Christmas Reminiscences

I love Christmas ! That’s the busiest time in my otherwise placid calendar.. That’s the time you'll find me running around for choir practice, drama rehearsals, carol singing and yeah shopping for Christmas presents . ( I must let on that the last point is something that makes me deliriously happy ) . So I decided to post this bit as an ode to the season to be jolly !

Now, I have had the fortune of travelling across India , thanks to my dad’s travelling itch , So I have been in the North, in the West and in the South of India and got an opportunity to experience Christmas in all these regions. I spend my childhood in Ludhiana, Punjab and attended a Christian school, so I experienced the Christmas treatment in school . We used to have this Christmas party every year around the 22nd or 23rd where you could wear anything you wanted to school. And it was on that day, ordinary school girls with pig tails would transform into eye-catching beauties sporting the latest fashion. Such transformation is only possible at that magical age called adolescence. The school choir would belt out timeless Christmas carols and there would be a whole lot of interesting stuff on the agenda. But the thing most looked forward to, was the gift exchanging ceremony called the 'Shelly Party'. Now no one really knows how it got that name. All we knew was it was called 'Shelly Party' and no one really had the time nor the inclination to dig into the details. My wildest guess is that maybe someone called Shelly started the whole thing, or it was a corruption of the term 'sharing party' but then, who really cared ! To elaborate further, Shelly Party was a gift exchanging ceremony , wherein a couple of weeks before the Christmas party , chits were drawn with all the class student’s name and each student had to pick a chit and buy a gift for that person within a price range specified of course. I don’t quite remember what gifts I got through the years, but when I was in the 7th grade, my class teacher happened to draw my name and I got a very pretty box full of chocolate bars!

At home, a couple of weeks before Christmas, mom would get into a flurry of activitiy, preparing ‘faral’ ( for those who don’t know Marathi, 'faral' is the term for the goodies prepared at festivals) . So there were doughnuts , chakli , shankarpali , karanji, besan & rava ka ladoo, sev and of course Christmas cake . For a few years she used to make cake at home , but later hired a bakery fella to bake it for her. She would give him the ingredients and he would mix the batter and bake it for her . So you see, she was very futuristic, she used the concept of outsourcing even before it was tried out by IBM ! During that period our eating habits would change drastically, we literally lived on ‘faral’ much to the annoyance of my mother. But you can’t be crabby during Christmas, can you? !

Dad used to work for a Christian hospital, and so we used to have a whole lot of parties for each department in the hospital. And of course there was the late night carol singing for us kids. I loved those times; we used to go carol singing till 1.00 am and come back home unescorted most of the times. And even now when I sing ‘O come all ye faithful’, it brings back those sweet memories, when life was simple and cities safe !

Then there was the Christmas stocking bit ! I still don’t believe how could we fall for that Santa Claus act . For me Santa Claus was very real. . And our parents played royally on our staunch belief and left written notes advising how we should behave during the year. I remember a time when I was probably in my 2nd grade, my dad actually made a call to Santa ( beat that !) and told him that I had been a good girl that year and wanted a doll for Christmas. Gawd ! dumb or innocent !

When I was in my 8th grade , my folks moved to a small town in Maharashtra, and my school there was not a christian school, so celebrating Christmas at school was pretty much out of the question. But, since my father worked for a mission hospital, Christmas was a huge affair on the campus. There would be these games and sports conducted for the kids, and I remember me winning at musical chairs and lemon and spoon ! Heh heh .. I still blush at the thought of me running with a spoon and lemon in my mouth .. but those were innocent times . An of course there was the Nativity Play in Sunday school . And all of us girls either wanted to be Mary or an Angel. Of course , till date I never got to be Mary and I got to play the angel only twice in my life. It was either the shepherd or the support role for me ! Heh heh and once when I was a tiny little kid , I even got to play the sheep ! Match that !

By the time we moved down south , I was in junior college already and Christmas after that was never the same , as I always had exams around that time . Right from that time till my post grad , I have always had exams around Christmas time . So Christmas was generally a few hours affair where I attended church, met a couple of friends and went back to my hostel to prepare for the next day’s exam . I remember , when I was in my 3rd semester of BBA a friend from church came all the way to my hostel ( and she lived pretty far ) to deliver a dabba of steaming biryani ! It was one of the sweetest gestures I have come across.

