Night

The night has fallen,
there is smoke everywhere
The pain has risen,
why did the heart bear,
why did it ignore?
A knife pierces the heart of gossamer.

Some threw, but he
put some rubble on her wings.
He said it was always done
The feathers were clipped,
The lips are reddened,
Light was her friend,
and the night will end,
but the light is stuck.
The princess is put in a bed of rubbles
She will rise in the rain of acid tomorrow
She wakes up neither, is she burning,
nor is she dancing.
Nobody knows the corpse of the dream,
In the night, she cries,
On the road she walks,
Winds roaring just like Medusa's locks engulfs her.

She looks up,
She stares at the skies,
Any ideas, he asks,
She smiles, and dies everyday.

Perception and Pablo!

“Whenever I wanted to say something, I said it the way I believed I should.”

I am not a very artsy person. I cannot understand it very much! I researched some things for an assignment. I am now going to write the name of the artist whose creations I could connect with and somewhat understand and not understand.

It was Pablo Picasso. He was one of the biggest and the most influential artists in the 20th century. Picasso was a painter, a sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and a stage maker. He was ahead of his time and was one of the most celebrated artists of all time. His contribution in the field of Modern Art is inconceivable, an art form which is full of abstraction and has no logical formation, but questions the very existence of any structure and form.

Pablo's use of “Cubism” in his paintings reflects how simple shapes can evoke feelings and makes the process of understanding an artwork a “process”, a journey, where the artwork is slowly assimilated and understood by the person who views it.

Girl Before Mirror, 1932 by Pablo Picasso

Source: www.PabloPicasso.org

Sometimes some scenes create a sense of Deja Vu. With Girl Before Mirror, I feel that I have been there. In the painting, there is a girl who looks in the mirror. Her real face is divided into two halves. One half of this girl is her painted version, where she applies a mask of paint and makeup on herself. This half of hers, smiles when she is offered a drink, and seems happy with her life. This aspect is probably what she would probably post in Instagram today. This painted half travels at different places in the world. She is independent and seems to need nobody. This side is her side during the day when she needs to be strong and look gentle at the same time.  

The other half is her face without makeup and without any artifice. I can say this is how her face looks like before she goes to bed, devoid of makeup and pretense. She is not smiling because right now, she doesn’t need to tell the world what she is feeling right now. She is just her solemn self and believes that existing in this world is just another mundane task. She doesn’t need to bring about any change. She just exists and tomorrow will be just another day filled with mundane things and monotony. She is showing no emotion.

In the mirror, the woman’s reflection is again divided into two halves. One half of the reflection reflects darkness. It is basically a reflection of the artifice. The blackness indicates how pretense is just eating the girl and is leaving a hollowness, which is like a black hole. All the pretense and paint and the materialistic pleasures just leads her to the path of nothingness which is further leading her to darkness and despair. Amongst all the pretense, you one day just vanish in thin air. Its as if she just faded in the surroundings and lost herself being the ‘it’ girl.

The other half of the reflection reflects the inner turmoil of the solemn side, how she wants to cry as her weaknesses are reflected in the mirror. Her frustrations from being quiet, her inner struggles of not showing any emotion makes her want to cry and not face herself as tears trickle down breaking her inside every time she looks at herself. It is as if she has admitted defeat and accepted her fate. She doesn’t want to face herself anymore and just waits silently for life to end.

The imagery of the girl touching the mirror wants to console her reflection and tell her that it will be better. Logic says that if life brings you down, you can go up, only if the reflection could understand!

Rants and Ramayan

When I got married, I was given blessings by my elders. Even while I was getting married, the pandit wished us to be like Ram and Sita. Probably the worst thing that somebody can wish for us. I forgave him almost immediately because his intent seemed honorable. As the days progressed, more and more people started wishing my husband and I to have a happy married life like Shiva and Parvati. I hated it and I will tell you why it was the worst thing ever!

In our very own grand Hindu epic tale of Ramayana, Sita was 6 years old when she got married to Ram, who was twelve years old. After that they grew up together and stayed for 12 years with each other in Ayodhya. Later, when Sita was 18 years old, both Rama and Sita were sent to exile.

