Hell of a day...and i am through

just when i relaxed after being upset the whole day that i can have at least a day rest this happened.
I woke up early morning with just one thought in mind ...if only i can avoid working saturday and sunday ...o god i don't want to....
after resigning myself to it anyway for client...customer ...whatever satisfaction...
damn it ...its our project says my manager....hey the infrastructure ....should also be in place and.....because of resource crunch ...we have to pull in.....
...hey gimme a break.Once in 6 months you use it sounds good ...once a week is pathetic.

and then the end of the day magically we hear of a maintenance so no work at least on saturday im told.The manager has a long face...as we'r told...the way its delivered is this.....

"I have good news and bad news
Good news is ....how many of u were not willing to come on saturday?
well you may not come.
The bad news is our project..its gonna be affected" all this with a sad morose expression.
...yeah...blah ...blah

why was i sitting like mad at office while i had work ...because they could not get the required s/w resources.So when they beg/borrow it off on weekends i have to work on weekends.

There was other cold war drama too but thats in a different post.

So i came home at least a bit relaxed by 8.30.
had tea and was just resting ...i heard my sister's coming into the gate crying so much that i got dead scared....two guys on scooter had pushed her and pulled her bag
and fled.It had her Nokia a expensive piece she got from her first job savings.This in a town known as pretty safe(its an obscure word i guess in real life).

It was terrible...i was feeling so better after i heard that she was fine whatever's lost.Its hard to describe.Then we got on to the business of consolidating....
called up the bank to disable the atm card....damn these private banks..
...felt disgusted..they charge you so much..automate all stuff and then you have to listen to all stupid music when you are so upset for an hour just to get it disabled.
How cruel it seems.
well not much i realised when i called up Hutch to disable
my connection.It was so horrible....the damn guy is rattling off my dues(the dues are
less than the deposit i have with them)when i tell him i want it disabled immediately

the guy simply insisted it cannot be done till i pay the money...he means this at 9.30 in the night.

Having had experience in this service business well enough i did what i knew was best...disconnected the call
called up again waited till i got a better fella

told him he...first he said it will take a day ..then by night...the finally when you say this connection will never be renewed in such a case ...outgoing will be barred
within 25 mins he says..
all the while they play in the background ...raindrops keep falling....really how cruel and those recorded lines "we welcome your call/thank you for waiting...its sickening the recorded voices.

Its less to do with those executives there... more to do with the falsities propagated in the name of customer satisfaction...by corporations.

We did inform the police as one of our uncles wanted us to...but this is what the SI said to my tearful sister "So what if you are into Software...I am an SI but i keep a cell of 2000 ..why do you need a 14k cell" .Of course my uncle explained they joke like that ...dont take it to heart...but well thats about the whole story.

Its lost ...she's quite sad .... poor thing lost all her friends nos too as she was too lazy to keep em anywhere else and few she had in a tel book that too was in the purse.

It was a bad day in the end...i had my own struggles...lost my lens in the eye(how bad can it get)...i thought i had dropped it...but it was kind of hurting so i doubted...was thinking of getting back home from office at noon...but mom had left and no keys so stayed at office and after splashing water like mad at the eye i found the lens.

It was too eventful in other ways and quite bad --later on that.

But every one has their own way of looking at things.....after being sad for 2 hrs about the cell ...she says...i had my four expensive lipsticks in it(Im not as much into cosmetics and she loves em but the way she said it i was like ahhhhhh).
and i did not know what to say.

im wondering all kind of things about
this job..the money...the personal feeling when such things happen and all kind of whys.......

I myself have still not gotten over losing my cell..the oldest cheap nokia(i lost it when someone happily took it from my purse in a crowded shopping fair) and now this.
Its so easy to steal really...some do it because no work...some because they think who'll work and root causes of this.....Unemployment..population actually..this that....

and we go on living ....kabhi khushi..bahut gham.

the days just go on....

well was feeling queasy so had taken a day off monday and now i know why it was fine
simple....i'll have be working the weekend....got it confirmed today.....thats enough to upset me.
anyway i left an half an hour early .......yet there were long faces esp my manager's.....i'd finished the work dammit....why should i just hang out there..chat on msgr...keep smiling...or listen to music(i'll do it better at home) and suffer them i know not.
anyway i had to pay bills etc did that and to better my mood went to the shopping mall nearby...
.......it was being renovated ...... lot changed since i used to meet up with friends there.....suddenly remembered them all......the place we used to sit around ...they 've stacked up decorative candles now.hmmmm well........
navigated across blogs...some of ppl who commented on mine...from there to their friends blogs and i ended up at the steve jobs speech at stanford site.
liked it quite a lot.....i fwd it just some ppl in office.....just a part of it....and (while i get along with all ---- only two people i like in some specific way though they are not in my team so have to struggle to meet but we chat on the office IM) replied back --- asking why do u not send the full text it was so good. it felt good that u know ur friends ...... and they like what you like.