And that’s what I believe , Christmas is all about . A time to love and share !

Merry Christmas People !

(c) copyright 2007 Neha Shinde

Of Conferences and Coffee

“It’s so boring ! When will he stop? “I whispered to Parag as I wrapped my duppata closer to myself and shivered , “ And why do they have to keep the AC so low ? Are they trying to recreate Antarctica? “

“No, silly it’s a new experiment they are trying at mass freezing ! They freeze us and then use our DNA to replicate us and use us as soldiers in the Cambodian civil war “whispered back Parag, doodling with his pen as always.

For those of you who are still trying to figure out the background in spite of the title and the thread of conversations, Parag is my colleague and we were unfortunately caught in the middle of a highly boring software testing conference paper presentation where the speaker unfortunately thought he was Kem Carner’s sibling.

With Presales as a job profile, the onus of making our company presence felt at various testing conferences falls on me. And with Parag as the branding manager, he is also unhappily roped in building the brand image externally and it is our respective jobs that brought us to this place where, in between interesting industry and testing insights we have pseudo Kem Carner’s spout testing fundas in Siberian climate.

Conferences provide an excellent respite to our normal desk jobs and are generally filled with interesting things like freebies and non interesting things like mediocre versions of James Bach and Kem Craner. But all these are only secondary to the main attraction yeah you guessed it ...The Food ... It’s an excellent way of trying out various cuisines at different places without loosening you purse strings. Of course, you need to be the 'unabashed about free grub' type to enjoy the experience. So you can go back and make a note that while the Leela Palace serves excellent Malabar fish curry, its Italian side is relatively weak and the veg stuff at Le Meridian is pretty decent. Small nuances, which help you, know what to order where, especially if the obligation of footing the bill falls upon you.

But while the food is great distraction, there is nothing like a steaming hot cup of coffee after a chilling section (I say chilling primarily in the milieu perspective, of course there have been some very excellent sessions that give you intellectual goose bumps). The knowledge of the fact that there is coffee or tea out beyond the confines of the Antarctic zone , especially when the agenda in your hand says coffee break in bold as the next item , is highly distracting and has the effect of making you squirming in your seat wishing the speaker were less garrulous .

That’s the precise reason, I end my presentations if they happen to be scheduled before a coffee break with “I know that the only T on your mind does not stand for Testing but is something with milk and sugar it, so ladies and gentlemen, I herby end my presentation. Thank You and enjoy you break.”

Makes sense..Right ?!

Copyright (c) 2007 Neha Shinde

Did you hear that ?

I keep hearing it ! .. In the bus, on the street, on the campus, in the autos, in malls, in the multiplexes, on my occasional visit to the theatre and sometimes even in the church. Now before you derive a very scary connotation of my ranting and start dialling the local priest’s number , let me clarify my point ...I am talking about these unbridled maddening mobiles ringtones that have the very annoying habit of ringing almost everywhere and anywhere.

There is nothing like a mobile ringing unremittingly to drive you wacky , especially when the owner has left his phone behind and is blissfully unaware of the noise mayhem it is creating for those in its unfortunate vicinity. I experience it so often at my workplace. I am deep in thoughts on developing a strategy that will garner an overwhelming response for my Road show’s or how can I best leverage on our existing analyst relations, when suddenly out of nowhere the place booms with ‘ I am a Barbie girl in a Barbie world ‘ and to make matters worse the racket is right behind my workstation and the owner of the blessed thing is a 5 .11 swarthy man ! geeeez ... Identity crisis anyone !

Funny as it sounds , it’s extremely bothersome to be caught at the wrong end ... and sometimes the ringtones are not all that appropriate ... I remember when we were in a meeting once , debating on why Independent Software Testing is all that a big deal with a valued client when without warning one of our Delivery Managers phone rang joyfully ‘ Give it to me baby ... uh huh uh huh ... Give it to me baby’ much to the horror of all of us present . And no, the client did not give it to us .. The business deal, of course ! But nothing beats the time when it was a lazy afternoon in office and our floor was trying to digest the heavy but unsavoury afternoon meal served at our cafeteria , when out of the blue a tough voice boomed ‘Phone utha , abbe saale phone utha , kutte phone utatha kyon nahi ! ‘ Needless to say every one of us picked up our phones to appease the livid voice , while the guilty party dashed into a conference room to escape our collective glare.

