Some thoughts on the chatter and confusions post 26/11

After a very hectic fortnight in November work again is languishing in the festive month of December(yeah for MNC’s it is) - , but I’ve had too many things on mind and too little coherence in thought to pen anything.

So much has happened all around.On 26/11 I was working late night from home with TV on and me glued to my laptop and frustrated with slow network when I first saw the news scrolling and since then watched on till over 24 hrs till I got exasperated at the way things were stretched out.

But the hardest part is the conversations the lunch time ones.Everyone has opinions - so do I so no offence taken but the way it goes on unnerves you.

I have seen relatively liberal people suddenly becoming extremely touchy about religion and to some extent I seem to run out of any arguments on this and at times feel I am succumbing to it despite being agnostic.
Things are such and while one should not desist from calling a spade a spade and that the most destructive harbingers of terror right now are fanatics of what they call jihad.
Fanatics of Hinduism and Christianity and Communism and all are the same - a horror for humane peace loving society but the one difference one sees is while most other fanatics are somehow outnumbered or at least well matched by the liberals of that sect or community,this seems sort of difficult in a religion where any voice of dissent has a fatwa issued somehow(not always literally - but imagine the plight of being a outcast among aggressive followers of such a God esp when projected as a voice against their God).

The deep rooted passion and aggression displayed by fanatics of terror is lacking in the just and peace loving denizens of the religion.
My stupid doubt is if you can be brainwashed about injustices , is there no shrink available who can brainwash a few about the just things and right things - even in these dark times some good does happen I am sure.

Whatever all this is I hardly believe solution is as simple as most people project it.
Why are people so unrealistic - whether we like it or not partition happened and we have a Muslim population higher than anywhere else .There is no community or sect of any kind which is full of saints and the world is not black or white.

So why do even well educated and well traveled people talk of simplistic and jingoistic solutions. (But when a Booker Prize winner like Ms Roy can talk Trash of the kind she does(Ive some instinctive dislike to her and her recent talk and writings are pathetic) - We just hope way too much from literacy - rediff message boards are a 24X7 proof that literacy does not take humanity forward and education is a different thing altogether. )

People just point to history as a cause for a happening.

History repeats itself because we always hark back to it , get agitated about it ,relive it rather than avoiding its mistakes.

Is is really possible in current scenario of so much globalization to wipe out any chunk of a major community sect or religion and its followers that easily - without getting into the dark ages and making the bulk of humanity irrespective of religion/community/sect etc suffer for decades.

In today’s age of nuclear weapons and biological and chemical warfare how can anyone with an iota of sense believe WAR is a solution.But so many people talk as if these terrorists are a set of boxed out things which can be wiped out in one shot or two. What people forget is the days of winning and losing wars in a realistic sense is over - its all about how much and how long one can bleed the opposition.

In fact i remember the quote from the “The Art of War”-
To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence;
supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without
fighting.

Then almost every one talks as though Army Rule was is a solution to our corrupt politicians. This from people who make comments about being checked at entry and exit points. Are they really that thoughtless or do people just make conversations for the heck of it.
I oscillate between being irritated enough to argue a point or two and remembering the golden rule of silence.

Everyone says this time things will change - yes one does hope but what I concluded when I heard people was somehow this - There is a serious leadership vacuum in our country.

Everyone is charged up against corruption - against our politicians , against traitors, willing to do things and what not but what they want is a new leader i.e a new GOD.

The followers are ready but where is that leader who can satiate them.

Americans found Obama and they found hope and so “Hope, deceiving as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of our lives by an agreeable route. ” - Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Where do we find our deceiver - Nah dont tell me its Maya … - the great deception.

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P.S: I came across a few articles on the Net and so on a relook I too at times on looking back felt that The batman with its Joker scenario was too much of a coincidence for 26/11 - of course batman is missing.

Though now I do wonder all those fanatic admirers of Joker do they admire Kasab too ?

Merge for a single view ....

I had for some strange reason in those old days created two seperate blogs and then believed that one was better and merged them into wordpress.

Now with the blogger's import export feature I've merged my Frozenthoughtz and Fragrantechoes so that the blogger one is pretty much the same as the wordpress one and there is no need for two blogs esp now that I write relatively less.

The fragrantechoes blog is left undeleted but it wont be updated.
From henceforth its
FROZENTHOUGHTZ.BLOGSPOT.COM or FROZENTHOUGHTZ.WORDPRESS.COM

A Serious Joke

Ok I have a cruel streak and here's a example.But then the world has
too much of a stage loving posers for my comfort zone.
There's my sole teammate at work w.r.t being a peer - he's a tad short
.The chap used to be a bit too effusive with self gloating humor
and all and so I too never bothered much about restricting my sarcasm.
Now I've shut up but I guess its a bit too late and the way it pans
out is worthy of note.
Months ago as we returned from lunch , he with a spring in his step
was jumping around hitting some signs hitting across the office
corridor.
I remarked in my blunt manner smilingly that had you done this when
you were young it would have been better.
He immediately said you should not say such and i realized ok ok one
does get touchy I said Sorry .
Today nearly 3 to 4 months later as we were going for lunch he
instinctively jumped to hit the sign post and and then checked himself
with a clenched fist. I noticed that and later during some remark of
his I remarked that you act as if you dont care about things but this
is how at heart you take things.

And now in front of my boss the joke continues.
He:You know what would happen if I tell to the HR what you said says he.

Me: Oh go ahead tell it to HR.After all i just spoke about the
benefits of such jumps when young :) rather than now.
He: No No This is a hurt to short people and discrimination.
Me: Ok enjoy yourself go and complain
He: yeah then I will become famous about a reverse case of discrimination.
Me: May be but then you dont know how many well wishers I will have
who would say what a brave girl - just said what's on her mind while
we could not say it .
He: Ha ha nopes nothing like that will happen
My Boss; Smilingy indulging us while making mental notes - yeah by the
end of it all the organization will have to hang all signs too low so

that no person feels short when trying to hit them.

Now all this was done with smiling faces . This exactly is why A joke
is always a serious thing.
Life's a vicious circle we all somehow fall in and it nurtures itself on and on.

I did try to write a few things since last month - since typing on the PC was not working i tried writing it down.In fact when Saurav announced his retirement I almost scribbled 4 pages but as was not in a mood to type it.

And now I just dont feel in a mood to type what was scribbled.
My last post was about seasons changing in a very general perspective.
But now since then so much has changed irrevocably in this world.
There will be more dawns,
more flowers will bloom but what moved on will never be back.
There's my favorite words from that beautiful song - Zindagi ke Safar me guzar jaate hai jo mukaam vo fir nahi aate(The destinations that you pass by in the journey of life will never pass you by again)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Phool Khilte hai(Flowers do bloom)
Log Milte Hai (One does meet people)

Magar Jo phool patjhad me murjha jaate hai
Vo baharaon ke aane se khilte nahi(But the flowers that wither in fall do not bloom when spring arrives)

kuch log ek roz jo bichad jaate hai
vo hazaaron ke aane se milte nahin(Some people from whom we seperated are not found even by meeting hundreds of people )
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So much has changed with nothing changing on the surface.
Somewhere far there's euphoria over a new President elect who people believe will bring in change.
The problem with such euphoric changes always is what change is not exactly anyone wants to think about.
You want to numb the pain and any thing like tranquilizer is good.

But nearer home and nearer to heart is a much smaller change the loss of our very own tranquilizers I guess.
It was a strange feeling this whole australia series.
All the time thinking more of the past series I was.Its taking some time to sink in.

No Sourav to watch any more...Kumble wont be around...
And people are after Dravid now and he being in the form that he is if one thinks by the head he better go with respect.
He has done a lot good and it would be sad to see him have to be thrown out without grace.
But when you think from the heart you just want it to last just a wee bit longer.May be till another abroad series.

Of course the last cut whenever that comes would be the hardest and its kind of a dread.
Cricket for my generation at least for me will never be the same without the Fab Four and esp the most special of them Sachin Tendulkar.

I dont like to write much on it because of huge nostalgia and stupid sentiment involved here.
Watching his cricket was the brightest light in my darkest days.

The Team photographs watching them together for may be the last time reminded me of my collectibles from college.
One being the Outlook magazine with the cover of the three of them as the Trinity.(I must have wallowed on this previously too in my blog)
I still look at it and think over the huge turbulences that happened esp since Chappell stepped in to scatter them , but it was so heart warming to see them all together at their felitications.

There seems to be a philosoper's calm descended upon me or may be i just am acting it to myself
to prevent looking back.Change does that to you at times.

Will still watch cricket after Sachin too signs off but it will just be a nice game.
There wont have tears anymore for a loss or for a wicket or a crazy joy within. Just pure fun.
There wont be any need to hate Mom for switching off the TV late in the night that is if i stay up till late.
Ironically she never does that now but then can I tell her its too late for the compromise or nicety or whatever.

May be there will be better players somewhere down the line lets see but I doubt if anyone can arouse the emotional attachment.

