur. Its a town, around 200 km from Kolkata . Actually my best friend's parents live there.  It is just one- day trip and we will be back on Sunday. So, I am not sure If I will get time for sight seeing. Lets see. 

I captured this cute moment today morning. My niece was trying to touch and feel our dog for the first time. The funny thing is Mr Nuku is always scared of her but somehow he didn't resist today. Watching them together just made my day :) 

My niece Gigi with our dog Nuku. 

Merry Christmas to everyone in advance !!! May Santa bring lots of happiness, joy, success and good surprises in your life. Stay blessed always !!!


Image Source

                                                            

Chronicles Of Puri - A Memorable Journey With Friends! !

One day while munching Momo, (a Chinese dish)  with my university friends, at Sikkim House, my mind started wandering to a distant unknown place. When I told my friends what is cooking inside my head they gladly agreed to be my partner in crime. There were three major obstacles:

First, consent of my parents. This consumed lots of my energy and time. For them I’m still a kid, who can’t take care of herself. However, through emotional blackmailing, I won the game!   

Second problem was to convince other friends to bunk their classes and office to join us. I applied “senti” strategy here and I failed miserably. Except three friends, everyone else refused to come with me.

Finally, short-listing a beautiful place, that would not make big holes in our pockets and which is not that far away from Kolkata.

After overcoming all the above-mentioned hurdles, we booked our train tickets for Puri,   for 2days.

Puri is approximately 670 kms from Kolkata. Bus, train, and taxi are the transports available to reach puri. It does not have its own airport yet. Puri attracts thousands of tourists every year for its beautiful beach (Best in India) and temples. There are many places to explore in Puri like world famous Jaganath Temple, Konark Sun Temple, Chilika Lake etc.

Puri Sea Beach

19^th July 2012, Day 1:

After a weeklong preparation for our journey, the day had finally arrived to leave Kolkata. Four of us were super excited since, we woke up in the morning. We were sending text messages to each other to express our enthusiasm. Packing is a challenging task. I wanted to put everything into just one backpack so that I can carry it myself easily everywhere. Travelling light is the mantra of every successful traveler and I am not good at it.

I left my house at around 5pm. I had enough time in my hand to reach station. I left home early to spend more time with friends. I turned down my father’s proposal to accompany me until railway station. I wanted to cover this journey all alone with only my friends.    

My bus ride was o.k. Bus was overflowing with people. I did not mind the crowd as I was in good mood. Weather was just perfect. Roads were wet with monsoon raindrops. Air was filled with pleasant smell of wet soil. I sat buried under my own luggage beside the window. I covered two hours long bus ride by enjoying cool soothing wind on my face and hair. Happiness was written in all over my face.

My friend, sam (Name changed), was waiting for me at Howrah Station. We had coffee to kill time while waiting for our two other friends Rash (Name Changed) and Ash (Name changed). They are Husband and wife. I know them since 2004. Rash is my college friend and I know Ash through Rash. They got married last year. They joined us almost after 1 hour.

We had dinner at Howrah Plaza, a multi-cuisine restaurant, only decent place to eat in Howrah railway station. Food was delicious. While we were relishing Fried Rice with Chilli Chicken, suddenly we realized that we have only half an hour left to catch our train. At once we ran like Usan Bolt towards our train. The Howrah Puri G Rath left sharp at 9pm. G stands for “Garib” which means “poor”. Ironically, all the coaches in “Garib” trains are equipped with A.C unlike others non-garib trains. Our arrival time at Puri was 6am.

Fifteen minutes of frantic search led us to our respective seats. We again made calls to our family members to say second good-bye over phone. They reminded us repeatedly to inform them once we reach our destination. My parents warned me against misusing my freedom. While, we were waiting for T.T to re allot our seats, I started jumping. An unexpected person called me for the first time (I will write about this unexpected call someday J).

Once we settled down, we started building castles in the air about love, life, marriage, future etc. This is what we do most of the time whenever we are together. People find it useless and wastage of time and prefer to do something “creative” which is good. Nevertheless, we enjoy it. This way we have bagged enough memories to cherish when we are old.

At 11 pm, our co passengers started retiring to their one night bed. One by one everyone was switching off lights. Reluctantly we climbed up to our respective berth to sleep.

Around 3 am, I needed to use bathroom but refrained myself from going alone. My parents and Rash’s warning rang on my mind. We had decided never to go alone anywhere in this journey. Therefore, I woke up, Rash, Ash and Sam. After appointing Sam to keep eyes on our luggage, we left to accomplish “mission loo” which later turned into one of the memorable moment of our life.

We spent an hour standing at the door area after we finished our bathroom work. We talked about childhood. This was unthinkable in our parent’s presence. For the first time in my life, I felt like I was breathing “air of independence”. I became nostalgic. Some thoughts started clouding my mind. Someday I will leave my parents house and start a new life. Would I really enjoy this freedom? Do I really want to grow up?

I came back to my berth, leaving Rash and Ash behind at door. They came back after sometime. Rash was not sleepy even at 4am and wanted to talk all night. I advised  her to save her energy for tomorrow as we had planned lots of sightseeing. We dozed off after sometime thinking about an eventful day ahead. 

To be Continued...

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Today is my niece's 1st birthday. My diva is celebrating her birthday at her grandparent's place. Many many happy returns of the day to my rock star !!! May God bless her !!!!

My niece