Slices of my daily life

Here are my time-transcending theories about time: I) Time-Mathematics 101 - Speed of Time : Day of Week Ratio where  SoT = Speed of Time DoW = Day of the Week The Speed of Time is inversely proportional to the Day of the Week . Case in point: On Friday afternoon, time advances one inch per minute while on Sunday afternoon it advances one kilometre per second. II) Time-Physics - Time transmogrifies *  ! Time assumes different forms according to the Day of the Week .  Refer to the illustrations for an in-depth understanding of this concept. Monday   Image Courtesy http://fattytantan.wordpress.com Tuesday Image Courtesy www.pinestreet.ca    Wednesday Image Courtesy www.smafccp.org Thursday Image Courtesy http://rachelcreative.wordpress.com Friday Morning Image Courtesy www.marktoon.co.uk Friday Evening Image Courtesy www.abduzeedo.com Saturday Image Courtesy www.animalclipart.net Sunday Morning Image Courtesy http://buckeyepsych.wordpress.com

Image Courtsey: www.funonthenet.com The office has holidays for the whole of next week and I'm off to celebrate Diwali by taking a much-desired vacation. See you on the other side of Diwali with pictures and tales of the vacation. Have fun you all and be safe and enjoy your Diwali :)

Its interesting how we engage our minds in complicated things all too quickly when there could be a simpler answer !

The one super-objective ? What is it ? In our plays, we have a super-objective for each character for the timeline of the play…then for each scene…and that is the overall goal towards which you build up your character, your scene, your performance…you split it down to the tiniest fragments, feel it, understand it…then lend it meaning and appropriate emotion so that it is in tune with your super-objective…which you figure out when you read the script. Then the only struggle is to be able to get it in the correct measure…and be able to project it also. You know where to go and carving out the path is the task. Even the time available is specified. Why do I have to figure out the super-objective for my life online…while I live ? What if I never do...or even worse, figure it out at the end when I won't be able to do anything about it ? What is the point of figuring out the super-objective after you stop doing shows of a play ? And till then, what ? Do I drift in the direction that e

Yesterday morning I left home later than usual, to go to office. It had been raining and the roads were wet and in some places slippery due to the mud. There was a massive traffic jam…actually bumper-to-bumper as they say. Due to the rains the vehicles were driving very slowly. Mercifully people’s tempers were quite calm and there was no honking or desperation to get ahead. Suddenly I heard and ambulance siren in a distance. Usually whenever I hear an ambulance siren I get a little worried. The first thought that comes to my mind is ‘what are the people accompanying the patient, usually close relatives, going through at this moment?’. I make sure that I get out of the way as soon as possible and I have observed that so do all others on the road. Today, however, when I heard the siren, I felt a lot more disturbed because I was acutely aware of the traffic jam. Very slowly the siren came closer and closer. I had already moved to the side of the road. Other vehicles too were trying to

I laughed my guts out while reading this . Then I had another bout of laughter thinking of all the incidents that happen with me. For a long time now I have known that I am, what I like to call, ‘geographically challenged’ :) Situation 1 - If I go inside a building (happens mostly with residential buildings), then after I exit the lift (elevator) or come down the stairs, I cannot quickly locate the gate ! Situation 2 - If I am inside a building, I will routinely point in wrong directions to indicate places outside the building. Situation 3 - I am presently at office. I have come here from home. Now I have to go to some place where I have always gone from home and never from office. What do I do ? I go home first and from there I go to that place. It doesn’t matter if it is a longer distance or takes more time. I have to do this, because simply have no mechanism to re-align my mental map to my present location ! Situation 4 - Another thing is that if I have come to your place in

Yesterday morning I had gone to my Mom’s. When I was about to turn in the gate of the building, I noticed that somebody had parked a car in such a manner that it was blocking one-third of the entrance gate. I felt a flicker of irritation but since I was on my motor-cycle, it wasn’t blocking my way. But it would definitely cause a problem to a car trying to enter the gate. As I turned in, I noticed an uncle in our building walking away from that car. I knew that it wasn’t his car. Then I suddenly noticed a white paper with red lettering stuck to the back glass of the car. It was simply the best ! I burst out laughing and also thought that this was a superb response…one that the car owner wouldn’t forget in a long time :) It didn’t occur to me to take a photograph at the time. So I did a small drawing (as best as I can) in paintbrush and here it is for you to enjoy :)

If you no longer feel any emotion - positive or negative - for somebody who used to previously evoke some emotion in you, if neither knowing nor not knowing about them makes no difference to you, if you feel no desire to change this situation, then they are dead in your life, isn’t it ?