As Oscar Wilde put it
"The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life.
And the body is born young and grows old. That is life's tragedy."

Our era is pretty much over.....the generation signified by the Fab Four in cricket - Shahrukh /Aamir and a few in Cinema - a time of optimism - open economy - where being a world citizen was the buzzword.

Now there's change - Dhoni - Abhishek/Ranbir kapoor etc and way too many - aggresiveness is a mantra - protectionist economies - and localite populism to the core is the keyword.

Not that I dislike so many of the current . I enjoy them but just that they fail to have much of any original identity beyond being young and upcoming or leave any lasting impresssion except may be Dhoni for his unflappable calm if nothing else.
You look at Sreesanth and almost feel like supporting the opposition at times and thats the terrible thing.

In mainstream Cinema almost every heroine looks the same and heroes are trying to also fit into the same mould.
Of course the offbeat movies now are quite a joy compared to what was available before.

"In a crazy world, it's only your insanity that will keep you sane" -=-Leo Buscaglia.

So Right now I am getting nostalgic being immersed in reading all articles on net and news and stuff on TV about them just like I used to before I had a real job and all and a future to work for.
The future anyhow wont be coming soon anyways so I let it hang in suspension and spend time looking up the tributes all around from equally stupid people(who make me feel so sane) who even in such a state pen emotions so beautifully . I empathize and even sympathize.One awesome piece is here on cricinfo.
There is only 1 time that i ever failed in my board exams and
I did nor care much about it that day as India had won then - so states my diary - Ah my life.

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I also got a scanner at home so I finally somehow decided to destroy my juvenile chronological personal diary.
Its presence caused useless trouble of misinterpretations at home once which makes me empathize with
Ekta Kapoor's storylines of misunderstandings so I did not want it.
You open it , read the hurt the pain and you see how ultra sensitive you were in a practical world.
So yes when I look at it I know I have grown up - becoming the cynical realist if nothing else.
Though one must say juvenile poetry is horrible to look back on.

So much of the writing is self focused. Someone said that - I said this - and then the quarrels the environment - the fears.
My blog now kind of like radiates my thoughts about others from me.
My diary was more like how the world around me and everyone's actions radiated themself in to hurt me.
I can only laugh at how long its been since I believe that I as a story should have been done with by now - by the creator.
But the best part of it is - It shows my descent into agnostic behavior from a beleiver.

My dark future imagination actually has remained mostly intact from my diary days to my blog days except when I write of books.
I always seem to start with some tragedy of mine except when there was a India win or Sachin century.
None of my fears were baseless or unfounded just that I have always underestimated my resilience once I have lived and cried over them and overestimated their ability to finish me up.
So yeah I am quite a survivor till now though where this journey ends will decide if its any worth - this survival.

Noticing the seasons over a weekend

Every year its the same seasons for us and they come and go whether you notice them or let them pass by busying yourself in the necessary activities of our mundane life .

Yet there will be a day - some day when you some how suddenly see it or rather feel it - That the season's changing and then feel as if its something to be noticed.

It was a late Saturday afternoon and after being tired working on a issue which seemed worth exploring walked into the balcony .
The light sun seemed to shine specially on my nearly wilting rose of pink and white hue and then slowly the sun started setting and as I spent time lazing around - you could feel it all in the air like YES!!! Winter is starting and enjoy it for a while.

And then the wintry chill of memories takes you over . Things start flashing in your head - its been such a boring long life most times and yet you remember.
Of childhood gardens -
Of childhood taunts -
Of the stormy dust wind rounded up right in front of the rickshaw as you came home from school -
Of things you've given up on
Of people who made you smile
Of times when you hoped
Of times when you believed

There isn't much to be sad or happy about - its just a day - its just a season I've seen for three decades and yet may be its those decades that weigh you down .

Aargh..Just the same

Aristotle was right - absolutely right
“All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind“
And so was whoever who said that nothing changes - life just goes round and round.

Again the same thing(Huh even my normally sweet and reticent friend today agreed once she went to US - that yeah all jobs are the same)
Again a flashy fiery email about what else but workplace attitude.
Again some funny cause - being unavailable for a remotely broadcast training arranged way too late i.e for a product you’ve already finished a project on .
Only difference - this time the cause is not a single person ( I like to give the benefit of doubt to some people some times ) but simply a comedy of errors or miscommunication (unless I think up a conspiracy theory here which frankly in workplace scenarios cannot be ruled out.Now I didnt mean outside the workplaces such scenarios are ruled out - they actually are the norm, Ask Ekta Kapoor. )
Ah that line of Karla from Shantaram and how many times do i quote it - “If fate does not make you laugh you just don’t get the joke“
I’ve been getting the joke more than ever these days.
And to think just in my previous post I was sort of complaining about feeling less passionate about venting or raging about anything .Think before you wish dear - Think before you wish.
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P.S: Read up the blog of a chap I knew (Blogging’s become so very fashionable these days since Amitabh and Aamir started it that I feel like stopping writing here - feels as though I ‘m trying to do some in thing).
But neverthless quite a revelation some stuff - though sometimes I wonder if a lot of it is fact - especially stuff about some gals. Reminded me of the boasting done by the character Raj in “Bachna Ae Haseeno” after meeting the first heroine in the story played by Minnisha Lamba.

Old and Nostalgic

Time just surreptitiously takes away your life - a day at a time and before you know you have nothing left.

Did want to write something from quite some time but its just that have been unable to zero upon anything.
Books I tried to speed read - a few non fiction,
movies - well a few but need some discipline in my head to write anything
the world around you crashing in different ways and means - floods ,stock markets, terror attacks and yet I seem to have become sort of lost in my very cocoon , once again.

Work when its open ended makes you feel busier than when say its target oriented. Work centered around evaluation / exploration of stuff seems a cool thing but in the end it strains you a hell lot more than when you work towards getting done with stuff to acheive a target thats set.
Handling such things then becomes more of an attitude thing i.e how you as a person want to take it based of course on your position in life and workplace and universe too i guess.

You don't have the pressure of targets - so if you have a take it easy and anyway we can cook up a story and such get away kind of attitude life is pretty cool in such work scenario.

Problem starts if you take it as though you want to put across something substantial for the exploration/stuff you have been working on and you hit roadblocks at everything, and you never know where to stop , what is enough or is it good enough.
Being at a new workplace in such a job sort of makes you more intent on the second option and thus I've been feeling a bit like a workalholic.Not that many will believe at my office since I walk in pretty cool at 11 .

Sometime last month again I went through living my usual yearly stress - of avoiding people forced to wish me happy birthday and asking for treats and cake and all that drama. Not that I dont do it for others , but they seem happy about it. I pretty much may be mistaken about them.Who knows.
For me I never since childhood enjoyed it and with time I tried my best making people miss it which kind of had a strange effect.
They missed it that one time and after that never really. So the best way out was join the exuberance and say oh people would like me to be at home and avoid all and then give some treat just any other day to make them feel I was normal enough.

People who somehow crowded my life with their affection, though I never looked or hoped to get it all have dissappeared with time and its cruel ways and it is now you feel the vaccum.

I've never minded being alone and loved solitude since childhood somehow but as they say

How sweet, how passing sweet is solitude.
But grant me still a friend in my retreat,
Whom I may whisper--Solitude is sweet.

When I was a child I never had the friends - so may be it never meant that much
but now after these years of cribbing complaining and sometimes escaping a set of people I miss their presence.

But oh I'm older - did not some Ted Koppel say
It becomes increasingly easy, as you get older, to drown in nostalgia.

Or May be I've been born old - an old soul - hmm cause I seem to have been drowning in nostalgia since forever. Over 3 years of nostalgia on this blog seems a testimony to that fact.

To hell with All - Just Kidding

Had a real bad day yesterday capping a bad week.
Nothing new , just scraping up of old wounds, but Ive lost it and just blew it up.
I just cannot put it up any longer and its these jokes and the "Just Kidding" people who frankly inspire violence in me.
In the workplace you have to be cordial to one and all ,in the name of collaboration, and at home too you get hammered on the virtues of settling down with whatever and wherever so you find some more people to be cordial to. After all we wont last forever is the lament.

And gosh what is it that I earn given all my insecurities(even freshers get paid almost the same
these days for their freshness value, its so  low brow),  but I live among the great new Indian middle class and hence
seems almost everyone is after me - only person right now living the high brow IT dream(though deep down they have their doubts ,
 how come she's still never gone abroad.All companies send s/w engg abroad).
Of course they are just KIDDING.

What is money , after all did they not spend so much on me - i.e buying their favorite things for me .

