The Exile

I am feeling a little vulnerable rite now. A lot of things are happening all at once and i am not sure if am ready for all these changes yet. My best friend is going to meet a guy this weekend ( for marriage ) and i think i am more nervous than she is. I don't think i am ready to share her with sum1 yet...its too soon. I know i cudn't be more egocentric rite now.... but well thats how i am feelin. I hav literally grown up with her and i think her family has been just amazin to me and i luv them like they are my own. And now that she is gettin ready to go into another family all i can think is that God i'll hav to adjust with them just like she wud hav to. I am always hanging out at her place, infact when things aren't goin rite at home thats the place where i go to seek solace and in sum time she won't be there. When we were young we'd talk about how we'd want our wedding dress to be, how we'd be there for each other even when we get married. I just can't believe its already happening. I think i was so preoccupied with my own mess during Shaista's weddin but now when Neha is about to go down that road i am just completely freaking out....

I think one of the reasons that i had been writtin more often was cos i was just drifting apart from a very dear friend of mine and i just ended up blogging about stuff that i wud usually share with her. Generally when things go wrong with my friends i am always the 1st one to work things out but sum how i just didn't feel like it this time. Also i just cudn't figure out why we were driftin apart, maybe it was the lack of time or maybe we just didn't feel like sharin stuff anymore. But a couple of weeks bak i realised sumthing which i just had to share with her and no one else. That i think helped break the ice between us, hopefully things will get better between us now..

I think i am completing my MBA in the worse possible time ever. The market is just goin down the drain and there are no jobs available. Infact the market has never been hit this badly since the Great Depression which happened in 1929.....talk about havin bad luck. I am takin things a bit easy now cos my exams just got over but soon i'll hav to start lookin 4 a job. I hav made sum plans and they are so not goin to materialize if i don't get a job . So people wish me luck and pray for me.

I was just wonderin how cum when we are young all we want to do is just get away and discover the world. But once we are out there we can't wait to get bak home. I am no different but i do know that i am never goin to luv a place like the way i luv Mumbai. But then a part of me just wants to go away, see the world, experience new cultures, live a completely different life. Does this make me look like an unpatriotic person? I don't know, sumtimes i feel a lil guilty but then u can't change the way u feel.

I read this book called The Exile by Navtej Sarna a couple of days bak. I think its one the best books i hav ever read. This book is about the last king of Punjab Maharaja Duleep Singh. Now one of the reasons why i wanted to read this book was cos i had heard a lot about Maharaja Ranjeet Singh, Duleep Singh's father when i was growin up. My Dad wud tell me all these stories about him and i wud just be mesmerized. The thing about readin books related to history is that u already know the ending. So the writer has to really make the story interesting for you to actually have the curiosity to continue readin till the end. Maharaja Ranjeet Singh by the way is one of the greatest Kings that this country had ever seen. No u'll be surprised to know that this man who people literally idolized was short, thin and cud only see with one eye. One of the reason's why his people luved him so much cos was a very fair person. After he died his son Kharak Singh took over as the King. But a lot of deaths due to greed and power hungry wazirs led to Duleep Singh becoming the King of Punjab when he was just 5 years old. Now Duleep was the son of Ranjeet Singh's youngest queen Jindan Kaur and he wasn't even in line to becum the king. So imagine how canniving the wazirs must hav been. Now Duleep was just a proxy king all the decisions were taken by the wazirs and sum by his mother, he was just 5 wat did u expect? The inhouse fighting continued in Punjab and the Britishers took advantage of the situation and took over Punjab. Now i hav to admit that after readin this book i kinda started hatin them. They made poor Duleep a ward of the British government and send Rani Jindan to jail. Now she being a sardarni wasn't obviously goin to stay like that so she escaped and later got asylum in the Kingdom of Nepal. Jindan kaur was very young ( in her twenties) when Duleep was made the king and she made sum wrong choices which didn't really help the kingdom. Anyways the Britisher's raised Duleep in a Christian household and in order to please the family that he was livin with Duleep decided to becum a Christian when he was eleven. He was just a child and he just wanted to fit in i guess. By the time he was 16 the Britisher's sent him to England where he became a puppet in Queen Victoria's court. As he grew up he realized what the Britishers had taken away from him and started questioning them about his rights and the terms of the treaty which they had signed when they took over Punjab . They allowed him to cum to India to meet his mother after 14 years of separation but only for a short while. He spent the rest of his life trying to fight the Britsihers and in the hope of justice and literally struggled to get bak to India. But at every step the Britisher's were ahead of him and finally he died in Paris. Its just sad how the British deceived poor Duleep when he was so young and seriously after readin the book i felt those asses shud give us the Kohinoor bak. They took it from a child talk about bein fair. Now the interesting thing is Duleep had 8 children and not one of them had a child. Its said that the queen of England ordered them not to hav any children cos they didn't want any heirs to the throne of Punjab. But i read this in the paper sumtime bak that a Britisher had found out that his great grand mother worked in a house where Duleep Singh lived and it turns out that his grandfather was Duleep Singh's son. Now i am tryin to find more info on this cos its gotten me all curious. Back to the book i think its very well written not like the borin autobiographies. After readin this book i realized i want to find more about the history of Punjab ( ok so me being a sardarni does kinda make a lil biased). Anyways that it for now see ya..