Speak up!

So whats on my mind today?

Considering the amount of work that i have today, i should not be blogging at all. But I had to write. I simply had to.

There is this thing with me of not saying things when they ought to be said, or in the way i would like to say it. It could be about replying to someone commenting on my work, or passing snide remarks on the way i look on some day, or a taunt about some work i made a mistake in or forgot about. It could be about asking someone if he/she would have some time in the day to explain me something. It could be about initiating a conversation.

For people who know me, this may come as a surprise. Shy may not be the trait they would choose to associate me with. I am anything but shy. But why this then? And not only me, there would be others who may have faced this problem in their lives. What if this starts happening to someone daily, every time he/she has to face people at home or in the office? Today, in all those micro seconds i was not working in, i came up with answers to these questions within my mind.

• "What would they think of me?" or " I may look like an idiot doing that.", "She/He may think I am an inefficient slug." I would term this as is a extreme case of empathy. I have never been shy to do or say anything till now! Oh Come on!
  
• What should be the way out of it? How i see it is to tell yourself that it is high time you stop getting concious about yourself. "Hell, will they kill me if i look stupid?" Every damn organism in this world has a right to look stupid ok. And if that helps you learn something, then understand that, and do it the right way next time. (Like if you fall down a million times, you get up and start walking again.)
  
• As for remarks and innuendos, well, i guess different people react to it differently. Some swear under their breath, for some pat comes the reply, while others just choose to ignore. Sometimes its better to ignore that to repent for the rest of the day (or the week or whatever amount of time) for what you said.
  
• And its OK to be bitchy sometimes. Do not let the other person take you for granted. Do not let them presume things about you. Truth must be known. Like i said, its good to remain silent sometimes; but if you think it has to be said, JUST SAY IT. Its ok. There are no saints here. And you obviously do not want to be one. They'll understand. No one treats you like door-mat. Not even your elders. Not even your seniors.


• Be good to people who deserve it; ONLY to the ones who deserve it.

The next time i want to say something to someone, il remember what i blogged for myself. This should probably be the rarest post one must have ever read- a post in a public blog site meant exclusively for the person writing it. Whew!.. I feel better now.

Blissful Thinking

• Peace in the air, book in one hand, warm coffee in the other
• Feel of the raindrops on the palm
• Ma’s hug
• Cool breeze, long walks
• Mountains, temples, twilight, and a camera
• Stereo playing rock music, no traffic on the road, long drive
• An old pal drops in to say hi
• The engulfing warmth in the eyes of your beloved
• Flowers sent on birthday
• Food cooked by Ma
• Bike ride on a long stretch with best buddies
• Sunday evening movie, Monday holiday

Happiness, there it lay
Just somewhere around ye

Had gathered dust and must

As ye chose to walk away

And the angel said, "Ye shall work again".

Monday inertia... Drove to work... Checked mails... Read blogs... Am updating mine... Routine... Except one thing... Iv got work dude!... heh

Got a new project at last. And this ones going to be a looong drraaaagggg... I say, its going to be a tough one. Study of eight cities.. sigh!.. But thats ok i guess. One has to move on... from one city to eight... But no worries... Come November, and people shall find me cribbing for work again!

Weekend was ok... Nothing extraordinary... Well as a friend says, it requires great willpower to sit at home during the weekend and do nothing. But it comes naturally in my case. Laze around in the house, watch mallu movies (featured on the TV like a zillion times already, dialogues known by heart), yapping with Ma, evening strolls. Twenty-20 was the saving grace... Busy friends never call up.. Dont have time to read blogs... Corporate life i say...

So for the coming one and a half months moi shall be drowning in reams of data sheets and preparing draft reports... Blogging, thus shall be sporadic (yeah.. as if it already was not).

All smiles...

Tudu!

Bhai's Sunday Opener: "How can it be Daughters' Day on a S(o)nday?"
Crab: Poor thing has lost his mind... is on a dieting spree nowadays. Gift of gab vs the Gift of flab... uhhuh

Tick tick tick....

Either you kill time.. or time kills you.. muwahahahaha

Thinkpad revisited...

Two weeks since the last project got over... No new project... No work yet... Life is in a s-l-o-w m-o-t-i-o-n... Days have never been this long.... Cranky... Irritated... Conscious... Worried... Random thoughts haunting the Crab throughout the day...

"9:20 a. m"

"Oh sh*t.. why is she online early in the morning? I hope she doesnt buzz me."

"I wonder why Jabberwock dint blog today."

"My table's cleaner than hers.. at least over an arms distance on my table"

"What would happen if i press control alt shift and the down arrow key together?"

"11:38 a.m"

"i wonder when aju would be free for a chat"

"Heehee... Its so funny.. the way he sticks his tongue out when he drags a file into the folder"

"I wonder why they dont lower the volume of their mobile phones. Its so irritating. Especially when you have no work."

"There! Even adi's on a project now. Sh*t! Do they feel im incompetent to handle another project?"

