Taking Stock

Another year coming to end. As i look back, i realise that i haven't done much this year...

I haven't read as many books i'd like to read.
I haven't been a good person as much as i would like to be and I have had a lot of aspersion dumped on me this year.. always unwelcome, sometimes unexpected
I have mostly been a work person. (I want to change that, but i get sad when i think that i will not be 100% dedicated, whatever my 100% means.)

I made new friends, I had more fun this year.
I ate healthier this year, but gained weight nonetheless..
We made some major life decisions this year, took on more responsibility on our shoulders

This year, I finally accepted what i have been evading, that i find it hard to say no to people.
I found that i am never going to be a politically correct person, which means i am going to suffer all my life from foot in mouth disease.
I made my peace with the fact that it is ok to not be/ do what society expects of you.

I found that my family accepted me even though i had a penchant for drama sometimes; though i do not know why.

Vibha Vinod (Part 1)

She was fidgeting under the collective stares of the ladkawalas. Her mother had told her to look abashed, so she kept her gaze averted.

Vibha was in her final year of Masters and wanted to complete her MPhil so she could teach. Math was her favorite subject, she understood numbers. But the untimely death of her father, a trader, had changed things. Suddenly, as if spurred by her husband's death, Vibha's mother had started looking for prospective grooms with an unjustified urgency. The only problem was that her brother was not working yet, and there was not much of a dowry to be offered.

She was called back from her reverie, by her mother's voice. They were now discussing the achievements of the groom. He looked handsome, a head full of hair, shy smile. He was not very tall, but so was her father. He was an MBA, she was relieved to find that he was at least as educated as she was. They had a lot of ancestral land near Bikaner, though they were settled a mere 4 hours away from her hometown. They were very forward, not expecting much dowry, and of course they would let her finish her M Phil.

What more could a girl ask for!

It was a quick wedding. The immediate family was Vinod's parents and his elder brother's family and his elder married sister. The family was close knit and they indulged her through all the ceremonies, encouraging her to dream about a happy comfortable life.

In later years when she will look back to this time, she would bitterly blame herself to be so naive as to readily believe what they told her family. She would close her eyes and silently scream until she was no longer thinking of that fateful day she said yes to marry Vinod.

Time: the silent assasin

Did you ever realize how Time cures every heart ache?
All you need, is to give it time.. and you will stop aching for it: sleep, coffee, booze, chocolate, earrings, shoes, mommy...

Time is an assassin, it kills the feelings in you, and it will also kill the feeling that makes you feel good if you dont shake it up every now and then.

So fight with those you love, cry your heart out, grab hold of them like your life depends on it, because loving them silently will just not do!

Quit your job today and apply for that MS, become the entrepreneur you dreamed to be even if it bankrupts you, because if not now then when?

Beware of Time, it will kill the feeling if you don't live it each day..

Say-More Glass

Have you read the Salinger's Glass family novels?
If you haven't i would invite you to do so.

There is a constant undertone of unrest in all the novels. You can feel that the characters are squeamish, they are suffering due to something in their suroundings and that keeps you hooked. You want to know what's eating them... Everything looks ok on the surface, but that doesn't fool you.. What wrong with this family?

"She worries over the way her love for me comes and goes, appears and disappears. She doubts its reality simply because it isn’t as steadily pleasurable as a kitten. God knows it is sad. The human voice conspires to desecrate everything on earth.” - Seymour Glass

You know those days when you get sick of the artificiality of things. You hate yourself for participating in the act, to keep in step with society.
Saying yes to what you want to say no. Following social etiquettes for a successful life, even though you hate every bit of it.

Keep abiding by the society and eventually such days will come less and less. You will go farther and farther from yourself. You will become the world's version of you, the social shadow will overtake who you were.

On the contrary, stick to doing and saying what you want to and you will be a social pariah. Shunned by people, embarrassment to the family... not that you would care. If you don't care then you are an super attractive social pariah. If you care, then... well... you are doomed.

Where should one exist?

Somewhere in the middle? No i think, that will be the certain path to insanity. I guess we choose the persona in keeping with our personal courage.

Guacamole (Recipe)

It is the best healthy dip i have had recently and Guacamole is very very easy to make.

1 ripe (black) Avocado- peeled, pitted and mashed
1 medium onion - chopped fine
lemon to squeeze
salt & cayenne pepper

Mix it and taste and adjust.
Eat it along with Nachos.. yum!!

Who to Fire First?

He said that till he is fired, he will be fully devoted to the company, he will not start finding a parallel option. There is something in that which smells of motivation, and that feels good these days, a little motivation.

It is troubled times for us oil diggers. The industry is going through possibly the worst downturn of the recent times. We do not hope to recover soon. We do not hope to work less, while there is no work..

We are in the middle of a state of alarm. Our dear CEO left the sword hanging when he publicly announced further headcount reduction.
Now what do you do?
Many will start to job hunt in parallel, to have something in their pocket. Many will rely on their performance as their job security. Most will just panic.

I am struggling these days to be able to put my 100% at work. It depresses me to think that a name is being chosen somewhere high up, with no contribution from our side and that person will get the axe. It is depressing, it is understandable from business perspective, but still it feels wrong.

The debate in my head is, who is a more important asset right now? A person who has started looking for options and will eventually leave, or a person who is working with all his focus and will stick it out if we do not fire him. .

Let me simplify.

There are two parameters at work here:
a) Performance of Employee
b) Loyalty of Employee

Obviously the first to go will be people who have not been performing as expected, consistently.