But my misadventures with this instrument is not limited to the office alone , where I must confess I have seen most mobile bloopers. There was this instance in church ( yes, you heard it right , church ) , when the pastor had just finished delivering a powerful sermon on how we must live our life for others and not be self centred and selfish , when Madonna in full throttle began to croon “ Papa don’t preach ! ‘ The disconcerting song was traced to Abbey in the last pew , who was all red in face and for the next one month was the subject of aggressive counselling by all aunties and uncles and elders and pastors and deacons in the church. We, youngsters learnt a valuable lesson that day: Change your mobile tune to ‘God is good all the time’ on Saturday night ! A rule that I still abide with :)

But all said and done. I sometimes feel what would life be without these omnipresent mobile tunes .Maybe church services would be conducted more smoothly , meetings would have less glitches, movie watchers will not have unwanted music mixed with the ones they paid for, maybe workplaces would have less noise pollution and maybe Mukesh Ambani will share his vast wealth with me ( ok ok , forget the last one), but come to think of it , life would be a little more silent than what it is now and maybe in spite of all my cribbing , I would miss that laugh a mobile blooper guarantees. So folks all I can say is ... Bebo, bebo, ye, bebo, bebo, ye, ikaw ang aking ... oops nopes that’s not Latin , just my caller tune from Black Eyed Peas.. I am getting a call ....so like I was saying enjoy while the music lasts and bear with the little nuisance it brings along with it ....After all what’s life without a song !

(c) Copyright Neha Shinde

It's Raining {uh not men , but plain H20 } Hallelujah !

The rain gods have arrived in Bangalore and how! Since the past couple of weeks Bangalore has been receiving its share of rains. At a time when rest of the country is getting ready to welcome the winter, Bangalore is busy shaking water off its umbrellas and raincoats.

Its so weird and wonderful how arrival of rains can have an effect like no other season or weather. There is nothing like the first shower of rains and people caught unaware and unprepared. It’s almost like nature having her bit of fun watching people scurrying for cover.

The rains bring a spectrum of memories to my mind, predominantly the ones in Belgaum where I did my graduation. Belgaum is a city that gets more than its share of rains and with the facilities in our college hostel, the rains were not the most looked forward to event. Incidentally, the floor of the ground level rooms had a mysterious ability to get semi-flooded and it was quite a herculean task to keep the floor dry . I was invariably allotted one of the ground level rooms and had my ingenuity tested to the hilt in the mammoth task of keeping the floor from looking like a swimming pool. And in case you are curious.... Newspapers !.. It works !!

There was also the temptation of dashing to the rooftop , which by the way was a taboo ( you see, the boys hostel was adjacent to our hostel and the warden could not risk rain soaked youths singing ‘Tip Tip Barsa Paani, Paani Mein Aag Lagaye ’ on rooftops.) But we did sometimes manage a quick dash without being obstructed and it was during one of these escapades, we spied a lovely rainbow in the rain aftermath. Breaking rules sometimes pays!

Of course the most recent 'rain memory' is that of Pune a couple of years ago. While Mumbai was getting flooded, Pune just kept receiving rains and rains and endless rains with no particular effect. I would wake up every cloudy morning hoping the rains had finally reached a point where an official holiday could be declared. But God is workaholic and any such hopes were religiously dashed. A few places in Pune did get the flood alert, but with the resourceful people of Pune things were soon bought under control. My most vivid memory is listening to an appeal for help on Radio Mirchi and sending my flat roomie with packets of rice and daal to the collection center. She returned with mixed feelings firstly, because our packet was the smallest parcel in the room and secondly, because it reflected the magnanimous nature of the Punekars in helping their fellow beings. Ah Pune .. it brings sweet memories.. But then I am digressing..

Coming back to the monsoons Like I earlier said the rains evoke myriad emotions that a summer or winter can only hope to stir ..It’s all in the dripping umbrellas, the wet dupattas, the colourful raincoats, the cold damp fingers, the clammy shoes, the Knorr soups , the hot chai and pakoras, the hot water evening baths, that towel tossed carelessly over the chair......That's what makes the rains so special ...Makes you fetch your twice mended umbrella and hum the very romantic song from 1942 : A Love Story...Rimjhim Rimjhim .....

