Its been more than a month since my college (re)started. Yet, I haven’t posted about it on my blog! Well.. This does sound preposterous to me
Anyways, I’m back as a blogger, and am seriously trying to find more time into writing new posts. Posting once a week is too less for a passionate blogger, isn’t it? Once, I even posted after fifteen days! My time management sucks, that’s why… I might want to do so many things (posting to blog, studying, writing, et al), but end up doing nothing! I am a perfectionist, maybe that’s why. I want things to be done my way, or else I don’t want them to happen. Since nothing of that sort happens in reality, I end up, well.. doing nothing!
Taking time out from my messy life, here I am, posting after more than a week. And that too, about the great Hans Raj College. Life’s back to normal I guess.
Lemme give you an introductory info about my group of friends. I shall be poking fun on them all the time, so you gotta know who they are, so that you can join the party
First, I am friends with myself! If you want to read about me, move on to my homepage. Lots of crap is written there. Hope you enjoy reading that!
Next up, comes Mohnish. I call him b.c. And he calls me b.c. (If you are wondering what the hell is ‘b.c.’, then probably you don’t need to know! Rating: ‘A’!) So.. Mohnish is a happy-go-lucky kind of guy, who takes a bath only on Holi, used to carry a very dirty bag, and sports hair ala Aamir Khan in Taare Zameen Par. Everytime I crack a PJ, he’s the first person who tries to kill me He’s always late for the first class, much to the dispair of all those who wait for him at the Metro Station. (I use the bus, so I’m spared!)
Dhruv. He’s the next one, but most of us don’t call him by that name. We call him tharki instead. (Again, Rating: ‘A’!), due to some things he did during the first week in college. (And our decision of calling him tharki got even more strengthened when we had a chat with him in metro, some weeks ago!) He’s 22 years old, the oldest in our batch, but that doesn’t mean that he is someone duffer who just fails n fails every year (He’s the topper, guys!) He’s the most distraught when Mohnish comes late, and has even decided not to wait for him anymore. He’s the only person who listens carefully in class, says that he has 16GB ‘Maal’ in his PC, loves to give unusual poses for pics (like with an umbrella inside a classroom, or with his nose sticking out, etc. etc.). He’s a CS Whiz Kid, and loves to eat a lot of food (until recently, we also used to call him ??????!).
Next come the Bhai-Bhai, Vinik and Subrata. They are not real brothers. They are siamese twins! ! Sitting in LP most of the time and ogling at girls is their favorite passtime. And on top of that, they have a huge database of girls inside their minds, and you can extract info of just about any girl of our college! Sure, when it comes to girl watching, these two guys are the undisputed kings!
Enuf Boyz!! Lets come to girls
There are only 4 girls in our batch. (Just 3, if I remove the one I don’t hang out with!), and one of them is Deepti. She’s an utterly religious girl. 95% of the CDs found at her place are of bhajans and stuff. (Well… that’s what she tells me. I haven’t checked it out myself!) We call her Kaali Maata, and joke that she’ll destroy us if we come in her way! She’s too religious that a guy in our batch (Vipin, more about him later) would literally touch her feet before going for an exam! She cannot, or rather does not walk very much, and always look for escalators and elevators when she has to climb, because she got three diseases at the same time, last year. Hmm…
Anyways, the next one is Sana. She’s anorexic (lack of appetite or avoidance of food). Yeah, she avoids food, and literally lives on two plates of maggi and dinner for the whole day! That is why, she looks like a maachis ki teeli. She has a fetish for pink dresses, so I call is Gulaabo (Gulaabi is pink in Hindi). The other day, she came to college wearing a dress having floral prints. Can you guess her name for the day? Phoolan Devi
Yeah, so you got it. Everyday she gets a new name. A new title, I should say! And everyday she gets to hear from me and Dhruv about her eating habits (or rather the lack of them!) The other day, when I introduced her to a friend of mine, I called her a Soft Toy! See, each day, new title!
Two more people left to be described. Lemme come to Richa first. Her birthday falls on 7^th of July (7÷7, you know…) That’s why, in my terminology, her name happens to be Satte Pe Satta! Otherwise I can also call her Dhanno or something similar. She’s a nineteen year old girl whose cellphone is always broken, and who has a fetish for getting free gifts. Like Mohnish, she has a habit of getting late (Yeah, never comes on time! People had had to wait for her for even 40 minutes!) Has a friend in another college, to whom she can talk to on phone for five hours straight!
Now comes the BlockBuster! VIPIN!
Nah.. You just can’t describe him in a few words. He’s from Haryana. He always wants somebody to give him a treat. He never told anybody that his birthday falls on 19^th of August. He likes to act like a pregnant woman. Wants that every outing of ours should be near to his home. And yes, he acts like a doggy too! Lemme show you a video of this :

Vipin’s Doggy Characteristics from Rajat Arora on Vimeo.

