The Year Thats Gone By...some musings on 31st..

Every year on 31st, i come up with a long list of resolutions for the next one and right at that point of time even when i am jotting them down, i smile inwardly knowing very well that i wont stick to any of them!
but like so many other things in life we do in the name of tradition, this is one of them and i stick to at least writing them down ;)
one more thing i always do on 31st is to visit the memory lanes that were lost somewhere in the hustle bustle of the highways and flyovers that go grand and grander with every passing week. With every new shiny object, new label, acquired skill i tend to forget something old but equally precious so this day is when i open my trunk and get out with all that would now be old - something that happened 'last year'. :)

This year the highlight of the year was that i managed to strike out two 'to-do' things from my bucket of 'Things to do before you die'.

- Stayed alone in an apartment
- Traveled alone in a foreign land

my mom always called me a loner. Never quite liked the company of humans so naturally for me, someone who is very well shielded by her family, all her life, someone whom people challenged that she would never be able to live independently, i always wanted to stay away from my parents and alone. This year, Devi's marriage gave me the opportunity and on the first night alone in a 750 Sq Ft apartment, i cursed all my dim stars for wanting to be this way. She did go away with tears in our eyes but i chose not to have a roomie. some people and some things in life are never replaceable :) Few nights passed with me sleeping upright in my bed, my eyes flying open with every single crack and hoot from outside and all horror movies i dragged people with me to watch flashed in front of my eyes but i survived and now i love it to the core. Sometimes i do feel the need to have someone by my side when i am not well or am depressed about something that happened in the office but otherwise i am just fine and doing spectacularly well with a satisfying feeling at the back of my mind that my best friends are just a phone call away and that i may not have garnered anything else in the past year but surely have 4 am friends that i can call and vent!

Traveling alone was a conscious decision. Not that i did not enjoy my previous trips to other lands. i did but being a loner (read: Psycho ;)) i always wanted to do things differently on a tour. I always wanted to take my own time to sink in the new place, its feeling, its history in me instead of rushing from one landmark to other. It has its own charm to just sit at a street side cafe with a book, no camera, no cell phone, no maps. just sit there and watch people around you. people who dont know who you are and you arent bothered about them either. people who are forgiving towards you cause they dont know what mistakes you have made, what blunders you have committed. a stranger can smile at you and you hesitate at first but smile back and the moment is gone and still written on your slate forever. So i went to Boston for my Thanksgiving vacation and fell in love with the city. If ever, i had any doubt about me being a city gal, its all gone now. Give me the cities! any day! Visited places where i always always wanted to go. walked miles and miles and came back to hotel tired but happy. Of course there is fun when you can share it with people you love but then i love myself too. :) this meant no photos of mine but i could, on a whim, hire a cab to find out the exact place that i wanted to visit at the night time to catch nighttime skyline of Boston in my camera. cost me $60. its crazy but its essentially something i could do only when i was alone. Cant work out your whims when you are with a gang. you have to behave when you are social. you necessarily dont have to when your actions dont put others in a spot :) i returned to Dallas, my heart heavy with memories, with a want to go back to the lovely city and wallet a lot lighter but hey...i could very well be packing my bags next month to go back to India and never return to this fascinating land. Why rely on future when you cant see it for sure :)

apart from these two, a lot of small things happened. Some broke my heart beyond repair and made me take stock on how naive and immature i still am, 26 years after birth. How my silence or tongue held at the right moment could have saved a little damage but i dont repent for anything. at that point of time, i did everything cause it felt right, for me it was the right thing to do so i did it. No going back on one's words or actions. I would have said sorry if i had felt it. i didnt so i couldnt :)

made lot of good friends that would stick with me through thick and thin or so i hope. Who would call me names, tease hell out of me, comment on my profession with an authority that pisses me off completely but i know one thing. if the day comes, god forbid, when i faint in my apartment, my dead body wont be eaten by a stray dog or cat.
They may not call me every other day but they do keep me in their thoughts and that i figure somewhere as a  tiny spec in the bigger scheme of things in their lives. That they help me realize in their own way of how much growing up i still have to do. People who accept me with open arms with all my psycho ways of thinking, my fears, my obstinacy, my poor jokes, my rigidness and my helplessness with letting things and hurt go.  I have always always thanked God for people around me and this year he did not disappoint me from adding some more to the list.

I want to thank each and every person that taught me a thing or two last year. I surely am a little different person this year than i was the last and the lion's share goes to you.

