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.

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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

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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

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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.

Hope, deceiving …..

Unspoken Kindness in faces scares you

when you know you are not destined for such.

Some moments are destined to break your heart

Life has a way of scraping the wounds

"It could have been" is such a deceiving phrase in the realm of existence

When you reach the end of some horizon

you know it in the heart - the end that is

and yet…you wish

you had that betrayer of a friend , called hope by your side

for as they say

"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

A feel of the days

There's a feeling of being akin to sand
Broken into grains of nothingness
Can hold no water
drifting away never finding any roots
just slipping away to nothingness
even the sea throws you far off itself

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

When nietzsche said "The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time" he was right but thats for sweet memories.
Bad memory brings its own troubles . You never seem to be become immune to the bad things when they occur over and over again.You seem to hurt yourself for the same things over and over again.

I have a strange memory blackout problem amplified by a low confidence in my memory and my tendency to remain obscure.
When in a training class someone said SWOT analysis. All i remember is O and T expanded.It took me 30 mins to finally remember the S & W expansion.
And so i've never understood why i never trust my memory well enough .
There was a quote on the slide in today's training …a quote i easily know to be from Romeo and Juliet( Where else can one find a rose by any name) but i never respond on being asked.

When another class they ask if anyone has read "World is Flat" i find it prudent not to talk though i read it long back.
Then when someone puts across that poem i love "The Road not Taken" on a slide and tells that its an amazing poem and strange no one has read it and proceeds to read it, i find it unnecessary to comment.

I'm drifting back to a quiet nothingness i hopelessly prefer all over again.

I look back at anything past  and it seems something like this lovely Calvin stuff

Here's a picture of me when I was three. Look at that smile! Ahh, the arrogance of youth! I thought I knew everything when I was three. ….. Now, a lifetime of experience has left me bitter and cynical.
Funny how you miss out on things. Watched Sweet Home Alabama again.

A lil over 5 years ago we watched it at the end of a training program wherein we had to give opinions and all that stuff.
In my evergreen cynicism i found only one point  - The other guy in the movie who was being nice throughout anyways ended up a loser and hence it shows that most of the time you just accept that Life is unfair.

This time when i watched i pondered over a line i seemed to have missed last time.
"You cannot have roots and wings." The saddest part though is when you cant have both

I was searching for the exact quote and it seems someone else too has thought about the same…Funny some coincidences are just that but yet they i guess make you feel sane.

Last month i had taken two books which are not much in circulation at the Library - "A corner of a Foreign Field" and "The Brainfever bird" . When i returned them finally after nearly 2 months with me and a girl after surfing through all the library again picked those two I was a bit reflective , curious and sort of possesive too funnily of the books. And then she sees my pick for the recent month and enquires if i am taking it  or can she have it.

I'd have loved to talk more but she was with a chirpy crowd and so i am left to myself believing in my own normalcy as much as weird i seem to many these days.

A dull and loaded begining

A new place or is it new?

As is said there are wheels within wheels

and so life goes on.

The best part of this beginning is I have had least expectations

I seemed to have grown old quite a bit finally in my mind too or so it seemed till I got into this place and found people worse than me in those terms .

A top notch workplace in the world and yet I feel bored.

Its not about the work , I dont have an inkling of what i would be doing in concrete terms - Its all visions i've been shown for the moment and i am too cynical of them and its too early to talk of it.

The thing is there's no liveliness around, me being dull enough.

Both my previous workplaces had n number of issues

but it was always buzzing with people

their problems, their anger

their fun and sheer joy

I guess this is a problem with the real big organizations where you have those highly experienced people immersed and tagging along with life. Its not like they don't have fun or they don't laugh and all.

Its just that they dont take the change of an added person and so they dont take an initiative and its quite tough to break into well settled groups unlike in the past places where we who became friends - all joined in fresh groups and were equally new.

I am the same frankly but i was fortunate in the past. I did not run into people who were the same as me. Most were freshers who took in change and assimilated me into them and their enthusiasm their joy and spirit was simply contagious.

