So what type of Blogger are you really? :)

Well when I had posted my 'Come-Back' post at the beginning of this year, it was with a new year resolution that I would write atleast one post a month. But as all Resolutions go, this too didnt live too long. But if you are one of those, who read every post I write, you would know I have surely written a lil more than what I wrote the year before this.

So today, 16th December 2012, with just about half a month left for this year to get over, I thought "Yaar, December ka blog post toh banta hi hai" And like a true Marketing student, I decided to do some RESEARCH (oh yeah, you read it right.. I said Research) done on what is currently trending in the blog-world. This brought me across a lot many types of blogs and should I say "Types of Bloggers" But seriously no truely useful information or insights!! you wanna know why?... Then Continue reading!!

Disclaimer: All types of Bloggers described in this blogpost are purely (nah.. actually only partially) fictitious and bear no/some/a lot of resemblence to the blogger community as a whole. ;)

Well, the first and the most common types of Bloggers that I came across was Travel bloggers.

These are the guys who somehow manage to get the maximum and the longest chutti off work!! No, seriously, dont you think so? Just imagine if you had to travel to the number of places these people actually have and have all the time in the world not only to click photos of the place, but also read and learn and remember about the history/geography/ political history etc of the place and then, finally to reproduce the same in your blogs... I mean , Phew... u guys are the super-talented dudes and dudettes, man!! ;)

On a more serious note, these guys really are a great help especially when you are planning a vacation. starting from which location to what hotel to which places to visit and why... their blog would tell you all. There are some who would go a step further to tell you how much money to carry ( this is usually with a disclaimer that says 'Assuming you dont want to shop too much' ). My question to these free-advisors is " So, how much shopping do you really think is 'TOO MUCH'??" :P

But while they answer most of your query on the travel, there is this one query which I think every travel blogger should check and blog about:

So from travel, I decided to move to my second favorite topic 'Food".. but rather than finding a lot many food critics, I came across these 'Recipe Bloggers'

Of course, you guessed it right. kitchen is the laboratory for these bloggers and thats exactly, where they perform their culinary experiments. The pictures here look awesomely yummy and seriously can make even a not-so-pro-kitchen person to try one's hand at atleast one recipe.

And especially when you are one of those 'getting-into-the-kitchen-for-the-first-time-to-cook' category, these bloggers are like angelic saviors!!  But then again, there are somethings that they can or rather would surely not tell you:

like that yummy looking food that you see in the picture was actually the outcome of how many burnt food, overly-baked, raw food served incidents ;).. Lol, yeah, who really talks of those disasters :D :D

So maybe here I shall take that extra step forward and give u a life-saving option for such disasters. Dont forget to thank me for it when you actually use it :D :D

Your Life-saving option in times of culinary disasters :)

With travel and food covering most of my mind space, Google then brought me to large group of bloggers from a totally different space!! Its called the Blogoshpere!... Eh, What do you mean by you dont know blogospere?? This is where Blogospere lies...

well, the bloggers here are insanely crazy!! In simpler words we call them "Geeks"... So, what do these Geek Bloggers do?

They first wait for the tech industry spokesperson/experts to leak some information about an upcoming gadget/code/ product/ software etc. They read all about it from where-ever possible and then blog about the same thing giving back reference to the experts blog/article. Thereby, just adding to the list of one more post on the net about the product!!

These guys are the best to look upto for views when you are planning an new phone/laptop/music system etc

But the story, really doesnt end here. the language that they use here is primarily english... but usually wont sound like that to a common manager person like you or me. Their langauge is understood only by their fellow blogosphere companions ;)... maybe thats why they have created a new space of their own!

I feel it would be worth thinking, how would their parents have communicated with them? My read... maybe like this:

or even better....

