Withered by Time

Words spoken in jest bring out what a person
would like to say or what one thinks
but would not  or could not say it straight.

So i observed always
The most recent one being a bit off context but neverthless was meant quite straight.
" Withered flowers dont need maintenance"
Yeah they dont .....Quite True
Then on a rethink on the words you wonder
whats wrong with with withered flowers....
they've had a blooming time
The tragedy is of the withered buds may be......Not sure
You need a bit of off the world perspective to see the difference
 Then again......
If the flower is happy to wither off on a branch
than become Cut Flower to be maintained in  living rooms
who are you to be bothered.

Pondering upon "The Unbearable Lightness of being" by Kundera

Amongst my varied reading which defies any sense most books that i read i either empathize or feel the book sympathizes with me or it simply puts the thrill and excitement of life into me or which makes me think.

Few books really give a new direction to ever wandering thoughts.This is one such book.On the surface
if you read it just as a story its all a series of infidelities and i hardly have much to say of the subject .But then it is the thoughts of the character and the narrators theories that are amazingly thought provoking.
Sadly though for a book with so much to ponder the story of the book as a whole seems focused on infidelities and such and is definitely not a great fiction read.Added to it there is a lot of physical descriptions which after a point get plain irritating in a novel with thought as its core.But then since the novel   was originally written in French one does let it be .

The book opens with a deep conflict in itself
"The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other philosophers with it: to think that everything recurs as we once experienced it, and that the recur¬rence itself recurs ad infinitum! What does this mad myth signify? "

I rarely get coninced by categorizations but this one surely made a mark and i surely put myself in the fourth category

We all need someone to look at us. We can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under.

The first category longs for the look of an infinite number of anonymous eyes, in other words, for the

look of the public. ………………………….anonymous eyes……………………..

The second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by many known

eyes. They are the tireless hosts of cocktail parties and dinners. They are happier than the people in the

first category, who, when they lose their public, have the feeling that the lights have gone out in the

room of their lives. This happens to nearly all of them sooner or later. People in the second category,

on the other hand, can always come up with the eyes they need. ………….

Then there is the third category, the category of people who need to be constantly before the eyes of

the person they love. Their situation is as dangerous as the situation of people in the first category. One

day the eyes of their beloved will close, and the room will go dark. ……………………….

And finally there is the fourth category, the rarest, the category of people who live in the imaginary

eyes of those who are not present. They are the dreamers.

The chapter "A Short Dictionary of Misunderstood Words" is a real fine one though my favorites are surely what is written in for the word "Music" and "Light and darkness" and "Living in Truth"

MUSIC
Franz made no distinction between "classical" music and "pop." He found the distinction old-fashioned

and hypocritical. He loved rock as much as Mozart.He considered music a liberating force: it liberated

him from loneliness, introversion, the dust of the library; it opened the door of his body and allowed his

soul to step out into the world to make friends. He loved to dance and regretted that Sabina did not hare his passion.
They were sitting together at a restaurant, and loud music with a heavy beat poured out of a nearby peaker as they ate.
"It's a vicious circle," Sabina said. "People are going deaf because music is played louder and louder. But

because they're going deaf, it has to be played louder still."
"Don't you like music?" Franz asked.
"No," said Sabina, and then added, "though in a different era…" She was thinking of the days of Johann

Sebastian Bach, when music was like a rose blooming on a boundless snow-covered plain of silence.
Noise masked as music had pursued her since early childhood.
……..Music roared out of loudspeakers on the site from five in the morning to nine at night. She felt like rying, but the music was cheerful, and there was nowhere to hide, not in the latrine or under the bedclothes: everything was in range of the speakers. The music was like a pack of hounds that had
been sicked on her………………………………………………………..
"Noise has one advantage. It drowns out words." And suddenly he realized that all his life he had done
nothing but talk, write, lecture, concoct sentences, search for formulations and amend them, so in the nd no words were precise, their meanings were obliterated, their content lost, they turned into trash, haff, dust, sand; prowling through his brain, tearing at his head, they were his insomnia, his illness

LIVING IN TRUTH

Putting it negatively is easy enough: it means not lying, not hiding, and not dissimulating. From the time e met Sabina, however, Franz had been living in lies. He told his wife about nonexistent congresses in Amsterdam and lectures in Madrid; he was afraid to walk with Sabina through the streets of Geneva.

And he enjoyed the lying and hiding: it was all so new to him. He was as excited as a teacher's pet who as plucked up the courage to play truant.
For Sabina, living in truth, lying neither to ourselves nor to others, was possible only away from the public: the moment someone keeps an eye on what we do, we involuntarily make allowances for that ye, and nothing we do is truthful. Having a public, keeping a public in mind, means living in lies. Sabina
despised literature in which people give away all kinds of intimate secrets about themselves and their friends. A man who loses his privacy loses everything, Sabina thought. And a man who gives it up of his own free will is a monster. That was why Sabina did not suffer in the least from having to keep her love secret. On the contrary, only by doing so could she live in truth.

LIGHT AND DARKNESS
Living for Sabina meant seeing. Seeing is limited by two borders: strong light, which blinds, and total arkness. Perhaps that was what motivated Sabina's distaste for all extremism. Extremes mean orders beyond which life ends, and a passion for extremism, in art and in politics, is a veiled longing for death……………………………….
But for her, darkness did not mean infinity; for her, it meant a disagreement with what she saw, the negation of what was seen, the refusal to see.

Its hardly a great fiction read , too much gross stuff in between for people with puritanical tastes and lain boring in places but wherein it pauses and observes and ponders its simply amazing.

Poetic Lookback

Interpretation

Somewhere within your loving look I sense,
Without the least intention to deceive,
Without suspicion, without evidence,
Somewhere within your heart the heart to leave.

When i feel the least like writing or even reading something new i read the old already read books and poetry but then i love them all over again and wish to post them.
I guess this blog has lot of Vikram Seth's fine poetry on it which i post cause i love just rereading it.

Another lovely one below

Across

Across these miles I wish you well.
May nothing haunt your heart but sleep.
May you not sense what I don't tell.
May you not dream, or doubt, or weep.
May what my pen this peaceless day
Writes on this page not reach your view
Till its deferred print lets you say
It speaks to someone else than you.

Fragmented musings at year end

It been a useless year, i exclaim
cannot explain what useful would have been
but the conclusion is just the same.

If one is worthless
in every scheme of this world
does one lose the right to exist
should one give up the right to exist?

The more crowded life gets,the lonelier it gets
The sweeter it seems , the falsified it becomes

With time everyone's heading towards constancy and stability
as i hurtle towards my instabilty.

Forced Ambition? (Kabhi kisi ko Mukammal jahan nahi milta)

If you cant avoid something you can surely delay it ….
seems i’ve been doing just that but everything has its limits and mine seems like been reached.(That might explain such a huge post).
It all started off on a bad day
You get up early morning and see your goldfish die…swear that no more of them (umm at least for a few days)
You login to you mail and there’s a mail that the project you worked on just isnt running at the client end.(Never mind that clients dont follow instructions…You just hit the run button and whoosh alls supposed to work…thats why we outsource. )

You just login to your demat account to see your great string of losses all because of one days senselessness.
And then started the real one..the real dilemma the real pain.
I am called in and told i MIGHT have to go to US for 1 or 2 weeks as there is some need in a domain i really am not much into.
All this since i was interested in an onsite project(Gosh that was 6 months back to escape well something else……..damn but well how do i escape now……what an escapist i am)
But then it wasn’t something i was prepared to risk and so i really outdid myself in finding some very perfect words to convey that i wanted all options open and by going onsite for 15 days i am not willing to risk that.
When the sr lead says many things can happen i latch on to that beautiful line
“Yeah many things can happen and so i cant commit”.
So at least from my end i did what i could so that if something does work out for me miraculously at least i am not blackmailed saying i ‘ve not been commited.
It was a beautiful ploy though from my leads…send me for 15 days and tie me up for a year
or 6 months….and if you are greedy enough its what many would die for.
But herein lies the catch….i am such an escapist , lazy slob who relegiously reiterates
“Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy” (as in this post).