They were together for less than half year, when Sita was kidnapped by Ravan. She lived in Lanka for the next 14 years and met Rama again when she was 32 years old. They then lived together for 1 year and then was abandoned by Ram. He did not even tell her that he was dumping her. He just asked his brother to leave her in the forest. Sita was pregnant with twins at that time. She met Ram again after her kids were at war with their dad because they had caught his damn horse. They were 8 year old kids who gave nightmares to the “Oh-good-old-Lord-Ram”. Sita ultimately went inside the earth or in other words took her life and committed suicide.

Before going to exile, Ram did ask Sita stay at Ayodhya, but Sita didn’t because she thought that her place is with her husband. A girl of 18 who had never left her palace, suddenly decided to leave every comfort because her husband was asked to move out of his dad’s place. She was in love. Her formative years was at her husband’s place. Everywhere she went it was drilled in her, that Ram was the best thing that could have happened to her. She was “lucky”. She had no other choice. If she stayed at Ayodhya, Sita was going to be told by everybody how she abandoned her husband. She went and stayed with a man who was not strong enough to stand up for her.

People say that Ram was a great ruler. He was a great statesman. If he was that and everybody was in awe of him, shouldn’t he have managed his subjects right? I even get the fact that he wanted to separate from his wife, but why couldn’t he just get Sita settled in a far away place with atleast a house? After all Sita became his subject as soon as he became a king. She was a princess. Her father gave her away. She accepted Ram’s family and did not look back.

In the entire Ramayan, it seemed that Ram just conquered Lanka to make a name for himself. He left her for his career. Sita had stars in her eyes for him , which ultimately led her to commit suicide.

Thinking of other epic love stories, Parvati and Shiva has their own marital issues because of some serious anger management issues of Shiva. Brahma fell in love with his own daughter, Saraswati. She did not want his attention but he desired her too much. Indra was a womanizer. Lord Krishna was a playboy.

Now, people respect Gods. We are supposed to imitate them. I don’t believe in this, but I am not an atheist. I do not believe that by not drinking water and not eating food, my husband will live longer. I don’t believe in Karwa Chauth but I believe that I love my husband. I don’t want to be somebody because it will make other people happy. All in all, I have not seen anybody ending up very happy with that arrangement. We must tell others how we feel so that the other person understands what we have to say.

At the same time, we must hear what other people say. We should trust them but not do things just to shut them up. We should do things because it makes us happy. It is so difficult for me to accept what people have to say. This is because I try to give logic to it in my head.

For instance, people keep telling me that life is a compromise. It is a compromise if you are unable to improve the condition of your life. Sita listened to everybody and she did commit suicide in the end. Now maybe Sita wanted that life. I am okay with that, but I don’t want that life for myself. I want to like people and them to like me. If that doesn’t happen, we will have no option but to leave each other in our own troubles.

Dictums of Damaged Dreams

I have never used demotivation as a word in my everyday life. Its sounds too permanent, a little too irreversible. I use phrases like “not motivated enough”, “energy down”, “death of my spirit”, “looking for my inner Beyonce” and “so hungry and will wait for death first” and “don’t care about it”.

Its so typical that I have divided this into stages.

Emotional atyachar in stages

Stage 1: When the heart breaks, there is no sound:

I am so upset with the way things are turning out. My every action is leading to failure. Whats wrong with others? Is it me? Lets listen to tragic songs. I will work hard and try to change my life. My husband and should reduce weight so I am just making khichdi/ yellow dal stew.

Stage 2: Death of my spirit:

This is weird. Everyone affects me. Am I comparing myself even to a damn spider and thinking if they could have been any bigger they would have kicked those dinosaur’s asses.

