It's One Year!

(Very incoherent, Very random.. depicting very well, the current state of my mind..).


.. since I saw my family..

.. since I took a breath of Indian air...

.. since I touched Indian soil (Background music: Yeh jo des hai mera... Swades....la..laa )

YESS! It's one year since I set foot in the United States! Yes, it was on the 27th of August, 2007.. when a major blissful idiot with a dumb grin.. who had no clue what was coming, landed. Three academic quarters went by.. They can best be described as "Whoosh", "Whoosh" and yeah, "Whoosh".

Still, it's been the most eventful year of my life, a year of rich learning experiences of all sorts.

It's one year since I saw some dear friends who helped me when I first came here. I am very grateful to them..

It's one year since I saw the people who are responsible for my existence and for my being what I am (I do hope they don't regret it :P).

With NO change in the levels whatsoever, of love, affection, and attachment, I feel like I've finally let go of them in terms of dependence for every other thing.. and that's such an important milestone..

Thanks! All the people who helped me make it here.
And Thanks! All the people here, who've been there for me at all times, good and bad, because of whom I run back "home" to Palo Alto every other weekend..!! :P they know who they are and they're most probably reading this right now :)

Love you all!

Cat Fight!!

I'm basically more of a dog person. I never really did own one, and I was even terrified of them.. until I met this friend's endearing cocker spaniel, who taught me that dogs aren't really out there just to bite you, and that they also have other interests in life.

And then I started to love dogs. But Cats??!! "uggh....", I used to think, "How can people ever like cats..?!!". But that too sort of changed when my heart went out to this brand new kitten of a stray cat in the neighbourhood. She was the only one of the litter her mother decided to abandon - for whatever reason. She made her way into our backyard and decided that she could probably stay there. I played with her, fed her, teased her and had lots of fun with her. In fact, I was so heavily distracted from my studies (or so my mom thought .. it was only visible this time.. tee hee :P) that she distracted the kitten herself, who left our backyard and went out in search of a new life. I missed her a lot, but well..

Anyway, I should tell you that my loyalties were only with this kitten. My adoration for cats in general didn't change too much.

Now I'm here, in another country, living with this really sweet couple for the summer. They have this fluffy, mostly black cat called Puff.

Puff is terrified of anyone new. I tried so hard to win her trust. Trust me, it wasn't easy. For some reason, she had decided that I had objections to her eating. Her food tray with some cat food and water is on the kitchen floor. Whenever I went into the kitchen to get something for myself, she would run away. If I stood in the kitchen for longer, she would tiptoe into the kitchen trying really hard not to be heard (silly thing, she doesn't know that cats need make no effort not to be heard!), and if I turned around, she would run away.

So much for one cat called Puff. Then the cat fun began. The lady C, that I stay with has a daughter who lives in a nearby city. She wanted to go on a holiday with her friends. So she decided to leave her two cats (yes, TWO) at C's place. This was actually coinciding with C and R (her husband)'s trip to Phoenix. SO, here was an interesting situation - I was going to live alone with 3 cats for 5 days. C asked me if I could feed Puff, and that her neighbours would feed her daughter's cats. Oh by the way, these two cats are called Crookshanks (brown in colour) and Savannah (snow-white in colour)!

Very hesitantly, C gave me a few instructions before she left. They were all cat-centric.

1) She asked me if I could fill Puff's tray with her food from time to time.

2) And then I was supposed to make sure that all doors of the house were closed at all times (since Puff/Crookshanks/Savannah liked to run away. And Crooks, in particular, would jump at the first opportunity).

3) Next, since Crookshanks and Puff did not "get along", I was supposed to keep Crook's room door shut - so that Puff would be safe. Crookshanks supposedly gets a kick out of scaring poor Puff off. And Puff, being a timid thing, totally lets Crookshanks have that supreme pleasure. But Savannah knows better. She sits still when Crookshanks is jumping around her, and lets her continue doing that until Crooks herself gets tired of it and stops. The most amusing thing about Savannah is that she's not scared of this monster Crookshanks, but is scared of everyone else. In fact, she's so terrified of people that she was hiding under the bed for as long as she was here, and I never got to see her. She is supposedly snow-white.

The last thing I wanted was to be witness to a Cat fight! Fortunately, it all went on quite smoothly. Puff and Crooks were not allowed to see one another. I filled Puff's food tray and the neighbours slid through the slit between the door and the wall of Crookshanks' room (or at least that's how I imagined they did it: I really don't know how they managed to keep Crooks from leaping out of the room).

So, I can now say I've had some solid experience with cats now. I still can neither say that I like them or that I dislike them. But I definitely think they're great sources of amusement!

Note: 1) It's Puff in Pic 1, and Crookshanks in Pic 2. And Savannah's pic isn't here for obvious reasons.
2) Puff is not scared of me anymore, yaaaay! :)