Just a clue

It’s a funny feeling of trying to put myself in love
And this time around, my family is hand in glove.

Everybody around me tells me “at least give it a try”
I now ask myself the question, WHY?

There’s very little I really expect from my life partner
He should be smart and someone who can burst out with laughter

Well, honest and responsible is what he also needs to be
And that’s all I want to put it simply.

But the game ain’t all that easy,
And one may say that I am being choosy.

I realize today that all my friends have these qualifications
But never once did I consider them as options

It’s more than what I can put in words that I expect
I am looking for that “connect”


I want to be with someone who wants to explore
Be it things, food, people or a new shore


I want to be someone’s girl, spoilt and pampered
Not the one calling the shots, yet empowered

Care, trust and enthralling company is what I promise in return
And I shall never falter when it’s my turn

Promises I make few and stick to them like glue
In the search for my man, God please give me a clue.

People, times and change

Meandering through life’s hassles I flew
Meeting people all too new.

Some I love, some I hate
While still others seem a puzzle too great.

Kids I adore,
Do men I abhor?

Women are my kind,
Are bosses born to make you grind?

Friends bring a cheer to life,
Why with parents are arguments rife?

The cook at home, seems all to important,
Oh why! Is the security guard forever nonchalant?

A random colleague who keeps asking you,
And the one you like, has of you, no clue?

Often I wondered through times in the past,
How much of today, till tomorrow last.

People will pass, changing my belief
Joys will hopefully replace some grief

And strong i will be, to stand the harshest rain
Chugging along life still, like a superfast train!

Friends i miss

Friends I have many and still wanting for more,
We’ve bonded over years and know each other to the core.

It’s not the time we’ve been friends for that counts
It’s the sentiment and fervor, and to such things you can’t put amounts.

From those I met in school to the one a month ago,
They are all precious and at no cost would I want to let them go.

With some I talk intellect, with some I play,
From heated discussions, to pots of clay.

It’s friends who hold you along your times of trouble,
From wishing you luck to picking you from rubble.

Though fun and good is always the underlying intention,
At times the pranks and leg pulling may seem a botheration.

Be it studies, work, fun, or partying,
Friends are privy to all and forever happening.

Never dear God, make me choose in friends,
Never should I lose them to changing trends.

While I may not be in touch with them everyday
I do be aware of them using all the tools of today.

How I wish I could have all of them together,
Catch up with them every now and then for a chatter.

Distance, work and reasons are plenty,
And as I realize that life has no guarantee.


Missing my friends makes me feel terrible,
Meet my friends I must, as often as possible.

And like they say,
Where there is a will, there is a way.

Shikshak Divas!

Some of my favourite teachers, and most of them would have joined the list when they were no longer teaching me, coz its only in the end that I realized that they meant some real, sincere good for me.

Mrs Beddoe, for the pronunciations I know
Mrs Dias, for making me believe that I had a l’ll more brain than the rest ;) ..at that time I did believe it!!
Mrs James, for making me fall in love with Maths
Mrs Rudola, for setting me right..that’s helped me this far!
Mrs Wadhwa, I think I have been thanking her for every day of my working life for the last one year, whatever little accounting I know.. ONLY because of her!
Ms Gupta, I realize that she did help me write better and I finally do know the difference between its and it’s.

TS. I thank her from the bottom of my heart. Any presentation that I have made in life, I have thought of her either before, during or after it. She gave me the confidence.
Prof RM Singh, no one taught Eco like he did
DG, for giving me the strongest Intl Fin fundas
PRS for not teaching marketing, rather magically injecting it into my system. I can discuss the BCG matrix even in my sleep.. with examples 


Prof Natarajan, however cruel he may have seemed then, IDCM eventually did make a lot of sense.
Prof Avinash Paranjpe, for making a 9 o’clock morning class on financial markets the most awaited thing
Prof Kidiyoor, for being the cool, practical, logical and sensible Prof around.
Prof Ajith Kumar, he’s my favourite at TAPMI for his sincerity and the way he respects his students as intelligent adults… and no doubt he’s great at his subjects.