When i ask why me esp since this involves less work and more knowledge transfer i am told that i should be looking towards my next goal i.e Lead
Now when i say i am more technically inclined(i dont mean it really…this depends on my mood…i just am moodily inclined to many things) i am told that unless you are a genius(which i clearly am not i admit unless i factor in Calvin’s definition of a misunderstood genius ) everyone must get into management and grow.
Heck why must i ….why am i force fed your definition of growth and then you call it an individual development.
Now herein lies my root cause of angerWhy do we have to grow to the level of our incompetence(Ok i personally dont beleive i will be an incompetent lead but than who wants the stress of being a competent one or the heartbreak of being one more of those sucking incompetent ones i’ve always maligned).
Everyone in the team though finds me either weird or that i’m being a tad too smart ….
but what they dont get is my definition of success varies from theirs.
They think on the lines that why does this uninterested girl get an opportunity that we’d kill for.
Anyways i am a hopeless sceptic….
I think going onsite in December sucks…its so cold here it’d be frozen there in a small remote town all by myself.
I will have to do manual boring stuff and deal with a set of subordinates once i am back who expect me to answer everything for months on and on just because i met the client for 2 weeks.
All this when i know nothing is CONCRETE it is all still a requirement.

My friends tell me of a job opening somewhere and i say oh well thats too far to travel in this traffic(She says you are ridiculous…first go and get the job .)My take is plain why put in effort when the reward does not interest you.
This friend of mine has a job in one of the most prestigious MNC in India and she is unhappyas she has too much free time (root cause here is she does not like the people she has the free time with) and gets bored and depressed as no work.

I just find it so nonsensical …i mean heck who cares what people are…i enjoy myself soo muchand i can do so much if i just have the time.(Read books , Browse /Write blogs if nothing else).
Anyways finally i managed to watch ‘The Devil wears Prada’ and i liked it a lot really though the line to toast for me in my mood was“To jobs that pay the rent“
I could add …allow me to have a room/ internet/ buy books and so on….

But then the fact remains one never gets what you want andmost importantly when you want it.
All this so touching written by Shahryar and sung beautifully my that great voice i love of Jagjit SinghAn all time favorite of mine and every line in this poetry is so very true.I will try to transalate it to the best my ability.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
kabhi kisi ko mukammal jahan nahin milta
kahin zameen to kahin aasmaan nahin milta
(No one ever gets an easy world…
Some dont get their share of earth and some their place in the sky)

jise bhi dekhiye vo apne aap me gum hai
zuban mili hai magar hamzuban nahin milta
(Wherever you look at one is lost in oneself….
youve got the ability to speak but keep longing for someone who understands your language/words)

bujha saka hai bhala kaun waqt ke shole
ye aisi aag hai jis men dhuaaN nahin milta
(Who has been able to quiten the revolution of times,These are fires which dont have smoke)

tere jahan men aisa nahin ki pyar na ho
jahan umeed ho is ki vahaan nahin milta.
(In your world it is not that love is nonexistent
you just never find it where you expect it from or want it from most)
—————————————
Such Truths of life….sung so melodiously

Some Appalling words....

L&T's chairman  interview in DNA now amused me no end and made me a tad upset too.Just because he is not finding enough Engineers to fulfill his plans the way he has narrated
his problems is sad.But what was worse was the way he was insisting that IT companies should not hire Mechanical and Civil Engineers .I was kind of appalled ….hey do you really think it is fair just because you need them badly and you can't afford them you deny them opportunities.
Is there nothing called free choice. After all whats the guarantee that if IT companies here dont hire them they wont move to the US or elsewhere. Also why this discrimination especially since the fact remains whatever be the industry what is taught in the colleges is hardly ever useful as it is
in whatever is the arena of work.
Also isn't it unfair that  if you had made a choice of mechanical/civil or even say arts at a young age…you are not supposed to change the stream forever and get cast in that for life.How can some one with such wide experience and visions speak such.

L&T definitely is a very admirable company for me more so than the famous IT companies but then when he complains that IT does not build India  our IT Engineers only work for US , one should remember the fact that L&T today gets opportunity to build India's infrastructure today because there is a need…a need kickstarted majorly by IT.
He needs to innovate and find a way to inspire those engineers, attract them and  not inspire others to cut off their livelihood and make it easy for himself.

Weekend - Jab we Met


Circumstances caused me to have to wake up at 8:30 morning on a Sunday(which is like a rarity in my life) to catch this movie around 10:30. ...and i walked in few mins late but in the end it was worth the effort .
I loved it quite a bit....I cant think of anything special to say about the movie honestly - except that its quite refreshingly sweet - and yeah by the end of it you wish Shahid Kareena stayed together in real life too.
Their chemistry was real cool and that i beleive was what i liked most.
Shahid Kapur also was looking quite nice apart from that business suit look which was a bit too much for his frame.
I enjoyed the self indulgence in a way of Kareena's character in the movie. And then u just hum
Yeh ishq hai...baithe bithaye jannat dikhaye....

One of my friend who watched it in US (in US they watch it somehow earlier than me always)buzzed me up to say how much it reminded of her own self eons ago...so i am told i must watch it and then we'll talk.....
and so talk we did all about 'ghar ke parde' dreams gone haywire.
Life is comically tragic in its own way as they say.

Another friend from college days came over from the US and i take her around and come home as late as i am allowed. She's been seven years in US and is visiting after 4 yrs though she hardly looks any different from 7 yrs ago.She's amazed at the way people spend out here...down there in the US indians hardly spend she tells me.In fact indians are more prettily dressed out here in cool tops than in the US she tells.
Then i'm given a quick lead of how i should move over to US too for all our very own woes but i remain indecisive as a pendulum in this matter.
Its funny how you lose touch in just a few years ...when people started walking out during the interval in the movie i am asked how much time will be the interval...30 mins..
I say yaar 15 mins only and she quips how will all these people who go out get back in so fast..hmmm.
Then though i tell i dont want it , i get that shiny bronze nail polish...we've moved over to matte colors since college ...
but friends lovingly remember you just as you were.
We move around in restaurants and look back on our college days when we used to count pennies for a cool drink after the tiresome mechanical labs.
Our outlooks vary ...our perspectives vary...its our memories that remain etched.

Last week was all about how to invite stress into your life.....movies friends and then WORK
I mean work had to be finished but life gets tougher when it has to be done in a place with poor infrastructure but well i am stuck here for n reasons....and everything i touch out there fails these days...
and I'm hating it.

Just want to get well soon and then think of what to do with myself - my job that is -
cause i know i wont get to do anything really with myself.

why isn’t it ever unfair in my favour?

So its Diwali and i am posting on this blog out here…..
That pretty much implies i am not into crackers
and i have had my share of watching the sparklers from the balcony.
The last 10 days have been a strain heavily on me …..
…..so straining that my only refuge was Calvin….and
i promptly updated my signature lines to
"Reality continues to ruin my life "(and it sure does…god or whoever
has such a bad imagination)
Does Calvin rock….or what…I certainly dont remember every strip of his
or all the names and stuff but his one liners i tell ya….Thats all
thats there in this world.Bill Watterson you just are great.

I got my much awaited and debated appraisal….
and i am asked Are you happy and then leaving no chance as the
expression my face
became clear i am told "You should be happy".
Gosh how people love to control other people's emotions too …
At home parents/family tell you …you should like what they select
/give.At office its the boss.

Damn i dont even get sympathy once i get outside with my pay
cheque….cause i am told and true it is that except for a few excellent
i've got the 2nd or 3rd best possible deal at my grade. Hmm the only
line i could think of is
"In the kingdom of the blind….one eyed is the king".

Whatever it is the thing is its over and i ve reached a dead end in my
career too apart from my life which seems to be perenially stuck
there.

Added to it my healths been at its lowest since probably years
and nothing really scares the living daylights off me than bad
health.My imagination runs riot …and i just congratulate myself once
more that despite being a topper in biology at school i never wanted
to become a doctor cause blood and gore and my imagination(developed
by unintentionally watching those UGC programmes on brain surgery
/skull drilling …i puke almost whenever i remember that).I would have
imagined all the diseases i studied on myself.
One of the best decisions of my life….not taking up biology beyond school.

So sitting tired and staring at some horrible work at desk I casually
remembered Bill gates and Calvin together and some farmers exploited
by middlemen.
This is the crux story of outsourcing which i figured out by some
chance glances at figures on some computers at work.
In the US the company saves $4000 by outsourcing a $8000 work to
india. Super saving $4000.
The company here thus bills 1 Engineer around $4000 to this us client
and pays the engineer $ 1000.
Assuming a $500 administrative expense per engineer our dear
entrepreuner makes a cool $2500 profit.and they say farmers are
exploited by middlemen.What about poor us….But we lack the courage to
bet on and be an entrepreuner …hmmm.

Gates said: Life is not fair get used to it.
Calvin:"I know ….but why isn't it ever unfair in my favour?"

