Riddles of Time

Spiritual Marketing

2011-08-11T23:20:00.001+05:30

I was shocked to see the luxurious web site and marketing of school of bhagavat gita. I wonder how in such a short duration of time a spiritual organisation could grow world wide and establish its roots all through the world-- I think infosys took about 25 years to spread around the globe and establish itself ( of course that is when you are doing it ethically)
Browsing through the web site it felt as though they are advertising for a hotel chain --the rooms in the so called ashram looks more like a 5-star hotel than a place of retirement.
But i liked the strategy used by the people behind this. The world is running after luxury and comfort. The world also needs peace and spiritual realization.So it is easier to wrap vedanta in luxury papers to attract the crowd.

The marketing techniques is a must-learn technique from here. The licence of sanyasam these guys use to influence everyone-- The highness , Abdul Kalam are a few mentioned in the site -- is just amazing. For an ordinary man striving for a genuine cause , he would never be able to even cross those big gates of 'Democracy'.

But i must admit that i totally awe the demand for spiritual leaders in our society.People dont even check the credibility and worth of the 'leaders' before falling at their feet.

The educated goes to schools, colleges, works for 20 hours a day, competes with the best of brains, deals with the ups and down of economy, runs away from recessions .... while these saffron coated monks take the short cut of just learning a few books of vedanta and making fortunes out of it.
A good knowledge of Bhagavat Gita and a few references to Upanishads and vedas and good oratory skills is all that is needed to make ur own ashramas and your own spiritual establishments.
To be successful you need to be a lil different from the rest of the familiar monks who are already doing great in the field. You need to appear to be more lateral and 'rational' and with a new outlook to attract the crowd. To drive more income you can even run a travel agency under this veil.. There are too many spiritual destinations and enough rich people in India to derive abundant profit out of these projects.

Well , just check their site and you will know what i am talking about.

Nothing to write

2011-06-09T17:52:00.000+05:30

It isnt that I don’t have anything to write these days. But I choose to just keep them in my word pad most of the time. And of everything happening around me most of the things are either against the company policy or they are too personal to write about. So I choose to just talk about it to my husband on our drives back home than to type them all and upload to blogger.
At the org level there are too many crazy changes which just whirl around on our tables. Everything is so shaky and unstable that something that is today is sure to be out tomorrow-- Is that what they call Growth ??. The whole system lives in statistics and I am tired of hearing these percentages.

As I am typing this I can hear a lady X from the client side shouting for some issues. That lady X I have been hearing her unpleasant angry voice for the past 3-4 years… the lady who works round the clock to keep her position in office. I really feel pity for her ( and I hate the way she talks as if we are cattle tied in her shed). And worse … I feel pity for the guy working like a dog to get an appreciation from her.

Rest in Peace

2011-06-02T15:35:00.000+05:30

Most times we take people for so granded that we don’t realise what trouble we give them in their daily affairs. Perhaps we are so focussed on our own business and our own schedules and deliverables that we tend to forget the rest of the world.
Today I saw a mail that our receptionist died of cardiac arrest. As much as I wondered what could have made a less than thirty year old guy to die of heart attack I was also feeling bad for giving him a bad time every morning to connect a list of US and local numbers for our onsite calls. With so many teams asking the reception to connect and conference numbers across the globe the job of a receptionist would have been really tough. I have never given it a thought until today while trying to figure out how difficult his job would have been.
He was only a voice at the other end of our conference calls and most of us have not even seen him. Today ,reading his death news I can still recollect his voice at the other end of the phone connecting conferencing and reconnecting a hundred calls we ask him to connect.

The magician steps out.

2011-04-24T11:11:00.000+05:30

I am glad that one National Fraud has mortally come to his end. I hope more stories of fake cheap miracles won’t spread the news about him anymore. It was only earlier this week that I read about scent and perfume oozing out of his statue when he was hospitalized. His godliness is a highly networked one which is beyond our imagination. Whatever be the logic of the network it is definitely a profitable business. Be it for the witnesses who sees gold and silver balls spitted out or for the owners of status where ashes and perfumes ooze out. Like it is said ‘Pothujanam kazhutha’ there will be hundreds and thousands of people who want to take a look at the ‘Miracle’.

He is one of the ‘sages’ who transformed the classical image of simplicity, spirituality and sacrifice of sanyasam to luxury, power and authority .
He has for sure a long string of national and international celebrities as followers. Some of them even move in a collaboration using the sentiments of ‘Ashramam’ as a tool to convert their millions of black to white currency. Well the Indian law does not give any tax regulations to ‘Spiritual organizations’ and as per the law even the multi millionaire swamys are classified along with beggars.
Tax and other legal formalities are always the ‘privileges’ of common men who should strictly abide and live by them.

Now the master of such a black world is mortally no more. All his proclaimed powers of divinity hasn’t helped him ease his sufferings at his death bed and he has left the phase of earth inspite of all efforts of his followers to bring him back.
Well , I am not trying to mock mortality here. The exploitation in his name will follow and after 1000 years there might even be a religion after his name.
But all that matters is where that soul of him that escaped his thin fragile old body has gone to… With no media flashes and spectators around , with no gold and silver balls hidden in his throat to spit any more , with no one to fool and nothing to fake i am glad the soul escaped from his identity for ever.

The New template

2011-04-20T18:56:00.000+05:30

I liked this new template of blogger. It is offering more designs than what it had when I started blogging.
I was almost glued to the old classic canvas template. But this one isnt bad either.

So trying this new look ... words in fire !

Of Inaugurations ...

2011-02-18T12:46:00.000+05:30

There were two inaugurations back to back… of the college I studied in and the company I am working for. About Barton Hill engineering college , I owe one thread of memory of being a part of the foundation stone laying ceremony . That was long back when I was in my second year and I remember us sitting in the ground ( where the new building stands now ) and wondering after how many years these plans would finally materialize. Yesterday was The day we kids were talking about then , when the buildings were formally inaugurated .

The construction of the building started during our last semester after which we could no longer see the ground as the ground we knew. The then Union members even mentioned in some of their SFI campaigns that ‘The ground is full of Garthams now ‘ in some context..
Well that ground with Garthams have grown to a five storey building though it took a long 5-6 years to look the way it is today.
About the inauguration of my office building .. that’s a different story altogether. What is there now is just a small portion of what is yet to come in the coming years. Seeing the sketches and outlines displayed here it sure is gonna be one of the best of its kind in the state. Amen !

Some changes !!!

2011-02-15T13:14:00.000+05:30

Well it is time to sit back and think what has actually gone wrong ( or right ) with me over the past few months.
I am becoming that which I did not like to be once. Perhaps the system and policies are making me someone else without even my consent.
When I first joined a project I knew to meet people with a genuine smile. I knew to enjoy the project outings and team parties. I knew to enjoy the project and DC initiatives.
Here people are like the bits of colors in a kaleidoscope . The picture keeps changing- people change , work change , problems change. I never had the same people working with me for ever. Initially that was the most difficult part when I found it difficult to part with the people I was comfortable with.
Then it became a practice .
The long 5 years has taught me more to forget than to remember. I was forced to unlearn to fit into new structures and work methods. If I kept all those database and table structure in my head I would get confused with the new ones… So all those I learned for months I had to undo in a week to grasp new things.
As time went I learnt what people spoke and meant were not the same in a corporate world . There are phrases and jargon used over and again for decades to talk when there is nothing to talk. I could hear people talking for hours without making any sense. The group of people whom we could associate and could be friends slowly vanished. They were either moved to far off projects or were married away or went onsite . The immediate crowd became a pool of strangers talking jargon.

Eventually I had to be one among those jargon talkers repeating someone’s phrases when I had nothing to tell or when I did not believe in what I was supposed to talk.
The onsite time put me into a jungle of human species where the rule was to eat or be eaten. I could see people slitting throats and stabbing from behind and still smiling away proud. It is from there that I learnt to kill rather than be killed.
I learnt ‘justice’ was just another word in the dictionary.

By the time I returned I could no longer feel any bonds with any team around me. Office to me was just a space where I spend 9 hours to get my salary. People around became resources with whom I need to deal with daily to ensure the work is done. I don’t give them trouble like how others had given me.. at least not deliberately. But I don’t take any step to seem good to anyone. I have forgotten to smile from my heart to strangers. When I smile now it is the smile I give because I am supposed to smile when I talk to them in X , Y and Z situations.
I don’t feel any emotional bondage when I release one person and bid them good bye for ever. I have purposely toughened my mind not to feel too bad or too good for anything in office. Even those faces whom I have worked for years I can forget the next day as long as their replacement is good enough or even better.

Every time I step into my office I feel I am keeping the humane side of me outside the campus. And then when I walk out of the campus and step into our car , I start living again. I leave the jargon and work behind not wanting them to cling on to me even for a second outside the 9.xx hours I am supposed to live with them.

After all, sacrificing a 9 hours to live the remaining hours happy is a good deal I think .At least i am glad i have a life outside this office. I am just glad.

The tale of 2 Kani konnas

2011-02-09T18:07:00.000+05:30

There are two kani konna trees which we got as gift . Kept in the same plastic cover since we got, we tried to keep it alive until the house construction is over to plant it somewhere safe where cement and stones don’t rain. A few weeks back I saw one of them completely dried up and it was like a dried twig. It seemed there was no point watering it any longer .But I just dint feel like watering just one of them and continued pouring water for the dried twig as well.
Two days back I saw leaf sprouting again on the dried twig. The feeling of seeing those two leaves showing sign of life on the twig is just incredible.

I just hope I can keep them alive until I find a little earth to plant them safe .

X mas 2010

2011-01-07T11:06:00.000+05:30

This Xmas was a special one. Not just because this is the first Christmas after we got married but because I got to go to a lot of places in a window of 2 days.
Compared to last Xmas when I spent the entire week locked up in Bentonville with a shroud of snow all around this one was just perfect.
I am not someone who loves to travel a lot. In fact if I travel for a day I need a day off to compensate the tiredness. But this time we took regular halts so it was not as tiring as I thought it would be.
Thiruvairanikulam temple in Aluva made us stand in a queue for 4 long hours. But the sight of the diety was worth the pain of such a long waiting..Not just that there were many philosophies learnt in that 4 hours of waiting with practical experiences. . Well more of it I have written elsewhere , so not repeating it here.
The stay in Trissur was a good break. The hotel was a luxurious one and it gave us a good place to relax before the next day. The live updates of Karunakaran’s cremation was there in all the channels . I was confused if I should be happy for not being a celebrity. Not everyone gets a chance to get even the cremation broadcasted with its details… But would it really matter after death ? And more over , is cremation not a personal thing ? Would anyone ( however great) prefer the whole world to see his mortal remains burning away ? Well , since I strongly believed against broadcasting a cremation I chose not to watch TV that evening.
The next day we went to Thirumanthankunnu temple and akathupurathu temple. The highlight was the chance to visit the Poonthanam Illam now maintained by the Guruvayur Devaswam. The myths and stories still hover around the place and you can see them all played back again with the help of your imagination.
The narrow steps which is to be ascended with the help of a hanging rope , the table on which Jnanapana was written , the Pathayapura , the old rooms … They had the finger prints of Time all over them. It was an amazing experience.
Bharathapuzha was another achievement. It was a long accomplished desire when my husband stopped the car by the river side for us to get a better glimpse of the river. Except for the loads of dirt and abandoned plastic wastes, the river was very much like the one they show in movies.

Kerala Kalamandalam , though we only stood in front of the gates and posed for photographs was a good experience .
It was a long journey back to home. We had to go for a marriage two hours after we reached Trivandrum. . . The next day it was the same old story of things awaiting us back in office.

Thanks and Regards, Indu

2011-01-05T18:24:00.000+05:30

Well one big change that happened to me after returning from onsite is that I am no longer the hip-hop girl who used to run around for DC initiatives. I used to be totally enthusiastic in giving slogans and captions for the numerous DC programs once upon a time ..and I used to enjoy my captions hanging under the company banner all along the Technopark roads.
Events and programs still float around , cake cuttings , birthday celebrations, Dance and cultural progs… I hardly notice them.
From the team there is a monthly bucket pirivu for wedding , farewell and birthdays in the team. It is one major money drain for me since I don’t even go for a single outing or cake cutting. I have even lost my mind to attend a treat from anyone. I just thank them and escape.
I have thought many times how a gap of 2 years could make me to someone totally different from the me who was here before.

1.I have discovered the politics and tricks here that these celebrations and events seem like a meaningless polish on top of them.
2.There are better things to do than spending my time and energy for what I don’t believe in.
3.Generation gap – too early to use the word though. My priorities have changed.
4.There are very few things I have a choice over here . And the best of all choices is to quit what I don’t like to be in.

The Metamorphosis

2011-01-01T10:42:00.000+05:30

2010 was the most eventful year in my life. It was a roller coaster ride of changes that came to me even before I realized them.
Jan : I got my precious 2 week vacation to India after a lot of begging and threatening. Precious 2 weeks with family . At the end of 2 weeks I extended the vacation by one more week. Went to Mookambika temple , visited relatives and stayed at home for all the remaining time.
Feb : I reached back the USA after my vacation. Moved into a new one BHK apartment and started setting up the house for the next few months. The house facing the memorial park was good. I decorated the house with scented candles , wind chimes and curtains. I tried to make a home out of the house.

March, April -> I realized that I hated the stay in the USA more than anything else and that I badly wanted to get back home. I was seriously thinking of resigning my job or returning home without even waiting for anyone’s permission. I even planned to book my tickets and to abscond from the place.

May : Uncovering of the treasure ...

No prayers but the truth in my breath
No chants but the pulse within my ribs
For all the Time that has gone past me
All the life that I have lived without you
Seems just a prologue to find you here.

June :- Waiting for The Return. Sold the car , sub leased my apartment , shopped for the india travel. Finalized the itinerary and booked the tickets. Joined back Trivandrum office. Decided the engagement and marriage dates. Sari and gold Shopping .

July 4th :- Our Engagement.

August 24th : Our Marriage.
http://www.mywedding.com/kanakanindu/

September : House visits , Virunnu , Travel, Celebrations, A beautiful one month vacation.

October : End of leave. New office routines. New project .Transfer to the new office building .

November : Klueless , Nanowrimo ( which I felt sorry later for attempting and losing the spirit of writing ) , A very special Birthday experience with my husband .

December :IFFK, Temple visits , long drives

Pulling the curtains aside

2010-06-10T10:38:00.000+05:30

Perhaps it is time to pull aside the sheets of philosophies and hypothesis. Poetry continues however - someone bit by the poetry bug lives and dies in poetry .

The most beautiful poetry is perhaps read in the depths of those eyes where every lil movement fills a new meaning to the verse , where the lashes and tears form the punctuations , where the smile of the lids form the rhythm.
And you can feel it even with your eyes closed.

When you say nothing and when someone reads your mind ... and when someone doesnt speak and you read his mind - i wonder if language is just an illusion.

To be or not to be ...

2010-05-27T20:55:00.001+05:30

Blogging after a break.

Every time I sit in a meeting where the discussion is about things that doesn’t interest me, this thought comes to me that I don’t belong here.May be I have blogged about this a 100 times. But when things haven’t changed around and within me I wont have anything new to write about.
To be in such a field needs the passion – passion to even cheat the conscience ( when you have to advocate the processes which u don’t believe in ) . There should be a reason other than just money. ( money ofcourse is a good driving force though..but not for ever ) .
I feel I have been away from humanity since long that I long to be back home. Living with data , text and meetings is like living on crash diet. Eventually I lose my interest to be the centre of attraction in a group where every body strives to be the centre of attraction. I feel like taking the back chair and resting for some time and shutting out the noises and competition and silent throat slitting for a while.
Winning is all about shouting out and doing things different – even if the difference is the most weird of what you can imagine.

May be like what mentioned earlier – perhaps I am a bit too separated from humanity that I have lost my interest in work completely . May be things will fall in place once I am back in Trivandrum. Well , it should . It would .

And for the time being … let me say the door is half open.

