Silence of the drizzles

If something can bring me immediate nostalgia, rain takes the first place and music comes a close second. And whenever I had the privilege to experience both at the same time, I fall in to an infinite loop of pleasant nostalgia. It takes me back to the childhood and travel through years to reach the 28th year of my life. It's an experience which I rarely go through nowadays.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, I'm at my new office for over a week now. It's a new building with a lot of amenities and a majority of my colleagues leave by 4.30 as they start early. So it's a kind of awkward silence in the office after that time except for the people who come to pick up snacks which are strategically placed near my cubicle.

So when my wife called up to tell that she's opting for the company bus to a previously decided husband's bike, I was a little curious. She told me that it's raining cats, dogs and what not; hence the decision. I was surprised to know about this rain which is going on for sometime, without informing me! So, I went out and sure, the rain was at her best. I enjoyed the tranquillity, as a prayer from some nearby Mosque made the background. I believe that rain is a way of God telling us that he still loves us.

After standing there for a couple of minutes, I came back to my work station and to the awkward emptiness. The realization that we all are missing a lot of things that we like, as life paces up, was the only thought left. Silence of the raindrops is a way of telling that they are not happy with me, I assume. I will come back to you, that's my word.

Blogger's block!

The blogger's block has been preventing me from posting something for quite a while. Whatever I write nowadays, ends up as an unfinished draft. Anyway, this post will surely see light as a part of a new (personal) policy implementation.

Let me give some important update before getting in to the policy details. I resigned from my last job, which was largely a mix of administrations and sales support jobs, and now joined a proper (hopefully) communications job. I sincerely believe that one should do what he/she knows, or even better, what a person really wants to do. It makes no sense to suffer through a job, it has to be enjoyed and only then it will be mutually beneficial for an individual and the employer.

So, what is next? Of course, juggling between work and life, because one is a matter of survival and the other one is the survival of  matter. It's you to figure out which one is which. Is it possible to give 100% at both work and life, simultaneously? I think, if you keep things where they belong to, giving 100% is very much possible.

I am trying to change life a little, in a positive manner, one step at a time. And my latest policy is to live life the way I really want to, to finish things that I start and to keep myself fit and fine.

The barbarian civilization

I live in a civilized society, or may be that is something just in my head. When we shifted to Bangalore some six months back, I knew it's not going to be a smooth ride. But the dog eat dog attitude which I'm witnessing in fast paced cities like Bangalore is beyond imagination. I am unsure if it can be completely attributed to the non-stop life, happening 24X7, but it sure contributes to it. For instance, when on the road, all they care is about their car, time and safety. The attitude has changed to 'Life is valuable, only if it is mine'. 'Mutual respect' is a term we conveniently forget and the problems rooting from this exponentially grows, day after day.

The following series of events happened in the apartment I live in, where people belong to upper middle class occupy most of the houses. That day I parked my bike at the basement and was walking towards the lift when I heard a messy argument. One of the occupants, who works in a frontline IT company in India along with his wife were having a heated argument with the security guy, not to forget the couple's kid was also there. When we were going upstairs, the argument was progressing to an ugly fight, but never thought that it would end up in such a fiasco.

I came out after some time to buy something from a nearby shop, there sits the security with wounds on his face and hand. The guy was about to cry, but was holding it back. I talked to him and realized that the employee of the IT bellwether and his wife has beaten up the poor guy using footwear. They tore his uniform and tortured him in the worst possible way in the basement, all when their baby girl was watching.

I don't know what happened later on, but the security (and his companion ) disappeared from the apartment and I came to know from the notice board that the maintenance fees is increased by 200 rupees as we are getting a new security from April. The society might have fired the security guy for raising his voice against the lady who slapped and wounded him. And, as obvious as it is, the lady and family are still there, unjustifiably, enjoying all civil privileges.

I had lesser frustration when I found that someone has stolen petrol from my bike yesterday, as there was no security person, but if I don't let the world know about such blatant human right violation I will not be who I am. You do not even need common sense to understand that you have no right to manhandle someone, you do not need a tag of the biggest IT company in the country to refrain from barbarianism. I bow down my head in shame for co-existing with such insensitive human beings.

Composure, elegance and sensibility

One fine day I was travelling with my family. My brother was driving, dad was in the front seat and I was sitting between my wife and mom. We were talking and I made a statement; "I'm sitting between two most influential people in my life". Though my dad took a little offence on that, the fact remains ;)

And why are they influential?

For a lot of reasons, mostly rooted from their sincerity and innate love.  There is this stereotype of emotional women, don't go by it, women are the most emotionally balanced set of living beings I know. She can hide an ocean of emotions behind a smile and make you run for your life when they're still smiling. Her love is unconditional, unless you have done an irreversible mistake. She stick with you through thick and thin, regardless the jerk you are. Her multi tasking skills are incomparable and they hardly crib about the amount of work they do.

Fellow men, now don't brag about your physical strength, my mother's single whack made me cry for at least half an hour when I was 15. Oh yeah, those whacks made me the man who I am today and I'm proud to admit that.

So I feel that they're incredible and that they do not need a special day to celebrate. And sorry boys, bad boys clearly out do the number of bad girls, so there is no comparison. Cheers to all great ladies out there who moulded me from a kid to a boy to a man, kudos from another MCP ;)

Send me a blue boy!