When i proclaim that  let me live my life in peace for the few years I may live, I aks nothing from anyone - my very own who are the epitome of optimism ,and still beleive in doing or in fact planning everything in the next decade rather than now - question me ,
 "If you have no such belief in tommorow what is it that you do with your money, where and why are you stashing it ".
This from a set of people who never know or care where they blew up all they earned in three decades - to me who's earning
since just last five years.
I used to walk 3 km to save Rs 5 on my Internet expenses because the way I was handed out pennies I hated asking(now the story is we gave what you asked),
I was shut up on one occasion too many saying that I could not earn a penny so I better behave and now I am told ,
you take every little thing to heart, it was just SMALL things.
If we take what you say seriously what will it be like ? is what i am told.
Hmm well yeah - WHY DO YOU NOT TAKE IT SERIOUSLY IS ALL I SAY AND THINK.

Someone in the family buys a car and the whole gang and their wellwishers who visit believes since I earn enough and have a plan anyways I should buy a car - take a loan.
I blow up about taking loans and I am advised and rebuked - come on its not like you were paying it off immediately or buying it,
 just smile and say ok and forget it. Its just their way of joking and talking.

"It is your mistake surely - you are being touchy , they just expressed their know how and opinion"(uncalled for is what i can say)
Oh yeah I am being touchy.I am bloody hell am.

At the workplace people who happily had all the fun - onsite jobs , parties and a lavish lifestyle now say well we dont own a house.
 Look at you- you are single have a house and what the hell do you do with your money ,
you even stay with your parents so hardly any expenditure.Come on give a treat...he he its ok JUST KIDDING.

Oh yeah I am being touchy and stupid and have lost all my patience with people.
Point is why associate with such a hopeless touchy person, more so when she wilfully stands out of your way.
The kind of violent emotion the whole drama inspired in me , makes me realize all said and done English is never the first language.
I cannot express that well enough just wish I could as easily blog in hindi/native language.

Then there's grossness in people. R made such a cheap remark about S being no good, just because he hasn't been helpful for her
 in her career plans,such gross spite made me re-evaluate my whole association with her.
I cant handle the raw gross cheap language used. Its nothing bad may be just raw emotion on her part,pure frustration like me
 but getting so badly personal about a person for a few career issues made me feel so very uneasy. And its not like they
stop at that - she expects you to either support her or the opposite person and giving reasons.
After such stress on diplomacy you get home and what awaits you is more of the same, this time more where it hurts.

All my loving ones and caring and always well wishing for me dearies all over my home and in the world 
can you please stop KIDDING with me.
I just was not born with the mood.
You just wish humanity be damned and then say Oh was JUST KIDDING.

Reading India Unbound

Last fortnight had so much work that I never managed to write about this book which I really liked reading, and as always with time its never quite the same for me. My thoughts as I say on my blog , with moments- flit by.
When i finished off reading the Introduction chapter of India Unbound which ends with "Although slower India is more likely to preserve its way of life and its civilization of diversity, tolerance, and spirituality against the onslaught of the global culture. If it does , then it is perhaps a wise elephant." I simply felt like  ha ha Wise Elephant eh - how hindsight can leave you so cynical.

These lines must have been penned less than a five years ago and yet here we are in a India where things seem to be going quite the opposite with hatred and seperatism and religion seeming to be leading the onslaught against peace.

But the book does reflect how the pace of change itself has changed. Change might have always been a way of life , but its become so very fast paced that it becomes tough to keep up with the next happening or risk predictions of any kind.

Coming back to the book as a whole, its splendid simply because its one those few books that manages to talk about economics of India for over a century as a whole with perceptions of individuals especially of different generations as example.It never feels like a heavy
statistic oriented or overtly economic theory oriented and the best part for me is it explores both ends of a equation. The leftists and the Rightists, individualism capitalism socialism and there is no taking sides or solutions of any kind.
Proven solution offering books that irritate the living daylights out of you and one the foremost reasons why i hugely prefer fiction over non - fiction.

Like he says at one point
"It is important not to direct people too much and to let them find their way. It might bring out their creative urges. This is not to say one abdicates responsibility to train employees.....but he or she must refrain from controlling them"

Something I found quite interesting for example was his description of the impression made on him by a  'A Theory of Justice' by Rawls wherein he felt " moral justification based on consent seemed to me superior than the greatest good for the greatest number". As he says further "Most of  us
became Socialists because we were repelled by the inequality of capitalism.Having said that it is important to remember that Rawls model works only in a genuinely open society. In the end no society even America is completely open.The key is to ensure that everyone has a equal
start in life and hope to raise to the Top."

The books starts off with how rich India was but the good part is it does not keep harping on it. It shows why it was that and how it was us who lost it rather than someone really looting it all from us and why we better concentrate on creating it all over again rather than mulling over who took it , and blaming them for what we are now.

It potrays quite vividly about the leftist and socialist feelings of the 60-70's especially in young people and why exactly once those rose colored glasses were gone the world had actually moved on far ahead.

Somehow as I read this book the movie 'Hazaaron Khwahishein Aisi" somehow played on subconsciously in the mind.
Like when the author says "As I look back on my four years at college , I am shocked that we were so concerned with the distribution of wealth in those days that we ignored the whole subject of wealth creation........All of us wanted to be scholars and dedicate our lives to the dispassionate pursuit of 'truth beauty and justice' like Socrates"

Then he comes back to today's scenario
"Today's undergraduates both in US and India don't seem to suffer from our hang ups and our Idealism.They have the opposite problem...today's youth I think need to be reminded, I think that there is a great world out there beyond money."

His anecdotes from corporate life too make a nice read.
"A Swiss manager of a MNC told me that a sure way to inaction is to put two talented Indians on a Global task force. They will never agree and brilliantly  argue the proposal to death."
His account of how he was treated by his first managers in India once he came to India after graduating in US makes quite a read.
Another beautiful and for me commonplace incident was his description was of meeting with few young people in Bandra whom he asks "Would you take arts in college" and gets a the true reply.

"Arts subjects aren't high scoring" ......."in Science you just have to memorize a bunch of facts and luckily I have a good memory"

The author then ponders over that our education wherein no one had told him that science was about learning to  think more exactly ....."experimental habit of mind".

Nevertheless he concludes that the young are no less virtuous today - chief difference is there is less hypocrisy and more self confidence.
I somehow am not very sure - I must say I see a very different hypocrisy and a tendency to the very old religious extremism right now which makes one feel like we almost want to go back.

As always there might be a simple point wherein you feel strong empathy in any book and for me it was in that one line "For one Dhirubhai who succeeded there were hundreds who failed".
I've been surrounded quite a lot by ever green dreamers of being someone or something like him if not exactly in that sense but getting to the simple point - making  millions soon enough . What none of these wonderful people know ,and if the theory of positive thinking is to be
followed must know is - of those hundreds who failed.

Thing is I feel deeply uncomfortable about is the discounting of the possibility of those hundred and relying on the success of one.
Like a friend recently asked after over a year of niceties , so when did you pass out - oh 1998 - it was a good year only nah(he must have joined college then )and you did not go to US. All your friends in  US must be millionaries by now. What do i say as much as I try. That i know of people who've scraped through there, of people who are living well enough there but millionaires, nah I know none.

The book states stuff in a matter of fact style and that is what made it appealing to me

"In the competitive market some will gain and others will lose.Even if the winners greatly outnumber losers, In a country like India, The losers will be considerable.But it has to be that way in a society with a young population that needs to absorb an increasing labor force.One should be aware of the downside of capitalism, but one cannot morally stop the yearning o fthe underprivileged and the poor to rise to a better standard of living.....Nobody knows the ideal social mix.the West certainly does not offer a model ....for its excessive individualism has a corrosive effect on family and society.Individualism is certainly vital in the economy of information and innovation but the west has also learnt that Individuals need a supportive society as well.......................

.....It is no good hoping that Indian values and Indian way of life will survive intact...Asian values are indistinguishable from Victorian values....Modernization has its positive and negative consequences and we have to live with them"

"The irony of liberalism is that it gives the individual free space, in order to fashion his life, but he is unable to cope with the free space and fills it up with trivial objects....without an ideology - life is reduced to an endless pursuit of cars cellphones channel surfing".
The core point he puts across "Self interest has always been the greatest motivator of individuals and classes. In denying this basic truth about humanity, we embraced treacherous ideologies and failed economic policies."

Its something many people try to deny but in the end thats a truth Ive always seen win.

Though there is no startling knowledge one will gain through the book , its a real interesting overview of the interesting times that we've started living in, and how that the most trivial things at times may affects us with a far greater impact than what we call the most important incidents ,and what misconceptions we always start our future with.

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P.S: After finishing this I was engrossed by the very personal murder mystery by Agatha Christie "Sad Cypress". Its so enjoyable to see how beautiful a study fiction offers on human nature, rather than the most philosophical books.

A very cruel thought - Was hearing about the food riots in Bihar - Thoughts went back to the 'The Dark Knight' . The Joker won in his experiment?

But sometimes when one sees such stuff one does wish one has real tangible solutions .Nothing seems to convince me that donations by a even lakh people for over twenty lakhs will suffice.And most people like to calm their conscience  by donating a few bucks, but no one thinks who will administer the relief bought by these donations,  a thousand or so volunteers for such a huge lakhs.

