Groom hunt (episode 1)

Hello everybody,

So my mom recons I am old enough to be married like all mothers do, but the difference between all the mothers of the world and mine is that she is Indian. If you are an Indian then you know how big of a deal it is for Indian girls to be married young. And since I am not cool enough to have a boyfriend or have someone I can introduce at home, my mom has taken the matter of my marriage upon herself and thinks that it is her life's goal to get me married to a nice, well settle guy who comes from a good family.

Well that is not too long of a list to look for in guys right? Apparently that is expecting way too much from guys. My mum who has registered my "profile" is an "matrimonial house" got this profile of a guy (whom I won't mane) and let's just call him Mr. Dokey!

Now, Mr. Dokey lives in Miami, Florida and has done his masters in Engineering and works there as a business analyst at a hospital. After both our parents initially spoke over phone they exchanged the details of our profiles over email which took about a week, I saw the few images that were sent to my mum by email and he looked alright and it first looked like I looked fine to Mr. Dokey too. So he told his mother that he would like to have a conversation with me on Skype. That was what I wanted too, because I have firmly told my mother that I am not going to marry some random guy without getting to know him better.

So last Saturday, Mr. Dokey's mother emailed me his skyde details and I added him to my contacts. To my surprise Mr. Dokey was already online and was ready to have a conversation with me. And since I had never really met a guy physically or virtually with marriage in mind this totally threw me off guard and I was literally this close to having an anxiety attack.

When he called, I was so nervous that I had such difficulty breathing I was sure I would pass out. That is exactly what would have happened if he had started to interrogate me about my life. Luckily, he turned out to be really chilled. That is something I had least expected of any guy (don't know why.) He was all smiling and the conversation was really pleasant. He actually told me all about himself without me having to ask him much and whenever I asked me some basic questions like what kind of wife does he want he gave a reasonable enough answer. Also I must add that he was extremely charming and he put me at ease the moment our conversation started. I slowly started to relax and breathe easy. ti even felt comfortable after the first ten minutes and was began to have fun. It was exactly like going on a first date but with a computer screen between us. We spoke about our college, to work life to everything about our favorite movies and music and hobbies.

Now this is what threw me off a bit about Mr. Dokey. He said he has no hobbies and in all the 8 years of him living in America he has travelled only to Yellowstone National Park once and does not watch movies in the weekend and he doesn't like to go out over the weekend but loves to bring his work home and finish them by Monday morning. To be fair, I am not a very outgoing person either and I love staying home with my copy of Wuthering Heights. But even me - an introvert - have friends I meet up with over the weekends. And as lazy as I am, even I have hobbies and I love travelling and watching movies!

But at the moment I was so charmed by Mr. Dokey I thought, 'Oh this is no big deal, I can live with a boring man as long as he is charming and I am smitten.'

After talking for about ninety minutes we ended our conversation saying that it would be best if we spoke some more before saying anything to our parents and since he is always working and so busy all the time he would email me and let me know when we would talk again.

Obviously, my mum who was standing right outside my door in spite of managing to hear some of our conversation did ask me to tell her in detail about what we spoke and what I thought about the guy and would I like to marry him. I told her (as per Mr. Dokey's request) that I would like to talk to him again before giving my answer.

After this conversation I got really busy the following week and so did my mum and I forgot all about the conversation plans with Mr. Dokey until last night when my mum reminded me. I promptly checked my email to see if he had sent details on when we would talk next and there was nothing. My mum called his mother today morning and apparently Mr. Dokey told his mum that he feels very confused and doesn't know how he feels about me. He is too busy at the moment to call me and continue conversation with me and hence is still contemplating if it is the right time for him to get married to anybody at all.

So here I am thinking, if you don't want to get married why create a profile at the matrimony house and make both our parents figure out computers and internet and exchange profiles? Why would you want to even talk to me and waste my time if you don't have marriage on your mind? Or is he such a chicken that he is making this up to avoid refusing me?

So with the end of this story ends the role of another jerk in my life. If you are opting arranged marriage are you ready to face jerks? If you are already married and your marriage was arranged how did you know your spouse was the one?

Wishing you happiness and a successful marriage,

Love,
Ranju

First time at Forever 21

Hello beauty queens,

If you are regular at my blog then you know by now that I live in the most exciting Bangalore city. The reason I find it exciting to live here is because of late the best stores are opening.

I always dreamed of shopping at Forever 21. It was one of my 'must do's whenever I went to the USA or Hong Kong. But not any more! Forever 21 is now in my own backyard!

And by backyard I mean Garuda mall at Magrath Road (haha.) Forever 21 opened here two months ago and ever since I so badly wanted to go and look for myself if their clothes were as stylish as I had read them to be and if their accessories where as beautiful as I had seen them on pintrest. I know my expectations were pretty up there and from the moment I entered boy was I super impressed!