Here for the first time i seem to be in a place where 70% of the workforce is steeped in experience and thus target oriented for the next position(and also married), so they all are busy with their lives and its issues.
I am initially very shy and quiet so i don't make friends but at both my past jobs it was these lively people who came to me involved me and we ended up having great fun.Here even if i take initiative people have too many worries and just let it be known nicely that have to finish work.
Also fortune played a bad joke.I ran into a really avoidable person here… a chap whom i had requested to get me a job in tech doc umentation when i had no job and things were not good for me. I went for 2 or 3 days to get trained but then many things happened.
Like i realized though i write ok and can learn it , i wanted to be in s/w a lot more .
The environment and job profile seemed dull the more i understood it.

And then this guy had a bit of superiority while training and all that pissed off and i quit giving reason about my moving to another city.

This shocked him, and may be affected his word at place where he recommended don't know what, but i was amazed when i ran into him at my new company and he remembered me.Then few days ago he casually mentioned - you were moving to somewhere else…"Was that a lie".
He put it as though i had spoken some great lie.
Just so irritating and pisses me off. I really wonder the worlds a small place.

But yeah i am amazed - I am always amazed when people remember me. I always think I myself would forget a person like me very easily.

But nevertheless life's at a very dull point after a long time.It was bad so many times in the past 4.5 years since I began a career but its been long since it was so dull.

The cubicles are huge and so is the emptiness.

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P.S: Some standard cribbing

I hate Laptops at least since Ive been forcefully made to own one by this job. I am supposed to take it around with me all the time and have to walk nearly a km with it to get to office. Not even in school did i carry anything so heavy. the bag's all very well made but thats heavy in itself.

It feels like a noose around my neck- I feel like a coolie at times.

Oh heck why cant i just leave it at office.This is why big organizations and their policies and all get to me. For a easy going person like me who never wanted to bother to drive i am seeing some benefits of it finally.

The byproducts of a farcial / forced equality

Hey daughter i came home tired and toiling for you all  get me a cigarette from the shop

Are you mad - Does anyone ask their daughter to get one

Whats the big deal I never differentiated between a Son and a Daughter (i .e I paid for your education completely) and I cant even get such a small thing done .

Ok if this is what it is i guess I will get it have some myself too say what ?

Shut up you don't have any respect for elders -  what rubbish you are  talking about.

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Truth is stranger than fiction .....It surely is.
He he he ...Such are the Inspirations for posts with topics "Save the girl Child" and this.

Fortnight of whiling away time at movies…..

The last month or more specifically the last fortnight i seem to have watched more movies than i ever do these days.

Yesterday caught up on Ajay Devgan's U Me aur Hum. Though i dont like to admit I liked some parts of the movie not the whole though. But i wont recommend it to anyone looking out for a relaxation or fun at the weekend.
The sad part may be that i like the tragic parts of the movie much more than the comic parts. The comedy was stupid and irritable. But whenever esp in the seconf half Ajay devgan gets into his guilty and cynical mode i liked him. I liked that frank acceptance that everybody likes oneself the most - the self defence part.
As one grows older hum bane tum bane ek duje ke liye seriously seems stupid and the way he enacts that feeling i really liked it. The best thing about the movie was definitely the bonhomie of friends in every scene(though Divya dutta surely makes loud scenes wherever present..when its just the three of the guys it seems pretty much how guys seem to hang out), its a welcome relief from saas bahu behen and maa at every hospital scene in Bollywood.

The real person needing appreciation for this movie is the marketing department. If they had let it out before that the script was related to Alzheimers i doubt even the first week would have had any collection. It was packaged through and through a Kajol romance and   its truly a Kajol movie whenever she's in the frame .But when she's not around the rest carry it through without being too sombre.

One mistake i did was watch this movie in a normal theater and not a multiplex where crowds are relatively quiet. If one needs to understand what Indian majority is like you just need to see them in dark theaters and the way they behave. I can get it when they laugh at crude joke or at the hero or whistle at the heroine but what is so funny about a baby drowning is beyond me as i listened to laughter at that scene.
So if one does want to see it better watch it where people keep quietly to themselves or at least act as such.