The Japan earthquake and tsunami managed to bring tears to my eyes. It is terrible to see the amount of damage …to humans, to property, to the landscape…to lives…and it will take ages to restore some sense of normalcy. Life as they knew it before this disaster is lost forever for all the affected people…those who are still alive. :( Call me weird or naïve or stupid or un-informed or anything, but I really believe that we humans have managed to bring things to such a level where Nature has to act to restore the balance. How else does one explain the rise in the frequency of natural disasters and the increased intensity of the damage they cause each time they occur ? The uncontrolled population increase over the centuries itself has been responsible in robbing the Earth of its natural resources. Add to it the greed of humans…we can’t take just as much as we need…we have to take more and hoard. We don’t think of preservation, of regeneration or of repaying what was taken. We cross the

Yes, I know, I haven’t made an earth-shattering discovery…but on Sunday, I experienced it so deeply that I had to say it out loud. I was returning from Delhi by flight. As the aircraft descended to land at the Pune airport, I was looking out of the window. It wasn’t the first time I was in an aeroplane, but this time something felt different. The awareness was so acute and so high ! From a quilt of dark green, light green, mustard yellow, brown, ochre stripes intersected by grey undulating lines, the focus became sharper and I could see tiny houses, vehicles plying on the roads, bonsai trees, patches of green fields, and human dolls - a miniature city, in fact. From so high up, the city looked so well-planned, neatly divided into square sections separated by roads and so clean ! The people on the vehicles, on the roads, just like a city of Little Tom Thumbs and Thumbelinas ! I felt as if I was playing the game SimCity ! In some way it felt like an out of body experience ! Birds

Change is so daunting and one feels that one will never be able to realign oneself to the new situation. Yet, eventually, one does realign and adapt oneself to the changed reality. The world as you knew it before the change is definitely lost forever. Yet you learn to accept this fact and model yourself to the new world.   Here’s what has happened. Our company has been taken over. In our company the environment has always been very family-like. We have all been great friends of each other and quite into each other’s homes as well. In the face of adversity, most of us stuck together and fought it. Some, compelled by their personal priorities left. Now, we are down to less than half our strength…which number is less than 20. So we are all clinging on to each other and this family is more tightly-knit than it ever was. That’s the upside. Downside ? Loss of independence is the major one. All others are operational inconveniences – large and small – which we will gradually get (or have to

There’s a big change happening on the work front…change of organisational composition, change of location and most importantly for me, change of profile. The change of profile is happening with my consent and I know I will struggle initially, but I welcomed the learning opportunity. As my family and close friends will vouch, I am not particularly comfortable with big changes. I too have always known my resistance to change and also recognised the need to learn to accept changes, adapt and evolve. Previously I used to resist them with all my might. Over the years the actual resistance diminished in strength but the resentment and apprehension persisted in my mind. In the present scenario, I am making this huge effort to be ‘saintly’ about this change…that means, ‘I’m neither too happy nor too sad about it’…cocoon --> butterfly theory etc. etc. So far it’s working. Yet today, my resolve is getting a little shaky. Today, we started the actual process of sorting things, disposing of

*Pardon the ‘art’ I've observed this so often. I wonder why parents mostly hold their kids’ hands like this. I think the parent’s hand as well as the kid’s hand would ache less if held like this. Any idea why ?