When you speak of Geeks... It just becomes equally important not to forget the "dumb blonde" category. These bloggers I would rather name them as "Personal diary Bloggers"
They write about anything and everything that happens in their life.. a new pet, a new dress, PINK shoes, or the breaking of a heel at a social-do blah blah blah...blah blah or maybe even this???

All those different types of blogs and bloggers finally brought me down to myself... So what type of a Blogger am I? hmmm... a question that I myself couldnt answer but guess, this cartoon very aptly did :D :D

Waiting for you guys to give a name to my 'type' :) :)

Ashtavinayak Yatra_ Meri Zubaani

If you are looking for some proper information on the ashtavinayak yatra and google ended up bringing you here, well, sorry to say you are at the wrong page.

I am not going to be giving any gyaan on the ashtavinayak yatra, the significance of the temples etc etc etc. As the title says, this blog is all about the yatra that I just finished today, totally 'Meri Zubaani'

Having been practically brought up in Bombay, the word 'temple' for me always meant Mahalakshmi Temple or Siddhivinayak Temple. It always meant a lot of crowd (well, that is synonymous with Mumbai not just at temples but any public place for that matter). It always signified a lot of commercialization and the haste in the Temple priest's pujas so that the crowd doesnt get built up.
But it also meant a lot of belief in God or rather, faith which over the years has kept Mumbai running to these temples inspite of the crowd and commercialization. And I am proud to say, I am totally, one such Mumbai-kar.

So, this August when I got a long weekend off at work, I decided to take my parents to the Ashtavinayak Yatra. For those who are new to this term, it is basically a journey to visit 8 Ganpati temples in 8 different villages in Maharashtra majorly located within a 500km radius circle with Pune being the centre.

So we load our car (a Swift Desire with more than enough boot space... Well, since we totally believe in 'Travelling Light', this was an absolute neccesity) and with a 'Ganpati Bappa Morya' , we are good to go. I insert my USB stick in the music player so that I dont have to listen to the crappy radio and the first song that comes up is 'चड़ी मुझे यारी तेरी ऐसी जैसे हो दारू देसी ...'. My mom's first reaction to this was,"Khushbu, Change the Song"... I was like.."uh..okay!". So, as I clicked on the next track, the speakers blared with "टल्ली हुआ टल्ली हुआ यारोँ देखो यारा मेरा टल्ली हुआ ..." Well, there were some more like this and it did take a few songs to get my Mom out of the culture shock. But poor she, had no choice, I had personally loaded all good ;) latest songs on the memory stick :D. और वैसे भी श्रद्धा तो मन में होती है ना । ;)

Well,the first Temple we visited was Girijatmaj Mandir, Lenyadri. Now this temple is situated in the 8th cave of the Lenyadri Caves and is a site governed by the Archeological Society of India. The way to this temple has 307 steps and trust me, that was surely 'some' physical excercise. But once you reach the top, the view is breathtakingly beautiful. and like is the case with every cave-type architecture built on the hills, we found a lot of monkeys roaming around the place as if they own them. This wasnt new to me as I have seen such monkeys roaming around even at Elephanta caves. But what really caught my attention was a shephard who had brought his sheep to graze at the neighbouring hill. He totally reminded of the character 'Peter' from the novel Hiedi.. one of my favorite classics.


Living the scene from Hiedi with 'Peter the shepherd' at Lenyadri hills





What can I say... Rural Maharashtra did bring alive a lot of things I had only read about. Some of them, which I hadnt even read about. From Lenyadri, one-by-one over the next 2 days we visited the remaining 7 temples. One thing I did realize there, temples are not just about the God's Murti or the Temple priests chanting prayers. There are a lot many little things that go into building the faith.

First comes the Pooja ki Thali. Complete with the flowers,the माला, coconut and दुर्वा (the grass), this was the most simple and beautiful offering.

Every Temple has a legend, a story. And the best part was, each of the places where the legend highlights the victory of good over evil, the evil character was given almost equal (or maybe just a little less) celebrity status than the good. Just like the Rakshasas head which formed the first step at the entrance of the temples at Ozar, Ranjangaon and Pali.