Other movie i watched is to be watched in a theater where you get the real Indian audience. shouting whistling screaming, throwing torn paper. Yeah the movie is made for it and is good for a  weekend watch without thinking much about it.
Race is one such movie which would get on your nerves if everyone around you was too quiet and thoughtful. You have to be sort of blind and the mind being nauseatingly immersed in watching the cool strutting heroes and sexy scheming heroines.The plot may be a mystery to some , to me though it was more a question of how than what?
"What" kind of suspense stories are rare in bollywood.
There are cars, there's the sizzling Bipasha and Katrina and the pouting Sameera. Then there's the cool Saif and Anilkapoor(Gosh he's just looking dashing these days and one can only laugh when one sees the old song one two ka four) There's Akshay Khanna too but thats hardly noteworthy.

Then I watched quite a few older ones of the past year i missed out on. Some like Dhol were fun  and some thoughtful like Halla Bol which i blogged previously about.
Some were like fine for the time being say Saawariya. I think Bhansali is just a child who likes to paint but got into movies. Saawariya you can say my expectation as a movie was so low that i ended up liking it if only for the look and feel. I mean i expected so much gloominess in that blue as i watched the trailers and heard the story that when i finally saw it i though Sonam's Kapoor's laughter and Rabir Kapoors childishness sort of seemed to make me feel as though i was watching some Hans Andersen fairy tale. There's nothing that remains though after you watch it except a blue haze.

Then i watched Namesake. Tabu's fascinating is the first thing that comes to mind and then the movie. Well the movie's good but it won't be the same without Tabu. The best part of it is though its less of a commercial movie it never drifts into the sullenness that some art movies do.It has a upbeat feel to it even when sad and Kal Penn is also enjoyable and considering its a diaspora movie i liked the honesty of it, the generation gap and the final acceptance of it once you are in US.

In India they will fight it but once you get to US a helplessness added to the loneliness i guess makes one accept the differences of generation much more ,though the hurts i guess linger on and that exactly i guess the NRI's suddenly become more religious and traditional than ever in that far land.

My favorite moment was when Tabu is asked by her husband (after being married for years and they return to India for a vacation )"why did you say yes to me" she says that because you were the better of what was on offer…and then laughs and says what did you expect me to say "I love you" as in America. Its a beautifully honest moment i felt.

Then I just watched two of my all time favorites again like My best friends wedding and Casablanca.Though i like Julia Roberts in general this movie is sort of more than her. I sort of love it a little bit more whenever i see it. I laugh at myself remembering that I was in college when it released and then there were no multiplexes and i watched this movie thrice(something i only did for Sharukh's yash/karan johar flicks).
I just liked Rupert Everett though i then did not know that even in real life the guy is not straight.His part is  really charming especially the whole sequence of talk in the end when he calls her up and gets her to dance at the wedding reception. Of course the music is very beautifully used in the movie  and even the hero (Dermot Mulroney )is nice and touching.
The best part inevitably has to be the conversation as its a given with any movie i really like esp with ones i watch again and again.

Casablanca i guess i've just blogged much about the movie but i love watching such movies again when its late night somehow. you sort of belong to a different world.

Notting Hill is another of those nice weekend watches that  keep you warm. I like the whole sequence about a bunch of non acheivers. It sort of reminds me of that one line that i used to think fits perfect for me."Who said nothing is impossible. Ive done nothing for years now"

 At times it does get a bit loud though but i enjoy Hugh Grant quite a lot there…esp the garden and the song. You say it best when you say nothing at all.

Not sure when i will catch up on the rest considering i have a new job to get used to from tommorow.

My friends ask me constantly hey you are at home for nearly a fortnight , aren't you bored . I seriously cant explain to them  that NO I am not. I'm just loving it. I'd have loved it more if i got to Travel but even without it honestly I am not bored.

Ive my books and there are blogs(which i keep to myself ) and then there's cinema once in a while and then there's sleep always. Ah to be lost to this world till the sun is right above your forehead. It'll be long before i get such a break (i.e to wake up by 11 am) and it just went by …hmmm.

Remembering the Roses and its yet unanswered question

This post was actually prompted after the previous post about crowds and individuals thought i expressed.
This first thought came to me years ago first in school though then it was not so definitive.

