Can you tell who’s better?
Posted by: pradsword on: July 28, 2009
me and her..poles apart
can you tell who’s better? can you tell who’s smart?
Me..always..committed to work
My deadlines tend to earn her smirk
She’d rather read a book or be naturebound
her lazy ways always make me frown..
Rains always make me think of muck and cold
she’s drenched and laughing, a sight to behold
And when the Music plays, I nodd and smile
She’s already swaying to the tunes with an easy beguile
She exclaims and exhalts, while I state and elaborate
She’s a total supporter, while I merely corroborate
Protests and fights make me a lot uneasy
she’s shouting out there,swearwords too sleazy
In moderation, I live – I sympathise or cry or even eat
She’s desparate to help, she binges,grieves with tears not really discrete
Still I try to remind her to act like an adult
but she’s happy to be child, how she exhults!!
I’m polite,inconspicuous, a self confessed chicken
my thick skinned views make her flamboyant self always sicken
But I’m living the life and she’s living the moment
so, I weasel out from all the troubles she tries to foment
And that was our story, me and her
totally like strangers though always with each other
even though we’re made of same heart..
can you tell who’s better? can you tell who’s smart?
Vacation – Oh how I long for thee
Posted by: pradsword on: June 7, 2009
My fondest wish, my dearest hope
from all these deadlines if I could elope
and get to a place so obscure and far
no phones, no PCs , not even a single car
would be close enough to remind me
or take me back to work – Oh so deadly…
O Vacation, for you I wait
the lack of rhymes would’nt abate
the longing that I feel for thee
from tedium I wish to flee
and reach some place where nature abounds,
a beach, a peak, a lush green ground,
anywhere, any place where I could sit
without having to think of that odious shit
which is called ‘deadline’ colloquially…
Vacation – oh, how I long for thee…
Okay. I have to admit this. I no longer agree with my earlier post. All I can say is that I still maintain my opinion on “real estate” as a concept, as a sector and the irrational exuberance, though my view on the company mentioned therein are no longer the same….
Thoughts and Conclusions
Posted by: pradsword on: January 21, 2009
About….
- Dosas: NO MORE DOSAS FOR ME!! I’ve had enough of them lately. Infact, the ongoing week’s been like a “Dosa Festival” at home, where event organizer was yours truly… Mum’s away and so I’ve been called upon to take her place in the kitchen. Now, cooking remains a recreational activity for me unless my Mum goes out of town or is unwell…and I tend to avoid the usual poli-bhaaji-bhat-varan/amti route and prefer to make one single item, which can serve as dinner for previous night cum breakfast for the next morning etc, since I cannot afford to keep several items on the menu and also manage my schedule… so well, this time around, I decided it was to be different types of dosas which I would be experimenting with. First day was a fusion Rava Dosa. The next day it was cucumber – dosa. When I mentioned these names to my colleague (who’s a Tam Bram) , she actually told me that they didnt exist…well, I’m sure that most of what I cook is always a fusion. You dont always find all the ingredients at the last minute . Like everyone else, even I ended up replacing one ingredient with the other, added something on my own and Viola, a new dish!! So far so good! They were loving it and I thought of many more types of dosas which I could feed them with. My father and my brother were astonished though when I told them that I was making a type of dosa on third evening (yest eve) as well. It was a recepie shared by an enthusiastic aquaintance who was more than willing to teach it (and a lot many) to ensure that my training in being a homemaker continued while my mum was away. So the effect was this third dosa, made mostly of rice flour, onions and turmeric. The effect was a wobbly dosa, which my father thought looked like an egg omlette. Now it needs to be mentioned that he is a pure vegetarian and cannot even be anywhere near non vegetarian food, including anything made out of egg. So he of course could not eat it. Even at the breakfast today. So I decided that I needed a break from this cooking routine in general and Dosa in particular. Besides I had a note to prepare (Which is why I am up right now at 1.50 am and working!!) . So I called him up from work and told him to order something from the nearby restaurant for ourselves for dinner tonight. For myself, I told him, I needed something light, since I had to work most of the night tonight. So, I was all anticipation when I reached home tonight, only to find that he had ordered Masala Dosa for me!! Arrgh! no more dosas.
- Cooking: I love cooking. Though I dont cook daily / regularly. I could have become a chef perhaps, if I hadnt studied Finance.
- Crazy Fat Women in the Trains: Damn you ladies! in ideal situations, I’d say seamless pressure on body from all sides sounds like some kind of resistance training, but in situations like my daily commute to work, when I am subjected to being aggressively pushed around, shoved around and sandwiched from all the sides, all I can think of is getting off the train, onepiece and alive. I was struggling yesterday, surrounded by a bunch of fat ladies who were literally squeezing me from all sides. So busy was I in concentrating on breathing regularly that I didnt notice that my purse too was getting subjected to this pressure torture. As soon as I got off the train though, I realised that somethng was clinking inside my purse. To my horror, my sunglasses had broken. One grand may be a small amount for some,but to me, wasting one grand is significant enough… Suddenly , I remembered a recent conversation, when the person went on and on about thrift and benefits of public transport. I wondered if that person had ever been through something like this!!