 This totally reminded me of Heath Ledger's dialogue to batman in The Dark Knight, "You exist only because I exist." ... brilliant!!! :D :D

The huge beautiful structures to place your diyas and the sound of manjiras that echoed almost at every temple just added to the purity of the ambience there.

Another thing that was new to me was..apparently, the exit door of any temple is supposed to be smaller than the entrance. And whoever constructed these eight temples really took this dictate very seriously. The exit doors were sized as small as 2 ft in width by 4 ft in height.


The exit door at Shree Mayureshwar, Moregaon

One more thing that was notably common was that almost every temple had a tortoise facing the Ganpati murti just at the entrance. I was told that a tortoise is considered to signify wealth according to Vaastu Shashtra. Wow, till now I knew that the tortoise signified wealth according to Chinese Feng Shui. This Vaastu Shashtra angle was totally new to me. No wonder. they say Hindi-Cheeni, Bhai-Bhai!! Atleast our literatures are associated someplace. ;)

After completing this yatra, I can surely say that visiting a temple in a metro like Mumbai and visiting one in rural Maharashtra is a totally different experience. The little rituals and tiny little things that add up to every ritual, every belief, every legend just makes your entire experience so beautiful.

Now, as I gear up to getting back to my hectic life at work and an even more hectic travel on the potholed, crowded roads of Mumbai, there is one thing that I shall surely miss from this trip....

THE ABSOLUTELY ZERO TRAFFIC ROADS :D :D

"I am not like other Girls!!!"

She always said,"I am not like other girls. I am different". And all he did was nod in agreement

She would walk down the corridors of any mall and just stare and admire the window display for hours at length and still not buy anything... So whats that called? .. Window-shopping!! But hell yeah, "She is different!"

She knew her wardrobe like the back of her hand, and everytime while shopping for clothes, she ran through it to check what she has got, whats in vogue and decide on the purchase doing a quick mental need-gap analysis of her closet's contents.

Every new dress needed a matching pair of shoes, earrings and a neckpiece, or maybe a scarf or just a belt. Still, he would just nod in agreement that She is not like other girls. :)

For her, a pink is not just PINk..there is a Baby pink, fuschia pink, regular pink, magenta.. n blah n blah..Pink!! And He would never know at what time, which pink would become her 'Mera wala PINK'. But she always said,"I am not like other girls" ;)

Every dress of hers hanging der in that closet had a mental tag in her mind with date-ocassion stamps of when and where it was worn. She remembered each of every detail of what she had worn to the party last time or even the instance before that. but She still said,"I am not like other girls" and he just nodded in agreement.

She would get angry if he forgot their first coffee-date anniversary, or the date when he first gave her a lift home from college. and at such times, he knew,the best medicine for her foul mood would be chocolate and flowers. But she was definitely not like other girls.

She would chatter off twenty to a dozen on the phone for a continous half an hour without the other person saying anything. She loved doing that! But she always said,"I am not like other girls"

Every soft-toy or a small lil puppy or a baby would get the same reaction from her always "AWWWW... chooo chweet!!". But, she surely is not like other girls.

Everytime she said,"I am not like other girls. I am different". He would think of all this and then just nod in agreement saying,"Yes baby, you are not at all like other girls. You are different and that is why, I Love You!!" , just to see that smile and happiness flash in her eyes that really make her different from all other girls!!!

That thing called Constraints!!

I have got to admit here that I am a big fan of Dr.Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory series. And why not, it takes sheer talent to talk geeky all the time. :) and not only is this respect there for geeks but also for the subject matter that makes these ppl the geek they are... Physics, statistics and all that mathematics applied in real life. As a student, my personal favorite has been the concept called 'CONSTRAINTS'.

