Learning how to swim

Cast away into a wild,wild sea,
"I Know how to swim" : Oh no!that's not me.

Neither am I sinking nor am I swimming;
All that's happening is a lot of hapless splashing.

You sometimes make me feel I'll drown in a minute,
But then send a gleeful wave to lift up my spirit.

Oh sea!Will you and I ever gel?
Ask me not,that only time can tell.

Quote of the day: "Egotism is nature's compensation for mediocrity." - L.A. Safian

Tagged

Got tagged by Varun.Here I go with my taggie questionnaire:

Three names I go by:
Chutki,Pinky,Enthu-cutlet.

Three screen names I would like to have:
bachke_rehna,chutkimutki,mental_loafer

Three physical things I like about myself:
My tiny feet that need shoes of size 3.They cause a lot of embarassment to me n bring some much needed laughter to reprieve-seeking shopkeepers when I go shopping for sandals.
My grey matter covered thankfully with non-grey matter.
My ears that forgot to continue to grow after I turned 5.

Three physical things I don't like about myself:
(1)I don't care
(2)About MYSELF?How can I not like it then :-p Yes,Iam a lil too much in love with myself.....so???

Three parts of your heritage:
(1)I don't exactly kneel down n fold my hands in prayer everyday but I definitely do pray everyday in my own way.Maa are you listening?Iam sure this'll make you happy but that's not the only reason why I wrote it.Iam being honest n all.
(2)Old age is second childhood.So I do pamper my grandparents like I love and pamper kids.
(3)Homeopathy wins hands down over allopathy.

Three things that scare me:
Waning self worth because of underachievement, fear of losing my loved ones,fear of being misunderstood by people who matter to me.

Three of my everyday essentials:
Yahoo messenger, phone, sleep.

Three things I badly want to do before I die:
Earn a worthy epitaph stamped and endorsed by me.
Make arrangements to get God to gimme a life again ASAP :)
Earn powers to selectively erase/fill people's memory slates.

Three careers I'm considering:
IT Consultancy,Child Psychology,Fine Arts

Three places I want to go:
Home,home,home.

Two truths and a lie (in no particular order):
I was kidnapped once.
I love pets.
I absolutely love life.

Tagging Chubby and Nami

Reliving the Lonavala bliss - part II

4-7-2005:This day was by far my best one in Lonavala.Highlights:
The assault course: 5 random groups of 10.5 outdoor activities.Incessant rains.Slipping all the time while running around for these activities right at the top of a hill.Totally drenched and shivering all through.Getting an incoherent no-one-known-anyone-else team to work together to beat records.Cleanliness and delicate-darling norms thrown to the winds.A whole lot of physical activities that always kept me on my toes.In short, absolutely thrilling.Be it building a runway of pipes continuously to catch a rolling ball into a target container or fishing out 7 floating rubber balls from one bucket into another using thread control or passing people carefully through holes in a cobweb or building a tent completely blindfolded or crossing a river on 2 narrow planks of wood, it all felt like Crystal Maze come true!KM,A and I were the only braveheart women to accept Dwarika sir's challenge of trekking a round-trip to a far-off bus in less than 5 minutes.....I clocked 2 mins,15 secs!!!

The trek:After something as stimulating as the assault course, the trek was a cake-walk.Having trekked on terrains that are atleast 10 times tougher and longer,this one was nowhere close to exciting.It was enjoyable nevertheless.A panoramic view of the foggy Dutchess' nose was what greeted us from the peak of the Dutch's nose.Exchanged some quick mountaineering tips with Tanmay and headed back to our bus, only to find it stuck in knee-deep slush.(OK,accepted that knee-deep for Chutki means a lil more than ankle-deep for everyone else:) ).Cheered our heroes to push the carrier outa the slush and landed back at Shahani to a game of TT and endless gup-shup that went on upto 3am when the profs came down n quietened us down.

5-7-2005:The treasure hunt:5 teams co-ordinate to find clues and unlock one treasure.The idea that all 5 teams were in pursuit of a single treasure occurred to me when we were less than 5 minutes into the game but my group leader n everyone else that I voiced my two-paisa-worth opinion to, played it down as a very improbable thought!Finally a whole 45 precious minutes later, they arrived at the conclusion that it was indeed just one treasure and got working on the clues.Talk of openness to ideas!Treasure hunt was amazing fun and the locale was extremely filmi lush-green.The clues were way too simple though,requiring some compass and measurement skills.This activity brought back fond memories of my days at the Bharat Scouts and Guides Camps.I miss them very dearly....th activities,the spirit,the crowd and the learning.Hope to get back to it soon.The sudden rush of activity while unlocking the treasure is astonishing.If I were to draw a graph of the activity and enthu levels of people from the beginning to the end of the treasure hunt, it would look like this:

Drat!!!The BE-MBA attitude of graphs is catching on really soon now:)

Just two days into the trip, I had run out of my entire stock of dry clothes,thanks to the incessant downpour.Spending the remaining two days in wet clothes was awful to say the least.

