Goa Dec 1997: I came across this photograph yesterday during reshuffling of things at home. The best thing about having your house painted is that things roll out from shelves you didn’t know existed. Extremely amused, I brought it to work this morning and showed it to my colleagues with a smile and said "This is how I looked like all those years ago, I weighed 38.5kg and I needed a belt to hold up those purple jeans, how many of you can bet that I cannot go back to this form again?" There were a few giggles, more comments and finally a bet placed. So, armed with motivation of winning I am actually rejoining the gym again from today, all expenses paid. Visuals really work! Who cares if I win the bet or not, at least the carousal has started spinning.
One thing you don’t know about the beautiful mud cottage in the picture: It didn't have any bathroom doors, so I will never forget how two of us were woken up in the middle of the night and we were driven out of the cottage to sit outside while the third one had to go.
One thing I want to really do: Meet up some day with Barsha and Rageshwari in the picture. I lost contact, the last I heard of them was that Barsha is probably doing her Phd in some part of the world and Rajeshwari is a doctor in some other part of the world. If anyone knows them, I will pay a handsome reunion fee.
Some things never change: I absolutely had no idea where I was headed 10yrs ago and I still don’t know now. What I do know are some of my achievements. As I tick them off I realize that I never even planned some of the nicer achievements along the way…nor did I envision the surprise accolades.
- Best youngest teacher award at the age of 19yrs with price money of Tk 5,000. I figured back than that it was probably because the kids loved me so much because I was their size. I loved them, I treated them like adults and they studied harder and scored better. Till today, I couldn’t bring myself to spending that cheque.
- Silver medal in Wado, blue belt which was a big laugh because I was kicked out once during the competition for hyperventilating.
- Youngest assist manager at Citibank, bangalore. This was a real surprise, all I had to do was work 7 days a week for more than 18hrs a day to escape boredom of returning to an empty apartment back when I lived on my own.
- Got selected amongst 2,000 candidates in an audition to participate on a program on MTV and StarPlus in 2000. I wasn’t really interested in the audition, I just wanted to see what the real Veejays and hosts looked like in person.
- Second place at an intercollegiate essay competition on the topic “Mathematics in the new Millenium”. The funniest thing is that I was forced to enter the competition because someone else called in sick. I hate Mathematics, I had flunked a few times in it and I don’t even remember what I wrote in the essay that day.
- 1st place at a dance competition. For starters, I signed in because I liked the stage and thought of doing something on it and decided to choose dancing. So I went to a custume lending store and finally found someting that fit me. It was a glittery bejeweled gown with a huge bejeweled Turban. I looked like Tipu sultan’s sister with no idea which way I was gyrating on stage. I guess my mom's advice “dress so well during a dance performance that people don’t notice what you do on stage” worked. For the record, I never attended a dance class in my life!
- Having my nephew Marfiq smile at me every time he sees me. I don’t know how that’s an achievement but he might like reading his name out on my achievement list when he grows up.
10yrs back I was always broke. I am still always broke (not literally of course) and happy. I actually want to go and say “Thank You” to that cottage owner for giving us complimentary breakfast because he figured we ran out on cash the day we left that cottage in Goa.
“The best things happen to you when you least expect it”