Everytime you feel you can do or have or get everything under the sun, they(constraints) just pop up from no-where. It is as if your brain just pulls these out of some corner and excitedly shouts 'SURPRISE!!!' at you. And this would especially happen after a nice round of wishfull thinking and then there is this implicit challenge thrown at you 'Now show me what you've REALLY got'. It doesnt generally end up there. They have this incorrigible habit of coming forth in installments. So, when you are done with applying round 1 constraints to your wishful thinking, your list (of thoughts emerged during that wishful thinking) thus reduced by some amount, the next surprise package of Round 2 constraints is already in front of you.

They are like those evils you cant live without.

Dont believe me?!! When was the last time you went shopping and left behind an awesome handbag/dress looking at the pricetag? When was the last time you put forth your sales estimate and then the production guy walked in and said "dude, this is not possible, we dont have that capacity". When was the last time you wished you had just a little more time to complete that project report. They are there everywhere in the form of capacity, time, money, manpower etc. EVERYWHERE!!!

But then they are not so bad either. Imagine a world without constraints!! You could do all that you wanted, all that you asked for!! You would have infinite options for everything. INFINITE OPTIONS??!! Now, Thats a scary thought. That little processor we have beneath our skull called the brain would have so much more work to do if it had to weigh down infinite options to make a decision.

Currently with the constraints our options are just reduced down, making the process of decision-making so much easier Sometimes, the constraints are so strong that you are just left to say 'Okay, so do I have a choice? Then that's it, its decided'.Life is made so simple with fewer options, hence fewer confusions. :) And most of the times, this is all thanks to that thing called 'CONSTRAINTS'

So the next time you crib about them, think again!! Probably they are there just to make your life simpler :D :D

While @ Airport Boarding Lounge

This is a write-up by a very dear friend "Somya Agarwal" which i received in my mail yesterday...Am amazing read, so I thought it deserves to be published here.

People generally hate waiting at airports to board the flight. I find it quite interesting. The best flavor is to see the people's adrenaline rush up at signal of boarding. Most of the people jump up and stand in miles long queue as to attack the gate and get that free entry from crew. But the most interesting are the people sitting on the seats lazily. Standing in line to get a single step ahead is like last resort. 'what can be better than sitting on the comfortable chairs? Even if it means people walking in front of you stroll past you and check-in. The first instinct- I am not even competing with them. I belong to this crocodile class. The best part is you get more time to check out the flight ground and cabin crew. These are the pretty good-looking eye candies, eye tonics, flowing here to there, sometimes walking upto you to know who you are. The best thought is that they are interested in knowing if you are on their flight. Oh my my!!! Good enough thought to blush! So after that little dose of virtual flirting, your attention gets back to the line. It is now almost reduced to a negligible length.That's when a new battle starts. The line is really short now, but the question of pride, among the last self- chosen ones. Who will get up first? Never do this!! After-all, what will my fellow co-'lazy'-passengers think of me! I cant demean the clan by being the first one to break the laziness inertia.

So when someone (probably a newcomer) does the mistake and everyone starts getting up as if they will walk the stage to get some Olympics and Oscars award. Next good part is the airline bus. As no-one is in the rush to fill it and make space, you see real chivalry. The gentleman (or rather the gentleguys or gentleboys, as you may want to call them considering their age) stand back in style and let you get in first. 90% times you really never see where the person sits in rest of the journey but still a 10% chance still stands. My favorite spot in the bus is the one next to the window, called as "Hit & fall or stand" spot. You dont hold to anything and done raise your hand to some chain and something. Like an experienced flirt, you lean back to the bus wall, have your phone in hand, one eye on the screen and another on crowd near you. Even if seat is there, I prefer to check this place. Even if crowd is not interesting, people surely find you interesting. You are spot of attraction. But my favorite thing or red lining is to stay away from those hangers and people around (shoulder sweat can be quite annoying arghh). Ok but whatever, best feeling swelling your chest comes to see the plane waiting for you. Please highness walk in and let the airline feel honored by your presence. Everyone is waiting for you. From CEO of some company to head of states (hardly even one of their staff travels in Spicejet though) is waiting for your arrival. Well you must be real lucky if all of this is true but I assure you that being a lazy bum at check-in boarding surely gives you ample time to write all this. One thing- I walk in the plane and it is smelling like pizza. Is it effect of some new freshener they used or its my appetite triggered because of skipping lunch/ Whatever! I really wished these red dressed air- stewards to be pizza hut guys and the red circles to be spices in pizza hut! Yumm!!!