ഒറ്റക്കിരിക്കുമ്പോള്‍

2010-05-09T21:12:00.001+05:30

Started writing in malayalam when i first learnt to write malayalam ... For almost until college it was all in malayalam that i used to write.. And then one day i found my comfort with English .
Not sure if i can still write as good as what i used to write in malayalam before .. Attempts to preserve the malayalam writings ... Lets see :)

ഇനിയും എഴുതുവാന്‍ അക്ഷരങ്ങള്‍ ഇല്ലെനിക്ക്
അല അടിക്കും ചിന്തകള്‍ മാത്രം ബാക്കിയായ്
എഴുതിവയ്ക്കുവാനാകാതെ ഉള്ളില്‍ അലയും
ലിപികളില്‍ മറയുന്നു ഓര്‍മകള്‍ സമുദ്രമായ്‌
എന്നോ പൂഴിയില്‍ ഉപേക്ഷിച്ചോരെന്‍ കാലടികള്‍
തിരകളില്‍ പിടഞ്ഞു അകലുന്ന പോല്‍
ഒടുവില്‍ ശൂന്യമാം തീരങ്ങളില്‍ തനിയെ
വിദൂരതയില്‍ കണ്‍ നട്ടിരുന്നവ ഓര്‍ക്കുന്നപോല്‍

കണ്ണടച്ചാല്‍ കേള്‍ക്കാം എനിക്കിന്നും ആ കടലിന്റെ ഹൃത്തുടിപ്പുകള്‍
അകലങ്ങള്‍ക്ക് അതീതമായ് ഒഴുകി എത്തുന്നൊരു
വേരുകള്‍തന്‍ ദാഹ രോദനങ്ങളായ് .
ഇനിയും തിരിച്ചെത്തുവാനാകാതൊരു പൂമുഖപടികളില്‍
ചിതറികിടക്കുന്ന ഓര്‍മ്മകള്‍ ഉറക്കെ കരയുന്ന പോല്‍
അവിടെ ദശാബ്ധങ്ങളായ് ചുവരില്‍ ഞാന്‍ കണ്ട ചിത്രങ്ങള്‍ ഒക്കെയും
താഴെ വീണുടഞ്ഞു എന്നെ വിളിക്കുന്ന പോല്‍
ഒരു മിഴി നീര്‍ കണമായ്‌ അവയെന്‍ മുന്നില്‍ തെളിഞ്ഞു മറയുന്ന പോല്‍

നിശബ്ദമാം രാത്രികള്‍ ഓര്‍ത്തെടുക്കുന്നു ഇന്നും
അന്ന് എന്നോ കേട്ട് പരിചിതമാം താരാട്ടുകള്‍
കാലുകള്‍ പിന്‍ തുടരുന്നു ഞാന്‍ ഓടികളിച്ച-
അകത്തളങ്ങളില്‍ വീണുടഞ്ഞ ചിരി മണികള്‍ തേടി .
ഒരു മന്ദഹാസമായ് തിരിച്ചെത്തും കുസൃതികള്‍ ഉറങ്ങുന്ന
മണ്ണിന്‍റെ ഹൃത്ധ്വനികള്‍ മുഴങ്ങുന്നു ചുറ്റും
ഞാന്‍ അറിയുന്നു അവ എന്‍ ഉള്ളില്‍ എന്നും
എന്റെ നാഡിയില്‍ തുടിക്കും ജീവ സ്പന്ദമായ്

യാത്രയില്‍ എങ്കിലും നഷ്ടമായ് സഹയാത്രികര്‍ പലര്‍
നെറുകയില്‍ തൊട്ട് അനുഗ്രഹിച്ചവര്‍ കടന്നു പൊയ്
ഉള്ളില്‍ ഒരു തേങ്ങലായ് നോവുകള്‍ കുറുകവേ
എങ്കിലും തെളിയുന്നു മുന്നിലെന്‍ വീഥികള്‍
എരിഞ്ഞമര്‍ന്നു സ്ഫുരിക്കും നോവുകള്‍ തെളിക്കുന്നു
വെളിച്ചമായ് തത്വമായ് ഇന്നെന്‍ പാതകള്‍
അമൂല്യമാണെനിക്കീ നോവുകള്‍ ഒക്കെയും
മറവിക്ക് നല്‍കാതെ ഞാന്‍ തെളിച്ചു വയ്ക്കുന്നൊരു നെയ്‌വിളക്കെന്നപോള്‍

ഇനിയും എഴുതുവാന്‍ അക്ഷരങ്ങള്‍ ഇല്ലെനിക്ക്
അല അടിക്കും ചിന്തകള്‍ മാത്രം ബാക്കിയായ്‌
ഭാഷക്ക് അതീതമായ് ഉണരും സത്യങ്ങള്‍ ഒക്കെയും
അലിഖിതമാം കാവ്യങ്ങളായ് ഉള്ളില്‍ പൊഴിയവെ
നഷ്ടങ്ങള്‍ വെറും ഗാഥകള്‍ മാത്രമായി താളുകളില്‍
മാട്ടിവക്കുന്നു ഞാന്‍ നഷ്ടമാകാതിരിക്കുവാന്‍ ഓര്‍മ്മകള്‍
എത്തി പിടിക്കുവാന്‍ തോറ്റൊന്നു അറിയുവാന്‍
ഒറ്റയ്ക്ക് ഇരിക്കുമ്പോള്‍ എനിക്ക് എപ്പഴും ...

For Her, on this Mother’s Day…

2010-05-09T11:11:00.000+05:30

Mother was the treasure Time gave me, but kept not
A blessing that couldn’t walk with me for long
A comfort, a silent assurance, a magic
That filled my life for twenty years …
The time I hold within like a prayer.
Divine and blessed, beyond my words .
For, to me my mother was the world
An unchallenged figure I worship within

Gone beyond the senses I perceive,
As my heart misses her every moment I live through,
Those moments of pride she missed to see
On occasions when I lived the dream she left for me
Yet in my inner world I see the smile,
Assuring me to walk forth and never to pause
For in all her prayers she has set a wish
A silent prayer that follows my path.

The void remains for ever, the foot prints of destiny
I call it the law of Nature, eternal, unchanging
For now, I love her beyond my mortal senses
Knowing these human eyes see the most limited
I hear her voice deep within my memories
I feel her presence clear, I read her thoughts
I walk along those roads she once walked in my age
Knowing her better, loving her dearer.

When life gets me into tougher roles
To shoulder tougher responsibilities,
When I feel the roads empty, dull and lonely
I send my thoughts back to the closed doors of memories
I become the girl on her lap secured by an embrace, a kiss
I feel her visions across the horizons,
the dreams she ever had
That’s the gift I hold for my mother,
to live the dreams she left behind
Until I join her in another world,
to be her child once again.

Written long ago ... But i just feel like posting it again . On this mother's day .

Peace for Sale -- Limited offer

2010-05-03T12:40:00.000+05:30

Sometimes I feel religion is all about taking leadership. Is it all about marketing some good thoughts efficiently?
Very soon we will see boards like ‘Peace for sale ‘.

Before I start let me tell you this. This is not to hurt anyone’s sentiments about their believes ( and their freedom of choice of that belief). But I am just putting down what I feel about some things beyond the politics of religion. You have the choice not to read.

Saffron scares me now- This uniform which the modern luxury loving saints have adopted to make them look pious! 99.00 % of the saffron coated ones are fake. We keep discovering their fraudness and there would still be people wanting to believe ‘what if he really is good ‘ . A million Santhosh Madavans and Nityanandas ( and a lot more names ofcourse ) are yet to be found. We know that … and still why are people not choosing to brand them frauds ? why do they even give chance for someone like that to grow up ?
It is high time to realize that the time of Sankaracharya has changed and if someone dresses up like Sankaracharya he needn’t be given any more attention than given for a fancy dress competition.

I don’t want to give more examples from any religion. But I have felt things are not different in other boats too.
Money , man power ( we need money , we need people to follow us) – forms the rule.

Surprisingly a spiritual organization spreads world wide in fraction of the time than any other establishment. Infosys took 25 years to hit a proud milestone spreading across the whole world. I was shocked to see a small school set up by a swami who was thrown out of his earlier org having network in almost every state of the USA and in almost every country in the middle east. I was equally shocked to see tall ‘Ashramas’ with modern networking facilities and all luxurious amenities in less than an year.
( Infosys campus took 3-4 years to start its construction . Ethical and legal stuffs unfortunately takes longer time in our country ) .

I wonder who sponsors these saints and what their real motives are . As per the Indian constituency saints are categorized along with beggars –do they get the tax exempt too which the beggars get ?
If they don’t even have to pay tax we should admit that we are foolish spectators of a mighty destroying force veiled safely under religion.
And the funny thing is that the modern day swamis and swamini’s even choose a numerological name which will bring them fortune and publicity . There are channels to sponsor their pre recorded speeches , to advertise their ashram’s new( collection ) programs.

Long beard and hair – olden days real sanyasis had these because they spent most of their life in seclusion and they dint care to take a blade and razor along. I am not sure if you have noticed this or not – modern day sanyasis trim their beards in style and style their hair too in a presentable manner ( ofcourse they have more channel interviews and programs than a real actors)
When asked they will tell us not to stereotype .
‘Who said if sanyasi travels in benz car or if sanyasi puts AC in his room or if sanyasi gets food from the best restaurant that it affects her sanyasam ? Where is it written that sanyasi shouldn’t have private planes and helicopters ? …’ they argue . They keep defending.

As long as there is demand for peace , they keep flourishing . I know they will keep growing right in front of us and there would be people to sing bhajans praising them ( U know they have sahasya naamams and songs praising their names ??? ) . we will still see old women believing that the dummy in front of them in blood and flesh is some incarnation of Lord Vishnu.

I am not here to hurt anyone’s feelings … But at least someone of you out there… don’t you feel this is a primitive stupidity ? ( like how fans association pours milk and offers haaram to super stars ) .
There are always just enough fools to put in their money to build a swami or swamini of their own .

the rain of my memories

2010-05-01T02:05:00.000+05:30

It is a mystery how even from within my office building , from behind the tinted crystal windows it is the memory of my grandmother’s house which is making the rain look exceptionally beautiful. When I watched the rain all I could think of was the rain I used to watch from my maternal house.
The water flowing down from the reddish brown tiles ,the music of rain clattering on the tiled roof , the warmth of my cousins cuddling next to me…
I miss them all.
The old house is no more , cousins have gone far away , grown older and more responsible . But yet I am glad I still meet them in my memories... the rain brings them all to me.

From Seattle

2010-04-26T21:53:00.000+05:30

Tulips in Seattle was a great experience. The drive to the tulip town was awesome with distant snow covered mountains , green pastures ,gracing horses... The flowers did not have any fragrance that i could remember.

Daffodils was another experience. Ever since i fell in love with Daffodils poem i had this wish to actually see 'daffodils' sometime in my life. So when i came across this daffodil farm ( which dint have many golden daffodils though ) i asked my friends to stop the car by the shoulder road for me to see the flower near. And there the daffodils were with all the pride of being the 'bliss of a poet's solitude'.

Homo sapiens

2010-04-23T22:16:00.000+05:30

The first intuitions about people usually don’t go wrong. It is just that if we don’t listen to our heart we will regret later. The philosophy that runs around is so confusing, like some painted drama.. and yet the reality is so deeply hidden among them.
I feel like trusting that seems seemingly bad and running away from all that which seems seemingly good.

The ‘actually good’ people don’t take any extra effort in portraying themselves good. These days when I hear some guy calling himself as ‘good’ I note down in my mind that he is the least trustable one . It gets very confusing at times to make out who is genuine and who is not. In a world where we need to deal with a lot of people , i wonder how it is possible to be out of all the meshes of traps out there.

Men are of different types and yet they fall into two categories as far as I know – Complete and incomplete. The complete ones are stable . They don’t care about what others think . They are themselves – be it good or bad in other’s eyes. The non-flirts for whom technology , drinks , cigarrates, movies …….exist. Girls are jst another one in the long list ranging from daily affairs to technology and automobiles .
The incomplete ones know they are incomplete and they keep hiding , pretending , faking and imitating. For them anything else other than women are just a means of either showing off or hiding from women. The incomplete ones make deliberate efforts to be good.They imitate the complete to seem to be a loving caring complete man.
The incomplete and complete men fall under the bigger umbrella of Men which is universally the same with big small differences.

Women as far as I know cannot be classified into any finite categories. Every new woman I meet has a characteristic unique to them—Their secrets are unique , their reactions are unique , their attitudes are unique. But basically (whether they are or not ) most women want to look good or justified. They will try to attach a justification for everything seemingly crazy to others. The craziness and justifications are infinite .
But yet as per the IT terms if you should do a root cause analysis of all the infinite types of women – they still possess 70% characteristics common which are collectively termed as ‘girlishness’.
The rule of ‘acting good’ applies to women much more than what I initially thought it does. In varying proportions of danger and innocence this ‘acting good’ exists. Let me choose to leave them alone because most of my discoveries are bitter truths potential to wreck many happy relations. So I better not speak of them .
I always have a ‘justified’ soft corner for women and I have a feeling that if you take out the small lil unique differences of a woman she becomes as rough and stale like a man. What is the meaning in existing with no emotions ? What is the point in being without feeling – That’s my own justification of what I believe.

And about the seemingly uncaring , seemingly out of the way women – they are not as bad as I thought they were . They have more innocence in them than the ones who are branded innocent.

Ironically I find more goodness in who are thought of as bad. May be MTs interpretation of Perumthachan and Chandu are not just filaments of his imaginations. – May be they are true.

However ,tt is difficult to generalize human behavior and there are always exceptions. – I agree.

My concepts about people keep changing . I keep rediscovering the same person. I rediscover the same truths .

People are like undiscovered planets and galaxies in the universe . We keep finding new specimens. It is the people that puzzle me the most – this wide infinite spectrum of human behavior, this constantly fluctuating yet seemingly stable human personalities , the conveniently twisted and covered believes and faiths…….. It is amazing .

Adding one more thought : Never has my first time impressions of people gone wrong. With some people I get the feeling ‘Either they are too good or real bad’ . Most times I have tried to see them good . I wanted to believe in the theory that people are good basically. But behind smiling faces and convincing words I have seen blood stained fangs.
There is no thumb rule to remain unhurt . It is the bruises that write the first verses of wisdom. It is the bruises that are reliable and true.

I choose to forgive them. I owe them the pay for a lesson I wouldn’t have got in any books. In any case : I have the choice to be strong , I have the choice to be myself and I have my choice to not to give up . And that choice is hard earned and I have the choice not to lose it.

Morning blues

2010-04-20T15:16:00.000+05:30

It is past 5:00 AM in the morning . A weird time to go to sleep . But it is just now that the validation got over and the status mail could be sent. Unlike the other prod validation nights when i choose not to sleep until i can send the final status mail, today i slept for some 2-3 hours during the deployment time. So i dont feel like going to sleep at such an early hour of the day.

I just opened the doors of my apartment and the park in front of my house is still sleeping under the thick black quilt of the night. Cold,silent and scary.Seems like day break is still away...
I remember the school and college days when i had to occasionally wake up early morning to study : Around this time i could hear the prayers from distant mosques , followed by ringing of bells and songs from temples , of chirping birds , of clashing of dishes from some neighbor's kitchen.

Here everything is so silent and still : no prayer songs, no temple bells .

Well , i just opened my doors once again and i could hear chirping of birds. Good.
Now i can go to sleep in peace. :)

Down Time

2010-04-19T10:00:00.000+05:30

words slipping out of my head ...
What is life without words ?

Good and the Bad ...

2010-04-12T22:30:00.000+05:30

There are always enough choices to do a wrong thing.
Sometimes I feel the good is like a gem hidden among a crowd of wrongs . The same scenario of wrongs come to us again and again … and I just think of this craftsmanship of Time to fine tune our choices.
Places, people and names change, but the situation remains the same. I wonder how a person born and brought up in a different culture and geography can replicate what someone else on the other side of the planet did some x years ago. Perhaps people are the same everywhere – it is just that they seem different .

I feel this destiny is like a naughty kid hiding somewhere around and laughing at the falls of people on the same pits every time – until we learn to make our roads out of all the pits and falls.

The metamorphism of a human mind is amazing. Mind crawls , retires and rests in a pupa form and then it unleashes its wings and flies into the outer space with ultimate freedom. I feel we can call it freedom when we know to propel ourselves against the tides of good and bad .

I tried running away from the bad . I tried ignoring and believing that the world was as good as in my dreams. And then I realized with a broken heart that bad is as real as the good and to be good, we just need to know how to outdo the gusts of the bad .
I sought good in everything that was seemingly good and I realized that the veil of good is the biggest lie. I was hurt by the hypocrisy and politics of religion and the lies of religious preachers to defend their interpretations. I was tired of seeing the marketing of faith –like how they sell the Amway products ...
And then I realized ‘good’ was no more wrapped in the saffron clothes . Good found its safe place among the wrongs where no one would torture its existence with hypocrisy .

SwaLe

2010-04-05T10:51:00.000+05:30

I just completed watching the movie 'Swale' and i felt something heavy at heart even though the movie had a humorous style of narration. I also saw in some reviews that the movie is based on a short story inspired from some reporter's real life experience.
This movie however reminded me of Thakazhi. I was in 10th standard and i remember that the newspapers then used to keep reporting about his health condition almost every day for many days. I also remember some women in the near by apartments laughing at the repeated news as though they were bothered to have him alive one more day.
There are many instances in the movie which reminded me of parallel instances which happened during the last days of Thakazhi.

I believe ( and strongly want to believe ) that the element of the reporter removing the oxygen mask is an element of fiction added to the movie. Knowing this world I am praying that it is just fiction.

It is true that there is market for the death of celebrities and that media competes to show the audience as much exclusive as possible . And we watch them live munching on snacks and waiting for the next hot news on screen. I have heard of an incident when some channel broad casted the visuals of an actor burning within the logs . The picture of a favorite actor burning in real was in demand. Even the last ritual , the last pay of respect to the dead is not spared. Unfortunate.

Something similar happened when i heard the death news of Kamala Das. I was more hurt to hear the comments from others for whom Kamala Das was no one.Celebrities are not spared -- even in their death.
'Madavi Kutti ? Soo sweet . Kutti sounds so funny ' was the comment from a tamilian collegue and she started laughing.
The other comments are not worth mentioning .

There was yet another incident when death could become an entertainment.
It was hardly 3 weeks after i lost my mother and the day when i started going back to college. There was a fisher woman, named Maima from whom my mother used to buy fish from. On my way to college Maima stopped me to share a joke
'Ohh chechi is gone eh ? These people here in the shop told me chechi was calling me from the balcony and i went inside to give fish. She was not there. It is only when i came out they started teasing me saying chechi died 2 weeks back ' Maima laughed.

Death is sometimes comic . Brutally comic.

Slow day

2010-03-25T21:40:00.000+05:30

Some days are silent. Nothing much happens and we just keep waiting for things.
It is raining outside. Had to come to office early.
But the machine is not working + some network issues.
So sitting alone in a conference room waiting for things to get fixed.

Internet has become more of a necessity than a comfort.May be 10 years from now economics text books will have internet next to food , clothing and shelter.

Tax filing is a mess. Passport expiry is scary. No idea when i am gonna complete them. Today i could have at least taken care of them in the down time.
Let me see if i can slide out of office today.

Bentonville ...

2010-03-24T02:48:00.000+05:30

I have never realized how much I loved Bentonville..
When I came to the city ( well village) last April I did not hear anything good about the place– not even a remotely good comment . The 3 months of staying alone , helplessness with no car to commute , walking in the snow and under hot sun, an unpardonable processing error because of which I dint get salary for 2 months, 17+ hours of work … I had every reason to hate the place..
But yesterday when I drove to a mall , I realized that Bentonville has become the most familiar place for me next to Trivandrum. Perhaps even in Trivandrum I wouldn’t feel the security which Bentonville gives me.

The images of America in my mind did not have gracing cows , open pastures , undisturbed lakes , lonely roads , dragon flies … Bentonville has it all . I remember the summer evenings when I could see at least a 500 dragon flies resting on the lawn . It was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. I used to walk all alone among them and it was the greatest feelings – listening to songs and walking amidst dragon flies.

There are lakes whose names I don’t know . In some random drives we have discovered many such lakes. A few of them were even private shores. We drive , we find , we spend some time and we return . A few of them which we remembered the route , we went back again. Some guys from Allepey and kollam for whom rivers and lakes were not alien demonstrated different ways of throwing stones into water. They had some names for the method too which I cant remember now. Throwing stones and watching the ripples were great.