Copyright (c) Neha Shinde 2007

The Perils of a Puneite in Bangalore

Since my arrival in Bangalore about ten months ago I have often encountered the question “So, how do you find Bangalore? How is it compared to Pune?” I find the very question intimidating, especially the comparison part. It’s almost like asking “So, how do you think our left eye is as compared to your left hand or right ear ?”. Me I like ‘em all, yes, I do have something against my tummy, which has the highly distressing habit of deeply rumbling right in the middle of a lecture and more recently office meetings, but those are matters of less importance and I think I’ll live with it.

Coming back to the all important question how is it for a Punite in Bangalore? Thinking about it, I decided to post this as an answer to all those questions in the past and to those questions which are yet to come.

Well, for starters I detest Bangalore Autos!! Yes, you heard me right I do detest them, not the machine as much as the person operating it. And I am sure they detest me in return. It’s mutual, which is a relief in one way coz this hate business is rather difficult to carry one sided. And I have my reasons; I am yet to meet an autowala who doesn’t behave like a rantipole.

I had an early taste of their malicious nature. I happened to miss my company bus on my very second day in Bangalore, and instead of waiting like any normal person would for the next bus, I foolishly ventured out to make it on my own. Suicide I tell you! Well, with the help of a kindly soul, whom I met at the local bus stop in Electronic city, I somehow made it till Silk Board, and I decided to take an auto from there. I have a firm belief that these auto people do have an uncanny sense of smelling out people who are non -Bangaloreans Anyways, I asked an autowala to take me to the desired location and he unblinkingly said “Rs 140 madam” Beggers cannot be choosers they say and I agreed, but before I could even get into his sacred auto he suddenly turned around and said “Madam udhar ja kar 30 Rs extra” Boy did I see red ! I refused not only his ride, but also gave him a sound lecture on how he was spoiling the image of a beautiful city. Not that he cared. For him all I resembled was a piece of paper with a waterline, the image of the father of the nation and a promise from the governor of RBI. Ufff!! I have had many such encounters with these machine men and now it more like who trounces whom. With so much training I could have taken up Law if not the Army!!!

Anyways, with travel taken care of, my next experience was with accommodation. Not only do I find accommodation in Bangalore expensive, but also highly cramped. During my first week, my sister and I went looking for good PG accommodation in Kormangala. Of course, finding a needle in a haystack would have been easier. We tried BTM, Kormangala, Indiranagar without much luck. Nothing could please us moderately. I still shudder at the kind of places we were shown. It’s unbelievable! There was a place where a bathroom was converted into a room!! The lady went great lengths to explain how wonderful was it to live there and even agreed to reduce the rent, but then who wants to live in a Bathroom!!! Disappointment enveloped us. Finally we came up with a solution . Mission “Find it and Rent it was brought into action “That was all what was on our mind. With that new found mission we were again ready for combat.

Thankfully, by God’s grace and admag's help , I found a place that was not only clean and hygienic but also centrally located, with a lovely balcony. So all’s well that ends well! But sometimes I still see that lady’s face as she earnestly tried to convince me that a bathroom was a room after all.

The next logical item in the sequence of things: Food. Thankfully, I love south Indian food, and so I kind of gorge myself on Idlies, Dosas, Bisse Bele Bath, Curd rice, Rasam rice and all those goodies. I am a rice eater so Bangalore is a food haven for me. Of course there are still times when I crave for Poha, Vada Pav, Missal Pav and Pav Bhaji. I haven’t yet found a place that makes decent pav bhaji and the rest of the above items are out of question. But I have found a couple of places where I get great Malyalee food and I was recently introduced to Coorg style by a friend and boy did I love that!!

Coming to the final element (if there is ever such thing) , THE LANGUAGE !!! Now, I have stayed in Belgaum for a few years , so I understand a few kannad words , but the dialect here is very different from that of Belgaum or North Karnataka. And of course there is the slight resistance to speak Hindi , by the locals which is just fine with me as my Hindi is also nothing to write home about. I have the typical Mumbaya way of talking that would make a Hindi lover blush if not have murderous thoughts. But I love the statement ”Chill Maadi “ Its a concoction of English and Kannada which I have termed “ Kanglish “ a statement enough to make you forget all about those horrid ‘autofellas ‘and bathroom woes and feel great ..So whatever the problem chill maadi !!