I didn't know what I wanted to buy. Everything looked so pleasing and picture perfect to me. Rows and rows of the most beautiful summer dresses, the largest collection of the coolest looking hats, walls covered in shiny necklaces and so many lovely pairs of shoes to try on.

Since it is the summer the store was well stocked with beautiful skater skirts, the most summery crop tops, floral summer dresses and jogger pants and everything else I am forgetting to name.

I remember last year my sister and I looked literally all over the  city and into every single store and we couldn find a single crop top. And here in Forever 21 there were hundreds of crop tops in all possible prints and fabrics just casually hung in rows for us to be spoilt for choice.

As much as I would have loved to shop everything my eyes fell on I had to hold myself back and remind myself that summer really was winding down and even even if I bought a whole load of clothes I wouldn be able to wear them for long.

So did I walk away without buying anything? As if! I did a whole load of jewelry shopping. They have these gorgeous dainty little necklaces and finger rings that I have probably never seen anywhere ever. And these were not just dainty accessories they were rose gold accessories.

Now before we get ahead of ourselves I need to tell you I am not a gold person. I don't like the color for some reason and I cannot pull it off. But when it comes to rose gold and copper I am all over it. In fact I can't get enough of it! Since I had never really found rose gold accessories with ease before I went nuts! Below are the things I bought and I don't flaunt them lightly. I am obsessed with what I wear and how much I love it and I make sure all my girlfriends notice it (haha) and if they don't I keep shoving it on their face until they do. (yes, that's me, I am that freak.)

Now if you are thinking this has got to be expensive well it was only just as pricy if not cheaper than most of your regular accessories from a local store.

So next time you are at Forever 21 make sure to go nuts and shop till you drop. I highly recommend the store, the more than helpful staff and the satisfying shopping experience.

Wishing you a very happy shopping!
Love,
Ranju
xoxo

Posted via Blogaway

MAC Studio finish concealer Review

Hello everybody!

I am so sorry I haven't written anything in a long time! I have been super busy with my YouTube channel and my bake sale. But enough excuses! Today let's talk about concealers!

The real reason I went into the MAC store looking for a concealer was because there isn't enough shades of drugstore concealers available here in India to match us all. I got tired of looking in every beauty counter for my perfect match.

MAC Studio Finish Concealer pot

When I went to the MAC store I honestly doubted that I would find a concealer in my shade but I was so overjoyed when I found the studio finish concealer was available in so many shades!

The lady matched me up with two shades- I mean I had difficulty finding one shade to match me all along and here I was trying to decide which of the two shades looked closer to my complexion. This was totally a new experience and I was very happy!

The shade I chose was NW 40.

The concealer is cream based and feels lightweight on my skin. Even though it is a heavy duty full coverage product it feels light and not cakey in the slightest. It can hide even the darkest spots and the best part is it does not cling to my dry patches. And the fact the it has Spf 35 prevents my dark circles and spots growing darker because of the sun. Yay! I feel like it is a win-win-win-win product throughout.

My dark circles and that tiny spot over my eyebrow need concealing

Depending on how much time I have no hand to get ready I sometimes blend it with my ring finger and the other times with a real techniques blending brush. The result is flawless both ways! This means that if you don't want to invest in expensive makeup brush it is still possible to look gorgeous with just the concealer blended with the pads of your fingers.

The result after the product

Also because it is so tiny I always find space for it in my travel beauty kit. And the products behaves very well in bad weather too. Last August I took it with me to Gujarat and it was so hot that I was worried that it would melt and ruin my bag but it stayed put in the container and stayed in pretty much the same condition. When I took it to Mt. Abu this January it survived 7 degrees. The concealer did harden a bit but it blended easily under my eyes with the heat of my fingertips.

I used this concealer for at least six months before I purchased my makeup primer and even without the primer it stayed put for hours once set with powder. And with the concealer I am sure it stays put on my face for longer than 12 hours. 

The other thing I absolutely love about this concealer is that a little goes a long long way. So even though it comes in a small pot, you can use it for well over an year or two.

Love the packaging!

I love that the concealer comes in a small pot with a transparent lid. It is a plain black plastic container but it is sturdy and has not cracked even a tiny bit even though I have dropped it a couple of times.

Name of the product: MAC studio finish concealer
Shade number: NW 40
Store price: Rs. 1650
Net weight: 7g 
Spf 35

Overall to me it is great concealer and is worth the money. I highly recommend this concealer if you are having a hard time finding your shade or if you are looking for something with full coverage. This is surely one beauty product in my makeup kit that I am going to purchase when I am through this pot.

You can also find me on:

Twitter - @Iamranjun

Instagram - @iamranjun

Youtube - Ranju N

Thank you for reading and being my friend :)

Love,
Ranju

Why do I travel?

