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.