Tagore 's Chitrangada and Lipika over the weekend

Have been reading Chitrangada by Tagore this weekend.
It about another of those princesses smitten by Arjuna though Tagore models this drama in a very sensitive and different way and herein the warrior princess is the equal of Arjuna at least thats the way the drama's written . It ends by some very strong proposal by the princess
"I am Chitra. No goddess to be worshipped, nor yet the object of common pity to be brushed
aside like a moth with indifference. If you deign to keep me by your side in the path of danger and daring, if you allow me to share the great duties of your life, then you will know my true self."

The story as per Indian mythology is different and softer but then thats the joy of mythology ...there are myths galore ...to each his own.

It beautifully describes how the princess is spurned by Arjuna giving his celibacy vow as an excuse
when she meets him first in her true form and thus she gets a beauty as a boon from gods for a year
and when Arjuna breaks his vow on seeing her she is disillusioned .
But then the gods persuade her to keep the disguise for the year.
When i am in a critical mood i guess i would dissect everything and make all noises about stuff
but since i decided for now i am enjoying fairy tales and dramas in good spirit it was a nice read.
It probably reminded me of the same thoughts that made me write "The Charm of Appearances"

Its been long though since i read Tagore.
Some times translations take away so much...i probably realize t a bit more as i have knowledge at least two languages which i an speak and understand to a great extent but cannot read but This book Lipika is relatively well translated by Indu Dutt.



I had got Tagore's Lipika(Brief Writings) in a very old and soiled with ink condition and another book 'The Gardener" on the street for some 10 or 20 rs 6 yrs ago and then i had loved it way too much cause it made you ponder a lot.
I wish i had blogged then...i seem clueless about my thoughts
except the one story which i somehow remeber well and recall at quite a few occasions.

Its a small writing called the "The First Letter"

Herein a young man newly married has to leave his young bride to go abroad.
Then abroad while walking reading the first letter from her
where she begs him to return saying

"Without you, when i do ot see you, the whole sky of my world is drenched in tears"

At this point he wonders
"What have I in me that has the value of those tears?"
Then suddenly a group of foreign girls come across him on the
street and its described thus
"Who knows what was exactly in his face or his dress or gait.........but they hurried away bursting into a giggle"
"In that cruel amused laughter mountain springs also changed their tune"

Now he wonders
"What was the value in my looks that could provoke such laughter"
and then he cant stop himself and goes back to his letter and
re reads the lines asking him to return.

Somehow i find myself often wondering on such lines when people are sweet or nice or cruel to me or vice versa(coz i too seem to be nice and cruel to some)
in ways that seem to have no explicable reasons.
I will probably re read those other stories and post some more .

You know you've read a good book when

you turn the last page and feel as if you've lost a friend.

I just loved this wallpaper and feel i dont need to add more words for it.

Degeneration methinks…

Fame however unwanted i think if forced uponpeople adjust but then itmight be very difficult to get over.
That is the only reason i can think ofwhy Rowling has done what she did.To again become front page materialnow that the last book mania is calming down.
I have nothing against her revelation about Dumbledore being gay(except a lurking feeling that in the west the concept of friends is really being killed by giving every relationship a name.) .Her revelation is simply is irrelevant to the story and hardly makes a great difference to Dumbledore lovable and wise character.It would have been good fun and enjoyment to all those Potter adult fiction fans to spin tales on it…but why does she need to confirm it….simply to drum up attention on herself.Its really sad how much people get dragged down by fame.
If this every time new revelations goes on she may very well ruin all the othercharacters too, or may be she has changed her thought process to…well before someone else ruins my characters let me ruin them.
Nevertheless some characters outgrow their author and Harry Potter series is a great example and for us simple fans ……it will always be the original books …no matter what Rowling degenerates into.

Pomegranate

The most impassioned of all trees,
The home of three intensities;
Gnarled trunk, dark concentrated leaf,
And flowers that burn in love and grief.

These are part of those haunting lines by Vikram Seth and
i really dig them too much and they kind of get imprinted on the mind.

This was a small draft i saved somewhere and i just though i better get over with it.

Last year when i had to walk 10 mins home everyday across some lovely houses with gardens- there used to be these trees with the sweetest orange flowers....and most of us know its the Anarkali.(Sad if we can only remember Salim now).


I have been so off mood that i looked back on my own blog
and then thought ....
why once upon a time i was so better at cribbing ....
now its such a boring rant....
Almost all in life seems so hopeless....
dont know whats the fuss is all about ...
its not just me...most people just go on living ....and on.
But then i realise we create our own hypes...
our own passions which keeps us going....
the movies and movie stars/cricket and cricketers /Harry Potter/TV shows/Stock

markets /chat forums/hours of gossip/ambitions and even blogging for some.

But honestly what i still like when i look back and reread are my favorite poems

and my thoughts on reading books.
Actually thats what it seems is missing....its been so long that i read a pure
fiction story apart from Harry Potter.(Well i better not start on it again...).
I need that escape ...my books else this is how i become .

Bad memory has its pleasures.
I was looking up some old selected quotes and found this quote

"People who are not in love fail to understand how an intelligent man can suffer because of a very ordinary woman. This is like being surprised that anyone should be stricken with cholera because of a creature so insignificant as the comma bacillus."
Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, vol. 2, "Swann's Way: Swann in Love"

Some people have an awesome way with words....Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh
Comma bacillus ...ROFL...........

A bit of nostalgia

Nostalgia is a file that removes the rough edges from the good old days.
  ~Doug Larson

Last fortnight i can recall two things which made me very nostalgic.
One was a movie which was a glossed out fairytale of a college life i have never seen anyone living (forget being part of it myself ).
Its not that i don't enjoy romanticized stuff in movies but when i see too many people talking of that in real terms of those good old days i feel absurd.
Very few people(and yeah a few have it partly do i agree) have had the real fun and hep college life displayed in most movies but everyone talks as if they did cause we like to think the past was better.....we forget that the troubles we faced then , and which we laugh at now actually felt monstrous in those days.


The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealized past.  ~Robertson Davies, A Voice from the Attic

Yes its so very easy to idealize and gloss over past and if i let myself get carried away by such versions  in my imagination i can see how easy it is.
Luckily my cynicism keeps me safe from such these days.

Other very unexpected nostalgia was a chat (it might have been a one sided recollection by me actually once the topic was triggered ...the topic of days when i was a huge cricket fan...
not that i am not now ,
but its not the same...
no one but i know the difference.)

about some very old ,simple but immensely passionate joys.....
joys i rarely speak of in the present,
 for i fear they might be soiled by the present....
It isn't those events it is what we were then to
 derive such happiness  from such .

Weekend with the Google Story

This weekend with nothing better to google than the complications of wisdom tooth extraction(if doctors are a pain ....what the heck  do you call dentists...they are  a bloody damn pain and i am living with it for nearly a month and a half) i just cuddled up with ' The Google Story '  by David A Vise.

Its a book that gives a pretty good insight but somehow not a very interesting book.Its quite factual the kind most techies would be familiar with and so it just adds  date and time and names to the events.

Of course i liked some chapters a bit more like 'Divide and Rule' wherein Sergey and Larry decide to have both the leading venture capitalists and not one so that the infighting between them would prevent the loss of control by the founders and the parts about Eric Schmidt's initial times at Google.Also interesting was the 'Going Public ' and ' Playboy' chapter which details Google very different way of going public.

The book makes it clearer though how superior the product was as unlike most other companies here it wasn't reallly some management and marketing guys who called the shots but the engineers who built the product and they pretty much have been having their own way which actually is not a very easy thing on a corporate world dependent on marketing and management heavily once a product is available.Not many engineers really think or can manage  keeping that kind of control over what they build or code.

All in all its a good book but not quite half as good as the product itself and no there's nothing inspiring for those who love inspirational and motivating stuff(of course their success of all kinds itself may motivate some people...dont know but yeah it will not fit that category).

Its just a chronicle really of one of the greatest product of our times and it fascinates in small parts .

Google is one of those  rarest of the products i guess where the  product is as superior if not more than how its projected to be.I cant deny i have a deep personal fondness for it as i cant think of any other brand i have any sort of attachment to. Unlike most people i guess i dont really get awed by brand names just like some, dislike some.Some brands , i do admire but never really feel their presence or absence would cause any difference to my life.

But it is exactly here that Google differs. Among many brands that might have changed the world, humanity , science , universe or whatever , when it comes to me in my cocoon and instant thoughts i know Google made a huge difference to my life .

Unlike other brands for which i can think up alternatives or adjust may be with their absence i really would as an individual feel its absence....its such a part of everyday life.

Last week when i saw the google logo conveying its 9th birthday i remebered the difference it made.I passed out of college 9 years ago and how different it would have been to have google then.Not many can understand the impact lack of information can have (esp for people who lack contacts who hoarded information)....information which we or certainly I take for granted in recent times.