Hello again,


I know I have not blogged in a long while and the reason for that is, I took a break for about 18 days and went travelling off to Gujarat, Rajasthan, Mumbai and Goa. I love taking long vacations. Last summer I backpacked my way across Tamil Nadu - from Hosur to Kanyakymari  and from Coimbatore to Chennai.


The other day I sat jobless-ly and thought about why I enjoy travelling so much. And please don't think I am the kind that goes to a posh resort and spend all my time by the pool or in their spa (even thought that's a great way to relax.) I am the kind that travels like how a nomad wanders. I barely plan my next destination and more often then not take a bus or a train without thinking much about the destination. The joy I incur when the unplanned destination turns out to have great weather, amazing people, excellent food is some thing that will stay with me forever.


That thought and experience right there is why I am inspired to travel so much. In an ideal world I would be travelling all over the world (not necessarily in luxury) every single day of my existence and exploring the planet through my eyes and not through a travel show in a lifestyle channel.


There are some people who travel only to the beaches and then there are others who travel only to the hill stations. And then there is another kind of travelers - the ones who only travel to a place of pilgrimage. I on the other hand am neither of above mentioned kind and yet I belong to all the above kind. I am a wanderer trapped in a city chick. When I first started travelling I went exclusively to hill stations so I could trek and explore the forest, raft through the rivers and camp out. Till date I find trekking very meditative and find the exercise very restful even thought I am actually working my thighs and calves out ( the next day's soreness in my legs stand as proof in elaborate detail.)




The first time I travelled to a place that was not green or surrounded by forests and rivers was to Goa a couple of years ago for my best friends bachelorette party. There too I managed to find a trekking trail to Tamdi Surla and enjoyed the waterfall. But what surprised me the most was that a walk on the sandy beaches and the beautiful sunsets were just as peace evoking as any of my trekking experiences. This feeling was unexpected and surprised me so much that I started to re-think my travel dream for the next five years. This is the reason why I recently went back to Goa again and explored South Goa extensively. I completely gave up on the crowded tourist traps and headed to remote beaches that only a handful of localities were aware of. That opened a new world where I drove through winding roads shaded by coconut trees, ate more quintessentially Goan food, walked on the best most peaceful beaches and caught some of the more spectacular sunsets.


The Goa experience the first time inspired me to go backpacking across Tamil Nadu - and I don't mean the beaches or the coast (although the beach at Kanyakumari was fun.) This time I took the scorching sun inland over the dreaded summer. I started my journey at our country's end in Kanyakumari and travelled north and encountered the best kind of waterfalls. It made me wonder how a state that is so hot and muggy can still have numerous waterfalls (between Namakkal and Coyambattore) of such grace and beauty. This vacation thought me to be more confident and patience and I could finally learn to let go and still be ok when not everything went my way and I was going the way everything else pulled and pushed me. I felt like a piece of wood lost in a beach. Nothing went the way I planned but I learned to accept everything that came my way and by the end of that vacation I was probably more flexible than play dough (I know I am probably kidding myself.)


Now that I had experienced woods, waterfalls, sun and surf it only made sense to go to a sandier desert. So my next destination was the state of Rajasthan. Rajasthan being a state that was once ruled entirely by the kinds is a state like no other. The forts still look formidable, the palaces still look so rich that some still have gold plated ceilings and ruby and emerald encrusted marble floor. The ornate architecture is mind boggling considering the lack of technology and almost every archway and statue was hand made. The attention to detail in the palaces of Rajasthan is like no other. Even the food and the snacks of the state are made with rich ghee and even a commoner eats like royalty. And then there is the desert itself. The only way to travel in the desert is to catch a camel back ride. If you have never ridden a camel then you are in for a startling shock as the camel sways back and forth very violently every time it stands up and sits down but the ride is not too different from horse riding. Camels are very gentle creatures and as they give you a ride they mind their business gurgling the water from their water pouch. If I thought the desert sand will be just as similar to the beaches of Goa then I was absolutely wrong. The desert sand is so fine you can hardly hold it in your hands for a little more than a five seconds. It was super exhilarating to climb over my first sand dune (again unlike what I had seen on TV these were huge and you could easily get lost behind one) and the I got to see the India-Pakistan border. It was here that it struck me so profoundly that I was an Indian and was very proud to be one.


So here I stand thinking why I travel. Is it the wanderer in me or is it the need to be adventurous? Do I travel to escape from the monotony of my life or do I travel to add more color to make my life more vibrant? do I travel for the love of woods or is it that sand? Is it the desire to do something new everyday or just to kill time?


The answer could be a mixture of all but I couldn't tell you that for sure. As long as I am moving from one place to another, learning new cultures and languages, tasting new and exotic food, trekking over a new mountain, walking along a new beach, experiencing a new means of transport I am just very happy. And to me happiness is reason enough to travel the way I do and live on the go.


