Do I sound funny...

Life is like a black man's left ass .
...its not fair and its not right.

Shayarana Andaaz...

Watched 'Zindagi na Milegi Dobara' today.Didn't feel it was any great creation...okay dokay I''d say, yet one should give credit where due.
The locations of Spain were breathtaking while some scenes were genuinely funny and some brutally witty one liners. The movie reminds me of 'Dil Chahta Hai' and 'Hangover' both of which I liked better than this one.
Somehow I just cant digest men who are almost forty giggling like school boys. ZNMD had men who were more caricatures...men who are ubber rich, ubber kool and each of them carries some emotional baggage which were extremely cliched and boring. They can afford a fortnight holiday in Spain, rent the dream villas, buy bags worth 12000 euros...and more shit. They seem far from real.
Jealous I am of their wealth...you might say. May be I am, and yet I reserve the right to not like a movie for the above mentioned reasons.

And what were actors like Nasseruddin Shah and Deepti Naval doing in their teeny-weeny roles. What did they charge for that little much presence in the film...two way taxi fare!!!
And the most surprising part...for the first time I liked Katrina Kaif, Dhan Tan Nan!!! I am surprised at myself too.

Well..there were a few amazing shayaris in the movie written by Javed Akhtar. I am not a great poetry lover...yet the poems in the movie did catch a nerve. Here is one of them :

जब जब दर्द का बादल छाया

जब ग़म का साया लहराया

जब जब आंसूं पलकों तक आया

जब यह तनहा दिल घबराया

हमने दिल को यह समझाया

आखिर दिल तू क्यूँ रोता है

दुनिया मैं यूँ ही होता है

यह जो गहरे सन्नाटे हैं

वक़्त ने सबको ही बाटें हैं

थोडा ग़म है सबका किस्सा

थोड़ी धुप है सबका हिस्सा

आँख तेरी बेकार ही नम है

हर पल एक नया मौसम है

क्यूँ तू ऐसे पल खोता है

आखिर दिल तू क्यूँ रोता है

Moving on...

Today is when I breathe my last on SG-Land, and then I move on...

Not that switching jobs is something new to me, but this time its different. This time I am more anxious, more nervous. May be its something do with my years of experience. I think i am at a more vunerable situation now when one wrong decision can screw up my carrier for a long time to come. So the fear of the unknown is more...way more this time.

I would be jobless, unemployed for the next three days...a normal housewife with no paycheque and no insurance. So I intend to watch a lot of movies, go for shopping...basically drain out my husband's bank balance. Isn't that what housewife's are supposed to do!!!


Shopping reminds me.
I had done this little online shopping on a chinese website, and despite of the fact that I ordered the largest size that they had it would still not fit me. Lets not forget that chinese sizes are obviously samller than that of Indians. Determined to fit into it some day, I have finally achieved my goal. Though I am not sure if I lost weight or the dress expanded due to numerous trials.

What do you think???
I think I look pretty darn good.

Back to work...err...No Work

I am finally back to Bangalore after 10 days...

Not that I would consider in-laws visiting as my ideal holiday idea, yet one has to agree that Db was born at a picninc spot. His hometown is so picturesque, full of mountains and rivers and waterfalls and leeches too.
But sadly I am not the daughter of the place, I am the daughter in law. And its a priviledge that I have been excused from wearing saree all the time unlike all the other bahus do...they wear a saree with a ghungat.

If I would have been born in the same place I would have probably jumped in to the waters, play till I get pnemonia, get cured, crawled back to it, play till I got pnemonia again, cure myself again and crawled back to the waterfall yet again. And with the mountains, I would have probably gone on a montain climbing/trekking spree till I would have managed to unfurl a flag with my name on every single mountain a pair of eyes could reach...which would easily be a couple of hundreds.

But sadly its not my Mayka. That's my sasural, and this thought itself is scandalizing. Sulk!!!

Nevertheless, the good part is Db finally managed to click some descent pictures of me. Oh haven't I told you...in my previous birth I had happened to break a very expensive and rare Pinhole camera, because of which all cameras in the world conspired to hold grudge against me and never ever give me a decent click. Even my matrimony pics clicked by a professional photographer, and for which I paid a fortune made me look like a baby elephant. And for the similar reason I have shoved away my wedding album to a place where where even cockroaches can't find it.
So I consider it as a great achievement that after three years and more, Db was finally able to click some pics which we both with mutual consent considered as descent. Applaud!!!