Resolutions for new year:

- Reduce weight (not going to happen since i will soon sink my teeth in something sinful and something that will take days to come off my hips)
- Read more (this does not include online reading. i mean real books and nook!)
- Write more (try not to hide the lazy bum under the pretext of writer's block)
- Travel more (alone and with groups)
- Spend less (hrmph)
- Call old friends
- Be happy with what you have and forget about what couldnt come to you. (the most difficult one)
- Get a promotion (shouldnt really be on my list. should be on my Manager's list as a to do ;))
- Find love (not through the weird matrimonial sites)
- Think of more resolutions for the next year

Badbad from Boston - Day 2

I do live in present but half the time i am reminiscing about the past and the remaining half, i am daydreaming about the future.

Today however was different. My second day in Boston - Sightseeingwise the first one :) Today i lived in past and mourned over what could have been an alternate future that i didnt have. 

I walked through two Universities/colleges that are in reality are huge & crowded cities. Harvard at Cambridge and MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). I have visited a lot of colleges in Bombay and always found two very close to my heart. One - Ruparel - My own Junior college and IIT Bombay - We went there during Mood Indigo during my engineering final year and i had fallen in love with the place. I had never thought any other place would rekindle the magic again, ever but today MIT did. 

A little history on MIT is in order. It is a private research university founded in 1861. It has a 168 Acre campus dedicated to various buildings that house laboratories, classrooms, lounges (yes with neon green couches), libraries and endless corridors. Though it started off as an engineering and Applied Science's facility, it has now expanded into Biology, Economics, Linguistics, Political Science and Arts as well. The institute is on the banks of Charles River. As you get down the stairs in the backyard of The Great Dome, you see Boston's very impressive bay skyline. The highrise is no wonder in US but it still amazes you. Or may be it did to me cause highrises are a novelty in Dallas! 

First building that i visited was "The Stata Center" - It houses CSAIL, LIDS and Department of philosophy and linguistics. This strangely stacked building was designed by Frank Gehry - A Canadian American Pritzker Prize winning architect based in LA. 

Second was the Building 7 thats considered as the official entrance to MIT. It is also known as 'The Great Dome'. This building has endless corridors. All that you need is a strong pair of legs and energy to outdo its length. Its daunting! No wonder they call it "The Infinite Corridor". The backyard overlooks the Boston  Bay and i stood there for atleast half an hour clicking pictures and generally taking in the view. 

I also visited Simmons Hall and Kresge Auditorium - both build post war and represent contemporary architecture. I also chanced upon visiting the MIT Playgrounds and they are just as huge as the college buildings are! 

Some interesting trivia. The undergraduates can wear a ring that is parted only to those that are students in MIT, depending upon the year of the course. The initialism IHTFP is engraved on the ring along with a beaver to mark the experience attached to each year. so for the 

First Year - IHTFP stands for - I Hate The Fucking Place

Second Year - I Have Truly Found Paradise

Third Year - Institute Had The Finest Professors 

Fourth Year - Its Hard To Fondle Penguins.

Isnt that funny ;)

I was surprised too! i had always imagined MIT students to be all sincere, devoid of fun & sense of humor but here you are! :)) 

While i was returning back to Red Line to catch my next train to Harvard, a boy - Indian and very simple and studious looking said hello. i smiled and said Hi but continued walking. Finally after walking in parallel for more than 5 minutes, he asked me if i were a student on MIT campus. I said no and asked generally if he was and he said yes. I was bowled! i so wanted to talk to someone who was the actual student. His name was Sandeep and he narrated how it was to be an MIT student. Ofcourse the affiliation is the best thing you can do to yourself afterall MIT is world's number 1 technological institute but it does come with very very hectic schedule! He is doing his PhD in Applied Mechanics. May be i put foot in my mouth as usual but i gasped and told him how i had KT in mechanics during my F.E. and he laughed! he said it wasnt that difficult - Mechanics and i was ready to bow! Thats what you call modesty! He has been staying on the campus for last 3 years and is planning to continue his career in research. He walked me to one of the Indian restaurant nearby - flocked by everyone since its Thanksgiving Day and all the rest of the shops were closed down already! Over the lunch he told me how he thought i was a Bengali. Now thats first. I do get labelled as South Indian quite very often but Bengali is different and first! While he offered to pay for lunch, i denied vehemently saying he was still a student while i earned, albeit a lowly IT engineer. He smiled and said he got a good grant $8K every month! and i was gaping open mouthed. I was like, please pay. He did. We bid goodbye after he walked me to Red Line. Its true that intelligence should always be accompanied by modesty. Its a lethal combination! 

The next destination was waiting for me.. 

I will continue this badbad tomorrow, cause my legs are killing me. I must have walked atleast 20 miles today. The only break was the lunch i had and well 4 Chai Tea Lattes. There is starbucks all over the MIT and its 20 F outside!!!!! 

Agenda for tomorrow:

- The famous Duck Tour

- The Freedom Trail

- Prudential Tower

- Museums 

- Boston Bay Tour 

See ya tomorrow!!