…making detailed plans to begin a long-due personal project. Long ago I realised that there is no better time than the present to begin self-improvement projects. Finally today I am actually acting upon my realisation. We keep making excuses. Something or the other is currently taking up most of our time and energy and hence we plan to begin this project after the current hectic phase ends. This hectic phase never ends…and if it does, it is promptly replaced by another very important-urgent thing. And so we keep delaying the project since it is absolutely ‘unfeasible’ right now. But truth be told, we do not want to embark on, what we clearly realise as, tremendous hard work. Most of us do things when they become imperative. I’m no exception. But for this project (I’d like to believe) I’ve taken it up before it has become a ‘no-other-option’ situation. So, hold your breath, I have finally begun (what I assume is going to be a long and tedious) journey towards weight loss through exe

I have been reading Ai Ling’s blog for some time now and gradually I got curious about her name. So I asked her whether it was name + surname (last name / family name) and which was which or whether it was a pseudonym she had taken for the blogging world. So in response she wrote a nice detailed post that not only gave me the answer to my question but also gave me some information about pronunciations of Chinese names. What it also did was, it inspired me to write about name conventions in India. So, here's a little bit (as much as I'm aware) about the Indian names convention. Whenever surnames are used, they have come about from either the name of a place or the occupation or a title bestowed on a person in the family and then carried on as a family name. Some surnames come from castes or sub-castes. There are some surnames whose origins I am not entirely certain about. In India, in the Central and Western region, the convention is usually name + surname. On official doc

From 9th December 2010 till 8th January 2011, I successfully completed 31 posts in 31 days i.e. the NaBloPoMo challenge :) I am feeling so relieved. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to do it. Consistency isn’t one of my big qualities, you see. But I have done it. So I am feeling ‘phew’ ! And ‘Yaaaaaayyy’ for the same reason…I successfully completed a task that I had set for myself. Actually, only initially did it seem like a task. Later, however, I was eager to write. All day I would be observing things and thinking of subjects, I would be mentally composing posts and couldn’t wait to find time from my work schedule to put up a post. I shall continue to write, though perhaps not daily, but very often. Perhaps I might even do another NaBloPoMo later…this time starting on the first of a month :) I am now officially hooked on to writing :)

When we are children, each of us gets asked this question, "What do you want to become when you grow up ?", and, depending on whatever has taken our fancy at that moment, our answer changes. Just like everybody else, I went through a lot of 'things I wanted to be when I grew up'…and for sometimes funny and sometimes strange reasons. My earliest wish, if I remember correctly, was to become a teacher. I would always gather the children in the society and make them students and teach them all I had learnt at school that day. Naturally, in that phase of mine, I wasn't a very popular girl :) So sometimes I had nobody to play with and yet I taught…to an empty class…such was my dedication :D In one long phase I wanted to become a veterinary doctor (remember Dr. James Herriot ?) and cure all the little doggies. I wouldn't have minded being a conservationist either, like Gerald Durell . I was even serious about being a zookeeper…or in the least a caretaker of elep

Warning: This is not going to be a profound post…if you are expecting something like that after reading the title. As I sat down to write, my mind was crowded with thoughts of things I need to do, I want to do, but I can’t do, presently, for several reasons. I just couldn’t focus on any particular thing to write about. So, I thought, why write something contrived ? Why not simply write about what’s on my mind right now, this very moment ? So here goes… These are a few of the things I am longing to do… Sleep. And wake up only when I feel like it. Only when I feel completely rested. I think this item would be on everybody’s list, if they made one :) Finish reading those three…um…wait, it’s four…actually no, those five new books. Take a vacation. Somewhere serene and beautiful. And not get antsy on the last two days of the vacation with the thought that it is getting over. Finish writing that story I have begun. Drive on my motorcycle to Kokan. For the uninitiated, Kokan is abou

I was speaking to TH a little while ago. He was telling me about how he had made up a game to teach a very difficult history lesson. It is a very interesting game and will ensure that history doesn’t remain just names and dates for the children but becomes something alive. It got me thinking about innovative teaching methods. In India, the usual method is to memorize things and reproduce it in the exam. So, most of us don’t understand concepts or their applications. We just remember information…only till the exams are finished :) I remember TH telling me that he had a history teacher who would either narrate history lessons as stories or get the children to enact them. TH knows history so well because of this method. I used to have a professor who taught a dry subject like accounting in a very animated manner. He would give a lot of examples of real situations and enact almost all situations. To this date I remember each and every thing that he taught. I remember that his was the o