Come-back Post :) :)

I know it's been over a year since I last posted anything here. Precisely the reason why I thought that I should write something. But then, how can you just write anything without having decided on what to write about? So I 'poked'(this one s purely from the Facebook patented 'poke') my mind for topics. This is how my mind started

"Should I talk about the falling economies, or the different new yr eve parties my friends had this year. How about the work@office purely dilbert style or rather my own life in the Calvin and Hobbes style? nah, maybe since I'm right now in Singapore, I should write about how different this place is to my matrubhoomi, India. Firstly, it's small, progressive and awesomely cool. But then, aren't there more than enough sites that promote Singapore tourism? Why should I do it for free??

I guess being a marketing student, advertisements can never skip your mind when you are thinking of topics to talk about. So maybe, I should just highlight the latest Coca-cola TVC. The one in Hindi which says or rather sings "umeedon wali dhoop" But again, hasn't that been bombarding your TV screens enough for me also to dedicate a whole new blog to that. Bottom line: this idea also gets dropped!!

Maybe I should Just 'express' my views on the new genre of item numbers like Munni badnaam hui, Sheela ki jawaani, the latest one Chikni Chameli or the most hilarious one from the house of deols " pal pal na maane tinku jiya, ish-aq ka manjan ghisse hai piya". About the class, the sophistication, the demand and the supply ( from an exonomist's view) of these songs or about the all-time evergreen debate " Is this what we want our kids to grow up listening"? But hey, I'm no film critic nor a politician trying to gain votebank by criticizing such item numbers. These songs are made for people to enjoy and I'm sure most of us are enjoying them, then why to conduct a post-Mortem and ruin the fun."

After all this thinking, my mind started to get a little irritated. It decided to step out of its(or rather my) cozy skull and spoke:

"Oh c'mon Khushbu, you are a Gemini and Geminis are known for their ease of communicating, their ease to express themselves. You can talk about anything and I literally mean ANYTHING!!! On why the sun is round? Why it always rises before you wake up? Why does the water feel wet or the winters feel cold, how do most people manage to be so dumb at times and why is common sense the rarest thing around. How different would it feel to walk barefoot on the green grass than to walk barefoot on a white sand beach. Why is it that Pink is always said to be a girls's color and blue to be a boy's color? seriously Khushbu, how difficult is it to choose a topic for your blog post?"

My mind went on and on in full blast but I was listening only half-heartedly. After all, it's not just another post, it is my Come-back Post. it has to be special. It has to be different....just den,

... "Hey , hey wait a sec(this was my mind back in its cozy skull, this time sounding very excited)!!! Dont you Realize, khushbu ... In the last 5 minutes, I have rambled a plethora of topics. I have spoken about so many things and yet not spoken about anything. Hah, it's a special talent, don't you think"

Oooh yes, suddenly my Comeback post shaped up in front of my eyes. Whoever would have thought that you could actually dedicate an entire post to saying nothing at all. Not every read needs to have a 'moral' at its end. Sometimes, it's got to be just as crazy as a great game of playing around with words. Hahahaaa... That's just me!!

To be frank, since you have managed to survive till this line, I would love to know whether you enjoyed this ramble or I just about managed to waste a few minutes of your precious serious and 'moral'some reading time.

Cheers,
Khushbu

Mumbaichi Porgi in Surati Ishtyle!!!