Badbad from Boston - Day 1

There are a few things every person vouches that they cant/wont do. For me it was 'being alone'. Those who know me also know how much i love to talk. I have always been a people's person. If this sounds a little dramatic then lets say that i had/have dependency on a lot of people around me to feel good. I had always maintained in the past that i could have never stayed alone but now i do for past couple of months and though i miss Devina - my ex-roomie, i havent found staying alone as traumatic as i always imagined it to be in the past. It has its pros and cons like everything else. I had fantasized about living a carefree bachelor life while i was back in Bombay and that is now checked off my list of Things To Do.

So after staying alone, the next obvious To Do was to travel alone. So here i am, in the City Of Commerce, City Of Colleges, city thats very very similar to my hometown Bombay - Boston! you would ask why Boston!

- I had heard a lot about this city from a friend and had planned to visit it someday. The day is now here :)

- It houses my broken dream - MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) - back in Bombay, i had tried my bit to see if i could join. I couldnt. 

- Harvard - Need i say more!

- This is one of the fewest US cities where you can get around without having to have a car at your disposal. They have amazing Metros available known as 'T' and if you are a little on splurging side, you have Cabs...all you have to do is hail! A weekly pass that works for buses as well as for Metro cost you 15 bucks! not bad by the Boston standards!! its an expensive city. 

I did plan early and booked all the tickets well in advance but i am still clueless about where to go and how to go. So tomorrow morning, over the free breakfast at my Hotel's restaurant, i need to browse through stuff and  plan what i should have planned before the touchdown :( 

So far the trip has been fun! *touchwood* 

- My first flight from Dallas Fort worth International Airport was dot on time! My shuttle arrived just in time. i did not have a window seat on my boarding pass and that got me down! i love window seats on the planes :(( but as soon as i boarded, the girl occupying the window seat asked me if i could trade my isle seat with her, she had a connecting flight from Chicago and her connection time was just 11 minutes!!! i gladly did and wished her best of luck. O'Hare International Airport is world's busiest and getting from concourse A to B by their skylinks itself takes more than 10 minutes. 

- Next to me was the cutest American guy i have ever met. He had green eyes and was reading 'The Classical World'. A guy who loves to read - thats my perfect man! We did exchange smiles over my Coke and his wine but didnt talk *sigh*.

- My connection time was only 30 minutes to catch the next flight to The Logan International Airport, Boston and i was stuck in the plane for more than 10 minutes. While i was generously wishing the other '11 minutes' girl best of luck, i hadnt seen me needing that as well. but guess what! my next flight was an hour delayed for 'Air Traffic Control' reasons so i had enough time to run to the Duty Free shops to buy a 'Chicago' fridge magnet (yes i am crazy for them! i buy atleast 5-6 at every new place i visit) and get my Chai Tea Latte and have it calmly while reading on my Nook! I got good time observing people around me. I love airports!!! i enjoy the hustle bustle. For me an airport can never be boring, doesnt matter how delayed my flight is. There is so much you can observe....! 

- One of the confirmations fell through and i got the window seat yet again! talk about being too much lucky on one day! and yet again i had an American as my fellow passenger. and while he was a married man (i have turned American in this one aspect - when i like a guy, my eyes automatically scan his ring finger ;)), he was extremely handsome! if i were the on duty air hostess, i would have upgraded him to first class, all for his looks! (may be thats why i am not!) 

- First thing that hit me hard in Boston was the COLD! its 1 degree Celsius outside and will drop further during the early hours of morning! i was well packed from head to toe. My hotel shuttle arrived just in time to get me to my Hotel. 

- My room looks fabulous! i did pay a little more to have a good 4 star hotel, close to airport etc etc cause i couldnt stay alone at a shoddy place and this hotel is worth every penny!! The lobby and the room, every tiny place is warmly lit, its not flashy. its cozy.. and they have a real fireplace and candles burning near the reception, yielding it a festive glow... loved it!!! 

All in all a good, hasslefree day! I am in new time zone and my body is still adjusted to my CST time. so i still have time to do some reading, watching TV etc. yieppe!!! 

I know that my family and my well wishing friends are worried for me and may have thought this decision of touring alone as 'insane' but none of them have said that. Each one of them have encouraged me and i cant thank them enough for it. Sometimes all you need is courage & excitement and my friends made sure that i had both in plenty :)

Agenda for tomorrow:

- Get up on time (preferably before noon)
- Feast on the complimentary hotel breakfast ;)
- buy Boston Metro Pass 

- The Freedom Trail

- Harvard Square

- Lots of walking

- Fridge Magnet shopping

- Local cuisine tasting

- Lots of photography

- Meeting Tanushree for Dinner (hopefully in Downtown) - my foe turned friend ex colleague (we were 'cutthroat bitches' of our QA training batch in Patni for all the men folk ;))  

 Catch ya tomorrow! for now, my comfy inn's comfy bed is beckoning me! 