Not me I know, Not my colleague or friend or whoever I know. We all have a  life which we may hate but we still have not been able to reach onto such high ideological humanity serving paths.So I really admire the people who get personally involved rather than donating etc in such efforts and feel a bit challenged at never being that kind somehow.

Then you think of Nature and you know that Man has never won in so many ways.
Its become a mutual destruction path the way things keep occuring on and on.
Man destroys nature for his ever expanding needs and Nature destroys mankind in its gay reckless abandon ways.

The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason. - T.S. Eliot

It been hard resisting that temptation.
Its so very easy for me to do that right thing - like say be nice to people for they are nice to you.
I am naturally polite most of the time and can behave like quite a soft spoken person but to behave like that with people , for issues I do not believe in or I am not convinced about is being hard on me.

Happenings last week seem quite very simple on the surface but there is a feeling they will resonate in my head for quite sometime.
It was such a beautiful day today at home i felt somehow since the morning that i did not feel like writing much about the dismal things that are around me.The day almost made me feel somewhere some good thing had happened. May be i woke up with some nice dream subconsciously, nothing else explained it. I felt so fine that i did nothing much except stare through my window onto the sunlight beaming all around.Its only after nightfall that I manage to write somehow.

Its quite easy being rude and cut people out its said but its really tough I feel esp for me if you are not convinced that these people have no ill will towards me.It makes me feel queasy after i behave the way i do.

After ranting so much against my team mates in quite some previous posts due to their opinions and thinking , when i think it over charitably i feel a bit bad , simply because none of this whole charade is regarding me in particular.
I somehow end up in situations where people at least outwardly are rather nice to me. Too nice for my comfort frankly.

The hardest part of life right now is having a too sweet and a bit too friendly absolutely unmoved by stuff kind of manager is - you dont know whom to really get at at times.
The culture in this wonderful place is where nothing seems urgent or planned explicitly reminds me of that quote
"Take your life into your hands , and what happens? No one to blame".

I try to maintain my distance and try coming across as extremely ill mannered but ah i am quite disturbed with all this.
Like this incident when both of them invited me over to check out the houses they bought recently as they were going there and it was on the way for them to drop me at home.
I made the most pathetic excuses , to the extent of saying they should not even look forward to a cup of Tea I am such a bad host in general, but neverthless when i did ask them they just had a glass of water, but the thing is I feel bad being so unkind to people who for whatever reason are decent to me.
I just do it with some nice self deprecating wit but still I dont like being that unhospitable.The issue is honestly its not a comfortable thought to think of fighting/arguing with a manager and team members who visit your home. That kind of status quo spoils things.It is actually being quite a learning curve for me.

It is quite an experience shifting from a services organization to a product based organization.
You miss the buzz and happenings and expectations that are part of being in any services software or otherwise.
Appreciations from the clients, the expectations (most common being the onsite stuff), the particularity of things, the careful drafting and revising of emails repeatedly befor hitting a send.
These are the very things you hated then and I stll remind myself of that instead of calling them sweet memories.
Here where i am its a perfect place for the innovators i guess OR the world weary - cool atmosphere , not much nonsense about etiquette and relaxed attitudes which only get disturbed on news of firings for cost cuttings.
And here I am complaining I have nothing to look forward to.
I complained about the extreme pace of things then and now i fret at the lethargy of things around me because i have seen things moving faster in every sense.
Why is quite such a big thing to have the balanced best of both worlds i quip….

Then there was another drama which left me all the more unsettled.
Some of my mother's close but far off cousin sister turned up with her family.She's a government servant , with a husband who is a lecturer in a small town. Belonging to the educated but traditional kind of family they started the same charade that everyone does , but in a more polished and kinder way than say the more rustic relatives.

They see me after what some 20+ years and express their deep affection and keen desire to see me well settled and try talking as they say some sense into my head. I try every trick in my book dissapearing to the balcony , picking up a book and keeping silent saying that i hardly am much of a speaker.

But the lady seemed quite intent on forcing a rountable conversation , with her hubby my mom and sis included and would stop at none.
She thought I should stop at reading books, enough books by now. I have a job too , so thats enough.

Anyways the conversation veered off in all directions of my expectations , their experiences etc etc, with the lecturer ending up asking me , how much do i earn - a question i deliberately did not answer but was forced to quote a figure in a way only Indian relatives can.
In fact the man joked it off saying "Tell me - lets see how much i have earned after putting in all these years of service and how much you people earn.What is that you people do to get paid such. All these stress strain things that people talk on these days."

My essential problem is unlike others is with age i become more passionate when talking about what i believe in and have lost the patience that i seemed to have so easily as a child.I started pretty reluctantly due to this but when they seemed to be so insistent i gave them a piece of my mind.
"Its pretty simple. You as a lecturer can take classes of any quality as you like that is if kids attend firstly and get away with it, not something you can really do in our case and so on as easily.
For you what you have learnt in college is the end , here you just have to keep unlearning and relearning."

The fact is there are so many misconceptions in half the people outside software about software industry.They just know software engineers = good money earning and scope and US chances.There is one set who thinks they are overpaid for jobs that even Xth standard people can do and the other half thinks just the opposite . I almost feel like cracking a bad joke that well because a highly educated person supresses his capabilities and does a Xth standard job he ought to be paid more.

"Whatever happens no one employed now will lose jobs for next 20 years " says this man and I tried to enlighten him about my friends who were given pink slips with 2 hrs of notice period.That the real money is hardly earned by an average software engineer but by businesses which were built to cater to them.That half of the rich lifestyle this set of people put on is debt money in the shape of plastic cards.

Its really easy to snap such people out of your life i think and then realise , but for my family or may be my job i would never associate with such.
And as this continued , I was told that my expectations were all wrong I tried to make some fair arguments and my sister chipped in with some but for them all that i could talk of were trivial.

As per them
Finances should not be an issue(This from a person who in the previous conversation had said he never joined any of the universities as a professor because , it only means research and career growth and I want financial growth too for my family hence i stayed on as a college lecturer- which i though was a very honest decent answer.)
Lifestyle should not be an issue.
Differences in upbringing are not an issue.
Looks must never be an issue

Survival is the the word they spoke of (though i guess social conformity was what they meant at heart and should have been spelled it such ) and then I really was worked up to a point that i was forced to be blunt that I survive decently if not well and any so called compromise of settling down should improve my quality of life rather than doing the opposite.

The conversation finally was ended up with a cheery smile that we both sisters spoke too well and know almost every line of argument, but you know from those polite faces that these things have resonances in people heads, like how the generation has changed, how the world is going to become and what not.

The thing is they were not bad people or one of those scheming / sermonizing relatives everyone has their share of - but they just belong to a world I want to escape from.
They cannot see beyond what they are in ,as they find it safer and comfortable in there and I do not like what they show me from their perspective.I never like being so heartless to such people but I guess that seems to be destiny.

Anyway life goes on and at this point in life with over thirty years of being a nuisance in the
universe i can only quote from somewhere

"The years are forest paths
Where I've lost my way
Not even a sun-ray
To guide my wandering… "

The best thing though in this rather unsettling week was my reading "India Unbound" by Gurucharan Das.
What a fine book , nothing earth shattering and yet so effective in presenting the country's journey from pre independence and its dilemmas to this age and i will write a seperate post on it. Its core may be set about the economic ideologies that have changed but its touches a whole lot more splendidly.