That long Silence……

I read this book I guess a month or so back and I found so much of it echoing my thoughts….thoughts which I thought were really off track with the ways of this world.

It was a great empathizing book for me…something I rarely come across in the amount of fiction ive read.Ive read quite some Indian fiction and have my own fav’s but I came across her books recently .she’s not as hyped as all the other famous ones but hers is the truer picture.Her exploration of the Indian psyche esp middle class ..its more of a woman’s perspective but not feminist. it so touches a chord for anyone daring to speak the truth at least to themselves.

Some examples are when the heroine (narrator) is thinking of her maid jeeja

‘all those happy women with husbands in good jobs ……. were of no use to me…It was jeeja and her like…..women who saved me from the hell of drudgery. any little freedom I had depended on them’.

It looks like a strange statement but how much we today depend on our maids even with the modern machines(they are no match work done by hand).If they were not there would housewives… forget working women(they wudnt have a chance)ever have leisure for their wonderful weepies by ekta kapoor or gossip or shopping or any fun or quality time as its said.

When we had moved house some months back and among the many reasons against I gave one saying we would never find such a flexible and good maid as we have here---- my mom had said we cannot build life around maids……well here we are in our new house day in and night out mom suffers due to our reckless new maid.we have to come and go adjusting to her timings…I can only smirk but the it does not register with her anyway.

The other line is a more poignant one…

“baby girls are done to death ….swift ending of agony….than prolonging for years”

I always (since I heard of female infanticide) thought of this but I guessed I if I said it people would simply not understand so I think I never argued much on the subject with anyone and its so locked up kind of thing ..Neither here nor there.

My thought is this …government with its laws and all can prevent these babies done to death but can they ever make someone callous enough to do this love them.

I do not think so….….rather than living a whole life of rejection ,pain not understanding why…what’s wrong with ending it at the start as a few cells. We are willing to raise a hue and cry for a biological case but what about someone who feels, who lives for years in hurt….even if they go on to succeed in the world somehow which is more of one in a thousand case can they ever outgrow a childhood steeped in rejection and pain.

I do not think the law is unfair its fine but its just that--- a law-- and life is all so different.

There is so much more in the book that captures you throughout like

“I want solitude now not when I am old and frightened of being alone”

“Poor Gandhi he thought he could change human nature but people do not change”—this one’s amusing since there was a recent movie. I don’t remember the name --- where there was a joke about Gandhi in the same vein. How Gandhi preached against money but ended up being stamped on money and I and my sis simply thought it the absolute cynical truth.

It’s a book that’s so very raw about some truths ….which some people do not even confess to themselves as they play out the great Indian happy family. Such books you cant say you loved it…they simply haunt you …as truth haunts….The other book I read of hers ‘The dark holds no terror’ is also amazing in its portrayal of exorcising past ghosts.

Lie lies in the mind

While reading some books we often feel the author has put our thoughts into word and sometimes a confusing thought is clarified or u feel so much empathy on reading them.

One such thought that always came to me was do people lie sometimes first to themselves and convince their own self that the lie is the truth and them bang it on all around insisting as that was the truth conveniently forgetting the truth themselves.

I observed it many times with people around me.I remembered this again when recently someone close was telling about their workplace.This person was talking about a new joinee who was leaving now soon ,who she thought was irresponsible ,lazy and many other things.But what she conveniently forgot was that just a month back when this new joinee had joined she liked her…in fact she said …her story is so similar to mine…she too started out as a fresher being paid less and doing all kinds of odd jobs and after two years she’s here…..then after a week another girl joined now my friend who was earlier apprehensive about this new joinee seemed to like her better than the previous one.Well from what she describes to me sure the first joinee is not of a great nature but what my friend completely forgot while using expletives for her was a month ago she liked her.