Cheers & Happy Thanksgiving!!!

- Himali

Life lessons - Learn till you live!

Yesterday a colleague of mine asked me a funny question! I was about to leave when i realised i needed access to one of our new Oracle instances so i gathered all my stuff and went to him to get it. He must be at least 60 years old and tries to teach me a word here and there in Spanish - the second most used language in USA and sometimes French. A week ago, we decided that for every task he does for me, he needs Mordida - its a Spanish word for 'Bribe'. I told him promptly that i am not getting paid in 5 digits every month to afford that. I would rather log a ticket and wait for him to pick it up - as the process calls it. He laughed and said it would be an answer to his question. One Task - One Question. I shrugged my head and said fair enough as long as the questions were not personal & indecent. So yesterday was the first task after this unwritten treaty between us and i had almost forgotten about it as a joke till he drummed his fingers on desk and asked me


"Whats the best part of being alive?"


While he launched my application to grant me the access, he kept an eye on me. Now Now! This can be a very easy or a very difficult question. Depends upon how you take it. In that short duration of time while i shifted my weight from this leg to that, a lot of things flashed in front of my eyes.


Just few weeks back i had been to Six Flags - a thrill park with amazing rides. The best part of being alive i thought was to be able to do something that would push you off the edge. To be able to feel the fear and excitement mixing up in a concoction that fuels your brain & pumps the extra adrenaline in blood that your heart needs. To be able to hear the heart pounding in your ears, To be able to overcome your phobias and your inhibitions and just scream your lungs out and laugh hysterically when its over.


OR


It could be as simple as being able to sit in your apartment quietly and read your favorite book. As the lines after lines pass from under your eyes, your brain works its magic and you interpret their meaning. you transport yourself in a whole new world. It could be J.K.Rowling's magical Potter's world or the sterilized and cold Operation Rooms of Robin Cook's. The visualization can be so dramatic & engrossing - its something only a voracious reader can understand.


OR


It could be the ability to feel emotions. Yours and others too. It could be love, affection, belongingness, anger, frustration, awkwardness, happiness, sadness, a longing, a feeling that you dont fit or sometimes when you hit it off with a stranger. It could be the touch as you lift a newborn in your arms. It could be tears and a gnawing feeling of missing someone in your life. It could be laughter - unbound and cascading. It could be hurt and pain. There is a whole spectrum out there for you and its up to you to decide where you want to lie on it. Its your ability to forgive or forget or your decision not to do so! It could be your inability to enjoy the most that others do or a different perspective than the ordinary.


OR


Could it be dreaming? It may sound ridiculous but i spend a definite amount of time per day daydreaming. I feel it keeps me alive and longing for more from my life. I imagine myself in a lot of situations that i am not currently and chances are more that i would never be and then i try to gauge how i would react to it. Sometimes that discovery is disconcerting. I never knew i could feel that way. Sometimes its very predictive. Yeah! i always knew i would feel it that way. Its in the moments like this that i realise and accept how less i know about my own self and how much of my mind and nature still remain unexplored. I imagine myself Pregnant and all the stuff i would want to do for my baby. I imagine myself as the woman i just saw in Starbucks, happily serving coffee and looking far more happier than my boss who must be earning a lot of money than she does. I imagined myself parent less and that scares me. At the end of the day they are the only people who accept me with all my negativity, stubbornness, mood swings and failures in life. Others taunt, tease and make fun of me. Sometimes i am hurt but i dont show it. Sometimes i just let it go. Sometimes i imagine myself in a position to be able to control other's lives and how i could help them or my one mistake could bring their world crashing down. The possibilities are infinite & so is the fun behind the imagination.


Of course i couldn't say all this to him. I stood there thinking. I knew i had to keep my word and say something. He wrote down my password and offered it to me but not before i answer. so i said -


The best part of being alive is to be able to learn something every single day! the learning never stops and it doesn't have to be a rocket science. It could be a simple cooking trick or a complex planning algorithm. It could be as simple as a new word in a foreign language or a life lesson that would guide and help you all your life. It could be a self discovery or something that makes you look at a person in a whole new different light.


God has a way of teaching. He may not flash you the cards or circle up things and make them easy for you to understand. Sometimes they are right there, in front of you - all that is needed is for you to wait and think about it. He doesn't believe in theory, He puts you in the field and gives you all the necessary tools required to learn and then its up to you how to use them to your advantage or forget that you even have them.


for example, it could be a word or an expression that hurt your sentiments. You still learn not to use the same word and expression for anybody else unless the provocation is beyond your tolerance.
It could be how someone criticises you and you learn a thing or two from it. Even if you feel that it wasn't so constructive after all, you can still learn how to put it in a way that would not discourage a person.
It could be how some people laugh at you. You can still learn how to laugh WITH others than at them.
It could be how you learn to lower your guard for a set of people while some make you feel unwelcome & unimportant. You still learn how not to be affected by how world sees you.