P.S: this was a old post i somehow missed hitting publish

The unwelcome women managers

People seldom differentiate between managers and leaders but there’s a huge difference there. And while with respect to leadership women may be fine though using different style totally I’ve never seen much loved women managers esp in middle management.I do not mean competent , they are more often than not competent and ambitious but i mean I’ve never heard of any mid level woman manager being admired inspirational and so on.There was some talk about opportunities ahead for women in the organization and also with some new women in the managerial hiring last quarter there’s been some incidents which made me feel like summarizing a few thoughts.
Somehow in software when i do a reality check women as managers are yet to be cherished by employees.From what i’ve seen around in all my previous organizations , whenever there is a woman manager there’s a instant dislike, suspicion and the foremost people to initiate or at least openly express these are the unfortunately women employees.
Most of these thoughts are from what i hear and then perceive from people around me rather than my individual experience which is a bit offbeat.
There’s an instance of a woman manager making a point about employees being on time. This stringent rule in a organization known for its flexibility in timings, certainly made one too many employees furious and ended up as a complaint against her.In a normal circumstance I also pretty much will join this complaint, when people make an issue about hours and timings.But what i dislike is why people link this as a issue that cropped up because the manager was a woman and women are like that, too rule abiding taking things too seriously and what not.
In another organization my friend is forced to come on time(being the only flaw explained in her one year of tenure because of which she did not deserve a promotion) even if there is no work by a manager who is a guy. Here they say he’s a horrid sadistic boss but they do not say , oh he is guy.
Frankly a lot of women are high strung and cannot relax with deadlines looming and in such a situation when your employees go around playing TT and have endless smoke and lunch breaks i guess it does get on their nerves.
From what i observed there’s a root cause.Women want to go home (or at least off work) invariably on time and quite a few like to do decent work if not great and so would like the things all in control and fine when they leave office.Men on the other are quite cool , a delay here a delay there - we can always stay late , come later and are so much relaxed.
So yes its very nice to have a boss who is cool and will never make a issue about timings and errors and wont like to be in know how of your whereabouts every minute,BUT its not very easy TO BE such a boss when you have employees you know are not all committed.
My short experience in that scenario of being a back up manager put me off management track quite well. I am quite a nervous freak myself and
have fondness for own personal time way too much and so yes its much easier doing your work however tough it is than getting a bunch of disinterested people committed to work.The worst part is any case is the personal slurs that people make if the manager is a woman. I am all for criticizing their over strictness or even their over ambitious drive in proving themselves and the picky nature, but whats terrible is to keep quiet when people make statementslike” Oh this is what happens when a frustrated single woman is a manager ” OR“She just got in through her husband’s connections” ORthe standard stuff about looks and character.
Also when a mistake is pointed out by a manager , they say oh he’s being too much. If she’s a woman manager well she’s picky - she’s a woman.Ok women are picky at times esp our brilliant technos hate it when a lady goes on picking issues with email and language.A guy as a manager wont do that.So there you go , another irritant factor against women as managers.
Then there are things I hear that makes you really feel cynical.You have all our great MNC’s promoting women in workplace and you have a senior manager in one of the greatest workplaces disliking women at workplaces.Of course he wont dare to go on record in his company .But thats the whole point - by making rules you cannot change attitudes.And imagine how that inbuilt resentment is expressed in everyday life in subtle saddism.
Women more often than not worry - it comes naturally esp if they strive for a perfect deliverable.Also trouble follows cause they ensure that you also worry about it and do something.Something that many people think is quite uncool esp if there is a chance to get away with it.
I really on a personal front (i.e about my managers) cannot tell the difference caused by gender of managers in concrete terms much may be because I take things individually rather than gender wise and my experience has been quite reverse i.e i have had more immediate managers aswomen rather than men.I have cribbed all my blog about them, but I doubt any of those issues would have disapeared if the manager was a guy.I honestly wonder if the rare few who read the past three years of crap on managers here guessed that my manager was a woman.
I’ve had good as well as bad from them - I doubt sometimes men as managers would have fought for me and my work with senior management with as much passion and conviction as my previous managers did.They had their own benefits and reasons for doing that but yet when I look at my current manager I suspect he would stand up for any one and fight .And yet I tell people that he’s quite cool - reason he never gets worked up over deadlines, will not care that i come in at 11 am almost every other day (OK fine thats my achievement - I finally convinced my woman managers too to live with that flaw of mine with a commitmentthat none of their expectations in terms of work will be affected )and is a quiet listener, a humble person with great commitment to the organization .
Ive seen others of this kind , loved a lot by employees, if the employees are good they make them work , if not then they themselves do the work but they do not take a stand and fight. May be thats being cool.
The problem though i guess comes at the end with such people.At the end of the day when you want something tangible while they do support you , people of such nature will start talking philosophy, rules and organizational commitment etc.They may want to help you but they really lack a passion to fight for their own selves how will they do it for anyone?I guess as usual i deviated from a general issue to a personal one, but such seems to be my limitation.

My Daily Life of Morosity

There are calms before storms. I am not sure what storm awaits me but this is a depressing and extremely bad calm phase i am stuck in.
I have become irritated thinking about it, blogging about it and yet I have to live it through everyday.

Now i understand why Katherine Hepburn said "Enemies are so stimulating" and here i am stuck among a place i cant even make enemies.
This phase i fear is pulling me into being a hypocrite .
After all these years of  getting over my reluctance to interact much with people esp strangers, I am again at a point when i have started despising people.Well at least the ones that I get stuck with. And the way i act and suffer this I despise myself too.

The problem is this is my job , my sustenance. There are just five of us i deal with at work.
One is a technical lead and except in team meetings he can be ignored, one is a fresher with the cool attitude that since anyways you've gotta work a lifetime why bother so early getting into this mess and they have their gang to hang out which is just fine.

One is a manager and however cool they act its always the management and I am quite wary of that and I have yet not been proved wrong.
Thus remain two people. One is "Me" the morose serious argumentative and the other chap is the sugary , laughter packed  all knowing guiding angel to the new freshers.

I do not care who hogs the limelight and I have my share in different areas . Neither do i care how wonderfully they build social networks.In four months in this new company I know fourteen people may be in the company maximum and he knows a hundred may be.

How they bond so soon Such wonderfully or superficially I never get  and I frankly think thats great as thats how businesses work in the end.Only fault the few people see in him is may be his overt argumentativeness regarding the work which is pretty OK.

The problem is this is where I spend three fourths of my day and I share the cubicle with these.

Fair enough so what I do is come late and spend continuos hours at my desk finish my work and leave. No coffee breaks / no walks nothing. Those days are gone poor lady I tell myself.There are days when i have my lunch at desk to avoid them.This when they take so much care to include me being a lone teammate.
How cruel am I ?

Strange no one here would question if i dont show up for hours together and yet I am at my desk always and at my previous place it was vice versa.

This is why it was said in that wonderful book Shantaram "If fate does not make you laugh you just dont get the joke"

I can take being alone as I am someone who likes solitude.

It is the 1 minute conversations that punctuate my solitary life in my
office that irritate the hell out of me.

I might have brought this upon myself in ways and deeds unknown who knows.
I got friendly with probably just one woman named R here in this multitude, may be because she is the one who talks the most to strangers.
She gets people to talk and then gives advice which again is a common livable problem.
The reason is you can ignore it though when i keep saying hmm hmm to lot of stuff i dont beleive in I know this is my descent into hypocrisy.

The following is a very harsh description of someone who is known as the funny lovable guy who even in long US stint in his previous organization was loved by one and all as per him.

But I dont enjoy having him as a teammate such because while I myself can carry on quite a few superficial conversations when circumstances need, I never respect or like people who talk on and on for the heck of it and never stick to what they say and then when you start a decent
argument hide it in humor  and say things like
"I may say whatever just for fun but think twenty times before doing something"

But he happens to be my only co worker and hence I cant really put up the perfect go to hell kind of attitude.
The lady R from a different team is also quite talkative so she considers this chap one of those dil ka saaf nice guys and he is like meri didi didi types.

Understandable both people from a similar region(Cant avoid this in India).

Their views and worse me being the quiet participant with hmm hmm are playing havoc on my peace of mind.
Some conversations:

R: Oh that friend of mine , she is a tamilian
He: They are quite kanjoos na
R: No why , she always keeps getting stuff for me and is very nice
He: Oh then she must be nice
R: One should not say like this about everyone
He: why in my college down south the lecturer said in front of everyone, I hate Biharis and I stood up and asked why what is your problem and

he said you are an exception.
R: Well thats why they are driving them out in Mumbai
Me: Well its always like that one or two people spoil the name of a whole set.
He: True

The point here is this chap has no viewpoint or if he does he does not exactlt speak that. If you argue a bit he will hide behind that
facade Ok we all northies esp Biharis are bad Fine Ok.
Its such irritating though no one raises that point he brings it up.
=========================================

Now notice the heartfelt concern he has for people here and i am so cold blooded.

He: Yamini I am so upset what kind of place we have gotten into. here everyone is scared that if our
project succeeds they all may be jobless. It seems they feel only the Top performers will be kept and rest downsized.

Me:Well why are you bothered no one can help people who want to live taking this job as some government secure job.
And you and I have worked in service companies with much stringent work culture and if it comes to that for us we
can take it. So why worry?

He:    No I feel very bad this whole rating business you know like rating one person above the other,
to tell one person that you should be like him, he is good , you are incompetent is so bad.

Me:Well like it or not Bell curve kind of rating is a norm in all leading companies. If these people hoped that by default of an acquisition they had a secure job in a big company, its sad.

This conv was continued…as below

R: I do not like Ramji among gods and she goes on about his treatment of sita.Useless fellow leaves a expecting lady in forest.

Me; Same here I too dislike(though I am agnostic , I discuss Gods quite well and am not averse to the chat in general)

He: Well thats because you dont understand. Ram Bhagwan and even sita maiyya knew the happening even before it happened.
He did it for Rajhith (Good of the country) and because that was the vidhi(process or rather as prescribed socially).

R: Ah caught you , now this firing or rating too is exactly that for company hith(good). So why you complain.

He:Ab aap bhi naa(You are too much)

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

He: Ha ha you know what my resolution is? (Bubbling with enthu like a kid)
Me: Whatever
He: I wont drink tea.It has nicotine. I will eat only sattvic food(ya thats a new buzzword for chaps
like these who've had their fill of non  veg in the US and all over. Damn I've been a veggie by choice all my life and yet never complain a

word about non vegans or potray being a veggie as sattvic)

As i type this blog i remember i should have spoken about Hitlers's sattvic food.