Which brings me to one of my favorite muse.. People,. People, I believe are same all over irrespective of the geography or culture. Bangaloreans are gentle people with a lot of pride for their culture. Sometimes , I feel they resent their city been invaded by outsiders, a dilemma faced by every expanding metro , but being the hospitable people that they are , they are quick to adjust to the changes and open their hearts and houses ( and bathrooms heh heh ) to us. Some are good and some are bad , like I said earlier the fabric is the same for all of us it’s only the color and pattern that differ.

But nothing beats the weather, which is simply amazing. Just the right temperature and the freshness is striking. It’s a lovely feeling early in the morning, on my way to the bus pick up point, as I see elderly couples taking their morning walk, or late nights as I come back from work when I see youngersters hanging out at different juice junctions and eat outs, or on Sundays when on my way to church I see a lone jogger with an ipod in one hand and water bottle in another on the ring road that connects Kormangala to Indiranagar, or the numerous ‘narayial paniwalas’ I see scattered all across the town. That’s’ when I realize why Bangalore is what it is. It’s that moment when I want to look up in the sky, feel the breeze on my face and say “namm Benguluru rocks”

Copyright (c) 2007 Neha Shinde

Fashion !!

Fashion, I have come to a sad realization, is something I will never fully comprehend.

My earlier attempts to understand this highly complex logy has left me completely exhausted and utterly devastated, that I have taken up the comparatively bird brained game of chess to alleviate the despair.

The point that bothers me most is the fickleness of the whole thing. A particular style barely gets to make an entrance on stage that you have nine others waiting in the wings for their moment of glory. Fickle. ever so fickle!!

Probable this feeling stems from an incident that caused me much pain and which still haunts me. It was our annual college party . The importance of the day could not be overemphasized . The day when every one got to make a lasting impression on the Junta.

Well, I decided to come out of my hermit existence and my literary world and be a part of the crowd. It was of course at a time when I was naïve enough to think that I could master this seemingly simple game of fashion. I browsed through every style magazine I could lay my ink stained hands on and with the indispensable advice from Raji, our college style guru, I came to the conclusion that bell sleeves and orange colour was the flavor of the season. Elementary aint’t it ?!! I used up my allowance which I had saved for Shakespeare’s Hamlet( Shakespeare, I figured was dead since 1616 and could wait for another two months) to buy an orange bell sleeved shirt with intricate embroidery on the sleeves. I even got a 20 % discount on it which was more that what I could ask for.

On the day of the party , feeling extremely confident, I entered the hall and got a bigger shock than what probably Sushmita Sen got when she won the Miss Universe title. Every being , human and otherwise was dressed in black . Well, with the exception of Mohan , the college peon who turned up in a yellow kurta , but then Mohan was considered to be the worst dressed person in India after Govinda and was of no comfort to me. And yes the sleeves were nowhere near my flag post. They were closely cut into what I later came to know as mega sleeves.

I felt all eyes on me and a couple of them boring my head from behind. I suddenly wished I had Anil Kapoor’s magical watch he wore in Mr. India. I desperately sought out Raji, who looked cool in a black and gray outfit with yes , you guessed it MEGA SLEEVES!!! “Whatever happened to you?” she exclaimed looking at me as though I was Spielberg’s ET. “I thought this is what the world in general is wearing “ I muttered trying to evade those piercing eyes. Hah ! for the simple life of an amoeba!” It was babes, till last week. Don’t you watch Star Plus? Ever since Manish Malhotra expressed his views on bell sleeves and the orange and green colour , they are to be avoided like the pariah. Black is THE COLOR and mega sleeves rock!! Now, if you’ll excuse me , I can’t be seen hanging around an orange flag. I have a reputation to protect”

Well, that was the end of my social life ( not that it was all that great to begin with) for the next six months and it was just not funny being called ‘Rasna Nagpur Orange’ a name that still sticks.

Once bitten, twice shy. Shakespeare has his sweet revenge and I returned back to my world of Keats, Shakespeare and Wordsworth and have tried to stay there since.

And for all you unfortunate ones , trying to get a foothold on this unstable domain of colours and patterns , my only advice is WATCH STAR PLUS…


Copyright (c) Neha Shinde

The day it rained…..

Salsa!!! I was in love with the word even before I came in contact with the dance form and then I wished I were contended knowing the dictionary meaning of it .