I am one of those hugely dependent on Google. Not that there aren't other search engines or i don't try them...just that i seem to be have a very good hand at searching very fast what i want in google and for some one with my kind of random access memory Google is a real savior and i dont mind having a reputation of a Google dependent.

Last week i got a new handbag in a shade of pink . Now a colleague asked  what do you call that color. I was very busy at that moment and could think of nothing really and I said I will find it and tell ya ...and i get an immediate smiling reply...where on google????  I could only quip....Hmmmm

Well i did find it through google and its 'Mauve Taupe'.Well.....

A week that went by.....and bye

Sometimes its not nice to be right
Many times it hasnt been surprising to be right
 about all the wrongs
Sometimes you feel bad that there are a host of people
 feeling more bad about whats not been nice
and you walk around with a smile and
take in a cool stride.
being a cynic has always has its advantages and as i repeat
its not being negative...its just the art of accurate observation.

Too bad ....i very accurately predict bad news for myself.

Friends try blaming conspiracies and competition
but then i know these are the ways of my fate and
 not anyone's machinations really.

I've been through half my life and well
i ve seen enough bad news not to care.
Not many know that and so they apologize
for being the bearer of such news.
And when i just smile and take it cool
not sure though whats the impression i am creating.

P.S: Last weekend watched HP-Order of the Phoenix.
 Heck 60% of the book is absent ...
So much is missing...how do people who did not read the book follow it...
Well as Snape says in that splendid voice "No idea!!!..." Mmm
Was very displeased with the way the occlumency/penseive scenario was shot

And i really enjoy Fred and George weasley...though again
 i felt bad they left the line that i loved "Give them hell Peeves".
Oh movies can never match up hmm...
I guess they should make up a word to word matching drama /soap
kind of thing rather like BBC's Pride and Prejudice.
the worst part of 19th Sep was assuming i wont have time later i
literally went in the rain to return my books at the library and
did not get a single book and when i come back to office i get my news.
at least i was more upset about that rather than anything else
which at least as per me was expected.

Crappy Days
One of the most boring and stupid posts of the blog i guess

Been at my laziest ....
Ive been thinking of writing a post but
never really am getting to actually do it
Things all around me are so suspended and
i am sort of waiting for them to happen
Don't want to push anything as of now.

Was alone at home on Ganesh Puja
and a friend asked ...did i go to a temple
Well No.........and when i said i am not that relegious though no one says it but
people find it well not very comfortable i guess.
They then joke ...gosh how will you manage if you end up in a relegious family.

What's wrong with being agnostic or atheist
Never really get it and then someone had put this wallpaper on an extra desktop

at office where somehow wallpapers were yet not disabled.
Ah i wish it was on mine

"God made me an Atheist.
Who are you to question his wisdom?"

But as i said previously in some posts i am pretty agnostic... rather than atheist
i mean why bother proving any side.

I am an agnostic; I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of.
(Clarence Darrow)

Actually this quote pretty much proves it
“There's nothing an agnostic can't do if he doesn't know
whether he believes in anything or not”

I mean thats the mode i am in mostly these days
Whatever comes let it come.....
i am sure i would be able to do something about it.

In fact i seem to be hell bent on wasting time
Friends kind of are making me feel tedious
While i do enjoy company of some people
I find i am quite very happy by myself 50% of the time
and so feel confused when people pull you out for a movie
or the usual food stuff.
Food has never been my plus point anyways.
I am not sure where the whole life is drifting


Its been raining way too much this year
Almost sick of it at times.
If i hate anything really really its being sick and the past month
has taken a toll on me.
I hate hospitals...and more so dentists...these days.
Been a month since i had my twisted wisdom off me
but still am so very unwell and i am quite worried with this.
Why cant i be healthy and hale.

I went to a nearby hospital due to lack of time and now am questioning my

stupidity. I mean honestly with the way seats in medical get booked
you get scared of going to doctors all the more.Don't even know whats wrong.
Every visit you end up with a new doctor at such hospitals.One doctor diagnoses,
one does the extraction and one checks it after a week.What can one expect. But

its plain stupidity on my part and i just pray that it works out well in the end.
After such crap above being agnostic ...i write about my prayers...
Ah Such is my confusion.

One of our acquaintances told us how her cousin's medical seat was pre booked for a huge sum. No problem about that i mean who cares if someone spends for themselves .
Next day when another similar neighbor was wrongly diagnosed and was lucky to
live through my sister summed it up when she remarked pretty unsympathetically
" This is what happens when you spend on such cases".

I am not sure if i need to type this crap for posterity

Some musings on the Charm of Appearances

The world is governed more by appearance than realities so that it is fully as necessary to seem to know something as to know it. ~Daniel Webster

“It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.”- Oscar Wilde

While being politically correct we can hold on that appearances being just the
surface , they do matter though may be not as most people beleive they do
but then but one can never say they do not matter.
Of course when you've known a person deeply by chance and circumstance ....
appearances dissolve into irrelevance at times.

But whenever one has a choice of knowing a person appearances will matter....
how they matter is individuality but then
some appearances appeal/repel universally,
some to very few very strongly ,
some appearances grow roots and slowly but surely hold you intrigued.
Well why i got thinking of that...
Hmm quite some time pass on two of my all time favorites and a movie i saw made
me think of it.

I'm quite fond of that evergreen universally loved Austen novel hashed and
rehashed everywhere, but as much as the character of Mark Darcy is fascinating
in Pride and Prejudice , one must agree that Colin Firth simply increases it a 100
times. He's way too dashing as Darcy....




I've been spending the whole of last week downloading The BBC mini series from youtube and really beleive he simply enhances such a enchanting character. No wonder the fan following.



Then there is the most complex character in Harry Potter....Severus Snape.
He has a amazing fan following for a character so nasty at times at least till Book6.

I liked the complexity of the character and admired quite some stuff but no i did not
really feel deeply affectionate for him till Book7 wherein you cant do much but sob
off for him....its a pretty tragedy woven in there.

But then i did not watch the movies as i wanted to wait till book7.

And now i see Alan Rickman and while i wont say in part1 i love him ....One cant help liking him ... he's such class and so very addictive.and as some one on the Amazon forum said

"he cast a Confundus spell on half of the population?"
So Rowling clearly is dead right when she posed the question to someone who confessed to love Snape. "Are you thinking of Snape or Alan Rickman?".

Because lets face it till Book7 (here its a final shift and whatever be the face you
just would have to agree with Harry at the end), if you dont see the Harry Potter
movies it is very very difficult to like Snape.

You can trust him...admire him ......beleive he's is Dumbledore's man and

has reformed or whatever but to like or love him he has to get the face of Alan Rickman.

Well Snape gets appealing truly as Alan Rickman i guess.

Then there is this movie Chak de ...that i saw I liked it and enjoyed it enough to watch it twice a rarity these days for meBut the thought that played on was simple ....would the movie be the same without SRK. We'd have better actors...some of the girls in there were also as good.But some appearances can capture the imagination more universally.

If it was not SRK also the movie i believe would be good but would only be
watched by some very genuine movie goers and admirers .

Thus i will end with another quote

Appearances are not held to be a clue to the truth.

But we seem to have no other. ~Ivy Compton-Burnett

And some more of Harry Potter Book Seven after effects.

The Epilogue was boring and nonsense but well she probably did it to shut it off.
I mean Ginny ...she's so quite boring.Harry anyways was never the most

interesting its always the stories and people around. And now after book seven

oh wow ...its everything but Harry.
I 've been having soo much fun reading forums and watching videos on You tube.
Like i was so astonished to read Rowling was asked by a small girl...Does Snape

love anyone?? Wow ...clever question...Rowling surely must've been stumped .

Oh what a series its been and now you want to go back and read again those little

parts which link here.
All the lines which are explained.....
what dumbledore said...(she's made him bloody hell interesting....and i love it.)
Lily evans...hmmm....
and Snape well now his fan following would be the highest...forget Potter.

Hmm ive never seen the movie yet but after Book Seven i know the seventh one

i will see it in theater first day...i tell myself...its still t wo years but yeah ...it'll be

good. Katie Holmes as Lily ...cool.
All the characters now seem so very interesting except the main ones.
This book seven is not the best in terms of writing but what makes it special is that you will go back to the previous books all the more.
I'll end up re -reading the whole thing again...... I know.

Rowling's great and thank god for her timesof india article in 2001 (which was sort of very special in a different way to me at that time) when i picked up this

book......never bothered until book three thinking its just hype and kids books
are not any more for me.
Then she's kind of left it soo very open not for the main haracters but ah those side stories...you let your imagination enjoy.

