The journey back home…….

It was 28 years since she had traveled back home……..

28 years since she had last smelt the fragrance of her home soil, 28 years since she had last met her family, 28 years since she was held close by her mother, ……..28 years spent in solitude. For the whole time, she was itching to get back to her home ground. All those years spent in anticipation of that one news disappeared when she finally got the news that she would be making the trip of her dreams very soon – that of returning to her homeland.

It was all the more irritating that she had to change her base every 4 years. Packing, moving, settling in & adjusting to her new environment every 4 years though exciting, was definitely a herculean task. She had been the darling of every team that she had belonged to. She was treated like a princess. But nothing……………. nothing could substitute the feeling of being held by her home team. Although she enjoyed every bit of her overseas stay, of being a part of a new team every 4 years, they very thought of heading back home had filled her with such exhilaration & excitement that she couldn't contain it any longer.

Technology Vs Human brain comprehending ability - 2

On the advice of a colleague and to show that I'm not Ms. Perfect as perceived by the world around me, the below mentioned situation shows off my goofiness to an extent that it surpasses the minimum threshold set by the Guinness book of world records!

7 months back when I was recruited into my current organization, it had been 2 years since my previous stint at the IT industry. So needless to say, my familiarity with technology was a big zilch! I had to re-build on whatever basics I had picked up at my previous organization. So my goofiness was at its all time high. (I have been very famous for my goofiness right through my life. I've built a minimum threshold level among friends with which they compare other goofiness and so far nobody has been able to beat my record on it! :p) Just so that I do not screw up my first impression at the workplace, I had to curb on my goofiness and it was becoming very difficult for me to control it.

The first week was when I got familiar with the place, with people around me, people in my team (Training), and people from HR. It was also the time when I got my computer connection, got my outlook configured and got access to the printer. I was asked to give a test print of a page by the person from the Helpdesk to check on the access. Being new to the team, I dint know where the printer was located. Now this is where my goofiness acted up and I became the laughing stock of the team. I being my regular pompous self was too snobbish to ask my team mates where it was located. So I thought of finding it out on my own. Finally after searching nearby, I found something that looked like a printer. I gave a test print and when to collect it, but I couldn't find it in the printer. So I gave another one just to be sure and again went to collect it. Yet again I dint find it. Now I was really confused! Coz the person from helpdesk was saying that my computer was connected to the printer, but I was not finding any prints coming out from the printer. So I let go of my snobbish attitude and finally asked a colleague where the printer was located. She counter questioned me on where I was trying to retrieve my print outs. I pointed out to her on what I thought was the printer. She was quite for some time with a big grin on her face. She couldn't control anymore and she burst out laughing. Finally when she was able control on her laughter, she pointed out to what I thought was the printer and told that it wasn't a printer, but actually was a 'Scanner'! I went red in the face and didn't know what to reply. I was silent for a few minutes and then I too joined her in laughing at my goofiness.

That situation not just broke the ice, but made me famous for my 'goofy' attitude at work! :)

I have a poster on my desk that reads: Warning! I have an attitude and know how to use it! People, who know me quite well by now, know that the word 'goofy' needs to be added in the sentence. So it should read as: Warning! I have a 'goofy' attitude and know how to use it!

Statutory Warning: This incident may or may not depict my IQ level. You can take a call on it. I'm not giving any hints! :)

Technology Vs Human Brain’s comprehending ability

The incident I'm going to be narrating is a classic example of how technology diminishes the comprehending ability of human brains.

We have a college intern who recently joined our team to do a project as a part of her course requirement. First look of her – She's smart. She carries herself well, is able to communicate well, is able to understand when we explain the concepts to her and at the end of the day delivers what is needed of her.

Being in HR, most of our job gets done over MS Excel. So obviously anybody who joins us would be expected to have a decent knowledge of it. This intern (let's call her V) was given a large chunk of data (obviously in Excel) and was asked to make some sort of sense from it. (Poor gal!) She was shuttling between multiple excel files simultaneously. She was lost amidst the huge chunk of data given to her and the multiple excel files. She looked like a walking zombie who needed a serious break from the computer table. After some time there was a groan of frustration from her end. When enquired by a colleague, she said that she had put in all the data required into the Excel sheet, but now all of a sudden the keyboard was not working and she couldn't work any further. Another colleague tried to pitch in & help her. Both of them tried innumerable things checked all the connections. Everything was working fine, but still her keyboard was not working.