These lessons go a long way into making you the person that you are or a person that you will be. When life is unfair to you, you have two choices. You can get your frustration out on others to make them feel just as miserable OR you can save them from making the same mistakes that you did.


The key is to not merely survive but to live life with all its Dos and Donts and fine printed instructions that you never read and learn on every step of the way.

Objectifying Friends!

In the far far corners of my brains where the rationality and practicality often lose their way, i know i should not be suffering because of the other people. That i should be taking charge of my life like a grown up and independent girl & stop whining about things that did not happen very well.
From years of experience - after living a quarter of my life already i am now eligible to use this heavily loaded sentence - i should understand that objectifying certain things work best for your mental health and that includes people as well.

So how is it possible to look at people as objects that can be bought, sold, acquired, discarded or just plain ignored? Those who can do it are often called as selfish by those who can not do it. The reality is that those who cant are incapable people just trying to make themselves feel better by calling others selfish. The act of correctly defining the boundaries around the relationships be it parents, spouse, friends or colleagues & how much you would let others affect you is maturity. may be a rare form of otherwise age dependent maturity that is hardwired in the brain and cant be cultivated. it comes naturally. Some people just do not care, no matter what or who. Some people care for everything and everyone. and then there are some people who can categorize people as per how they treat them and then care for those who matter and dont care for those who doesnt. thats the people i really envy.

 
For me its still an open question though..how do you decide who matters and who doesnt! how do you categorize people - people with blood & flesh, people with real feelings, people with life. I dont think i can ever do that...because these are the people I heavily rely onto. For support. be it physical, financial, emotional. Sometimes nothing works well on your grim situation than just sitting with your buddies and discussing it to its very core. It does not necessarily yield positive results every time but it helps to share, to vent it out. You feel a little lighter after shading tears on their shoulders after a nasty break up & then its not very untrue that your ego feels cajoled everytime your friends rattle on how you were too good for him anyways. Your future that looked all hazy & quite too distant becomes a little less turbid when your girlfriends tell you how one day your prince will arrive in his shining armor.
There is nothing else in this world that can kill the nagging rational thinking as effectively as these people & and then you cant help but be greatful.
Or remember the time when you thought your boss is out to get you. There is nothing  that you can really do. He still is your boss and your strings are wrapped around his fingers. but calling him names with your equally tortured and frustrated colleagues help a little. You dont have to make your own mistakes to learn lessons. you can observe your colleagues and learn them. A shared tiffin on the day when you forgot yours or have something you wouldnt want to eat, A shared ride to office or back home where you kept on changing stations after station to find a decent hindi song and then laughed at the hideously recorded desi ads, A shared joke in an official meeting where the others look at you totally clueless and you give them a smug look for not being one of the insider's circle... how can these moments be forgotten as if they never happened. They may not be the unforgettable ones but they still make your life in office survivable.. especially when you are under pressure all the time..
We have a phrase in Marathi - Tuza ni maza patena.. tuzya vachun karmena... it means we cant get along all the time but we cant stay apart either. The phrase was probably meant for couples ;) but it is just as true for the people around you.. not all but a few that you grow close and accustomed to, who become part of your life that you cant shed.. who eventually become a habit that you cant get over...you try calling it quits but you keep on going back to the moments you shared and you realize that you are friends and you can get bored of each other and tired too but you will need each other in that one point of life where your own self is not enough for you....

So let me be honest. i have tried it in the past. to objectify people after carefully categorizing them and have realised with heavy heart that i just cant......its not my cup of tea to be mature in this sense and i will have to live with it... a 'Paravalambi' - a dependent life as its written in my horoscope too... that i will scale the heights with almost inhumanly pace.. but at the end of the day.. i will be dependent on others to feel happy.. and content...may be its a losing battle..but i have given up on it anyways... 

And then i realized my true calling in Starbucks the other day!

These days I get off work early. Not because I dont have anything to do but because I have so much to do. I know at the end of the evening when I am well fed, thanks to my roomies, I will have to power on my laptop and start working. And so I get off early from office so as to save a little time here and there not worrying about work.

On one of such days, I was sitting outside the Starbucks on the Preston and Frankford intersection with my friends - Mayura and Abdul. With our favorite Chai Tea Latte, we talked about almost everything under the sun.