It was prompted by a story in it called "Remember the Roses".
As if the mystery in the story was not enough it was the only story in the book for whom author information page said "Information not available" author name though was Avery Taylor but the yeah there was no Google then.

Its a story that has a haunting quality about it and i believed i was the only one who thought so much about it, but i found a comment here just a few hours ago by someone who also remembers it which just adds to the story anyways :).
Caesarean Conspiracies seems to be my most visited post on the blog .

Actually thought i would put a link to the story if i could find it online and i was led to a site http://www.remembertheroses.com/ .

Here the person tells in the background section how he came across the story
"About fifteen years ago while traveling in India, I came across an old book of short stories being read by the school children there"

I happen to be one of the schoolchildren and have loved it ever since.
I would want to see the movie cause everyone has their own interpretation ,
own touching part of the story and a part of my own imagination and thoughts is what this post is all about.
Every time i think of the story i have a different dimension to it.

The story overall is really special in that special book aptly name "Treasury of short stories " .
I still treasure it and its yellow pages with underlines and meanings i remember some of the happiest days of my life.

There is a word called "apoplexy" in it which i had not understood and had looked up the dictionary.
Strangely i forget so much in todays's world, but i always remember that word and the story.
It is in this story that in those days when very few people around spoke good english that we came across the first french words "Au revoir" ,"Adieu" and "Vive Churchill" etc.

Its a story set in the World war era of Nazis where Robert a soldier of the Allied forces is captured by the German and he is saved by a
mysterious woman called Jehane Lebrun.
No one believes his true story and report of escape and when he digs up the evidences he can only come to the conclusion that its Joan of Arc
who saved him and his friend.
But what is more touching is the way the story sets off as though this Robert of the second world war era is the Knight called
Sir Robert whom Joan of Arc is supposed to have loved.
Its a very touching story with just the right amout of love , mystery and history and sort of lingers on and on in the mind especially the last line

"See Jehane i remembered the roses"

In this story the below lines are the ones which first brought the conflicting thought about individual vs the whole crowd(be it a nation/ community/family).

Here Robert is being helped to escape by Jehane and he also tries to take with him another captive soldier but he is unconscious and when Robert cannot revive him

Robert decides to kill him so that he has an easy death compared to the torture by Nazis to give secrets, but Jehane prevents this by the below argument.

Robert:"Do you think i enjoy doing it"
Joan:"No it sickens you"
Robert:"yes but its necessary"

Joan: "Ah yes the old story Always the same. Better to sacrifice one life than many. Thats what they tell you , isn't it"

Robert:"And its true"

Joan: "Its never true" There was pitiless anger in her eyes and her voice was bitter
"Every life is precious. War demands that we kill, but in our own defence, to save what God has given us.But this is murder…It is betrayal and you know its wrong. In
your heart its wrong"

Since then whenever i come to a conflict about whether Every life is precious or some are more equal than the others this story fills my mind.
Honestly i have never resolved any answer.
As long as that one life to be sacrificed is no one to you or rather is not some one precious or special in our own eyes , we have a tendency to say yes one life can and should be sacrificed if saves/ helps the collective whole.

The moment we replace the person to be sacrificed with someone we love or regard as a great person relative to other being who live day in and day out the argument thins out and we believe every life is precious.

Its also probably my favorite short story with a romatic touch, along with that excellent Jeffrey Archer short story called "Old Love" and i remember it very well ,far after it was supposed to be remembered by the school .

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P.S: For all those who somehow love this story , thanks to Vinits efforts we have a pdf version of it. and here is the link to download “Remember the Roses”.Very nice of you Vinitt and thanks a lot.

