We@Cloud Number Nine

Our best time is when four of us sit together, turn some nice music on with a mug of coffee/tea or may be some other mouth-watering snacks. Whether its day or night, evening or afternoon khoob jamta hai rang jab mil baithte hain Hum Charon Nescafe ke sang...that’s what we say. Music – nothing is as good as the soft n soothing music. Soft, romantic pop is my most favorite though would love to rock with Bryan Adam’s rock numbers as well. Meena is most fond of Savage garden and Jyoti is fond of everyone I guess…may be Backstreet Boys, Boy zone, Marc Anthony and now Bryan Adams, MLTR too. Our Chhotu is fond of Celine Deon and Bryan Adams, West life though she doesn’t mind the other bands like Venga Boys, Eagles. But I feel that special touch with Enrique’s numbers. Everytime i listen to him, I can feel the adrenaline rushing in the blood.

New day has come- is the most favorite of Chhotu whereas it doesn’t beat Meenu’s favorite Insatiable; yes I do agree. It’s one of the most romantic songs. Jyoti’s favorite, you sang to me is also a song of all times. But all of us agree with my most favorite-You say it best when you say nothing at all. The song took me six months to search it after I heard it for the first time on Radio city while buying something in Archies Gallery. But the song means a lot to me...a lot of memory with that song, in fact it means a lot to all of us now. After couple of months of the Archies Gallery shopping, one fine morning when I was watching MTV, I found out the song- the most famous of all Ronan Keating numbers- You say it best when you say nothing at all- the song from Notting Hills. That takes us to the cloud nine by making us feel so special. Let’s start humming it...

it’s amazing how you can speak right to my heart

without saying a word you can light up the dark…

the smile on your face let’s me know that you need me,

the truth in your eyes saying you’ll never leave me…

the touch on your hand says you’ll catch me wherever I fall….

You say it best, when you say nothing at all…

We enjoy living in another world with Enrique's numbers; either its wanna be with you or bilamos- we enjoy it everytime we listen to it though could never understand why he says love to see you cry in another song. I am so fond of that song that this has become my daily aerobics song. And my heart goes sha la la la is my walking song. I used to listen to it every time when I had to walk from my old office to my house. It has the most cherishing memory in it. When we are talking about songs how we can forget telling about the Bryan Adam- whether it’s summer 69 or please forgive me, coming back to you or everything I do; every song takes us into a different world when we listen to them. Tejal and I are the biggest fans of his songs- best of me and let’s make a night. Awesome songs- that’s all we can say. I should not ignore another favorite song – words, that’s more commonly known as smile in our house coz every time it brings a smile on our faces. Few months back when Meenu and then I started stringing our guitars we wanted to play hotel california but that day has not yet come. George Michel’s careless whisper and Abba’s dancing queen - are not exceptions to this list though.

All of us still agree on one thing that there is no comparison to Kishore’s romantic numbers and the duets of Lata n Kishore. Pal pal dil ke paas, Kya yehi pyaar hai, Ajeeb dastan hai yeh- are the other most favorite ones that we always listen to before going to our sweet dreams. Even songs like tere bin, jab koi baat bigad jaaye, never say goodbye, juda hoke bhi (the list goes on n on n on…) make our evenings more happening. Here the most interesting part is making Meenu understand the exact meaning of these romantic Hindi numbers. Hats off to Tejal, the way she explains the meaning of words like Izzat.

The exciting thing in all this is the way we search the song, listen to it, and watch the video after we overhear it somewhere on the radio. That again makes us sit together in the late evenings when we have desserts. Chhotu, who will listen to all the Bryan Adams numbers with me when you go to Pune…hopefully Mottu n Chudail will fall in love with Bryan’s numbers then. We reach cloud Nine easily with these songs…ae kya bolti Chudail & Motu…

The Mona Lisa Smile :-)

Life goes on as it never ends…eyes of stone observe the trend…well-said. We are all ready for Tejal’s farewell party now, though I am really feeling bad about it. I used to hang around with Chhotu most of the time. Tejal- a girl as free as me- even if she has lots n lots of p&d’s. That evening all of us were sitting together when we started talking about DaVinci Code- the ultimate fiction and most favorite book of all four of us. How we could stop discussing about Mona Lisa when we were discussing about DaVinci. All those secretes that we came to know about the most famous painting while reading the novel was shocking. The next thing we did was search about Mona Lisa on Google to know the secrete behind that smile.

Scientists analyzed the portrait of the Mona Lisa, a woman with famously mixed emotions, hoping to unlock her smile. They applied emotion recognition software that measures a person's mood by examining features such as the curve of the lips and the crinkles around the eyes. Mona Lisa was 83 percent happy, 9 percent disgusted, 6 percent fearful, and 2 percent angry, according to the British weekly "New Scientist." Still, scientists will probably never know what made her feel the way she did.

The portrait was painted in Florence, Italy, between 1503 and 1506, according to the Louvre's Web site. Historians have long debated Mona Lisa's identity, with theories ranging from being Da Vinci's mother, a self-portrait or a Florentine prostitute. Research conducted in 2004 support a claim first made almost 500 years ago -- that she really existed and that she was the wife of a rich silk merchant. But what excited us most was what Dan Brown had written in his novel.

With all these information the discussion didn’t come to an end. It was more interesting after each of us started smiling like Mona Lisa smile. It’s really funny the way Meenu was telling me to smile like Mona Lisa, the way I was telling to Jyoti n Meenu. Oh God… I have to transfer all those pictures from my mobile phone to my PC to give you a real feel of all our Mona Lisa smiles :)