I could remind her of her words and what I would get …words like it was meant differently…or I did not say that blunt answer…an argument….souring of our relationship…..so I just listened to her but this was a perfect example of my observation. Convenience of forgetting our own words.

This is the reason I never go by first impressions…they are correct quite a lot for me but I still prefer to keep them to myself and give time before getting the whole idea stamped in my mind.

Ive read quite some fiction in Indian English but the best about middle class India ive read is by Shashi deshpande.She explores the Indian esp Middle class pschye beautifully without harsh judgements and I came across examples in her book ‘That Long Silence’that supported my thought.The book is amazingly down to earth and is so easy to relate to.

‘Ai believes in her lies’

She talks about the heroine’s mother who talks on and on about her dead uncle a school dropout who died successful and rich(the mother’s brother)…how wonderful and clever he was .how she helped him succeed though parents were against his movie career though the heroine remembers perfectly that as a child she had heard her mother hating her brother ,said he brought shame upon the family by his ways and so on.

The author explains how the old mother simply convinces herself she loved her brother all these years and he succeeded due to her support and keeps narrating to all and sundry. People who know otherwise keep shut because there no point arguing with someone who’s erased the truth from memory.

She relates other things so beautifully like when her mother tells her daughter fussing about her daughter who fusses about eating—“In my days my children ate whatever I gave them—u just fuss and spoil them”—a very contradictory thing as the daughter remembers finely her childhood when she used to be troubled about what to cook for them always and made that clear and loud.

There are other things too (I’ll write another post only on the book) which shows the Indian nature of glossing over all success forgetting conveniently the pre success story and thoughts .

I also laughed wondering the same thought when I saw on TV some old uncle singing praises of the Indian idol abhijeet sawant saying these guys hang out near the apartment and sang songs and he knew he was very good.

Really I doubt…mostly when guys hang out as an adda at aptmts and sing and make noise and play cricket most uncles in the area simply see them as a nuisance. hardly do they think then they will be famous one day for sure as he says. But that’s how people are.

If a person is brilliant and succeeds ...u c I always knew he would.

If a person who was no good say at studies and succeeds….u c I always believed he would .he’s always been damn clever…so what if he’s no good at studies.

Upset about a.....

I was really upset early morning.
Really upset ....about what could seem to many a really small thing
after all there are bigger issues this world and what not.
but well i think its the smallest things that get you out of your mind. As goes the quote
It isn't the mountains ahead that wear you out, it's the grain of sand in your shoe.
well coming back why i was upset enough and remember it to write a blog.
Its all because of a Rose.
My lovely peach rose plant .the only one that survived my house move few months ago.(I still cant get over leaving that house where i had grown such a lovely garden to this morose house with hardly any place for them).
oh how i tok care of it ...i remembered to water it at the cost of being late a bit to office in summer. now its blooming and last four times in the fortnight everyday by the time i get back from office its gone and im left frustrated at this theft.
Today it was worse..i woke up walked out .it was oh so perfect ..nice curled up waking to the sun
and i got ready for office , went to look at it while leaving for office and it was gone.
Obviously the work of one of the servant girls in the houses within...
I was seething and fuming and really it upsets me so much......fifth time.....why does the rose have to bloom on monday my thoughts go awry in anger. I missed my one of my flower loving friends(now far in the us) who's one of those few people who'd understand how upsetting it is.
Since my mom knew there was no solution to this as they would not listen she moved the pot to our dark backyard where you can hardly see it unless you go there.
You can buy flowers sure i love them too but nothing like flowers of your garden. I never did like people plucking flowers except may be the fragrant ones lot of southindian women use for braids(I personally like flowers on the plants best or may be in vases inside never in hair but im not against personal choices).
What really gets to me is stealing flowers.
I can't remember now but i think it was Ruskin bond who said
"why do perfectly honest people think its fine to steal flowers and books".
Forget about dishonest ones...... Hmm i have many opinions on it and i'll continue this in my next post coz as of now i will only give lopsided arguments. After all i too don't mind getting a plucking out a few plants(not flowers though) from here and there not from individuals who 'd be upset ,.But then i sure got plants out from parks to my pots and saw them bloom better .
So so so what...... how dare some stupid woman simply dare to pluck n steal my rose everyday to adorn her hair.
I hate it.

