contemplating

there was a time when I thought confusion was bad. How can one afford to be confused about what they want in life? And then over the past 4 years of working with students and extensive stesearch in education (others did that .. but I helped wherever I could),  I corrected myself and changed my statement to “Confusion – is exactly what we want! – for confusion is the first step to getting things resolved!”

Well! – today I am not just confused but contemplating as well..  Contemplating ways of getting out of it.. and whether to dump the confusion and move on with life. What caused it ?

Well, I took 5 days off last week and decided to go and meet some really old friends. Some pals who had lost touch and some others I desperately needed to meet. And there came a whole new set of introspective days. I thought about what I really wanted, deserved, should deserve and should be expecting.  Everytime I take this absolute breaks I think about moving out all over again.  (Ru RU, i know what you are thinking.. it’s just that time of the year! – when I want to get out of the rut again!) – But I guess this time it’s a little bit more serious.. alittle bit more focussed. Guess even a little bit more frustrated with the way things are going.

So this time it’s paper, pencil, thoughts, plans, actions and there you go…

IF you think you know what i should be doing? where I should be going.. Go ahead.. give me ideas!

life’s like that

lately i have been trying to regularise things in my life. OH! hell it’s tough. It all started with an initiative at work. One of our director’s happened to read “Doesn’t lose your mind. Lose your weight” by Rujuta Diwekar. (Here’s here blog http://rujutadiwekar.blogspot.com/)He got totally inspired by it and started following what it recommended. Me – being the part of the enthu group (as my MD likes to call us) and desperately in need of losing weight and de-toxifying myself from a year load of medication, pushed him to take a session on ‘healthy living’.

The ball started to roll from that day and has not stopped till date.  So it started from eating every two hours (OH yes! it’s fun, and can be really painful as one needs to think what to eat! I had my apprehensions and so I decided to read the book myself. Trust me, noone has ever made eating healthy sound so much fun and funny! I think she has good content to start her own stand-up comedy club.  So while we struggled to eat every two hours, some of us also decided to start exercising togather.

Once again our healthy director decided to volunteer and teach us yoga in the morning. So while around 30 people attended his lecture, 3 of us turned up for yoga at 5:30 in the morning. It’s only been 5 days  and I already see my mind changing the way it thinks.

> everytime he starts an aasan you feel, this is so not possible. But when you start doing it, you realise nothing is impossible.

> my biggest fights with myself begin from the moment i wake up to the moment i get into the car. Every thing seems fine and flows in a beautiful rhythm after that.

> it’s all the mind’s play. The body is merely a vehicle of what you want it to do.

> Some think waking up is difficult and some other’s like me wake up twice – thrice in the night thinking it 5am and I am getting late!

Life has suddenly changed from waking up 7:30am to waking up at 5:00am! While I sincerely hope that this is what life looks like for years to come, I am scared that the rains and the eagerly awaited break is going to spoil this routine.

the fear of old

Oh no I am not on trip about the whole old is gold routine. Infact I am talking about the fear of picking up old habits, interests, hobbies once again. It felt harder than getting back to the gym or getting up early like one did during school. It was so old in my memory that I dont even think I could feel the rust. It used to be a routine, a craving, a passion, a habit of de-stressing with it… I am talking about my Sitar!

A few months ago a collegue started taking flute lessons. It made me think about my interests in music. Something I had burried under my rug, mind and memories. He would play random notes (that sounded absolutely not in tune) sitting right next to me. Annoyed the hell out of my brains I tell you. Actually started making me think about how annoyed my parents must be getting when I had started learning the sitar.  After about 2 years or so it was their grumbling that made me give it all up.  I am hoping it was not because how terrible I would play it. for by then I could play alot of the raagas!

While the flute started sounding in tune over the next few weeks, my brain kept telling me to start playing the Sitar again. I would try and bring up the topic of getting it down from the attic while my mom was busy watching one of those cranky tv serials. She would nod her head then and give me a snarl when I would open the attic door and stand there staring at my beautiful companian.  After about 2 weeks of staring I wore my lucky socks and tried to feel some magin in my hands. I managed to take the sitar out and clean it all up.