Also since quite a few people requested for it on my wordpress blog here are the stories

The following scanned stories are uploaded at
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=2b12de67400a8fb991b20cc0d07ba4d29c366712a409c822

Treasury of Short Stories - Scanned pages for below

1. The Tiger in the Tunnel…..Ruskin Bond
2. The Silver Lining…………….Chaman Nahal
3. The Liar…………………………Mulk Raj Anand
4. Half a Rupee Worth……….R K Narayan
5. The Case for the Defence….Graham Greene
6. Robin……………………………Jim Corbett
9. Mowgli’s Brothers………….Rudyard Kipling
11. A Fishy Story………………….Jerome K Jerome
15. The Lost Pearls………………..Sir Patrick Hastings
===================================================================================
Links for the rest of the stories

7. Dusk…………………………….Saki (Hector Hugh Munro) - http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/375/
8. The Face on the Wall……..E.V.Lucas - http://students.iiit.ac.in/~nirnimesh/Literature/The%20Face%20on%20the%20Wall.htm
10. The Gift of the the Magi……O Henry - http://www.auburn.edu/~vestmon/Gift_of_the_Magi.html
12. Three Questions………………Leo Tolstoy - http://www.online-literature.com/tolstoy/2736/
13. David Swan ……………………Nathaniel Hawthorne - http://www.classicreader.com/book/188/1/
14. The SignalMan ………………..Cahrles dickens - http://www.gordon-fernandes.com/hp-lovecraft/other_authors/signalman.htm
16. Remember the Roses………..Avery Taylor - download at http://www.mediafire.com/?xeidjmn2yzs

“The Last Burden” & Three years

My first weekend after quitting my job and i was stuck at home in rain and a not so very great mood i picked up the " The Last Burden" by Upamanyu Chatterjee. It certainly did not help my mood.

Its a book to be read to realize why art films will always be that…..art films….Truth personified but for a working class person it is what we dont like to look at or rather why a normal middle class person does not find it not worth the time
and money.It explains why Bollywood potboilers and everlasting Television teary sagas and the no good fiction like M&B's and are infinitely more interesting or rather seem more worth spending time and money.

They help you escape , they give you hope or rather they just blot out the present and when the present is a dark and unrelenting pain this isn't that what the majority would like.

The reason is stark and simple. Who wants to go and see on a 70mm screen or read for hours or days together of a dreariness, of a hurt that on lives through day in and night out - reflected and picturised again and then spend time and money on it….unless you are a soul looking for refuge in the compassion that you are not alone suffering the same.

"You'll notice, Jamun, money's never within your reach when you need it the most. I've witnessed how the itch to hoard dominated both my father and yours. I merely hoodwinked myself - that if i spent bountifully on deserving things then somehow my kitty would be replenished."

"Instead over the years while Jamun has grown up observing his parents squabble…while he's witnessed their marriage paralyse his father and slowly butcher his mother, he's begun to believe that living is elementally a petty , indecent, punishing business; its value lies in struggling against its meanness."

Most of it if not all is about the everyday middle class fare that we live through and struggle with. The finances, the hatred, the guilt ,the sense of duty, the helplessness compounded by the frustration of with /for the people around you.

The forces that pull you down when you try to make an escape.One should read this book to understand why its so difficult to simply read those new age books on positivity and leading a better life are so useless in so much of our world and why so many of our brilliant and not so brilliant people escape as a last refuge to that land of promise USA and others far enough despite criticizing all about it and its culture.

I come across such books once in a while and to say i enjoy them would be too nonsensical. There are mirrors you dislike and this is one of them. But for people who like mirrors however truly they reflect the darkness around and within them
this should be just fine.

"belu was the sole person in my family who cherished me, and not the salary i carted home-……….living together merely to thrill in unkindness…"

"But you oughtn't judge all marriages by the corrosion of ours. I know - that you don't wish to marry because you dread that you'll tail off like us."

Then there was Chekov egging on the cynic in me as i read his "Three Years"

"You'll fall in love and you'll suffer, you'll fall out of love and you'll be deceived, because there isn't a woman (I happily read it as woman/man rather than criticizing Chekov) that wouldn't deceive you, you'll suffer, fall into despair and you yourself will deceive. But the time will come, when all this will be just a memory and you'll reason coldly and consider it utterly trivial…"

"He remembered the long conversations in Moscow in which he had himself still so recently taken part, conversations about how it is possible to live without love, how passionate love is a psychosis, how finally there is no love…..but now …..(some stuff about how he fell in love at first sight) …he would be at a loss to give an answer"

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P.S: Loved the Vodafone ad with the Kabhi Kabhi song.I guess its because its pretty much of what we grew up like and some did end up just the same way if not all.

