Countdown

This started on tuesday...Sen was the first to ask...successfully dodged the query....came down to 3...satish guessed if it was the number of days to go before I was to be at home...well after my 'respected' MD decided on his grand plan to exhibit his equ-enmity towards us...that option doesn't even count...then bhushan (Hale bhushan with ur righ palm on ur chest if u will) came up with some very good guesses. Good not in the sense that they were so perilously close to the plan that he might crack it in his next one...but good in the sense that wat he said added some more meaning to this countdown...a very much awaited Indo-Pak showdown...a movie plan to "What's ur Rashee"...Weekend...his enthu acted as that last push I needed to fall or (is it better to say) jump off the cliff. I came up with my one-of-those-moments thought of agreeing with my dentist for my tooth extraction. Well its Ashtami...it would be like slaying the Mahisasura hiding in my potato-trap...I know it sounds like a far-fetched metaphor..but I am so longing to be a part of DP in kgp that anything killing bad seems like DP to me now...Well now I have some more reasons to be counting down to saturday...Now one more day to go...and I dont feel so nervous as I would have been if I was really counting it down to something real...its just a gut feeling...Ashtami has always been good to me when I really wanted it to be...so cutting down the chase..this countdown is really for that unknown gut-feeling that something will happen...well if it doesn't I always have the option of making it up...don't I??? ;)

Missing

5 months of planning...over a 100 phone calls to confirm who all would be there...and two weeks before the T-DAY, thanks to my MD, its confirmed that I am stuck at hyd for this year's durga puja. All the countdown to this vacation ended up with the fuse failing to light the explosive for the blast that I was planning to have at KGP. I don't know why..but the sense of longing is too much this time. May be all the things I thought to do at kgp and the knowledge that I wont be able to do even a single one of them...may be the hope that I would be in kgp after almost a year and now the fact that I wont...I don't know the reason..but I really am missing the festive fervor of kgp. All thats Durga Puja to me... the frenzied beats of dhaak...the divine sound of "shankh"..."meeshti"..."pandals"...the pandal-hopping crowd that flows along the streets in the evening...that sweet smell of "dhoop" lingering in the air...the ashtami puja at the Durga Mandir...the immolation of Raavan and the fireworks...and most importantly....I really miss the "khichidi". Well... may be next year...