Subsequently there will be four types in which we can categorize the employees. It is very very obvious what to do with Orange Quadrant and what to do with the Blue one.

The question arises, who do we choose between:
a) Low Loyalty High Performer
b) High loyalty Average performer

I will chose a High Loyalty Average Performer everytime. You can be sure that the low loyalty employees are bad mouthing everyone, they are not happy and not holding back to spread that feeling around. It is a trial to be on good terms with them and death to be on their wrong side.

But Loyalty is not a quantifiable parameter and hence, it does not appear in any appraisal. So when someone completely cut off from the ground reality takes a decision, he/she cannot factor in the loyalty variable.

Herein lies the problem. We keep releasing average people and keep getting shot in the foot.
In times like these i think Loyalty should be the factor that takes precedence over Superstar status at work.

But my theories are unlikely to be picked up by the mechanical organization that we have become. Soon this company will be run by number crunching finance guys and head-chopping HR guys. Operations is fast disappearing into the background.

The only glimpses i get of the ideal company i joined, the company that I was proud to be a part of, the company which valued employees first; are in the words of a handful managers.

In times like these, we just hope to get this over with and move to better times to more meaningful achievements.

This too shall pass.

Uuuh..

My imaginary friends are mute. I know who they are, i know what they do, but i do not know what they feel or why. They don't talk to me.

I have been wanting to write a story, for sometime now.
But you cannot write a story if you cannot get under the skin of the character. If you do not experience the same emotions as them when they react to the mundane situations of life.
How else do you connect to your protagonist?

Back in college i was involved in Dramatics. When i used to act, i could never remember my lines verbatim, i could only remember what i am supposed to convey and what i am feeling. I became the character. I could cry and i could be hysterical and i could be confused, i dint need any props for that.

I want to be able to feel that way again when i am writing, to be able to feel the character. But i guess it requires a lot of compassion to be able to write. Because u are creating when you are writing and you are only re-creating when you are acting and someone has already written for you.
It takes more compassion to understand the various complexities of a character you want to put down on paper, not just your 2-D rendition of them.

Ha Ha funny?

Do you have Ha Ha funny moments in your life?
I do. Lots and lots of them.
But generally it is funny for the others. Those are memories of me being the butt of the joke.

As a kid (as even now) i was always scared of things breaking. It was an irrational fear. It defied the laws of Physics but i employed physics to reason with myself that things will break. for example:
Pressure = Force/ Area (i rue the day i learnt that)
We all stand on earth on our feet, and our feet has a very small area, hence the earth will collapse under the combined force of all human population. Same applies to buildings.
The car will break, we are one too many in it, too much weight on the chassis.
The bed will break, don't jump on it.
And then one day the bed broke while Rohan was jumping on it, and i cried. No one was hurt, but the bed broke!!

Now when we all cousins meet, they remind me of "that" time and everyone enjoys a good laugh. Ha Ha. I don't tell them that i am still scared of that stuff :-/

As a kid i was also scared of electric geysers.
Yeah i know! Ha Ha right?
I am still scared of that thing.
I used to imagine that it will drop on my head and i will be burnt in the hot water; or that it will suddenly burst and spray me with boiling hot water and scald me.
Recently the 10 year old geyser at my parent's place actually spewed hot water everywhere, luckily no one was there to get hurt.

I told Ambuj about it and he managed to keep a straight face (bless him), but not my mom x-(
I am still scared of Geysers, specially the big ones. It is something i check in a house, whether the geyser is located inside or outside the bath.

Want more of my "physicsy" fears?

a) When a lot of vehicles are running at a very high speed, ie not following speed limit, on a bridge (ex; Worli Sealink); is it possible that the vibrations produced by these vehicles superimpose and becomes same as the resonant frequency of the bridge and it collapses?
b) My office floors look to be made of wood (no concrete), if that is safe at all. It is vibrating everytime ANYONE walks around. How long before it collapses and i am dead?
c) When i connect too many appliances on a power strip (which has a fuse) am i running the risk of tripping the electric, or worse, causing a fire?- TV, PS3, TataSky, Home theatre all on one power strip connected to one 5 Amp switch.

You might say that i overthink stuff, but mishaps do happen.. don't they?

Maa

Maa is my grandmother.
I was very fortunate to have grown up with my grandparents. I think i owe this to my mom, who (despite the challenges of staying with aged in laws) made this possible for me.

Maa loved me :) i was the first kid in our joint family and for four long years, the sole center of attention.
But i was remembering her today for something entirely different.
I must have been about four or five years old when this happened. My uncle was home and he had brought a gift for ma (his mom). And stupid and "fearless" as kids are i asked him loudly if this ring was real! He smiled and i saw a weird expression on Maa's face, one i had not seen before. I knew that i had done something when i asked that question but since i recieved no answer or feedback i was not sure.

Few days later, while she was in the poojaghar i went and sat with her. After sometime, while she was rubbing the sandalwood stick to make paste for tilak, I pointed to her earing and asked her, "Maa is this real?"
Before i could recieve an answer or register whether her expression again changes to the same weird expression there was blinding pain, she pulled my ear and told me, "if you ask that question to anyone ever again u will answer to me. You will accept with gratitude whatever someone gives you. What is good for them to give is good for you to have."

I have not forgotten it.
It was one of the most important lessons in my life: humility and respect.

As we go up in life, we forget what matters most is the sentiment. We evaluate others and ourselves in things possessed, in things displayed, in things gifted.... in things.
In this mad race to possess "things" we sometimes forget what we started out for. We forget what matters most to us.

I went shopping today, spent a lot.