Conditioned body

Today it was drizzling when me and the son were driving back from work. I rolled down the windows (which I do very rarely) so that I can enjoy the rain (no smells, remember?) drops. I rolled down just my window and the passenger seat (son sits in his own sinhasan aka car seat at the back). Suddenly he yelped angrily and held his hair. I am assuming either it was the wind or a rain drop. He didn't like it. Till I rolled the windows back up and shut out the external elements, he kept angrily signaling to me that he is not comfortable at all.

Talk about conditioned bodies. Phew!

The foodie and her sense of smell

Was down with a beastly cold all weekend (starting Friday evening). I lost my voice and faculties of smell and taste. Voice is slowly back now, but smell and taste still evade. For the past four days I have been having food very mechanically without relishing it at all. If you know how much of a foodie I am, you will understand what kind of torture this is. To eat and to not experience the food. Yuck! Yuck! Yuck! And Yuck!

Taste slowly is coming back but no smells yet. Which made me realize, how important, the smell of food is, in this whole experience thing. Just taste doesn't cut it, unless you can also savour the aroma of good food.

Damn!

Birthday girl

So it was a completely anti-climactic birthday. Subhash and I were planning to take off for the day and do something nice, but his CEO decided to visit just for the day and he had a slot with him to present his work. Can't say no to that. Plus he had to have dinner with him. No to that is also not possible. So off we went to our own workplaces. He in fact had to leave earlier and came back much later.

First half of work was ok. Same old Friday. I was to go out for lunch with my lunch gang, but that got canceled. My team was going to take me out for lunch but I had told them I had alternate plans, so I didn't feel very nice about asking them if they want to go ;) But in the course of some conversation I did tell them and they did take me out for lunch. It was all good.

I came back and finished some meetings after which my old team said they wanted to come and meet me. My lunch gang was also going to come with cake et al. So I was excited. Turns out my old team also got me a cake!! This was probably the best part of this birthday and I felt truly touched. I didn't think they would go out of their way to do so much for me! It was awesome. So I cut both cakes, called my team over and we all had the cake and I chatted a little while with my old team folks before signing off for the work day.

Evening was pretty much routine.

All in all not a bad day at all, thanks to generous folks at work! :)

It is over, finally!

The wait for the World Cup. I am sick almost of all the Facebook pages being filled with myriad updates, but I must confess, that this World Cup victory has its special place for me too.

For the one and only reason being that we scored over Sri Lanka. The 1996 semi-final at Eden Garden was when I stopped watching cricket. Or at least, stopped putting my heart into it at any rate. I remember feeling crest-fallen, broken, and my heart really aching. For the way we played and the way we treated the players during the match, handing it over to them because it had to be called off due to rowdy behavior. I vowed I would never ever again put my heart into any sport because it causes vicarious heart-ache to see the team lose and fail. I am glad I could finally chase those ghosts away last night. Now when I recollect 1996, I will always remember 2011 too :) And I won't feel so depressed.

For my much-proclaimed "I don't follow cricket", I did watch the second innings of the QF against Australia, the SF against Pakistan and the final.

Never was there an easy victory. All of them were hard-won, simply because the pressure (off the field) was always enormous (unlike in 1983). We truly deserved it, there was no fluke or stroke of luck in play. So we can be happy that the cup is home.

In all the hullabaloo surround the result and the "bringing home of the cup", there is just one man, the heart is warming up to. MS Dhoni. If there was ever an Indian captain who deserved to lift the cup after 1983, it is him. Just look at him on the field and off it. An epitome of calm, both in wins and losses. And his post match ceremony statements were awesome. Simply superb. I bow to you MS, you are truly inspirational :) And what a captain he has been. T20 world cup, test #1 and now THE world cup. He rocks. I hope he has a future that flourishes just as his past has :)

And I hope the next cup doesn't happen only when the son has kids (I was 3 when it last came home)!!