A communication professional's job is like an abandoned drum, almost all other functions in the company beat it in the way they like and they expect it to sound awesome, all the time. When talking about overlap of job functions, the confusion will be more than what the poor police men had with the cross dressed sadhu. We do human resource jobs, administration jobs, sales jobs, marketing jobs and many more. For instance, once I sent out a mail to announce the launch of new job referral portal for HR, of course with all relevant links. And next day onwards, I started getting at least 4-5 resumes per day, in my inbox. In short, communications is not anymore a supporting function, it's the super function which unfortunately can't fly to reach everywhere.

But the fun part of the work is, however, cannot be overlooked. I'll talk about just some mails here.

Recently one of my colleagues, an internal communications manager, told about this interesting mail that found its way to her inbox. She often (mistakenly) gets mails for another colleague, who has a similar name and this one was the weirdest of all. The mail read "Send me a blue boy for a day'. Though a  bit startled, she figured out what the mail was about as she went through it. Apparently, sender of this mail wanted support from a helper, who wears a blue uniform to work. My colleague wrote back that it is a demeaning term and refrain from using that, besides informing about the wrong recipient. We had a good laugh on the unintended humor sense of the person who send the mail.

This in turn reminded me of a couple of mails I got while I was in a factory location. One was about visitors wearing shoes inside the factory premises. After telling that it is mandatory to wear a pair of shoes inside the facility and those without shoes will not be allowed inside, the sender emphasized it by telling 'to avoid embracement at the gate, please make sure that visitors are wearing shoes'. It sounded like "Hey you are not wearing shoes, give a hug and go inside'. Err, not sounding right, I know.

Second one was about...well you read the rest to believe it. The mail's subject line was ' Rooming charges: issues' and I instantly got a feeling that it is about some new guest house or sorts. The mail was addressed to the manager of mobile service provider and it read "please refer our meeting on ..........., regarding the rooming charges. It has been noticed by most of our employees that the rooming charges are not levied as per the..."

Besides this, there are extremely caring colleagues who promptly forward virus alerts 'directly' from Norton and McAfee and some others tell the tale of a lost pen gifted by dad. While HR departments of organizations are trying hard to deal with attrition, there are mails on a daily basis telling adieu, bye and sayanora. All of them has a 'sad part' telling that if they had hurt anyone during his tenure with the company, that was completely unintentional.

Though typos are commonplace, these examples do not fall under this category.
PS: If you find any typos in this post, those are merely coincidental ;)

Photo courtesy: Michael of Scott's photostream on Flickr

Valentinium

It's again that time of the year when advertisements tell you how platinum (gold is passe) bonds you better than Fevikwik, or love. I saw red flood on my Faceook timeline and some others were expressing their anti-valentine rage.

Honestly, I am not very sure about which side I belong now. I always thought and still think that the hype about Valentine's day is a consumerist proposition. If I want to celebrate love on a day, it could be anyday and furthermore, if I need to celebrate it on a special day it could be a birthday or an anniversary. And I personally think that I'm not supposed to say someone else should celebrate it or not. I just don't see the point and that's all.

Evidently, we (me and wife) finished our V-day celebrations before the 14th. I gifted her on the week before, I took her for a long bike ride on the weekend (11&12) and her gifting for me was also before the V-day. Were these all part of our Valentines day celebrations? Yes and no, these just happened around the day and so constituted our V-day celebrations. But then, we were not in a hurry to finish everything on or before the day. We might plan something similar in a month or two, again. So we have multiple V-days a year.

My message is clear, always express your love and make the person you love feel special. And if you want to celebrate it once in a year ONLY, it's your call :)

This one is for you Simi. I do not have diamond or platinum, this is my Valentinium for you ;)

Photo courtesy: plrang, sxc.hu

Thought for food

Life is full of surprises, you never know where and with whom you will be ending up with. Moreover, you could never predict if you are going to get in to a kitchen and cook someday. Seriously, now I think that there is some correlation between this blog post and me, or is it?

Tasty food has always been a major interest for me and I have always been very specific about what I eat. Though a non-vegetarian for the most of my life, over the last few years I'm trying to practise vegetarianism. Anyhow, the point is, I love food and the misconception was that I thought I just love to eat food.

My mom and dad are great cooks, so at home it's always a huge variety of delicacies. Sometimes they make so many dishes that I confine myself to one or two. As I said, I'm very specific about my tastes and at home it was served, without fail.

And then I ventured out of home and realized that serving specific to my taste buds will just be an occasional privilege now. The college mess was mostly a mess, but introduced me to delicacies specific to North-West India. Initially I hated the sweetness in sambar, yellow colored poha and all those green colored dishes, but as we explored Pune, we found places like 'Simply Idlicious' and 'Steamy affair' to name a few. My appetite was more than satisfied whenever we went out searching for restaurants. Over those two years in Pune, I slowly shifted from a hardcore non vegetarian to a 'mostly' vegetarian. Also, in those two years I realized that there is a difference between a food lover and a connoisseur of food.

Then the time came when I had to stay all alone. Food in a platter, whenever I needed, became a dream. I had to have samosas and vada pav for breakfast, apple and bread-peanut butter for dinner, while I'm living alone.  My cooking was limited to boiling water using the kettle, for preparing the cup noodles. As the days progressed I was more repellent towards the idea of cooking and was happy with restaurant food and ready-to-eat items.

Nevertheless, Bangalore had something else in store for me. I, now being a husband, started helping out my wife in kitchen. Started with making chapathi's, I'm getting in to cooking in a larger scale nowadays and I realize that cooking is one of my interest areas. I'm turning in to a connoisseur of food from a lover of it. I started cooking my own dishes and began experimenting with groceries and spices. Though it's just a start, I'm sure I will go a long way in cooking ;)

So is there any moral for this story? No. But you never know where you will end up, one day.