All the above names are of teachers who I came across at one of the three educational institutions I have been a part of, CJM, CBS and TAPMI, but apart from these too I have come across some great teachers and here goes the list

This list has to be topped by my Mom and Grandmom, and I guess I can run out of space if I start listing down what all they taught me.. so no questions asked, the two ladies win it! My Dad for teaching me to be super confident all the time, as in ALL THE TIME. My bros for the attitude i have ;)

And some more people who have knowingly or unknowingly taught me quite a bit - Arti Tahiliani, Ruchika Saraf, Nilesh Gauda and Madhur Sinha.

Finally a big Happy Teachers’ Day to everybody. One day we celebrate, which wasn’t really the brainchild of someone sitting in an Archies Sales office!!

A year in Bangalore

It’s been a year in this city, which still feels so new, yet so much my own. There are so many places which feel so “me” and still some which feel so so alien. But I would not give all the credit to the city, I guess I have done my bit by totally opening myself up to it.

Since I am all by myself in the city, not even the slightest trace of the species called relatives (thankfully :p) I have more than happily lived totally by the kind called friends. They are my everything here. Even one weekend without them, I am like a fish out of water. But here again, time has trained me. I have now reached newer levels of loving the city, where I love a few places so much that I like being there all by myself. With friends or without them, there are some things and places that the last year has given me, and I have a feeling these are for keepers

Church street is so me
HRC on weekend afternoons
Coffee at Matteo
Food at queens
Beer at coco grove
Movies at fame shankarnaag (I call it the Priya of banaglore).. they do it the best here!
Morning jogs at cubbon park
Dinner at 13th floor, that’s my favourite place. I’d probably come back to the city for this one..if ever i leave it that is.
And not to forget the movies at rex, they have something special about them. I’ve seen some of the crappiest ones there..yet!!
An overdose of idli and dosa, I like it still!
Picking up my bit of kannada.. and I am so proud of that.
Wishful heading out on weekends.. done very little of that.. hating that bit :(.. but there is still hope!
Making some 100% new friends, and totally hitting it off with them
Learning so much at work, I knew nothing about what I do today.
Meeting some totally fun people at work too, and seeing a lot of them go!
Realizing time and again that people have serious issues with dilliwallahs.. but do I even care??
Knowing that I am my boss, and learning to draw the lines.
Ticking some items off the “I wish” list
Having pets for the first time in life, Stripey and Chilly my beautiful angels.
Yet.. falling sick and realizing that there is no place that can replace “home”. It just has some magic to it.
Not doing anything at all for some days that were so important for me till a year ago, holi, my birthday and a few more.
Learning that loneliness is only a state of mind, and nothing more.

:) / :(

Well it’s not been one of my best days today. I totally hate falling sick to an extent where I can not go to work, and I believe that there is no point in falling sick if there is nobody around to take care of me and pamper me. So now, since I live all alone, there was no one to push me to do things to which I would keep saying no for a long time. fully aware all through that I am being asked to do the “right” things, i'd give in only after some prolonged effort from the other parties.

Here, I must accept. I am a difficult person to be with when I am not feeling the best. I hate talking, eating, or basically doing anything. My funda is that to recover from an illness the body needs rest, and the same should be granted to it in the complete sense. But then, people want me to expend my energy on things like eating, visiting a doctor and I hate doing any of it.

Today, when there was no one to tell me to do anything, I realized I had to push myself for a lot more than just this. While just eating seemed a daunting task earlier, today the task was far more elaborate. I had to first cook for myself and then force myself to eat.

In my nine months of living alone, today was the first time I felt like taking the next flight home.