This post is almost a week old as i just felt too lazy to complete it and in just a week i find my mood is different enough.

Bidding Adieu to an era….and learning to let Go

Its been like the end of an era for me today in more ways than one.
I just walked out of a place i spent nearly 3 years - my workplace and no i did not even look back and walked off as though it was just another day.
I put in my papers a week back and to my utter astonishment I was relieved in a week when i had requested just a month early releiving (well when cost cutting is the mantra such things happen…my only regret being that if i knew they would be so nice I would not have spent almost an hour at the new company interview begging for a 2 months notice and instead bargained for a better package).

When i sit down and look back there is so much to cherish , so much to be thankful that it got over but yet I am not mourning .In fact i was almost tearful when two of my friends in the group left over a year back. I have changed it seems , that girl who used to get sentimental enough to sulk for hours and days when you leave a place/person seems to have finally after thirty years of existence gotten used to leaving things behind.
I have always since childhood had to leave things behind being the the daughter of a government servant transferred around, and every place it took one hell of a time to adjust and then when i finally did , we moved again and i became grief personified as a melancholic child.
Now i guess i finally have learnt to Let Go.
Is it because i have finally grown up , or is it because i have finally given up?
I have been wondering.

I dont know what lies ahead of me , and I being that worst scenario thinking person I do have my fears but i am so calm relatively.Then i came home and looked at my blog. I noticed that in the last 1 year after changing the project i have been relatively less bitter about my workplace esp my managers on the blog .

The reason being that it was relatively a much nicer project and place than my previous one but yet today when i gave my exitinterview i filled in the form in what i remembered bitterly .

After that i realized unfortunately that this might end up being used against my immediate project/manager rather than being taken as a collective feedback for the organization.
I spoke to my manager to let it be known and i guess she's pretty cool on that which made me feel better.
In fact even in my previous project i really appreciate my manager for the support (despite such a sick sr management…against whom i have the real issues) and all except for the damned possesiveness they possesed about letting people go their way and the dramatics that were associated there.

Somewhere it pained when was greeted with a "thank you for your services" line but then what can you expect from someone way up the ladder and had minimal intearction with you.

For a moment i felt guilty about giving any negative feedback of any sort considering the fact that while i have always been criticized for not doing something more, I have always been appreciated here for doing what was expected of me splendidly.
But then I always believe that one needs to do it for a future set of people who would come in and some who stayed behind.

Nevertheless I for one last time met people who would remember me fondly and so would I though the chances of us meeting were less .
I somehow felt fine about leaving . I sort of realize deep within finally that things change in any case, if i dont move on others will and we anyways will end up on different paths.

I will always remember this place for the friends i made here….friends who remind me of the quote
"Love is blind , but friendship closes its eyes".
So many of them did that for me , I 've never realized why ?

People who pulled me out of my quiet moods ,
People who put up with my temper,
People who for all their jokes on all around spared me ,
People who gossiped all around and had so many judgements of everyone but never judged me or at least always put up a not guilty for me.
People who for all the ease with which they speak on all other stuff to me become hesitant when they ask me , when will you marry ? or invite us for your marriage.
People who stood up for me even when I spoke against them.
People who trusted me and took my word instantly.
People who may have thought me miserly but yet adored me despite it and spent a lil bit more on me.
We all have dispersed slowly across companies , cities and continents.
I will miss them . As you go up that damned ladder one is forced to climb i know it will rare to get that same love ,that trust that loyalty,
but then for once i will be positive minded, for i did not expect all the above here too when i left my past organization.(I started my blog with a poem missing people from my past organization)
I know its hard , but yeah for once its not really impossible.

So here's hoping for the best and getting prepared for the worst.

P.S: I have now 2 whole months to fritter but considering i have only one offer in hand , to minimize the risk i am considering to request an early joining .
But yeah for the next fortnight i plan to just be idle and while away time , cause i no longer have a team i can go around with , and most friends are married and
have I have a family which does not travel well.
So i will get some books and enjoy them my greatest loves and traverse a thousand worlds.

