Happy Thanksgiving!

It's the American Thanksgiving today. And even though there is no formal celebration and (being the staunch grass-eater that I am) definitely no turkey. But there is no reason why there should be no sentiments and mushy speeches. Warning: lots of mush and tears ahead. Proceed at your own risk. :P

To God: For giving me this life, with all these people in it and for keeping the extra share of love from each one of them for me. I know I crib a lot. But I'm sure you know how much I appreciate this life, the comforts, the loving family, the doting friends and all the academic success. :) Thank you very much!

To my parents: For everything. For pampering me and for disciplining me. For making me understand the value of relations and also also making me aware of my individuality. For waking me up in the mornings. For keeping the biggest piece of chocolate for me. For making sure that I get everything I wish for and for making sure that I don't take any of that for granted. I love you two. Even when I'm super pissed off with you and even when you exasperate me no end, I love you very much. And no one should EVER mention this again but I used to cry myself to bed practically every alternate day when I was in England because I used to miss you both so very much. Thank you for being you.

To Sun and Moon: For being my pillars. For the long nights spent talking about boys and about things best not mentioned here. :P For being my sound-boards. For making the extra effort to wrap my gifts. For making chocolates together for the first time. For pinning up my dresses while dressing up for events. For going bra-shopping with me. (Trust me, it's a BIG ordeal!) For sharing the best time of my life with me, making it all the more special. For knowing me better than myself. For writing the long emails and letters when I was away. For talking me out of my blues. For reminding me of my "balls of steel". :P For looking to me for strength. For believing in me. For making me believe in me. For growing up with me. I love you two more than anything else in the world! Thank you for being my soul mates.

To S: For being the reason England was beautiful. For being my ever-ready travel mate. For being my baking-buddy. For being my shopping advice. For introducing me to couchsurfing and for my first real Thanksgiving meal ever. For indulging my passions for almost everything from silly Bollywood films to bitching about "Indian men". (Disclaimer: For all the men who read this, it is not meant to insult you unless you come in one of these categories.) For putting up with me every time I crawled into your bed and cried "Mummeeee!!" (Yes, I really did that to her!) For taking care of me when I was shit-faced pissed. For being the sound of my conscience and also for reminding me that I'm an adult and can make my own decisions. ;) I love you very much! Thank you for being my proverbial better half. :D

To Kyra, JD and Sara: For being my fun quotient in England. For all the drunken games of never have I ever. For the passionate, sometimes intellectual, most of the times silly discussions on Bollywood and popular culture. For being the ones who understand what being an Indian in England means. And for understanding what being an immigrant back in India means. For the rajma, the alu chaat, the gulab-jamun, the daal makhni, the mojitos, the risotto, the cocktails, the wine, the cake and so much more! Oooh, and for being my first joint! :P For the Emotional Attyachar and Munni dances. For the future ventures. For all the marriage proposals. :P I love you all! Thank you for being the best kind of mates anyone can hope for!

To Atom: For being the reason England became all the more beautiful, even in autumn! ;) For the long chats, often resulting in us sleeping at 3 am! For being interested in things you are interested in. And for looking up things I'm interested in so that we can talk about them. For sharing my love for films. For believing in me and my book. For saying the loving things that make me feel special. For treating me like I'm precious. For the friendship. And for the love and warmth. For being so kind and understanding. Thank you for being so special!

To Xavier's and the School of English, Leeds: For shaping me. For giving me the confidence I have today. For making me a person ready to go ahead and face the world with all it's challenges. For sheltering me enough that I feel I have someone to lean on and for letting me go enough that I learn not to take that support to lean onto. For quenching my thirst for knowledge and also for fanning my quest for more. You are the best alma maters anyone can ever hope for. Thank you for the great learning experiences!

To Chhaya Mam: For giving me a role model. For being absolutely the best teacher I've ever had in my entire life. For taking that extra effort and being our friend more than our teacher. For always being interested in anything and everything that affects us. For giving us excellent guidance and superb opportunities. For being so understanding, kind and gentle. For being the inspiration in my life. I love you, mam! Thank you for being the reason English Literature was my best decision ever.