Stage 3: Looking for my inner Beyonce

I am calm and spirited. How much worse can it get. The only direction now is to go up, right? I am going to make some changes. I am going to exercise daily. Practice Yoga. Get some help and ask about meditation to Chaggi. I am going to make food at home everyday. I should start by cooking Butter Chicken. I am going to work hard and change the world. I am at a party talking about great technology things which I read about in Tech crunch in the morning. I am a warrior. I am not going to lose(because I have nothing to lose). I am Zen

Stage 4: Hunger till death

I want to be dead. Starvation is a good reason. I can tell people I am loosing weight. At least I will die looking like a million dollars. How have everybody around me figured out life? I should have studied more. My husband is talking about retiring at 35. I am 26 and I don’t have a job. If he goes to the Himalayas, I have to live alone, with no job and two fat kids who ate a lot of potato chips because I was too distracted waiting for my death because of starvation.

Stage 5: Shit happens! Lets party!

I have totally give up now. I am going to party with everyone. I am going to become a diva and have fun. Everyday my happening life will be published in Instagram, Facebook. I am going to ask everybody if they did anything for fun and make sure that they understand that their concept of fun is boring and so not interesting.

Now this is just me. It can be you too, but its safe to admit for now that this is just me!

Conundrum and Cannabis.

This was supposed to be a Medium post but I have been told Medium is more for professional stuff so I moved my stuff here. I wanted to give the most quirky title to my first medium post but I guess this is what it is going to be.

My husband claims that he takes around 5–6 hours for coming with a title. I use to write something down and then think of a title. I should have stuck to that technique. It works for me. On the second thought, I probably might change the title. Incase I do, its “Who am I?” for now.

This is a loaded question. I don’t know how to answer this. I can say that I am a girl who studied engineering and did her MBA in Marketing and Finance. She got married to a guy who is more like a best friend. I think I just friend-zoned my husband. I live in Mountain View, the heart of Silicon Valley and I worked for Google’s Self Driving car Project. I left my job because I wanted to pursue my career in UX Design. I can further talk who my parents are and what kind of foods I like. I like to go to new places. I am not a music fan but people tell me that I have a nice voice.

I just summed up my life in a paragraph.

I once read a book in which the author talked about a friend who documented everything in a journal. He was intrigued if given a chance, how his friend could talk about himself because he had recorded everything. I used to try to be like that friend recording everything and then I just stopped. I became melodramatic and burnt all the diaries I ever possessed because I was upset about who I was. It seemed that burning all my personal stories would give me a second lease at life. Then I stopped. I did not write anything and even if I did, I wrote it and deleted it. It was a huge conundrum considering I wanted to be heard and still not talk about myself.

Anyway, the author of that book thought that his friend could tell anybody about his life because he could relive those moments again and again and never forget what happened. My 26 year old just summarized myself in a paragraph. Its not that I don’t have any significant moments to talk about. My Facebook feed says that I had fun last year but I don’t remember how I felt back then. Does that mean everything that I feel will be gone and all that will be left is the smoke coming out of a joint? (I don’t smoke by the way but the way I feel about this, I could not think of any other metaphor.)

So I have tried two things. I have tried to record my life and not record it. The first approach made me feel that I was not writing about a very exciting life. The second one certainly does not require me to fill in empty pages but makes me feel incompetent to answer who I was.

I don’t know what I am going to do about this situation but I did figure out a title for this post.

I dont understand

Understanding is a weird thing. I don't understand some things and sometimes you don't understand me! Its like when I hot my head to a wall, I know that it is going to hurt and bleed. You would logically interpret it and then decide you are bored.

I don't understand you and you don't understand me. We don't fight now. Not because we don't understand this. Its because we don't want to.

The girl who got lost!

There was a girl. She was once there and now she is lost.

She had simple wishes. She thought good things happen to everybody.

She is now lost.

She looked as if innocence had a face. When she smiled, the dew drops sparkled on the grass

She is lost.

When she moved, there were songs in the wind.
She danced like the rain falling on a tin roof.

But for now she is lost.

She was tall. She looked at your eyes and you will see joy dancing in them.


She was there. You just missed her. She just went away looking for a paradise.
There were some ashes where she was before. She is now lost.

Now they just say one thing:
There was a girl. She was once there and now she is lost.