I was scared to change the strings and try out a few notes, thinking my folks would get annoyed and that would upset me. But I still did that.  To my surprise my hands moved smoothly and the sound made me smile. Dad walked in after 15 minutes of my riyaz and gave me a smile. It was one of those comforting signs telling me that it was okay at times to overcome the fear of picking up old things once again.

I think I was more scared of holding it in my hand as it had more memories attached to it’s strings than I thought. And although I had managed to develop a ‘no strings attached’ attitude, I was scared these notes would strike a cord with unwanted memories. While I still fight sudden gushes of guilt (of giving it up) and random flashes of events attached to it, the sitar has been given new strings and cleaned up so that I can de-stress once in a while.

I know its going to take me a very long time before I can play all that I used to before, but its presence brings a huge smile on my face everytime I enter my room.

I have realised that somethings you learn in life just never leave you… It’s like knowing how to ride a bike.

P.S. I owe it big time to the one who played really bad notes and forced me to play something in tune… I promise to jam one of these days and make it sound better than aaj jaane ki zid na karo…

a whole new world of happiness

In the last week, I have realised a couple of things.

> A long deep breathe can change a lot more than you think!

> Walking in the morning changes the way you do everything in the day

> Children have a mind of their own

I spent the entire week with a bunch of kids at work.  And it was fun and a bit scary at times. I had to get them to record a whole 2000 questions recorded. It was interesting at times I felt that they were taking more tantrums from me than I was supposed to take from them. I felt pretty bad at times trying to make them understand ‘deadlines’ and pushing them to achieve targets. Trust me they were more serious about getting things done than any one of us can be. They made me realise that it’s very easy to make life interesting. Just keep opening and closing excel files. Keep reading the same question in 10 different voices. Or even better, just walk around the room a couple of time or run in the corridor. This was all ‘accepted behaviour’ – because they were kids!  Would’nt life at work be much more interesting if we were allowed to these things?

Well! This was not enough and God had some more stuff instore for me. I spend my sunday morning with my baby cousins. They were visiting from the USA and I was meeting them for the first time. I have to admit, I felt more akward then they did. They came in with presents and did not care to talk to me for hours without knowing my name. The older one was very comfortable sitting on my bed (with his shoes on) and playing car games on my laptop. He sat there changing the color of different cars.

He would ask me, “Hey do you like green?”

I would say, “Yeah go for it!”

To that he would reply, “OH no you dont want green!”

And I would say, “OK!” – I thought it, see how easy it is to convince people about your ideas!! Why do we make life so complicated when we can simply tell someone, “Oh! – you don’t want this!” LOL

So if this was the older one, I had a more interesting young baby sister. She enjoyed getting on my bed (which was a bit of a struggle, considering she a little less than 2) and getting off it.  She was get on the bed, order me to switch on the tv and then happily get off the bed and walk away to the other room. Only to return in five minutes to do the same thing all over again. I could not imagine, how she managed to enjoy this for a full 4 hours. Yes! I was tired watching her, but she continued to have a huge smile on her face everytime she walked out of the room.

A toast to these little ones, who added a whole new world of happiness to my life!

Waste finder

A toast to  Shantana Dutta for  turning me into a Waste finder!  I know Shantana from school, never a very close friend of mine then! but II I am more than glad to have met her again (thanks to Henri!)

So let’s begin with a snapshot: Here sincerity shocked me and her focus  intrigued me.  She came across as superbly (and if that’s not a word I found it!) intelligent and I was scared of going and asking silly things to her. So I would envy the people she hung out with and wished to gain some sense so that I could be friends with her someday!  She is by far the cutest person I have ever met and her sense of finding pleasures in the smallest things makes very happy. 

Okay! so this amazing chess player, swimmer and not to forget now an Engineer ( and has done her MBA) is the co-founder of an initiative called Greenergy!  

Greenery believes…

 

Waste seems the ultimate byproduct of our race to development and lifestyle full of comforts and facilities. With increasing urban population, waste issues – specially solid waste is becoming un-manageable.

Sustainable Lifestyle is all about moving beyond from these waste generating practices – to a more environment friendly way to live. Greenergy Solutions is an initiative aimed to provide urbanites and the like with these green living options – in form of Eco-products, Eco-services and Eco-initiatives. Greenergy solutions is also about – brining innovative solutions to waste issues  – in ways which are cost effective, practical, sustainable and make not only environmental sense but an economic sense too.