Now that I am back, and its my last week in this office...I have nothing to do here that can be remotely considered as work. So sitting all wella after a long time or as my dear collegues would like to put it as...this is my honemoon period.

So honeymooning I am...

Another story...another mishap.

It happens yet again to another man, who unwilling became the victim to the women of this generation who cannot handle her independence.

I wonder what is wrong with this generataion of women!!! Why is it so difficult to keep priorities clear, and who gives them the right to screw somebody else's life with their own. If there was somebody else who you wished to marry, but could not beacuse of any God-Damned reason, why can you not try and begin a new life with the man you finally decided to marry instead. What makes them think it is a fair decision to hang on to both, the ex-flame and the now husband...and screw all the three lifes.

Probably the idea of happiness is different for different people....yet I don't see any reasoning of a sane mind here. I feel like shaking these women and ask...What? Why? What do you want?? What were you thinking???

It did happen with my family too, and I know how devasted everyone is. Not just the man in question, his entire family goes through a lot of pain while the woman's family has to go through a sad phase of embarassment. Eventually it leads nowhere, nobody is happy. Independence for women...at the cost of what??? Is it worth it???

No, I am not against women being independent...like many people are.
Some even say that probably our ancestors were aware that women do not have the capability to handle freedom and that's precisely the reason they were dominated and kept in purdah. Now that they have broken the chain of opression enforced on them since so many years, it has been proved that women cannot handle it.

While I do agree to some extend that most women are not able to use the newly found independence responsibly, yet I also believe that the problem here is much more than just that .
Women do have evolved, yet we do have an older generation and a hypocrite societe to please. If the woman in question would have gone ahead and married the man she pleased with no opposition from her family or the socite, then I wouldn't have been here writing how she has been the cause of worry, embarassment and destruction for everybody.

Till today most of the parents do impose restrictions on the girl child, the societe continues its hipocracy towards a woman.
If a man goes around with many women, he is a stud....but when a woman does the same she is labelled...
It shockes me to find that a lot of the educated mass considers it to be a pride to have recieved huge dowries...also these people do not celebrate a girl child. If a man wants to marry a woman who is of a different caste/religion, its easier for his parents to give in while its almost an impossible task for a woman to convince her parents.
Such women, when suddenly get their independence, they obviously misuse it.

I believe since this generation has witnessed women proving themselves time and again to be as competent as men, anything that is considered a taboo for a woman has to be a taboo for a man too, while anything which is acceptable for a man has to be acceptable for us, despite being women.

Probably when the older generation would also consider us at par with the men, and would be fair to us...the women would not misuse their freedom.

The bygone weekend...

Note : This post is gonna be very long and self-indulgent. Read it only if you have nothing better to do.
Now that you are going ahead with reading the post, you have agreed that you are sitting as wella like me. Join the club.

An interview to remember...

I had this interview in the EGL campus in Domlur around 1pm on Saturday. I was pretty interested in the company because I had heard they pay well and also they are very close to my place. May be that's the reason that stopped be from walking out even though they made me wait for almost 2 hours, a practice I normally follow if the waiting time exceeds 45 ins.
Whatsoever, I was called in for the interview. The interviewer was quite a good looking man, may be in his early thirties...My java questions went very well, better than I had expected. But,when he wanted to know my experience in webservices, I had only a couple of months on my resume. Yet with what little I remembered, I was able to answer a few high level questions. But they wanted somebody in a lead role, hence my experience in webservices would not suffice.The interviewer couldn't be sorry enough, he said sorry to me almost 5 times...since he thought my java experience was quite good but I would be an outright reject if he passed me to the next technical panel, who apparently would judge me only on my webservice experience.

He called out my name as I opened the door to leave...
'I am gonna remember your name...unique one'
'Yes' I said. 'There is only one'
'Not even on orkut or facebook???'
'None' I said.
'I am gonna find out...' He smiled.
'Okay'(!!!???)
'And yes I am sorry again...you were good'
'Please don't be...you are just doing your job' I smiled and left.

Where the hell were these people while I was single...shit !!!

The high Maintainance wife...

