Happy Diwali

Hey.. happy diwali everyone

Had a great time over the weekend. Friday evening started on a relative low missing all the people and goodies like murukku, jalebi and mysore-pak at home, not to mention family, friends and the noise and colours of crackers lighting up the morning sky in Chembur. Going to temple in new clothes, meeting near and dear ones from around the area... man!! those were the days.... called up my parents and oops!! served as an alarm as in my absence, they had set their diwali to begin a wee bit later than usual... but I guess it was in someways good that my voice triggered the celebrations for them.

Than the fun began... went with Varun adn Manali to Royal Sweets and bought jalebi, burfi, rasgollas (Sushant's special request) and pedhas. Good crowd at the sweet shop. Felt good to see the spirit high amongst the NRIs :P... of course, any visit to the desi adda in Irving is incomplete without chat so we obliged our stomachs and went to Taj Chat house.. good decent fare, too much crowd, at times driving the poor servers crazy .. buta very novel concept. You take a small menu booklet with a counterfile, tick mark what all u want... give the counterfoil to the person at the counter. The booklet bears a no. which doubles up as your order no. .. they shout out in weird accents stuff like rawa dosa and bisibela bhaat (agreed its tough for a bengali to tell puliyodharai rice)... and wait, you havent paid yet. At the end of it all, you go to the cashier and give him the booklet and he totals you. Depending on the kind of dishes, there are various booklets for chat, beverages, rice dishes, dosas etc. So sometimes if you've indulged in a good variety you may look like a waiter yourself with 2-3 chits on hand. Coming to the point, it runs on a system that places the onus on you as a customer to give the chits for what you have eaten and be charged accordingly. Amazing!!! Just comes around to tell you that trust begets trust and truthful actions alike. Saw acouple of uncles telling the cashier that they had bought so and so thing but had lost the chit and hence, requested him to bill them for it.... way to go .....

Of course, back home, dinner settled with Papdi chaat and mysore masala dosa, got into the groove to watch a movie... actually dont remember it coz I think I've watched 4-5 over this weekend:P. Sunday began late but spent half the day calling everyone all voer the US... kinda weird since I am not really the calling-types but tyohaar hai bhai!! Had Laxmi puja at baba's (Sagar) place before which I went to the temple . Not too crowded at 6 PM thankfully but some other friends who went later werent so lucky.... did some desigiri, line thodi and came back for the puja. Followed with a stupendous feast of potluck dishes comprising, kheer , 5-6 sweets, batata wada, pulao, palak dal and sabji.

A good beginning to the new year. Diwali as usual left me high in spirits... also passed a psychological barrier of 50 days left before heading home ;)...

P.S : Gifted myself an Ipod nano for diwali... its good... cute, sounds nice... am happy :)
Currently listening to: Strings - Najanay kyon (Spiderman OST)