Muddled up about my Manager

Its kind of real hard sometimes to be with some people everyday,
a perfect example is my current manager.
As my manager i get irritated about the person is
no authority in managing(except when it comes to the crunch just says i want
this this stuff done.....
do it ...how? simple i dont know u ppl have to)

No sense of clarity in what is required causing repeat work.this is esp excruciating in
certain areas like data collection where one day u need data arranged this way
next day a different way ans so do the damn copy paste 200 times again.
just to get some data to draw their charts which go nowhere.
Managing 20 ppl you will get 20 ideas but you as a manger needs to
decide what you want .Its one thing to encourage team work
and another to literally frown whenever u regularly chat up/have lunch with other non-team ppl.

But as a person you can call the person sweet/kiddish and so on.
Promoted by a similar region(this is India!!!!!!) past manager this person rose soon to
become a manager and frankly is quite sound technically but has
so few management skills.
So most of the management work used to be handled
which was appreciably called as delegation of work to senior guys who
made good use of the authority in good and bad ways.But this person ended up never developing
management skills.

I cant even hate this person unlike my past Manager who deserves
not a post but a blog he was so terrible and im sure all my past colleagues would contribute
greatly to it.
All my practical knowledge about management is from him
i.e WHAT NOT TO DO AS A MANAGER if/when i become one i knew by observing and working with him.he was that terrible as a person too in some contexts not all.

Life is so perplexing with some other people though......u don't like them... you don't hate them like the current manager.

when we stay back late just while leaving there is so much concern(genuine too) as to how you'll reach home blah blah..
if only that was shown a few hours early and a solution worked out we'd feel so good.
Today was this confusing candidate's birthday and all i could do was take refuge
in sun signs Ok i tell myself the person's a CANCERIAN ........Whatever....

Its pouring now.......saawan ko aane do(july 9_2005)

what a day great.... its pouring n pouring from the heavens
and its my day off and
luckily not much work to do on weekends
hurrah.....lovely it is
my sis is simply muttering with envy
as she starts off for office
and i play on music nazron se kehdo.......
no one around ..... but its so nice really
if ever i beleived in enjoying the moment
its now..... i know it wont be much fun
this downpour when i have to trudge along to work on monday
oh the though itself is terrible
but as of now
saawan ko aane do...........

Need to drum up the feel good

Its ever hard for me to understand the blind positivity or rather the pretence of it
that goes on in corporate offices.there are many examples here 's a short one

This week my manager asks me why not contribute something for the organization magazine
we need contributions(the fav line of managers they always need......)

I say hmm i'll see

well i doubt i would but i just opened up the company mail
requesting such contributions and i could write a nice article about that mail itself if

only it could be published there.well this is how they start ....


"the rainy season is here ....the season for a book .sitting warm and with a
steamy cup of coffee."

when u read such a line in the office esp a cynic like me

what can i say

yeah a book where 's the time....do this that and if luckily u have no work from client
then what the manager says that u have to have learning path ...
.....learn new technologies and worse lets analyse our work and innane data and statistics and reports
which amount to nothing but beautiful powerpoints for the managers to display at their meetings.

warm !!!!! r u kidding they increase the AC happily to keep yours servers cool.employees can live wearing jerkins and sweaters and freezing hands on keyboard.coffee!!!!! its a bad enough habit guzzling small plastic cups as u work cutting out food.how can one dream of a lovely steamy coffe in a mug.but what can we do feel good factor is what is needed everywhereto hell with facts.

MULTITASKING BY A MULTITHREADED MIND

multitasking is the order of the day
but why is my mind into mutithreading
my virtual memory has become very low
with all this multimedia i have to handle
after all i have no multiprocessors

i am really feeling crazy
thats why i am making up such lines
thing is i dont wanna go to office
but then even if i dont and take a day off somehow
there are so many chores left
that i know it'll end up wasting my day
and my mind simply has not been letting me enjoy anything
.i listen to music it thinks of something to be done
i start doing some work. ...
it says wouldnt u love to read some good stuff

this has been a problem for me always and today it way too much
multi tasking somehow takes away the pleasure of
the complete immersion feeling
why the heck cant i enjoy music while on the job
as so many of my colleagues do
why do i have to sit down close my eyes and enjoy it
(a colleague suggested a solution for this he said listen to songs of a language u do not understand
u'll not be distracted)
the problem is my mind is always thinking of too many things
but as a person i can enjoy completely only one thing at a time i feel
i wish i had single mindedness of whats that ....ya arjuna's
when he was shooting the bird
i'd see too many things but the bird
if i were asked something like that today

i better end this post here
it seems going multidirectional

Its raining........