But when you are young, you tend to think of yourself as Hercules’s sibling and it was in one of those foolish moments, I decided to shod my dancing shoes and master the dance.

And thus began a rocky journey ….

It was the first day of lessons and about a dozen of us wannabe dancers assembled at the stroke of 18.00 hrs in the dance studio in eager anticipation of the next course of actions. What came next was something we were not prepared for. The side door suddenly flew open and a ball the size of a dinosaur’s egg came rolling in towards us. It was only when the ball stopped right in front of me, I realized that the ‘ball’ had tiny eyes peering out of it, limbs attached to it and ahem a bust. And then suddenly to the alarm of us all it started speaking in a shrill high pitched voice,” Good evening, class. My name is Bubble and I am your salsa teacher and I am going to make Spanish Dancers out of you brutes”

Looking at her I thought she would make a better Spanish omelet of herself. But to do justice to the lady, I must confess the name suited her to the T and she was a great dancer as I later came to know.

Anyways with that little greeting, Bubbly set about the phenomenal task of teaching us salsa. Of course, it was then I realized that shaving a lion with a rusty razor would have been less intimidating than learning those complicated moves.

But God’s don’t give up and definitely not this demi goddess. After a while things were pretty okay, except for a little problem. I JUST COULDN’T DANCE WITH A PARTNER! and considering salsa is essentially a couple dance I was in deep trouble. I would either try leading the dance, which is the job of the male partner (whatever happened to women’s liberation) or not respond to his lead. Either ways it would frustrate my partner to no end and soon no body wanted to dance with me …. Booooohooooooooo sob sob ….

And then came the day when it rained....

It was a gloomy rainy Saturday and Carrot (that’s actually my red haired friend Ashvin) dropped me to class and that’s when I saw HIM .. Him was this tall, dark and needless to say attractive Greek God with a smile which could light up a thousand cities. He was standing at the entrance of the studio and casually glanced in our direction before resting his eyes on Bubbly who was bouncing with joy at having to teach this Adonis. Well, he was an amazing dancer and maybe the good Lord was smiling on me, but he took the mantle of being my unofficial teacher. When Bubbly gave up on me, he would patiently take me through the steps. And he would also ask me out for ice-cream after class, which made all the other girls green with envy. We-el, I always knew I had the ahem.. X factor, except for the fact that it never surfaced all these years, but then better late than never they say .

More of such idyllic ecstatic days passed and I was more and more convinced that he had totally fallen for me and I waited for a verbal confirmation from him. And then the D-Day arrived. It was the last class of our beginner’s course and just before class he came rather breathless and urgently asked me to wait for him after class in the parking lot . Boy did that thrill me to the bits and the rest of the class passed as if a dream.

True to his words, I saw him waiting in the parking lot looking devastatingly handsome and as nervous as a newly wed bride ( heh heh I love that sentence)
As I joined him there, he smiled nervously and muttered incoherently about the weather in general before suddenly blurting out “Do you believe in love at first sight?” Wow Did I?! I must be better than I thought, love at first sight huh? I smiled smugly at the thought . Nodding my head in agreement I waited for him to proceed . “Well, then you’ll know what I mean , my life has not been the same since that rainy day !!” Cleopatra, that’s what I was, I told my self with conceit. I nodded in complete agreement. “ I knew you would understand “, He enthused” After all there is something about red hair you know ! “ Red Hair ??!! Now, wait a minute what red hair was he talking about? Was he color blind or something ? I looked at him uncertainly . “ Your friend , of course !” he spluttered, “The one who was with you that rainy day . I can’t tell you how much he’s been on my mind. I was wondering if you could introduce him to me? “

Good Lord !! This must be a nightmare !! I stared at him in dumb amazement. My dark handsome prince – a ‘fairy‘ ! And I thought it was me and my charm!! Cleo must be laughing in her grave or pyramid whatever it was….

That was the end of Salsa classes for me. And Ashvin just couldn’t understand the alternating angry glances and puzzled looks I gave him for weeks.

But revisiting the experience, I realized it was not such a bad deal after all. At least I got to learn the dance, something that was a near impossible thing earlier. Well, something good did turn out of it, romance or no romance.

I am now considering taking piano lessons, I wonder if Ashvin will be free to drop me ….

Copyright (c) Neha Shinde