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.

Waiting to Take off !!

Whoever has ever had the “opportunity” to dance with me, would know that I know nothing about it. Now that I have all the time in the world, I decided to enroll for classes to learn dance. After lots of enquiry calls I went down to the studio to register myself and the lady at the desk handed out to me an unassuming form. I, in fact everybody has filled too many of such forms where they ask you to give out details which you know at the drop of a hat. A form of this kind would usually look like this:

Personal Particulars Form
1. NAME:
2. AGE:
3. OCCUPATION:
4. ADDRESS:
5. PHONE NO.:

You're obviously thinking 'what’s the big fuss?' The fuss is about point number 3. I did not know what to write. The mind in me, trained to answer as many questions as you can, as soon as you can, could easily answer the remaining questions, but back I was to point number three.

What could I have written there?

Two options constantly ran in my head, student or service. Actually if I come to think of it, I am none. I am no longer a student, because to be a student I need to be enrolled with an institute, pursuing some form of study, which I am certainly not. I very well graduated from school last month. The second option came to my head because that is the occupation I am waiting, and rather frantically, to take up. But the world seems to be conspiring against me to let this happen. To be eligible to write my occupation as ‘service’ I need to be employed on the rolls of some organisation, which I am currently not.

To explain my plight I'd like to draw a parallel. At that point I felt like Viktor Navorski, the Tom Hanks of the Steven Spielberg movie, The Terminal. For those who haven’t seen the movie, Tom Hanks plays Viktor Navorski, a citizen of Krakozhia. He is on a visit to New York and during his flight from Krakozhia to JFK Airport war breaks out in his home country and then it fails to figure in the list of countries recognized by the US. So essentially, Navorski is a man without a country. And here I am, a girl without an occupation!!

As Navorski did not have a valid passport, he could not be allowed to leave the airport. Needless to say he hated to be in that situation initially. It was all about frustration, irritation, a feeling of helplessness but soon he managed to find things to do, people to talk to, streams of income. He had come over it!

Now I see myself traversing the same path. I was cribbing way too much about how I was going to be “jobless” for almost four months. I completely hated not having something to do, and especially when it’s for such long periods. But surprisingly enough I see myself always managing to find something to interest me. Be it a movie, a book, pictures of old times, errands around the house, meeting friends, if nothing else people to chat with. I have more, much more, I ain’t all that sad. And I am pretty happy about this extremely comfortable, all expenses paid stay at the airport, but certainly waiting to take off!!

Quiz Time

I have recently caught the bug called quizzes. Thankfully it is well after I have graduated from school. I never liked quizzes then, and even now, the facebook version of these is something I tried to avoid for long. But now when I have nothing to do, absolutely nothing, even taking these quizzes seems an option. So here I am pondering over the result of one of my recent quizzes called “which drink are you?”

For those who do not know, I like the idea of drinking and two years at school gave me ample time and opportunity to pursue this love.

The result of the quiz turned out be ‘Jack Daniels Tennessee Whiskey’

To give it more meaning the result came with further explanation which read as follows:

You are Jack Daniels Tennessee Whiskey! Definitely a classic, you adapt to all situations---from quiet nights to loud parties--you fit in! While you have a feisty side, there is something unmistakably smooth about your character.

What much can I make out of this, beyond that these are some real flattering words!!

Now the truth, forget being this drink I have never even seen it, and let’s not even get to the having had it part!

If there has to be such a quiz and an answer sought, I know it hands down. It’s the drink to which I have dedicated my two years at school. It’s a separate matter that it comes @ Rs 175 for a full bottle that too after the extreme inflation that India was recently struggling with.

The truth is that I am a super cheap, yet legendary drink. And I am only too proud to claim that I am that. I am an Old Monk Rum. Liked best when mixed with a little Thums Up. Does this quiz even have this drink, MY DRINK as an option.

So my advice to those who make these quizzes. Agreed, highly idle people like me take your quiz, but you’re getting it all wrong. You’ve just announced me as something to which I do not even have the remotestestest… (super emphasis) connection.
Buck up guys!

Starry Starry Night

Yesterday night I was sleeping in my four year old nephew’s room as he’s away at his granny’s place, marking the start of his summer vacation. I went to bed at around midnight, and as it hasn’t been too long since I got back home from school, midnight isn’t a time when I want to be sleeping. But, given the norms of home I generally choose to be in bed to ensure peace and avoid any kind of fireworks.