It rained so heavily today in the day
its been sometime i could watch it and enjoy it.
had a team lunch away from office
and the downpour was amazing.
it was a fine sleet of water not huge drops
that lashed across the town and did i love it oh....but then....

rain makes things so special
the chill in the air,
the breeeze with water splashing across you
the sky clear yet broody
the trees swaying in joy.

but if your life's not goin great it hurts all the more
u feel lonely a lil more on a rainy day

it hurts to try to watch the rain
from behind the office blinds
when there's work.

it hurts to watch the rain pass by
when ud like to be cuddled up cozily
and hear the rain splashing the roof and windows.

it hurts to try to save ur dress and carry umbrellas
when best ud like is to get drenched in the lovely spray.

neverthless its exhilarating
Rain not only refreshes the weather
it refreshes the heart and soul esp the first rains of the season.

a poem remembered


it has been a long sad past week its put me in a strange blue mood
all i do i ends up in some mess somehow or the other
and worse of all i could not think straight
some worry kept going through the mind
nothing to pinpoint
probably its all about the chore life has become
i thought about people ,colleagues,friends
there was none i could say was the culprit
all seemed trapped by their own life to trap me .....
i am not really very fatalistic
but there are times wheni feel its hold over my life
and i don't know what to do.
office is a necessary evil to get through life....
family u have no choice...
self u have ,u had but where's the time to be with oneself.
as i walked home all i could remember was lines from a poem from school

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate
Those that I guard I do not love;..................
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delightDrove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind....

why am i so uninterested?

if someone told me i was uninteresting i'd not even think twice because its
understandable
i hardly am great fun or an exciting person to meet normally unless
i am with people who i have come to trust or cherish as friends
basically people with whom i can relate to and people who know and accept me as i am
then its another story altogether.

well when some at work asked me why am i so uninterested
or rather take no interest in any thing?
is a different question that set me thinking.

I had been accused rather indirectly and I made the usual socially polite comments.
When I could say the truth. there are two sides as usual.

As far as the background to this question its because of this
I'm not excited about going to our team picnic on a weekend to a oks sort of place ive visited many times and have to shell out money for that too.

Im not excited about decorating our office for our yearly event as this is to be done after slogging it all for a overseas client who has no inkling of all these events and needs work done.so what r the general encouraging statements…. its your office… stay late or come early and im to feel excited …..very interested.

I m not interested in taking part in dance and fashion show for the corporate party

representing our team.we need people please please they irritate me and some others as we refuse.

Can’t these people ask themselves why there are no people and if there aren’t its better to scrap it.but no they want to turn a blind eye to the fact that the crowd is such cheap that no one wants to get into it unless final team spirit card is played.if I don’t take the bait I don’t take interest in the cause of the team.

Dance ,fashion shows are the in thing .what if I don’t care

I am uninterested.i really am

So the other side now I try

So I am no good no interest in doing anything fun i.e dance ,fashion

No team spirit

Working at the organization as an also ran, add no value to the org.

For some time these thoughts made me wonder

As it also brought back memories of a previous job where some of this had occurred and similar accusations were observed in some people’s eyes.

But all I can say is do I exist for these organizations, corporations

just coz I work for them.

This happens says a close friend so only way out is go get your own business.so till i am at a job ive to trek along with this.

I will be uninterested in them yes I will be….. because I cannot get interested

• Decorating offices in themes no one believes in to achieve team work.
• Making people work on festivals like diwali/new year or whatever and say have fun here by decorating the building.
• About taking up dreadful boring work just coz your manager says great words and asks for contribution.
• In dance and fashion shows where people need material to comment and gossip.

I am not against fashion dance which I enjoy as much as any but to force people

albeit emotionally and use it to define attitude at workplace is not appreciable.

• About drumming up every line of scanty praise showered by overseas client
• In people who need such stuff to have excitement in life.

this quote I came across says it best

“The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests

and his own are the same”

and then there are some sheep like me see through it but know we’ve to go on and are uninterested.