The rest of the day was spent in event management.I was on the 3-member core committee of our group.Having to deal with screening and selecting programmes to be presented in our half-an-hour-slot,oraganizing talent pools,co-ordinating amongst the different functional wings,making posters,providing funny headlines to flash and a zillion such shouldered responsibilities ensured that I skipped dinner and had precisely 3 minutes to prepare for my compering for that evening.The stress that came with this muddle of event-management activities coupled with my bad habit of skipping meals over the past one month took a heavy toll on me that night.My close brush with the eternal hush that night deserves a separate post,for the myriad of emotions that gripped me for those crucial 8 hours are impossible to pen down in 2-3 lines.

6-7-2005.All good things must come to an end and so too the bliss I lived in at Lonavala.We had a "Paint your future" activity.I personally didn't find it too useful coz I have strained my brain with precisely this for the past 6-8 months and Iam now at peace with the direction I have set myself on.It would've probably helped those confused souls who are in as confused a state as I was a few months back about what I want to do with the rest of my life.This activity was followed by another one where we had to package 2 eggs with some given material in such a way that they do not break when dropped from a height of 16 feet.This last group was the most challenging one that I got to work with and the one in which my thoughts on group dynamics were reinforced the most.A classic show of ego clashes,Iam-right-u're-wrong attitudes,lack of direction.....it was all there.The negative result was the only thing that was predictable about this group :) It did reinforce a lot of my thoughts about separation of personal relationships from task-based ones.Overall, Lonavala was a lot of fun packed with a lot of learning too.Like the seniors say, it is one of the best things that happen to you at SP after the first 5 days of absolute bliss.

Quote for the day:To be able to spread cheer around,you first need to be happy from within.

Reliving the Lonavala bliss - part I

3-7-2005.The D-day had finally arrived.Our entire batch of 145 enthu cutlets were going to be packed off to Lonavala for a Personality Growth workshop.We had heard long tales from our seniors about how much fun we were going to have in Lonavala.There was some skepticism lurking in the background though:theirs was a batch that knew each other for 4 long months before Lonavala happened to them,while our batch had been together for hardly a month.Considering that we did not know most of our classmates even by name and considering the prejudiced opinion we had formed of our batch, a lot of us remained highly skeptical about having as good a time as our seniors did.

We were divided into three groups,each packed into a separate bus.Hardly half a km into our journey, the enthu levels began to soar.A lot of screaming and singing followed.I felt a much-craved-for sense of belonging in this junglee fun crowd - it was precisely my types :) The very first stop spot on our itinerary was Bhushy Dam.A dam that was overcrowded thanks to that day being a Sunday,still had some of the most treausrable moments to offer.Anu and I threw inhibitions to the winds and started off by sitting down on the steps, where the gush of water was extemely forceful.Twice in a row, we were literally washed away and luckily pulled back by someone!After experiencing this natural water massage for sometime, a group of us trekked uphill until we were directly below a huge waterfall.The fall of water on our heads was so powerful that I could feel a thousand hammers banging on my head all at once.Just one step further and we were safely behind this sheet of water.Turning to look back at our classmates who were cheering us from below,it felt like looking at the world from behind a sheet of glass.Beautiful sight indeed.Not too sure if this is a thing to be proud of but I was the only daredevil woman who could make it to the other side of this huge fall.It was extremely foggy by now and the visibility was severely limited to a few metres.Sat down on the strong-current-ridden steps for a while longer.The best part about this place is that while you relax on these steps with the cold water giving you a lovely massage,the chaai and butta vendors wade through the water right down to where you are sitting and offer the choicest of chaai and butta! We walked back down,had some hot vada paav and butta,enjoyed a roadside disc complete with DJ n all n then headed towards Shahani Holiday Home - our abode for the next 3 days.The drive, that should've ideally taken about an hour, took over 2 hours, thanks to our novice driver who had us spell-bound with atleast 7 U-turns and reverses on the way!

We checked into our rooms and gathered quickly for a session of ice breakers.The nice part about the ice breaker was that I got to interact with many of my classmates whom I didn't know even by name.The bad part was that it was too cliched a team game and hence quite boring.The funny part was noting how some people go about "talk to each other casually and get to know each other better" as a mundane activity....there they were,drawing out mighty pens n notepads and noting down points about the new person that they were supposed to make friends with!!!We were then divided into three random groups and asked to choose a name,punch line,motto for our group and make presentable posters accordingly.We named our group mosaic and the punch line was as simple and uncreative as "Together we rock".I enjoyed this activity immensely.I was the unanimous choice to make the presentation, thanks to the over-hyped image that people have of my supposedly awesome presentation skills, out here.Modesty apart, it did feel nice to hear all that people said about my presentation, once it was over.With a fair name,uninteresting punch line and a whole lot of gyaan to present, it did take a decent rocker of a presentation to make people sit up and listen!