I took the first book after reading her interview......not any review......
I have that times paper still in my old stuff....

i felt somehow very inspired being at very very low point in my life.Reading her interview (i'm searching for that archive sometime in 2003 or 2002 i guess) made me want to read the book.

I read the first few chapters in a bus and i still remember the feeling :----
i was like whats this cat waiting ...oh i dont get this kiddish nonsense
lets leave it ...and then after half an hour ...i've never looked back.

Its so much joy !!!!!!!!
I just wish there was a book more and all the stories of Dumbledore, Snape and all could've been expanded more.
Ah hopes
Hazaaron khwahishein aisi, ki har khwahish pe dum nikle
bahut nikale mere armaan, lekin phir bhi kam nikle!!

I will just update this like this..................

Of Stories, Of Choices....Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

if someone still wants no word on the book 7 suspense please do not read any further

Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive.” ~Barry Lopez
well if not literally alive but to feel alive yes you do...some stories do that and
Rowling's magical Harry Potter books do that.
Last week almost seemed like the end of an era.....when i finished the book seven (Harry Potter and the deathly Hallows late at night.
It was too much to resist and it brought back that feeling you have when you leave school. There is so much in life beyond school everyone tells but you want it back...those rules which you despised...those innocent friendships.....that world which you owned and will love for life.Therein lies the charm of Rowling's world.

Unlike other books which critics praise as much more accomplished and classy,
Potter books are actually just a hark back of the wonderful days when we
believed, we hoped and we loved.

Unlike other books ,its not a magical world for all the magic in the book.
The same can't be said for other books.......its all about friendships, families...
responsibilities and choices.
Yes choices...somehow this line had caught my eye when i read it in Harry Potter
and the Chamber of Secrets.
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."

Somehow in the end the whole series seemed to emphasize just that.If there was
one character who seemed to good to be true or above being just human it was
Dumbledore and in this book she humanizes him the most and makes the
greatest point about choices and abilities.
At every point in the book most characters choose,
Harry chooses to trust Dumbledore finally while burying Kreacher
...Harry chooses to die......if that was the only way.
Voldemort chooses to kill who he believes served him most loyally.
Ron chooses....,
Draco chooses....even Narcissa Malfoy chooses ....
Xenophilius Lovegod chooses
Dudley chooses and so do most in some part or the other.
While i wont say it was the best of the seven books it surely was a befitting end
and Rowling simply was amazing.

The Dumbledore angle was brilliant and it shows how one becomes wise.Dumbledore was brilliant...but it is after his misery that he understood how much
power corrupts and as he says
"It is a curious thing, Harry, but perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it. Those who, like you, have leadership thrustupon them, and take up the mantle because they must, and find to their ownsurprise that they wear it well."

On a side note i've always felt this about leaders and managers.

Snape's character was brilliantly etched. It shows how the most resourceful and brilliant
can be the most brave or the most evil depending on the choice .
It shows how not all brave people believe in showcasing themselves.
It shows why appearances can be deceptive, and why you first have to be strong
in the mind to be do anything great evil or good.
People who are weak within like Xenophilius may have good intentions
but will easily break.
People like Snape once they choose the right side will never break and is the
greatest cause he probably was the only one who overcame temptation most.

Even Dumbledore was never confident about himself having power so he never
took up a post at ministry but Snape was confident enough that he wont do
wrong again and hangs around with Voldemort's power.

There was nothing exceptional in Harry except that he earned the
love and trust his friends and fellowmen by his being brave and loving for them.
I've not yet seen the movies of this book though i've read all seven ,
now i may see them. But to really love this story you've got to read it,
get immersed in its world and then feel its familiarity...
a movie does not do that to you.
Some who did not read the book ,don't understand the movie they tell me
and some enjoy it nevertheless and you have to hand it Rowling , she made it
complex enough and its all linked up from book one ...clues clues and clues.

I've read the book in absolute anxiety(been waiting since i read the sixth and
wrote a post on it) and sure would 've missed so much and so there might be another post or some addition to this.It could've been made more thrilling , more duels more magic, but Rowling instead focuses on human nature, its temptations, its fears and fallacies .

Its definitely not literature but then once you read books which deal purely with
such literary stuff ,you kind of wont face up that you belong there even if you do in reality........but here in Rowling's world you do own up .
Ron faces upto his fears when he tries to destroy a Horcrux
Harry faces unto them when he realizes that others were becoming leaders too as he wavered off.
But the book surely leaves you longing for what you cant have....
what you leave behind or
rather can never leave behind ...memories.

A good read of some new maxims

Somehow found this site and been very happy about it.
http://positivesharing.com/2006/08/top-5-business-maxims-that-need-to-go

Pretty much what i felt always and what made be tell a friend at my BPO job once a quote by Stephen Covey .
" Treat your Employees as you want them to treat your Customers".Thats the only line i cared for in the books i guess.

Indian Companies really go the old stupid way and its so pathetic when the times of india
published no hikes in IT for next few quarters on front page and rediff says work weekends.
Heck man did they give us extra hikes as dollar was strong or 4 day week .
Then why all these stories now.
I ve been enjoying and relating to so much on the site .Like when my manager says to me ok great youve done good work..whatever you were assigned a great job but what more for the
company, we paid for your work what extra for the organization......and then the splendid question one keeps pondering is why pray why!!!

"Each individual should work for himself. People will not sacrifice themselves for the company. They come to work at the company to enjoy themselves."
- Soichiro Honda, founder of Honda

Wish some one tells that to many of our managers

The site has great articles

Like this which reminded how whenever we had stayed late we got a pizza and

did that lessen our anger well no not at all.
Or may be those boring team lunches and biryanis organized.
http://positivesharing.com/2006/12/why-motivation-by-pizza-doesnt-work/

My yrs exp in the service industry supports this totally
http://positivesharing.com/2006/07/why-the-customer-is-always-right-results-in-bad-customer-service/
I ve seen techs who went out of their way and time to help customers who were

a bit kinder and nicer.

Then this http://positivesharing.com/2006/03/how-not-to-lead-geeks/
esp the point about tools. How can you run a application which itself needs 256 MB and Visual studio on a machine which has only 256 MB RAM and then code test scripts fast. It sucks but people are expected to. Because we are so very adjusting.

The whole set of articles i find are excellent and great but it seems the only people who read them are us who know them by experience and not the managers and leaders who would rather know them but well.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Last weekend read Benazir Bhutto's Interview in Times
It went like this
"The happiest years of my life were spent at harvard-radcliffe campus in the US.
I was young then , wore my hair loose and looked like Joan Beaz, and attended rock concerts in Boston."

Immediately after the above she says
When i retire , I'll have a less hectic schedule . I'd like to teach politics to young people.

I kind of wondered and wondered whyyyy
You were young and happiest in life at rock concerts and now for the newly young you recommend politics.....Its strange how radically one alters their perceptions...or is it that old theory of the happiness of the young being envied.

I am not the right person to know yet...i'm on neither side yet.

Some lil things

Weekends have been extremely tiring since a little over last month since i decided
to look out for jobs. You almost feel like giving it up the whole waste of
time....of the whole day for 15 to 20 mins of chit chat.But anyways i'd decided to give it a break so tired i was (ah the advantages of having some employment).......but then got a call and
trudged along.Nothing much happened beyong the regular nonsense i'm used to
but well a nice visual kinda stuck in mind.

Last year at nearly same time in the house where i stayed there were these
monsoon flowers and i'd been so happy to se them blossom randomly in the rain
and i kind of was happy enough to gather them nad take a snap of my vase with my then new cam.

This weekend a year later where i went for thr interview i saw similar flowers cultivated beautifully in front of the impressive huge glass building.Cultivated as wide borders in pink white and yellow these flowers of the rain and oh how pretty they looked.

Nothing in that huge state of the art building could match them .I almost was tempted to take a snap of them with my webcam but you never know who would question you so i refrained.

I mumbled to myself that quote

"The Pyramids will not last a moment compared with the daisy."
Well they won't....all these great things man built ...inspire awe, admiration and sometimes make one proud may be , but to feel that joy you need something that seems effortless ....its wonderful to stumble upon somethings that bring that happiness. There's so much to be said abou the tiniest things in life.

Reciprocating - ‘being Nice’

Is it necessary to like someone who is nice to you,
are you supposed to feel guilty when someone is being kind
and yet you are able to see what you dislike in that person….and never quite make yourself say he/she is nice and good .

How come one can like someone who's not particularly kind and nice to you and yet not have any good feelings for someone who's being all thats said to be good.

Why is is that it becomes like a unwelcome duty to like some nice people and why is it a welcome pain to like some people not so great to you.

