i am VIP for myself !!

yesterday I was pleasantly surprised by the lady guard at a mall I visited. Usually they are cut and dried kinds, on the verge of being rude and this one was smiling. I was really touched by the warm smile and I told her that she is the first guard I met who smiled at me. Her reaction was something that surprised me. She at first did not get what I said so I repeated myself and then her smile broadened and she said to me,”you are the only one who noticed my smile today.”

I guess we get so busy with our hectic lives that if it were not a pre requisite to breathe to be alive we would even forget to do that !! (My bro always tells me when I am driving on a very crowded lane “didi breadth breadth!!” no kidding !!)

Why do we have to be so brusque to downright rude to strangers ? Of course with terrorist activities on a all time high we hold reservations in befriending a stranger but what about being good old polite to people ? Why is that so difficult ? A smile while interacting with people cant kill any one !!

Then I realized that forget others, we dont even treat ourselves well !! we love to criticize ourselves, forget to praise ourselves when we do something good, actually we might just go ahead and think its fluke that we did something good!! We never have time for ourselves, to reflect, to just be with ourselves and not think at all (now am going crazy u would say !!). But come on you know what am saying is true !

All this madness in our lives is to lead a better life.. to ensure that our beloved ones are taken care of. Dont we fall in our beloved ones for ourselves? Once I had overheard a mom telling her daughter, “ we are VIPs for ourselves”. How true!! And it also holds true for how we treat others.

I was planning to go to Dharamshala to be away from this mad mad world and give a shot at meditation for internal peace and check out if I have any spiritual craving and do I have any connection with my inner self. But now I think will a few days of change really change my attitude towards myself ? I guess not.

So now I am trying to feel good about my self on this gloomy rainy day but writing this post and patting my back and smiling at receiving a pat. Ya I have lost it !! laugh on !!

she watches wwf for a reason !!

I and ma love to go window shopping once a while together. Its fun to see ma's expression when she hears the cost of coffee at a snooty cafe or a real revealing dress at a store and I always make best use of such situations reminding her how lucky she is as she does not have to loose her sleep over her daughter wearing stuff she does not approve of.

At home I have this dubious distinction of being the one with shortest of temper and ready to mess people up bad if they mess with me. Trust me my folks have a penchant for overdoing their praises when I am the subject.

Yesterday ma and I went shopping and we had a good time.. retail therapy again worked its charm. As I picked my bag from the baggage counter, I saw a diamond earring that took my fancy and off I ran after it asking ma to pick my umbrella from the b counter. The security lady for some reason refused to give ma my umbrella, my ma tried explaining her but the lady cut her out seeing I guess she is the docile types. My ma went”wait till my daughter comes” and of course I came and ensured that I got my umbrella back.

Ma was like “i knew you would set her straight” and we busted off laughing. Some times you have to assertive (wont use the word bully my ma was using) to ensure work gets done. You know right its a bad bad world out there and if you are meek and docile they take you for a ride royally. When ma narrated home what happened there to tease me further, baba goes” of course she sees wwf with a reason.”

well laugh you guys all you want but the bottom line is that is one of the fastest way to get work done when you are right.

couch potato at work !!

off late I have been hooked to tv on week day evenings, earlier I would scorn at people who would do the same and label them dim wits but off late I lead their gang.
But I realized something real funny. I and ma now watch the same soaps, all mushy collage lub story ones and now find a lot of time to catch up on each other during the breaks, I do my routine free hand work outs as it no longer is boring due to ma's company and the soaps happening.

Now baba too joins for sarabhai vs sarabhai and bro whenever is home gives company which is rare due to his evening schedule. Our dexy always snoozes during these soaps and at stipulated intervals pines for attention which is taken care of by me and then dexter after being assured he still rocks our world go back to his smug trance.

Bro and I always had deep discussions over wwe raw, smackdown and main events so he is not much missed during the daily tv jig.

So who ever said being a couch potato was dump or dim or whatever expression you have for lack of grey cells, it is the coolest thing to be. It has medicinal, emotional and now even physical benefits. Medicinal: you get your daily dose of non sense to laugh at, emotional: great time to bond with family, physical: club it with your exercise schedule so you dont need to put in extra hours and dont need to do it alone!!
so happy couching you dim couch potato :)

rain drops keep falling on my head

it happened a few days back but I was unable to pen it down earlier.
As I had mentioned earlier, am new to driving and this was my first rains. I had heard many legends about driving in the rains from my buddies who are pros and would mentally hug myself assuring myself that I too shall survive. But when it happened I was least prepared.

At home the first thing I hear when I wake up is sai baba bhajans on tv, thanks to baba, so we dont bother checking latest news before leaving for work. I thought it was just drizzling and that would not really require me to do a mental revision of things my buddies had asked me to do during such times.

But the moment I reached the main road, the thin drizzles botoxed into swollen rain balloons, initially I started humming to myself,”rain drops keep falling on my head” but soon realized the clear sky had transformed into my grandfather's old black coat and visibility was very low.(according to my personal unit of measure, it was 40 %) And I was shit scared at first, mentally kicking myself for not checking on weather and then not taking bombay rains seriously. I just wanted to run into my ma's arm for comfort.