"11:49 a.m."

"Hutch really cares. It is the only one to message me thrice everyday without fail. 'Predict and win! 20000 cash to be won! Get ringtones of blah blah blah'. Wow"

"Hey!... The smilies on gtalk automatically tilt if you place the cursor on it.. Arrey!.. again!... there!.. hahaha!...again!"

"12:13 p.m"

"Blog blog blog... what do i write about?"

Stomach rumbles....

"I hope the beggar lady (outside my office) has had something for lunch today."

"12:57 p.m"

"Why are the folders of yellow color by default? Some other color would have looked better... Brown maybe."

"Are they ignoring me? Or am i imagining things?"

"1:08 p.m"

"I want to fight with someone. I miss my brother"

"Uhm.. what do i blog about?"

"Ah... Phone rang... project project project..."

"Why do the finance guys have to call up during lunch time?"

"Why the hell am i sitting here during lunch time?.. Why the hell is everyone sitting here during lunch time?.. Arent they hungry? I mean its lunch time!"

"2:15 p.m"

"No work means no life. I want to write a poem."

"Ah! the mobile is ringing!"

A lady tells me that my request for new cheque books had not been registered due to some technical snag (I had placed the request a week ago.) Confirms my details. Says she is sorry and that she would be my pro bono car driver for the rest of her life. Truth. OK. Minus the exaggeration.

"4:00 a.m"

"Hmm.. tea? coffee?.. no... water... i should drink more water."

"Buscuits. Hell, no i should cut down my cravings for junk food"

"Wese... What do i write about?"

"4:39 p.m"

"Ah! smoke break!"

A quick five minute chat over smokes... another bout of me holding my breath to avoid passive smoking, Adi pulling my leg over my so called mallu accent, smita telling me its time i bought new footwear, all of us agreeing that Shakey tends to stand in a Shaktiman posture....

"4:45 p.m"

"I wonder what those car parking guys do throughout the day..."

"The AC's too cold."

"My blogpage would look better in a blue background... red (yuck! no)... pink?.. green?... ok blue font?.. uhm... yellow!.. no... green background and black font.. looks sick... acha brown background?... no.. white background... ah!.. i guess black is ok..."

"5:00 p.m"

"Sh*t... why did she look at me like that?"

"Does she feel im wasting time doing stupid things?" " But then i dont have any work!"

"5:30 p.m"

" Sh*t! i think im feeling bloggish now."

"Why does this happen when it's almost time to leave?"

"Blog Blog Blog..."

"Wtf!...6:15 p.m!"

"How do i end the blog?...."

"Blink blink..."

"Uhm... how do i end this blog?"

"I hope they stop putting the chocolate powder in the coffee machine tomorrow onwards."

"6:28 p.m"

"i hope i blog better tomorrow...."

"Amen."

Sigh!!!!......

Ahem.. for the past one week i have been sitting free on my Goddamned seat for 8 hours every day, drained out of ideas to blog. Today, as i walked towards my office from the car parking, i decided that I HAD to blog today. And yes, I blogged for two hours.. thought and typed.. a long post i must say... a pretty long one... And then just as i was giving it the final touches, i accidentally selected the whole text and deleted it. And the blog page autosaved the blank post.

Period.

Moral of the story being... (and i advice my fellow bloggers matching my teaspoon level super brain as well) from now onwards im going to type the text on a word doc, save it and then CCP as a post.. sheh...

aaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Reminds me of Boman Irani in Munnabhai..."Take a deep breath Lekha, deep breath..."

I would really love to meet the person who introduced the idea of autosaving posts as drafts.

Zimbly Bong...

No, I’m not a Bong. And NO I am not getting paid to write good things about the roshogulla loving clan. But there is something intriguingly fascinating, and fascinatingly intriguing about the Bengali culture (that play of words was just to make the sentence sound intelligent, nevertheless, I hope you get the point). I find myself smitten by anything remotely Bengali- the language of course, the rituals, and the inexplicable tendency of bonding between the Bong Brethren... yeah yeah... Bhadralog.

I would certainly not underestimate the beauty of Bangla by calling it a ‘cute’ language. Yes, sweet it is, for, there is something in it that makes the person speaking it, sound extremely mellifluous (in spite of Bappi Da). Maybe that’s why Bengal boasts of so many singers it has gifted Mother India.

I unconsciously hunt for information- about Bangla films, film makers, songs, singers, places, history of such places, Bengali folklores, food (Of course!), books, writers, rituals, people... Uhm... Basically, everything. I even visited Flicker to relish the snaps of the place I have always wanted to visit.

