A day in a rat’s life

I crashed into his arms and he promptly hugged me. As the man apologized and moved on, my hubby quipped “There goes another man looking for an excuse to hug you”. It was all I cud do not to laugh out aloud in the middle of the office floor.
We had gone to get our customary cup of coffee at eleven in the morn and were walking back to our seats when all of a sudden at a corner, a colleague walking fast got right in my way and since I was walking at a quick pace, before I cud stop, we collided. The man opened his arms out wide and literally hugged me which in fact reduced the impact and kept me from spilling the hot coffee on both of us. Trust my hubby to never pass up a chance to pull my leg.….As I looked at him and thought of a wicked reply, I wondered, as I often do, on the workings of fate…He was everything I cud have wanted and more…and I was still surprised that no gal had snapped him up before I came along……..and he keeps saying he was surprised that I fell for him…chuckle..Ok.So we have a mutual admiration society going on…

I hurry back to my seat. It’s a typical day in the rat race.3 Releases going on simultaneously with umpteen fone calls, every nut I ever said a hi to calling up to find this detail or the other, unending cries from my teammates ”Anupama,this,Anupama that,Anupama,the other thing”, and the urge to change my name to Abrakatuchosui grows by the second; the fight not to throw up my hands in despair and say “I quit” becomes more difficult and the wish to go back home and hide under the bed with my dog becomes a heartfelt prayer. The temptation to yell at someone, call someone an idiot, the urge to tell someone “Get lost” or “No. I wont do it cos its ur job”, the constant fight to stay a professional and take pride in my work. Its one of those days when I lose sight of the fact that I am not a rat and neither do I want to be one. I lose every last rational thought and there is no relief to be found in a hot shower or a nap. Even in my dreams, I find myself counting the number of programs in each Release and wake up in a cold sweat cos I remembered that I had forgotten a task only to find that I had completed it last week.Yes, am a classic basket case on the verge of screaming every second. I stand up for a minute and stretch my aching back. I mutinously think of my last appraisal which was unsatisfactory indeed with a year’s hard work gone completely unappreciated. I think with despair of going home and making dinner and the next day’s lunch. I think with despair of a friend across the sea who has been mailing me faithfully every single day though I am not able to type her a reply. I think of the library books which are overdue and need to be returned. I think of how I had not had a stroke of exercise for the last one month and how I am stiff from sitting in my seat for so long. I think of how even my prayers had been said at the traffic signals on the road these days. I am too tired to even heave a sigh. Across the aisle, a guy with coffee brown eyes looks at me and winks. Chuckle….He is irresistible.
People ask me if I don’t get tired of seeing him all the time…since we both work in the same office, in the same bay and sit within 3 metres of each other. Absolutely not. Maybe cos I know it won’t be forever. Right now if I want to see him, I just have to stand up from my seat and there’s my hubby.And there are so many couples out there in this rat race who hardly get time together.

To be honest, I have slowed down a bit after marriage. I take time to do the things I love doing. I actually discovered that I love cooking. My mama will get a huge laugh out of this. She tried hard to get me to cook while I was in college but I always managed to squirm my way out of the cooking part and stuck to the eating part. Now that am away from home, my dog gets to play that part. Lucky her.
I still don’t manage to do all that I want to .I cannot pinpoint exactly how I have changed but I have. I still have the drive to get the best of all worlds but maybe I do it more consciously and try to keep a balance. I keep in touch with my aunts and uncles more than I did when I was single. I hurry to finish my work so that I can go home early but I still take time to enjoy a cup of coffee with my husband. Talking to my mom and dad was always important but now it has become second to nothing. No matter am running late to office or it’s the dead of the night, when am talking to my parents, as far as am concerned the world comes to a standstill. My work does not suffer for this newfound pace of life.
Maybe it’s the realization that even if I win the rat race, I’d still be a rat. Though to be honest, there are times when I forget it and become a rat. Just the other day, inspite of a hectic schedule, I walked out for a minute with the hubby to buy a fruit bag for lunch .I sat under a shady tree enjoying the breeze and watching the cars whiz by while the hubby stood in line in the sun.(Yeah.I was protecting my complexion. A little sun wont hurt him since he anyway comes back looking brown after a round of cricket. Chuckle…The privileges of being married.)It was lovely. The flowers were out in full bloom and the trees were all a bright fresh green with new leaves.A treat for the eyes and the soul. Its one of those days when all u want to do is lie out there in the grass and read a book all the while enjoying the weather. Its one of those days when u can see what u want out of life very clearly, the kind that makes u realize that the journey is what matters. For a second I envied the fruitwala.He had an entire day of this bliss. At that moment I wud have gladly exchanged a couple of days of my life with him. And then I realized that the grass is always greener on the other side. For all I knew the guy wud be envying me my life in the air-conditioned office. Sigh, I don’t want to think of that Chaos awaiting me.
When I was in college, our hostel had this large terrace which looked out onto the mountains unmarred by any tall buildings. You cud see a huge expanse of the sky and the mountains. Everyday the sun wud go down behind the mountains setting the skies ablaze in unimaginably beautiful scarlet, oranges, pinks, purples and yellows. Each day I wud think that this beauty cannot be surpassed and the next day, it wud be even more magnificent. Every single day the sunset was heartrendingly beautiful.Poignant.It made u feel glad, sad, immensely tiny and moved to tears, not knowing why. The kind that made u want to go down on ur knees in gratitude for the privilege of being able to see it. The kind that washed u clean of the pettiness of life and made u feel that its ur own fault that u lost sight of what’s important to u..The kind that made u stand with ur mouth open in sheer awe. The kind that made u sigh in happiness when it got over. Nothing mattered after it. You got ur perspective on life right. You believed that God spoils u.I loved receiving parcels from home in those days and still do. Call me crazy but those days I honestly believed that God sent me a surprise parcel every day with a sunset in it.Well,I’ll admit it, I still believe that.
I don’t get to see a sunset everyday but God does send me a parcel everyday. It may be the chance to wander abt barefoot on the damp lawn outside the library after a long day at work when am so tired that I cant even think of getting dinner up. Or it may be a 2 year old with rosy cheeks smiling up at my stony face (though for the life of me, I cant figure out whether the kid is smiling at me cos his life is so happy or cos I look funny when am stony faced.) .Am not very particular abt the gifts and God probably knows it.
It cud be a laugh shared with a friend or some bit of kindness from a colleague or a good snap clicked by me or a plant growing in our tiny garden or even a recipe that turned out well.