Many of us lack the ability to say ‘No’. Actually I wonder why…since, as children, we are quite proficient in the use of that word :) Apparently we lose that skill as we grow up to be adults. It is only recently, that is, a couple of years ago, that I have become comfortable with saying ‘No’. Earlier I used to feel much pressurised if somebody asked something of me. The more politely they asked, the more difficult it would be for me. I would usually end up saying ‘Yes’. There would be a lot of stress accumulation due to this. I used to worry that saying ‘No’ would offend that person so much that it would definitely put a crack in the relationship, if not end it altogether. Also, I was confident that I would never be able to say it in a way that the other person wouldn’t be offended. I also used to feel that they wouldn’t believe me even if there was a genuine reason to say ‘No’. Gradually I have come to a point where I can politely but firmly say ‘No’, but many times, in fact most

This is what I’m feeling right now. Yesterday, exactly at this time in the evening, I was frustrated at a co-worker whose irresponsible behaviour caused a lot of trouble to my boss, who then, knowing well that I wasn’t responsible for it, took out some of his irritation on me. I didn’t react at all to my boss or my co-worker…it was no use…the former would cool down eventually and see that he unnecessarily took it out on me…and the latter would never admit that he was irresponsible and find somebody to blame. I came to office this morning in a depressed frame of mind…thinking that the sincere one always gets loaded with work and that would happen to me today too, like yesterday. The morning too was a repeat performance of irresponsible behaviour from my co-worker. I plodded on. The boss was out for meetings all morning. Post-lunch I decided that enough was enough…I had to get out of this frame of mind. So I just started a completely new task for which I am presently receiving traini

An incident that occurred today prompted me to think about how, when and why people blame others for things that they are responsible for. In my opinion, the most common reason why most people blame others is, to cover up their mistakes. Such people are afraid of the consequences of the mistakes but not careful enough to avoid them in the first place. I understand that sometimes mistakes do happen. In that case, according to me, the right thing to do would be to own up, apologise and make amends. Some people blame other people or events for things because that makes it easy to feel good about oneself. Sometimes it is useful in gathering sympathy. I feel that cowards blame others. The people who can’t take the responsibility for their actions or those who don’t have the courage to face, fight if required and overcome adverse consequences blame others. The first time you make the choice of dealing with the consequences is the most difficult one. After that it gradually gets easier t

I promise. I'll not post about any more animal incidents for a while…ok ok…a long time. But this one's really worth sharing… A couple of years ago, I had gone to a beach in Kokan for a vacation. We were staying in a small resort whose back gate opened on to the beach. There was a semi-circle of five hut-shaped rooms which housed my extended family and I. Early one morning, I went to the beach alone for a walk. The sun was just rising. There was a cool breeze blowing. The sea was calm. I was feeling serene. As I walked along the beach, I noticed a really tiny pink shell. The colour was fascinating. I picked it up and put in my pyjama pocket. Further I saw one more and I pocketed it as well. As I went along, I found many more and I picked up all of them. A  little further, I felt something prick in my pyjama pocket. I ignored it and continued walking. But again, there was a little pricking. So I stopped, dipped my hand in the pyjama pocket and located one shell that was pric

I spent a lovely New Year's eve at a friend's recently re-decorated place which, by the way, looks absolutely stunning. Actually TH and I had decided to spend the evening in having a quiet dinner by ourselves.   Suddenly in the morning, said friend called and invited us over for a quiet dinner with just a few close friends. So off we went in the evening to the friend's house and met up with some old friends, some we hadn't met for long and one we made yesterday :) Delicious food was had (finger-licking good chicken biryani, superb salad), excellent wine was consumed in very little quantity (but strangely that wasn't minded one bit) and an interesting little card-game involving major strategising was played. All in all immense fun was had and this will count as one those great New Year's eves that one always talks about years later. I had a great start to my new year…how about you ?