The entire thing with feeling sick and lonely, and missing home made me really sad. As in “really” sad. And trust me, it takes a lot, for me to actually feel sad. While I was experiencing all of this, I was online since I did not have anything better to do, or rather more out of habit. So in a bout of “real” sadness I made my Gtalk status message as a sad face [ :( ]. And I had never imagined what followed.

Within seconds of my doing this, I had chat windows popping all over the place. And what made me wonder and even laugh was what people thought. The first comments ranged from a simple “hey..what’s wrong” to more animated “tujhe pyaar vyaar to nahi ho gaya”. So after explaining things to most people that I was just feeling unwell and that the good weather was making me sadder, for I couldn’t really enjoy it, I was rather surprised by what most people had to say. “ C’mon Garry, remove that sad face, just doesn’t go with you,” to the extent that I was being cornered. I too finally gave in and all this in a matter of less than 30 minutes.

Though I did change my status message, not that I stopped feeling sad, I was feeling pretty much the same as before, except that I had a new thought with me. Agreed that I am happy or in an attempt to be happy, at all times. Does that mean that I have lost the right to be sad? Being sad is an absolutely valid human emotion, though not the best. Just like anybody else, I have the right to feel sad, though I still maintain that I shall strive for a happy face at all times :)

P.S: this note was written on 21 April 2010. I am perfectly well n happy now :)
just been too bu/la ZY!!

Eureka!!

Today morning I woke up to three things of which I would categorize two as usual, one special. If I were to categorize these three things on the basis of significance, one would be significant and two utterly insignificant. Well, in a third classification on the basis of rarity, two are rare and one’s a daily thing.

Ok , enough of this riddle business. I am coming to the point, just hang on. Before I tell you what I am talking about, I want you to think in your head how it feels when you know something for sure and it’s just that you aren’t being able to recall it. It’s there in the system for sure, it’s just that you don’t have something as great as google to search your brain. Or better still, how does it feel when you can’t come up with the right word to express what’s on your head. At times like these, one fails to express and comes up with lame expressions like, “what’s that called……”. Only to tell people that you are being unable to think up a word, but you have an idea!

Well going back to where I’d started. Today morning I woke up to three things. One, my alarm which is one song I like but have no idea why I set it up as my alarm tone, coz essentially the guy is talking about getting a girl laid. In my first round of categorization this one’s called the usual as there is nothing special about this as I was waking up to it for the last one week too. The second thing I woke up to was some really amazing weather, well that’s what gets categorized as special in round one, coz not everyday does a Delhite wake up to beautiful breeze, usually it’s lots of sweat. The third thing, and by now it is obvious that it has been categorized as usual, was a “thought”. This is because practically everyday I wake up to some thought, just something or the other, so there ain’t something special about it.

I now head on to round two of classification, which happens on the basis of significance. Well the alarm tone is undoubtedly insignificant, after all there is no big deal about it, I can have it one day, not have it the other and for all you know I’ll have it back the third day. So let’s just leave it there. The weather though special wasn’t all that significant. No doubt it did make my morning jog quite a pleasure. What more does one want, the smell of rain soaked mud, and cool breeze. But yet, it doesn’t qualify to be significant. But what I categorize as significant is the thought that came to me. I had found a word to describe my self. If you’d remember in my last post I’d written about my dilemma of being unable to give my self an occupation. Well here it is, from today on I call my self ‘ Pseudo-employed’

In round three, the newly coined term and the weather are categorized as rare and the alarm tone as common. Waking up to a thought that brings some peace to your mind, rather it was like finding something that I’d been searching for, for really long. The word that I knew I knew, but just wasn’t getting it. Though I am precisely what I slept as yesterday night, but in some way, significant enough, I am relieved and at peace within me. At the moment when I woke up the word that came to me was “Eureka!!”. And the following expression was “ what took me so long..what was I thinking”. The weather was also rare, not something I can experience now as I write this and in all probability tomorrow morning too would be about sweat, and breeze would be something for the dreams.