Death of her!

I am scared!

I am scared of death!

I am scared of people dying, even if I don't love them or even know them.

I am scared of hearing about people I have met or even know vaguely about, dying and leaving the world as we know it!

Hinduism says that we keep on taking birth again and again on this earth. This theory is probably created to make us feel that our loved ones have never left us. It probably was created by somebody who thought that life is too dynamic.

For me, once they are gone, they are forever gone. They leave us, they abandon us, they are not the same ever again,they kill us. They don't love us the way they do right now. They never will. We will not love them the way we do right now.

I feel bad for a lady who loved somebody more than she loved anybody. I feel for her today because she will from now on always alone. She will be lonely till her last breath.

I want to travel and visit places all by myself. A part of me understands that it will be fun but then there is another part of me who thinks its wrong. Its not my duties which stop me.  Its wrong because I don't want to stay away from the love of my life. It is wrong to go. I wish I die before him, but I don't want him to suffer. I want him to be happy and if being happy means to kill some of your dreams, I will do it because my greatest dream is to live happily with him, so that when he goes away I stand there, smiling and thinking that we made the best of our lives. Even if we don't meet in some other life, we made our life today worthwhile.

He loves me! I love him! We live together! We have made our life worth loving! I don't him to leave, because after all he is the love of my life!


PS: Dedicated to Dr Bawa! I am sorry for your loss, mam! I hope the love of your life will forever give you strength to survive this!

It will be hot on Friday!

It was a long day at work. I reached outside his office exactly at seven. I text him I have reached. He comes down where I am waiting for him in the car. He has his bag on one of his shoulders. His shoulders are always drooped at this time time of the day. I know this because I come to get him everyday. He lets me use the car and walks to work everyday. I used to ask him before taking the car. Now I just grab the keys everyday and leave for my work.

We decide to go somewhere to eat. I always let him choose. I don't cook these days. I am so tired that I can't work in the kitchen. He takes me to a restaurant everyday.  He asks me about my day. I try to think of best of things and tell stories to him. He smiles and looks straight. I wanted him to drive. To drive gives you a feeling that you can go anywhere. Its your choice.

He is always quiet. I ask him about his day. Words need to be forced out of him, yet when he speaks, it all seems so obvious. Everything looks possible when he speaks it in his slow drawl. If there is a problem, find a solution and if there is no solution, don't complain and just endure. He checks his cell phone as we wait for the light to change green.

I interrupt our silent moments. We reach the restaurant. I try to provoke him to get a reaction. I say that we would not get a cooling system because he thinks its not required. He retorts. He had the expression on his face which said "stop being so difficult everyday". He says he is hungry and tired and we would discuss it later. I say it is going to be hot again on Friday.

We enter the restaurant and look at the menu. I tell him what I want and then I go to a restroom. He places the order and looks for me. He can't see me. He goes and sits on a table. He grabs his phone again.

I come and find him. He had got two paans and two lassis for each of us. I just take the lassi thanklessly and take a sip. It was sweet. I loved it. I didn't say it. He likes paan. He smiles and tells me he got paan for us. "I don't eat paan, don't you know?", I said. He picks his cell phone and starts looking at it. I stare at him for 10 minutes till the food arrives. "Why doesn't he say anything?Does he have nothing to say to me after such a long day? We have nothing to talk about just after a few months."

He was still looking at his phone when he said that we could buy a cooling system from Amazon too. He had looked it up online while I sat and wondered whether he has lost interest in talking to me. He did not want me to feel hot on Friday!

hello awesome

Its 3:54 PM and its a Tuesday. The man of the house has been out for more than 24 hours and is now on his way back home. Like a good wife, I have soaked some dal in the water so that we can have it for dinner.

I got a job. Everybody will now have no content to talk to me. They will probably ask how is it going and I will be like its going fine. That will be the end of it. No more questioning. You know how liberating it feels. Okay not as empowering as Rahul gandhi in his interview with Arnab Goswami.