I recently read something on the internet and it made so much sense that am posting it here.

“We convince ourselves that life will be better after we get married, have a baby, then another. Then we are frustrated that the kids aren't old enough and we'll be more content when they are. After that we're frustrated that we have teenagers to deal with.
We will certainly be happy when they are out of that stage. We tell ourselves that our life will be complete when our spouse gets his or her act together, when we get a nicer car, are able to go on a nice vacation, when we retire.
The truth is, there's no better time to be happy than right now. If not now, when? Your life will always be filled with challenges.”

So true. There will never be a best car. There will never be a perfect spouse. There never will be perfect children. Life is rather simple and God only meant us to enjoy it. It’s we who make it complicated and a fight. Maybe if we all sat down and looked at a sunset, half the problems in the world wud be solved. Just imagine. Laden and Bush sharing a sunset together…Inspiring, isn’t it? Chuckle….

Out from my head. On the blog.

Its tuf when u want the best of all worlds…and especially when ur job is not as challenging or as rewarding as u wud like it to be, u can either moan abt it or u can start working on the list of things-to-do-someday….and that’s what I did. All of a sudden, I found that my job did not give me the returns I expected for what I invested. Blame it on the management or on the client but the bottom line was that “this is how things worked” on this team.Ok…lets not go into all that. It just digs up a lot of bitterness and I prefer not to have the extra luggage. and so I decided to take a look at my to-do-someday list.…I don’t hate my job or anything but I decided that I need to get back in touch with my creative side. It helped that I have a hubby who absolutely loves it when I do something artsy.I got out my paints and painted a picture. I started spending more time on decorating our house and writing .I started reading more and I made a new friend whom I mailed every day.I took out my camera and got a few lovely snaps. I started my newest hobby of jewellery making. Now the problem with having so many hobbies is that u cannot be up todate on all ur projects. My second painting has been awaiting the final touches for over 2 months and my jewellery making skills have improved. My writing has been suffering while my reading has been going on at a stop-start-stop pace. And I have forgotten my photography techniques.….and to top it all, I want it all….chuckle…I never learnt to slow down and decide on one thing…I always want it all and I always want it now….so here is the plan. I want to write at least 3-4 times a week, mail my friend as much as possible, make at least 1 pair of earrings every day, paint on the weekends, read as much as I can and still be able to keep my house looking neat and tidy, ring up my dad more often, ring up my relatives and friends once a month atleast.Wow!!!Wudnt I be perfect? The trouble is even when am not able to do all this,I still believe that its possible to do it all…I managed to tidy our clothes cupboard finally last Friday and it still looks neat and tidy. The trouble with the 2 of us working is that the laundry never gets folded. We did the laundry on weekends but the Laundry room wud be so crowded that it took a lot of juggling to get our clothes washed and dried.So we switched to doing the laundry on the weekdays when the laundry room wud be empty. The trouble with this arrangement was that by the time the clothes were dry, it wud be late in the night and we wud leave the clothes jumbled up on the couch. The next day when we wanted to sit on the couch,they wud be moved in the same jumbled form onto the bed and at night back to the couch. This wud go on for a couple of days until finally I wud give up on my good intentions of tidying the clothes cupboard and stuff the jumble into the already messy cupboard. So even when I did tidy up the house,scrubbed the bathroom and the kitchen, my cupboard wud always keep niggling at the back of my mind. Finally, it came to a point where when we needed something from the cupboard, we wud pull it all out, pick out our thing and pile it all back in. Its tuf to find something in that jumble even when u have it all out on the bed and the floor. On Friday, when I had to do some office work from home which basically required me to click a button once every half an hour and monitor, I set up the laptop where I cud see it and started on my cupboard. It took me a good 2-3 hrs.But by the time I finished my office work which involved clicking the mouse 10 times and staring at the screen, I had a neat and tidy cupboard. I felt real good. Finally I had a clean house and a tidy cupboard.U may think what’s the big deal abt having a neat and tidy cupboard. I’ll tell u.I read it somewhere that even if u have a tidy house but a messy cupboard which is hidden from the world, it indicates that u have certain hidden emotional issues. Now to all of u out there who are thinking guiltily abt ur own untidy cupboards and wondering if u had any hidden emotional issues ,let me tell u.I don’t believe that u have an untidy closet cos u have emotional issues. I bet the guy who figured that one had never ever tidied his cupboard and was just taking a jab at his poor wife cos he was not able to find his underwear in their messy closet. There is something abt having to tidy a clothes cupboard that turns a good woman into an ostrich that buries its head in the sand. We cringe at the thought of our cupboards, promise ourselves to tidy it up every other day and never get round to doing it.Atleast that was my case, until I finally did it.I pulled out just one shelf of clothes,sorted,folded and arranged them on the bed and the bare shelf looked so neat that I started on the next one.By then I knew I wud get it done.And viola!I did it.It also helped that this was done on a weekday cos it left my weekend guilt free.I did all the cleaning and tidying around the house on the during the weekdays last week and to my amazement ,found that it was easier than trying to do it on the weekend. On weekends, just the thought of tidying up was enuf to keep me in bed. Of course, am tired when I come home from work, but when I do tidy up and the house looks nice, it relaxes me much more than anything else. And the weekend turned out to be much more fun cos I did not have a huge pile of things to do. The cupboard was the only thing which was a pain in the …um…double cheeked rear region. And I did it while I was finishing my office task and on a weekday. Isn’t that nice? After all those weekends where I kept putting it off, I finally did it on a weekday.

