Slices of my daily life

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...