I lay in bed, not knowing what to think about, but the next instant I knew what will be on my mind till I fell asleep, whether I want it to, or not. The sight of the ceiling was such that I couldn’t help but gaze. Ladies and gentlemen, I had with me in the room that night, stars and the moon, only for me. So what if there is a moon and the stars out there in the sky too.

Lots of thoughts came to me in that one instant, a slightly prolonged one though. The first thing that flashed in my head were images from a few weeks ago when I was comfortably nestled in an environment where gazing at the star studded sky was usual affair. So often did I lay comfortably in the greens and spend hours chit-chatting with friends, or just gazing at the sky while hearing sum random rambling in the background. Lately, I even managed to fulfill my long cherished wish of spending a night by the beach, sky gazing. The picture of me conveniently resting in a hammock, firefighting the mosquitoes, while my gang is discussing what’s up for the next day, kept returning.

In the next instant I was wondering at the sense of artificiality that prevails in cities and metros, one being Delhi, the nation’s capital. The ceiling of my nephews room has been laced with “glow in the dark” stars and that's his version of star gazing. Why is it that we want a perfect world? The convenience of sleeping in a room with a super comfortable bed and air conditioning, but then we want the stars too. And when I looked close, I figured out that the stars had been put up in a manner that one could actually spot a constellation or two. Is it a matter of parents wanting everything for their children. Why can we not let some things remain exclusive? There is only one moon and the fact remains. The moon for me is all about aspirations, something that you long for but can never achieve. There have to be the unattainables! Until we let the kids know that there are things that are still beyond reach, how in the world would they want to get them?

Now as I think it is just a ‘product’, a tool to earn revenue, most likely, for some Chinese manufacturing firm and I like a true “I have nothing to do” person am trying to read too much into it. But, it does certainly concern me that this attempt at making the world perfect might just be one of the many other things that are being undertaken by the ever so caring and concerned parents of the affluent kids of today. The kids who might just grow up thinking that the world is perfect and then one day they will, eventually they will, realize that it is only as good as the world, there is no “perfect world”.

Sorry!

I just realized that it’s been over a month since I posted anything on my blog. It’s not that I have not written anything, in fact, lately I have been writing far more than I usually do. And today, when I was going to post something, I felt that this failure to blog deserved a comment first.

When I started blogging not too long ago, my blog is only about 40 days and 6 posts old, I had thought, being my ambitious self, that I would blog regularly. Regulary as in regularly.
Here I am, not being able to maintain any sense of regularity as early as this. Whatever I write these days, I follow it with a question to myself, that is, 'Would people be interested in reading this?'. For some strange reason the answer that I hear in my mind is a no, and thus I drop the idea of posting that piece of writing.

But today again I promise to myself that I should write more often on my blog.


P.S. This is also a sorry note for my readers, who also helped me realize that what I was doing was not all that right. Thank You!

Chaos

This one is for the rush of thoughts within me. I am thinking too many things in too short a span of time. I want to say and write far more than I have words for. But I have neither the ability nor the heart to write even a word at this time. This is the first time in my life that I am experiencing utter chaos, and surprisingly so, I want the chaos to continue, rather than anything coming to an end. I hate ends, closures, lasts, farewells. They all have one thing in common, the promise to continue, which I now know rarely holds. The truth is that beyond one day, near enough, we will all move out in different directions only to know that we have something in common, and too many things too diverse. Our ambitions, reasons, routes, companions all too distinct. While each one of us moves out, we must remember, or at least I will remember, that we shared a lot in common, the two best years of our lives. The two years that have taught each one of us a lot more than any other time could possibly have. So, with the hope that we excel and reach higher highs in life, a strongly heartfelt goodbye!!

My dream is to fly, over a rainbow so high!!

To me a rainbow means perfection. The perfect seven shades arched over a bright blue sky can be nothing but bliss. My dream is to attain bliss, to attain perfection. I know it is difficult or maybe the toughest thing to achieve, coz as they say, nothing’s perfect. But yes, striving for perfection is also an end in itself, something to be proud of.