I have totally turned that Waste-finder after I learnt about this initiative.  We usually think of the larger organisations thinking these are the people who will be using a large amount of paper etc… So while sitting at the kitli (at the chaiwala’s) I wondered if we could have containers to collect the paper cups and if schools could start getting students to collect the paper that usually makes it’s way to the dustbins.  If you are aware of organisation who could join this revolutionary initiative kindly write to greenergy.in@gmail.com or visit www.greenergyindia.com

indeed a women’s day

6 women set to explore the old city of Ahmedabad through their lens.

The challenge started with deciding if one could enter a mosque. That one was easy! – We sort of took over the Seedi Sayed ni jaali - a landmark and heritage site in Ahmedabad with over 6 cameras. Each one found a muse in a pigeon, a wall, carvings, water, men, women, dogs, crows… It was interesting to see each one lost but strung with a common goal of taking good pictures.

Well! The idea was to learn how to take pictures and they all expected me to help with that. I realised how difficult it was to teach someone what you are most passionate about. It is tough to get someone to look for a good composition or get them to make a good composition out of beautifully carved walls. I tried my level best but I think I need to be more prepared next time.

Well as the sun shown a little bit more our spirits were a little too higher. We climbed through narrow, dark and dingy steps of an old fort and secretly took pictures while the guard was not watching. Yeah! well what’s women’s day if we did not use our secret devilish powers? Some 200 shots down by each one of us (and I am sincerely hoping that along with having loads of fun each one of you learnt something new about photography) we stacked up our cameras at the house of MG (one of the finest restaurants in the old city and a must visit if you want to try unadulterated Gujarati food that does not taste sweet and is authentic!- BTW Gujarati food is not sweet) A good walk and some excellent breakfast we were up for new challenges.

We headed for the Sunday markets next. We were hoping to find something interesting and if nothing else, checking out the hype that we all had heard about but had never seen for ourselves.  No one could have guessed that one would find old/new/stolen cutlery stolen from flights, rare books, furniture, brass utensils etc In my head I kept thinking – So this is the place where people come get antiques from! We were amused by range of things available but little did we know that there was something much more exciting coming our way. While one our group-mates was looking at a beautiful red lamp shade, we found a man constantly following and asking to go inside the office. The obvious thought was, What a pervert! We kept walking away from him while being instructed to take care of our bags and constant mental reminders on how we should get out of this place soon before we had our bums being pinched. So while we were making our way out, the pervert did not leave us alone and followed us everywhere. This is when our dear friend lost all her patience and picked a fight up with him.

In not less than 60 seconds we were surrounded by 50 people taking pleasure in watching a chinese lady fighting with the pervert who constantly kept asking us to go to some office. It was getting noisier by the milli-second when we were given to understand that the pevert was but a gaurd and had been asking us to go to the office to ask for permission to take pictures. We being the always alert lot – trained to never trust strangers demanded to call the manager outside. Well! the gaurd finally had to make a phone call and get the officer to leave his office to come and sort the matter out with us at our chosen place. While that all got sorted out as we told him that we were not interested in taking pictures and ofcourse proving our point by saying that at no place had they mentioned that we could not take pictures; another friend realised she had wallet was missing!

 

We did the needful by lodging the complaint and headed to get an FIR registered (which obviously we thought was simple formality) With absolutely no hopes of finding the wallet, but in desperate need of the copy of this FIR to get new license for our friend, we drove to the nearest police station to learn that we needed to go to another police station as the area where the wallet was lost did not fall under their territory.

Our Chinese headstrong but resourceful friend made a couple of calls to get directions to this police station and ultimately called up an auto driver to come and escort to the police station. So for about 15 minutes the care had one person constantly noting down phone numbers, and the other tryin to block her cards while I was trying to squeeze my car through the lanes and honking away to autos lying on the road. 

