Random Desires

When I went out with my friends on my birthday this year, I had two random desires in mind. One was to buy a piece of clothing or jewellery that I would normally never buy, that was drastically different from my regular taste. And the other was to go to Costa Coffee and eat a chocolate chip muffin. Not any other chocolaty sin, this was the only one I wanted to commit.

So there was no Costa near our destination for that day. There was a Barista and a Cafe Coffee Day, but no Costa. So I dropped that idea. The other one we all tried our best to materialize, but I didn't really find anything of the sort.

So that's what happened on Sunday. On Monday, my friends in the office gifted me a nice, big bunch of litchis for my birthday. All of us had a good time picking off those litchis and eating them, with Namrata intermittently voicing concern over the presence of worms in the fruit, and the rest of carrying on eating, not bothered by worms. At one point of time I actually tried to convince everybody that even if you did eat the worms, they would do you good. They are rich in proteins and low in cholesterol.

Then there was the "pushp vitaran" as Gauri called it. On our birthdays, we get a bouquet on behalf of the entire team and there is some amount of fun involved, like asking the birthday girl or boy to share some memorable incidents or sing or something of that sort. I was asked to sing. I sang a snippet from Beete Lamhein, after which people decided that it was a really sad song and they wanted to hear a happier number as well. To that end, Bhavna asked me to sing "that bhajan of yours". There's this song that I really like, which, Bhavna claims, sounds like a bhajan. I could barely finish one line of that song before Ashish and Hemant started out with the requisite sound effects to make it sound completely like a bhajan and broke out in hysterical laughter. I was actually looking around for something to throw at those two, but I missed my aim because Ashish actually fell on to the floor laughing!

Coming back from the digression, the litchis were good, and we had fun eating them, but they were not the real gift. There was a kurti that Akash picked out for me from Fabindia which totally fit the template I had in mind... something that I liked but I'd never buy normally. The same goes for the two neckpieces that Akash and Chaya picked out for me from Stupid Cupid. For some reason, Akash doesn't want me to tell people that he picked out that kurti. I'm still curious about why that is, but he refuses to explain himself. But of course, I'm a little stubborn and a little rebellious, so I'm telling everyone. I actually wanted to put up a picture of Akash and me (me dressed in the kurti in question) here. I'm not too sure why I'm not doing that, but I'm not.

But anyway, interesting birthday. And interesting gifts from Akash, Chaya, Bhavna, Abhinav (who disapproves of all of them, by the way), Sandy and Namrata. Thank you folks for making it memorable.

By the way, in case you are wondering why I'm writing this so late, I'd actually planned on writing this last weekend, but I'd told my dear friend Ashish that I would not write any more blog posts until he finished reading all of the existing ones. That's the reason why I did not write anything for twelve days, which, you'll notice, is a long gap by my usual standards. Since then Ashish has read quite a few posts, but still not all of them. But I have so many ideas floating around in my head that I'm finding it difficult to not write. So I'm planning to write all the overdue posts this weekend anyway. But I'll point out, Ashish, that this does not mean that I no longer care about whether or not you read them!