Fall time was when I got my car. I couldn’t go to many places because of the work and no-leave time. So fall time was entirely what Bentonville had for me. Every day on my drive to work and back home I could see trees changing slowing and losing their colors leaf by leaf.

Winter is bad everywhere I guess. So I don’t blame Bentonville for it. I spent the whole week of Christmas and new year alone . Looking back, it was quite an experience being locked up in a house with just ice and snow all around and with no one around to even talk to . Most of my friends had gone out of Bentonville for vacation that time.
By the end of the most silent week ( in fact 2 weeks ) I was close to becoming a philosopher.
That was the inspiration for my India vacation .. I yearned to talk to people , to hear noises , to hear something other than technology and business. I wanted to hear something genuine which is not a part of a pie chart or formula.

I am not sure if I can go back to India. I don’t know if I can take a break from my work .But I know that If I am leaving I would be leaving Bentonville in 2 or 3 months for ever. That makes this time dearer to me , to know the pulse of Bentonville better.
There is a park right in front of my apartment and the good thing is that it is not crowded. The few times when I could go there for jogging I even wished if I could take just that park with me . Cool breeze , saffron sky , AR Rahman music from the ipod , green lawn , geese , ducks , sparrows .
A few days I have even rested on the benches there. I don’t think I can even think of doing that in India . Lying down under a star studded sky after an hour of jogging is just beautiful .

I am not sure if I would ever be able to return to this place once I leave . I know that this park , the roads , the lakes , the dragon flies would still exist in my memories and that I would long to see them again.

But I am glad at least I can take them along in my memories.

Silent Statues

2010-03-19T23:47:00.000+05:30

Was trying to delete my old blog .. For some reason not able to delete it . So retaining the link here.

http://silent-statues.blogspot.com/

Curtain fall.

2010-03-18T07:52:00.000+05:30

The cage is invisible. But there is a cage for sure.

The ropes are invisible. But they are tied all around.

Sanity , thou art a luxury .

Taking the handcuffs off ...

2010-03-17T05:01:00.000+05:30

And hence I chose to end the 56 months of life waking up and going to sleep with the name of US retailers in mind.
I like taking decisions quick. But in practice I never do that. I take too much time to think of the pros and cons before finally making a choice. Some things, how much ever I think leads to no answer. And all I have to do is to let Time give me the answers and be ready to take them when I get to know.

And hence I am initiating my resignation process ( e-separation ) tonight after one more final thought.

I know how important money is to live. And I also know how important it is to have a life to use the money.

There was money . There was freedom . There was silence in plenty.

Perhaps there was too much of them. I need a more life , more restrictions and obligations and more noises around.

Long Night

2010-03-12T08:44:00.000+05:30

The longest night of the month. Not even in siva rathri have i given up my sleep.

The last time i remember staying awake for work was in the first month of my onsite assignment when i couldnt sleep because of the chicago winter ( and the broken window which i discovered later ) and i kept working on some automation scripts throughout the nights.

So i spent a whole night baby sitting the newly deployed .com which looked prettier than the broadvision version.

It was around 5:00 AM when i finished the testing and went to sleep. The last thing i expected was a business escalation for an invisible link in the morning. Well that link just goes invisible when there is no internet and they havent given internet access to the VDI. Logical to us , but the language of the business is in sales and revenues. So i had to leave my sleep back on the bed and drive to office with the images of my broken dream still hanging on the air. Good that i drove safe though i was almost about to hit a sparrow flying across the road .

Newtons first law saved the bird from dying.

Onset of The days

2010-03-10T08:27:00.000+05:30

Gone are the good old days of Samsclub with just enough work to spend 8 hours in office . With the coming of a big release 2 and the pending committed regression series of the R1 , work is spilling over hands.

I started maintaining a note pad with the tasks for the day scribbled all over its pages. The good thing is that i love having lists written down so that i wont forget to do what i am supposed to do .. the bad thing is i cannot follow this rule every day.

But for the past 1 month i am pretty consistent with the tasks for the day rule and my work is getting more streamlined .

Well ..so the work as i told you is gonna get really bad with sleepless nights ,lengthy meetings and status updates. In a way i love my days to be fully packed with events so that it gives more meaning to the slow times ...

I had this secret plan to resign my job and give all my time for writing after marriage. But i feel i may not be able to survive without getting chained to this pattern of life. You know this race started right from the Kindergarden and perhaps i am so addicted to it that i may not feel normal without all these.

And another thing is it was only when i get stressed out that i feel like writing . When i have all the time , i wont have any thoughts in me , i wont have any words to write ...

Tired after a long day . Gotta prepare for the calls . Signing off ...

Vinnaithandi Varuvaaya

2010-03-04T03:08:00.000+05:30

The songs were good. It was the songs that made me travel about 20 miles at night for a ticket cost of $12 .

I usually dont like reading the reviews before going for any movies. I dont even prefer seeing the trailer before the movie. Movie should be a fresh experience directly from the screen. Well that is the risk.

And so this movie started well with the perfect back ground score . I liked the way the credits were shown , the fonts on river water and their reflection looked good. The movie started well with the marriage scene in church with the hero getting ready to lose his heroine.The development of romance was also ok though i dint like that question of 'Of all the girls in the world why did i love Jessie ? ' repeated 101 times in the movie .

Half way through the movie i could feel the same confusion , dragging and drama which i felt for the movie 'Varanam aayiram' .

This movie, like Vaaranam aayiram had many things shown on screen , many dialogues rendered too which were ultimately leading to nothing big.

The story as a whole can be told as a replica of '500 days of Summer' in a tamil fashion.

A hero - heroine - love - break up - heroine marries someone else - they meet last to part. The end.

And the tamil thread is Hero aspiring for movie direction - becomes assistant director - love break up - new love proposal - script writing - movie direction - movie becomes hit . Wow . The end.

Google just now told me that the director of both Vinnaithandi Varuvaaya and Vaaranam aayiram is the same guy . Well , i dint like the style of narration in both the movies. But i must tell you who ever the director is, he has a style of his own - good or bad. I was surprised that of all the tamil movies i have seen i could relate this to Vaaranam aayiram.

Perhaps there are some good things in it and they would have looked good if he had avoided a lot of unnecessary twists and dramas and most importantly repetitive dramatic dialogues .

For the last 20 minutes i waited for the movie to get over and the entertainment was the comments passed by the audience. And the last few serious 'emotional' scenes seemed real comical .

The movie of course was an injustice to the music.

By the way i must tell you , this director chooses good names for his movies. Very misleading names though.

Lies lies lies

2010-02-22T09:43:00.000+05:30

Well i cant be very specific here. I am permitted to write only in bits and pieces on this. This is to relief my conscience from the guilt of being a part of something which i dont agree with.

The pivot of this industry is communication . Someone who sits on top of the management doesnt see who is actually burning the mid night oil. All he sees is the output.or rather all he wants to see is the output. and all he hears is the voice of who can shout over everybody else.

There was a team working hard day and night .

And those who got the appreciation was some other team.

Who ever sacrificed their personal time , sleep and energy were behind the curtain. Their names were never mentioned...

I felt bad.

I kneel down here ..before my conscience to tell me that i dont want to touch what i dont deserve .

Shift + Delete

Let me not take what i dont deserve . It was someone elses wrongly posted to me.

Let me close my ears . I can hear some lies of toil and sweat. Lies lies lies.

Let me please close my ears because i know they are lying on behalf of me too ...

Yathravivaranam - XNA to Trivandrum

2010-01-27T02:56:00.000+05:30

Back to home for vacation.
The toughest part was taking my 2 check in bags and putting them on the weighing machine in the Bentonville ( XNA) airport. After a house shifting exercise lifting and cleaning and scrubbing the previous week , my bones were not in a shape to carry them all alone again .
By the grace of God someone in the counter had the merci to help me with the bags and put some good tapes on the labels which had almost come out in my process to drag them out.
I hate lifting heavy bags. But my bags are always heavy how ever less I pack .

Well , now the bags are checked in , the security check is done and I am waiting for my flight to come. Walking around came across a business center with ports to plug in my laptop. My laptop doesn’t have power back up .. and it doesn’t have wireless too . So I am not sure if there is wireless connection in the Bentonville airport or not .

For long travels I prefer some attire which gives me comfort, something loose and something neat . I wore a long ankle length skirt because of which I was asked to step aside in the security check. One old woman came and asked me to stand at ease and pushed through the entire length of my legs before asking me to proceed.
The American Airlines people told me that they have never come across this destination of ‘Trivandrum’ ever before . They asked me if it is some distant village . Grr…. I told them it is the south most part of india .

Well the waiting continues … Starting to feel hungry .
I am not sure if they will provide food in a domestic flight.
I hate American food – the uncooked , unspiced ,cheesy versions.
Let me roam around and see if I can get something good.
Bye for now.

I compromised with a carrot cake and coke for lunch from Bentonville airport.

An usual flight of 2 hours from Bentonville.
The only difference perhaps was the sight of empty patches of Bentonville , devoid of buildings when the flight took off . Even from Trivandrum I could see buildings , roads , life .. Bentonville looked dull , gloomy and deserted. Bentonville has no big buildings , no big roads , no big malls …

Part 2

Now in Chicago ORD airport with about more than 4 hours for my connection to Frankfurt . I had some chineese food from one of the first food centers I came across and roamed around the airport for about an hour.
People and people everywhere. I have come to ORD airport twice before this . But in both the times I don’t remember how the air port looked like .
The airport is n times the size of XNA .
I walked along the aisles trying to find my next boarding gate. And I confirmed about my check in baggages ( that I don’t need to do anything more about them ).
And here I am in a port where I could connect my laptop .

Looking around there are a lot of Indian faces … south Indian faces. But not a one which I have seen before.
I remember a comment from one of my friends : How in this lil space of human face God could draw so many different people .. unique , different and yet the same .

Part 3
8 hours of flight to Frankfurt where I had to board my flight to Dubai .
Frankfurt was a lil bad experience. There were confusing indicators for the gates and I lost my way in the airport. I felt my cabin bag gained weight and I found it really difficult to drag it along with me. I am not sure if Germans are rude by nature .. to me who ever talked seemed to be very unfriendly .
I had enough and more time to lose my way in the airport and explore the whole place. So I was in no hurry. The flight got delayed by 2 hours and I had to wait there for about 5 hours.
By then I couldn’t control my hunger any longer and went out in search of some familiar food chain boards . Again another piece of carrot cake and hot chocolate. I had almost hated even the thought of having yet another bite of anything sweet. Left the carrot cake half uneaten into the trash .
I was too tired to wait there . I knew I might sleep off and miss the connection. So tried walking around the waiting area dragging my cabin bags along .
It was one hall way from where the boarding and take off of flights could be seen clearly. I checked my bags and realized that I had forgotten to put my camera in the bag . What a loss !
I watched the take off of a few flights and when sleep became uncontrollable I set my mobile alarm for half an hour and managed to sleep resting my head on my chair.

Part 4
I was supposed to reach Dubai at local time 11:30 PM. But since the flight from Frankfurt got delayed I reached there late with just enough time to find the boarding gate to Trivandrum. Dubai airport looked luxurious .
It was the best one hour of the travel with the excitement to reach home in the next 4 hours. After a brief duty free shopping when I waited for the gates to open I tried to control the smile on my face. It was the most exciting part of the travel and I was dying to just reach Trivandrum.
Travel to Trivandrum was good . There was one aunty settled in London next to me. Of all the co travelers in the whole travel she was the only one I talked to .
Before landing in Trivandrum airport there was a spectacular sun rise which I could see from the flight. Once again I felt sorry for forgetting my camera.

Last few minutes of landing. Flying over familiar landscapes which I knew were familiar but unable to spot what was what. And then it flew over Sanghumukham beach and I could see the boats parked like chappals left outside , first glimpse of the coast , of coconut trees , of houses….
Those last one or two minutes were the most fulfilling in the whole 30 hours of flight… and when I actually could breath the worth of the 1400$ I spent for the tickets. And I just felt if I could freeze the next 14 days of my life since then and live it every other day .
There was life beneath those clouds…. Meaning ... love and a lot more which I had hidden deep in my memories and which I wanted to run to all the while I was away .

That is my land … where I am no more an alien to .

One Confession

2010-01-20T05:16:00.000+05:30

Christmas party was the only colorful day in school when we were allowed to wear color dresses. It was the only day when classrooms were decorated and when teachers did not talk of studies. It was the only day in an year when the entire class sat around and had food together.
It once happened (I think when I was in 8th std or so ) when I was busy with the class room decorations and talking with my friends I saw my sister ( If i were in 8th std then she was in 5th std ) waiting for me outside.
She wanted to meet me and was peeping into my class .
I came out and told I was busy and asked her what the matter was. She did not tell me why but asked me to come out .
I went out . She gave me a paper bag – a small brown cover . I thought she was trying to fool me . I asked her what it was and she just smiled and gave it .
I asked her again what was inside it . And again she smiled .
Out of one wild instinct I threw it out and walked back to my class.
Turning back I saw tears in her eyes . She walked off back to her class.
I felt bad.
I went back and took the brown bag which I threw out . There were sweets which she kept for me .
Later I came to know that she did not want to have them alone so came to give it to me .

Even today … I cannot forgive me for those 2 drops of tears rolling down her cheeks and for the disappointment with she walked off to her class room.

She is singing it wrong

2009-12-30T12:18:00.001+05:30

It was some time during my LKG or UKG that my kochachan ( my dad's younger brother ) used to record my nursery rhymes and play them back to me. I used to think it was some other girl inside the recorder who repeated what i sang to her. I even use to imagine a picture for that girl (oh my unknown reflection !! ) .
And there were a few rhymes which i did not know to sing well when i learnt it first ..and which i learnt in course of time. ..May be later part of the year.
And when he used to play some previously recorded rhymes i used to feel 'This girl inside the recorder is singing it wrong'.

Well , that is what i remembered when i was going through my blog. When i was scrolling down from the day one to today , i felt the 'me in 2007 ' was like the girl singing wrong rhymes from the recorder.
I havent even reviewed most of them before publishing and it sounded more like captured talking in words. It was a much younger me , with a more fragile mind and a totally different set of plans for the years that have gone by.

As i type this here .... I remember a me sitting on a table listening to the rhymes played from the recorder and telling my kochachan that the girl is singing it wrong.

Meeting of a Mallu

2009-12-30T07:59:00.000+05:30

Hardly there are any mallus in this place and hearing someone talk in malayalam is like hearing some unheard music for me.And today when i was coming out of gym i heard someone talking in malayalam and i saw a man whom i knew by face.I have seen him in gym a couple of times ..though i dint know his name .

He asked me to stop when i was walking down the stairs. It was a bit strange for a person i dint know , to motion me to stop -- either there should be some reason ( like he is some of my distant relative and wants to tell me that ) or sm class mate who grew beyond recognition . He winded up his call and came towards me .

'Indu alle ? '

for a moment i rewinded my mind to all those engineering graduate cousins and second cousins to check if it was any of them. No clue.

'Yaa' i said .

'Malayali alle '

'athe '

'Evida padiche '

'Trivandrum '

'Avide evida '

interogation continued for a while and i was trying to figure out if he was just introducing himself just like that ( because i am a malayali ) or if there was any reason.

And for the reason that he was an above average looking guy , i dint mind telling him where i studied and replying to those qns which was already available in the walmart directory.

And then towards the last minute of the conversation .. he spoke in english. Some things , as Narendraprasad said in a movie are better to say in english. ...

'I just waited here for you ... to check if you could join me '
For a moment i thought he is in some organisation and that he is out for some campaign.
'Join ? '
'Yaa i mean ... i dint know your frequency ..so just wanted to know if you would want to join me tonight'

I stood with my eye brows lifted up and question marks in my eyes.

'Well ...i mean for dinner . My wife and kid is not at home . So i am kinda single ....hmm i mean alone. I wanted to know if you can join for dinner ' he explained.
'no .I cook at home. I dont go out '
'I was going out .. so '
'I dont go out. ' i was not quite sure of what my expression was when i said that .

I said a bye and started walking towards my car. I heard him saying 'stay in touch ' from behind
and i told 'ya' turning over my shoulder and hurrying towards my car.

It was an experience when you listen to an old song and then the tape rolls over the recorder and turns out to a shrill cry.
It was a mixture of fear and disgust which i badly wanted to tell someone . I dont fear these kind of people . I just fear their attitude and perhaps the 'Why'.
This is certainly not the first time a seemingly decent fellow starts an innocent conversation and try his luck for a day.
It just leaves me cold.
And as i told my friend 'when i feel the gravity of my mind growing , i just go cold ... and all i want is a just reliable shoulder to rest my head upon. '

A bitter slice

2009-12-29T06:02:00.000+05:30

Well i wrote a whole page , letting all my frustrations and realisations flow in words. On reading it again once more i felt it silly to put them all in a blog.
One thing which i have decided to maintain was to keep out names and direct incidents relevant to others out of my blog. As far as possible i have tried to stick to that principle.
So deleting most of what i typed about who ever and keeping just a few lines ..

Empathy is the most misused human feeling i think .
Some realisations cannot be proved , it can just be experienced.And there is no point in complaining ( to anyone .. not even to yoursef) because they are best to be left the way they are. It would only look complex or get complex if we try to make them any better.

Some Slef talk.

2009-12-24T23:21:00.000+05:30

I am tired of these diplomacies. I am tired of seeing fake faces and hearing fake words. In the corporate world it is tough to see anything real.
‘Mind should be in the words and words should be in the mind ‘ doesn’t hold good for many .
And hence I choose to remain quiet most times. I feel it completely pointless to do some artificial hip hypes for survival. When I don’t mean it and when who ever is hearing hardly hears the meaning of it .. whats the point of spitting out a few words ?

I remember one dialogue from Thoovanathumbikal where Clara says ‘ I am tired of seeing rooms .. rooms and inner rooms .’
I feel like repeating that .
Walls and walls around .
Cold freezing weather . silence and walls.
A perfect combination to make a person insane.

I look around and see faces .. faces that keep changing . The same ppl with multiple faces…. Ceasers and Butuses in disguise.
I look around and wonder what is the story that is going on . The tale of business and dollars and competition which is becoming difficult for me to follow . The statistics of profit and margins getting surfeited.
A few weeks back my manager was explaining some big project which the company won. I wish I could feel the same excitement as her . But all I felt was ‘So what ? ‘.