A couple of other people sat next to us.. a happy hoard of friends catching up with each other's lives. A cute baby boy threw himself on the floor kicking and screaming to have something he wanted and his parents wouldn’t approve of. A cute dog sat on the lap of a lady and tried licking Abdul’s neck from behind. Abdul ducked just in time. The crying baby got us started on how we were as kids and how disciplinarian our parents were.

As even the life goes, we then moved to our adolescence days. With love and all the other troubles, there is one more thing that captures your fancy those days. Its your career and your calling. I want to keep these separate since not everyone gets to have a career where their calling is. I tried thinking what my favorite field was then. I think I wanted to be a journalist.. not necessarily a war-journalist or something. I was always too scared of death..even in those days. I wanted to search, compile and write. A few years down the line, I did exactly the same but it wasn’t for a newspaper. I was writing pieces of code. Search on Google, compile in local editor and write my name on it. So my first so called calling did not see light of the day. 

The next one I suppose was medicine. I have always been fascinated by this branch of science. Everyday the world comes up with new explanation for something that was unknown till yesterday..about the Human body and the mind and still there is so much to explore. I loved the Neuroscience especially. So I spent huge amount of time reading medical journals and whatever that I could find about medicine – surgery in particular. All this reading did me no good except that I learned a new fact about myself that I was and still am a highly hypochondriac person. I see all the symptoms in me the moment I read about a disease. So at one point of time, I was convinced, I had a cancer, at another,I had a brain tumor.

My dad picked up on this quicker than me without any knowledge of medicine and without any reading of those glossy medicine magazines. He made me drop Biology in Junior college. My gates to the medical world were closed even before I could open them and take a peep. 

 

After my chaotic engineering years as I fought hard to have dot 40 in Mech & Maths and scored hugely in Digital Design and VLSI, I saw myself working in a fabrication plant. My only problem - I was the only female working there. Not even in my dreams that the other females would consider working on a Fab Plant. We soon visited one of those on our industrial visit and I understood why. They were more practical. I was idiotically idealistic. So after my major in Electronics, I took up Testing as my career.. There were lot of crinkled noses, boos and OMGs but I knew I would be a very very lousy developer. Lousier than a lot of those I have worked with. All this came rushing to me when Abdul told us about how he had visualized his career path already and was working towards achieving it. He had visualized how his promotions would come by, what certifications he would do, how he can grow further on the path. From what I know, he has a Plan B ready for every point where he thinks he can falter. His path though remains same and steady under his fee.

When I compare ( I can imagine Abdul giving me one of his famous looks. Don’t compare. You should never compare yourself with any other person), I see that I never had a path really. All that I visualized ever was the destination and how I would revel in it when I reach there. I should have thought about the path, the potholes, the sudden speed humps. I just didn’t. Not that I was a lazybum. I had an aim and I also could see a faint trail that would take me there but that was the problem. It was a trail. It had more escape routes than Plan Bs. It wasn’t anywhere like Abdul’s 8 Lane freeway like our IS635. Mine was a little one that you see in Somerset. It goes around this beautiful colony and then just ends back to where it started. Pity. I was able to visualize Harry Potters and Narnias and Lord of the Rings but I could never clearly visualize what I wanted, where did I want to go, what did I want to end up doing. I let the life take decisions for me instead of having any control over them. Sometimes people do that as a last resort, I didn’t wait that long.

The next obsession was The America and the on-site opportunity. I saw that as another Via Point to my destination but again I let it happen to me instead of really fighting for it that very often. Yes. I grumbled. I grumbled a lot to every one and any one that I could find but that’s about it.

It occupied every waking hour of mine and even saw myself boarding a US plane in my dreams. Nothing else, No one else mattered as much as that did. For the first time I thought I knew what I wanted to do. The feeling was more relieving than exhilarating. I wasn’t that crappy after all. This on-site stay was my short term goal and I would take it to its completion. I never thought the obsession would die ever. Even if I manage myself a GC.

But like all of my other obsessions, this died as well. It died quite a painful and slow death. Over an year’s time.It wasn’t the hardship or the disappointment but may be the feeling that I finally got to it, killed it for me. I didn’t know about it as clearly till the point Abdul and Mayura discussed about how they visualized their life to be. It was a rude shock when I tried doing it and didn’t see America anywhere in it. I thought America was calling me. Rather America was The Calling.

What I saw instead like the numerous times before is a small room and a big bed. Don’t get your naughty minds run into an overdrive. This room belongs to a couple. An elderly couple. You can see the temple stand on one side. You see a huge pile of books on the other. Some of them are dog eared so somebody is reading them. Multiple at a time. The bed has a white bed-sheet with pink flowers on it. It isn’t neatly tucked in anymore cause there are four adults lying on it. An elderly couple and a young one. They are playing cards. The gambling cards. Don’t know what the name of the game is but I can see that I am one of them. I am trying hard to think of the next strategy and apparently having hard time with it. It’s a night time and I have put my little daughter to sleep in her nursery (which makes me think I am in US). Half of my attention is tuned towards the nursery to see if she is crying. She is not. The elderly lady sitting next to me pats me hardly. I make a poor face and she laughs loudly. The other two men frown.

