So today is Diwali [or Deepavali - the festival of lights] and so before anything else at all, Happy Diwali to all the readers of this blog, whether you are Indian or American Or Namibian 
This is the first time that I am away from India on an occasion as grand as our biggest festival and I can’t help feeling nostalgic about all the lights, the fireworks, the festivities and the people. Even as a child, I remember planning months in advance for all the crackers I would buy budgeting carefully for a good balance of Atom bombs, King Kong bombs, Lakshmi bombs, Bell rockets and the like, and my mother listening patiently to me as I read out my annual statement of demands. At 10, I was in love with Diwali for only one reason back then – the fireworks. But as a 22 year old Indian on the other side of the globe, I remember all I can about my favourite festival for an altogether different reason. Diwali today, for me, signifies everything about my country and its people that I miss so much [not to mention how we have more festivals in a week than the number of days in a week itself as the saying in Hindi goes, "Saat din, aath tyauhaar" 
]. Anyway, so I just got back from a nice Diwali hosted at Uma’s place and I feel good – the food was excellent, of course and so was the company. I am glad I decided to accept Booze’s invitation and go along instead of just sitting at home missing India.
Well, that’s enough of the nostalgia for now. Time for the update on my life [which you no doubt are dying to know ]. On the blogging front, it seems that my mother too is reading my blog – what more can you ask for than a mother who is in the cyber age too ! And it seems a lot more people are posting comments [other than good old Ravi Rao, of course ] and it certainly is making the whole experience much more of a pleasure than it already is.
‘Dil Chahta Hai’ went off really well on Friday evening and a lot of crowd turned up which made us all really happy. At the end, a lot of people told us they had a memorable time which left us all very pleased, of course. I am now all excited about organizing the next movie, in about a month’s time. Anyway, so dinner was at Nonda’s house and Rajneesh joined us briefly and left for his usual Friday night stint at MP O’Reillys. Nonda and I just sat around chatting for a long time before I finally headed home.
Yesterday, a sudden urge to do something adventurous got the better of me and after a nice dinner at Priya’s with Masood, Tarannum and Sharmeel, I decided to just go off driving all alone by myself in Vidye’s car and soon, I was on I-170 N zipping along at 60+ in the pouring rain. With the radio playing some really good songs, I was enjoying the time I had to myself. It wasn’t long of course, before I got completely bewildered by the array of signs and well, I managed to take some exit without really meaning to, I found myself in completely unfamiliar territory. “Big deal,” I told myself. “I just need to find my way back to the highway.” So I proceeded to do just that – but after some more wrong turns and missing the ramp I finally managed to do precisely that in my third attempt. Phew. Now I was on 270 E apparently and I was seeing signs which said, ‘Route 367 to Alton, IL’ Woah, Illinois ! I am completely in the wrong state ! So I called home first [thank God for cellphones !] and asked Anand to check the Internet on how to get back to I-170 or for that matter, something familar like 64-40. Meanwhile, I decided that I was just on the wrong highway so I got onto 270 W and then called Vidye for help. Being a far more experienced driver in the US, Vidye told me how to get back home via 70 E and I-170 S and sure enough, I was making my way to Central West End to join her, Swapna and Dhanusree for coffee at the Grind. Ah, I was still alive
Back home after dropping Vidye at her place. Called up my family in Chennai and spoke to Amma and Rahul for a long time. That was good fun I can’t wait to go to India this December
And finally, what my feature dependency program is doing :
[ravi@cs]$ ps aux | grep ravip ravip 23440 99.9 76.9 665144 394464 ? R Nov02 2280:26 java -Xmx512m ed
It’s been more than a day now dude! Aaaargh !