It is a good feeling and I think I am in my happy place. My usability week last week at San Fransisco was a great learning experience. You know I always used to take the phrase "a great learning experience" very lightly. I have now noticed its hidden depths. I am not ashamed. I am just 25 years old. Soon enough, I will be 26 and then 27 and then 45 and then 55 and then I am assuming it will all go downhill from there. I will have "great many learning experiences" with stories to tell to probably volunteers in the community center. The past of the future will be glorified but we do not want to be concerned about that any more.

How I turned invisible today and had the best rajma chawal ever!

It was 12:45 PM. I still had 15 minutes to kill before I would start walking to watch Cinderella at Century Cinemas. I watered the plants on all the three sides of the house  with the front including the joint project of Nikhil's and mine, the orange tree and the lemon tree. I also watered the second side which got always left out. I made it in exact 12 minutes and then washed off myself to start my 30 minute walk to the cinema.

I got my self some nachos and a coke(Nachos in India were 100 times better). The movie began. There was nothing new in the story and I guess Disney people could not violate the already known tale of Cinderella and her lost glass slipper. The seats were like the lounging types so I could put my feet very comfortably and just relax while sipping the cold drink.

The movie ended at 3:35. I checked the schedule of the Mountain View(MTV) Community Shuttle and ran towards the bus stop. This is a new bus for people to travel across MTV without any ticket to different locations. I had some difficulty finding the stop and reached there at around 3:49. The bus was was scheduled to arrive at 3:50. I then, sat down and thought that I have missed the bus. I gave myself 10 minutes to wait because I was not sure if the bus had left or not. The bus came at 3:57.

There were four persons in the bus including a female driver, a lady with a kid and an old man. Actually minus the white driver lady everybody seemed Indian to me. So you know how in India, a bus tends to stop at every point in its designated route, even when there is nobody waiting at the stop. In the U.S. it is quite the contrary. The bus driver stops only if he or she sees a passenger waiting at the stop or if the passenger inside the bus presses a button for the "stop request" or well tells the driver verbally.

After a while I could hear the Indian lady with the kid arguing with the driver to have stopped at a particular stop. The driver said that she could not remember each and everybody's stop like that.(Seriously three and half persons in the bus and you can't remember). Anyway after a heated argument the lady with the kid got off on the next stop which seemed like a good mile away from the lady's original stop.

The old man wearing a pin striped shirt then asked to get off Sylvan. As soon as he got off, the driver got off the bus and started lighting a smoke. I didn't know what to do. To be honest, I have been treated invisible many a times. I am hardly a looker  and the only reason I was noticed in my class was because I used to answer lots of questions during class participation.

I thought to myself that if this was India, it would have been very scary. A driver stopping the bus while you are sitting all alone in it, is not a very comfortable idea for an Indian girl. Should I get off the bus? I packed some courage and stepped outside the bus. She was still lighting the smoke(How much time does it take to light a cigarette?)

I asked her if there is a problem. The lady turned and was seemed flushed. She apologized and said she did not see me there. She thought the bus was empty and wanted to just chill for a few minutes. I was in no hurry so I asked her to take her time. This time I sat in the front instead of the second last row of the bus.

She, herself started talking to me and told me how she had broken her toe while being angry in her dream. I asked if it hurt. She said it does but she had taped it and the swelling was less. I asked her why she did not go to a doctor. To this she replied that she had hurt her same toe six years ago and knew how the doctor would do it. She asked me what I thought of Dreams. When I told her that feeling a dream as if its real is the best kind of therapy anybody can get, she was surprised. I told her that dreams give us that power to be anyone in them. You do not have to get judged in the dream world. I also told her that from where I come from, dreams which come in the morning were supposed to get true. She liked the idea and laughed that next time she is going to dream a happy dream during the morning.

The lady driver was from Las Vegas and had moved here because she thought Vegas was no place to raise a child with most of the adults being addicted to gambling, alcohol, drugs etc. We agreed that the glitterati was too overbearing for us.

She asked me about what I was doing here. I told her about my home in Chandigarh and how I have recently gotten married.

