Rising above the Limitations

The Dark Knight has risen all over the world and there is euphoria in our land too. Of course I'll have to watch it on TV as I didn't get any company to go to the theatre. Actually I was on leave on Thursday and Friday as my parents went to their native place and I had grand plans of reading books and watching some movies over my long weekend. It proved just the contrary; I hardly had time even to comb my hair decently by the end of the day and everyday I slept at 12 or later!! The situation was so hopeless that I ended up laughing every night when I looked at the clock as I went to bed.

We have a club right next to our house and whenever I look at people playing - people are playing at any time of the day!! - I wonder what kind of profile theirs must be. I mean, if they are students, working, married, parents or what. I wonder how they manage to spend so much of time playing with no hurry or worry on their face. I used to envy them in the beginning but no more. I was also like that may be a decade ago and had I known that a decade later my life would be like this, may be I would've done more then. I guess I would've travelled more and seen some places at least. I think even now the problem lies with me - I do not have the guts or energy to push the limits - the limits imposed on me by so many people around me, near and dear ones of course - and I'm being unhappy just not doing anything about it. Easier way is to quit the job and create some time for myself but I'm just postponing it for a long time. Is it that I want more money not to feel guilty when I spend it on my dreams(hopefully) or is it that I fear I'll become a nobody if I sit at home or...what is it? I don't know yet.

My daughter is being cuter by the day - she gives me my toothbrush after I wake up, makes me change my dress immediately after I return from work(otherwise I'm quite lazy about it) and yesterday she surprised me further by pouring a mug of water on my feet when I went into the bathroom after coming home!!

Yesterday I dreamt that I saw Rafael Nadal in a BMTC bus and I was excited and went in to talk to him and we discussed and compared the buses in Bangalore and his native. Can you imagine dreams being so unreal!! Of course it was all very pleasant while it lasted.

Bugs and Mugs

One of our guys returned from a client site and gave me and another colleague a coffee mug as a token of appreciation from the client for the help we had done. Felt really sad taking it, sad for the client. I mean, all I did was fixing the bugs that we,if not me,created and there he is, feeling thankful for that. It is very frustrating actually. You do the best you can, bring the module to a shape and then the great people get some brainwave and gift it to some idiots to do as they please with it and it is a mess all over again. Then the bosses give it to us to nurse it back to health as if they are doing us a favour and then the cycle repeats. And the bottomline always is that we haven't made it stable. How can we?

A superb cricket match that South Africa won quite easily in the end. Couldn't help watching.

Displacement

I suddenly heard that we may be shifting to a different office altogether, got alarmed at the prospect and asked my boss. His initial irritation showed that I had touched a sore spot. He elaborated on it later - his boss believes that everybody should be in the office by 9 and he thinks that having the office far from as many as possible will make it happen by way of office transport. My boss, who already travels 20 kilometers one way, is obviously irked at having to travel 10 more and expressed that my having to travel only 10 is nothing. But I think it's only proportionate; I never traveled more than 4 before in the last 10 years! Having a travel time of more than an hour is tough for me and I really don't know if it comes to that what I will do! Actually I have travelled everyday for an hour when I was alone but things are not the same now.

Yesterday our floor was looking pretty much like a marketplace if you purely go by the noise level. Two of our colleagues who got engaged were distributing sweets and the general cacophony of best wishes and sundry jokes had filled the air for sometime. Just when it died down, another kind started; quite a few people got displaced to lower floors thanks to some restructuring of weights on each floor and the shifting of people and machines and what nots made for a welcome distraction to many. It seems we have overloaded our floor and some people may have left feeling that they are moving to a safer haven!

The girls gang that I'm newly member of(for lunch mostly) has started sending me facebook requests and I'm going to find myself with quite a few connections. I'm quite an inactive member actually. I'm not interested in everybody's lives and very few really matter to me. And those few, I'm anyway in touch with!

Pouring Out...

It's raining heavily outside and listening to the drone of rainfall on the roof is pleasing to the ears. This is the first time this season that it's raining like this and I hope it pours back home too. Father who is there was telling me that it's not at all like typical July there - by now it should be raning for days and one should do nothing but sit and watch the rain in awe and happiness. Though it used to be highly inconvenient to go anywhere when it rained like that, I don't remember being upset about it. I mean, we all took it granted so it feels so odd this time around.