To June, HG, Kannan, survivingbrain, pj, smalltowngirl and all the others who are kind enough to read my rants, pleas, opinions that nobody else really cares about, for commenting and consoling me, for giving me brilliant advice and for being the awesome bloggers that they are! :D

Happy Thanksgiving to all!! :)

Lots of Love,
Star.

50th Post!

So, this post is about nothing except for the fact that it is my 50th post on the blog. :D And yes, you will be subjected to these kinds of posts when 1) I don't have anything else to write about and 2) It's the 100th post, the 200th one, the 350th one, the 500th one, etc.

I also have to tell you that I've crossed the 1000 visitors mark in the 3 months! :D Yay! My 1000th visitor was someone from Calicut! :D ::hearts and music notes doodles::

Thank you for reading all the crap, all the rants and sometimes intelligent things that I put up here and also for commenting and making me feel better about myself! :D ::blabbers drunkenly:: (hey, I'll celebrate, won't I? :P) "Thank you, Thank yous very muchs! I love you alls!!! I feel like the Kings of the Earths!" :D

Bas, Yunhi (Just like that!) ;)

I realised, I've been writing too many "justifications" lately and decided to relax a bit...So, here goes: Random things about me which you probably didn't need to know but now will since you're reading this...bas yunhi!

1. I've recently updated my food blog and now, it looks all cool and professional chef-types blog! Yay, I rock! :P
2. I have also, FINALLY, mastered the art of eating with chopsticks!! :D I POLISHED off my Thai fried rice yesterday, down to the LAST grain of rice, with my chopsticks! Yay again!! 
3. I started following a few new blogs and realised we have awesome bloggers in the world! Especially, June and Vampire Doc here. Hehe, very funny! Go, read! 
4. My house ALWAYS smells of catpoo and fish! :/ I don't think our landlady eats anything other than fish. And even though I'm friends with the cats, it's impossible to go into the kitchen without scrunching up your nose because of the fish and catpoo smell! Hmph. Oh well, hardly 3 more months more to stay in this house before I go back home, baby!! :D
5. I've been using the expression "Home, baby!!" way too many times for it to be considered normal! BUT, in my defence, I'd be going back home and back to my beloved Mumbai after 13 VERY long months! So, I'm allowed some over-excitement. :P
6. For sometime now, I've been thinking of changing my blog name to something funkier. Any suggestions?
7. I HEART BOLLYWOOD!!! :D I've never seen anything more brilliant than Om Shanti Om in my life!! (Take that bewildered and aghast look off your face and stop judging me. ::pause:: Now.) I have a special relationship with Bollywood, where I love to hate it and hate to love it! (S, my lovely Yankee friend, tells me that if you purely love Bollywood, then there is something seriously wrong with you. The only way you can love Bollywood is by hating it. And I think she has pretty much nailed my relationship with Bollywood. Does that make any sense to you? Because I think it's perfect!) Oh, and this should come as #1. I don't know how I didn't put it before frivolous things like catpoo and fish smells! 
8. I'm just doing this list because I read somewhere that lists have come back in fashion in Blogworld. Hmm, which makes me wonder because I'm generally not the sort of person who follows fashion. Comfort is more my style.
9. I don't like being kissed in the morning without having brushed my (and him, his) teeth. 
10. I would very much like to write fiction except that I'm VERY creatively challenged! :( But, because I have made this promise to the sacred God of chick lit and to myself, I WILL write THAT one book at least at some point of time in my life. 
11. A boy I have a little crush on said he likes the way I write!! :D :D :D Now, I write the way I think and talk. So, if he likes the way I write, it means he must like the way I talk! Which means, he'd want to talk to me more and thus, hang out with me more! Oooh, finally, some excitement in my life after MANY months of being single! ;)
12. I totally made the last one up but I wish it were true! *sigh* :P

Ok, since I wrote about non-worry like and very cool things, I feel awesome right now! :D Happy blogging, world! 

Lying is the most fun a girl can have without taking her clothes off!