Weekends roll by…as i while off time watching stuff

Saw Jodha Akbar sometime before last weekend and what do i say its for me just another movie  only the sets are like of another era. The language put me off ,the dialogues make it actually worse than it is.It feels like todays's chit chat, nothing
royal about it.

When i said its was just the same love story set in a different era , a friend remarked well all love stories are same. True but its how you treat them that makes them different.

The Rasoi dialogues and stuff are simply out of Ekta Kapoor's soaps i felt .And now this reminds me of the timesofindia article " What woment don't want" wherein Ekta Kapoor says "I have always been a very focused person….And my career is my focus now . I see no reason or incentive  to reprioritise and focus on marriage instead"

This is why i love the woman and hate her soaps. She simply doesn't believe in what she puts on her soaps and yet has a nation believing in that bharatiya nari covered in kilos of jewellery thing.She fools scores of people and makes loads of money. I guess it gives her one huge kick out of it.

I must say Ekta Kapoor's key strength is her comedy which she adds in all her soaps but still if Ekta Kapoor had made Jodha Akbar beleive me she'll make it more romantic than Gowarikar did .(He made Swades so realistic which was
awesome esp in terms of what made Shahrukh do).

There was that scene of Hrithik doing sword fight practice showing off, and Jodha impressed by it. Thats ok but then if thats all then why do the film fraternity go to town that the movie was made to showcase Jodha's strength of character and
blah blah.
It was for this scene that  that many girls  and even guys(adds my sis) see the movie its said.His face never matches his abs somehow for Hrithik i always feel.If abs are to to one's taste John Abraham is the original and the better.

Anyway the pair is beautiful enough(guys around say Ashs's old now ho cares …well i think it is now that she's looking pretty , rather than plastic earlier) to watch the movie once as stretched out as it is once but anyone who calls it a classic is just being too much.

Watched "Runaway bride" and "Four weddings and a Funeral" again on the weekend and just keep thinking why by the the time many English movies end you are so impressed by the hero/heroine though at the start you never think much of him/her. I first got this thought a decade ago i guess when i watched Speed. Keanu Reeves looked just nothing on the poster to me but by end i  liked him fine.Therein lies the acting and direction difference i guess.

P.S: Then there was the end of the Australian tour, I was delirious enough to disturb by buzzing on messenger a friend in US working hard towards a release.When in college we were like so thick friends only about cricket, we belonged to different groups and all but it cricket esp that Australian tour in 1998(warne's nightmares being my cherished dream), the world cup in 1996 that our memories really start off and i guess this starts the end of them.
Its wonderful to see all the new ones but nostalgia is a damned thing for the mind as much as it cajoles the heart.

As says my Tooltip for Books in Life tag on the wordpress blog my book reviews are not reviews but the feelings ,thoughts and memories the book puts in my head and heart and occasionally the soul.

After quite some days I started off reading Rusking Bond's Landour days this weekend. He is one author I love (and perhaps envy )for the sheer simplicity of life he has had is able to relate in his books.Except for his book "Strangers in the Night" which is absolutely a male fantasy kind of book different from any other book of his and I did not enjoy rest of his book bring into life an idyllic pleasure that I never have had.

His love for flowers and his description of them makes me so enjoy them . So when I started of on the introduction of this book "Landour days" – a writers journal I found so many of the things echoed and so many memories brought back .

The first line itself reminds me why I started writing this blog anonymously

""The habit of keeping a diary has led me into trouble more than once,""….."People love dipping into other people's diaries and….resulted in … ill-feeling."

It happened to me with someone of my own with just a few lines and no one has the time to read the whole ….just a few words that "I hate her" (Never mind the fact that she is the only one in this world I ever have trouble deciding to hate or love at any given time ) is all that was remembered and it probably caused a crack that though time has hidden has caused irreparable damage.

Then the story of his headmasters wife reminded me of the day in school when I was given some real insult as a child saying I was trying to forge.Funny part was I never understood what I was doing was wrong. On my lazy afternoons I just copied my teacher's signature a few times in my notebook and when it went again to her with the homework I was caught for An attempt to forge in fourth or fifth class I think. I recalled it as I read it.