We finally reached the police station where having spent two hours learning the following things:

·         Criminals are nothing but like colleagues for policemen and are allowed to take mobiles in their cells

·         Criminals come to these cells just to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon and make a few phone calls explaining to those outside on how to manage the bail

·         The criminal inside the cell is more resourceful than the police man assisting you

·         Police men get handwritten salary slips with a seal that makes everything look official

·         3/7 police men are not interested in their job

·         Policemen enjoy writing FIR complaints with details that are absolutely not needed or connected to the cause

·         Policemen have been appointed to re-assure you that you will not find what you have lost

·         It is not a policeman’s job to find things for you! – so you better be careful about them

So it was a women’s day! But as they say, “A little madness is good in life or else it might seem like a few Thursdays strung together…”

who am i? I?

It was a room filled with ex-carmelites. Every face shown with pride and some others with boredom. Soon the bored faces were not to be seen around. This was an interesting turn. While I sat watching the crowd going from some 80 odd people to a handful 20 this is what I thought to myself.

I have been through a few cities and a few countries. I have studied in more than 3 colleges and met a few hundered different people from various walks of life. But is it that  I am really made up of?

What is my brain made up of ? At the core, I am made up of those traditional values taught in school. I connect to the discipline, I was asked to follow when I was 6 – 16… What I respect is the people I were friends with in school and what I miss the most, is being the person I used to be then.

I hope today marks the beginning of what I might like to call ‘me’ . The me that wishes to be free but at the same time values the sense of belongingness. I am ‘me’ because I am passionate about every little thing that I do. But I never knew there was a lot who respected and loved me for that…

A much needed realisation, a much needed awakening and a much needed re-union! (Thanks to Ekta who pushed me to go for it)

NEW BLOG! – Mint, Moments and Memories

Mint, Moments and Memories I enjoy photography more than anything else and aspire to do that for a living one day. I wish to excel with every moment capture and savour it by sharing the mint with others..

I look forward to your comments, suggestions and views!

losing half glass of wine – part 2

It was pouring and dark. He was rushing to the bus stop so that he could find a place to pick up that call that had been buzzing for some time in his bag. The bus-stop seemed another 5 minutes away. He was wondering if he should take the risk of taking his phone out from the bag…. What if she was calling him from a booth? It was strange; she refused to give him her mobile number. She said she likes being unreachable. That ways he would always say things to her face… He hated the sound of that but on second thoughts when he woke up at 3am thinking he should send her a message he would smile and go back thinking about the look on her face at lunch when he would say it to her.
He made it to the bus stop – only to realise that he had missed some 5 calls. The phone rang again, he picked it up this time (missing the bus was better than missing the call he thought) She said, “You wish to make it really hard for me to speak to you. You think that ways I’ll give you my number huh!” He smiled and said, “That was not the intention and even if it did the magic, I don’t want the number…” She seemed to be excited about something. It was more like the – I have received a promotion kind of happiness in the voice.
So once again you managed to win his heart with some foolish lines huh!, he said. NO this time it was a stupid website that got him hooked on and he wants me to go and spend a week with the production team. Now I am stuck as to what is it that I am going to do there for a week. So I need some ideas.
Ideas are plenty, I am wondering if any of those will make sense around the production team;)…
She giggled and said, “yeah… I am wondering the same – What use will these ideas be without the producer around?”
(will be continued)

losing half a glass of wine

(What I find most fascinating about fiction is that it is inspired from facts!)

She curled the last piece of spaghetti, only to lose her half a glass of wine to him.

She picked her hand up to order some more but he held it softly only and asked for something else. She was enjoying the rhythm of the night. There was nothing that she needed to worry about. They were sitting at a cafe by the moonlight and the plates will be taken care of. The drinks kept coming as she talked about what mattered the most. People, pictures and places – the three important pieces of life at that moment. Places changed and the move from the chairs to the couch seemed well choreographed.

She wondered if the things she mentioned mattered but as the night changed colors all that mattered was there was less talk and more silence.

He had said very little in words but everything he did said much more than what she had been trying to narrate. It seemed like a really long film that was moving too fast. In the past 3 hours he had said exactly 5 lines. He was not drunk, he had not even been drinking. That’s when she felt a little uncomfortable and started thinking if she was acting funny and if it was time she picked up her keys and left the comforts of his hands….

As her body moved a bit, and he felt his hands slipping her back, he said, ” If you think you are leaving.. you are wrong. I haven’t even started talking… “

She smiled and said, “When will you begin, only if I stop..?”

He said, “No silly! just when I feel interruption will be entertainment”

(might be continued…)