We have a team outing coming up this monthend and it has already taken off on a bad note as far as I'm concerned. We have some guys who moved to a different team recently and they were not invited originally and then were invited by some of us but that has been taken very badly by my boss. I don't deny that I am biased towards S and I was a bit embarrassed when my boss reminded me of others but it seems but natural that he should be part of the gathering; he still sits surrounded by our team, never denied help to any of his old-teammates and in general friends with everybody in the team. When he told me he wouldn't come because he may be not be comfortable as such, I didn't know what to say. Felt very sad and I didn't know if it was because he declined or because of my helplessness in the changed circumstances to really insist on his coming.

Friday the 13th

Why does Hollywood produce so many scary movies? Every possible superstition, folklore and wildest thought has been explored and put into movies.But I wish they had left children out of it, one because it feels a bit harsh on them and also because the innocent faces sometimes become the scariest too.

I'm watching Friday the 13th today. I must've seen so many of its kind but somehow something seems different and I end up watching it. Of course there are movies whose end leaves you feeling foolish about 2 hours wasted but it's rare.

One thing I admire in Hollywood and Irani movies is the way the acting looks so natural, even in small children. I mean, in our movies there will be many instances where forget the side actors, even hero and heroine will act so artificially(!!) but I've not seen it elsewhere. Everybody and everything looks the part.

It rained heavily today and even the dirty lake in front of our office looked fresh after all the junk got pushed towards the shore. Only problem was that the autos vanished suddenly and at 7:30 I had to walk about two kilometers in the rain. It was quite nice once the rain subsided a little and now I'm sweating inside the house. I hope the monsoon has truly arrived this time.

Stolen...

Gloom at home tonight. My son stole a pen from a shop this evening and admitted it after a lot of cross-examination and threats, big and small scale. My shocked parents have already spent some tears on the incident, I've played good cop-bad cop act, many stories and their morals have followed and my son has finally slept off fearing that the situation may be worse when his father arrives home. Actually we all have been quite unhappy with my son for the past few days - he got caught copying his teacher's signature in his rough notebook in the class, I've found some stray things not belonging to him in his bag which he says he never put so there is a general mistrust when we are dealing with him. I'm particularly sad remembering the times when he was a boy I always had faith on; he was like that and that was not very long ago. I think I need to spend more time with him, I've hardly done that in the past few months. I'm spending my energies mostly on the younger one and neglecting my son. I know my son misses me, he told me so in such earnest words just the other day. I hope he'll come out of this mess fine, I'm going to help him.

FaceValue

These days I've got into the habit of trying to guess people's origin looking at their faces. After seeing so many people in the office, now it comes quite easily to me and I can categorize south Indians, Marathis, Punjabis and Bengalis into their respective states. North Indians are tougher but when they start talking, the task becomes easier. It's a pleasure when my guess turns out to be right.

But ironically enough, my own face does not seem to fit anywhere - people have hardly guessed my origin correctly. One of my teachers in college was surprised to hear that I was from the same district as him; he said he always thought I was a North Indian! Then when I was in Mumbai, my Telugu guesthouse-mate said I didn't look like a Kannadiga and not at all a Brahmin. I don't know what his standards were but he sounded disappointed especially on the second point. There are many who've got deceived by my hair and thought I am a Malayali and then there are others who've started talking to me in Tamil without my uttering even a word of it. Once a junior colleague of mine sent me a mail with Punjabi words and I had to convince him that my surname was indeed a South Indian one and I didn't have any trace of Punjab in me. Then very recently when I went for a walk to our terrace, one of the housemaids asked me if I was from Nepal; she was from there and she was very eager to hear the affirmative. I was sorry to disappoint her but this whole business is disappointing to me at times. Now, M told me once that our folks have their links to Iran so that's one place where I should go and try my luck I guess.

Though it's irritating to see all these numerous fairness cream ads(don't know why I get more upset with men's creams), I do believe people are increasingly judging people by their appearance. I have seen even so-called well-bred people passing such nasty remarks on people they hardly know.

Ee Nanna Manavu Uyyaleyaagi Toogide...

I don't know why I'm humming this song suddenly today but that really seems to be the case, in more ways than one. There are some undercurrents of joy, don't know why. Work is as usual, quite relaxed though, and once in a while someone or the other comes and flatters me and gets his work done. Today a junior quit and for some reason, thanked me in his farewell mail quite unreasonably. Really had to dig deep to figure out if I did any help worth mentioning but couldn't find any. But such mails will surely make me all nice and helpful to some more people, I'm sure.

