First of all a very happy new year to all of you!!!

WISHING YOU A HAPPY AND PROSPEROUS 2009

May all your dreams and aspirations for this coming year be fulfilled and may you achieve all that your heart desires and may all of you have a peaceful but successful 2009. I know this comes a little late but then since we have not yet crossed the magic mark of 7Th it is still new. So again a very happy new year to you.

As for me last week was a little hectic as Ma and Pa were here with me and I was blissfully happy at being back to the time when things were just like this before. I got to usher in the new year just like old times……. It was fun. I left them in Pune yesterday and now it is again me and hubs and the house is again empty as before. For the last one week the house seemed so much different and happy and full. I miss ma and pa and you wont believe it but I have already called them three times since morning. They are already thinking that something is wrong with me and I definitely dont want them to get worried about me. Today I wish I was the flamingo. I could have gone and come and gone again. Miss them a lot….. a poem for them check it out!!!!

I so MISS cooking (which I otherwise don’t like much) and taking ma and pa out some place. Also miss arguing with ma. I do that a lot. I miss the morning and evening blowing of the conch as ma finishes her prayers and dad cribbing about the breakfast options, Ma running after me all day to eat something or the other while I keep complaining about how much weight I am putting upon. I miss Ma making all the delicious stuff specially my favorite begun bhaja everyday. I love the begun bhaja that my ma makes……. nobody in the whole world can make it like her. I miss running after dad when he is doing something or the other in the house. I really wish that they didn’t have to go. But I guess dad and ma love their plants more than they do me. “The plants are wilting” they’d say. The first thing that I did when we reached home was water the plants. Can’t let them die…… right !!! I miss Pune too.

The temperature at Pune is almost four degrees lesser than Mumbai and so consequentially hubs dear got a chill and then cold and then very conveniently transmitted that to me and while he is fit as a fiddle and pranced off to work today morning…… I lay surrounded by tissues and the steamers. I just cant stop sneezing and coughing. Guess my immunity needs working upon. Specially immunity from hubs!!! Nice start to the new year!!!! I hope this is not the preview of the whole year ahead but then considering that hubs has achieved the impossible (of making Ma and Pa stay for one full week) everything he does is forgiven. It was really something to see my usually reticient hubs suddenly become Annaconda and get my parents to stay the full week. They were going to leave on the 31st morning…… he actually made dad change his mind and stay the week. He achieved the impossible you know!!!! All my life the only person who could change Dad’s decision was me and I had to really really fight tooth and nail for that. Rajdeep actually did what very few people in the world could achieve so right now he can get away with murder as far as I am concerned.

I don’t really make resolutions in the new year. I usually do that on my birthday. The most important resolution that I made for this year is to complete my thesis and to lose weight……. lots of it. I am working on it!!! A friend of mine told me some days back that the key to losing weight is to imagine yourself as you want to be. You will lose weight immediately. It is all about training the mind to do what you want to do. Does not work for me. For the last two years since I have seen Carol Gracias, I have always imagined to have a “haddi ka dhacha” body like hers!!!! I have never ever had one haddi coming out ever in my life. Well I didn’t get it. I mean just think of it…… anybody who is so thin like her would never need an x-ray if she ever broke a rib or a bone. The bones are so prominent from the outside that anybody can spot a broken bone from the outside. The doctor will automatically say that rib no 5 is having a hair line fracture. I have imagined being thin like Carol Gracias all the time but nothing happened.

My last year’s resolution also was to lose weight. I did lose but could not attain the Carol Gracias standards. I lost almost 12 kg (and then put on two more) but not one teeny meeny haddi came out. Yeah!!! the elbow and the fingers and toes….. as hubs pointed out. Hubs, Ma, Pa my sisters and my best friend would be perpetually after me to eat. But my conviction stayed. I did not starve myself but then stayed away from the fatty, junk, and hi-sugared food and eventually lost 5% body fat…… but nahhhh not one small haddi made an appearance. So when Ma came this time I just put all my convictions in the air and ate all the begun bhajas that I could. I am going back to my precious diet again today but then I haven’t stood on the scale for two weeks and I am really scared at the outcome. My weight just wont go below 60 whatever I do. I even increased my exercise but no results there. Guess I will have to work even harder to break the plateau.

I close by keeping my fingers crossed and hoping that this year I achieve the fifties. I am going to do my best and leave the rest to my destiny……… So what are your resolutions for this year??? what were they last year unlike me did you achieve them???