Till date there have been in-numerous stories of people from smaller cities migrating to bigger metros and the way they have to adjust to the sudden culture clash. But has anyone ever thought that there is a similar culture clash/ shock in a vice-versa scenario... Well, actually it aint similar , it's hilariously worse!!!

Im sure I must have mentioned this before too, but here I go again " Im a hard-core mumbai-ite" The humid air, the sweaty local train's crowd, the traffic jams (even at 2am at night) all are a quintessential part of my life... Atleast, they were till I got transferred to Surat.

I was happy about being able to see a new place, sad about leaving mumbai behind, Anxious because i knew no one in this new city. So, with such mixed emotions, i reached Surat.

Stepping out from Surat station, well, this was the first thing that welcomed me!!!



'RIXA' Stand!!!

You must be wondering " hey, isnt this supposed to be an official government sign board??"... well, of course it is!! do you doubt that??? So if u really doubt that, let me tell you this is just the beginning ;) ;)

A few kilometers from the station, u hit the first flyover and here lay a new learning for me!!!



NO BULLOCK-CARTS ON THE FLYOVER!!!!

I racked my brains for all the road symbols I had learned before my driving test (okay, the truth is I had given just one glance to that sheet on road symbols that my instructor had given me), I am pretty sure this wasnt on that sheet.

My excitement: Wow, this symbol actually exists!!! And even if it does, do bullock-carts actually follow road symbols???or for that matter traffic rules??? Where do they get this training from??? Just wondering!!! :D :D :D

A lot of things changed as I started living in this city.

Hollywood movies suddenly became desi!!
‘The Storm Warriors’ suddenly became ‘ Toofani Mahasangram’
‘Inception’ became ‘Chakravyuh’
And here is the latest addition to the list!!!



'Glocalisation'!! Isnt that wat we marketeers call it?? :D :D :D

It was not only movies. Fashion also got a new name!!!



AND...



WHOEVER S HEARD OF 'Allen Solly' and 'Lee Cooper' ;) ;)

Suratis, as they so lovingly call themselves, have their own way of being trendy!!!



Oops... sorry, TRANDY!!! :D :D :D
No wonder, some Punjus feel very much at home in Surat!!! ;) ;)

Some shopkeepers make themselves very clear in the name of their shop itself!!!



SHOP & GO!!! : U better not crowd here!!! :P :P :P



Brand extensions!!! anyone??!!! :D :D :D

This city sure has it's own sense of Style and Fashion!!! ;) ;) ;)

So long for Fashion... i spotted this food joint with an interesting name too!!!



RAM Bharose!!! So, everytime u eat here, u know whom to blame for any stomach condition!!! " Eat at your Own risk!!!" ;) ;) ;)

With such beautiful (yeah right!!) , awesome (Oh, Really??!!) places for entertaiment, Suratis have their own personal favorite hang-out place. Every Sunday evening you'll see half the city park their bikes/cars here and sit down with their family and friends for a good round of 'Snakes' (the true Gujju style!!)

So what place is this??? Scroll down to see!!!



THE FOOTPATH!!!!
And fyi, this footpath is right outside a garden named 'Lake View Garden'
Amazingly, suratis just love to sit here and eat, with vehicles zooming past them on the road!!! The service lane and the adjoining footpath is the best picnic spot for a sunday evening!!! Call it "Making full use of Public Infrastructure" :D :D :D

Been almost six months here, and i have tried quite a few gujarati delicacies. Everytime i treated myself to tea, coffee, gujarati dal, dhokla etc etc etc... I would ponder over just one doubt...

Do people here get Sugar for FREE???

Adjustment aint easy when the transition is from Mumbai metro to a city like Surat. There are times when I am amazed by the business acumen and times when I cant digest their ignorance to the outside world.

But there was this one time around Diwali when the city said "LIGHTS" and I said " CAMERA!! CLICK!!"