I am getting bored of this work. To spend a whole day staring at the 15 inch monitor of my laptop. This has become my window ..virtual window .
I remember the picture of lunatics holding the rusted parallel bars of their cell and staring outside and smiling at things of their hallucination . I see people around me ( including myself) staring at laptop screens smiling .
It looks pretty mch the same to me : except that the lunatics behind the bars don’t get a handsome pay , and they don’t fill excels and they don’t talk of business and margins and profits.

Just empty asiles , empty roads , empty houses and porches .
And I find it totally useless to continue the job I am doing here. It is not teaching me anything new , nor am I able to give them anything different . And… I feel this is not what I want. It is as though my thoughts are else where and I am forced to wake up and spend my day here. I am tied to my laptop to be paid .
I feel I am forced by norms to take this job and just do enough work to get paid. But may be I don’t have a choice. This is perhaps the better evil …perhaps it is actually good. Perhaps it is better than what many others do .. and there would even be a couple of them who believe I am in a better boat than them.

I try to find reasons to stay on board.

Walls , faces , corridors, silence , frustration , statistics, pie diagrams , regression cycles, excels, competition : No I don’t belong here.

Avatar

2009-12-19T10:30:00.000+05:30

Well if i should describe the whole experience in one word :it is 'Perfect' , unless you tell me a word above perfect. If there is a visualisation of a perfect blend of concept and implementation i would say it is Avatar .
More than watching the movie for 3 hours , it was almost living in the whole plot as an invisible Avatar feeling the gravity of their emotions.
Perhaps of all the movies i have seen in the recent past ( or let me even say Ever ) this one holds the best.
The precision of graphics is implicit . It goes hand in hand with the plot . And to me it was as real as life.

What i loved the most was the spiritual bonding of the forest ... the centralised network which gets stipulated in the last encounter.
The movie left with me a word that was stuck in my throat and all that comes out in voice is just the word 'Perfect'. It was more than a brilliant effort to communicate such a beautiful message through a movie.
To me, Avatar was close to seeing a realisation . A medium through which the director has spoken a lot more than his words (Perfectly!) . And that is what echoes in my mind right now like the whispers of the anscestors from the holy tree..

There is no other word . It was just perfect .
And hats off to him , James Cameron!

Week end

2009-12-14T05:35:00.000+05:30

Alas a sunday is also over.
The irony is that i wait for week ends throughout the week . I count the days for friday to come.
And then from friday evening onwards i sit at home wondering what to do. I get up late and miss half the day on bed. Most week ends are slow ... and other than cleaning the house and washing and re arranging my room ,nothing else happens.
And then at the end of 48 hours when i realise it is sunday evening some how i feel bad to start the cycle of monday , tuesday , wednesday , thursday , friday .

To be honest it is the working days that are more fulfilling . And perhaps the hope of a week end predictably away is comfortable .

In the past few years messenger has become my voice pipe. The moment i wake up , i log into gtalk ... and keep waiting for my friends to come online. Somehow it has become an invisible chain that ties me to my laptop . The phenomenon of waiting for people and having nothing to talk at times .. and chatting with 4 different people on 400 no-way-related topics.
Some times i wish to go out and have a walk ( but i dont like walking alone these days ) ...

Laptop has become another window to a virtual world ( Bill gates rightly chose the name windows ) .

So i sit here in front of my latop telling my friend that the week end is over....

2 Idlis and one vada

2009-12-10T10:05:00.000+05:30

There was a recent concern about a miscommunication that was sent to a bunch of people ( i being one of them ) . It was regarding a recent policy change which failed to be implemented uniformly resulting in a lot of noise and disturbance among the crowd.
To me , this was one of the manifestations of hypocrisy <> is lately following.
Well i dont want to get into the details of the actual problem . But let me tell you a follow up on that request R.

I got a mail from one so and so HR head .
The content was simple :
She was trying to reach my cell phone to update on the clarification i asked the HR .
To give her a call back to [her number] if possible
It is urgent
I called her at 10:30 PM CST today . ( I dint have my offshore call tonight )
Me : Hi this is Indu . I got a mail regarding req <> and to give a call to you in this number .
HR : Oh yes . Indu . I have been trying to reach you .
Me : Sorry about that . There was some issue with my mobile connection last week .
HR: Tell me Indu ... Tell me <>
Me : I guess you wanted to talk about the request <>
HR : Oh yes . Indu could you please hold on for a while .
2 Idli and one vada . ( repeating 2 more times )
Me : !!!
HR : Tell me Indu
Me : <> I can call at another time if you are busy right now.
HR : Oh thats ok . You can tell me . and regarding the request <................................>
me : ...
HR : ...
me : ....
[Clinging of plates announcing the arrival of the 2 idlis and one vada ]
HR : May be then i can call you back at some other time . blah blah ... asking for time .

HR ? MBA holders ? working for reputed company ... 2 idlis and one vada.
Rightly said they are the ambassadors of the company's current status.

The White Life !!!

2009-12-09T23:59:00.000+05:30

So it is all back .. the days of freezing winds and snowy roads and shivering life. Perhaps in such a weather what I would love to do it to just remain under the comfort of my quilt and just pull it over my face and go back to sleep. My bed is always warm enough to put me asleep …
Today was the first snow in Bentonville .. and as I was sipping my morning tea I could see the snow starting (the first particles of snow dancing in the air ) . First slow and then thicker and intense.
The muffler , gloves , thermals and jackets to hug me from all around and I walked to my car to discover that the doors were jammed. It was a new info to me that the doors would get jammed in snow . At first I thought my key stopped working and tried a couple of more times ( remote and manual ) to make sure that there was that tick sound of opening the lock.
I tried my best to pull the door open ( hoping that the door handle will not get detached ) . Standing in the snow with my laptop bag on one shoulder it was not very comfortable to pull the door any harder .
Luckily the door on the opposite side opened to let me into the car .
It needed some circus to finally get behind the steering and to jump over the gear box with all the winter clothes wrapped around me .

The next effort was in the parking lot trying to open the same jammed door. For a moment I thought I will have to walk back carrying one of those doors ( the jagathy image ) to office , or even the doors slamming against the adjacent parked cars ..
I was lucky enough to get the door opened after a lot of pushing and tapping and praying.

And now to go for lunch I am not sure if the doors would open when I walk all the way till the parking lot .
So .. it is all back .. the months of shivering cold white life .

Good News ???

2009-11-24T02:06:00.000+05:30

I wanted to plan for newspaper daily. For the past several months I am not even knowing what is happening around the world . Well, international big news I hear people discussing and then I go and search in the internet to know more of it . There was a time when I used to regularly check the Malayalam News links . But it is the same old news and I feel it meaningless reading them esp right in the beginning of a day .
Politics , corruption , murder , … Doesnt the news ever change ? Every day these are the static things . They form the frame and all the other news just fits into this frame. It is sometimes scary to read them and I think it is better to be ignorant than reading unpleasant news right in the beginning of the day .

But these are not the only happenings in this world . There should be some rule to collect just the good news on the front page of every newspaper. Waking up in the morning and reading of a gang murder even before you have your tea … is like starting the day upside down. The first news should be positive , should be full of energy and hope … and there should be a page for potitics ( where the vomit of who said what , allegations , power plays should be dumped ) , and a page for all the bad news just like they maintain a dedicated page for the dead.
I am sure it would be possible to find all good news and put it in the front page . I believe things would have got better by just emphasizing that in spite of all the bad there are still a lot more of good happening around.

With my morning tea I want to choose my News. When I read about blood and murder how can I start my day good .
Even now I see some political statements , some gossips , some allegations … that’s the first punch of energy you take with your morning sip of tea .
Rape , Murder , loot , politics , eve teasing , injustice … Why should they be advertised when nobody is particularly given a good BIG punishment as much as the hype in the newspapers ? I feel it is like saying ‘There was a gang rape.The victim was murdered and the culprits walked out of the game with no sufficient proofs’ …or sentenced for a 2 year imprisonment ( vacation !!!) …

Of Dragon flies and Scorpions

2009-11-23T22:16:00.000+05:30

I am an expert in giving advices. I really can motivate others( really!! : ) ) . Examples , similes and metaphors come so spontaneously that most times I myself become a listener to myself . It is like what Portia said in Merchant of Venice ..
‘If to do were as easy to know what is good to do .. then chapels would have been churches and poor man’s cottages prince’s palaces ‘ – word by word Shakespeare did not write exactly like this. But it means the same anyways .
So at times I listen to a portion of what I tell others and it helps me to make churches out of chapels.
And the images and words which I tell remains somewhere deep within me that when I actually feel low they whirl up and kind of lift me up to make me feel better .

I assume that with every good positive thought a new dragon fly ( minnaminungu) is born in your heart . And with every negative thought a scorpion . And at the end of everything my duty is just to kick out all the scorpions and to have just dragon flies within me – It helps me keep out anything negative now . I would rather not have any thought at all than a scorpion in my heart . I just want my heart to be lit with dragon flies flying all around.

When you feel low , Treat yourself . Get yourself an ice crème if you are not on diet , a dress if your salary if not over , or even a cup of tea with ginger and spices . Or watch a good comedy clip . It some how makes you feel so good. Happiness cannot be bought , but there are a lot of affordable things which can give you happiness – It helps me at least.

When you think that you are caught in front of a boiling volcano with just the heat and the lava , tell yourself that it is the most spectacular sights you have ever seen. You will have just one more minute left to live . But I would rather spend it happy , excited and satisfied than be worried and depressed . –It has helped me take a turn away from the volcano’s heat to drive home safe. If I had stood there and cried, I know it would have just swollen me up. – It feels great to be happy .

Cherish the smaller things . The best happiness is given by the smallest things . And I don’t want to miss the bliss of having them. So I tell myself not to overlook the smaller things . It could even be a smile of a kid who passes by you in the store , or the sight of your favorite book on the bookshelf , or even a talk with a friend with you have not spoken for years. –It recharges me at least .

If you should lose something , you would lose it one day . So there is no point in holding on to it and worrying if you will lose. Just let things go … and you would feel better than holding on to it and worrying. As long as there is nothing you have to do , nothing expected from you and nothing under your responsibility take your grip off and relax. –It has at least helped me to take one scorpion out of my heart. The pain of losing however big or small is just a reaction and it is just natural and the fault is not at your end . I wouldn’t want to compromise the happiness of the remaining years for just this small bite of a scorpion .

The biggest Guru as far as I have seen is experiences. And I don’t miss the lessons most of the times. Every thing , every one and every moment teaches us something new . And I just take down the lecture notes … I know I will need them someday to tell myself when I need the wisdom.

Grass is greener on the other side.

2009-11-22T22:28:00.000+05:30

For a really long time I thought I wanted to be alone. I thought I loved solitude and that I could find happiness in sun sets and flowers and stars and all that was abstract around. To an extent it was true – I could spend all my time in admiring the sunsets and flowers and abstraction. But it took me time to realize that it was not what I loved to do. It was perhaps a filament of my imagination and the pseudo personality that wanted abstraction.
Now I like groups , people , noises , laughers . I love spending time with others rather than sitting alone in my room and typing blogs. Perhaps it is because I already get more than enough time with myself alone and more than enough of silence every day that I want people around all the time. Even if we don’t talk , just the presence of another person in the house makes a difference .
When I am alone, I keep cleaning the house. I love it actually . Vacuuming , cleaning and washing clothes . The feel of a tidy house is very good . But time is still left even after all the work .
It is just human tendency to look for what we don’t have and think that what we have is not what we want . When I was staying at my valyammas house for a month I used to feel that life was becoming too fast . There were always lots of people in the house and there used to be conversations all the time. There used to be guests ( relatives ) most of the days … and I felt that I was getting too tired of the noises.
But looking back , I feel it is the noises and hectic schedules that we cherish the most. The silence and the solitudes just form an insulating layer in the memories .

These days when I see a good dusk , I just watch it and leave it with normal eyes. I don’t want to think philosophical and wonder about the wandering streaks of clouds that reflect the sun rays and make them look beautiful . Most things I just watch and leave.

In my project team too I am the only person who works from my office . I sit in an aisle which doesn’t have any people to whom I can talk to ( at least no girls with whom I can chit chat ).Other than the technical follow ups and official communications there is nothing I can talk of new dresses , new gossips J and new recepes . I think in a normal girl conversations these just comes in without even knowing .
I try new things in my room to kill boredom. I clean , I re arrange , I decorate … The feel of a new face to the room is happy . And then when I am tired, I login to gtalk and start talking to some long lost friends who are equally jobless on some other part of the world . I browse through their albums and wonder how fast their kids are growing.

Today I am planning to get some roses to keep near my pooja room. It is a new craze every day . Some times ice cream , sometimes dolls , some days dresses and today it is roses. And all I do is .. I just enjoy them to the maximum – be it ice crème , dolls or dresses.
Some times happiness is in making my room untidy . I just dump clothes and papers casually and feel it cozy to sleep in a messy room. Making an untidy room tidy is an art .

Sunday is almost half gone and I am determined not to sleep my day off.

The Ghost in my kitchen.

2009-11-19T22:52:00.000+05:30

I am not really scared of ghosts and I don’t want to think that they are significant enough to be thought about a lot. And that is the reason why I avoid seeing any horror movies to keep any threads of imagination that could make me feel scared later. It is the imaginations that used to make me scared once upon a time. … like the rustle of dry leaves , the shadows over the windows and, when I am scared I imagine faces in the shadow and foot steps in the winds.
Imagination just keep flowing and from somewhere deep down the archives of memories it will dig out some images to make my situation worse.
For the past one week nights are scary. By somewhere around 12:00 Am I hear noises in my kitchen. To avoid feeling scared I go to sleep early only to be woken up in the middle of the night. Day before yesterday when I was half way through my sleep I heard my roomie knocking at my door rigorously. I switched on the lights and opened my door and saw her outside telling me that there was something in our kitchen. Obviously if someone is woken at the middle of the night and told that there is something on the other side of the wall , anyone will get scared. We went slowly ,switched on the lights , opened all the doors and cupboards . There was nothing . And that is even more scary . if there is nothing what could be making the dub dub sound at night ?
The noises repeat . Last night too I was woken by this dub dub noise in the kitchen .
I dint dare to open my door and remained under my blanket . I just messaged my friend that there are noises in the kitchen and that not to keep his mobile in silent mode ( just in case due to some celestial reason me and my roomie should run out of the house to the cold cold night outside ) .
I must tell u that it is after a very long time that I am feeling this scared. I kept hearing the same dub dub in the kitchen . I don’t know from where this scene in ‘Sixth sense ‘ came to my mind – The image of the pale bloody woman preparing dinner and saying ‘Dinner is not ready’ to the boy.
I pulled my blanket further over my face and kept praying so that I would fall asleep somehow.

I know ghosts don’t interfere much with the living . I have never seen any inspite of the fear I used to have as a child. I could never see anything anywhere at any time even when I had gone near graves on all the odd times of the day .
Right now it is the imagination that is the problem.. And perhaps because I have nothing else to worry about .. so I just keep listening to noises which probably are not even worth listening to .

So tonight let me check if I can scoff at the ghost who cooks in my kitchen when the lights are switched off.

A Verse for the DM

2009-11-17T02:17:00.000+05:30

I see the mighty waves spilling above the sails
Roaring insane to pull me deeper into the seas
And I see the captain smiling at them composed
To shy away the tempest resting beneath the waves .
That which gives us a breeze of hope , a strength
to assure, beyond all that seems daunting around
that we still can make it beyond the crimson lines
With just that gaze of him beyond the sails ...

Well that wass a verse written as a momento for our DM on his visit to our client location. The irony is that i knew nothing of him and this is perhaps a hypothetical situation of how a manager should be .
But it was good to see my verse on a beautiful background , framed and given to him and to hear it read out to the crowd by him .
Knowing the least about him .. still what was amazing was his memory power. He seemed to know the complete history about each one in his unit..personal and professional records.
In these times when people prefer to forget most things about others , it is good to see people maintaining their memory updated.

Tastebuds ...

2009-11-14T13:16:00.000+05:30

Cooking for others gives a kind of satisfaction which perhaps nothing else can give . Sometimes I feel real taste is in the taste buds of whom we cook for.
The feeling that what I have made could satisfy someone’s hunger is one of my happiest emotions.
Cooking is where you can put all those secret ingredients of love , care and concern without anyone complaining that ‘there is too much love in sambar ‘.
In fact I have even felt that when you cook with a happy mind , you actually share your happiness through food. At least I have felt that the food can bring together people and that it can bring a lot of happiness over the dining table.

I love cooking for those whom I love – for my friends and my family . And at times I feel there is no bigger happiness than cooking for them.

One of my friend keeps complaining about what I cook . He somehow senses the % of salt , turmeric and chilli and says it is bad . When the food turns out to be good he remains silent , and when it goes bad he says about the % of missing ingredients . This is something strange to me because what ever I make for my dad he doesn’t complain at all ( even if sambar tastes like rasam my dad is happy to have what I make . Believe me ! ) .
But the more my friends says he dint like something , more the energy to fine tune the % of ingredients to make it taste good enough .
They dont know the effort behind most of such dishes . It is the first time i am ever touching non veg to cook and i have no clue what to do and how to do . They dont know how much research i do to make it even half as good as what the actual chicken curry should taste like. But i just do it again and again hoping that some day it would start tasting good enough.

Well , I must tell you irrespective of what feed back u get ( negative or positive ) , cooking still gives a lot of happiness. It is as good as writing a good verse and hearing someone say it is relatable .
When you are happy and when you have a reason , cooking becomes the best medium to say you love and that you care.

PS: the rule of emotion being a secret ingredient applies to all emotions. When I cook with an angry mind I can see my room mates coughing of smoke and opening the windows too.

Hey one more thing : Did u realise that today is a friday and that it is 13th too ? :) :)

It is close to 2:00 AM here and i think i shouldnt sit alone in my hall ( ironically of apartment 13th ) and do any more blogging.

Signing off ...

A slept away day

2009-11-12T06:38:00.000+05:30

Tried reading a story. No words were getting registered and sentences seemed meaningless. How could an award winning story be so full of words and having no meaning. Then i realised that none of the words were getting registered and that i was just reading and not reading at the same time.
I was on leave today . A deliberate leave to be away from the same crowd i see every day . Some times viruses are innocent - we just keep blaming them for the fever .Morning i called up my team mate and put the blame on viruses ( poor innocent microbes to take all the blames!) for my leave.And then the whole day i slept ,occassionally getting up to wet my throat whenever i see myself searching for oasis in my dreams .