His introduction itself is what I think I would like to write for my blog….

"I am a compulsive diarist…..In this way I have preserved much that otherwise would have been forgotten. Naturally there were evnts trivial in retrospect which are better forgotten but it is salutary for me to flip through the pages of old diaries…..and see how stupid I was at times or how I coped with difficult situations…..…Not everything that happens goes into the diary. The privacy of friends has to be respected. My own privacy has to be preserved, to a certain extent.But I am a subjective writer and much that I have written …has been from personal experience." I guess that's why being anonymous is best for this journal.

His lines about compulsive walkers –" who will walk all day here and there everywhere not in order to get somewhere, but to escape"……….Those of us who must work for a living and would love to be able to walk…It's a rat race for most people whether they like it or not." is another some surely can relate to.

In his advice to budding writers is a point 3 which convinces me of my limitations whenever I think of my writing in general

"Are you interested in anyone else other than yourself? Writing about oneself has its limitations"

The book and its simple funny incidents which are so believable and the idyllic morning and mountains reminding you you of times when you could dream of it at least .Many love the sea , but I like the mountains a bit more , theres something about them which fascinates me – hillsides covered with flowers may be that's what is my imagination – especially cosmos. As I walk to office I see the orange variety oif them planted in the traffic circle and they are so lovely standing up to the sun. I like the white and pink more but in the dusty crossroads I guess orange is suitable.Today one cant afford houses in hill stations . One cant afford them in these concrete jungles firstly.

Throughout the book he uses quotes like" It isn't life that matters , but the courage you bring to it" which put things into perspective which is something I love to do in my blog , never realized that till now.

I wouldn't write what he wrote of flowers they mean a lot more and so to me but ah the way he puts it.

"To me flowers are the most sensual of living things, or perhaps its just that they appeal to the sensuality in my own nature"

For me flowers are a hope , are a sign of living and blooming for the day and yes they appeal to me in ways nothing else does esp when they are on plants itself.

During my trip to Mumbai I traveled so much but what I remember is the flowers there , they are so cheap compared to here and so fresh and available in bounties. As I got down from Dadar station I saw a little girl with bouquets of red and yellow roses some 10 to 15 bouquets I guess as though they were so unreal all in her arms and that's all I remember. And then the African daisies you see green centered white ones that they pluck and sell at temples.I was so reluctant to give it to the pandit who would just crush and throw them at Siddhi Vinayak.Herein I see houses though where the pink bougainvillea wraps itself all over neem trees in such a pretty manner that I just stand for moments when I walk that path occasionally. I used to love the long walls for kilometers covered by bougainvillea a few years ago on roads which now have glass buildings.

"My faults and limitations are many but I've always accepted that I'm a most imperfect specimen of humanity, which means I've always been on friendly terms with myself"The first part of the above line I can write today but I hope I mean the second part too some day i.e I accept my faults and limitations easily but I can't be friendly with myself for them and none around me let me be.

It was nice to read something so simply joyful its always the reason I love his books, including the humor which does not get cynical and yet leaves you amused The part where he decides silence is the most sweetest sound is what I feel at time and cant bear to listen any music at all.

His stories set in simple people of Mussorie, Dehra and such hills remind me of what one can never have…its not just because of the financial factor but also because of the time that passed by.

The lines he writes for Dehradoon are what I guess one can write for anything or anyone one loves.

"Dear old Dehra : I may stop loving you, but I wont' stop loving the days I loved you"

P.S: The weekend I guess has been idyllic for me this time…Went for an interview which felt too easy except that the interviewer seemed more inrested in my education details or rather pulling out information from there. His wry look when he asked "how come your % dropped from 80% in school to 65% in Engineering- Too much studying eh was quite memorable" ….though I will forgive him rather for putting it humorously rather than the other chap at the Database company who found that some one from my college was supposed to be very active and god knows what.

Sunday was all watching Sachin and as that banner by some one in the match said thanks for all the memories. Not to watch him in live action is a regret I will live with.Then I had pre decided Monday was not right for office as I woke up idyllically at 9:30 am as I slept finishing this idyllic book late at 1:30 am and now write of it.