On the other hand, my husband seems to be having a real tough job on his hands, leading a huge team and having too many issues to battle. His working hours are about to touch 15(!!) and I wonder how he can go on like that, day in and day out. If I was in his place...I would've bunked a day at least!!

A glorious match between Federer and Djokovic today. I'm a fan of neither(Nadal is my favourite) and may be because of that I was able to enjoy the match with the right frame of mind. Djokovic seemed very irritated with the way he was playing and in the end, seemed eager to finish it all. I think Murray will win the other one and I want him to win the title too. I mean, enough Federer has had so far ,though the only good thing about his winning the title may be that he may retire after that. But you never know, if our Tendulkar has given him any tips about going on and on and on...

Sometimes I feel I watch sports only for players and not for the game per se. I mean, now that Dravid has retired, I'm forced to believe that I enjoyed cricket these 20 years all because he was playing and I've retired from the game along with him. He is a gem, isn't he?

And now, Murray has become the first British male to play in Wimbledon finals in 76 years!! Must be a great feeling and also a lot of expectations to watch out for on Sunday!

Split Ends

My mother cut my hair last week and accidentally cut it more than what we wanted to. No problem though as it gives me freedom from split ends and also to leave my hair open occasionally, at least at home. Contrary to all the popular myth that I heard, my hair is as thick as ever even after two children; my maid had warned me that I would lose my hair the moment my daughter started smiling! I think that belief must've stemmed from the fact that post-delivery diet was not great in her generation and it would start showing on the hair by the time the baby got a month old.

One of my friends is on the verge of a divorce and she's asked me to counsel her husband in her defense.The first reaction from my husband was one of dismissal of my persuasive powers which I don't claim to have either. But I'm going to try nevertheless just to give some support to my friend who I know has struggled a lot in her life. Actually, before 10 years I didn't know anybody who had had a divorce but now I've seen quite a few though in every one of those cases, I've known only the lady involved. The problems this side are mostly similar - interfering and demanding in-laws, insensitive, jealous and at times even cruel, husband. Though most of the times I feel I would've done the same thing myself, there are occasions I've felt that ladies are giving up too easily. I don't know what a guy's viewpoint is in this entire affair and I wonder why they become so unreasonable with a struggling partner whose life today is so much tougher in all the aspects - working in the office, managing child/children who as a generation are quite demanding and managing the household affairs too.

Bangalore has been very windy throughout this week and may be some of it has swept the clouds off the sky so we've hardly had our share of rain this season. But it's a pleasure to walk to the office in this weather and I enjoy all the 20 minutes of it, especially the one around the lake which has been sparkling these days. Cute little ducks chase each other while a fountain splashes water all around and though I'm sweating by the time I reach office, I'm happy.

Theatre Bound....

Went to watch a collection of plays by O Henry done by a team of our guys. Couldn't finish all of them but whatever I saw was pretty good. Actually it was my first brush with English plays and I wasn't really sure if they could keep me interested throughout but I came back quite happy. May be it's good that the director chose simple stories. But though they weren't exactly similar, I found them predictable and that took some excitement off for me. Actually I was reminded even of Raincoat by Rituparno Ghosh though it's not exactly the same. I think the underlying theme is similar though I can't define it.

On the way back from the college where the plays were shown, I was all alone in an auto and though that in itself is not a cause of concern for me, I got into some jittery moments. S called me up to check how I was going and I said there was no problem. But my mobilephone got switched off the moment I stepped out of the college and when I boarded the auto and the driver talked of taking a different route, I was regretting telling S that I was going to be fine. I don't know where the fear stemmed from, may be it was because I didn't know anything about the place I was in, whether it was the new route or the standard one. So I was eagerly looking outside for any signs of familiarity among the billboards and I think the driver caught that look too. Suddenly he stopped at the side somewhere and asked me if I knew the road we were going to take next. I was a bit more nervous by now but I told him the truth; I didn't. He didn't say anything more and my nerves calmed down only when we burst into the main road of Marathalli. I think the driver read my mind plain enough; he even chided me that now I seem to be on familiar track and later told me people were becoming very skeptical of taking shortcuts these days. Anyway, by then I was on my turf and I could wholeheartedly nod my head.

I miss the days of Neenasam, the excitement of days preceding the shows and of seeing the pamphlets stacked up for distribution and visiting the Ajjibettu stage being prepared specially for it, of seeing some of the artistes beforehand, sitting in the front rows, the light and the sound, the drama of the stage and on it and everything. I hope I can be on the stage too someday.