It was not planned. We wanted to buy a good saree for the MIL during our visit this July. We cheked at a few shops and we found the rates were ridiculously high. This Saturday, while a soon would-be-married friends were planning to go for their wedding shopping to Chikpet, we decided to join in.

Not being the kind who is so selfless to travel to another corner of Bangalore just to buy a saree for the MIL, I obvioulsy had other plans for myself...but not as evil as it eventually turned out to be.One of these shops had a dres material hung on display...I queried the price and he said it was for four hundred."Okay...I am interested...!!!"I went in to dig out similar cheap offerings that they might have, but after almost an hour I exited the shop with shopping bags worth 2000 rupees only.Also to be noted that I am to pay 1100 rupees to the tailor who is stiching those dresses for me.

BTW...I bought a nice and expensive saree for the MIL too.

Adieu Cockroaches...Plz don't come back

We went on a house cleansing mission this Sunday. The cockroaches have been a pain in the a** for quite long. So, finally we went a killing spree, our wepons being a red Hit spray and a broom to kill the cockroaches who managed to escape from the spray.
After a struggle that lasted more than an our we had the blood of almost a hundred cockroaches on our hands.
But the final result is good, my kitchen is devoid of cockroaches and that gives me a lot of peace.

Taking the Healthy options...

Since the kitchen smelled of the cockroach spray, cooking was a bad option. But the last thing that we wanted was to order food since we together weight a ton already, and putting on any more weight will result in long unending bills to the doctors.
Well...it was time then to try on firang food items like salad.I made something called a portuguese salad, inspired by the one I had in Nandos the previous day. It turned out quite tasty and filling...so much so that I made some more of it and carried to office for breakfast.

I plan to experiment more on the various kinds of salads that can be tasty and healthy at the same time. Hopefully we'd both lose some weight then.

What did you do to get your first Android....

I was born this date 28 years ago, and managed to con a gadget freak man to marraige...

Happy birthday to me...

Let go...

Laugh when you can,
apologize when you should,
and let go of what you can't change.
Life's too short to be anything... but happy.

Donno who wrote this, but what an absolutely delightful thought.

Life is too short to be anything...but happy.
Probably, some of us think holding on makes us strong...but sometimes it is letting go that makes life a lot easier.

Like Db asked me last night...you must be hating them. It actually did trigger a thought process, do I really hate them!!! HATE is a very strong word, I don't think I hate anybody at all. Rather I have learned to accept people the way they are, because accepting does makes it a hell lot easier for me. A little pretention, a fake smile and a whatever-attitute to when people try to provoke you...a perfect recipe to avoid trouble.

And how some people never cease to irk me...
I donno if counting your miseries is fashionable these days, or self-pity is the 'in' thing (I am pretty alien to fashion anyway)...but why can't people find strength within while they are so-capable of it.

Let go...
I know you are not as helpless as you potray yourself, or probably you are just not aware of it...
Self pity is the worse feeling one could have, more so when you aren't all that pitiful...
Holding grudges doesn't help you, it will only make matters worse...
When you let go of what you are, you become what you might be...
Lastly, You worry me because you are very naive...and worse,you don't know that you are...

As Eli Wallach explained it to Kate Winslet, In movies we have a leading lady and a best friend...you my dear are the leading lady but for some reason you are behaving like the best friend.
Applicable to both of us, me thinks. But now its time we start being the leading lady of our own lifes.

Itni khushi...

One of the best compliments in the best possible way found me last evening.

I was waiting at the reception of Db's office sitting beside a guy who seemed to have come for an interview. I took up a newspaper to read some bollywood gossip to kill time. This guy called me to ask...

'Fresher???'
Me : sorry...
Interview right !
Me : No...waiting for someone.

Nevertheless I was mentally doing a victory dance for being called a fresher.

Kya karen !!! Meri twacha se meri umr ka pata hi nahin chalta...

Who do you blame for your misery???

Actually, thats quite a shortcut, blaming somebody else for our plight. We spend more time trying to find somebody to blame things on, than trying to find a solution to the problem.
But does that help...wouldn't it help to look within???

I have been blaming too many people in my team for being unprofessional, due to few such people the work pressure has been ever increasing. But the fact is I haven't been working too hard to find a solution to it either. Neither did I give it all to change the attitude of the people around, nor did I try to find a way to escape all of it by finding myself a new job. So, who do I have to blame...nobody but myself.
Introspect always helps...it drives you to find solutions.
But somehow I find this to be a rare practice among others. While I always tend to blame myself for most of my problems, most of the time I come across people who always try to find others to blame.