Most of us who work outside home feel too tired to tidy up but I must say that that the sooner we get up and do it, the easier it is. The guilt alone is enuf to make us feel worse. And when u stand up and look around,you can literally feel urself relax. There is something abt a neat house which brings home a sense of being a successful woman.
Now after all that rambling…. I’ll come back to my plan of action so that I get it all and get it all done.I shall write one page post everyday. Just one page. Come on.How tuf can that be? If I can’t write a page a day then what’s the whole point of writing? And if nothing else, its good practice. And then painting is going to be done only on the weekends. Now the reason for this is, I need daylight. So weekends are the best. And I shall try to make at least one pair of earrings a day. Now while this sounds like its gonna be the simplest of all the projects, it really is not.Cos I have to cook dinner, tidy up the house, then finish the earrings….That’s a bit tuf,u see. But I wud hate to put it off for the weekends.Cos then it wud become more of a chore. So I like to do it on the weekdays. And then I decided I shall read in bed. Just before I pop off to sleep. Those 5 -10 min of reading shud do the trick…so there I have it all planned out. Now its just abt working it out.Somedays it just may not work. Like today. I have so much office work which am finishing simultaneously while I am writing this. But atleast I wud have tried. Like today. I was only planning to write a page to keep my resolution. But here I seem to have happily rambled on for 2 whole pages. Isn’t that great? Just shows, where there is a will, there is a way.

A bitter tale

One of the things that has changed after marriage is my interest in cooking which has increased by leaps and bounds…Though I had spent a year on my own in Cbe and another ten months in LA,I cooked when I felt like it but never really tried out any new dishes mainly cos its never worth the trouble when u cook for urself….and I wud rather cut up a salad and chomp on it for any meal than cook for myself .But after marrying a man who loves to eat and is always excited abt my cooking(I still cant understand why) ,I found myself looking up recipes on the internet and trying out new things. And having a hubby who loves fish, I discovered that there are umpteen ways of cooking fish and I was more interested in the process than the ultimate result which was my hubby’s concern. Now I never really followed a recipe exactly. I always tweak it a bit here and there to suit my tastes and the ingredients I had on hand.
And I always felt there wud be something missing in a curry. I never came across what I called the perfect yum fish curry except when I used the recipe my mom provided. That was yum indeed….but then for the sake of variety and for the sake of experimenting, I always hunted up new recipes. There was a time when a recipe looked like Greek and Latin to me , and my dear cousin (who is my age and much more clever than poor ole me),was baking cookies, cakes and what not………My mom loved cooking and baking while I loved eating .Mama is an awesome cook while everyone was after me abt how I cud not even make a decent cup of tea .(I still cant make a decent cup of tea)At that tender age I decided that I must have been adopted…chuckle. I wish I cud see my mom’s face. She wud whack me blue and black for this one.
So on a day when I was at home and the hubby was at work, I decided to make an awesome fish curry and was determined to follow the exact recipe.

