Queen of my castle

I was forced to go with this title, but hell i was easily persuaded !


The castle that I refer to, is my wonderful apartment, just around the bend in Kader Nawaz Khan Road. In fact it is the first house on KNK Road. Its the lovely Mansarovar Apartments.

We moved over to Mansarovar sometime in the summer of 2005...and that's where i met the queen of my castle - literally!
The way we fist met each other is worth a mention. If my failing memory does prove right, it was one of those weekends, when I had come down home from B'lore and had as usual brought along a lot of office work with me. Yea .. that was it, I was working on developing a prototype for Revenue Projection and I was working on that day in and day out for about 7 days. So as usual I was in a mess, unshaven, unkept and on top of that totally lost in my project. And that's when the queen walks in. Poor thing, she must have had a fright. Now with that fist impression, you can imagine ... whatever followed could only have been better :D

What followed was nothing short of a fairy tale. As promised, Ashwini, I shall pen down some of those wonderful moments that we did share together while we were at Mansarovar...and if I do forget something, do feel free to re-jig my memory.


1)Ashwini has always pepped me up whenever I was low - which was like almost every other day.

2)On numerous occasion we have gone out on walks. Once we went all the way to Marina for a walk, the other time along KNK road to pay my bills, but that aside - mostly on the terrace or along KNK road. Its surprising, how she did not lose her mind when I kept bombarding her such crazy whimsical ideas of fun walks :D .

3)Every evening, when I came home from work, I would get off at Nungambakkam and walk down KNK road hoping that I bump into Ashwini. And invariably i don't - but yea that's my luck. When I get home, I usually shout out to Ashwini and she would be out on her balcony , we have a cheesy conversation with the watchamn staring at us and then having jinxed the watchman I get back home satisfied.

4) There was a small little stunt we (tried but failed miserably) pulled together - GRE. We decided one fine afternoon that we had to do something with our lives and GRE would be the way out of all our miseries. We tried hard - preparing for the vocab and maths. She was amazing with Vocab and I was better off in maths. That stunt lasted for a few weeks and then she got into NUS and me into LSE - and we did not have to write our GRE.
Thank God for small mercies.

5) The Milkshake episodes - I hate that one. Once in a while, I would take Ashwini out to the Barista next door and get her her fav Chocolate Milkshake. What annoyed me the most was that everytime the waiter took the order, he would be like - "Mam shall I get you the usual ?" and then reluctantly take his eyes of her and come over to take my order. The funny thing is that I always have an Iced Tea and when I say - yea I shall have the usual as well - he would go like - " Ummm and what would that be ? "


6) The Aditya stunt - i tried getting my colleague at Infy , Aditya , to get ashwini a milkshake - but knowing aditya .. he wouldn't spend a penny without seeing returns. That did not work out, but yea I had a lot of fun kidding Adi and Ash with each other.

7) The Friday and Saturday evening dinners. Invariably we would have dinner every weekend at one of our places. I remember how John uncle used to get Ashwini to call up the hotel and make a booking. Ashwini used to play her part well - acting like the hot secretary calling up the restaurant to make a booking for a bunch of us in the middle of the night. She would go like - "No no , we need a table right now , else Mr. John Abraham would be pretty upset".

8) My miserable attempts at getting her to let me take some snaps. Not worth mentioning - other than the fact that i failed miserably.

9) Drives - Adding that bit post reading Ashwini's comment. Of all the drives in her car, there is one of them that I distinctly remember. This was on the night I came home with her after Nithin and Dia's party. We were almost home when we found our quiet neighbour Mr.Bhatts car iun front of us. Ashwini was a bit tipsy and was annoyed at seeing them so late at night and she said " what are these Bhatts (butts) doing out at this time in the night?" Those were the good times. Other than that, we did a lot of drives in her Zip drive, was fun and yea once in a while I drove (but, yea Ashwini realised it was better if she drove)! Yeeeeeaaaaaaaaa !


I guess, we never realise how important the other person is until we move away from them. With Ashwini so far away, our relationship I believe has only strengthened. Thinking of all those times we had together at Mansarovar just reminds me of what a wonderful person you are and how good you have been to me.

Right now Ashwini is pursuing her masters at the NUS - or rather she is done with it- She is busy job hunting but she has agreed to make an exception and is now willing to settle down with a rich millionaire.
Ashwini is an adorable person - a genuine sweetheart.