Cool song, btw! Check it out! :)


But, I want to write this post on a more serious note. No, no, please don't go away!!! Come on, I promise I won't bore you. (in a small voice: too much) Ok, so, if all of you have abandoned me, then I'll just go ahead and talk to myself! ::pouts::


According to an article in Forbes, lying is good for you. "Hell, yeah!!" is what I say. Here's what they say:

If I told you lying was good for you, you probably wouldn’t believe me. But trust me--I’m not lying.

Simply put, we lie because it works. When we do it well, we get what we want.

We lie to avoid awkwardness or punishment. We lie to maintain relationships and please others. And, of course, most of all we lie to please ourselves. Whether we’re embellishing our credentials or strengthening our stories, we often tell untruths to make ourselves appear and feel better.

You know where I lie the most? To my parents. They think I'm their goody two-shoes daughter, who even though a bit rebellious, is essentially chaste. No alcohol, no nicotine, no grass, no sex. And I lie. To keep those beliefs intact. I used to lie because I was scared of them, scared of punishment. Now, I lie because I'm afraid of hurting them. They are just very conservative Indian parents scared for me. (Hell, they don't even let me wear sleeveless T-shirts or Bermuda shorts!) And since I'm an only child, and a girl to top that, they are naturally a bit too protective of me. I completely understand them. But, honestly, I can't stop BEING the way I am because they don't approve. Does that make me a horrible, horrible person? Actually, no it does not. But, the conditioning that we receive ever since we are 3 seconds old always plants that guilt in me. Just the other day, my parents were trying to video-chat with me and I had a massive hangover. So, I lied and told them that I was busy. Small deception compared to the fact that they don't even know I drink. But, I felt lousy about lying to them. I guess we all feel lousy when we lie to parents. But, do you have another option that will not break my parents' hearts AND let me live my life?

Besides, it's not like I have any addictions. Social drinker. And I've smoked and smoked up about twice in my life. Don't plan on changing that statistic for a long time anyway. You know, all in the right company, people I trust. And never in a place or to the extent that I wouldn't know or wouldn't be able to go back home safely. I agree mishaps can still happen. But mishaps can happen even when I'm perfectly sane and sober. I don't see the harm in a little bit of fun. Especially, if it happens less than once a month. So, I don't think I should be judged for that. Not that I care if anyone else judges me. The only people I care about are my parents. The problem is that my parents care if others judge me (because, ultimately, they'll be judging them by judging my upbringing.) So, since a=b and b=c, a=c and I have to take utmost care that nobody who knows my parents would know about my life. And oh, this is so tiring! (That is also the reason why blogging helps me a lot! Sigh, catharsis!)

Damn it, why is life so complicated! It'd be *SO* much easier if I didn't have this alternative life hidden away from my parents! But nooooooooooooooo! All that sanskar mumbojumbo and all! It won't matter then that I have had brilliant scores all throughout my education, won't matter that I respect people, won't matter that I still have enough humanity in me to want to help lesser-privileged people, won't matter that I mind my own buisness and don't judge people for being who they are, won't matter that I am a good human being. All that will matter is that I let them down by not following every single thing that they ever said to me.

Again, damn it. I sound like my parents chain me down to traditions or something. They don't! They are wonderful parents and more liberal than a lot of people's parents I know! But, I guess my personality clashes with a LOT of their values! It's like I live on the north pole and they live on the equator. We just don't get each other's concerns. Impossible to wrap our heads around something so other-worldly! Sigh, what does one do?

Oh, and see, I got so carried away! This was supposed to be a post on lying, not a justification of my relationship with my parents! Well, anyway, I hate the situation. But, for the time being at least, I can't even imagine telling them the truth. Maybe sometime in the future, when they trust my judgements more... Until then, lying and dishonesty are my friends.

PS: Incidentally, if you happen to know my parents (or worse, fall in the category of people who are not supposed to know this part of my life but somehow have not only found my blog but also figured out who I am,) I'd appreciate if a) you don't judge my parents for umm, what I've turned out to be and b) not mention this particular part of my life to them.

Ok, peace out!

*Pictures courtsey Google.