Wait for the Snow

It’s raining snow right outside my window; this is kind of an iconic moment in my life. It might snow every day hence forth but today Thursday the 20^th of December, 2012 almost 11.15 is the first snow fall of my life.
 

Back in India, we get our usual, long summer, the most longed monsoons and a small stretch of winter which barely even noticed.  So thats what I love most about the west - the marvelous change of seasons people get to experience here; first it was the Fall, (in the order in which i got to experience it) where it was like walking live through the beautiful wallpapers that one admired only on a desktop. The floras were all these magnificent colors bright yellow, orange, maroon and pink; just awesome. We had occasional showers. Gradually it came to the light winds in the evenings which swept away the leaves off the trees leaving them naked with only the branches. I am not a huge fan of the cold numb climates, with everything looking smoggy and frozen. But I feel the winter this time was a little generous than what I heard was the situation last time. Except for two or three days and nights we had bearable cold climates with what I call bone-freezing-teeth-clattering winds. All through from the start of winter, we were all on a wait for the snowfall, may be because it’s kind of the first time real life deal. Even in fiction and movies it looks so marvelous. Now when I look at the snow swirling and pouring down from the sky I feel it too good to be true.

I stood outside the balcony, like some over excited kid watching shooting stars at night; I let out my hands for the flakes to drop on. It was crazy but still it was exhilarating. The snowflakes were like swarms of bees sometime whirling around sometime falling diagonally as how the winds cast them, but they were like showers of happiness and merriment from heaven. I got tiny flakes of snow caught up tangled in my hair and my arms. But they melted off as soon as they touched the surface.

I knew I hated winter for good reasons; I was so engaged in a fantasy coming true before my eyes that I hardly noticed I was standing outside the balcony without any warm clothes at a 4 degree and snow. We had thunderstorms yesterday. We had the broadcast as well. So it was just the wait for the snow that remained.
 

There are all kinds of things that inspire us. After so many days of spending my days as a home maker, which I am not that good at, I felt a little sprint in my spirit like a jolt or something of that sort. But then I guess it’s not just me, Mr. Jones; the handsome tree standing right outside my window lost all his color and vigor during the last couple of days of the winter. But now when I look at him I can see or rather feel a look of joy running through its drooped dried up leaves that remain on the otherwise leaf less branches. Even when the sun showed up on some of the days inviting little birdies and squirrels chirping and running around his branches and my balcony; Mr. Jones was unaffected. I on the other hand would watch the visitors from inside the closed frames of the French windows not wanting to bother them but feeling happy about their visits and chirps making themselves at home all around my balcony.

Ho! but now it’s like a tempest outside. The snow has slightly subsided and I am back inside leaving my footprints on the snow resting on my balcony. But I can still hear the wind outside howling and giving the delicate flakes a hard time driving them here and there in its strong currents. Mr. Jones is still in the merry mood, jostling his leaves and dripping the droplets of snow that settled and melted on his branches, he looks like an elephant on a swim. Despite of all the turbulence and the ruthless wind the snow continues. Watching this amazing phenomenon gives me a feeling of content and warmth. I might hate the cold and numbness of the winter, but I definitely don’t mind putting aside the grudges if it means I get to watch the tiny flakes of snow pouring down. Mr. Jones wouldn't mind it either.

The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of a world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found? (J. B. Priestley)

Julie, Julia & Me

I was watching a movie last day, Julie & Julia.  In fact, I have watched it many times before, but something about the movie just keeps me wanting to watch it again and again. This film has all the “recipes” in the right propositions to make my taste buds sing hallelujah - a quite drama with nothing out of the blue or quaking but still feels real and moving through the two strong women characters played by Meryl Streep and Amy Adams

The movie is about two women living in two different times and how the one thing they had in common brings them together. How inspite of the difference in era they lived or the difference in the lifestyles they followed, they could relate themselves to so many things through the only one thing they both found love in; cooking.

Apart from the fact that the threesome of us (Julie, Julia & Me) loves cooking, the grades we are likely to get for our dishes would straight away eliminate me from the competition. I could stand a good chance if I am competing against Nicky or Athi (My sole companion at work and my best friend ever). But, cooking isn’t the only thing that makes me play the movie again and again. I love watching Meryl Streep and the role played by Amy Adams in the movie is just me. Even before actually watching the movie for the first time, I had uttered several dialogues in my life which Amy's character does in the movie. Well not until the last day did I notice a few other resemblances with the character. …Julie Powell (Amy Adams) is a blogger too. Well, that’s not it, she too thinks she has ADD. She is also married, living with her husband and working in some consultancy. She too had nothing exciting in life to look forward to until she started her special blog.  

And further more catchy scenes of resemblances that I just couldn't let go was her meeting up with friends and the calls to her mom. Well, all my friends, thanks to the Lord above, have always loved me enough and more than I deserve, but what I could relate with Julie and me regarding meeting up with friends were both of us being the odd ones out in the group, the difference being in Julie's case, she was poor and as for me Orkut was the culprit.  The other likeness was, just like her relationship with her mother, I too had little patience with mine.

When I and my friends used to call up such get together (almost 10 years back) half of the time mummy wouldn’t feel it safe for me step out in the world alone when there are so many chain snatchers and rapists on loose. And at the other times, when my mom gathers up some confidence and let me go, our get together meetings usually get drowned in the talks about Orkut. What could be more thrilling than discussing a friend from KG who knocks on our Orkut doors and drops a “Hi” once in a while?  May be that’s the reason why I almost hate net working sites …well for the record, I do have accounts in a few, it’s just that I rarely pay them a visit. I, being PC- less those days, was a total illiterate in technology and had nothing much to do in these conversations. Well when the majority sticks with something it’s really hard to pull them apart and get their attention into something else, unless you have a very captivating communication skill to compensate. As to mine, I talked a little about this and that; mean while hoping and praying within that things don’t turn the Orkut way and inspite of my better attempts if they still do, I sat there gaping around silently sipping my milkshake and sometimes wondering when will I be genuinely a part of the awesome group and chat away about cool things like Orkut. Myself sitting in the great IT park of Kerala sometimes take time out to laugh at my old self that sat screwed up thinking that I was a loser coz I dint have a clue about the Net. At the same time, I can’t help feeling a little overjoyed about what happened to Orkut after Facebook took over the world. Hey, no offense to the Orkut fans eh.

Well let’s leave the haunting past behind and get into business. The point I was trying to make here is, the resemblances I felt with Julie that makes me watch Julie & Julia again and again. Well before Julie starts blogging she sets a deadline. The task was to blog her way cooking through the recipes of her icon Julia Child. (Julia Child wrote a cook book of French recipes for all the servant less Americans.) She had 524 recipes and 365 days. The reason why she sets the time line was because she never completed anything she starts. Just like me.

Well when I started blogging I thought this would be different, then again, I came to a halt that I completely ignored my figments for almost half a year. I wasn’t in any such earth quaking circumstances that could have absolutely  prevented me from penning down a post, like I wasn’t kidnapped or run over or dead…well most of the times I was busy managing work and home and at the other times I was just lazy.  But the positive point is the world is still surviving without my posts and nobody in particular misses it at any extent. That’s kind of a letdown and a relief at the same time. Why it is a letdown is self explanatory but why it’s a relief is because the other day I was reading a blog on someone who hates Chetan Bhagat, well I liked the blog it had good humor and language but he totally failed in taking care of the Chetan lovers who tortured, slaughtered and murdered him figuratively.

I would rather have no one comment on my blog, than have such a blog traffic just to bad-mouth you. But then as the saying goes; it is only the fruit-laden tree that receives the shower of stones from passersby