Quite a time i dedicated to pondering on this.
The least i could come up with was , while being nice to me by a person, does make me want to reciprocate ,I honestly have my own judgements about people, and them liking me ,or being nice to me figures nowhere in there.

The point may be is i like people, to whom i can look upto and in some way, for being what they are in themselves and what they stand for, and then if i like that …,I then kind of would enjoy that , such a person is nice to me or my friend.

Else, for all their goodness i have a very badly ingrained tendency of striking down people i do not respect.I try not to but i comes through anyways i guess.

I may get along with all kinds of people and even will happily spend time with people who are nice to me and with me but to really admire and love someone i need to respect and like what they stand for as a person . if not i always feel i am simply reciprocating their niceties to me and feel guilty about my being not really true.

It is thats why i guess say on my blog quote lines
"You can't love anyone until you understand that you can't love everyone."

——————————————————

P.S: pondering being over all i can think is my life's going nowhere or rather is it going down the drain.
Whatever not much i can do about it except say the obvious always
Hope for the best—- Be prepared for the worst.
But yeah the only good thing now is while the first part of hoping seems very bleak i'm totally off rose colored glasses these days…i feel so better for the second part…quite prepared to handle the worst.
Life's numbed me well.

Whats better ??

Life with innumerable options not knowing where they'll take you or may be not take you
or having just a couple where you know the direction if not the destination
or having no option at all and make a destination of where you stand presently.

I can almost argue for merits of each of the above and therein lies my dilemma.

For a mind which keeps changing (some call it reacting) to everything  perceived its a really hard to live with either of those options.

When you've really been tired option 3 seems so much better and then you can support it saying that quote - " Happiness is wanting what you get".

Just to wake up afresh the next day with that attitude of the first option that would be like saying
"Success is getting what you want. "
"Some would rather pursue happiness than obtain it."

And then in those days when you feel that something huge in the universe has actually conspired against you and you feel bogged down by trying to get what you want you so much prefer option 2.

——————————————————

As of now too many possibilities loom …too less time…..no clear picture
It seems i have the choice…but do i , can I?
So all i tell myself are those lines by Carnegie
"Take a chance! All life is a chance. The one who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare ."

Lets see this time…….
Till now its been more like the one never goes anywhere is the one who took a chance….. a chance to stay.
Lets see …….

Some organizational and management crap for the record

The less i want to write about management and organizational crap the more it seems to be around in life.The last 3 weeks have been my most agonizing and irritating in quite some time.

In fact i was so upset that i almost wished to put up that brilliant mail by my sr manager up here or somewhere on the web and see how many people really would like to work for such a manager.Actually i beleive there will be quite many because there is no dearth of people who love the bureacratic way of working in an office or rather putting in the hours and not the work.

Management is all about having no principles(put beautifully as being open ) and double talk.How are you supposed to feel when a manager constantly walks into team meetings and says
" I am authorized to fire anyone ".
"We pay for you work you are expected to do more for the organization"why pardon...well everyone has that question but no one asks

"The company's revenues are dipping and so you will see quite a shock in the appraisals" by saying this is his encouraging people to work well or work at getting off the organization i did not get
My lead tells me see dear i have no problems with anything your work is great and all else is fine...but you see the sr manager is very upset about your walking in late...then she adds thoughtfully - even there are issues in team(now i know for a fact no one in the team complained...they just crack jokes and that is being used by managers)

Then she addsIf it was a work issue i could have explained saying you need more experience willl learn but what do i say for this.....its a silly thing and how do i explain it - you are single(oh yeah if you are single you should love nothing but your organization) ......dont even have any chores ......why cant you come on time.Anyways i could live with that....

But next day when a sr manager drafts a mail with the kind of plain threat about taking disciplinary action (i.e this is for walking in at 1 hr late ) what exactly must anyone do...well they should get back and put such people in their place and if my career did not have the precarious blanks and past career shifts no one and no one i know could have managed to threaten me like that.
I have often blogged about how i dislike charityin general and mail goes on about how the "organization is not a charity institue...and one should follow discipline as other people who walkin at 9 feel upset about people who dont"
Walking in at 9 esp when there is no need is discipline ???....
ahhh its for no reason i say life is unfair.the whole mails had no reason or provocation except that two people beleived that rather than wasting time chatting and playing TT at office one can walkin after a good sleep and yet finish all work better than anyone else on the team used to walkin an hour late.

Charity...by not firing me for walking in at 10:30 they think they are doing charity ...WOW.
Though i am not much into charity and did not get much chance in my current project i think i have being doing a lot of free social work for the organization esp in my previous projects staying late and all that....huh.

After writing such a crappy threatening mail to the team he walkin smilingly and talks of where the team party would be and we are supposed to be excited. Now thats professionalism.

When a colleague put in the papers after taking a hike the sr manager says " you've exploited me"....its soo amusing.Next we hear he's also planning to put in his papers as he has an offer from the Indian IT giant if he does not get a project here which sends him onsite.Such people talk of principles and we are supposed to be inspired.

The guy makes such jeers about local guys who are managers and love to have candidatesfrom their hometown but never thinks how openly its visible his preference for high profile / north indian gals.
Whenever i think that in the end you too have to end up as a manager you hate it being in the middle of such double talk.Well we tell each other at least while leaving we can speak during exit interviews but well no one including me is for it cause now companies have reference checks...another threat used to the hilt by managers....and then you never know when during the job hopping drama you meet him and his friends again.This is a very connected world....and so everyone stays mum and so they flourish.

So why am i here still here....
because everywhere else they like Perfect lies and i'm too scared to make up one.If my age were a factor i should have been a manager by now and
since i am not -- dig up is what they do at interviews.
everyone likes to speculate and its so much fun with a resume in hand.
Umm so why did you not do any work for four years ...what kind of reason.
Put in a fake there for four years your resume is perfect and so can be the pay...nothing else counts.You just have to hope that lady luck is on your side and the company is not in a image building mood wherein they fire employees for putting in fakes and since i know that lady luck and me are not on speaking terms i play it quiet .

I sometimes guess if i was a bit stupid or not good enough for the work i do then may be i would have gotten away but while i am definitely nowhere brilliant but being quite good at getting things done , most people like to speculate on my personal life as why else would a 1st class engg graduate almost a decade ago is having only near to 3 yrs software exp and is still not in US.

It is oh so dissapointing and frustrating for most to find nothing there.One of the guys on my team asked in his oh always being nice jokes ,u from that college.....so when did you pass out implying how many times did i fail...having a cute face ,a fancy car and classy humorous lines helps him anyday in this office .
Its with no reason that i say life is unfair but neverthless its ok after a 11 hr sleep almost everything seems fine to me.

Being Hopeless in General

What makes you figure out that you are hopeless in general

Something like this When I
worry and wake up hating to wake up on such a pleasant cool morning
and go to office
worry about the work to be done
worry about all stuff at office
worry about not having enough money
worry about how to invest money and save taxes
worry about missing out on books, movies etc
worry about no good job offers
worry about confusing and devils dilemma kind of job offers
worry about catching up with on all those new technologies for interviews
worry about brushing up all the past stuff you've put on resume
worry about all the nonsense they ask on seeing my resume
worry about how to deal with all this headaches at home
worry about studying to somehow pass that part time Mba exam you've
paid up stupidly for
worry about not getting enough sleep
then suddenly find a online book website and

Somehow just glance up at Pride & Prejudice and read it (a book I 've
read quite some time back , seen a movie seen serials based on it and
yet!!!!!) late into night till 2 pm.

I've given up on myself

Coincidental reminders

Read through the lovely poem below by Elizabeth browning and then i
suddenly remembered one of my favorite song by Jagjit Singh - "Pyaar
mujhse kiya tumne to kiya paaogi" from the movie Saath Saath.
(Its the only cassette which i needed to buy a second time as it was
overused before the free mp3 days. Chitra Singh is too good in Arth
and Saath Saath songs. Adore her voice somehow as much as Jagjit
Singh's....esp that Tu nahi to zindagi me song.......hmmmm)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Can it be right to give what I can give?
To let thee sit beneath the fall of tears
As salt as mine, and hear the sighing years
Re-sighing on my lips renunciative
Through those infrequent smiles which fail to live
For all thy adjurations? O my fears,
That this can scarce be right! We are not peers,
So to be lovers; and I own, and grieve,
That givers of such gifts as mine are, must
Be counted with the ungenerous. Out, alas!
I will not soil thy purple with my dust,
Nor breathe my poison on thy Venice-glass,
Nor give thee any love--which were unjust.
Beloved, I only love thee! let it pass.