- Sunglasses – I am going to mend them. Not because I am crying over one grand. Its because I absolutely adored them. I could have bought costlier pair, and there were many branded ones which I could have bought, but mine was the first pair I saw and absolutely loved. My sunglasses were huge, somewhat tacky maybe, but they were super comfortable.
- Books: I do not deserve to own so many when I hardly read these days. The Strand exhibition is still on, and like every year, this year too I will buy books from there, manage to read one or two and leave the rest untouched. I really need to manage my time better.
- Reading: I wish trains were less crowded, so one could spread out the newspaper comfortably / read book while in train…
- Public Transport – Sucks big time. But I have no option…
- Tranquility – is a rare commodity these days and with some flyover work beginning in my own area, it’ll wane all the more. My area had been a quiet residential part of the city, and I would have really loved to see it like that forever….alas, it is not to be!
- Creek – Whats gonna happen to the saltpans and the creek in my area? those parts just remind me of my childhood and school days when we had spent lots of our idle afternoons at the saltpans, doing practically nothing – just starring at a distance!
I will sum up all of my experience till date in the field of corporate banking by way of a one-liner:
“Whatever didn’t kill me, made me stronger” – and of course I am zillion times stronger now!! and bazillion times faster! This field just stretched me to my limits, literally in the sense that I realised my limitations and concluded that if being a careerist meant that I was required to be atleast 10 times faster than I was presently (which was pretty fast according to me) in execution of my work, then it simply meant that I can never be careerist. Of course I also realised that apart from the inability to handle that kind of stress, I actually did not WANT even to think about it. So it was through this process of high stress levels that I discovered, I was not meant to be a careerist person, chief reason being that I did not want to become one. I essentially realised that for me the process of career growth always required worklife balance and wherever and whenever it was not present, which pretty much it wasn’t, I was unhappy.
I needed to put that on record somewhere…
Maniac Monday
Posted by: pradsword on: December 8, 2008
An open letter….
Dear Monday…
Just when I seem to have collected my bearings after five gruelling , never-ending days, you always come and spoil everything!! and this happens week after week after week..Don’t you realise? you’re an unwanted guest. If you want to make me realise what an utter failure at planning I am, let me tell you, I’ve already got the point.
You dont have to be extra mean to me you know…not a day at work goes when I am seated at the desk for an hour at a stretch, but you especially see to it that I am constantly running around. Why should all the escalations always happen on Mondays? I beg to differ from the claim that law of averages applies to every thing in this world. If there was a distribution on work-related sufferings, I’d bet it wouldn’t be normal. It’d be skewed towards you, Monday!!
For that matter, if there was any distribution of most-hated-day-of-the-week, again it’d be skewed towards you. So, in view of your ever declining popularity, I’m begging you to introspect and reconsider your pathetic tactics of being such a killjoy…
with lots of hate and swearwords,
me!
They’ve begun airing the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice on Zee Studio starting yesterday. The series that I was waiting and waiting to be aired on TV ever since I had watched an episode of it at a friend’s place 4-5 years back when she’d dowloaded it from the net. While I gave up and bought its VCDs 3 years back when they were finally available in market, its finally nice to be able to recommend it to all those people who you cant trust enough with your VCDs!!
I’ve been a diehard Jane Austen fan ever since I had read pride and prejudice in class 7. It was my second attempt at reading English Classics. The first ever English classic that I’d read was David Copperfield, and had found it filled with so much of sorrow and sufferings that I absolutely loved the story that was not too heavy on sorrow part and the most ideal love story for a 11-12 year old. I read it, re-read it , re-re-read it over the years. Though as I grew up, I finally concluded that THE Mr Darcy can never be real, I still adore the book, and all other works of Jane Austen, which I still unwind with many a times…
Me Mumbaikar
Posted by: pradsword on: December 3, 2008
Its been exactly one week today that the terrorist attacks took place and what a painfully long week it was! Most likely its changed the lives of most of the Mumbaiites – at least the media projects so. We are no longer cheering and saluting the ‘Spirit’ of Mumbai they say. “We are angry. We want action. Enough is enough!” etc.
I honestly never believed in the ‘Spirit’ factor. ‘Spirit’ is a gross misrepresentation. We Mumbaikars are simply indifferent. We are. We are simply never bothered. Firstly we rarely notice if something that is ‘happening’ is not happening to ourselves. If at all we notice, we just go ahead and ignore it. Similar to the American view on the rest of the world. Finally, the more underpreviledged the afflicted, the less we notice. We look at everything in terms of immediate benefit to self. This might sound too severe perhaps, but its true. Someone at work, amidst all the hostages-related news breaking in, happened to mention to me that there will be a movie on this a couple of years down the line and the police martyrs will become posthumus superheros. I was absolutely livid on hearing this – how could someone be so insensitive, I thought. Who will think of it when terrorists were still at large. But then, our Chief Minister (ex-Chief Minister from today on) went ahead and proved exactly that by taking his actor-son and director Ram Gopal Varma alongwith himself for firsthand tour of Taj. He represents in truest sense and meaning, the ‘Spirit’ of Mumbai.