It seemed as if she could understand the pangs of separation I feel after leaving my birthplace. We discussed how she should just go to the beach and leave everything aside for some time. I heard her longing for a vacation. It made me feel the value of this current time where I have no job responsibilities and tons of time to do whatever I feel like. It made me feel that I have something unique here and should try to make every moment of my present life count. Who knows I might just turn out to be a stone in my next life!

I went home and made some awesome rajma chawal which turned out to be one of the best meals I had ever prepared by now. I also smiled how I could easily connect with a white lady bus driver as compared to some other persons whom I seem to have nothing to talk about.


PS: Have you ever rubbed your eyes so hard that you felt that the eyeballs wills pop out?

Low points

I turned 25 on 8 February 2015. It was my first birthday outside India. Nikhil got a chocolate cake with some margarita. He gave me a card and teddy bear with a bouquet. We went to the mall and then I bought things. My birthday started at midnight IST and ended at midnight PST.

Anyway, thats that. Let me be honest. I am in possibly the worst mood tonight. My room is in a mess. I feel dishonorable and utterly useless. I am listening to old songs of Mahesh Bhatt movies. I have reached my lowest point where I want to shut everybody out and just roast in my own apathy.

I have desisted to write but I guess I have to for I have no choice but to write it all down. The thing is that nobody likes a sad person. The question is why am I sick of everything.

I do not have a job I hate doing. I have zero responsibility. I am supposed to have the time of my life but I just want to run. The problem is I can't run that much because my iron levels are running really low. I am not even feigning interest in whatever others are saying. You know that feeling when you are in a party with friends but do not feel like talking to anybody? You don't get it, right?

Too bad! I am not in a mood to elaborate.

Grab a Doughnut

Probably the only person who would be happy enough to read my blogpost today would be my husband. I am married. Yes, I am.

The months, which went by, made me feel a lot of emotions such as love, nostalgia, sadness, excitement, adventure and happiness. It also gave me a realization more than ever, that life gives you different opportunities to start over, to begin a new story in its own twisted ways.

There is something else I realized, everyday when we wake up we have two choices. The choices being to "love" and to "fear". It bottles down to these two feelings. I won't say "hope". I feel that hope is too much of a beggar. It wants others to do a favor. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't but between our choice of "love" and "fear", there is no dependence on the outside. I want us to value that choice. Between both, I choose "love".

I have a reason. I want to confess. I don't want to choose "fear" because it has this uncanny ability to engulf you up. I have a purely metaphorical scientific reason behind it. We all have eyes. They certainly help us see, but they also act as "projectors". We project the world in a certain way and if you choose "fear", get ready to get more of it. The feeling of "fear" not only creates a ripple of unprecedented scare but it also makes you somebody who makes decisions based on it. It makes you want to do a job you do not like doing. It makes you want to marry for convenience. It makes you want to steal the happiness of others for no reason at all. It is like being that character on the stage who is scared of taking chances, who is scared of taking risks. The sad truth about that is that nobody in the audience likes that man, they merely tolerate it and wait for that moment when that person becomes bold. While you are on your death bed, you will have your dreams, your talents coming to you and asking you, that "we came to you. Why did you show us the door? We wanted you to make us alive? Why did you pull away? Now with you we will die too, but a death far more morose than you because no one is going to moan for us."

I have no reasons to choose "love". It is probably because it helps in the process of taking a leap of "faith" and not "hope". It probably wants you think of the difference you want to make to this world. It probably makes you do things you did not know you were capable of. I was scared of cooking. When I entered US, I simply was rattled by the fact that I will have to cook on my own now. When I started out, I was terrible. I treated it like a chore, not something we like to do everyday. After a while I decided to not hate it and embrace it. I started looking at YouTube videos and blogs about Indian cooking. My relationship has somewhat changed with cooking. I have started liking it very much and now I laugh at my cooking disasters. It has become a friend in this foreign world which gets messed up many times but is the most delightful company many a times. Love helps to bring the choice of "acceptance" to another level. You don't accept or tolerate things anymore. You begin to embrace them and look them in to the eye and say "I will not leave you because you are complicated. Let me learn about you a little everyday and understand you better. Who knows, we might end up having a relationship with each other forever." 