---elizabeth browning---
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

pyar mujh se jo kiyaa tumne to kya paaogi
mere haalaat ki aandhi mein bikhar jaaogi

ranj aur dard ki basthi ka main baashinda hoon
ye to bas main hoon ke is haal mein bhi zinda hoon
khwaab kyoon dekhoon wo kal jispe main sahrminda hoon
mainjo sharminda hoon to aur tum bhi sharmaaogi

kyoon mere saath koi aur pareshaan rahe
meri duniya hai jo weeraan to weeraan rahe
zindagi ka ye safar tum pe to aasaan rahe
humsafar mujhko banaaogi to pachtaaogi

ek main kya abhi aayenge diwaane kitne
abhi goonjenge mohabbat ke taraane kitne
zindagi tumko sunaaegi fasaane kitne
kyoon samajhti ho mujhe bhool nahi paaogi

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Even reminiscences can be coincidental

More thoughts ......

I've been thinking ive such smart and sweet friends always
that guys at the other end sort of hate me so  much for
being like kabab me haddi.(This seems to be  something permanent since school)
They have to be polite to me just cause i'm kind of a permanent fixture with my friends.

I noticed this today again when the guy in my team wanted to ask B with whom he loves to converse (I and B kind of hang out, bunk out and work together always)"do you pursue any artistic hobbies"...
then he asked S our most brilliant coding lady in the charming but unseen sarcasm
Do u have any artistic hobbies or just coding(What classy tone, its hard to see sarcasm there but for what do they say negativistic ppl like me)
and when she too said no then after a long pause
 he realised he forgot to ask me and asked as a formality.
I just said no and amused myself .

 

Some assumptions are so very stupid by guys
A guy in our team acted like shocked
when he learnt that both of us friends the girls in the team
were born and brought up in the cities.
Hey you people are so boring and such sort....meaning
City girls are  different/ posh or whatever and showed an example
of the gals at a  table at coffee day.
Then at times he speaks in absolute sweet humor  of how
he would only marry  a girl
from his small town and all such .
Its spoken in absolute trademark classy humor(so you can pretend its a joke if and when needed) as thats how he gets away with so much nonsense talk
(unlike others who are so very crass about such nonsensical talk).

Of course my friend not one to take anything quiet
simply rattled off the costs of that look i.e  rates at parlors and
shut him up for the moment .
Then drove the nail in the coffin by saying that first ensure
you get a decent appraisal as youd need a lot more to  take em out.

But so many guys out here at my office
dont get that the difference in that look and charm is more
middle class and upper class strata
and not city or town that it gets irritating.
They look great and even we appreciate it but what
does that have to do with being  a city girl.

And i listen on in such conversations....
how pathetic can life get.

Thoughts on just a day

 

Some people or rather a whole set of people(not talking of strangers a territory i'm off mostly and  is a different thing but friends and acquaintances)
are so much more hearty open and cheerful
, talkative and truthful when on chat than when around
I guess i should include include myself too at times on the list
though i guess its less to do with chat than
with specific people and the approach anyday
----------------------------------------

I just dont have quick smart answers instantly
 when i do i have real sarcastic ones
But i have such smart friends ufff

I just came upset from an interview last week about
how the interviewer said why are you soo quiet types ,
u worked here studied in XX college ...why so quiet ----
and  my friend was like instant answer
 " You Shouldve said nah ....ki what do ya expect at an interview come on 
turn on the music lets dance...then he wud get the answer clear"

Another friend when i cribbed about how the chap kept asking about
did i not try going to US since i was from XXX college said
"You should've said nah....ki well i did not go , but now i want to join
your company and hope you'd fullfill my dream and send me"

I can never think of such stuff honestly.......

--------------------------------------
When you get upset , i mean  not angry (which is common for me)kind
but almost heartbroken about money or rather not enough money
its sad real sad,
I 've been hating myself the whole day ,
it was just for an hour or so but
i just felt so pathetic ki ab tu isko leke royegi
Pathetic dear ur slipping into pathetic worlds
Get off it..Get off it
If sobbing is whats must there are better thing to sob about.

----------------------------------------

Summers almost ending the monsoons are great at the start
but winter........ummmm another year ....another insignificant year
of festivals from August and what not.

On Being .......

Instinct
Instability
Undependable
Emotional
All rolled into one and defined as unprofessionalism.....
when seen by an onlooker
Being human is a sin somehow

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

How i wish i could be positive

When all you are surrounded by are negatives

How i wish i could be positive

when a question is asked because its needed to dispel the negative

Theres some dark abyss in life

I see it again

somehow i am quite positive

about its presence

How i wish i could be negative about this

 

Cheeni Kam

 

Well it was a bad day … Friday despite watching this eminently watchable film…too much unncessary stress, we like to build it up in office these leads of ours.

Anyways since we had planned an extremely covert exercise in the old college style of bunking to go for a movie during lunch went ahead with it….and watched Cheeni kam…and came back to office and then  took up the headache. The whole experience did not even sink in.

Its a treat the first half. It is not that Amitabh romances but the difference between class and doing something that tiltillate the masses (i.e Nishabd - its stupid to assume anyone watched it to understand any emotion. The leading lady has great legs and thats pretty much the movie for a layman which implies most men??? )  is visible .

You really enjoy watching Amitabh and well Tabu is so very classy and charming.Amitabh great at romance i always say but they baked him into a angry young man

Ok well like many i am still a sucker for bit of a classy romance  and this movie has it.
 Never mind the ending scenes which are gross.
The ending where Amitabh clings to the pillar saying mujhe sexy chahiye is a perfect example of how the  best can be spoiled by one single nonsensical thing.

It could have been so better handles the second half. The way the word sexy is used …i mean heck why be gross about it.Tabu looks great and the right word would be classy all over .Its not like she aint sexy or being branded sexy is equivalent to cheap but the class of Tabu in the movie is so much more than sexy.

Well her character ah  its amazing i ever saw a character in mainstream Hindi cinema.
I mean she doesnt buckle to emotional blackmail????.
A diabetic father threatens her if she goes ahead with her marriage and she does not even budge or lie even for a moment despite the threat.
Heck even heroes are not supposed to be so stubborn in Hindi movies. The moment doctor say unki jaan khatre me hai , or mom or dad says agar ye hua to mera mara munh dekhoge it like sacrifice started.From where did this character arise?
 She stays by her fathers side but not even to humor him she budges from her standpoint. Oh welll…..movies do change …very slowly but well they do ….OOOh.

Of course apart from that most of second part is crap…even amitabh's speech to Paresh Rawal on his stupid fast is irritating. When he points that he is within societal limits …that reason is unncessary and wrong way to justify.The love or togetherness and fun should have been enough reason to justify their marriage and not the way he goes on how marrying an older man is quite with social sanction especially in these times when older women marry younger men.

But hell blink it off…especially if you love watching romance purely just as some like watching action purely go along enjoy it the first half. It a sheer treat.
 As i said in my review of Honeymoon travels our directors these days start off with lovely  ideas but then get lost in making up a marketable products
.

The past never dies

The past never dies, it is never past.
Its not like you dont try
But its easier to say let go
but does anybody let it go
After 9 years of graduating , 4.5 yrs of unemployment and 4 yrs of various jobs i still get asked the same bloody question when someone snaps to the last page at a decent interview.

Oh you are from xxx college. How come you are still here.
Why did you not go to the US. Everybody from your college does.
Well yes they all used to go to US i say.
Well they still do he says…

Heck OK yes boss they do so whats the point you think i'm too old or stupid or something fishy in my personality to be stuck here fair enough - dont want you damned job even if you want to offer.

You say why you are quiet,
why not be more more what i wonder bubbly???…happy??
Who lets you….
And anyways why be …
why cant i be myself
So i am a sullen face
fine dont like it, avoid me …dont select me for your environment.
Why rake it up.
People love to rake up the past
dig up the past
You may want to move on
but past is never past.

"The past is never dead. It's not even past."

In this irritating day there's still was place i look at and smile,it wasn't a great place there was lot of messy times, hardships and pain and stress and yet somehow you only remember the good things .
Thats a rarity in life.
It was nice walking past the place where i worked first.

Raining Jobs and Parched IT TalentSpace

Raining Jobs and Parched IT TalentSpace

 

Essentially i am not much of a fan of rediff's articles and its discussion

boards are really gross most times. But i came across this article .(Nothing new in the article really)

What struck me was a comment by a manjula pathy there which i somehow noticed

"Why cry? there are number of people who are very well experienced sitting at home bcoz they are middle aged. companies who hire want very young people.In some of the countries employers see only capability and experience and not the age ,caste and sex like they do in India!!!"

Its not like very greatly put may be but its a very essential truth. I am a part of this industry and have been an going through it and here are a few of my cynical observations .