I would love to hear why you travel too. Please let me know your thoughts in the box below.


We can also be friends on Instagram @sriranjani_n
We can be friends on twitter @Iamsriranjani


If you are interested then you can watch me travel and experience everything I mentioned above on my Youtube channel www.youtube.com/sriranjanin



 

YouTube addiction

If you are an extremely outgoing person and have all the people skills you may never really understand my point view. This blog post is for people like me - introverts, internet addicts and even though we have a lot of work on hand we prefer doing it another time because we would much rather watch a family vlog.

Yes, that's me. Its not that I don't have friend, I do. And its not that I am not a fun person because I love travelling and am very adventurous. But if I were to choose between staying in my room watching YouTube videos and go meet exciting people outside then I would take the first option.

I don't quiet remember the first YouTube video I ever saw but I am sure it was something related to food. I also remember watching a lot of videos of WahChef. The host Sanjay is an exceptionally great chef but he is also hilarious. One of my fondest memories of me and my sister is us watching his entire playlist irrespective of weather we are cooking his recipes or not and laughing heartily at his yummy noises - no offence. This is so way back that YouTube still had the 5 star rating system.

Slowly from all of the cookery videos we broadened our circle of interest and from time to time when we had an event or family gathering to attend to we watched simple hairstyles tutorials and natural makeup tutorials. Although we watched beauty videos very rarely - owing to the fact that my sister and I are total tomboys - whenever we watched one video we would always watch the suggested videos on the side and even though we had settled on a hairstyle we would manage to watch videos for about three to four hours and would only realize we had done so when our mother returned from work and screamed at us for not even getting started on homework.

Well, such is the power of YouTube. Weather you have subscribed to a bunch of channels or you are simply surfing through from channel to channel, the world of videos sucks you in and keeps you mesmerized until you are brought to reality by a violent external force. If you are thinking this is already intense then this is only the beginning of the things to come.

I am sure we have all spent hours on YouTube watching videos and surfing for things that we were not even interested. But there comes a time in every Google account holder's life when he/she will stumble upon one YouTuber whom they find so entertaining that they end up subscribing. The First YouTuber I ever subscribed to was Superwoman. She is a Canadian resident Indian who makes videos that are so funny that you will fall off your chair or drop your laptop laughing. Now I wish it had stopped there but alas, the internet had other plans for me!
All YouTubers at one point of the other collaborate with other YouTubers and make videos together to increase their audience. Hence, I subscribed to Tyler Okley, Zoey Sugg, Troy Sevan, Bethany Mota, Tanya Burr, Alfie Dayze, Caspar Lee, Louis Cole, Thatcher Joe and Marcus Butler. I know its a long list of YouTubers but that's how they get you - they make fun videos together on both YouTubers' channels and ask you to check them both out and subscribe to both. And once you have subscribed there is no turning back. You are so smitten by their charm that you are hooked and watch their videos as and when they publish. But this isn't bad.... it is still only one healthy addiction.


But before you realize, you are following them on Instagram, Snapchat, Blogger and Twitter. When you have reached this level of commitment to a YouTuber there is no way out of the maze. Your parents may be chocking next to you and you would be busy liking your favorite YouTubers' tweets and Instagram pictures. When I was in this stage I got all my friends to subscribe to my favorite YouTubers and whenever I met them I would discuss the latest videos of the YouTubers like how most people discuss TV series. Yet, if there was a major blackout or if your internet server was down you would still survive.


You know you are truly terminal when you are so inspired by your favorite YouTubers that you want to become a YouTuber yourself. Yes me... the introvert! It is not like now that I blog and make videos for YouTube that I have suddenly become an extrovert but now I do love people virtually and I am surprised at how easy it is to make friends on social media. It is like opening a new chapter in my life!


It is because of YouTube that I now have friends all across the world. Also because I am a big stalker I now know their first names, their silly quirks, their interests and oddly enough they are just as interested about me! Now there is just no going back. Throughout the day, I am now replying to comments on my videos, watching my friends make videos on their channels and also watch people who inspire me. I spend nearly twelve hours a day on YouTube and love every minute of it. If there is a power breakdown or if my internet is low, I just pick my camera up and make a video. If I don't find anything interesting to watch then I sit and edit my videos and upload them on my channel. If I am stressed then instead of turning to comfort food like I used to before I now have a set of videos I watch to comfort me. Such is my love and addiction to YouTube and I don't think there is a rehab facility for that.


As I finish this post I am so excited to announce that at this moment my channel hit 200 subscribers and I am ecstatic. Now, this introvert only wants to make more videos, wants to be more inspired and make a lot of new friends! So if you do have the time then please check out my YouTube channel and subscribe. I make videos on beauty, food and DIY projects.


Looking forward to becoming friends with you guys on YouTube. My channel link is:
www.youtube.com/sriranjanin


Love,
Ranju