So how does it feel when somebody holds you responsible for his/her misery...
Fortunately or unfortunately, I wouldn't know...I somehow find no pleasure by being rude, or giving tension to others. So most of the time, I'd take pain myself, just because I don't want to pass it to others. But you know...I have been enough such phases in life where I realized that going out of your way to help others actually doesn't help. Someday, it has to come to an end...and when it does, all the good that you did is conveniently forgotten and people paint you grey and carry back only the bitterness just because you finally decided to prioritize yourself over others.

Whats the point in trying to make me feel guilty...
I would never abandon anybody while they are vulnerable, I would be the first one to offer you my hand during times of misery. Haven't I done that before !!! Now that I have decided to pull my hand back, that's because I am sure you can swim on your own...and also because you must learn to swim on your own to become a skilful swimmer.

Difficult to please

Db : (puppy faced)I want the iPad2.
Me : Okay. Lets buy it.
Db : (puppy faced again)Ummmmmm...!!! Its very costly.
Me : Okay. Lets not buy it then.
Db : What's my b'day gift then...you never gift me anything.
Me : Okay lets buy the iPad.
Db : Too costly.
Me : How about a watch?
Db : I already have three.
Me : Few new T-shirts...
Db : Nah...I have enough.
Me : Okay PS3...
Db : I dont like playing games.
Me : Okay. A nice novel. I know you like to read.
Db : Hmm...that works. You could do that.
Me : Great. (I know he likes John Grisham)

Next day.
Db : Which book have you decided for me.?
Me : John Grisham.The Confession.
Db : Hey don't buy that. I already have that e-book in my kindle.
Me : Okay. How about 'The Associate'
Db : I have that too.
Me : 'The Appeal'???
Db : That too.
Me : Could you please visit the site and tell me which one you haven't read.
Db : (After a while) Hmm...most of them.
Me : Basically I should chuck the book buying idea?
Db : Hmm...well Yes.
Me : So what the hell do you want!!!
Db : (puppy faced)I want the iPad2.

Repeat Block one.

Men's Gadgets vs woman's clothes

Last night Db asked my opinion on buying a wireless keyboard.

Me : And what would you do with it. We do not have a desktop anyway, 3 laptops all with their own keyboards. Where would you use it?
Db : I will connect the laptop to the TV and use the keyboard with it.
Me : **Rolling my eyes**
Db : You don't think its a good idea?
Me : Its a psycho idea.

Db : I don't spend anything on gadgets.
Me : You do. You just bought a new phone...the Samsung Galaxy Ace. While your HTC was in great condition.
Db : My HTC is a dinosaur, it uses windows 5. What else did I buy?
Me : You bought the Netbook, while we already had 2 laptops.
Db : Thats because the mother board of my compaq laptop was damaged...
Me : And you got that fixed too for 10 thousand. What about the Kindle???
Db : Yeah I would accept that. But I use it.
Me : And the iPod Touch???
Db : That was a gift, freee.
Me : No, you asked your friend to get it for you from the US. He chose to gift it us as a belated wedding gift.
Db : Okay.
Me : And that laptop stand, with a fan, to keep your laptop thanda.
Db : Thats anything but a gadget.
Me : Whatever!!! The light to read the kindle in dark.
Db : I am gonna kill myself if you call that a gadget.
Me : Anything that has been bought from a croma or ezone and is or used in a computer/tablet/e-book reader qualifies as a gadget.

Db : I am terribly offended. I am gonhna hit you where it hurts the most.

He starts checking his credit card satements since 2010 to check for how much I have spent on clothing and home appliances, which comes to almost 50K.

But here is my defence.
This 50K also includes your jeans for almost 2500, SIL's shopping close to 2000, your shoes from Reebok for 6000 and may be around 3000 that we shopped at Jeypore when we visited there in October.
That leaves me with a little more than 35K. That's almost equal to the price of the iPad if I would have let you buy it.

So not bad..huh!!!

Day 22 : The famous last words

Someone had told me that the key board has more germs than a toilette seat.

Falls with a bang on the keyboard.