Just like the fact we cannot forcefully start loving somebody its the same with things. I am not saying start doing what you love. It is irrational but isn't that a flaw in every Economic theory one will ever read. 

So in the end I have not taken any choice, but I have put my trust in a leap of faith. Catch me if I fall or well, at least get a doughnut by then.  

Six Days Two Continents--Madness Unplugged

It was an ordinary Monday, 24 May 2014.I got married to one of the best persons I know of. May be the link will help. http://www.quora.com/Who-is-Nikhil-Garg (I am so sorry Nik to put up a link here but I thought its so damn cool to have people asking as well as answering it on Quora).

Our wedding was supposed to happen in Spring 2015 but due to some hassles it got preponed to Fall 2014. I am so sorry to all our family and friends who had by then booked their tickets to India in February. 

It was nice. Everything seemed a bit rushed but due to the organising skills of our parents, nothing went wrong. Most of my cousins couldn't make it. This void was anyway filled up my best friends who stepped in on the stage and made us look better. A few of my friends cancelled their trains to be my side for the big moment and I shall forever be indebted to them for offering me so much love.

The seven promises were pretty much designed by the family pandit skewed towards me and Nikhil promised to honor each one of them. 

We went to Bhiwani, Nik's hometown. In those two days, I had been visited by many people who could not attend our wedding in Chandigarh. We went for a slight detour to Andaman and and had the best time at Havelock Islands. It was fantastic and so beautiful. Our resort Munjoh had a private beach and had the most exciting setup. This is however for a story next time. It was an enchanting experience where we did not have access to the Internet which worked out to be fine in the end.

We then flew to San Fransisco and then reached Mountain View. Instead of the ladies who welcomed us at Bhiwani, the house which welcomed us at Mountain View was silent and seemed different from the reception we got at Bhiwani. After getting some Mysore Masala Dosa from the Madras Restaurant, we came home. 

I slept while Nikhil worked from home that day. It is funny because within a span of 7 days we had been to 2 continents and 7 cities. I was tired and Nikhil was busy working.

I am settling in here and have been trying my level best to learn cooking. We have also started looking for jobs for me. 

This a rather dry account of what has happened by far. I shall tell you some glorious details later. Till then Take care and Happy Holidays!:)

Spoken unspoken

There are many things which are better unspoken of. One of them is that nobody wants to be a part of your pain every time you feel sad. Nobody wants to listen to your tirade of the glorious past you had and nobody wants to know why you cried.

What do you do then?

You simply start ingesting your sorrow and pray that the future is bright and in a moment of privacy, relish the golden life you had before.

Nothing much

Its the oldest story in the world. You are sixteen one day getting ready for your first board exam and the next you are just resigning from your first job trying to figure out better avenues to go to.

In between you meet so many people. Some become friends from strangers and some become strangers from friends.

I can't say there are no regrets, but I can say that few unsettling days can make your track go in a different way all together. A little distance away can turn into millions of kilometers leaving just a whiff of a memory of the journey.

There are so many places to go as yet. Will it be as smooth as it has been? Questions such as these are answered by time, only if we are patient enough.

Lots of roles, lots of dialogue and then plain silence. That's life!

Train journey

This post is dedicated to all those who are as lost as I am. For the record I am in a train and listening the tunes of Lucky Ali asking 'zindagi' what it wants with so many 'rastas'.

Remember when we were kids and got the summer holiday homework?
My mom used to get at least 10 photocopies of the thing and by the end of June I had only one copy left. I have no idea where the other 9 went. I don't remember ever flushing them or well throwing them.

Anyway I used to be enthused every time that this time, I would complete my homework by may and then enjoy june. Alas, it never happened and sometimes I even took two days after the reopening of school to finish my holiday homework.

