Friday, April 10, 2009

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!

It's the longest weekend ever since I joined this company.....a full 3 days off!!!! You have no idea what that means cause you're not the one who works alternate saturdays.
Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tuesday, April 07, 2009

Drive.....

I love to drive. (Contrary to what my friends believe cause I'm forever asking them to fetch me!). I love my mornings drive to work everyday. I love swearing at everyone on the road. I love talking to people in the cars next to me knowing they can't hear me. (While most of my comments are on their driving skills, I must confess I do often also comment on their hair and their clothes and even ask questions like 'What did you have for breakfast boss'...all without them knowing of course!). I love listening to music. I love getting behind the wheel after a long holiday. The feeling is very liberating....the fact that you can get yourself to wherever you want to go. Having said this, I have the worst parking skills in the world, my car gets a new scratch every month and I don't have any aspirations of driving a Merc....In fact, I can't drive anything but my Santro!

So day before yesterday I was on my way to work as usual taking the Delhi-Gurgaon Highway. The office is 6 flyovers away. The office is 6 high speed flyovers away.

The traffic was smooth. Many offices were shut. The morning was lazy. I was done with 2 flyovers and on my way to the 3rd. A thought. What if I were to ever have an accident? Thought over.

I start my ascent on the 3rd flyover. Speed 70. (The limit is 90 so you can imagine the speed of the traffic). Am in the middle lane. There's a car parked on the left side of the bridge.

Suddenly a bike bangs into the car. Cannot see the man who was on the bike but his bike comes flying and lands up right in front of my car. I have a choice. Drive over the bike. Or swerve the car. I don't decide. I'm frozen. I'm on autopilot.

I swerve to the right. And then swerve to the left. And the car swerves to the right again....like a life of its own. I know my foot's on the brake. I know I'm holding the steering wheel with all my strength. I can hear screeching sounds. And they're coming from my car. I can feel the world spinning. I can see the road coming at me. I need to stop before I hit the divider. And inches away from the divider, I stop.

It's not over. I now realise I'm perpendicular to the traffic. And there are fast moving cars coming right at me. The only thing I can now do is raise my hand and hope it all stops. And it does....

I don't know if my car did a 360 spin. I don't know how I managed to stop. I don't even know if the traffic had stopped for me or for the bike. But I do know that my knees felt like jelly and I knew I had to have the courage to move on. Someone signals me to keep driving. I reverse. Get the car back straight. And move on. Like my near death experience didn't happen.

I wish I'd stopped and seen what happened to that man. I wish I'd helped. But all these thoughts came 15 mins later when I was in the safety of my office parking. Till then I was just completely numb....driving on complete autopilot....

Friday, April 03, 2009

The Joys of Meeting GG

And no I don’t mean GGG (my giggly girl gang) but just GG….

So the world’s becoming smaller…..or am I becoming bigger? Whatever….the world’s becoming smaller because suddenly now everyone knows everyone else! And my pile on abilities which I like to disguise as being friendly and social has enabled me to hang out with Tina’s friends when he isn't even in the same city! (Yes yes, Tina is a he. It's his favourite nick name! :) )

So in any case GG was coming to town and it was almost like Santa Claus was coming to town (minus the presents though….hmph hmph…hint hint!)...so we all decide to meet at TGIF. The reason we chose TGIF was because Sick had the world’s ugliest bruise on his knee and wanted to wear shorts so that no one missed out seeing it (the kindly soul!). He also had a blue cast on the other leg which AJ found very intriguing cause she didn’t know it came in colours other than white! She wanted a pink one for herself.

Flashback to how Sick managed to do this to self.

Feb ’09. A bunch of 13 people used collective creativity to cook up stories to tell their bosses why they wouldn’t be working for the next couple of days and took off to Goa. The agenda: three items missing from their last trip to Goa. Water sports. Trekking. Hiring scootys. And of course prawns and alcohol and beach and alcohol and alcohol and alcohol...

10 very adventurous people decided to get onto the banana ride, the water scooter, parasailing. 3 of us decided we didn’t like the way our skin looked so got ourselves a free sunburn. Actually, the beachbeds on which we plonked for the sunburns cost us 100 bucks so they weren’t really free......... I braved onto a water scooter ride finally. I’d like to believe it was me being brave and not me being cheap cause Aye wanted to give up the last ride but hey we’d already paid 200 bucks for it and I couldn't possibly waste it! So there I was on the scooter, smiling bravely at M, then turning to look at the sea, panicking, remembering I couldn’t swim, thinking of the various sharks which would bite my leg off and suddenly it accelerated straight into the sea! Exactly 5 seconds later I was screaming “Bhaiya! Scared! Back back back back!”

Trekking was fun. My heart was very excited to get some exercise at last and boomed its way till my breath ran out and my legs felt like jelly. Madan (the same one who insists I was a maharani in my previous life - what a great guy!) said he wanted to climb every hill in sight! So he did sound a bit like someone from Sound of Music but what the hell! That was when Sick tumbled down and sprained his ankle. Hence the cast.

Scootys were hired. M confidently decided to let me sit behind him and only when I’d started enjoying the ride he said….I’ve only ridden this twice before!!!! I would’ve spent more time panicking but then saw Kur who had obviously never ridden a scooty before! For someone who drives a car everyday, he forgot a lot of basics that day! Like U turn does not mean going straight. Like brakes are a good thing to use instead of banging into other scootys. Like giving way to the traffic if it’s honking and you're leading a host of SUVs cause you don't know how to stop on the side.
The other person who’d never ridden a scooty was Sick so he fell and bruised his knee.

Back to TGIF.

So here we were a bunch of 28 year olds happily chattering away of school days and college days when we were young and life was happy when suddenly we got tempted by the idea of a free happy birthday TGIF cake! At 28, one isn’t very excited about one’s birthday yet the idea of a free cake…….hmmmmmmmmm. AJ decided it was her birthday. We arm twisted the waiters into bringing us a free cake. They avoided us like the plague. We made loud birthday conversation everytime they passed by. And they waited for the entire crowd to leave before they got us some leftovers. We wiped the plate clean.

Then we bade GG tearful good byes and he called us crazy drunk people and left.

Ah the little joys in life!