In the life of a girl, especially an Indian girl, this rainbow of perfection gets a new name. This standard of perfection is called ‘Sarva Guna Sampanna’. Relax! My readers don’t faint for what you just read. It is Garry writing. To not make you feel uncomfortable by referring to this super loaded expression too many times, I will refer to it in the future as ‘SGS’. How much ever we may blabber about the modernization of the world, the new age thinking process, the ideas of Gen Y, what can never be challenged is that we are ultimately traditional Indians, who are way too much in love with the Indian ways and pay respect to everything Indian in all sanctity. This applies to religion, rituals, traditions, social norms and the like. Though certain things have been tweaked to varying levels in this modern society, it essentially remains what it used to be even half a century ago. And if I were to plot myself on a traditional-modern continuum, I would be 70 traditional, 30 modern. Yes this result is after significant level of analysis of me. The fact that I am an MBA, I am bound to analyze everything that exists, so pardon me the overly done analysis of every damn thing. That’s me.

What probably has undergone a sea change in this time is the definition of SGS. While some 30 years ago, a beautiful, homely girl got the status of SGS, a few years later, the criteria were beautiful, homely and convent educated. Now, when women have undergone a treatment called “empowerment” the standard still remains, it’s just that it gets a new, more exacting definition. In today’s times an SGS is a girl who is beautiful, homely, well educated, and working. She should have the skill to earn a fat pay packet as well as mange the home, the parents the kids and live up to all social expectations. The only thing this translates to be is that life becomes a battle, a walk on the tightrope, the most difficult balance to strike.

I feel that not too far away in time, I will be subjected to such scanning and analysis and I will have to relent. So like most Indian girls, even after going to the best schools and being exposed to the big bad world out there, and believing all my life that I have a highly liberated existence, I will yet be exposed to the inspection and evaluation of the world, will I make it to the famed lot of SGS. Will my avaguna (ill traits), I think I have just one, overpower and be the hindrance in me getting there.

Time will tell how much of the positives and the negatives remain, and which side wins the battle. Whether I will manage to fly over the rainbow, so very high!!

I'm Booked

Today evening I was doing something very usual, in fact in the last two years of my life I have been doing this activity every now and then. It’s called packing. I packed my luggage, which majorly consisted of books to be transferred from here to Bangalore, my next station. While I was doing this greatly boring and tiresome task, a thought happened to cross my mind. This thought was about something that I liked being associated with at one point in time, in fact I still am. But all this association goes berserk, when you add the word 'text' before it. Yes, books are what I am associated with, and I am miles away from the specific kind called ‘text books’.
Text books. I hardly have anything to do with them, except that I paid a hefty fee for them (believe me I wouldn’t have, if I had any choice) stood in queues in the library to procure them and sign against my name. I even lugged them from the library to my hostel room and then from one hostel to another over the last two years. I know that some of those books do have a lot of sense written in them, sense that should have actually been in my head by now, given that I am nearing the end of my MBA, but I have failed to acquire any of it.
Today was the day to ascertain their fate. I had three options. First, leaving most of them back here, and forget about them. Second, sending them home, all the way to Delhi and expect that my 4 yr old nephew would grow up one day and read his aunt’s books, or a more plausible thing, my mom refusing to waste any storage space in the house on these books. The third option was the one that I also eventually exercised, sending them to Bangalore and store them at my residence to be, and continue to hope that someday, at least some odd day I would use even one of them.
In this hope, I decided to spend some more money in parcel, the one paid as fees not being enough. Tagging them along for at least another two years, when I never did bother to use them in the last two.
Optimism and positivity is the way to go!!

An evening to remember!!

It’s been an evening worth remembering, to say the least!!

It started out with me first having a question, to which I always knew the answer was yes, but the question was there. Am I going?? After deciding that I wasn’t really going to “dress up” to the evening, I’d rather be comfortable, I decided to go. A place just some ten minutes away from where I live, called Westind country Club. The place has a history. I somehow never enjoy my parties there, except one. I think the place is sad, but whatever the place may be, it was my farewell party that my juniors were hosting for my batch and me, and I had to be there. No ill health, nothing whatsoever could stop me. And true to myself, my attitude and my style, I went to the party, with one thing in mind, “Aaj rapat jaayein to hamein na uthaiyo!!!” Precisely that was the mood, but I never needed that kind of drinking to get me high. It was a day of being high on emotions, being high on thoughts, being high on what I’ve done for the last two years. Unusual of me, I hardly danced, or drank. I just loved being there, present, and party to it.