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

Some talk about marriage came up.
R: Guys parents have so much attitude and blah blah(theirs is a UP family so its that standard fare of dowry and ladki wale dar ke rehte types)
He: Aaj kal aisa kya hai , kuch nahi
R: Kuch nahi badla ladkiyon ke liye its the same still when it comes to ,marriage and guys have some much attitude
He: Haan to ladkiyon ka nahi hotha kya.(Dont girls have an attitude or what) Vo mera interview leti hai("How dare she take my interview" referring to some marraige proposal of a gal i guess who
must 've hurt the guys ego badly )

and so it goes on….

I almost had the Joker's plasticated smile during this conversation and yet was so very irritated

Me: I will be on leave 2 days
He: Why
Me: I am going to abcd
He: That only takes 1 day
me; you are not my manager why you ask so many questions
He: why friends should not ask hmm
Me; Well if you were a friend you would ask why 2 days take 4 days
Guy; You know a true friend is not some one who agrees or goes by you all the time but question you.

Damn the banter. How i hate myself

Then finally this week I had the question I was expecting from my manager since the day I joined
"So no plans of marrying in near future".
This is exactly why I dislike getting friendly\lunching with managers.

People are so irritating predictable.

Most of the above is done in quite amusing chatter but such an everyday life is being tortorous to me.
I have  to move out .
In every other aspect it seems like a calm relaxing job , I walk in at 11 no one questions, if I leave early not much questions asked.
In the end you know whatever you do the maximum difference it will make on you pay slip is at the maximum some 4-5k.
promotions are not my great inspiration and here they come with years piling up and I am partly incapable and partly uninterested of those

googled up and innovative mixed up white papers to get brownie points.
But just for these few comforts how much of this environment I can take and if not here what next.There's no gurantee that I will
end up with different people if I move again. Its a bloody small world in so many ways.

I cant even think of what to blog , such pitiful I have become and the posts in the last few months are quite reflective of this pathetic

state.Not that I loved all the people in the past,( I just lack that loving disposition and am too old to change i guess) but yeah some people were nice enough to distract me from bothering about the others.

The Dark Knight - few thoughts

Last fortnight watching “The Dark Knight” seemed a nightmare as far as travel is considered.
Almost everything that can go wrong goes wrong especially when i have a movie to watch.
The first time I missed the movie by a good half an hour and the next time by 10 minutes. This despite a well planned itineraryand getting a friends vehicle too.
The whole charade certainly spoilt my viewing mood but yet it was a movie i liked.
I am hardly someone who loves action and comic book movies much but I guess the
the movie is hardly comic book. And thats exactly why the people I watched it with - people who love comic book and super heroes did not like it much . But I did and thats simply because of the screenplay and dialogues that go with deeper subtexts. And be it action be it comedy or even romance my favorite is inevitably wordplay.

The point where Alfred says “Some men just want to see the world burn” and the solution later on implemented was “burn the forest down” seems to linger in your
mind especially when halfway through the movie you get a call about the Ahmadabad blasts.
You cannot help but wonder the motivation for such gruesome and horrific acts. Forget their nonsensical emails and religious leanings.
Such stuff never would serve any cause , and one needs to be either really blinded to think it will or one some where deep down they are the people who want to see this world burn i guess.

And is that the only solution we have for such - burn the forest and is that what US thinks when it acts as it does?

Getting back to the movie It isnt’ thrilling action and hence disappoints people who expect such fun but i kinda liked to think it over and over.
Near the end where the joker gives detonators to people calling it a social experiment, I just wonder would people really be that nice in real time, if it wasn’t a movie at least one boat would have been blown up?

Would I be that good? The instant thought is NO. Later may be i am not even sure - I have too many options in my head .
A real good one though was “madness, as you know, is like gravity. All it takes is a little push“.
I especially think something on those lines when people who act like saints or people who have it too good or are in real safe situations speak great lines about goodness ,patience in adversity , humanity and morality.
You push them a bit into the corner or hurt what they love and they emerge the more villainous and intolerant.

Reminds me of a quote i can’t exactly recall but it goes something like - “The most sensitive people are the ones capable of being most insensitive to others”.

An Irritant Conversation

Lot of People get on my nerves most of the time , and as much as i try to live with it internally i start feeling crappy to put up with such.
Yet I guess I have something irritatingly  wrong about me or the way I express myself that i get surrounded or form acquaintance with just the same kind.

=======================================
lh: so wats up

1:06 PM me: nothing monday is v tiresome
  hate to come to office
  as usual
   
1:13 PM lh: why u hate coming to office

1:14 PM we get an oppurtunity to work thats really gud thing

1:15 PM me: oh well

lh: remember the day when u strugle for job

 me: its not the job
 i hate

lh: work comes out of job

me: anyways i guess our philosophies are diff

lh: its not philosophy

1:17 PM i think u donno the exact meaning of philosophy

 me: may b

lh: its some thing like being practicle
  all time not to expect to have gud work to do
1:18 PM many a times people may not get the work which they are intrested

=============================================================
This is  a conversation with a chap I never met but simply came to know online
because he was a friends friend and had put in a referral at one of the organization i had gone to while looking for a
job change. Since then i get a casual hi  and hello on chat and I invariably respond with casual banter for the sake of not
being mean.
But when they start lecturing you it gets to you.
This is the reason i never ask of people even little things(in fact little things esp ) , I just hate it when they do these
things as a favor and then consciously or unconsciously expect you to be grateful .


Now if this person was really open about discussing philosophies or stuff ideally
, and I  believed he was some one you could have a serious debate with  i could have finished off the thing using the very same arguments advanced here. I mean if i am being lectured about the sanctity of work I just can throw it in his face what the
heck are you doing buzzing me when you can work , and let me work too.

And just because I was jobless once is no reason for me to feel ultra grateful about any organization/ person who
gives me a job. It was not a favor. I earned it all by myself  convincing i could be useful and they will not hesitate to throw me out if I am not useful. This whole attitude of being servilient when preached irritates me.

 I know it feels good to act like the know it all and lecture about philosophy but it is when i hear such stuff from  people i have not much opinion of , I kind of  get hugely pissed off.

Then again its also in the way its said i guess. I mean that patronizing tone as if you are oh so mature and you are teaching kids about life and philosophy.

or May be its my problem that I project such foolishness and stupidity?
or May be as usual I am too sensitive about any criticism of such kind .( On a quick think no i am clear here - it isn't criticism I dislike , it is criticism from people i do not believe have a standing to criticize me)
In fact it is what reminds me of that telling line from a classic book (beyond me why its a classic ,I did  not get it honestly  .)
Its a line I remind myself always since i myself have a tendency to be critical.

"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."

P.S: I am horribly nitpicking at spellingmistakes...even in such a irritating mood I see the spelling mistakes in that conversation. Even when I relook at my previous posts and i see typos they pinch me. Donno why i see them. May be I should have been a proof reader in my previous birth .

What If

What if its beyond you to get what you want
What if there is nothing else much that you have been able to want
What if you could exist without wanting
What if such existence was a choice
Would one want to exist such?

As i Enjoyed Jaane Tu ya Jaane Na

This is what you do when everything in life is horrid and you feel doomed....Escape
and what better place than Bollywood.


It somehow seemed so long since we had a pure college romance in Bollywood after Kuch Kuch Hota hai. There was Dil Chahta hai

but it wasn't standard bollywood fare.In fact even KKHH is not standard Bollywood stuff. The last i can remember was Jo Jeeta

Wohi Sikander in school and those were heady days of college romance for Bollywood , till Shahrukh and Aditya Chopra roped in the family romances.

So it was with that thought that i walked in into Jaane Tu ya Jaane na.The best part is there's absolutely no curiosity about the story and yet you go to watch it to see it in a different view.
As long as you watch the movie its good fun.
You like the simple characters , and esp the banter all around .Naseer and Ratna pathak are great joy throughout.Genelia's

pretty as ever and thr group has enough bonhomie.
Smita patils's son acts pretty fine but he might be cast into villianous stuff in mainstram cinema due to his looks which would be a pity.
No foreign locations no designer looks just the lyrics and the actors and yet it makes you like the movie. But the problem is there was something lacking . I am yet to put a finger on it but when you dont hold any experience of the movie once you are back on the street something must be missing.

Of course they irritated me for a second by screaming out one of my evergreen favorite songs "Tera mujhse hai pehle ka naata koi" (Oh those vividh bharti days)but thank god they did not make a alternate title track and ruin it.

There was something of a 70mm experience missing for me. Dont know if it was because its been a decade since i am out of college or because of my cynicism(I dont usually switch it on for Bollywood unless there's overacting or over sermonizing). A feel good movie , unless you do not think about watching it again invariably has missed out on something.Its far far better than anything we have on around currently but yet you remember times when you liked a movie and you wanted to watch it all over again and for a few minutes and sometimes a few hours after the movie is over you enjoy it in your mind.