I pick my brain hard to see if that’s my mom but she is not. I turn my focus towards the man, he is not my baba either. With a sudden jolt I realize they are my in-laws. There is a man sprawled across me, with spectacles perched on his nose, his hair ruffled a little, scratching his day old stubble. That’s my husband.

I am sitting in a cozy warm room (which has big French window on the wall. A Mogra tree peers inside and sways slightly as the wind blows) with my Husband and my In-Laws playing a game of cards and I am perfectly happy. I can feel i am a little tired cause I came from the office and cooked a dinner that everyone had and since it’s a Saturday the next day and my demanding baby (who is a few months old) is sleeping peacefully, my in laws suggested we had a game going. Men vs Women. So me and my MIL form a group and go on claiming that we would win. Being women that we are, we rattle on and on. My FIL and Husband seem quiet personalities. They smile but do not say much. Later, in the game, my husband (I cant see his face properly. All that I can feel though is that he is very ordinary looking but very intelligent) cheats. Its so blatant. He smiles cheekily at all three of us. I grumble to my In-laws and then I see it happening. They side with me with such a blind faith that I grin ear to ear to my cheater of a husband. They tell him off and say I am right. He makes a face. I fall down laughing on my MIL’s lap. She run her fingers in my hair while telling my husband of what kind of bad player he is. He mutters something about parents taking their son’s side by default. My FIL throws in his cards, demands a rematch and announces that we would do what pleases his DIL i.e. me. I laugh my guts out. My MIL shushes me cause I would wake my daughter up and when she is up, she is the sun, we all revolve around her.

I try to remain silent but the look on my husband’s face is so funny that I burst out laughing. My baby daughter sends out a warning wail. My husband rolls his eyes. My MIL starts getting up to go to the nursery. I pull her down by hand but she fuzzes over the baby and then my FIL gets up too. He wants to see whats up with his granddaughter. He complains that its my MIL’s loud laughing that woke her up while my MIL complains that it’s the Chana Chat that he fed the baby at the dinner table that’s giving her gas trouble. With this fight, they leave the room to coo over our baby.

As i hit my husband with a book i find lying nearby, I see a smile on his face. A smile of understanding that he is no longer the spoilt brat of his parents. He has been replaced by me. A proud smile that his parents have grown so much fond of me that they can sideline their only son for me. An appreciative smile that I could keep my hoity-toity status and aggressive manners locked up in my office cabin (yes. I am a manager of course, with cabin and all that stuff) and be a daughter to them. What I return is a sunny smile even when its dark outside. A smile of gratitude for giving me what I could cherish all my life. People. People who scold me because they think they have every right to. People who do not think I am an outsider anymore.

People who love me. A smile of contentment that at the end of the day, I can sit with my family and spend these light moments with them instead of fighting for the authority over my house and my husband. That I know that I will never have to share my husband with these two people ever because I totally understand that he is theirs. The understanding stems from the fact that they know he is mine just as much.

And so we live happily ever after!

Strange. For one I don’t see my parents or my sister. It almost makes me feel guilty and second I don’t know how to play cards! Most importantly its all too beautiful to ever come true.

I have had this dream for a few years now. Every time I had it, I had a smile on my face. I would hate my mom if she woke me up in the middle of it. Nothing changes in the dream, no matter what.Even the color of the bedsheet!. 

Every tiny detail remains etched on me forever. Its as good as my favorite movie that I can see any number of times and not be bored of it. Sometimes I feel that it also acts like Prozac on me. My brain triggers it on the nights when I go to bed utterly frustrated with my work. It gives me an odd motivation to keep it going. Funny. I thought I was always a hardcore career oriented girl. Marriage and family was obviously on the cards but I never consciously thought about it. I never day dreamed about my husband and who in the name of the god dreams about their In-Laws. The few people that I shared this dream with find it oddly funny for a girl like me. Some of them find it regressive that at the end of it all, I want to be a mother, a wife and a daughter in law. A few married ones think its obsolete and not possible real time but one of them, a friend named Maheshwari told me what I didn’t want to hear. That this was my calling.

Something that remained unchanged, unperturbed over all these years. Something that makes me feel good when I think about it. A house full of my people, laughing and rejoicing in the simple pleasures of life such as a game of cards. That no matter how many more promotions I would have or the companies I would switch or the awards I achieve, what would remain at the front of my line, something that I would gladly step back for will be my family.