Good sense prevailed I prayed to sai baba and looked out to see what others are doing. Every body was driving at not more than 20km/hr. I saw my speedometer, ha ha I was at 15, good. Then I saw all had put on their blinkers on, I quickly did the same.Whippers I had turned-on, on my own (smart me !!). I realized all of a sudden everybody on the road were driving on the same pace, no overtaking, no honking, no sneering. It felt like a choreographed drive, each dancing at the same pace, each turn orchestrated in synchronization. I felt that the bombay highway had got transformed into a ballet stage and all we guys driving were like dancing to an unknown tune in total co-ordination and sync.

Once the ordeal was over and I reached work safe, I started thinking about the unknown tune, guess the unknown tune was that of survival, each one of us knew that one wrong move and many lives would be at stake here. The urge to be alive bound us all together in harmony and I guess the fear of the unknown as later I learned the first rains are most dangerous as the mud on the road makes it more slippery and hence more accident prone. Wonder why this kind of prudence is not shown during normal days, our accident rates could do with a hit.

I once again learned that experience alone is the best teacher and how much every you are prepared for the test, the answers will always elude you. But once its over, you are a changed person. After that day I no longer freak thinking of rain but of course I am extremely cautious though. When ma tells me drive carefully in the rain, I smile to my self and say a little prayer.


pictures taken from my mobile of bombay rains

lub is blind and painful

Dexter hates it when am off on tours and if my bro’s study trip coincide with mine then we are in for double whammy .. dexter stops talking and eating.

During my twice a day calls back home during these trips, I would take a status check on dexter and ma would go he is mad and sleeping. Day before ma said he had no dinner and refused to go for his walks . so we had hit rock bottom !!

I came home yesterday evening with a real bad back injury so dexter after his welcome dance number wanted to go out on a walk with me. I could not do the honors because of my back problem and he refused to go out and eat.

Today at six I wake up all guilty for not taking him for his walk as all night he slept on my bed moving restless, I knew he wanted to pee. I woke up baba and requested him to take dexy out but dexter being the stubborn refused to go out with anyone but me. I inspite of severe back ache had to go grudgingly with him and there was snuggles waiting out for us.. so off went out brigade of dexter, me, baba and snuggles on a real early morning walk. I still full of sleep looking a scare crow in my night tee and hair which seemed like had a hell raising battle.

During my walk when dexter was doing his silly dances I could laugh through my pain just seeing him happy and then I realized how pain and joy together can be an out come of love; no wonder they say life aint easy!!

Snuggles is back at it.. again he just suavely greases in the moment he sees our door open and does his merry dances in all our rooms and then runs to ma for his daily quota of milk and bread.

Today too he came home and woke ma up by going to her room and boy was she surprised. But what dexter did kind of made me again wonder is this love… when ma gave snuggles his milk , dexter purposely tripped it..

Baba is the second in line to pamper and spoil dexter after me whacked him,, god and did he deserve it. In spite of all the love, attention and goodies he gets he gets jealous of snuggles.

Love is such a complex thing.. it brings out the best and worst in us and yet we cant survive without it..it can make us secure and happy at one time and totally insecure and unsure of our selves the very next more. it rocks our world and our gets our life rocked out coz of it. we are loved because of who we are or inspite of who we are and then we get scared that if he / she did not like or love us after knowing who we are!!

Again I go out to make sense to dexter that we will love him crazy inspite of as many snuggles come in our lives…. And I go back to my pain killer but relieved dexter went for his walk and get my self together for his evening walk which I inwardly dread for my sake.. need to c a doc

new generation .. not that new

i was in goa for the quater two sales review meet and to disclose our qtr ii strategy to our sales team, with A+ on our report cards, as we had not only hit our figures (sales one !!) but had surpassed the same. so after two days of number crunching our next qtr targets sets and strategies unfolded to ensure we again surpass them we were in for fun and frolic.

like bombay goa too is raining cats and dog and my sales team is a bunch of 20 something and all in high spirits that evening so we went off to enjoy ourselves and do a micro goa tour.. so off we went singing old hindi numbers and trying real hard to remember a new number to put in during the anatakshari sessions.. we really had a good evening...

on our way back we were tired but our spirits were still warm and now we got into candid discussions and light hearted teasing.. some how the topic shifted to the gay movement and then a otherwise real cool dude said he felt the westerners are rotting our country in the same breadth he was speaking about the best pub and disc in town.

I was surprised to hear that not only he but some of his buddies too shared this opinion.

Being gay or straight is a very personal choice and no one other than the individual itself has a right to have a say in this matter. The cornerstone has be layed but the road ahead will be for sure really bumpy. But am sure they are aware of it and are standing up for their rights.

In India we have this penchant of associating everything with religion which really is the root cause of all problems. It’s a paradoxical situation we are holding on to religious believes and cultural boundaries set some thousands of years back when we talk about India being the youngest nation sprinting forward towards globalization, liberalization, modernization and what not…beliefs then made were made with the then current situation taken in mind. We all have to change with time and so do our beliefs. If we really want to be liberated, we need to liberate our thoughts. Personal choices are personal and why not concentrate on issues that are affecting the entire country like poverty, illiteracy, corruption, female foeticide. If fanatics gang up against these social demons we would truly be liberated.

And blaming western influences when we love apeing them is best example of our hypocrisy. Wish we could learn to value time the way these westerners do then we would be singing a different tune. well of course there is lot more good things we could learn from them as well..

Am really happy that India has taken this step and I wish all the homosexuals all the best in their crusade. God bless!

this is a pic taken during a cruise in goa from my mobile