Like say about young people here's what it is,
Beleive me all companies want this—
A Engineering graduate with 70 or at least 60% + at 21yrs of age and then by 24 or 25 they should have a  3or 4 year experience.
That is perfect and thats what they want.

Now some years ago there was a IT slowdown. Nobody hired where would you get such perfect resumes. Many that are would go to US by now.So what is a clear …whenever there is something that perfect there's a great chance its a fake and yet it is welcomed.No harm in that if you stand by it .

Then one fine day Integrity and Honesty touches these corporates and they fire off people.  Initially i thought it was quite fine and right when people who get in with fake are not upto the expected standard they must be penalised.

But I was shocked to read of a leading company's statement.They say why did these employees fake it especially when they were competent enough to get it on merit. Well i guess it is they themselves and not the candidates who need to answer that.

And the answer simply would be that to even be considered for your interview you need fake.
What industry is expecting is perfect employees to use for their benefit but they are not mass produced. In fact in no industry do they exist these perfect employees.

Integrity is still available but i guess Integrity does not really equal smartness and what the companies need are smart workers isn't it?

Its one heck of an amusing thing simply put.

Many times we discuss and wonder how cool it is in the US to work when you want , if you want to or work part time . Esentially people work and take vacations have a life and come back. Is it feasible in India really.

Can you walk in to a interview and say well i passed out of college did a great job for 3 yrs took a break for 2 years had fun ,travelled and now i want a job again. Is it possible.
There may be exceptions(esp women who get married or had kids but even they get in with hubby or friends help even though they are quite good by  themselves ) but however competent you still may be after the break there is an assumption that you've lost it, your ability somehow at least in India.

HR people have these theories.
If you leave companies you are not stable. Well if all are stable how would you hire?

If you take a break and work or are not sure of your one great FAKE AIM in life(honestly how may have a real one in IT except earning money  which is unspoken )…you cant be reliable.(Assumption:for all you may leave the job any day to have another vacation- Ok confession - this aint an assumption I was asked this question once upon a time )

Can someone at 30 wanting to start a job really compete with a fresher though both are at the same stage of learning.
Its a absolute fact that youngster have more zeal will learn more and every company and country wants a young workforce but when you dont have the youth for it instead of cribbing about shortage cant we even look beyond.

I definitely am not for hiring  people who are sub standard for a given job but i wonder how many companies know what they are hiring for. Half of them stock employees on bench.Its sad to see freshers on bench. I would rather like a nice tired veteran on bench who can use the bench time to learn amd update slowly rather than the restless and raring to go fresher on bench. But yeah they hire the best in campus at times and put them on bench or make them do absolute useles work(some companies provide great recreation facilities though) and disillusion them till they fit into your regular job hopping IT employee type.

Another amazing aspect that HR people and companies keep gushing on is Employee referrals.
In fact I think that is the root cause of all substandard stuff.
You just have to observe with you eyes open when you wait in queue at inteviews. very interesting scenarios proceed. Actually some companies dont even advertise jobs all jobs are through employee referrals.

 Well what most companies don't get is Indians love their own and their own does not start with their company(Unlike say in USA). It starts with family , cousins , all other relatives and friends and then the company .
 So the first good they think for when they refer for the company is in the same order….family……

But then may be one good employee and they think its ok relatives means same genes so it will anyways be good is it…(hmm well i get ideas when i write).
Also that quote " Birds of a feather flock together"
But if that one employee is bad. Ah the theories.

There's another amazing aspect i have discovered from my experience in IT and ITES world.There is so much importance laid on English speaking and all that - so candidates and evaluators take communication as equivalent to speaking good english.
So candidates rattle of words and words of english some with a great accent but ask them to write a stanza, or even something like reading comprehension.

Half of the wonderful IT people do not understand simple IT requirements definition documents. …forget the strange one authored by the Americans.

They code great , i mean i envy their command over coding and memorizing mnemonics and keywords , I poor me who relies heavily on intellisense of IDE's….but do they really know what they are coding for.

Hell just ask some people to read a newspaper and some cant get it straight.Lets face the fact these crash courses in English will get you to speak good English may be but not speak what you wnat to convey and it will not develop your english. The best way to learn English or any language will be its constant use and reading something and assimilating it.

Thats why there's no point in saying "It's raining jobs! But whom to hire".
Its more like Its raining jobs and no one knows what and why to hire let alone how.
P.S:Well thank god i have a nice job - if not good job-else this post may

seem like the greatest crib…but heck thats why I blog.

Alchemist : A lookback

Alchemist : A lookback

 

I somehow recommend the book Alchemist to people . I wont say its a great book but its a book worth a read or some reads esp when you really start doubting  yourself, when you need to beleive in  yourself again against all commom sense.

People say its about love but i actully did not enjoy the love story in it all that much. The last part was too magical and over the top. Its the earlier parts which i admired a lot and liked the different perceptions like those of the crystal seller and the boy.

Whenever someone thanks me for recommending it i quickly glance through the book again and its refreshing.

Some of the best passages in Alchemist i felt are below
===================================================

The old man pointed to a baker standing in his shop window at one corner of the plaza. "When he was a child, that man wanted to travel, too. But he decided first to buy his bakery and put some money aside. When he's an old man, he's going to spend a month in Africa. He never realized that people are capable, at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of."
"He should have decided to become a shepherd," the boy said.
"Well, he thought about that," the old man said. "But bakers are more important people than shepherds. Bakers have homes, while shepherds sleep out in the open. Parents would rather see their children marry bakers than shepherds."
The boy felt a pang in his heart, thinking about the merchant's daughter. There was surely a baker in her town.
The old man continued,

"In the long run, what people think about shepherds and bakers becomes more important for them than their own destinies."
==========================================================
"Well, why don't you go to Mecca now?" asked the boy.
"Because it's the thought of Mecca that keeps me alive. That's what helps me face these days that are all the same, these mute crystals on the shelves, and lunch and dinner at that same horrible café. I'm afraid that if my dream is realized, I'll have no reason to go on living.

"You dream about your sheep and the Pyramids, but you're different from me, because you want to realize your dreams. I just want to dream about Mecca. I've already imagined a thousand times crossing the desert, arriving at the Plaza of the Sacred Stone, the seven times I walk around it before allowing myself to touch it. I've already imagined the people who would be at my side, and those in front of me, and the conversations and prayers we would share. But I'm afraid that it would all be a disappointment, so I prefer just to dream about it."

That day, the merchant gave the boy permission to build the display. Not everyone can see his dreams come true in the same way.
==================================================
"I've had this shop for thirty years. I know good crystal from bad, and everything else there is to know about crystal. I know its dimensions and how it behaves. If we serve tea in crystal, the shop is going to expand. And then I'll have to change my way of life."
"Well, isn't that good?"
"I'm already used to the way things are. Before you came, I was thinking about how much time I had wasted in the same place, while my friends had moved on, and either went bankrupt or did better than they had before. It made me very depressed. Now, I can see that it hasn't been too bad. The shop is exactly the size I always wanted it to be. I don't want to change anything, because I don't know how to deal with change. I'm used to the way I am."
The boy didn't know what to say. The old man continued, "You have been a real blessing to me. Today, I understand something I didn't see before: every blessing ignored becomes a curse. I don't want anything else in life. But you are forcing me to look at wealth and at horizons I have never known. Now that I have seen them, and now that I see how immense my possibilities are, I'm going to feel worse than I did before you arrived. Because I know the things I should be able to accomplish, and I don't want to do so."
It's good I refrained from saying anything to the baker in Tarifa, thought the boy to himself.

================================================

It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting, he thought
When someone sees the same people every day, as had happened with him at the seminary, they wind up becoming a part of that person's life. And then they want the person to change. If someone isn't what others want them to be, the others become angry. Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.

People learn, early in their lives, what is their reason for being," said the old man, with a certain bitterness. "Maybe that's why they give up on it so early, too. But that's the way it is."
. "In any case, it's good that you've learned that everything in life has its price
Sometimes it's better to leave things as they are, he thought to himself, and decided to say nothing. If he were to say anything, the baker would spend three days thinking about giving it all up, even though he had gotten used to the way things were

"The secret of happiness is to see all the marvels of the world, and never to forget the drops of oil on the spoon."
This candy merchant isn't making candy so that later he can travel or marry a shopkeeper's daughter. He's doing it because it's what he wants to do,

Who knows . . . maybe it's better to be like the crystal merchant: never go to Mecca, and just go through life wanting to do so, he thought, again trying to convince himself.
Making a decision was only the beginning of things. When someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he had never dreamed of when he first made the decision.
 

There are more but i guess its a small book and it makes no sense to put it all on the blog.