Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham

Sorry for not posting for so long...been trying to type as little as I can because of my wrists....its been a mixed couple of weeks, largely khushi, but also a little gham. The khushi is because of my sexy new black video ipod that Junri gifted me on Christmas! (See: how little one needs to be happy in life!) My old white one was all scratched and dirty and the battery kept on going out - and J totally surprised me by getting me a new one, with the most awesome message lasered on its back (mail me and I'll tell you what it was. :-) Also, Junri and me had a quiet and overall pretty excellent holiday season - the first time we spent Christmas and new year together actually, because last year he was in Japan at this time while I toiled away on the thesis. This year, my celebrations began on Christmas eve, with afternoon drinks at the old Ritz hotel in downtown Boston, with the absolutely wonderful Joyce and Seisha and their friends, Betsy and her husband whose name eludes me now. The bar is completely old style Raj - with horse and hound paintings, hoity toity waiters, etc. Nice, but U couldn't help thinking that our Taj is so much better back home in Bombay, na. Next day, J and me had Christmas dinner at Joyce's again - the table was so multicultural - Indian, Japanese, German, Madagascarese... the food was scrumptious, and we had a Yankee gift swap, which basically meant that we all got little gifts with us, and exchanged them, but following a complicated set of rules. Everyone was too nice - no fighting as such... what to do, Christmas spirit! Many little parties in between - Ajit's Christmas party, which was awesome as ever - the best pav bhaji and dahi batata puri's i've had for a long time, and also a chance to see some Malgudi Days episodes, too good ya... Yusuf's birthday bash at Kashmir - no wait, that was a few days after new year. Anyways...New Year, we went to see the ice sculptures and firework display at the Boston common, then had our first dinner at a little dive called Fajitas and Ritas (tasty but too much cheese - I felt like i was in a Gujju Mexican place, really!), and saw Brokeback Mountain. Then we had our second dinner at the Marriot near our house, and ran back home, because it was snowing too much, and we had to pack Junri's bag for Japan. He was leaving in a couple of hours.

Which brings me to the first gham. Junri is away in Japan!!! So all my days of 2006 so far have been Junri-less. So sad, no? (Well, we do talk two hours everyday, but its not the same at all). Second gham is that our wonderful friend and also one of your wonderful Arrey Baba! blog columnists - Stefan (in picture above, with J and me) has left us bereft of his company, and gone back to Germany. Stefan - miss you so much. No more Bollywood piano tunes, no more shopping trips to the Prudential, no more film nights and video game discussions...come back soon, yaar. Third gham is that on a complicated drive back from the airport on the first, i got swindled out of all my money by a nasty cab driver. I was rushing back home to get Junri's asthma medicine and take it back to the airport before he boarded his plane to Japan. Can you imagine - to rob someone at a time like that. To cut a long story short, I made it back in time... and thanks to another really kind cab driver (so there's a khushi element in this story too), who accepted less money from me and drove me there really fast, but still, I'm boggled. Don't thieves and criminals take New Year's day off? :-)