Day 21 : Already in a Holiday mood

Such a holiday mood that I am in and also because I stayed quite late at office last night...I almost decided I would not come to office today. But one hit on my conscience by none other than Db and I am here tearing my hair...

Day 20 : Introspect

Its strange how we wait all our life to grow up and come into our own, and when we reach that stage all we want to do is to go back to childhood. We grow up only to realise how things were simpler back then....when life revolved around things like friends, chocolates, playing and sometimes studies. Back then, we would wonder how cool it would be to go to college, to work and to be on your own.

One of biggest thing I craved as a child was to get my independence when I grew up. But we forget that independence comes with a price. There a whole lot of expectations from you. Now little mistakes have huge impacts and never can you get away with mistakes as you made as a kid. We are no longer answerable to just parents and teachers, we are also answerable to our boss at work, and if we are in a relationship we are largely answerable to our partner too. Then you get married and now you are answerable to a whole new set of people, your in-laws.

Life has been a cycle ever since we got married 3 years back. There have been problems, issues ever since. In the last 3 years there has hardly ever been a time when we sat down to think about US, I mean the both of us, what we would like to do or what exactly were OUR problems.
It was always others, my family and his which constantly claimed our attention. I believe the fault lies with US, since the responsibility belongs to the one who takes it. We voluntarily and large heartedly took their problems as ours and eventually lost ourselves within.
Sure its true that you cannot keep everyone happy...

And now, that we somehow managed to put a few things into place, and believed eventually we would be able to sigh peace...another chapter awaits US.

Day 19 :

Its going as an unfruitful day...

The servers are down so the testers cant test...
The testers can't test, so no bugs are raised...
No bugs are raised, so I have no work.

**Yawn**

Day 18

3 more days to go before I go home...

Day 17 : On the hunt

Humko toh hamare package ne mara
Technical round mein kya dum tha
Humare kasti wahan doobi
Jahaan paisa kam tha

Written in homage to all those offer letters that I lost because they believed my package was already too high for them to afford me.

Doesn't make sense...

whatever!!

Day 16 : Misplaced Intelligence

Ah I am so heartbroken.

I had reasons to believe that I would put down my papers before I start home on the 21st of this month.
But thats not happening, because I screwed up.
I had this offer from a descent company, though the package was not great but I would sure have loved to be a part of the organization. Even after many negotiations I could not bring them to give me any better pakage. I thought I would probably accept the offer and during my two months of notice period I would try to find a better offer.
But Db encouraged me to take a chance.

I was aware that my rating from the interview panel was quite high. I wrote them a mail stating that I would not be able to accept the offer if they were not willing to increase the pakage. We hoped that would ring a bell for them and they would try to put there best foot forward. It had happened several times in the past and this could have happened again. But it seems it didn't go well with them and the consultant tells me that the offer is withdrawn.
Boo hoo hoo!!!
I guess sometimes we think we are too smart, but people are smarter. I probably shouldn't have tried to use too much of my brains.

But then...lemme look at the better side of it.

I would get to work in the new building of my current employer. We are going to shift there by July and the building seems to be exteremely beautiful.

My salary here is not too bad, and I have managed to build an reputation here...because of which I believe I was given a higher designation during this appraisal cycle.

I can get a car loan from my office, at a nominal interest.

I can finally redeem the money for my french lessons, which otherwise wouldn't have been reimbursed.

Day 15 : Imagination Running Wild

Kinda free today, so lets have a thoughful post for a change.

Life has changed a lot in the past 12 years. With just two TV channels, a bicycle to ride, no internet, no cell phones and no computers(a rarety then), its difficult to imagine if we even had a life back then. Probably the next generation would not see such life changing inventions.
But on second thoughts may be they will.
Probably our parents would have thought the same about our generation...since they witnessed the invention of more essential things ...motor vehicles, plane, telephone, cameras or as small but essential things like gas stoves and mixer gringers. Probaly things that we saw in our lifetime would go more towards luxury while what our parents saw were essentials. May be our kids would witness something beyond just luxury.

If you were a Super Commando Dhruv fan in your hay days, you would understand this.
I wish they come up with this 'aayami dwaar' (inter-dimesional door) that Dhananjay had to anywhere he wants. It would open in the air and you just need to enter it and opens at wherever you want to go. They could probably have access rights on the door so as to control the access to various destinations. That would save us all the tedious travel in the traffic.