There is this internet cookery site which has videos of a chef demonstrating cooking. Let’s call the guy Mr.Chef.Now the only funny thing abt this guy was that he wud finish cooking his dish of the day, taste it himself and invariably put up his hands in the air, close his eyes and exclaim “Owww, Gawd!!!”He was inspiring and the tagline of the site is “Inspire others to cook”. I shud have known better than to follow his recipes considering that no one tasted his dishes except him and that closing ur eyes and calling out to God did not necessarily mean that the dish was awesome. But, alas, poor naïve me.

Anyway my dish of the day was tamarind fish curry. Now I normally use the basic stuff like ginger, garlic, coriander powder,garam masala,pepper and salt. So when I saw the guy roast a cupful of fenugreek seeds, I hunted for the same in my cupboards. I found just half a cup of the same which my ex-roomie had left behind. I decided to use only half of that since I may need it when I make the dish next time. So fretting that I had used way less fenugreek than Mr.Chef,I roasted my fenugreek seeds, coconut powder and then ground them up. Since my laptop’s battery was not working I had to connect it to the charger and leave it on the bed. I ran to and fro between the cooking range and the bed, pausing and rewinding the video umpteen times to make sure I missed absolutely nothing. I religiously squeezed out tamarind, stirred piously and then prayed over the pot all the while. The result? A beautiful brown fish curry. The texture of the curry itself was enuf to make me believe that I had created a masterpiece. My hubby walked in from office while I was watching the final touches on the video. He sniffed and said “Wow, something smells lovely”. Needless to say I swelled with pride. Now I don’t know why it is so but after marriage every meal I cook never seems to turn out to my satisfaction. But this was a homerun indeed and I was sure of it. Now all I had to do was taste it, put my hands up in the air and say “Owww Gawd!!”. So I bade my husband to wash his hands and sit down .I took a spoon, wiped it dry and scooped a lil bit of the hot curry up, blew hard on it, closed my eyes and tasted it.

Uggghhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!I don’t know what it was, but the darned thing tasted so bitter at the back of my throat that I gagged. I still get goose bumps at the memory. You cannot imagine my plight. I can normally conjure up a decent to good meal in an hour. This curry had taken me an entire 2 hrs on my feet and then it turns out to be bitter????There was no way I cud save it. I tried everything from adding chilli powder to telling myself that I imagined the bitter taste. Somewhere in the back of my mind glimmered a memory of my mom telling me that fenugreek was bitter.(and I had been worrying that I had not used as much fenugreek as that rat of a Chef had?!!!)While my hubby waited patiently with an expectant smile, I was in the throes of despair. I looked in dismay at my curry and then at my hubby’s bright face.
I tell you, it took me guts of the gutsiest kind to serve my hubby rice and that curry. But I did it. He almost broke my heart when he asked “Aren’t u eating?” Here is this nice considerate man whom I serve bitter fish curry and all he can think of is if am not eating. I put on a brave smile and said I really did not feel hungry. (O.K. So I did not want to eat the bitter curry and so wouldn’t u.So stop jeering)
He tasted it and I bent down to see his expression. He frowned, looked at me, and helped himself to a second mouthful while I stood with my heart in my mouth. He grimaced and asked “What recipe is this?”
Sigh!!!I had almost convinced myself that it was just my tastebuds.Owww Gawd!!!

I came. I saw. I lost.

“Go….go…go…aaaaarrrrrrggghhhhhh!!”…The long drawn out scream echoes around the empty bay.I had been encouraging my job to run thru and prove that my code ( on which I spent a record 16 hrs )was finally working.High hopes and flimsy dreams.Thats the stuff a developer’s life is made of.But it more than pays off when finally your code does work .The euphoria never lasts long cos no matter what you do,your ONC will find an error in it.But now I work for a team where we don’t write the code.In retrospect those were the best days of my life and the worst.Worst cos it was hectic and I looked like a hag.(not to say that I look like a bomb now).Best cos I learnt a lot in those days and not just abt coding.I worked under great team leads who always pointed out my strong points before they moved on to the areas of improvement and pushed me when I gave up.It may seem like a small thing but it did mean a lot to the fresher who every time an issue came up,assumed that it must have been cos of something she did.I remember once I read an issue mail from Onsite and moaned “Why ,Oh,why do I always make such dumb mistakes?” only to have my team lead ppoint out that the code had not been written by me.My team leads were very very patient souls to whom I owe every tiny piece of my career with Cognizant.

It’s been 3 years with Cognizant and I cant believe its been 3 years. This is going to be my personal Emmy’s. This is a tribute to all those people in Cognizant who have touched my life and molded me into the professional I am.(O.K. So I like to think of myself as a professional. Stop hooting and bear with me).This post may turn a bit emotional and am writing this with a box of tissues right beside me.For the sake of not embarrassing people,I shall use their nicknames here and this post is written in the order in which I got to know them.