Again, it is all about what ran through my mind, while I spent some two hours there, meeting a host of people. I had spoken at least once before to all the people I spoke to tonight. But let me be candid in accepting that I was surprised, or maybe even shocked. I did not know, before tonight, that I had secret admirers ( I am not offering any explanation on that), or that people who are obvious about it, are actually thinking about things. I never even gave such stuff thought. After surprising myself well enough, I am happy that I spent an evening in which I did not divulge any significant info about me, acquired a lot of information about people, and maybe I should say was introduced to a completely new set of people as well.

This day, which ended with some nonsense singing at TAPMI greens, some candid conversations, lots of hugs, and feeling happy about a day I was sure I was going to be sad about, is certainly a day to remember. My farewell party night at TAPMI, it rocked!!

Keep the Spark!

While I am almost set to graduate from B-school and more likely than not this is the last time I can call myself a student, I have a few promises to make. All to myself. Maybe they can be called resolutions.

My recent illness gave me an opportunity, lots and lots of time with me, just me. Normally, in the excitement of things happening around me, the work, the deadlines, the people, I probably ignore myself. And while I spent a couple of days doing absolutely nothing (like I had any choice!!) I thought, and thought hard at that. I have often felt that I am different than most people. In fact I believe that each person born on earth is as different from the other as her fingerprints. What followed this thought was a question. What precisely makes me different?

I could describe a few unique characteristics of mine to myself, to some I could not give words but I know they exist within me, and I am sure there are some things characteristic of me, of which I am absolutely unaware. After this great brainwave, I also thought that I generally like myself as a person, except times when I get down to doing some stuff, that even shocks me, but that’s rare. So, given that I like myself as I am, and am also willing to work on the present “needs improvement” list, the bigger question is how can I retain myself, as I am today. I fear that once I get down to doing what everybody does in life, “work for a living”, I might just forget being myself. So like a good student of knowledge management, I decided to put down in words, as far as I could, what makes me.

My enthusiasm: I am generally very excited about most things in life. Be it a simple joke being shared with friends, work, activities, books, movies, parties, plans, anything. I think this is one thing which certainly makes me different. In fact, at times people have even asked me, how can I be so upbeat about things..but that’s how it is. My funda, “most things in life are such that you have to do them, have to as in, HAVE TO. So, given that you have to do them, you have two choices, either you can do them willingly or cribbing. It’s just that I choose the former. And once that’s done, the enthusiasm and the excitement just follow.

My smile: this one’s my personal favourite. It is the best strategy at times, the best tool at some other times and a savior at some more. I think a smile can ease out tense situations, save you from embarrassments, it has the power to divert the attention of people. It is certainly the handiest tool when you know you have landed yourself in a soup. And like they say a smile does brighten up the day.

My “experimenting” nature: I have a weakness for trying out new things, participating in new activities. This also translates into me putting myself into too many things I have no idea about. This is probably to do with the risk loving side of me. I would categorize myself as an innovator in terms of kinds of buyers as we study in marketing. I am the one waiting to see what’s new. I think not too many things should remain the same for too long, so I like change at the speed I can manage. Infact I keep challenging myself on this one. So while the world resists change, I embrace it. This is a significant part of my being different.

These three put together, I call it my spark. The spark that makes me, defines me, differentiates me. I feel that if it were to go missing, the spirit in me would die out, and I will not remain myself. It’s all in the spark. So here I make a promise to myself that I will forever strive to keep the spark!!

My First

After being told by too many people too many times, and also rejecting the idea far too many times, I have taken to it. Yes, I have my blog. Like most things in life, I do not have any idea as to what I will be doing here, but I think this is a much needed thing.
My Motivation??
Soon I am graduating from a B-school, and in the last two years I have got used to the idea of me talking and people listening. I have to accept that I completely love the phenomenon of talking and the fact that someone is listening to it. Given, that I am not a person of any order of intelligence, forget high, I generally talk random stuff, the less euphemistic might even decide to call it crap. In the campus lingo it can be called gas. A term most B-school students are aware of, and an idea most swear by. It is something that most people hate, but most people end up resorting to. After having being called the gas champ by many, and I have no qualms in accepting that I do gas at times, I feel that in my life post MBA there will be few takers for it. So to vent my gas, and to expose to the world, the gaseous side of me, I set out with the blog, Gas by Garry.