I know a lot of you would wonder if ‘Family’ can ever be someone’s calling in their life. I am trying to figure out that myself. I have tried to deny it vehemently but its true and I will have to accept it no matter how regressive it may sound.Being happily married to the man i would choose eventually & be there for 'our' family would be something i would love to achieve and all those who have been married know that its not a small feat. Its just that its not feminist or modern or liberating for a large amount of people. My home would be my place. My Family would be my everything and being loved and accepted whole heartedly would be my aim.. 

i know there are still years before that happens.. but it always feels great to know what i want to do when i grow up (some more ;))

The Moment...Live it or Leave it...

The moment. A lot of those come and go. With every breath there is a moment passed.. lived and forgotten.
but there are always a few that take your breath away.. you skip a heartbeat and then it remains etched over in your memory.
Some of them remain so very fresh despite of the years passed that you can recall every single thing about them. The cause, the deed and the aftereffects.

Some of them come with their own triggers. A certain song, a certain scent, a certain word, a certain expression, a certain time...just that one trigger is enough to bring the memories back.. sad they can just conjure memories but not the moment.
that's the thing special about them.. a moment has its uniqueness. it just can not be created all over again.
every moment is as different as a softly falling snowflake. they rest on you for sometime and melt away, never to happen the same way again.

The moment when a mother feels her kid kicking hard inside her for the first time cant be felt by her again even if the kid would be there for some time more and there will be more kicks on her way.
The moment when a mother holds her kid for the first time after birth can hardly be felt again even if she can give birth to another child. that moment is just as different as the kid is.
The moment when a child curls her tiny fingers around her father's finger, this moment is unique for the man even if she would hold his hand in many more walks after that.
The moment when you look into the eyes of your loved one and see them smiling with your reflection swimming in them, the moment is unique.you can see those eyes again over the course of time but the magic is in that one moment when it happens when you yearn for it the most.
similarly, when you look into those eyes and see a layer of indecisiveness or doubts or plain rejection, your world comes crashing down with a thud.that moment although painful is unique. There could be other loss but each has its own unique pain that cant be replicated for another moment in loss. It could be so because so many factors contribute to it. The time, the situation, The mood, The presence of someone or the absence, The feelings, The emotions attached. The odds of all of these factors repeating themselves again is so unlikely to happen that it makes each moment like never before or after.

They can give you immense joy. They can make you depressingly sad. They can make you smile a shy smile. They can make you silently frown.They can bring tears in your eyes and lump in your throat.
They can make you want to end your life. sometimes, they can help you survive.

Imagine your life without them or their memories. It would be so colorless cause each of them shine with their own hue. Sometimes its a black of disappointment.Sometimes its the pink of budding romance. Sometimes its a red of passion. Sometimes its the blue of tranquility. Sometimes its a murky brown of confusion.Sometimes its the full rainbow when you are blessed with what you are longing for.

The moment almost every time proves to be a turning point. You may hate a person for years, a small act of thoughtfulness or kindness, a moment when you feel it, changes it all. That one moment forces you to see that person in a whole new light.
You may long for something for years, feel its absence killing you every second but what you feel at the moment when you find it ultimately defines a lot about how you would go on feeling about it whole of your life. It may fill you with immense joy, it may put you off it forever for the sheer waiting you did for it.

Seemingly so tiny, still a moment can contain so many emotions at once. For instance, Bidding goodbye to that one person you loved the most. The acute pain of parting, The hollow of uncertainty that you may never meet again, A hope that your paths will cross once more, The warmth of few parting words that they uttered to you, for you. The helplessness of not being able to prevent it from happening. The finality of it happening against all your wishes. The impotence of words after weeks and weeks of practise, as they refuse to come out of your mouth, The hope against hope that they understand without uttering them and finally the moment, when you see them for the last time before they turn their back on you, may be forever.
Can you feel that moment again in your life? you would rather wish you don't have to.

Sometimes the time is same but situation so different and then the moments change their colors like a chameleon.
One moment, your eyes meet, your knees go weak, The world around you go blurry. Another moment, your eyes meet, you don't find the same warmth, you see the rust of time that passed in between and the world around does go blurry but that because you are blinking the tears back and trying to be strong.
One moment, you both end up singing same tune, you smile and continue. Another moment, the song plays somewhere in the distance, you try to remember the words, you cant, you grimace and continue with whatever you are doing.
One moment, you have it all. Another moment you don't.
One moment, you win a little. Another moment, you lose it all.

No wonder, we live only in moments. The rest in between is when you are waiting for another moment to happen so that you live some more.


so friends, hold these moments close to your heart. They hold much more than what we give them credit for. They are the building blocks of our entire being..so learn to be in the moment. Tune out the world. Switch off your practicality and thoughts and live it cause remember they are unique and priceless. once gone, they are gone forever..