The first person who comes to mind is Gaggy. I know he is going to kill me for puting that nickname on this post but Gaggu dear,u are already used to having me screech Gaggoooooooooo across the continent.So I trust that by now you wud have got used to it.If not consider it my revenge for all the times u teased me with everyone from the security guy to the pantry boy.This guy,I tell u,is the best and nicest team lead you cud ever get.He guided me thru my coding mishaps,dragged me out of my slough of despondency,praised me for my hardwork and kicked me hard when he thought I was being dumb(which was quite a few times).He did the best he could by me and though I was not his best team member ,he is so far the best team lead I have had.From him I learned that hard work always pays.Till date, the man has immense faith in me,much more than I have in myself.Thanks ,Gaggy.Some team on the East coast is real lucky to have u as their ONC right now.

J-ja…I am not the one who gave him this nickname…But here is one guy with endless energy.He never ever gives up.He can get angry and when he does,you don’t want to be near him.A workaholic though he denies it.Always thinks of others first,always positive and terribly terribly patient.He kept telling me to eat on time,not to work too much, to take care of myself and all the while he wud skip meals stating “got lots of work”,work 24hrs and still keep going. A very dynamic person,I personally always think of him as a gentle giant.And he believes in giving everyone a chance.


Sathya Madam,the first time I met her,I was in total awe of her and still am.She is one smart woman.She can be fun but deadly if u get on her wrong side.But she is someone who never remembers your mistakes,who always believes in encouraging you no matter how hopeless you are,can always give you a push when you are down ,has this wacky sense of humour and makes the workplace bright with her pranks. You can have messed up your code like never before but you cant help but smile at this bright eyed lady and her enthusiasm which is infectious indeed.She is absolutely ageless.

Tommy Tucker….chuckle…it’s a nickname my mom came up with for this cool cool guy.I was his birthday present…Chuckle…I joined his team on his birthday…I am yet to see the man lose his cool or yell at someone. And mind you, he has this extra pair of eyes on the back of his head and sees everything that goes on in the team..He has this absolute talent for maintaining an expressionless face and I despaired of making him smile in the first 3 months that I worked with him..But trust me, he could express volumes without speaking a single word.Be it anger,irritation or “don’t-you-think-you-are-being-dumb”emotion.The guy has an awesome sense of humour with a rather rare smile.In spite of all the mistakes I made,I managed not to get on the wrong side of this guy.Firm but with endless patience , he taught me to think for myself though am sure he got a few grey hairs in the process.An absolute professional, I learnt a lot from just observing the guy handle his team.

I must make a mention of all the folks who helped me along the way with a word,a shoulder to lean on,immense faith in me and a friendship which is my pride and joy.I may not be writing paragraphs on them due to time constraint but they are no less important to me.Pappu,Kathri-kathri,Zelvi,Gabbar,Priya,Natty,Abhi.(There are other people who have touched my life but these people are the folks who laid the foundation of my career with Cog.)
A word for a person who is very close to my heart,Viggu.I was privileged to know him, honored by his friendship and humbled by his faith in me.I don’t know if I will ever stop missing you.If there is anyone who can make me smile and cry at the same time,its that guy.The heartache he has left behind has not eased though a year has passed since his demise.Every rung I have climbed,I have had Viggu cheer me on and now I climb on alone but for us both.

Last but definitely not the least,there are 3 people who rejoiced in every certification I took ,every milestone I passed and felt my every defeat much more intensely than I did.They are the reason why I kept going in spite of the urge to give it all up.My parents and my bro.At the risk of sounding clichéd ,I owe it all to them for they never let me give up,pushed me when I doubted myself and have been with me thru the thick and thin. I don’t have enuf words to tell them how much they mean to me and yet,ironically to quote the song ,“It's only words, and words are all I have”.

These are the people who made me fall in love with Cognizant.I don’t pretend that Cog is perfect and that everything that happens here is right.But more than a corporate,to me it resembles a group of people who believe in themselves and that when their team wins,they win.I lost my heart to them.They are the reason why this post is titled - I came. I saw. I lost.

Wooohoooo...what a ride!!!!!!!!!!