Now I being a true Libran, I believe in bringing harmony at my work place, I thought I could pitch-in with my indigenous brains and find a solution to this problem. So I opened a word file and keyed in some random alphabets and it worked fine. When I showed the same to Miss V, she was kinda confused. How could it work in a word file & not in an excel file??? So I asked her to open the particular excel file in which she was finding it difficult to type. When I saw the file, I couldn't control my laughter. I burst out laughing. (I'm famous for being extremely loud on the floor)

Actually she had taken a screen-shot of the excel file and had copy-pasted the image in an outlook file. Now a person who is a little tech –savvy would have understood by now that, one cannot type on an image. Poor gal, she had been staring at the excel files for such a long time that she was not able to differentiate between an actual excel file and the screen shot image of it!

Statutory warning: This incident does not depict the IQ level of Miss V. Rather it depicts on what prolonged usage of MS Excel can do to a person's comprehending skills!. She is a fellow blogger like me and u can find her blog here

3 days - 3 burns

This has just been the 3^rd day since my mom's been out and I already have 3 burns on my skin.

The day my mom told me that she would be off to a 15 day yoga camp, I was ecstatic, obviously after feeling sad that I wouldn't be seeing her for the next 15 days. I was ecstatic for the very fact that I would be the king  ( err….. more like the queen, but who cares!) of my world …….. my home and most importantly the kitchen. I was very enthusiastic on the verity that I could do anything I wish, experiment new dishes and my poor dad would have to bear the brunt of my cooking!

I must tell u here that I'm an absolute spoilt brat at home. I would never dare to step anywhere remotely close to the kitchen when my mum's around. My mom's tried innumerable excuses on trying to get me interested in 'horror' termed as cooking and I've happily stayed away from it. In spite of comparison with friends, cousins and others of the same age or much below my age, it has not affected my happy-go-lucky character on skipping from entering the kitchen every time I pass through it. And just for that, she was paranoid of leaving my dad in my clutches, lest he be left starved!

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So this time when she made the announcement, I decided that come what may I will enter the lion's den and deal with the monster termed 'cooking'. So I thought I'll begin with the basics:

Day 1 – I tried boiling water and I got burnt

Day 2 – I tried boiling milk and I got yet another burn.

But still my interest towards mastering cooking didn't die. I wanted to conquer the monster!

Day 3 – I tried heating oil and I got another burn

Ohh what the hell! Gimme me the directory, what's the number of Pizza hut???

Whoever said cooking is a woman's art?!!

The March of Daffodils

The month of March is here. It's the month of colours (Holi), the month of Woman's day and how can I forget……. It's the month of exams.

I remember slogging my *** off in school during the month of March. Coz that was the month when I finally woke up, realized the enormous amount of lessons I had to study, panic on whether I would be able to finish them before the exams begun, set into an absolutely biologically impossible rhythm trying to finish off the enormous portions in an absolutely limited time frame and finally bow down to the powers of almighty to have me scrap through the exams with a decent percentage which would give me the courage to stand before my teachers & parents when I went to collect my marks card.

High School was particularly difficult for me for the simple reason that I choose to have my first language as English when compared to the horror of having to choose Sanskrit. I prefer to be bred as a decent English lady than being bred as a Sanskrit pundit wherein I wouldn't be using the language for any other reason than to get good grades during the 3 years of my high school.

So obviously the language of English was accompanied by its entire clan of phonetics, sentence formation, correct usage of words and dissecting the sentences into simple & complex sentences. Not to mention that the Subject itself was split up into Literature, grammar & poetry. How did I manage to get through those 3 years of absolute drudgery??? I still wonder about it sometimes!

As much as I hated doing all the boring work in the subject, what particularly interested me was the part of poetry. I loved 'The Daffodils' by William Wordsworth.

Amazing Amazon Kindle

I've been an avid reader of books ever since I can remember. Sometimes I wonder if I was born with a book in my hand. I lovvvvvvvveeeee reading. Given a choice between reading & doing something, I would pick the choice of reading. And my interest in books varies like my temperament. I can move between an Archie's comic book and an Ayn Rand Fountainhead with the greatest of ease. And somehow the thought of borrowing books and reading never appealed to me. So needless to say, every month there would be a huge chuck of my salary that used to be spent on buying books and reading them. Looking at the huge collections of books I have, I've been called as a 'Book Library' among my friends coz they would borrow books from me for reading. Very often my mom would joke that the only dowry that I would be carrying to my hubby's place after marriage would be my huge collection of books.