Someone who has suffered personally in these attacks mentioned what bothered her the most apart from her personal loss. It was despair that the people will forget the tragedy and the brave policemen all too soon. In times like these when you hardly found an honest man, it was all the more a greater loss that these honest policemen sacrificed their lives. For whom she wonderd?, what will, if ever, come out of it? she asked. Silently I agreed with the every word she said, and for her sake, no, for the sake of precious lives of all these martyrs, I hope, something comes out of this. It better had. The best homage to these brave lives would be change. Foremost, in our attitudes.
Diwali and few related thoughts… maybe a few unrelated too..
Posted by: pradsword on: November 2, 2008
Now that Diwali is gone, all the newspapers are full of columns where writers exasperatedly comment on what a ritualistic and noisy affair Diwali is… streets bustling with people, vendors shouting, sale-venues overflowing even in the face of economic slowdown, crackers disturbing people in the middle of their peaceful slumbers etc etc etc. .. and people smsing / calling to wish happy diwali, some of whom they didnt even know! the typical poojas, wasteful expenditure of lanterns and electric lighting etc etc. all in all they were happy that it was finally over…
At the risk of sounding ‘unfashionable’ (for it is fashionable these days to talk about environment and general misuse of resources and the economy while fashionably using fancy Cars and multiple air conditioning arrangements in the house, imported branded wares, exotic food which are atleast high end even if they all are polluting the environs and affecting economy …), I’d say that it wouldnt be ‘Diwali’ anymore without all the noise and the hoopla, the friends and the frenzy!!
I want to know what is it of significance to these rich columnist ladies, who buy a Versace every month, that a lower middle class clerk working 12 hours in a private company thinks of buying new clothes for her entire family, furniture for her house or buying jewellery for herself?? its once a year or biannual event for her to shop on such a scale… for these so called concerned-for-economy women, shopping does not require a special ocassion!
These ladies probably spend lacs and lacs of Rupees organizing social dos/ events at plush hotels to help run their burgeoning businesses or atleast attend such events and write columns about them…. for them the neon-glitz of a nightclub is more economical than the twinkling electric lighting and the glowing lanterns that people hang/ hoist for 4 days of Diwali… waste of electricity in the era of load-shedding indeed!! I think probably what they consume for brunch in a five star on any given Sunday should cost more than the electricity bill of the watchman of my building of six months taken together…
It is even more hypocrisy to talk..er write about how endless smses troubled them with Diwali wishes and their fingers hurt having punched in replies to all of those messages… I wonder how their mouths dont hurt blowing air-kisses and from all that fake smiling at all those social parties… Its a sad reality that people are getting apart from each other and sms is one indication of it…rather than meeting, people text message each other, but Diwali is essentially about family and friends, celebrating together… perhaps, most of us cannot celebrate Diwali with our extended clan anymore, but their smses remind us of the good times spent together… and its good to know that they remembered to message us during the happier time of the year…
Bustling markets my foot! of course people who gather and shop on streets cant afford to shop in classy malls and designer shops… of crackers, I agree, that the sound pollution isnt good, but thats the only thing I agree with … though I am used to be awakened by someone bursting crackers bang at 5.00 am every year, and I havent yet taken the pains of knowing who it was this year, I admit to having done the same thing years ago myself!! Yes, Diwali is ritualistic with all its poojas and abhyangsnaans at the dawn etc… but without these, it wouldnt be Diwali anymore…
Lastly, something totally unrelated to Diwali as the topic of this post, but very relevant to ‘hypocrisy’ -which I thought was the underlying theme of this post… I recently ran into someone and the topic somehow turned to society and social norms … eventually he stated that he was against his father who lit a zero bulb in the mandir that they have at home, when there were so many poor people starving in India… somehow I wasnt convinced with the notion that his father was squandering and it had direct impact on the poor people of India. I should probably have advised him to curb his meaningless long talks on the cellphone and donate the difference to some charitable organization… or maybe save some money by not smoking for a period and donate that money…. Probably this is not hypocrisy…its more of misconceived ideas about resources and the meaning of saving resources and making a good use of them!!
Random
Posted by: pradsword on: September 16, 2008
The tremendous pain and hurt that I saw last saturday in the eyes of someone very close to me is haunting me even now.
A relationship is alive so long as the principles remain the same. Otherwise, it is the breach of trust. It is the changed principles that lead to changed behaviour. So the ‘actions’ of people are in essence the ‘reactions’ resulting out of changed basics. I used to always think that so long as the individuals agree on the essentials, the relationship may go through its ups and downs, but will sail through. Thats what I believed till last Saturday…. The world is not a utopia! relationships may fail because of a smallest splinter.. Though I am still reeling in shock , Is life so fragile? built around egos and prejudices? apparently so… in Marathi, there’s a saying, taali don hatanni vajte. Khara aahe! but human beings commit errors. If one of them cant forgive, the others have to, to make the relationship going… else all of us will soon become isolated islands…
Anyways, this is second day when I was at home before 9.30 and could chat up to the heart’s fill with my family. So 8 more days to go! but I still couldnt jog. It was raining heavily throughout the day…