I dont know if everybody has this syndrome - But to me ,when i feel sad i slip into deep sleep. I feel it is nature's way of soothing my mind .
Touch wood.

Winnie and Minney

2009-11-08T08:56:00.000+05:30

There is no price tag for happiness. Most times it comes absolutely free and some times with a denomination.
Last week i was feeling a bit low and drove to JC penny and picked every thing i felt good in my eyes. Ofcourse it was a bit expensive . But it was the happiest 100+ $ i have ever spent and i came smiling out of the store forgetting everything else. I never thought that happiness could last for a whole week with the excitement to try each dress.
And today too i went to JC penny to get some stuffs for my room mate. I tried picking some clothes . Tried a very cozy night dress ( but what difference . Who will see me at night ! ) .
And finally went to the kids section and found the best of stuffed dolls i have ever seen. I cant tell u how I felt to just take them and roam about the whole store. I bought a winnie the poo and minney mouse and it felt sooo good to hold them. It was the best 37$ i have spent on dolls .
They form the latest additions to my bed.
And i still cant tell u how happy it feels to be with them. :)

End to End Testing

2009-11-05T22:31:00.000+05:30

End to end testing is the worst in one sense and the most exiting on the other sense. Being the thread that runs from the first till the last portion of the application is a good feeling.You witness everything that goes through the system and sees the whole picture of the business behind each small block you deal with every day .
But the worst part is when each part of the application is made by different groups ( different set of vendors and even companies ) and when they try to arrange the jig saw it never fits.
And the chipping and chassel work starts to grind the extra and fill the missing . And it is the testers who suffer the most here trying to read a broken verse with jumbled words which makes no sense . It is a pain tallying what has been made with the whole set of requirement docs , with the test cases written as per the understanding and fighting and arguing for what we think is right.
The first time when the application was fitted it was a joke. It was like u try making a gulab jamun and ends up with pakoda. It gets better with each iteration how ever… and the pakoda starts looking more and more like gulab jamun. (and as per the new rules if you cannot make gulab jamun out of pakoda , change the nomenclature . They call for meetings and decide to call pakoda as Gulab Jamun from so and so date ) .Believe me I have seen worse than this .

This is kind of a last round of testing I am doing . Perhaps the work of a bigger team narrowed down and destined to be coordinated by one person. The only good thing that
keeps me going is that my current manager gives me enough motivation to keep going .

Well end to end testing where the client doesn’t even provide individual phones is tough. And when POCs from different modules sit at different corners of the building you can easily figure out who is the tester – They just have to keep running around north south east and west throughout the day . And you can see developers running away , taking hidden routes to avoid even meeting the testers accidentally .
And some times the tester should stand in the middle of a big group of people alone composed and hearing all the bashings from them and just telling them that you understand just to make them pause to put your point across. More than the business and the technology it the perseverance and patience that this has project taught me.

There were times when I have felt like crying , sometimes insulted , sometimes angry … and I just postpone my emotions because I have no other go but to push them further. And sometimes I feel sorry for the teams getting bashed for the defects and escalations we do. But I have no other go . . That is the agreed upon protocol . And the next time I go to these teams ( against whom I did the big escalation ) and ask them for data set up they know to take vengeance out of the protocol. And I hear them all , smile and ask them again for the same data until they finally give me.

End to end testing is at times like a Kurukshetra battle. There are sakunis, Dridaraasthras , Sreekrishnas , Arjunas , Bheemas , Duryodanas … and in fact every single character you can find here. And each time you have to put on the coat of a suitable character ( at times even Shakuni’s ) just to get things done.
Dharma yudha in every sense! There are protocols to slit each others throat , to kill , to stab , to run away , to put the blame on someone else …
Occasionally I step out of the game , sit back and enjoy the scene of people running for lives and others chasing them.
And then I feel it is a drama which starts at 9:00 and ends at 6:00. A time pass , a hide and seek game with everybody gaining at least something at the end of the day .

And then I come home, make myself a hot cup of tea and plan what to make for my dinner. Slicing the vegetables and cleaning the vessels – They seem to be so real , so much living with no masks , no competitions.
Onions , potatoes , beans and tomatoes … they are so predictable , so unchanging !

Of Scripts ...Of Padmarajan ... Of timeless art ...

2009-10-12T03:53:00.000+05:30

Every time I watch a Padmarajan movie , it leaves me with a speechless moment. I take a walk around my room or sometimes sit alone and I can still feel the movie like a story that has not ended. Beyond the still frame of the last scene and sliding credit list .. I feel there is a life to the movie ... a trail of thought which is left for each of us to follow beyond the story telling.
Just now finished watching Arapatta kettiya gramathil and I cant help wondering how he could give life to each of his charaters with so much of realism.
I liked Jagathy’s character and the way he handled it. The heroine wasn’t very great looking nor have I seen her in any other movie. But somehow in Padmarajan’s movies it is not the market of the actors that talk for the movie … I guess the most powerful element of his movie is his script .
My favorite scene in the movie was when Malu amma ( sukumari ) keeps telling her son bhasi ( jagathi ) not to go out when the riot was happening. That scene is beautifully handled. Esp the restlessness of Jagathy .
I was once addicted to reading Padmarajan's scripts and then watching those same movies , just to tally how well my imagination blended with the actual cinema .
There were many scenes where I realized what contribution an actor could give to the script … Like in ‘Kallan Pavithran’ Bharat Gopi performed much much better than how i imagined the character to be.

No HD technology … no morphing , no graphics . But yet there is something magical about Padmarajan movies which makes them timeless.

The Recipe

2009-10-07T21:34:00.000+05:30

There are no mistakes just reactions.
If I were given a chance to go back and alter anything which happened so far there would be very few things which I would want to change. Anything which are supposed to be bad to my eyes and to anyone’s eyes have contributed something positive to me. It has made me a better person and perhaps without those bitter experiences I wouldn’t have been what I am now .Each and every incident in my life has seasoned me to fit better into this world.
Life started with hypothesis which others taught me – the ideological picture of the world which was a lot different from the reality . What I explored myself was the real world. It took me time to stabilize myself and many times I kept falling down and hurting myself. But the truth is I love those falls than being locked up in an illusionary world which others painted for me.
And it is with those falls and bruises that I really came to know the meaning of my existence .
Well , I know there is no ideal stories ( and if you mean an ideal story is one which is just full of happiness I disagree with you .) . Life is a delicious meal … with hot , sour , bitter and sweet experiences tied together.

And for each of us the recipe is different, the taste is different and the ingredients are different . But I know that we are here to invent our own special recipes and to experience its taste.
And when I know that, I make my recipe careful … for I want it to taste good to me after all the toil and stirring.

Of Superlatives

2009-10-06T22:27:00.000+05:30

I don’t like talking much. Not those polished superlatives which we least mean and spit them out for diplomacy . Well , too much of them is suffocating . The polished , sugar coated words that doesn’t come from within.That takes away the whole purpose of a Hi and hello . It is like throwing pebbles into empty vessels.Mind should be in your words and words should be in the mind – that is my theory on communication.At times, beneath these polished words and superlatives I can see the fight of people like how street dogs roll over each other for a piece of bone covered with flies.There are hidden meanings and implicit intentions behind polishes .It is suffocating to see dogs fighting for bones . Dogs with seasoned behavior , diplomatic and qualified pounce on each other with sugar coatings and polished words …When I look around , I feel everyone is alone here. However old , however weak they are they still are independent . May be they crave for superlatives , Hi s and hellos . And since it is a social hunger they keep saying it even when they don’t mean it.

Re entry

2009-10-05T22:26:00.000+05:30

A long pause .Tired of being in anonymous identities. So back to the old one .I just cannot hold back from writing … be it sense or non sense I need a space to write. Writing without identity is not boldness ( I feel ) , being behind the curtains cannot give me the bliss of expression.So I take it back ..this blog.

The Closing Entry.

2009-01-12T22:46:00.000+05:30

I started this blog for no reason as such. But now when I see the long list of entries to the left I feel this has become a trail of my thoughts and this speaks more than what I ever wanted any one to know. This one perhaps is going to be the last entry.
In a world where an infinite number of words are dumped every second my words makes no difference and I feel what has been already written down is enough and more.

There are a lot of things life has taught me . .. Those things which I could not read from any books or those that were not taught by any one. Life is perhaps the best teacher.
To be on a infinitely spinning globe that spins only to reach the very same point after time and again , I feel it as a celestial joke. (The macrocosm of atom . The mad spinning of the electrons around for each element that makes the element what it is. Had the electron chosen not to spin for its seeming insane traversal around the very same nucleus we wouldnt have had soduim and pottassium different. So perhaps the celestial joke is just a seeming one )
Perhaps I have more to tell . But things are better when they are left unsaid.

This world is a colorful kaleidoscope of events. A place where the most beautiful and most artistic works are locked up . And this life is my privilege.

I feel it is better to die for your virtues than living happily for one hundred years. And how much ever the modern tag line says ‘there is no justice in the world ‘ , there certainly is a justice we perhaps always overlook. In every fall of twig , in every exhale of breath and in anything and everything that happens , there is always the justice and reason we choose not to read.

PS: The blog was never ME. It was just a witness of my thoughts . Witness is never the self. So i leave it here .. the blog.

Painting the past ,,,

2008-12-22T21:35:00.000+05:30

Some times I wish I shouldn’t have grown up . The life in school was predictable, definite, certain … Every year the syllabus was known in advance. School formed the world for me. I dint think there was a bitter reality lying out waiting for people to step out of the secure walls of the school.
Some times I wish I could get into that old school uniform , braid my hair into twos , wear those white pair of socks and open shoes … and to ride my life on that bicycle I had all through my school time.
Even while in my 12th I dint realize from the next year onwards I was going to be a stranger to the school.
I don’t feel very much attached to my college. Perhaps it was just 4 years or may be because it was a place that gave me a bunch of bad experiences. College taught me how cunning , tricky and fake people could get … But it trained me to live with the decaying realities of a real world. It woke me up from my illusion of a perfect world to tell me that all that exists in books is not true.
Engineering was not a passion. I joined Btech because I got a merit seat in a government engineering college. Till my 12th standard I must say I was passionate about coding. The 4 years of learning Information technology in college has put out all my interests for coding. After 2 years of coding in the company I got in , I decided to stop coding for ever. I moved to the QA validation department. And now for the first time after my 12th I am feeling good about coding .The coding here is a value addition and not a necessity and there is no one to keep our heads pushed under water to ‘innovate’ anything.

Some times my mind returns to those corridors of my school . I like visiting my school when it is empty. I feel as though the walls can recognize me . Those were the most innocent years of my life and when I walk the roads again I feel refreshed.
There is some thing like a fragrance of time which I get from there. A lot of things have changed since then and when I go back I feel I am walking back time.

Memories are always the best. They are static. We don’t need to fear anything unexpected creeping into the past. All that has happened , has happened. Good or bad they cannot be altered and we know to call the events back from the pages of memory and tell us that it is a silent past.
The good thing about memories is that … It keeps growing. Every today as it dies, it moves to the archive of memories.And it partly gives us the brush to draw what our memories should look like.

When todays become dreary, dull and lifeless
We push open the doors of memories
And feel the gush of all yesterdays
Swiping past our thoughts
With bitter sour and sweet moments
Re-living the inner worlds silent serene. ….

Photography....

2008-12-20T01:56:00.000+05:30

Dreams are like a well shot photograph . They highlight those which we dont even notice in reality. They flash upon the canvas of mind and all we see are just colors.

When Stars Shine Down ...

2008-12-18T00:59:00.000+05:30

The first snow fall in Chicago for this year started on the day I arrived here. It was almost impossible for me to cope up with the weather and I literally froze every time I had to step out.
Now it has been more than 2 weeks and I am getting accustomed to the negative degree celcius here.
Snow looks beautiful. And yesterday we had one of the most spectacular snowfalls which almost looked like ‘heavens blessing upon the earth ‘. I could see the flakes falling graciously, dancing with the winds as though to some slow background music played else where. If we keep staring at the snow fall for sometime, we feel the rhythm of the fall . ( I wonder if the celestial music concept of the Elizabethan era was referring to such a kind of an unheard music we feel from nature ) .
Everywhere there is just snow and nothing else. The monotonous white color used to look dull and dead to me till a few days back. But yesterday on the way home ,I could see some streams turned to ice, abandoned bird nests with snow accumulated , some withered willow trees ( I guess they are willow trees ) which resembled like a gang of old women standing with their long white hairs to the front .
And what surprised me today was , while walking to the office from the car I saw a few of the snow flakes resting on my hair ( I had my hair braided and put in front ) and each of those snow flakes had a beautiful structure. I paused for a while and saw more of it falling on my hair strands. They resembled stars.
I googled the snow structure and could know more about The Snow. Nature indeed amazes us with its infinite artistic dimensions. Be it in a flake of snow ( visible to the naked eyes ) or an invisible structure of an atom which prototypes a bigger solar system structure.
No wonder in Sir Arbindo Gosh's verse (named WHO) he wondered Who is He who shapes the curl in the forehead of a child with the very same care as He sends the mighty Jupitor on to its orbit ...

A name writ in water ...

2008-12-12T08:32:00.000+05:30

http://englishhistory.net/keats/life.html

....

Here lies him who will not give us one more verse...

yet challenging the death ,for he is still alive

for more generations to walk his mental roads

to awe as he spins out thoughts out of silent words

the words that meant nothing till then !

to live for ever in every heart that holds his verse safe within ...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

'Here lies one whose name was writ in water. '

and that got one with every ocean, to traverse around and reach the shores his mortal could not ... and flow into every heart that holds a garden for his verses to be sung ...

Snow Man ...

2008-12-04T04:59:00.000+05:30

It could be called an experience only after it got ended. Till then i was like a particle in brownian motion running aimlessly in a zig zag way.
The apartment i stay in has a main entrance door which can be opened by anyone from inside . But i dint know for sure that it can be opened only from inside ( and to open from outside we need to have a separate key) . This clause struck me only when i reached the door front . I turned back and the cab i came in was gone and all i could see was snow and nothing else around. It was snowing rigorously and there was nothing and no one to call for help. All doors closed . I tried even knocking the door in the hope that some one in the near by apartment would come and help. Nothing helped me.
I knew that my friend was inside the house and that i just need to call her up and she will open the door for me. But i dint have a mob fone with me. Its only my 3rd day in the US and i never realised that not having a fone could put me into such troubles.
I walked back , taking careful steps not to slip down in the snow . The snow was pouring down (exactly like that jsp we put in thoolika on dec edition to give snow falling effect ) . I could see 2 kids standing outside an apartment 2 blocks away. They were the only humans in sight . i walked towards them with the prayer that they shouldnt leave that place before i could reach them.
The snow was deep and some steps could swallow a good portion of my shoes ( and yaa i was wearing a semi open shoes which made things even worse ).
I narrated the story to the kids. And the girl handed over her mob fone to me. I had to take off my gloves to hold the phone and to take the fone numbers from my bag . My hands were literally frozen and i could see them shiver as i listened to the dial tone. My friend ( to my bad luck ) was sleeping and she dint hear the phone ring.I tried again and there was no response. By then my hands were dead and the mobile slipped off from my hand. It landed on the floor with some pieces of it coming out.
For a moment i expected the girl to catch me by my collar... I said a sorry and took back the pieces that fell down. But the kid was very sweet . She said .. 'Thats ok . Even i do it very often ' and she gave back the fone to me. I dialled 2 of my other friends and asked them for help.
I cant think what would have happened if i dint see those kids there. Thankfully my friend got woken up and she came down.
Perhaps the first next thing i should do is to get my sim card ready.

The first Night ....

2008-12-01T11:17:00.000+05:30

This is my first day or rather the first night in th US. I am yet to see the day light here. Even without seeing much i could feel the snow fall here and the biting cold that could almost freeze my blood if i dint have the jacket on. Just a while ago when i moved the curtains aside i could see the snow laden lawn of my apartment.

There is a glass window beside my portion of the room and its 'radiating' cold throughout.

The thought of sleeping here looks scary.

I think the time is some where close to my otherwise lunch time and may be that is why i am having a terrible attack of hunger now. The food in the flight was not very good and they made sure that it was served at all wrong times. I have never had rice and tea together before. To my bad luck the TV in front of my seat was not working . After Frankfurt i was given another seat where too the TV was not working. That made the travel a bit boring.

bits and pieces of thoughts ...

2008-11-27T23:28:00.000+05:30

Life seems to be a flow... and i feel like a tiny twig routing my destiny with the flow of life. Sometimes i become the spectator of my own story . I watch it not knowing whats gonna happen next (and ofcourse thats the nature of life). Perhaps it is that suspense of life that keeps us move forward.
Recently the face of a baby was haunting me a lot. A tiny skinny kid in MOC . He used to easily fall asleep in the warmth of my hands everytime i go there. And honestly i have never felt better than that before. I felt even if there was no other reason for me to live, i could perhaps live for just holding such a baby in my hands. They need the warmth which perhaps i myself dont realise i have.
It is with a confused state of mind that i am going to travel onsite this sat. I cant differentiate if this is pain or fear of the unknown. I certainly am gonna miss everythng around me (and the kids form a part of those few near to heart things. )
Its not easy to walk a whole long way alone. But i am just a lil twig caught in the flow of time and I must flow . Unfamiliarity is worse than loneliness. And in that respect i call being alone a luxury.

God's Home.

2008-11-22T21:52:00.000+05:30

Some instances make us feel that the world we live in is much more complex than what we can imagine. Last week when I visited one orphanage I could see kids as tiny as a week old abandoned by their mothers. And I could know that most of these ‘mothers’ were of the age group from 15 to 18 years. The ‘mothers’ just sever away the umbilical chords to return to their life of freedom . The ‘mothers’ complete their studies and get married to the men their family chooses. Most of the kids there were given birth by students.
Me and my friend went around lifting up each of the crying babies , changing their dipers , feeding them and putting them back to sleep. Managing some 20 – 25 kids was not easy . But it was a wonderful experience. Some kids just needed a pat to stop crying .. they just wanted the assurance that they are not left alone.To some the warmth of our hands was the luxury. . .
Each child had a different story , most of which were unbelievable. And when we see them innocently smiling out of their cradle we just cannot ignore the reality of the bitter world that is awaiting outside for them… Thankfully most of the kids get adopted to good families where they find their new identities. With no blood or DNA bonds God links them to a family where they will be safest. But then again there are some kids whom the records call as ‘medically unfit’ who will not be preferred by couples for adoption.
The un-adopted medically unfit kids continue their life in the orphanage. They get educated, employed and married away too . Orphanage is just another home…

I just could not help awing at the service the sisters do there. It was just a few hours that we could spend there and each kid was a prayer to us.