I looked out of the window just now and saw some clouds in the sky.One mass looked like a toad and the other …well….I dunno why but it looked like a chicken leg….the kind you get at the McDonalds.Now can one write a story on a toad and a chicken leg?maybe one cud if toads ate chicken legs but as it happens toads and chicken legs are as related as me and Amitabh Bachhan
I write mostly cos I love writing and its fun to put down my thoughts in order and push them around a bit so that they make some sense to other people(Hopefully).Half the time I just start scratching out something and sometimes it turns out to be a story and at others it turns out to be just a few ridiculous thoughts.It’s a long time since I wrote a story.For some reason I never cud write stories that were grown-up and real life.Maybe cos it invariably has to have a proper storyline and my imagination cannot be set wild as I wud like to.
My stories invariably reflect the maturity of a child who plays in grass on all fours.But then maturity is not abt how you write.Its how you react to the rotten tomatoes and eggs that life throws at you and sometimes the best way to handle problems is to lie down in the grass and stare up at the clouds and try to figure out which cloud looks like your dog’s head.
I am feeling pretty rich today.No,I have not won a lottery nor has anyone left me an inheritance.In fact am broke ,cos my salary for the fortnight has not turned up which is a disaster when u consider that every other person I can see around me was happily checking their accounts and waving their paychecks in the air last friday.Luckily my hubby has got his paycheck.So we wont starve....chuckle...There are certain advantages to being married.Now why has my salary not come?I checked my account umpteen times, raised a request on Peopleline,sent a mail to the Finance guy and prayed hard.Nothing happened.But I still feel rich.Yday I managed to spend 2 hrs painting a picture even though it was a weekday.I managed to make proper Dosas...Arrey waah!!Ok..so they were not crispy but they were golden brown ....am gonna try and make them crispy today..
I read a friend’s post today on Ekta kapoor’s serials and how senseless they seem.Well,Personally I love Ekta Kapoor’s hindi soaps.(Tip for the wiseguy :We are not talking about Nirma soaps here.Soaps means television serials.Watch star Plus any time between 6 to 10 in the evening and u shud see atleast 3 soaps all produced by ET….errrr…I mean EK )Most people probably are shocked at my making such a statement and before a bunch of people scream “what????&*%%#$” at me , let me tell you that I love her serials cos they have so much scope for rewriting .I can let my imagination soar and most likely end up laughing at myself.Here is one of my favorite scenes from I-don’t-remember-which soap.

A rich guy proposes to a poor gal and then their parents agree to their marriage.Now the gal is very very happy and goes to the temple with a thaali (for people who don’t know hindi,it’s a plate which contains all kinds of pooja materials) to get God’s blessings.And who shud she meet their but her to-be-mom-in-law.(henceforth to be referred to as Mil).Now the Mil is in possession of a deep dark secret about her son and does not want the poor gal to spoil her life marrying her son(Wow!!!Mils can be such crazy characters).So the Mil tells the gal that she cannot marry her son The poor gal pleads with the Mil and when no good comes out of it she screams nahi and drops her thaali,with the contents flying everywhere and runs away.

Now if I were to write this scene , it wud be as follows.

The poor gal now drops the thaali which accidentally lands on the Mil’s toes and the camera zooms in on the Mil hopping around in pain ,flapping her hands and screeching like a banishee at which the gal decides the Mil is nuts and runs away(clever of her,don’t you think?)

My hubby often told me that I live life as it shud be lived - to the full.Maybe this is cos I always try to keep in mind the following saying –
Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, wine in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO what a ride!”
Sounds exhilarating , doesn’t it?Just reading it makes me want to run down the road, waving my arms above my head and whoop loudly.So why don’t I?Well, simply cos this is the US and the last thing I need is to get arrested for being a public menace.A little restraint goes a long way in helping us live a relatively free life.(Author nodding wisely here).

I enjoyed writing this post.I just finished reading throught this post I have written and decided that it’s a gum ball of completely unrelated topics and since this is my blog and I can post anything on it, I shall post this.

Uninspired....

"Uninspired,God,am so uninspired!!!!!",the gal looked up into the skies in despair.And God watched her in amusement.It was a beautiful day and flowers everywhere with the advent of spring.She had been literally swamped with work for the past one week and had been trying to come up with a surprise for her husband's birthday.She wanted to do too many things together.Write a post,bake a cake,eat healthy,keep a clean house,paint,read,take long walks and what not...and into the mad rush was thrown the idea of coming up with a great present for her hubby.
It was time to spring clean her brain .Unknown to his creations ,every year,God spring cleaned their brains replacing broken dreams with fresh ones,disappointments with hopes and right now there were tiny elves who were soaping her brain and scrubbing away. There were soap suds all over the place which explained the excessive earwax buildup and why she cud not think straight.She clutched her hair and tried to think of an idea for a gift.She had a sense of time running out.
Just yday she had made a fish curry using a recipe out of the internet.It had smelt awesome but alas,due to an excessive amount of fenugreek used,the curry was unthinkably bitter.God cud not help but smile at her expression when she tasted it.She was too tuf on herself and refused to give herself time to settle down.She was impatient with herself.
Inside her brain,the elves were hard at work.Supervising them,was the chief cleaner,Chakki, a plump tiny elf with a kind face and wearing a sky blue apron.She walked up to Dhamu, the elf in charge of cleaning the memory archive,as he stood staring up a a big pile of tiny crumpled paper balls and thrown in the corner behind the motor area.Chuckling at Dhamu's expression, she bent over to pick up one of the crumpled bits of paper and smoothed it out."Dentist,call pops,buy veggies,mail revs,sort hubby's socks,iron his clothes,take oil bath....". Chakki's voice trailed away as she looked at the long list filled with tiny handwrtiting.Dhamu looked at her with his black eyes and said "Can u believe the woman?She makes lists for everything under the sky and her printer in the frontal lobe room is totally out of ink and paper.God has asked me to put in a couple of extra rolls of paper for her. When I told him that it may mean a shortage of paper for one of the others, he says to use toilet paper. This woman must be desperate".Chakki sighed.Dhamu cud be very difficult at times. “Just get on with it and don’t u question the Lord” she says and moves on before Dhamu cud come up with a retort.