My parents got tired of telling me not to buy books. The more they told me this statement, the more I was tempted to buy books and read. It was like a never ending saga of my life.

This was until, my father hit on a jackpot idea and man what an idea it was! When he got to know that one of my cousin's was traveling abroad, he ordered an Amazon Kindle for me to be gifted to be as a surprise birthday present. For all the naïve readers of this blog Amazon kindle is an e-book reader. Though it was a late to get it as a birthday present (my birthday is in October and I got this in the following February) I was obviously ecstatic when I got it. It's been my constant companion, and just like a much sought after thriller book, I can't keep this down.

Between then to now, I'm become absolutely crazy of the Kindle. It carry it with me when am traveling to office every day, It's by my bed side during the night and during weekends it's like my best buddy.

I've been absolutely blown away by the impact this particular technology has over my life. I'm never loved technology more than now! :)

The Best Religion…..

A brief dialogue between a Brazilian theologist Leonardo Boff and the Dalai Lama.

In a round table discussion about religion and freedom in which Dalai Lama and myself (Leonardo Boff) were participating at recess, I maliciously and also with interest asked him: “Your holiness what is the best religion?”

I thought he would say “The Tibetan Buddhism” or “The oriental religions, much older than Christianity.”

The Dalai Lama paused, smiled and looked me in the eyes which surprised me because I knew of the malice contained in my question. He answered “The best religion is that one that gets your closer to God. It is the one that makes you a better person.” 

To get out of my embarrassment with such a wise answer, I asked: What is that makes me better?”

He responded “Whatever makes you more compassionate, more sensible, more detached, more loving, more humanitarian, more responsive, and more ethical. The religion that will do that for you is the best religion”.

I was silent for a moment marveling and even today thinking of his wise and irrefutable reply. “I am not interested, my friend about your religion, or if you are religious or not. What really is important to me is your behavior in front of your peers, family, work commitment and in front of the world. Remember the universe is the echo of our actions and our thoughts.” “The law of action and reaction is not exclusively for physics. It is also of human relations. If I act with goodness, I will receive goodness. If I act with evil, I will get evil.”

“What our grand-parents told us is the pure truth. You will always have what your desire for others. Being happy is not a matter of desire. It is a matter of options.”

Finally, he said: “Take care of your Thoughts because they become your Words. Take care of your Words because they become your Actions. Take care of your Actions because they become your Habits. Take care of your Habits because they become your Character. Take care of your Character because they become your Destiny and your Destiny will be your Life and “There is no religion higher than Truth.”

~ Borrowed from the internet

Full Circle

It's strange how life turns around when you are least expecting it.

2008 - 2010 has been extremely taxing on me, in terms of personal life, relationships, professional life and in terms of maintaining my sanity as a person, as an individual. I always had this thoughts that I was bound with shackles which was making it very difficult for me to think, strategize and come out with a solution. It was like I was on the brink of insanity and many of my previous posts have reflected this.

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The last 2 years, I've realized emotions which I've never expected, experienced frustration at its peak, desperation clawing in me and depression killing me from inside. But if there's something that I must be proud about in these 2 years, it is the ability of having grown as a person internally and individually. The ability of having to withstand negative emotions without reacting to it. The ability of being indifferent towards people and towards circumstances which I no longer cared about. The ability of controlling my anger towards people and towards circumstances.

Just when I had given up hopes of a brighter tomorrow, the sun shone with its glorious rays encapsulating me with a warm glow of contentment from within.

Delays are not denials - I had read this as somebody's status message on gtalk a couple of days ago. When i had read the message, I was filled with rage. Because for me, delays have always turned out to be denials.

But then I also do believe in the adage of a silver lining for every dark cloud. And Trust me; I believe this now more than ever.

It's strange how life turns a full circle when you are least expecting it.

2000 – 2010, 18- 28 a decade well lived!

I was just wondering that 2010 as a year went by pretty easily, hassle free and quite quickly too. This was until; the realization hit me that it wasn’t just a year but an entire decade that ended, a decade in which I started with 18 and ended on 28. And boy, what a decade it was!

This decade was when I overcame the initial hurdles in my education, finished by graduation, was the first MBA in my extended family, got my first job, hated my first manager, managed to hit an all time low patch coinciding with the downturn of the economy and managed to land a 2nd job that I currently love doing.

This is also a decade where new friendships were forged, bonds were strengthened, a decade went by in studies and perfecting skills I didn't know existed in me.