PS : This is abt the particular orphanage where we went last week. I don’t want to generalize that all orphanages are run by Gods. A few of them are owned by devils too.

A note on Poetry ...

2008-11-17T11:34:00.000+05:30

Poetry is not all about lamenting. I badly want to tell this to some people who reiterate their belief of poetry being all about sadness and tragedy. Every one alive today has had at least a few instances of non happy moments in their life. And I am a strong believer of the fact that no bad times nor good times are permanent. In life we have just passing phases which we call as good and bad as per our convenience.
Poetry is perhaps the poet’s method of reciprocating to those good and bad moments.
I have seen ppl reading philosophy as lamenting. And I wonder what makes these ppl think that behind every poem there are concealed tragedies?
Each one of us have cried at some point of time. When I was a kid , I have cried even for losing a newly bought pencil .And perhaps those tear sheds have taught me to be more careful in handling my belongings.
Poetry should leave a trail of thought. There should be a discovery of dimension invisible otherwise. And I don’t call it as a tragic if it deals with a reality. I am not saying that what I look for in a poem is there in what I write. As some one said rightly... poetry should BE more than just written.

Partying ???

2008-11-11T15:40:00.000+05:30

A difficult slice of reality is that a lot of the ppl are ‘party lovers’. I have no aversion to partying. But to me an explicit throwing of party doesn’t sound very relevant always. I do like a party atm (occasionally) but I don’t feel very much for an ‘all time party’ routine.
I don’t know if it is because I am in a relatively smaller world that I call certain things as extravagance. I am probably very much accustomed to a simpler life and the stronger pungent colors some times choke me.
Perhaps I am a person who wants to stay away from the squeaking crowd. I really don’t understand if it’s the problem with me or with others. Some times I prefer to be left alone. Its difficult to get like minded ppl and I would rather be alone than in a wrong group.

Tribute to Mr Grammar

2008-10-15T20:55:00.000+05:30

Grammar is inevitable. And its sad that i dont follow it always.
Its the basic semantic of a language and i know i dont have the right to murder it. But if you ask me ( in case if i am missing a few clauses of grammar in my poems) , to me language is just a paint in my hand . I dint want to be bothered about 'What not' and 'how not' to use it.
I follow my heart when i write.
If some one tells me 'I am not good in Oracle or DB2' i might get demotivated .. but if u tell me 'here is a flaw in your poems ' i get some kind of a latent energy to outdo the parameters ...I value them - the criticises . They unviel those which i would miss otherwise - be it deliberate or otherwise !

Kankal irandaal Unn Kankal irandaal ...

2008-10-10T15:13:00.000+05:30

This is one of the best songs i could listen to of late. And i must tell you ..for one whole day i really died to listen to it . There were a few caller tunes with this song set and i had to keep dialling to those numbers to listen to the first 2 lines of the song. And finally at the end of the day when i got the song transfered from one of my project mates' mobile i felt i have received a fortune. I cant remember how many times i already listened to it since yesterday evening and i just cannot stop listening to that song. The music kind of trickles down to the soul every time we listen to it. And as the Lays ad line ,'No one can eat just one ' you just cannot stop with once. The way the song goes up and down with a perfect curve in music is awesome. Although i dont understand Tamil lyrics, the music reveals the mood and meaning of the song. I felt as though i was waiting to hear this song all my life ( no exhageration ! ) .. When i listen to this song , i feel i am the happiest person on this earth ..( the kind of feeling that 'Thank God i dint die yesterday .. else i would have missed this experience')

Another such song which i dint get fed up listening to over and again for weeks is a song from Mozhi ( and thats the reason y i kept 'mozhi' in my blog link ) -- Mauname unnidam ... Thats a short song but i felt it gave the bliss of listening to 10 such songs.. Beautiful blend of music and lyrics!

Now .. I cant stop listening to this song .. and i feel the music raining upon my soul .. Its a magical experience when i close my eyes with the ear fones plugged in to my ears .... Here we go - the Music and Me.

Some more art forms ...

2008-09-08T11:10:00.000+05:30

These days I realize I am goosing up more of my work than I used to do before. I really don’t understand whats bothering me. Just that the swipe in – swipe out is recording only my physical presence in the office. I really don’t know where the rest of me have gone .. may be I feel like going on writing for ever . may be I feel that I have more to write down before I leave .. or may be there is some bruise in the mind that I am keeping under the mat which is lurking from there… You know mind is the most complex part of a human being.

Have u seen those kathakali forms ? those which emerge from behind a small hand held red curtain cloth … those which has all dark profound colors all over their face .. and all symbolisms to tell stories.. I love watching them even when I don’t understand much about them . I love listening to those songs sung in a peculiar style … And after some time , even when I know nothing of the dance form , and when I know nothing of the story that’s played .. I start understanding the plot … I start recognizing that this form with so and so color and so and so make up is Krishnan , the other is arjunan … and this is draupathi ..

Some times the mind takes those complex forms ..and we become the spectators. Thoughts peeping in like the forms from behind the short red curtain .. thoughts weeping , enacting and compounding emotions ..

I sit there as the only spectator , trying to make sense out of the play going behind that flame of the nilavilakku ..

I know its temporary. I know emotions are just colorful art forms … I appreciate their genuineness. But what I don’t understand now is the plot they are trying to enact … I cant make sense out of them … I cant understand the why behind this complexity …

I am only a spectator trying to make sense out of it ..

Simpler things ...

2008-09-07T15:14:00.000+05:30

Silence is most of times a sentinel of relationships. Probably every thing is not meant to be said and perhaps its those few unsaid things that should sediment as the treasure of a life time.
Some where I have read ‘give up the little and strive for the complete’… and that is what every seeming loss in my life teaches me. I try not to realize the depth of wounds that each of the losses make. I just don’t think about it again . And may be that’s the advantage of having visible losses in life – You can be sure that it was just a mirage.

Looking back .. I feel most of the things were just a passing phase. Be it friends or relatives … they come in and they leave without giving us time to realize the role each of them played in our story. I hate memories. They are too static. They cannot be changed.

Every word said remains like a carved image on the path traversed . We cannot wipe them off the wall .. and they remain a memorial of the gains or losses that came across the journey.

Perhaps that’s the way it should be . Each one is assigned a set of losses and gains and life is perhaps an experience of walking over them ..and living past them.

Strangers on the way ..

2008-08-22T21:56:00.000+05:30

Some times i feel life is just a search for strangers.Most of the time knowingly or unknowingly the entire efforts end up in meeting new people , new tie ups ... new friendships ..
Every roll of time gives new 'strangers' who become permanent images for us.
spouse , children ... No body is born with them .. and yet they become the most import people around whom the life is gonna revolve for the rest of the years ..
Its a strange magic of time .. as one of my friends said .. its not the people who are changing , its the time ...

Heath Ledger Rocks !

2008-08-07T22:54:00.000+05:30

I dont know anything in this world .. Of the millions of things that are happening around, i just know a minute portion of what i am supposed to know. . I still sit back relaxed with those 2 lines of daffodils trying to explore deeper into my self ..
Ofcourse i am happy knowing nothing.
But one fine day if the world demands every one to know of atleast some x% of the happenings, i surely am gonna have a tuff time.

I dont know the movie names ( some movies i see and forget the names there ) , i dont know any english actors ( when i see them i know he was the guy in xyz movie and thats all ) ... And today when my friend was mentioning about Heath Ledger i was hearing that name for the first time ..
And right above my scrap was a scrap from a girl with her orkut message as 'Heath Ledger rocks' --
I googled and found out more about Ledger. I am perhaps one of those rare species existing in this 21st century who knows nothing about the world cinema , technologies , gadgets , mobile phones ... and the many things which i dont know.

I think my brain is kind of accustomed to the philosophical comforts ... The kind of penetrating thoughts that fills 70% of my brain space!
I hear the daily news . I skim through the newspapers .. and i see and read those that i want to see and read. I dont remember reading about a Ledger anywhere...

Its not the first time i am acting silly . Every silliness comes as a surprise to me. And i end up being silly how ever careful i am..

Perhaps there are too many things happening in this world and we choose the news for us. I remember reading about MT Vasudevan nair turning 75 . I remember reading about Kamala Das shifting to Pune , I remember reading about Kovilan getting kendra sahitya academy award for his Thattakam .. I remember the year when MT got his jnanapit award ... and a lot of things which i read and which remains within. These news dont get corrupted in my memory ..
I even remember the day when dilip and manju wariyar got married ( I was in 10th std and was in one of those internal exam fevers then .. )

Perhaps news is a choice. We choose to see , to read and select what should be remembered and what not .

I know , that doesnt give me an excuse for not knowing anything. But I still dont feel ashamed to say that i dont know most of the things .. not even those things i am supposed to know...

There are those few verses which get played in my mind giving me a feeling of completion. That gives me the confidence to tell myself that i know absolutely nothing in this vast wide world .. That holds me back from chasing those which comes with a version 2.0.
Our priorities , our comfort ..

And to me perhaps ignorance is bringing in all the bliss ...

Arranged marriage

2008-08-02T00:01:00.000+05:30

I think Religion and Caste are still living realities.Though we talk a lot about equality, some where deep down our believes caste and divisions continue to reign our choices. And the most obvious place where caste comes into play is perhaps in arranged marriages... In the a X b dimension of a web page the first thing we look for is the caste ... then to (probably ) the display image... Its unfortunate that its these 2 trivial characteristics of a person that play as the primary filter.
But then again thats the reality ... the site is a hub of white lies . It was funny to see a few chain smokers in my office with their profiles as 'Non smokers'.

This is a gambling in one way , shopping in another way.. when we feel ourselves as the item_number in some unknown data base. We are objects with attributes , rows fetched by some properly tuned query! Its a shopping shelf for life partners... with an invisible 'buy them online' tag. Ofcourse with a lot more clashing of family egos , weighings , horoscopings and a lot looott more...

I dont usually check this site.. more because i get the feeling of a commodity than of a human. The only choice is to keep the eyes shut against the profile ids and false descriptions with the hope that when we choose to open our eyes, destiny would give what we deserve(be it good or bad) .
Marriage .... is perhaps a necessity ... a protocol to make sure we are not left out in the crowd .. (I keep arguing for and against this topic.. when my logic questions me why i should finally choose some one i dont know and reasoning explains to me that i am getting older year after year )

Misinterpreted legend

2008-07-23T22:11:00.001+05:30

University college palayam was a name synonymous to violence. I have seen students jumping over the walls , throwing stones at the mob , and being chased and beaten up by frustrated policemen. To me , it was a breeding ground for political gundaism ... where brainless youth get molded to worthless political tools...

It was for my mba sem exam that i got a chance to be inside the campus for a while. And i must tell you i couldn't help appreciate the skills of the then architects. The buildings in red bricks with carefully carved out wooden structures make it too luxurious to be a college. The wooden works in the notice board ( which was grilled and kept neatly) , the dome shaped door ways , corridors .. it resembled more like a roman church + temple architecture to me. The campus too is maintained appreciably well. There was a botanical garden which was locked and kept well. Another noticeable factor was the pattern on the doors - a kind of parallel lines carved out well.

There were inscriptions and scribblings of names ( and their lover's names eg Romeo and Juliet ) on the corridors , walls and stair cases.
The college corridors and the shady campus grounds seemed fertile for romances to groom too. There were enough number of trees under which any one can read the hundreds ( or perhaps thousands ) of love stories that budded and withered.

The english literature department looked classic. By the sides of the board that read the 'Department of english literature' there were 2 doves sitting symmetrically opposite ( for a moment i even thought they were carved out till one of them fluttered its wings . They sat there for quite a long time ) . The class rooms seemed to echo the verses they were listening to for decades ( or even centuries) . You recite your favorite verse aloud and who knows if the bricks would not repeat ur words .

And thankfully since i was alone + it was a Sunday i could walk around to have a look at the campus to some extent..
Now i know that behind the 'not so tall walls' there remains a legend hidden.

The Good Bye ...

2008-07-23T21:37:00.000+05:30

No matter how close we are to people the underlying philosophy of 'We meet people to say good bye' applies. Be it a relative , friend or anyone we know.
Though its unfortunate that we dont realise what they mean to us until the time comes for that final good bye. Since the time i joined Infy the only thing i took extra care was to make sure that i dont get close to any one. Being in an industry that requires constant change , we cannot expect not to lose people we love. And the only solution i could find was not to love , not to care and not to feel close to any one. It worked successfully well for all the 3 years i was here ...
only to realize that i am gonna miss all of them whom i thought were no one in my life.

And today when i was walking under the drizzle from tejaswini to bhavani ... i was in a shower of realization that .. i cannot escape from myself. I cannot force myself not to care , not to love and not to feel close to heart ... Just like how the thick black smoke of clouds could no longer hold the shower of rain from falling ..
There is an invisible thread that runs from one person to another- a thread thats stronger than any human determinations . If i avoid her today I can only avoid her today .. and tomorrow she is gonna be my best friend. I would miss her perhaps more than i miss any other friend ...
Then why should i ever avoid her ? Why did i ever avoid her ...

And a lot of faces who were not my friends , nor my project mates ...But yet i realize seeing them every day has made them some one for me . And i am gonna miss those strangers on my way. We may not know each other ... But yet for the past many years we existed in each other's worlds silently occasionally exchanging smiles of diplomacy ...

How can say that i will not miss them inspite of not caring for them , nor loving them , nor being their friend.

We meet people only to say a good bye ... and perhaps its that good bye that make them special in our lives.

A word to Mr God.

2008-07-09T21:51:00.000+05:30

Give me not hunger if you dont plan to give me food...
show me not the food thats not served for me ..

Sindooram ...

2008-06-27T09:13:00.000+05:30

Have you seen those vermilion marks on married women’s forehead ? I used to be fascinated by them when I was small.
Girls copy a lot from their mothers and once when I was about to go out I ran inside and put some sindooram on my forehead the way my mother puts it. That day my grandmother told me ..’you can put it only after your marriage. You are not supposed to do this before .’ All through my LKG and UKG I wondered when I could grow up and get married to re-put the sindooram I had to remove the other day.

Even today the red sindooram on a married lady’s forehead fascinates me. I have never put it even for fun since that day in my kindergarden .. there is a thrill in not doing some things we badly want to…
And if at all I get married one day this would be one thing that would come along in the package … the licence to put that sindooram .

PS—the wondering of when I can grow up to get married stopped with my kindergarden stage.Just in case you interpret it as I have been waiting for marriage since then ;-)

A portrait within ...

2008-06-26T21:55:00.000+05:30

Every face holds a stranger's name
stepping out from the courtyards - for ever
into a raining path as they walk away
not turning back once nor pausing their gait
Let them not see the dripping wet lashes
the suppressed cry and the bleeding thoughts .
with the shroud of silence all around
as i hide beneath the shades of my roof ,
with bloodstains of fate honing the picture within
the splashes of pain upon the canvas of time!
To bring on to me a smile eternal
to smile back at them who left me alone in the dark .

Cannimera Market ...

2008-06-21T21:29:00.000+05:30

It was like a plastic surgery for Palayam when the Saphalyam shopping complex came . The complex coupled with the road widening has given a neat and proper look to our palayam- statue road.
It was actually when the road widening happened that the Cannimera Market road became visible to most of the people (the board Cannimera Market in the brick arch entrance to the market).
The market is a hub for ordinary sellers. If you are tired of the card swiping , air conditioned shopping experience with the usual big retailers you can try here for a change. Its a mall with the sky as the roof and occasionally some blind or disabled artists performing in front of the market area for the few coins that fall on their collection buckets ( and hence the market place has a good live concert most of the times in the back ground) .
If you dont mind the smell of fish from the fish section i feel its a good place for any vegetable shopping ( not as cheap as in chala market though).
For a person doing vegetable purchases from spensors or bigbazar this place certainly is an economic choice.

Today evening i went to this market for this week's veg purchase.
I saw one old lady siting behind her vegetables with no one to market her stall ( in most of the other stalls there are some 'agents' to call customers in..with the typical 'madam what do you want ?' ) This lady seemed to be doing her business bad being positioned among the stronger sellers. And she was looking away bored fanning her vegetables and chewing tobacco . There were enough things with her which i wanted to buy.
And she even cleared a doubt which i was having for quite a long time.
Last time when i bought a vaazhakoombu for making thoran i dint know which exactly are the parts to take and which parts need to be thrown away.That day I had to call up my kunjamma to get a vague picture of the required things and to finally make the thoran in a decent edible format.
Today when i bought vaazhakoombu from the lady i asked her which r the to-be-thrown away parts of it
She was really happy to explain that to me .. and even gave a demo of it with an advice 'make sure your hands dont get stained with the sap ' and a tip 'take enough cocunut oil in the hand when you are cutting it '
I felt really good when i made her the payment.

I walked around the maze of the market ( went even to the fish section though the smell was really bad there ) seeing different kinds of items, different kind of people , their exhaustion . Bought a few more things from the place . I am not sure if they were charged reasonable or not. But i am sure even if they are priced high you will not feel bad for paying them . In fact i felt like paying them more to see how pleased they were to get a business from one more person.
Most of the sellers are old women ( around 40 to 45 + atleast ) .With sweaty tired face , legs stretched out and tobacco stained smiles they looked like a copy paste of the very same person...( all of them looked similar in my eyes ) .. I am not sure if they get enough profit to justify the hardships and discomforts they take every day.

The shopping was a good experience today ... It was like going into another face of lives.
True good experience more than just a shopping ..

PS: its not the first time i am going to that place. I know the blog kinda sounds as though i have not seen ppl :)

Another day ..

2008-06-14T20:38:00.000+05:30

Today was one of those happening days though it started unusually late.

9 O clk(when i was still sleeping) i got a call from my friend asking me to join for a class scheduled in Sisuvihar @ 9:30. It is a session on basics of computer + MS office for the teachers of Sisuvihar. I was not quite sure how far i would be able to speak with a croaking throat that occasionally goes out of voice now.