She moved on to the occipital lobe room which was used to conure up dreams and thoughts. This was a magical room and her personal favourite.8 tiny elves were earnestly sorting thru the vibrant colorful skeins of silky translucent stuff. This was what dreams were made of, where ideas were born and thoughts turned into images. There were all possible colors and the elves were rolling the skeins up neatly and tucking them into the tiny drawers which were all around the room, from ceiling to floor. This was an easy job and was always done by the ELTs. (Entry level trainees).In a corner stood a small pile of slightly faded and discolored threads.Chakki nodded approvingly. One of the elves came up holding a skein of rose pink and smiled at Chakki shyly.Chakki smiled back and said "She seems to have made good use of her imagination." The elf nodded back "That she has.She has run out of almost all the colours and her drawers are all empty." Chakki nods back and moves on to the hypothalamus area.

Here she finds a few elves , wearing hardhats, working on a set of pipes which ran around the room with spanners and screwdrivers.They had opened up one of the pipes and were pouring in some deep wine coloured liquid.One of the elves looked at her and said "Her pipes are all bone dry.Not one drop of adrenaline left." Chakki nods and says "Hmmm...she has had a lot of excitement in the last year.Oh goodness, I nearly forgot!God has asked u to put in some patience too.This one seems to need it more than usual.The elf nods and opens a barrel of silvery liquid and sets abt filling the tiny tins set around the room.

One of the elves was brushing away the cobwebs in all the rooms using a soft brush made of cloud wisps while another was chasing down and trying to grab a gnawer gnat which was flitting around.Gnawer gnats were ugly little blue creatures which made a buzzing sound and troubled the human souls no end.They brew worries and stole the carefree thoughts away.Chakki took out a silver paddle from her apron pocket and swatted at one of the creatures.She gingerly picked it up and gave it the panting elf."How many of these did u find?"she asked the elf."Just two,Madame.".Chakki was relieved.The gnats were troublesome creatures and hard to eliminate if there were large numbers.

Chakki took from her apron pocket a spray can labeled “Light-head”.She sprayed it around the room and the room seemed to immediately lighten up.She looked at the effect in satisfaction and then looked at her tiny green stopwatch.They were almost out of time.It took 4 whole days to clean up a brain sometimes and since this creation had no bolt ,it had take them a week.It was time to leave.She put 2 fingers in her mouth and blew a sharp whistle.

All the elves came scampering and then Chakki counted them to make sure none were left behind.Once they had left an elf inside a woman’s head by mistake.The poor terrified elf had run around in the lady’s brain causing chaos and nearly drove the woman mad,who kept complaining of something squealing inside her head.They proceeded to the nose,where Chakki tickled the top of the nose with her mop causing the gal to sneeze “Atishoooooooo…ooo” and out went all the elves in a rush.
The gal rubbed her nose wondering if she was coming down with an allergy .But she did not seem to sneeze anymore.Strangely enuf she did feel brighter and felt an urge to write bubble up…..an inspiration...

Moms,Dads and Technology

Trring trring…That’s ur Telephone bell,Mr.Graham Bell!
Thanks to Graham Bell,for the first telephone even though he considered it a bane rather than a boon.I beg to differ,Mr.Bell,cos had it not been for your invention, the number of love marriages in the past 3 decades would have been considerably less than what they are , my mom would not have been able to speak to her sisters as much as she does and a lot of us wud have been swished down the drain of the education sytem,(Read,how do u think we figured out what portion of the syllabus came for exams and that too on the eve of the exam?By listening in class? U got to be kidding), But as life gets more complex we can no longer point to one person and say Thanks to him for any of our modern day inventions.Take the internet or the mobile phone which most people swear by as their lifelines.There is no one person whom you can point to and say , yeah, there goes the guy who invented the first cell phone.I know half of you will google in a minute to prove me wrong and if you can, then well, hats off to you for reading through all that material on the net and figuring it out.I can think up a few more things for you to google if you like.

A couple of weeks back I was chatting to my aunt.My uncle is a marine engineer and was away from home.My aunt wud log onto gmail daily check any mails from her hubby.One day she told me that the email was one of the greatest blessings ever and saved so much money on postage.I replied saying that next to Graham bell and the guy who invented cell fones, the person who invented the internet wud get the Swarga-lok noble prize.My aunt replied saying they wud definitely get the vote and especially from Shippie’s wives(Shippie is slang for sailors)She said now thanks to emails she was in touch with her hubby almost every day whereas in earlier days , letters from my uncle would come nearly a month after he mailed them .She said that my Uncle used to spray the letters with his perfume.Once she caught the postman sniffing at a letter and he commented “No perfume on this one” .The letter turned out to be from one of our overseas relatives.I cheekily asked my aunt if she sniffed at the letters too.And she replied saying without doubt and that my cousins did it too cos it brought their father home every time a letter came.While emails were definitely the best, she wistfully said that they lacked the human touch that letters provided.I agree with that completely.I still have every letter my cousins wrote me when we were kids.In those days letters were for grownups and when I got a letter,it was like receiving a secret parcel.For some reason, even today when I receive a letter in mail ,no matter how mundane it is, I love seeing my name printed on it and love tearing it open.(Well, unless it is the electricity bill )