Why all this? I have absolutely no idea. I don’t see any logic for my unfathomable affinity towards anything and everything simply Bong. I don’t speak the language, I have never traveled beyond Noida towards the east (make that Greater Noida... im not that bad ok!), am a hard core vegetarian (bhaat and maach jhol... wow! The smell’s enough to konk me out!). But yes I sing, and to be precise, the music I have learnt has been a healthy mixture of mallu, tamil, telugu (Carnatic, basically) in Indian music and a little bit of Western. But still this doesn’t explain my penchant towards Bangla literature, its places and history etc. Maybe its just the kalakar within me who wants to learn more about the place which has so much to offer to Kala per se. (I take the liberty to royally call myself a kalakar.... how else do you think MBAs like me earn their living after the 2 yr grind?)

For all I know, this could just be a short lived infatuation, but I’d like to believe otherwise. I’d like to believe that there is some cosmic connection... and relish the magic till it wears away.

“Ami Bangla boojhte paari na”...

The 7th Heaven

The number seven has a lot of relevance in my life. I dont know whether i should call it relevance or not. Perhaps not. Maybe its just a coincidence.
According to the free online dictionary (flash back: sixth standard history answer sheets- acc to blah blah blah), coincidence is 'a sequence of events that although accidental seems to have been planned or arranged.' Yes. Then it should be a coincidence.

So what makes me feel so about number 7? I dont quite believe in numerology and all, but i fail to understand how few of the most important instances of my life were related to this number in some way or the other.

It so happens that i celebrate my birthday on the 7th day of the 7th month every year.

The first time i took the common admission test, i got a score of 77.7 percentile (~~shudder shudder~~).

The second time i took the test i got a score of... hold your breath... 77.7 percentile... (Ha!.. talk about consistency...).

No No.. Thats it... NOT seven attempts...

Also, I got placed with my firm on 7th October 2006 (by the way 7-10-2006 adds up to 7).

And of course, 2007 was special. And that because i celebrated my birthday on 07-07-07 (although spent in the office talking to boring business development managers of some goddamned companies in Hyderabad).

But some incidents were deliberated to match the 'lucky number 7' concept. For instance, I went for the final registeration and delivery of my new car in July with my mausaji.
When asked about the number we wanted for the car:

Mausaji: (All excited) Lets find a number which adds up to seven.

Me: (blinking hard, thinks) Sh*t.. not again

Mausaji: Arey seven is a good number, moreover iv heard its your lucky number...

Me: (smiling innocently, thinks again) 77.7 percentile in CAT twice.. hmm.. lucky indeed...

After minutes of discussions we finally decided on a number which adds up to (heh!) 7.

Golly! Its almost like an arranged marriage with the number. It comes back in some form or the other.

That quite sums up my relation with 7, hitherto. I grown used to it now, no more 'oh my God, seven again!!' kinda reactions.

And see? I am posting this blog on the 7th of September 2007 (by the way 7-9-2007 also adds up to 7)

Arrey... relax!... bola na... coincidence...

The Eternal Knowledge....

Last week an article in the newspaper said that our lives in reality could be like lives of people in the movie Matrix. The hero of the movie, Thomas Anderson, apparantly realises that the Earth has been... uhm... conquered (?) by a crazy computer and that the world is a virtual reality..

Ok.. I have not seen the movie (yeah yeah.. i owe an L to my forehead)

But sh*t!... imagine... what if this was the truth?... that means my brother is my brother just because he is being portayed like that?.. my car is red because Mr. Comp wants it to look red? I started blogging all because the silly computer wanted me to?... this is NOT happening to me!

As a result of curiousity (and as a result of my last project getting over, and my not having to do anything for two long days), i did some research on this topic. (Basically i just wanted to check if there was some way to coax the Mr. Comp into getting my brother to shed some weight)...

And what i found was quite interesting...

I happened to come across a link describing Gnosticism (gnosis, in Greek meaning knowledge)- apparantly a Greek religious belief system according to which human beings are supposed to be divine souls 'trapped in a material world created by an imperfect spirit'. The imperfect spirit here refers to a evil embodiment-a.k.a Demiurge (not exaclty the Devil because Demiurge could simply be imperfect and not absoutely evil). Then there is this unknown supreme being (The Providence) that embodies the good (obviously). It further says that only 'learned elites' can free themselves from the world ala imperfect. Gnosticism even recognises Jesus as the divine incarnation of the supreme being who tried to help the mankind break from the shakles of darkness.

The philosophy is repeated in the Bhagwat Gita- the hindu religious text, which talks about the eternal knowledge of life and death, though in another form and a different context. It mentions at length, the knowledge (about 'Atman') that Lord Krishna passes over to Arjuna in the battlefield of Kurukshetra.

The Bible also says "Seek and ye shall find."

Funny.. All these belief systems, books and stories pointing out the same thing- the illusionary world and all of us being puppetted by some unknown power whose existence no one realises or give much relevance to. And the one who does realise, thereafter fears nothing. For, he knows the truth, the eternal truth (or the virtual truth?). Death then becomes a part of life.

The eternal light of knowledge... gnosis... virtual reality.... Atman...

Ahem.. do we have any freaking idea where we all are heading to?