But it turned out to be a real experience for me. Many times i had to strain my throat to bring out a few words and a couple of times i had to leave the room to finish the quota of coughing.
I was in charge of teaching MS word and powerpoint to one of the senior most teachers. The session some what took me back to the time i tried teaching my mother how to operate the computer. And surprisingly the teacher also said the very same things my mother told then ...
'I am scared if i do something wrong and if the system gets spoiled ' the teacher said
'No no .. what ever you do in word or powerpoint wont do any harm to the system .. '
'But still i am scared to experiment ' she said bringing a very innocent smile to her face.

I felt those 3 hours really touching. Its perhaps after a very long gap that i am even spending some time with a lady of her age. It gave me an opportunity to walk back those roads when i tried teaching my mother computer , mobile phones , spoken english. It was too good an experience. I can never tease any one or laugh at any one's mistakes as i could do then. And today when i was teaching the teacher i was remembering all those episodes.

The day became busier after the class.
Went for 'Innathe chintha vishayam ' ( The movie was bad. Sathyan anthikkad seems to be getting the stories repeated... the same touch for his last 3 movies . Nothing very special about this one too ) . Then went to Aiyyappas , took some materials ...
Did some window shopping in some malls . ... and here i am tired for the day ....

Friday the 13th - Numerology

2008-06-13T20:34:00.000+05:30

Today is Friday the 13^th . Its recently that I realized that there is an evil omen attached to the number 13 (and if it befalls on a Friday the intensity of evilness is worse it seems ) .

A few months back I watched in Asianet news that the kerala state vehicle number 13 is not opted by any ministers because of this superstition attached with number 13. However the LDF government being notorious for their atheism did not put aside this vehicle #13 . The education minister made this 13 as his official transportation.

The education department underwent a big sani desha since the take over of the LDF govt. The war between the management and the govt still continues reg the allotment of seats for engineering and medical admissions.The SSLC tug of wars and question paper leakages made the usual hit in the media. Thankfully no one remembered to put the blame on the minister's state car number.

When I started learning numbers I used to hate the number 3. I imagined number 3 as a cunning and bully number. And four according to me was an innocent number destined to be next to the bully number 3 for ever. 4 did not have a choice to realign in the number system and sit next to any other equal wave length numbers (even if there were any such numbers).

Those were the times when teachers determined where we should sit , to whom we should talk. May be roll number 3 in my class was not my friend . Else I dont find a reason to dislike 3 at such an early age. May be I found it difficult to learn the multiplication table of 3. I remember that I could learn multiplication table of 4 easier . Even when I started doing complex calculations with numbers the repulsion for number 3 existed.

Then I don’t know since when I started feeling a soft corner for the number I hated for no reason. I started noticing the perseverance the number had with me even when I loved 4 better. 5 to me was kind of a chechi-like number. I haven’t thought much about the other numbers.

I rarely use any numbers in my present day life. Even the phone numbers of my closest friends I don’t take the trouble of by hearting ( the disadvantage of mobile phones) . And amazingly those which I used back in my 10^th std I still remember. I still remember Amis landline number and even Sreevidya’s number though I have never called her even once after 7^th std.

No wonder my grey cells have started rusting down.

The only numbers that I use in my current life is perhaps my emp number , my house number (against address columns when I fill in forms ) , vehicle number (when I park my activa and come back searching where I parked ) ….may be that’s all I have with numbers now.

All those calculus , algebra , geometry and exponential theories just to enable me to remember my emp number ?

By the way I don’t hate number 3 now nor do I have a special love for 4. But still 5 to me some times appear as a matured chechi number :) .

soul of the darkness ( iruttinte aatmaavu)

2008-06-11T23:30:00.000+05:30

I am not scared of the darkness. I usually am not .
Just a while ago when i went down stairs to take water, my hand accidentally clashed against a chair which moved with a creaking sound. In the total silence of the night with a high freq screech of a plastic chair on the floor i think 30% of my courage got drained out. When i went down to the unlit rooms and towards my kitchen, a portion of the remaining dairyam also started draining off. I found my kitchen windows widely left open.
For some strange instinct i felt scared to put my hands outside to close the windows. I know nobody would be waiting outside to hold my hands ..
There were some shadows dancing on the glasses and even though i knew its the chemparathi near the wall it started resembling some forms and figures.
Some times human brain starts imagining beyond control . ..

I managed to run upstairs ,leaving things as it is down...

Fear is just a temporary state i know. But i hear unrecognized noises from around which i dont remember hearing before. I hope its some thing else. And the light of the street lamp is getting interrupted by something opaque . Could be some bats ... I can see it from here.

I better go retire to my room ...
For that i must start climbing down towards the unlit rooms to reach my room ...

The known Packages ...

2008-06-11T22:09:00.000+05:30

I hear a lot of post marriage plans these days. With a number of marriages in pipeline there is an increased search for the best place to celebrate their honeymoon.
Till 2 years back, in a group of friends the ratio of married to unmarried was favorable for the latter group. With just a span of 2 years, the majority gp got toppled and we are just very few in number now. And the regular things that we hear about have now shifted from the movies and dressmaterial costs to the 'big ladies conversations ' of honey moon packages and maternity leaves.
The minority remains good listeners ever .

Most of my friends go outside india to celebrate , some to the farthest end of india(at least to the max feasible distance they can afford to go ) .Today one of my friends was talking about a package to Malaysia and Thailand ... for a seemingly affordable package .
I really dont know if its the distance or place that matters. If its not material i wonder y they should waste tens of thousands for just a couple of days ? I really cannot find a reason.

Most of the times i hate traveling. Even for the team outings the long travel puts out all the enthusiasm and energy levels. If the destination is more important i tend to dislike the travel and vice versa.In that regard perhaps the only travel which i enjoy on a daily basis is the morning transportation to office when i wish if i could go on and on and if technopark was still kilometers away :)

Well ... as my friend said 'its a once in a life time opportunity to travel with all the freshness of a newly bud married life' and its perhaps thrilling to travel and be in a place where u will not be identified.
May be because i am too big a miser , or may be I cant picture how good or bad that time would be . I still continue to believe that honey moon happens within hearts and places and distances are not material ...

Just to contradict my own words ... There were some pictures i happened to see of disney land to which one of my friend's went recently. And the pictures and the excitement on their faces showed how thrilling the experience was. The place is perhaps good for couples after an year of their married life to step out of their boredom for atleast a few days .. Not recommendable for the newly wed ones.

Week end ....

2008-06-07T22:16:00.000+05:30

This was a week end with a number of plans in stock .We planned to go to ammathottil ( electronic cradle) near thycaud, we planned to re visit our school ...and the last thing i expected to happen was to be called back to office to do some last phase execution.
Some times i think if every day could be declared a Saturday ( no .. not sundays anyway ..Sundays dont have shops & offices open . Saturdays are better ) ...

For a really long time i wanted to go back to my school .. Just to walk the grounds with no disturbances.
going alone was not good. I wont feel like sitting there for long if i am alone . ( what if the sisters get suspicious that i have some other plans there .. )
The ppl with whom we go really matters. If its an out of wavelength company then i mite even get irritated for not being able to sit in peace for some time.
It reminds me of a visit from school to Padmanabhapuram palace. The palace was too good. But there were some girls laughing aloud(too too too loud) , cracking some bad inappropriate jokes abt the place , and some discussing abt guys -- the typical tuition effects then ...
I found it really annoying. And such ppl have a bad habit of teasing some one walking alone . So i had to stay in the group and mechanically walk around with a 'When are these ppl gonna shut up ? ' in mind.

my school is one of my fav places to be . And i remember almost each and every thing that happened there ...
From the most trivial to the most important instances of my growing up stage.

From the stairs where i used to do my last minute history and civics studying , to the place where i used to go and cry without being seen, to the place i used to meet merlyn in her boarding, to .. to .. to a lot of good memories are buried there.
I remember all my class rooms..

I see VIIC (now the room is converted to a staff room ) and i remember looking out of the windows watching the yellow flowers of the big kaattu konna tree adjacent to one of our windows..It was the year when geetha teacher taught us 'Mukilukal meyum kunnin cheruvilorambalam undallo .. ambala nadayil panthal idunnoru maamaram undallo .. Hridayam pottiya kavitha kanakka paal puzha ozhukumbol... ' I remember these wen ever i see that kaattu konna tree..

It was in VIIth standard that some one washed their hands out of the window after lunch and the water fell on sister Juana when she was crossing that way . She came up all the way screaming 'Who washed their hands out from there ? '

VIII C and IXC the darker and cozier class rooms ... XC the bright and airy room . We could see cliff dale being build from there. The construction , painting ...

Pic 2 : Cliff dale as seen from the once X C

XI and XII .. all i keep back in mind r the english lectures and the biology classes when we bio droppers had free hours ( when we used to go to the top floor sit around and talk /occasionally used to do AO sirs' and Saramma teachers' assignments )

Chemistry was a serious hour. No one dared to even smile when the classes go on. And once it happened that the dance sir was teaching the kindergarden children in the lawn next to our class.He was almost exactly like the chanthupottu dilip . And exactly the same tone as dilip in that movie...
For almost 2 consecutive chemistry hours me and the girl who sat next to me were suppressing our chiri to hear the dance lessons going on parallel. I still remember him saying 'Kuttikale oodi varu .. ' followed by some folk song which he sang.

Each of those rooms have a 1000 memories locked within ... the tomb of all my innocence. the days when i practiced more silence ( and not like the 'always talking gal' now ) .

That me is imprisoned within knowing that she cannot survive in this world. So i locked her up in the lonely deserted corridors and rooms of my school .... To be the guard of my memories .. of my childhood , of my teenage ... and the jigsaw of those innocent dreams that peeped out then.

In my school i can feel the resonance of that silent shy girl within me. Perhaps thats the reason y i truly truly love my friends who are kind of introverts ... even inspite of the insulting silent treatments ( they knwingly or unknwingly ) give.

In love .. .

2008-06-06T21:25:00.000+05:30

I am in love with the rain. From the vast infinity of Her deep blue eyes i see a spectrum of emotions pouring down meaningfully.
Today while returning from office some where after sasthamangalam it started raining ... It was too good an experience. And from the start of my lane till my home i really enjoyed the slow and majestic music of the rain ( thanks to the residence association for not lighting the street lights before 7 ... )
The smell of earth , the silence ( all except for the rain) and the deep deep blue color of the evening sky were too good to be in .

One timers ..

2008-06-05T23:34:00.000+05:30

Some events in life dont get repeated. They happen accidentally to remain an uncategorized chapter in the memory .. Many of them just get eroded out of our memory archives just because they are not significant enough to be remembered ..

Noting down a few of such instances which i dont want to forget later...

1. It was an intercollegiate fest Smrithi hosted by our semester ( S6 ) . The venue was Kanakakkunnu palace. And the previous day evening we realized that the posters were not yet put up in front of the Palace. It was the time when mobile phones were not very common among students..
Jithu , Philomina and myself were the only souls left to do the job. Philu got on top of the wall to tie the rope on some prop. I did climb partially before i chose to paste the posters on the walls in ground level... We walked along the entire length of the palace wall pasting the posters at intervals..It was a real experience walking along the main road putting up posters throughout..

2. A bit unpleasant memory ... but it brings a smile on my face everytime i remember this. I was in 2nd standard and the girls sitting on my bench were irritating me by trying to push me down. It was one of those hot after noon hours and i just couldnt stand them pushing me and not giving me enough space around . In one angry spike i turned to my side and bit the fat girl who was still pushing me. I kept on biting her on her hand till i could satisfy my anger.. There was a bleeding circle with my teeth impression on her hand just below the uniform sleeve.
I have never tried biting any one after that.

3. This happened when i was really very small . This forms one of my first memories in this life.. It was even before i started going to school . I was watching the movie moonampakkam with my cousin bro . I did not understand the main story line or the string of events. . But the image of jayaram drowning really touched me a lot. I knew that in the TV one appuppan ( thilakan) was waiting for a grandson (jayaram ) who went down into the sea. I couldnt see the remaining portion of it that day bcos of some reason and the image of jayaram drowning really haunted me the entire night .I remember getting up from my bed that night and praying that nothing should happen to that drowning guy.

4. In 2nd standard ( when education was co ed) the boy i hated the most in my class came to me and said ' i love you' . The girl i bit the other day kept blackmailing me that she will tell this to every one. 'I love you' was the worst and most dangerous words i knew then and when ever that girl threatened me i used to start crying... and that girl used to deliberately make me cry by threatening me more and more.. I was even scared to go to school for the fear of that boy and girl ...

5. For the 25th year anniversary of infy i was pulled in for a 2 minutes bharatanatyam. I learned the 6 steps in one single day and the pain of a continuous practice did not allow me to sit properly for about a week. It was the first time i was getting into a bharatanatyam costume..

6. Once i had an accident near Pattom petrol pump. I was in 3rd standard then and i was sitting behind my father's 2 wheeler when one chettan in a cycle hit our scooter perpendicularly. And my leg got in between the scooter and the cycle. I still have a small mark of that first accident on my left feet.The cycle chettan got worried and followed us to the hospital with his father. He waited outside near the observation with the guilt written all across his face. I still remember the bald uncle who apologized for his son's carelessness and the tall , fair , lean son who stood silent near.

7. After a tiring smithy session in my first year btech one boy came to me and told my eyes look beautiful. :)

8. It is the first vishu i can remember. I know it was vishu because i remember ammumma and appuppan giving me vishu kaineettam. It was the old one rupee note ( which was black in color) that i got and i put it some where carelessly. After playing till noon i realized that i lost my vishu kaineettam. I was not sure of the value of a black one rupee note. But i was really worried of what i should say if they asked me about it. Circumstances made me a thief. I took the pink color 2 rupee note from my cousin brother(3 yrs elder to me ) and remained innocently calm when he kept looking for it. It ended in a fight between me and him until ammumma came and told us that the 2 rupee note belonged to my brother ... 'I gave you a 1 re note and him a 2 rupee note ' till then i dint know notes could be differentiated like that ..

Enough ...

2008-06-01T22:59:00.000+05:30

Enough of blogs .. I feel my old diary system is better.
blogger and me cutties ...

Metamorphism ...

2008-05-23T21:03:00.000+05:30

These days I am experiencing a sort of matured abundance of peace within.. a kind of spiritual bliss .. a kind of realization .. a kind of stability …

I have gone through some quick and short notice changes in my thought processes at various significant junctures of my growing up stage …And perhaps this is one such change in me ...

Its interesting to look back at those changes that have come along in my journey ...

The same things which I innocently ignored at one age, I scoffed at another age and later I even felt they were amazing … The same things which I was determined in heart that ‘it will never be applicable to me ‘ has ended up changing my destiny all together .
The same things that I feared I could never even think of doing I could do it better than many of the people around…

Perhaps it’s a cyclic process .. from ignorance to scoffing to admiration ….and back to ignorance .

Life becomes a suspense thriller most of the times to make us totally powerless yet privileged to go through the instances life has in store for us .. Perhaps we are on a free tour through the realities of life. Grief, happiness, anger, disgust and all those hundreds of identified emotions to just spice our tenure here. And ultimately in the core of self there is a pool of infinite bliss that remains untouched by any of these life's spices ..

Mind rolls over from one aspect to another. It becomes ambitious at one time and the next moment it says
‘Na kaamshe vijayam Krishna na cha raajyam sukhaanicha --Kim no raajyena Govinda Kim bhogyr jeevithena… ‘ -- Bhagavat geetha (chapter 1)

Now ... my mind is experiencing a beautiful state of peacefulness ( touch wood :)-- hope u knw whats the meaning of touch wood )

Like how we feel to be on a lonely beach side with nothing between the waves and you. You become a visitor of the waves (one among the millions and millions of lives who were there before you... ) and you forget your name , your address , your designation and even your own breathing self to go out and fill your gasping spirits with the fragrance of time ...

There the chords of living spices end at least for that golden moment. A moment that lasts for a minute yet which stretches across the entire life time ..to polish our term here with a new meaning , a new value ...

Till then let me stand here invisible, with my arms stretched out and eyes closed ... till my spirits return to me rejuvenated with the newly explored meaning to my existence ...

MS outlook

2008-05-21T22:39:00.000+05:30

Since the time i started using outlook i can narrate a list of accidental mails that escaped from my mail box. For a really long time i dint even know that there was a call back option to pull back such escaped mails .
Experiences are supposed to be our teachers. But in this case my carefulness has not helped me escape such accidents....

One problem is the concatenation of 01, 02 , 03 to the email ids when we get a tendency to think abc_xy is actually the abc xy we know. This has caused some problems like me asking somebody from Bangalore DC to come to the reception to meet for lunch, wrong meeting requests , wrong appreciations and so on ...

The recent disorder is to comment on some mail sent to all users ... Either i send my comment to my friend(s) or they send me theirs ... It goes around for some time till the matter reaches its exhaustion.
This time it happened that the HR team sent a mail on the maternity policy in the company. And since 1 of my friend was scurrying for maternity leave policy i forwarded it to her with a FYI note.
The comments went to and fro for some time ..
It was after a while that i realized that one of my replies was hit to the actual mail from the HR team. To make my situation worse the mail could not be recalled ..

A few days back KP gave me a teasing smile saying ... behind your innocent face i dint know ...
the rest was understood .. The credits for the discovery of a missing clause in the policy was given to me ... And to think that the mail went to all the HR folks in the dc i feel like putting a shawl on my head when i pass that way ..

Now i stopped using short keys for the reply and send actions ...

4th dimension ...

2008-05-21T22:03:00.001+05:30

I love temples. The oil stained and camphor filled airs some how hushes all my inner conversations to get a better focus. I get a touch of many generations when i walk around a really old temple. It makes me even think if we are actually bowing before history when we are in such a temple.

Knowing that its the same corridors which possibly our great and great great grandmothers took at some point of their life we get a feeling of actually walking on a fourth dimension....
Generations which i have not met , but yet united by some un identified thread of emotions ..

The Dolls House

2008-05-16T22:24:00.000+05:30

There was a story 'The Dolls House ' by Katherine Mansfield which we had to learn in our 11th or 12th standard ...It was a simple story of a dolls house being presented to a group of kids and how they showed off in front of their school mates. The one thing that stays behind (in my mind) of the story now is the concept of 'if only we could open every house the way we open a dolls house ..'.

