Preeti Shenoy's blog.

It is summer in India. Bangalore is scorching hot. Thirty eight degree centigrade. Blazing sun. Skies so bright, you can't really  see the blue. Only white. Heat. Heat and more heat. So you can imagine what state I must have been in at 1.00 pm when I finally reached the gas agency. I needed to buy a rubber tube and also get one of those consumer books. The gas agency was crowded, teeming with customers who had issues ranging from a booking not accepted, a cancelled gas connection and a transfer which needed to happen. The lines were long and tempers were short. As I was waiting to be attended to,  in walks a bull. He was in full finery. It reminded me of what my teacher had told me when I was about 7 or so. He had told me of 'Basavannas' in karnataka-- which is basically a bull that apparently answers questions with a yes or a no. My teacher said that if you ask Basavanna a question and say "Is that a yes basavanna' he will shake his head with a yes.

So at a glittering event at Jahawarlal Nehru Stadium, new delhi, in the presence of more than 2000 people, I got my award from Shekhar Gupta. If you wish to know more about it, read my last post.    Here are the pictures which I promised to share. I left for Delhi , wiht my family by the early morning flight, and we had a great time going around delhi, shopping in Sarojini market, Khan market, eating lovely street food. At sarojini market Then when it was time to leave for the event, I wore a saree. Was asked to say a few words after I got it Shekhar Gupta already knew me from the India Today story. It was delightful to meet him The certificate And  finally, here is the award..It is beautiful! That's all for today's post. Will be back soon. Till then, be cheerful. Remember, there are people with far worse problems than what you face at the moment. And it WILL pass. ________________________________________________ Buy my boo

Good Lord! Where does time fly? I know the answer to that one. It vanishes into the pages of the new novel you are working on, if you happen to be a novelist :) Yes, I have been working on my new novel and i am completely lost in the world I have created. I do not know when it is day and night anymore. I wake up, and it is like my characters beckon me. Every novelist will tell you that these characters live inside your head, the entire duration that you are writing the book. You laugh with them, cry with them, rejoice at their triumphs, feel sad at their disappointments and you are lost in their lives. It is hard to switch tracks and juggle an existence in the real world. Which is why I think, novelists who are writing a book should take a ' van-vaas ' in the Himalayas. So, it was in this frame of mind that a mail landed in my inbox, that jolted me back to the real world. Pretty quickly. I landed with a loud BANG. Not a gentle thud. The mail was from the retd. Jud