Most of the work was usual stuff with maths teachers offloading their pressures of syllabus by giving two chapters of book as holiday homework. Language teachers lacked imagination and gave us writing of one page everyday. Later the English teachers tried asking us to write book reviews of books like Mill on the Floss. Unfortunately the internet revolution had started by then. It was a time when everybody had funky email ids and no two persons were allowed to have the same passwords. Most of my classmates copied book reviews and others copied exact sentences from the book. The good old days!

I had a Casio. I apologize a 'keyboard'. For ten years of calling it Casio, a classmate in a rock band told me it is supposed to be called a 'keyboard'. I felt so embarrassed. It was meant to be a cutting comment. Now that I have completed my MBA, I realize how much the company 'Casio' must have spent on its branding. It was a time when you tried to be more sophisticated by drinking 'Coke' instead of 'Pepsi', when cousins came and you crashed on makeshift beds on the floors because you wanted to sleep together. Now that I think of it, I don't remember ever happening again. We have all grown up into 'cool' adults who barely talk to each other . We have all left that era when being on ICQ seemed cool.

My first email was redridinghood@ yahoo.com . I don't even know if the account still exists.

Anyway it was in the past. Now I want to change the way things are. I want to contribute to the world. I want to change it in some way. I think it is possible.

While I am writing this Lewis Carroll mocks me in my head saying that 'if you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there'.

May June roundup

I have started reading a book by somebody called Siddharth Sharma. It is called Love your Mondays and Retire Young.

According to Ankita B., one cannot love his/her job. It is called a job because you are obligated to do it. Others say that they love their jobs. They say how can you progress if you hate it so much?

I wanted to be in the latter. I spent two months crying and complaining to anybody who would hear my tragic story of the job I dont like. When they stopped listening, I spoke to myself. (Dark days they were)

Then a few days ago, I was given a jolt. I was told that one of my uncles who used to remain always happy go lucky was going to die. My parents came pretty often and discussed how his cancer had engulfed him. I was already going through a "phase" which people generally associate with hormonal changes. My behaviour was rough. I was angry all the time. I hate every aspect of my job. Basically I had become so discontent that I even considered leaving everything and running away.

One of my friends gave me a warning that I was losing grip and finally the realization seeped in. The thing is my last exam was on May 5, 2014. My joining was on May 7, 2014 to a new place which felt less hospitable with every second. It has been a struggle and still is. When I tell people that I have worked for only two months they are surprised. They seemed to think that I have worked long and just need redemption.

Anyway to deal with this, I have decided to develop two versions of myself. One is the one I am usually and the other one is my gangster role with a standard local Gunda name called Hateli Fracture. Hateli Fracture can punch people on the face and should ideally wear a knuckle duster.

The change is pretty instantaneous. I am hungry once again and I want to change the world again. I want to change and contribute to the world. I want to make it better.

Anyway let me go and grab a pack of chips. Anyway tc..:)

Something random

I like Aamir Khan movies but I love Shahrukh Khan. I even sat through jab tak hai jaan, and I liked it. There is nothing like that awesome feeling one gets  when while munching salted popcorn, one sips icy cool Pepsi and watch Shahrukh Khan getting hit twice by a vehicle.

Anyway my grandmother is watching saas bahu serials and I am sitting in a zone of 15 GB of WiFi.

I go to office everyday. They say its difficult but I still want to try. I think people try to complicate lives. I don't get it. It is very easy. You help me.  I will help you. You lie and scare me. I will try not to talk to you.

Building relationships take time. My longest ties with my friends dates back till my school days.

Delhi drearies stories continued

I have issues with people who smoke. At least people who drink alcohol do not effect people who are not drinking.

My auto rickshaw driver is smoking his lungs out. I feel like showing him 'mukesh' ka tobacco ad.

So here's the thing. After engineering, I have somehow landed up with liars. In university, the lying was limited to one person. Job also has its share of plastics but delhi is becoming better.

Delhi summer without a car is accompanied with headaches, cough, cold, dehydration, bargaining headaches, heated traffic jam waits, fear of dying and etc

Without that, it is accompanied with traffic jams, fear of dying etc.