Ah.. I said that I’ll poke some fun on my friends, but all my time went away in just describing them! I’ll have to do that part later 

For those of you who did not understand, Kutte means Dogs. Yeah, I mean to say Who let the Dogs out. Then why didn’t I just say Dogs? Why did I say Kutte? Because I’m talking about those kutte, who don’t deserve to be dogs. Our very own, beloved, Street Dogs.
Oops! I forgot… Street Kutte!

By reading this, Dog Lovers will try to go away. My notice to them — “Stay here. I’m not despising Street Dogs. Though I don’t absolutely adore them, I don’t hate them either. They have a right to live and I don’t want them to be killed. What I’m really talking about is the situations that let them breed in large numbers.”
Note to self — “Disclaimers made. Now start criticizing!”
Ever since I’ve been living in this colony of mine, it has been a home to a number of stray dogs. As a kid, I used to be afraid of them. When I used to see one lurking around, I would become petrified, and somebody had to rescue me from there! On top of that, those shitty dogs used to growl at me, thinking that I was their lunch for the afternoon! (Q.: Really?? | A.: Yeah, Really!) Lesson learnt — nowadays, whenever I see a small kid face-to-face with a dog, I make it a point to shoo away the culprit!
Really now. One or two dogs are tolerable, but not more than that. And certainly not when a lot of them meet up at a place and start a barking match. It gets on my nerves! Just count the dogs in the above picture. There are seven of them. Welcome to my locality!
Along with their barking, these dogs come with free litter! No matter how many steps you take to make sure the colony’s clean, these dirty animals make sure that you don’t succeed. These scavenging snitters will look for food in every garbage dump they find. Look at this:

And don’t talk to me about the fact that these Kutte consider the roads as their public toilet. I once saw dog-poo inside the hostel of a reputed college! Dogs are everywhere!

Why so many dogs?
Dogs are everywhere, because dogs are allowed to breed in our country. You can see these animals mating in almost every street, which results in a large number of puppies. Even if we allow half of them to die, still, that makes a lot of dogs. Yup, more than half of the puppies that are born are destined to die! Now that’s really sad. Most of them do not survive the vagaries of weather, especially winters. Winters in Delhi can be really harsh, which makes the going very tough for these babies.
And then we have the oh-so-cool MCD, who don’t care to sterilize street dogs so that indiscriminate breeding doesn’t happen. No, they are not allowed to kill them. Dogs once born have all the right to live! Menacing dogs should be sheltered, rabid dogs should be vaccinated, and all others should be sterilized. But hey… This is India! Here we cannot guarantee speedy solutions.

Or can we?

Yay! I won an award! An award for writing about what I like. For criticizing the TV version of Mahabharat, for writing about my good friend, for making you guys meet my nephew, or for telling you what I liked on the social web-o-sphere. Wow! How can it be better than this?

Thank you Ritu!
Ritu gave me this award yesterday, who writes at http://phoenixritu.wordpress.com (Weaving a Web). A terrific blog, I must say. If you have read “Discovering Social Web”, you must be knowing that her blog is on my must read list. Her tongue-in-cheek humour, along with her ability to laugh and satire at herself is what I like! After you have done reading this post, head over to her blog! 

The Next Steps
With an award, comes a responsibility! There are a few rules to this award, which are as follows:

1. When you recieve the prize you must write a post showing it, together with the name of who has given it to you, and link them back
2. Choose a minimum of 7 blogs (or even more) that you find brilliant in their content or design.
3. Show their names and links and leave them a comment informing they were prized with ‘Brilliant Weblog’
4. Show a picture of those who awarded you and those you give the prize (optional).
5. I pass the candy forward to :

• Freya, who writes at http://thedreamgirldiaries.blogspot.com/

A seventeen year old South Indian from Mumbai, who likes to write about herself, her mom, her gran, her sis, her college, the guys in her college, her guitar, her ailing PC, and a variety of other things. Her writing style is impeccable, and her blog template changes frequently.