To me the Gtalk is one of the best things invented ever;a real heaven send and I use it every day to chat with my mom,my aunt and a few cousins if they happen to come online.My mom and her trip to becoming technology savvy has been awesome.My dad had been using the cell phone for some 7-8 years or more and all my mom knew then about using it was to hold the fone to her ear and jabber away. Whenever she needed to make a call, Dad would dial the number for her ,press talk “green button” and hand the phone to her.She wud finish her call and then hand it back frantically saying “Done, done!” so that Dad wud press the “red button” to end the call.So my dad was considered the tech-savvy member of the family.Fast forward a few years to when I was in college and stayed at a hostel.Not only did the smart lady learn how to make calls , she also picked up how to send SMS since this was cheaper than making STD calls to her daughter.And she learnt how to turn the dictionary mode on and off and was so good at the abbreviations that sometimes I had to read her messages several times to figure them out.Sometimes they did get a bit too cryptic but then once I figured them out I cud not think of a better way of putting them.Some of my all time favorite messages went time this. “Me sniz sniz.so took med & zzzzz.”Translated into plain English this meant she had another bout of allergy and had been sneezing.So she took her medicine and slept.Simple ,huh?
Anyway,after some time my dad found to his surprise that my mom knew the latest news about me including what I had for dinner without even making a call.All she seemed to do was tap away at the mobile fone and keep giggling.Thats when I started getting messages from my dad.Alas,the messages went something like this “higoodmorningtoyouhopeyouhavenaniceday”.Put a space in the proper places and u have the message “ Hi good morning to you.Hope u have a nice day”.Now when I sent back a reply asking him to put a space between his words so that I cud figure out what he was saying, I got another message which went thus ”howtoputspace”.
Needless to say,my mom took every opportunity to crow over him.Then came the day I joined Cognizant and I cud no longer send messages at any given time of the day.And that’s when my mom learnt to send emails and use the internet.I got a few sheets of newsprint and wrote down detailed instructions on using the google search engine and sending e-mails.The lady used google to look up cake recipes and just about everything that came into her head.And I sent all the forwards I found funny or interesting to her mail.She wud log on daily and check her mail and send me interesting info which she picked up during her Googling.
Well, if u know anything abt my family then u wud know that there is this endless cosmic competition which goes on there with an imaginery scoreboard on which points are chalked up.Now as soon as my dad found out that my mom was getting mails from me albeit only forwards, he got her to create a mail-id for himself which she duly did with a lot of long suffering sighs and condescending remarks on his internet skills.Soon enuf came a mail from pops and when I did not oblige by sending him tons of forwards a day,there came a phone call demanding why I did not send him the same number of forwards that I sent my mom.Jeez…. I scrambled to send him everything I sent my mom including post dated forwards…

When BSNL started putting up a tower in our residential area(which was illegal but they were doing it since our colony had telecom officers living quarters ) my mom learnt how to use the digital camera I had bought for my dad( and which had been sleeping in his cupboard for more than 6 months) and took snaps of the ongoing construction. (am sure the workers were probably flattered to find a lady taking pictures of them at work and probably posed for her) The snaps helped win the case the residents had filed against BSNL.The victory was celebrated with gusto and all the colony folks were full of praise for my mom’s detecting skills while my dad proudly kept telling everyone who wud listen ”My daughter bought me that camera!!”.

One thing I have realized from my family is that Moms wud go any length to pull one over Dads.When Cognizant was giving out ipods, I rang up my Mom and told her that we were receiving ipods as annual gifts.She promptly asked “what’s an ipod?” and I gave her an explanation which she seemed to understand real well.The next day I went home and in middle of dinner , told my dad and my brother that Cognizant was giving us ipods as annual gifts.Both my dad and bro immediately asked “what are ipods?” and before I cud reply , the dame of technology crowed “You don’t know what ipods are???!!! Sheesh!!!” and proceeded to give word for word the explanation which I had given her the previous day.My brother was so shocked that he was speechless.and as for me, I sat quietly and reflected on the deviousness of Moms.

I wondered why this competition existed only in my home until recently when I found my poor uncle asking my aunt to find him a number in HIS cell fone.The aunt in question rather smugly proceeded to find the number all the while inflicting scathing comments on how easy it was to find a number a cell fone and how men are just not technology savvy as women are.I honestly felt rather sorry for the uncle who spake thus in his frustration “Shobha, am asking cos I DON’T KNOW how to find it” .Well, if u ask me , the man had admitted that he did not know something and had it been me I wud have let it go at that but not so my aunt who proceeded to rub it in with a withering “Jayan, how many years have you been using a cell fone? And u still cant find a number in it???!!!”

Poor Dads.