For one the songs were not used well esp the picturization and the second half needed a song more.Bollywood is never and experience without its songs.

P.S:

Well for now whats on my mind is the trailer of Bachna Ae haseeno and its partly its song and partly the well crafted picturization of the sneak preview. Its been a sooo long since i bothered to relook a trailer.
What the movie will be or how it will be is not of interest its the awesome pure stupid aura it creates since you had that Kaho na pyaar hai, never found anything else as much to bother about.Ranbir Kapoor suits that song damn well and some of the shots i am sure will have the young girls quite swooning like we loved the shahrukh scenes in DDLJ where he waves to Kajol and all and
my sister and her friends even have postcards. Oh those days.....sigh.
Of course its the song...Hmm RDBurman Rocks any day.
For all of Rehman's raving fans i can just say well that is a classic.
Aditi song is good lovely but people have a tendency as i said before to use great too easily. One needs to get the difference.

And even if its the other way around using Mark twain's words i can say Rehman may be exotic wine but our old songs are water and fortunately everybody drinks water.
Even if its a remix, Ive never been able to get it off my lips for a week and its stupid of
the filmmakers to release the second slow song when the first one seems to keep the thing so awesome.

Becoming Rude

On hindsight i think for a person who's quite shy with new people i am very rude too .
But as much as i try to be patient if not nice,  its tough for me to be  saccharine.
It occured today too , in fact it seems like this whole week was the same in a way.
The problem stems from my inability to be diplomatic where i and my beliefs are strongly involved and my absolute lack of self control  over my facial expressions when angry.

There's A in my team who too joined almost at the same time as me. The guy used to be some sort of a technical manager onsite and now we are all back to working rather than managing. As much as i try to be quiet and let things pass it becomes a tedious life .

Unlike others , esp chirpy young girls who usually get awed by a US returned or talk of US i do not and rather  get bored hearing of the rides there, of the food there and all the trappings. In fact i just have the same old problem of never being over eager to know about  what your colleague was upto  or is daily upto except may be the work (If i consider the person a friend or truly look up to them its different, i love to hear all but such people are far and few)  .Thing is thats all the chap talks about apart from work - how much US people liked him , how good it was there
 and how much fun he had.
Such  conversation is pretty straining to me even though i personally agree with the universal notion that he is a simpleton and too sweet spoken .
Problem is i it gets to me that….. being sugary though you arent as happy or amused really.

Even talk about  work ends abruptly like this because our attitudes are different. He asks questions about something i ve worked on and expects one to have a one shot answer and i am a person who likes to search analyze and answer since i have a severe shortage of memory in my head,
 i do not and cannot rattle off Java methods. I rather happily look into the API and am very  quick to underastand it use it and forget it.
All i remember is the keyword and that its there in the API.

I try and i try to be helpful(after all you dont want to be at loggerheads with your only team mate considering the third chap in the team struts as a senior ) despite some irritating acting smart questions, cant see why cant he google them up if he's so dissastisfied but i have my limitations.
In such a scenario when you raise  points about what i beleive in strongly  i do dish it out scathingly.

A: (In Jest …thats how it starts)You come in so late , do you think if you were in your prev comp it would have been fine

Me: I was the same there too and they tolerated me because when they raised the point i ensured that i come at 9:30 and leave at 6:30 which ended up being a loss to them.
 You walkin and play TT for 2 hrs and i just walkin a hour late. Whats the use of being in office to count hours .

A: Its not the same .you see i believe all must come at 9:30 because when themanager is in all the people should be around and one must stay
till the work is complete(of course thing being his managing hangover). If i was themanager i would never tolerate people coming at 10:30 or 11.

Me: If you were the manager i would never join your project.

A: Hmm well yeah that is a different thing

Me: You count  hours present and not amount of work. Well that does not cut with me . I will not stay in such a place  where they count hours spent  and not work done. I will come at 9:30 and stay till 9 , and yet wont do much is that ok with you? ( I delivered it in such a scathing tone that reflected my prime irritation with such ideologies )

A: Hmm see thats not the thing. chalo chodo. (Poor guy this is what happens when you have only one gal in the team and she is so scathing and upfront instead of being the nice oh so amazed…tell me i will learn kind of thing).

He turned back to work at his laptop and did not talk for nearly 2 hrs and i felt remorse at expressing my beliefs so clearly esp since the chap is a jolly kind of fellow
 and every one likes him a lot.But my patience was used up a lot when i was young and here i am old and impatient and i cannot humor people much.

The other incident was like a comedy of errors straight out of Shakespeare.
I have been particulary upset at my work environment due to various reasons particulary lack of clarity and decision making .
In one such a time i happened to be in a classroom where my manager uttered "May be it was my fault or may be it was yamini's fault" in a very confusing context.
This triggered off all my pent up frustration in this place and i stormed out of the room requesting a one on one.Everyone almost thought i would hand in my papers i looked so upset.
 Of course after i vented how and why was i dragged into a mess i hardly am related to i was calmly clarified by the manager that he was referring to another yamini  - the one who arranged the things.

Now for once i am sorry, though i was glad to have put my all other thoughts clearly in the meeting  that i am fed up with lack of clarity , but then in an innovative environment clarity is always lacking or so it seems i am told.
Huh well so be it.
Life's being unkind all over again since last year can't help it.

Since friends are sparse , rather than cram life with just people
I long for some solitude .
I want time , some work just by myself , collaboration can wait.

Watched becoming Jane



Jane Austen was the flavor of the fortnight i guess for me.

Watched the Keira Knightley version of Pride and Prejudice again.

When it was released I happened to watch it by a happy last minute instinct which in itself shaped events of my professional life.I an V were then in a small seperate subset of our team and we used to really enjoy work . We all wrapped up work very fast as she was quite adept by then of that work and so we left by say at 3pm one fine day and watched this movie. This happened at a time when the rest of the team was kept extremely busy with their streched out days of work. Someone surely was upset by our having fun and made a complain which ended up the team size being decreased and i being moved out of it in the name of
additional responsibilities of importance.That move affected my resume for sure.

Anyways I do not enjoy this newer version of "Pride and Prejudice" as much.Its fine for just one watch. The BBC series is way too good .Keira Knightly gets on your nerves at times with her giggly smiles at times.The Elizabeth in the BBCseries was not as pretty but she grew onto you.
As for Darcy well no one can match Colin Firth at it.

Then i watched "Becoming Jane" a take on the young Jane's rumored affair with Tom Lefroy.Anne Hathway is extremely pretty and i liked her much better than in the eminently watchable "Devil wears Prada" .
The essential thing about such such stories is that they are so very same at the core - from those near victorian times to these so called modern times.

The ponderable quote from movie itself was from Jane's father
"Nothing destroys spirit like poverty."

Well in the end its a nice take and what makes such things special is they are puzzles never to be solved and anyone can take whatever take they want on it.
The truth's well beyond the reach.
Austen might be credited with being the real inventor of chick lit but the fact remains her characters have survived generations and hundreds of years effortlessly capturing the readers heart.
Whether she wrote of experience or imagination,
whether her relationship was a boyish love as somewhere attributed to Lefroy or a firm lasting affection
is a open debate to spice up our boring lives with.
But i like the fact that for all her ironies she gave her books mostly a happy ending implying a sort of spiritedness a sort of belief despite being cynical at the exterior.

As they say "The best love affairs are those we never had."

Pathetic overhearings

Pre Scene happenings:
Tall modern new women manager joins office
Single young fresher wins awards for taking initiatives and innovative ideas

Conversation overheard at Lunch:

W1: I cannot spend that extra time for all this appreciations.
W2: Hmm now they reward people for spending extra time at office
W3: Yes for all that you need to put in more time and we cannot because we have responsibilities
W1: Yes we too if we had remained single could have been like that.
W2: Been like what?
W1:Huh That lady manager
W3: Why do you say that..She has a 13 yr old son
W1: Oh well then (took a second to get over the wrong hypothesis ), well i guess its all about what priorities are.(Meaning she has family as priority so she is stuck here while that lady does not prioritize family like her so she has advanced in career)

Life sucks here….big time.So much hypocrisy.
Damn if you have taken the responsibility be proud of it, of your great sacrifice for the greater good…
why use it as a reason for someone's success and your not being able to match them.
Its there everywhere, i knew it early, so did never have much hopes
but here the acid seems to be concentrated way too much even for my pessimism.

My work too seems to be at a dead end.I feel despair beyond my usual self in this place.
Something ought to happen….even if it is bad…i want to be out of this rut.

A Pause of Thought

The monsoons somehow have a way of assaulting the senses.
Life is getting drearier and darker and in such times the weather kind of makes you feel all the more at sea at some point of nothingness when all around is pouring , moving blowing and what not.
Even the thoughts seemed totally at a pause and then i came across this from those old collections.

A Pause of Thought

I looked for that which is not, nor can be,
And hope deferred made my heart sick in truth:
But years must pass before a hope of youth
Is resigned utterly.