• Meeta Ma’am, who writes at http://myheroes-mita.blogspot.com/

The person who used to teach me English in school, the person whose advice and whacky ideas have found much use in my life, the person who literally says, “Don’t thank me, take me for granted!”. A gem of a person!
On her blog, she writes about the real lives of real people. Their real dilemmas, and their real approaches towards life. I love the way she writes. In fact, I love each and every moment I spend with her. Her writing comes much later!

• James Mowery, who writes at http://onlyjames.com/

A 21 year old living in USA, who calls himself a “hacker”, takes writing very seriously, and spends most of his time researching about various technologies. He also writes at Performancing.com, and has achieved so much in the blogosphere in such a short span of time that it is commendable!

• Rahul Bansal, who writes at http://www.devilsworkshop.org/

He is a 22 year old full-time blogger, who sacrificed a six-figure job offer for the love of blogging. His is a popular tech blog in India, with posts about various Web Technologies and Services. His recent series about WordPress plugins was awesome.
What sets him apart is his personal touch to everything. He replies to each and every comment he gets, which easily runs into hundreds. He remembers each and every suggestion he gets, however insignificant, and takes steps to follow it. The way he connects with his readers is incredible!

• Lemonade, who writes at http://withnowheretogo.blogspot.com/

This one, for the awesome design! Whenever I visit her blog, I actually feel thirsty for a lemonade! Her writing style is personal, and her designing style is exceptional. I like her blog.

• Nita, who writes at http://nitawriter.wordpress.com/

Her blog, “A wide angle view of India”, can be termed as the authority when it comes to reporting about current events. She writes daily, and topics range from opinions about latest news stories to the reviews of the latest movies — and everything in between! Reading her blog is better than reading news from other news sites!

• Nimisha, who writes at http://nimishasspace.blogspot.com/

Her posts are funny. Her posts are nostalgic. Her posts look at the simple things in life. My idea of a great blog! You can easily identify with things she writes about. Things you might have noticed, or things you might have experienced. She has an eye for noticing smaller anecdotes of life, things that easily go unnoticed in this world obsessed with speed. 

Shall I say it once more? Yay! I won an award!

Its been Fifteen Days since I last got a silent environment. Yet, it seems like its been longer. Its been Fifteen Days since I last sat down to write. Yet, it seems like more than a month. Its been Fifteen Days since I last wrote to Talking Talking. Yet, it seems like eternity.

Everytime I got an idea to post, it got entangled in my woes (read: lack of time). Did I tell you? My time management sucks! Worse still, when one of those “ideas” got entangled in my woes, it decided to free itself, by actually running away from me! Wow! Even ideas hate me now!

Anyways, back to those Fifteen Days. So much happened during them. Really, so much! Here the list:

• My college started, full steam this time. All the lectures were happening, and, for the fear of losing attendance, I attended most of them. (Read again: *Most Of Them*).
• The person, for whom I wrote That’s the Magic, came back!!! I mean, not for eternity, but she was here for ten days. Pleasant surprise there!
• I started making another good friend. More about this later.
• I watched Singh is Kinng, really liked it, and then went to watch it another time! Total money spent: Rs. 185. Cheap, isn’t it?
• In between watching Singh is Kinng two times, I got my result. It stood at 67%. My mental condition: Happy 
• My pocketmoney increased!
• I started studying!
• I started two new blogs — APS 2.00 and WordPress Helper.
• I updated my homepage. It looks good now. What do you think?
• Oh yes! I also watched The Mummy — The Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, and that too, dubbed in Hindi. Total money spent: Rs. 35. Can I say I liked it? Umm… Yes. Can I say I loved it? Umm… No! 
• I managed to miss the Fresher’s Party we gave to our juniors 
• And I got the “Brilliant Weblog Award” from @phoenixritu! (Yes, I’ll write a post about it, as per the rules.)

These Fifteen Days have been great. I enjoyed a lot. Looking forward to another Fifteen Days like that!