The entrance to the dolls house is not through its front door. We remove the roof and we can see it all .. the tiny furnitures , the family members , their lives ...

Today, for some reason i felt if could read some one elses thoughts about me . I was greedy to know if was bugging them beyond my permitted limits... I wanted to know if i was ruining some one's reserved time and space...
I closed my eyes to dive into my usual analysis of 'Am i doing wrong to me ? ' .. and it was this story that came to my mind . The dolls house!

There are lots of people who innocently trouble us. We avoid them . We even avoid looking at their direction for the fear of falling prey to their conversations. We know they are not aware of the disturbance they are giving us . But however close the person is to us .. we will never think of asking them to get lost. The poor souls would not even know the annoyance they are unintentionally causing.
No one chooses to be an annoyer. Circumstances make them . And once the impressions are formed about them, we start fearing them. We avoid them.
We are all annoyers to an x% of the population we interact with., how much ever good we are in our social networking skills ..

Perhaps to at least a few i am also an annoyer. Its bcos of this fear that I dont discuss poetry or philosophy with most of my friends. That would be like some one talking about fashion technology to me.

And to the few ppl i actually talk of poems ... i some times forget to think 'here is a person tired after work... she/he needs her/his space '

Thats the time i wish if i had the magic of a Dolls house. If i could go besides invisibly to steal from the brains of the people around me what thoughts they are indulged in, If i could walk around invisibly to press close my ears to their hearts ... to eaves drop their inner conversations...

No one chooses to be an annoyer.
And its always inappropriate to apologize if we step into a house and realize that it was not the right time for us. We step back and leave them alone with a gentle prayer that they shouldnt feel ill of us ...

If only i could eves drop the thoughts within some one else. If i could hear exactly what he/she talks about me to herself or himself so that i would not end up annoying them one more time...

An apology is inappropriate . So i tell them with all the sincerity of my heart.. that if i was bugging their silence , it was purely accidental ..

The summer is in my room

2008-05-13T23:51:00.000+05:30

The summer is in my room .
I shall not sleep ...

The Forbidden Fruit

2008-05-07T22:14:00.000+05:30

It was a forbidden fruit for me as a girl. A book though I knew existed dint have the courage to read it because amma asked me not to read it.

That was a day long long ago in a book exhibition when I chose this book and wanted to put it for billing . . Amma said its not good for young girls to read it. That made me even more curious to read the book though.

But later I never came across the book in any book stores or perhaps I dint bother to search for it.

Recently I happened to read a poem of Kamala Das and felt really curious to know about her and as a coincidence that same week I saw the book in a near by book store.Thats how i sat

At first I felt sorry for her. The lonely child who was craving for love in a metro. I even thought her mother should have taken better care of the young Kamala to avoid her going astray … But then she herself has explained that its not the fault of her parents and that its she herself who chose to become the way she is because she did not want to live life of confinement.

The initial chapters pictured her husband as a villain in her life.. A ruthless man who entered her life as a typhoon to spoil her innocence.

The later chapters made it clear that she was not too innocent the time she got married . And I found it surprising to see how she could be in love with a lot of men at the same time.. There is an itching demand which most of the women keep repeating of the insecurity and lack of love they get … And Kamala Das has constantly used these terms for justifying most of her affairs. I was surprised to read her concept that all men are like Lord Krishna , and who ever you love it’s the same Krishna that you are loving in different forms.. Perhaps its too frank a statement to be made.The concept is a beautiful one but applied wrongly ...

Throughout the book she contradicts her views about people and herself. And it then seemed to me as a foolish attempt of the poet to tarnish her own image by being too frank ( after all there is a circle of secrets which one should keep as a token of self respect ).

Ofcourse the language and the metaphors and the flow of writing are good. Some words just don’t leave the mind … Perhaps that makes her a very good writer.

I wonder if she has seen any other dimension of life other than the romance and love which she had to say.

I must admit that I loved her openness. In a world when people do the worst of things and act as saints atleast she had the guts to admit with pride all that she has done.

Perhaps a non responsive husband could make you feel worthless . Perhaps in a marriage the husband should keep telling the wife that he loves her always...
I don’t know the chemistry and depth of expectation between husband and wife. Perhaps all wives need to be recognized.

One retired lady Chief secretary once told me that women need verbal appreciations to be pleased. She told me that even she would want to hear from her husband that she looks good in a newly draped sari … or when she puts a new kammal or maala she would feel good to hear a good word from him. If things are not different for an educated socially respectable and powerful lady , then may be its a universal truth that women needs appreciation from the ones they love.

Perhaps there is more for me to go through as a woman. And perhaps then I would be able to appreciate Kamala Das better.

Perhaps the advantage of not getting married is .. some images would remain untarnished. When all your friends who are married and settled down, talks in disgust about romance you can still hold that image of love as a truly divine one.

Like what Keats have said

‘Bold Lover thou canst kiss nor can thy love fade ‘ - In Ode on a grecian urn . I dont remember the lines exactly though

Towards the end of the book I started feeling pity for her husband when he asks ‘What more do you expect from me ? ‘ a genuine question to be asked.
And for that Italian lover who introduced her as his fiancée to his friends.

The book is ( I feel) is centered a lot on the negative emotions in a person that can lead them no where. I had to remember the verses in Katopanishat in which human body is compared to a ratham with the 5 horses of senses attached to it. With untamed horses , for the pleasure of speed it can take one to the wrong places….

I still love Kamala Das's poems. And some of the ideas she has brought in are too good … And i dont justify people pointing their fingers towards her because of her change in faith or change in name to marry a man 20 years younger to her. Thats absolutely her freedom , her life .... As long as she keeps quite about it she need not be bothered.

A girl brought up in all the meshes of a metro , not been taught to walk the values her parents followed, with an untamed materialism rooted deep to break free from the simplicity of life she was taught to follow, with a husband who did not know to love verbally , a lady who was raped by a stranger next door … What more can we expect her to write in her autobiography ?

A woman should have an identity of her own … how ever small it is ..
A small income how ever trivial it may be…
A small engagement to keep her mind occupied all the time
Some thing to rely upon even if every thing around turn its faces away

watching the ship from the shore and shouting out directions seem easy , to sail in the sea against the storms and to reach safe on the other side is a destiny ..
Perhaps the sea be calm ... and thats all a lady can hope for when she knows that she herself has to make the journey one day.

An analysis of the mind ...

2008-05-02T20:30:00.000+05:30

Most of the times I find it difficult to plot a proper graph of my behavior .I know I am always changing.... Some times when I do a self analysis I find that most of the qualities which i am supposed to have by now are still not in my vicinities…

Cooking is the simplest real life example. I want to wake up at 5 O clk and finish off all the work before 7 to avoid the last minute rush in chasing my office bus. But some how I cant wake up any time before 6. The 6 might go up to even 6 15 or even 6 30 ..

If 2 weeks I am regular in doing things neat , the third week I start being lazy. Some days I sleep off till 7 and we have to fall back to the hotel food option.

Going for a regular yoga class is another thing that gets lagged. I cant have a cooking + 8 30 office + yoga scheduling possible. And to have all the 3 probably I should get confident with my driving (for that I must convince my dad that I can drive as good as him ) so that I can go to office at my convenience . I went to one ashram in west fort and paid a 30 rupees registration fees for joining their august (2006 :) ) batch .. but the cooking + office + yoga could not work … I had to drop yoga and the 30 rupees registration as a token of the attempt..

Most of the times I make decisions without thinking much .. without thinking whether I want it or not ( or whether its feasible or not ) ..

That’s how I went for violin classes.I love music.. esp classical music . With all the academic pressures (school tuitions colleges testpapers supplys ) I couldn’t take a formal learning in any musical domains ..

During a happy bench period I started going for violin classes . I dint even get permission from achan .. One fine evening he saw me coming back home with a new violin …

‘Ithethra naal pokumo aavo .. ‘ was his reaction. I took it as a challenge .I dint skip any of my classes. I did practice at home in spite of my sisters threats (for breaking the silence of the locality ). A few months went that way. .. And then like a lightning came one short term transfer to Bangalore. And it was not possible to carry my violin all the way till Bangalore .

Now my violin stays as a memorial of my attempt to learn music (Safely placed on top of my almarah ) . Once in a while I take it out and try to play the notes I learnt .. But perhaps its too late for me .. I have too many things to do at home and the only feasible attachment with music is to be a good listener.

The decision to join a distant education in MBA was the most recently made such decision . I am really not sure if I am interested in an MBA. Probably I was just scurrying for a reason to get out of this software engineering life. I was actually checking if I could do a distant education in Journalism. But with a bachelors degree in technology I am almost not eligible for a masters in journalism. When I went through some job sites randomly I re discovered that a Btech or a 3 years IT experience is nothing to say that I am good in anything. I still have the feeling that I can never become a good dedicated programmer ( for many reasons ). God knows how many classes I would attend for this MBA…

Some times I feel I put my head into a lot of things .. and leave half the things undone. BEC certification is yet another example. I paid the fees for training as well as for the exam .. and then I could attend neither the classes nor the exam.

Recently I tried to make another such decision which I could not make it happen though. One fine evening I told my dad I am resigning from my job. I am sure he was too shocked to hear that.

‘Resign and do what ?? ‘

‘I can go for teaching. I can get into some engineering college as a guest lecture and .. do more of writing and .. ‘

Achan gave me a good stare .After that I dint dare to tell him one more word .

But I know one day I will quit my job … and start living my life …

May be after 5 years .. or may be before that. Or even may be Never :(

Chinnu says my decisions are instant ones. I always come up with a easy ready to apply solutions .. She says I am not practical . I try to explain to her that I need to optimize my time and that’s the reason why I suggest the so called ‘instant’ solutions …

She still believes I am the kind of person who is least aware of any consequences.. May be I am ..May be not. It could be the result of a list of too many things to be done and too little time left situation.

Some times …its better to know the flaws than to carry on without ever knowing about them. Some times knowing that this is not the destination , to remain here for some more time is justifiable.. Some times knowing that people are teasing and making fun there is a satisfaction some where behind the mind to be a reason for their fun .. Some times doing things half done and giving up some things are reasonable because I could at least do it partially .. One life and too many options. It happens.

earths day ...

2008-04-22T23:24:00.000+05:30

Samudra vasane devi
parvathasthana mandale
vishnu patni namasthubhyam
Paathasparsham kshamaswame ..

Today is supposed to be the earth's day .

I feel the concept of 'celebrating' and dedicating a day out of the 365 days for the earth , the moon the stars ... a pure nonsense.
Even today in the news they were discussing about the food shortage as a result of the global warming and the climate that got unpredictable.

And a day in an year for human race to measure the amount of damage that they have already done and to estimate how many more years life can breath on earth as it is today .. ? To the ppl who says 'atleast one day in an year let ppl think of saving earth .. ' ... it sounds even more stupid.
One day in an year if google changes its fonts or IT industries wear a green badge of peace or if school children sing a group song on environment..wont help recover the ozone layer or stop the melting glaciers or save the dying river 0r stop the oceans that are preparing to spill over the continents ...

If there is no change in the routine of the day ..or if one day cannot serve to inspire the rest of the days ( atleast for one living human being on earth .. ), 'A day in an year' concept turns out to be a total insane one..

Now the old prayer praising mother Earth and seeking forgiveness for the paathasparsham makes sense to me . we would never disrespect anything we worship ..
But too much of ' logical reasoning' has wiped off the old concept that the forebears have left behind to preserve the planet .. The personification of natural objects to an extend was a necessity to preserve them too ..

bowing my head before the visions of the sage (s) who wrote these lines on Earth . Indian verses never hold a signature or phone number at the end of them ..
yet the logic behind them speaks to us the visions of the poet (sage) who composed the lines...

Mood : Sleepy ...

Balyakaalasakhi

2008-04-22T20:13:00.000+05:30

Books usually don’t make me cry. I admit that I have cried in movie theatres when some senti scenes flash on the screen.( though these days senti movies are rarely made ).But books usually haven’t made me cry.

Perhaps the only book that could literally bring tears to my eyes was Basheer’s Balyakaalasakhi. I could hardly read the last pages of the book with the tear layers blocking my vision. The last paragraph of the book left behind a sizzling pain that made me think for a few minutes about the various characters that formed the structure of the story. Each character had a life of its own …. One could actually feel the pulse and breath of its reality.
It was the signature of Basheer to write in the most simplest language and to portray the simplest human emotions without the support of any language jargons. He was indeed a master of straightforwardness and made it reflect in almost all his stories and articles. Another characteristics was perhaps his ability to knit together the bitter and lighter aspects of life. At the same time Basheer could make his readers laugh and cry for the same character.
And hence Balyakaalasakhi remains a special reading experience in the archive of my reading shelf ..

Reality shows

2008-04-22T20:11:00.000+05:30

( drafted a few weeks back )

Iam not addicted to reality shows.. I haven’t got enough time (or patience ) to go through the cycles and cycles of ‘rounds’ in such programs. I avoid them to prevent getting addicted ( Just in case if I get addicted) .

Yesterday I happened to kill 30 mins in front of the TV watching 'Idea Star Singer'.And I literally ran inside with my ears closed when I heard the dramatic speech of one of the contestant who couldn’t make it to the finals . There was a dragging background music ( as if they were showing some unfortunate natural calamity), supported by tear flows from the audience , judges and the contestants .. Surprisingly I could see even MG Sreekumar and Usha Uddup crying over the ‘elimination’ of the contestant from the final round.

Another thing was the ‘wonderful’ accent of the girl who anchored the show. Well ,if some one should be called good in English they don’t need to fake an English accent to Malayalam. I wonder why some girls do that … ( I rarely see this kind of a manglishness in boys ). Seems like people are too obsessed with English that they don’t realize the basic philosophy of 'language'. It sounded artificial and fake on the whole .

Another aspect that surprised me was the performance of Kalpana who was a guest to the show to announce the results… I believe simplicity has a beauty of its own .. and viceversa . When things are over done ( and over said ) they really look out of place… And I could underline this fact when I heard Kalpana talking non stop.

Well , It was obvious that the entire show required a lot of glycerin and practice . It also gave a good platform for the acting skills of the otherwise known singers…
On the whole it looked a lot bad than what I could imagine about a reality program.

Now I know what to expect from a reality show .. : (

Awards awards everywhere ....

2008-04-22T20:10:00.000+05:30

When i heard the state film awards were announced i was little interested to know further on the choices the jury has made.
Its just the usual names that get repeated year after year mostly to keep their names going and not for the performances they have shown.
Star oriented approach is perhaps one major drawback of indian film industry...
No body shows the patience to do an honest analysis of the quality of the movies ..

And even with all the technical magics possible today, the movies made today stands far behind the ones made in the 80s and 90s. Its not surprising because when movie is seen just as an entertainment, the film makers tend to forget the value of the script or the theme. Chocolate , Romeo , Don , Flash ... are wonderful examples of how badly movies can be made.
Stars keep changing with time ... They just give life to the characters they show on screen .. You cannot expect Prem Nazir to have come as a college boy during the time of 'Dwani' .. or to see Shobana as the heroine of Prem Nazir.. ( well thats what the stars fever is doing to the industry today)

I prefer calling a movie as the director's/script writer's child ( and not any star's own )..
When the award oriented race ceases in the industry, we might see better quality movies getting born( and better talents getting appreciated ). Its not necessary that every time adoor gopalakrishnan directs a movie it should grab some awards. The jury/ the ppl should be bold enough to call an outdated theme and film making as 'outdated'. There are no antique recycling processes with art i believe.

Well there is no doubt that mohanlal is a great actor . And ofcourse meera jasmine is a good actress too ... Just that with the repeated award declarations by different authorities and jurys, one tend to get fed up of the drama..

PS: Even with all the changing tastes of time, some things still remain the same. Dakshinamurthy's music or Vayalar's lyrics are still the best ones of their kind. Thats when talent beats the race of time i should say. They dint have any music sync softwares or the kind of facilities available in today's music direction ... yet they stand across all years with no replacements to the work they have done.(And why do we still limit the term 'Star' to actors alone ? )

Semantics ....

2008-04-21T22:40:00.000+05:30

Too much into poems these days and i think i have almost forgotten the old lessons of english grammar. With a plenty of has , had , have , been , being .. i am getting confused at what to use where.
Thats the problem when we use the poetic license too much to coin new terms and expressions in the language. bending words at our convenience then becomes a habit.
Thank god our thoughts are not limited by any language's semantics.

Perhaps i should take a short interval ..
Even in a functional design i am tempted to write ..

The table that gets not loaded with data
that which is created to be truncated and reloaded
a holding spot for the master be loaded
and be killed without a word of thanks
not even with the right to remember the values it held once...

Exaggerations aside it is high time i start brushing those semantics of the language ...
Has , had , have .. come over here .. lets come to a compromise now ...

Old is gold!!!

2008-04-19T19:45:00.000+05:30

Some body said ageing is a slow and steady process.
I am finding it a bit different how ever.
The face i have been seeing on the mirror have started changing a lot these days . Not old enough for wrinkles to come .. but there is the shadow of age i can recognise on my face.
As long as no one is there to say 'You are too old enough to walk with me ...' i smile at the changes time blesses me with.
(the same me who tried to reach the bottom tip of the mirror in grandmother's almarah , from the times when i had to jump high to see a glimpse of my face on the wall mirror to the day when I can sit down on my bed looking at the reflection of the same me with totally different thoughts in mind... is indeed a glorious change.)

Agening is like a 'passing the parcel' game. You hold it now and pass it on to some one else to grab your current_age from yet another someone ..
We give it all here ... the fineness of the eye lashes , the completion of the structure , the complexion , the energy.. It was never any bodys and will never be anybodys ...
The relations , the memories , the worries .. every attribute would set down one day...
It all seems like a passing the parcel game and nothing more..

Mind is some what hibernating into a spiritual cave of thoughts.

In between the silence of my inner cave comes in the distractions of reality ... when the mind misses some one, when the self cries over something , when we love , when we give up ...
And ultimately the mind comes back to us .. to its ground state of peacefulness.
Back to the cave that holds the camphor curls of meditation of thousands of years .. The destination for the human race !
yethrayo homagniyil jwalichu thelinja prajna ude vishrama manjal!
In between we become bigger , older , weaker ... and ultimately stronger in the soul to push off all the mortal wrinkles of time...