I watched and waited with a steadfast will:
And though the object seemed to flee away
That I so longed for, ever day by day
I watched and waited still.

Sometimes I said: This thing shall be no more;
My expectation wearies and shall cease;
I will resign it now and be at peace:
Yet never gave it o'er.

Sometimes I said: It is an empty name
I long for; to a name why should I give
The peace of all the days I have to live?—
Yet gave it all the same.

Alas, thou foolish one! alike unfit
For healthy joy and salutary pain:
Thou knowest the chase useless, and again
Turnest to follow it.

by Christina Rossetti
Goblin Market, and Other Poems, 1862

Random Notes …again

 

 

I thought i write something better or not write at all than this daily soap opera but then its funny to look back a year later on i hope and so i jotted them down  these stupid notes on my stupid times.

Casual conversations often have some deep undercurrents running and since i am someone who really ponders over words i sense them quite strongly. These thoughts sometimes dont do me much good in general but well i never really have been able to gain that control on the mind's ventures all over the universe.

I am in the most ill suited environment in recent times because it simply adds on to my inbuilt irritation, sarcasm

and depression. Firstly i feel terrible at not doing anything useful in my eyes at all in the past two months. No one bothers much on that but no one does that usually till it comes to the brink anyway.

And then this new team i am the juniormost in terms of experience , and  its getting on my nerves .
First there's a guy say "A" quite bubbly from the Hindi heartland and spending the last couple of years in US . The issue here is i am not chummy kind or young enough to laugh all the time on his jokes and be awed by his narration of US or anywhere for that matter.
Poor people do i hurt them or what.
I mean i am really thrifty with praise . I can be very polite to rudeness  and thus seem nice etc
 but false bubbling praise is something hard to come by me.
 When "A" uploaded his snaps on the intranet i was asked how is it  and i responded yeah good but never thought that such questions deserve applaud and all.
Next day i saw my managers(say S) snap (which looked like a eager child's rather than a time weary managers)

and asked when was  this taken and i was answered 2 years back and i just replied  "oh ok".
 Then "S" asked "come on say something it was good bad or whatever" and i was like - "Oh hell why do i ever talk".
Then this guy "A" added up "She is like this only . yesterday also i asked her about my snap she wont say i.e praise anything". I was perplexed even more - everyone makes notes.
A and all here play TT like maniacs and i am not someone into the games stuff at all. I sit at my desk and time flies by. Its been long since i sat nice and quiet at my desk.
I really do not fit in.
Till here its bearable but the third person sort of makes it a perfect mess.
This guy say "N"comes from over +/- 7 years in the States . May be thats why he thinks of India being stuck in the last millenium or whatever in terms of attitude.
Me and "A' are never comfortable really with this guy who may end up as the technical lead(though his expertise as they say is not of what we are working on he brings in huge generic experience — tools can be learnt..yeah true!!! –but while they learn what happens to those who know them is a different plight) .
Anyways the pure professional stuff is beside the point and issues are always sortable with time.
 I was shocked at the vehemance i heard in his voice that i did not know if to laugh or get serious.."A " and others were casually teasing me about my tiffin and said she wont eat anything that she did not cook. Now i am someone who happily proclaims  cooking is my least favorite activity of all time and i dont do it 90% of the time.
For a chap who speaks after quite some thought "N" spoke "I dont think so …Does she cook?".
"A" persisted "do you know how to make jalebi ", and N was like "She cant cook food and you talk of jalebi".

This to me would be nothing to me, all my dear friends tease me , my mom hates me on this topic eternally.
But when a person who is a virtual stranger to you talks with such  sarcasm on  such a light subject you wonder what is the whole undercurrent all about. It cant be my cooking really.

 Its about how you are perceived and what mental set up they carry in their head  and its now upto me how do i do the whole damned team work here.
That is what it is.
I just dont fit in neither for myself nor in their scheme of things .
For some Like "N" who gets paid double my salary and always hobnobs with the right senior management and yet not having a free hand and esp being given complete authority within the team i.e me and "A" is an issue which is his challenge.
As of now in every team discussion we end the lines with "Right" so much "Right N?", "Right A?","Right Yamini?" that its quite sure so much is so very "Wrong".

Random Notes

I seem to have no specific work and yet have been busier than ever before.
This is the problem i guess when work involves research (oh not in that hallowed sense but more like searching about ways to do stuff which you know exist and have no one to guide you where and when and in a scenario where google is slightly limited). Ive been tired by the whole trial and error scenarios i am doing. May be service companies are best suited for people like me  however stressful they may seem.
Life catches up with you seriously.
How easier life is when you have a manager to blame . Here now i have a manager who's new to the domain and who's so damn cool (he's too soft with people too and this isnt really great from a different perspective but later on about that) about things that it gets on your nerves.
Its a small team and we do wish we can do something tangible, to help him have something to project in his ppts.Poor fella he seems to work more than any of us in the team….endless streams of meetings and answering people and making ppts , while we seem to be stagnant at our desks doing this research with no output.

Three years ago i avoided everyday lunch with my manager by all means as it meant it took away that one peaceful hour of our lives and we had our own gang of girls and however much she tried to force us to join we just escaped.And now i just trod along with our team and the manager, just the four of us simply because it seems a better alternative than have lunch with women
discussing house maids and motherin laws everyday with no respite..

I seem to be the only local in  the team never been abroad , all  the others are back from a considerable time in US and that in itself creates a vaccumm in conversation never mind the different stages of career and lives we are at.

Its been quite a while since ive been this bored with no one to talk to,
no one to make me laugh just for the sheer heck of it ,
 without people who did not change my life in any way except that they made me forget the mess of my life.
Whenever i am stuck like this i go into that life is wortheless thinking mode.
Then again it is in such moments i realize the sheer fortune i've had to spend time with such lively people all around.
The summer is almost gone and rains seem to be coming over all over again. A year again seemed to have passed so soon.
Sometimes writing this blog seems very stupid now , considering the way the blog writing has become a joke all around among celebrities.

As I read Shalimar The Clown

Had been reading Rushdie's Shalimar The Clown.

More than the book its the epigraphs that seem to have settled in my mind.

Shakespeare (specifically Romeo and Juliet)anyway seems to be in thing in my life. In 2 days flat i come across his lines straight offwhen i did not expect them.
After the roses lines ( in my prev post)You come home open your next fiction read and the epigraph says "A plague on both your houses"

Now i i feel like using it oh so many times when i am so very irritated with life or caught between two people who want to see no sense which is quite often these days.

Even the simple act of getting a learning license becomes a nuisance for me. I managed to get a leave after 3 weeks of cancellation and got the learning license and then that envelope got lost in 15 minutes flat never mind how.

Fate as much as i like to wish it away seems to just catch up in amazing ways. Now this is not some huge issue, it simply adds to the irritation factor in my life.Every little thing seems a huge road block and i am worn out with this.

"It isn't the mountain ahead that wears you out; it's the grain of sand in your shoe."

Neverthless getting back to the other epigraph taken from from

"The Country without a post office" by Agha Shahid Ali
Its quite lovely in itself cause you could almost feel it

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

I am being rowed through Paradise on a river of Hell
Exquisite ghost, it is night.
The paddle is a heart; it breaks the porcelain waves…

I'm everything you lost. You won't forgive me.
My memory keeps getting in the way of your history.

There is nothing to forgive. You won't forgive me.

I hid my pain even from myself; I revealed my pain only to
myself.
There is everything to forgive. You can't forgive me.

If only somehow you could have been mine,
what would not have been possible in the world?

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

As for the book in itself its not ingenious or anything . It just shows some good research and linking up of facts and fiction with brilliance and brilliance is Rushdie's trademark.Though i never love his books one simply has to say that whole idea he scripts in his books is sheer brilliance. How he develops his script  sometimes irritates you.

 Every word esp in the introductory parts of the book alludes to something more. India is named to represent something …Kashmira represents something.

Though cannot say liked the book much it seemed quite better than "The Ground beneath her feet" which left you quite a bit unstable may be.The book when it looks beyond the revenge storypoint presents different facets of the same thing well……like the point wherein the Gen Kachhwaha thinks how the Kashmiris are not thankful about being defended and how he himself degenerates into savageness. The Kashmiris villagers though have their owm version as all the other characters define it.

The nuggets Rushdie inserts have their own significance like the story  about the "Room of Power" which he ends with the lines "Freedom is not a Tea party, India. Freedom is war"

Rushdie somehow lets one down badly when presenting a female standpoint and his sketch of Boonyi Kaul seems so messed up and confusing sort.
In fact the character he completely fleshes out i felt was only Max Ophelus. All the characters were set to represent something in the macro plot(Kashmir India and Pakistan) and never clear into the micro plot(the revenge drama).

Through out there is the description of a paradise called  Kashmir which probably was and which will never be even if peace returns.It is here that to some extent Rushdie succeeds.

Neverthless its an addition to Rushdie's brilliant plots set in tumultous times and full of human greed for power of various kinds manifesting itself in various ways.