piggy p

All that I said about the ‘calming’ rain is turning out to be so bogus… its quite like ‘driving me nuts’ rain now. Been raining since the past 3 to 4 days like crazy and its very depressing… cant go anywhere… ( not that I otherwise do!) still …its very dark not even 6 in evening… maybe some hurricane coming… and they will name it maybe ‘Murugan Murthy’ or something!

So to shake off the lethargy I decide to go to the gymnasium in the building… Before coming to this place I had hardly been to a gym… So, for the first few times it was a lil embarrassing to accept that I was new to all the gym paraphernalia. (for example.. the first day I was standing on the treadmill wondering why its not working. A smiling security guard came in with a string to which a magnet key is attached for the treadmill to work..! Ignoramus species that I am, I responded with a sheepish smile!)
But, how long can u work out… without any professional guidance. Also, standing on the treadmill you are facing the windows, which is good.. however it’s the ‘dhobhi’ outside the window facing you which can get a little distracting..! Felt like socking his face to wipe out that smirky leery grin…it was like his version of Baywatch.. (‘no tight tee shirts from next time’.. I make a mental note). So with very little to do around except the treadmill…I look around and try some weights and end up looking even more foolish.. coz I don’t know the next step after picking up the dumbbells! So, I choose the next best… cycling…. I peddle away like crazy!!
After the invigorating 45 minutes ‘workout’.. I come out all sweating.. wondering where to spend all the newly acquired vigor!!
Reclining on the bed… am really hungry but in no mood to cook… so the conversation in my head goes something like this:
Ummm.. icecream!! .. hmm.. noo.. icecream after workout??? No never
Hmm… maggi! Maggi?? No, its junk…
Cold coffee? Cant…No milk…
Juice? yeah juice is good….

but the question is who will get the juice for me??

So much for a work out, from a lazy pig to a looney ‘old’ pig!

Till next time!

PS:The 'old' is added to the pig because an acquaintance I met at the Infy interviews couple of days back told me with a very 'i am so wise' smile ‘your eyes give away your age’…

Thanks! huh!

wanted to tell her that her ass gave away her weight!>:P )

..paved paradise

Sitting in the house and staring at the walls and altering between reading Outlook, Shantaram, and watching VH1.. i realize how lonely it must have been for mom all these years...waiting for ppl to come back from their workplaces ... just to see them scurrying to their rooms and pushing off the next morning..without showing any trace of gratitude.

Gratitude for cooking meals for us... washing our clothes... keeping the house clean and liveable...ensuring that we were safe and warm!

I miss mom.. and that snug warm mom smell!

And just at this moment when i am writing this, guess what VH1 is playing?


"Dont it always seem to go,
that we dont know what we've got....
till its gone...
we paved paradise
to put up a parking lot'


And..is that just a coincidence? Nah.. i dont think so!!


Till next time!

purani jeans aur mere yaar...??

'...No one could ever know me
No one could ever see me
Seems you're the only one who knows
What it's like to be me
Someone to face the day with
Make it through all the rest with
Someone I'll always laugh with
Even at my worst I'm best with you, yeah
It's like you're always stuck in second gear
And it hasn't been your day, your week, your month,or even your year....

...I'll be there for you .....'


I miss having F.R.I.E.N.D.S :(

Dreams

I have never been really curious about dreams. I think they are very much an extension of your subconscious. We see the people we have known or meet everyday. A refelection of our own fears, hopes, ambitions, some which we very well know about and some which we consciously or subconsciously ignore. In a way, dreams are a great medium to understand your own thoughts in a gist. For example, if you have a recurring dream about certain people, they are the people who you value the most or maybe desire the most. Or maybe if you see some place where u have been .. that’s where you really want to be or really not want to be, depending on your experience.
I’ve had two most recurring dreams since childhood, since I was maybe 12 or 14. One, that I was smoking a cigarette…. And I concluded that was because I hated it and I was scared that someday I will also fall prey to it. ( somehow, it came true..for whatever reasons! And I have never smoked in my dreams since then.. which is obvious) And the other one…. that somehow I am all alone in this planet. Alone as in completely alone… and it would freak me out…and somehow that’s because it is one of my insecurities. Having to abandon friends and loved ones very often, which was because of frequent moving from one place to another or other arbitrary reasons.
So, somehow I tend to rationalize all my dreams and they are not that intriguing to me.
However, recently I have started to get very violent dreams, ….rape, murder, accidents, fire accidents, where I always seem to be the victim somehow. .. and for the first time in years I wasn’t sure how I should interpret these nightmares. I think I got my answer in a passage from the book I am reading…

“.. dream is a place where wish and fear meet. Where the wish and the fear are exactly the same, we call the dream a nightmare.”


Till next time!

(m)e-learning

As I still try to cope up with the ‘peas and carrots’ syndrome, God intervenes and I find myself standing on a new turf trying not to look stupid. Recently, got an offer from an assessment company to work part time as panelist for their client. Their client happens to be, the IT giant, Infosys. (Btw, this is supposed to be confidential information, and because my blog is read by a large audience ranging between 2 to3, I am quite sure this will remain confidential.)

So, yet again, I am into a new kind of job all over again. (although, this is just a part time sorta thing.. once in 2 weeks or so) I interviewed nearly 40 candidates for the job of a s/w engineer…..can u beat that?.. me? Interviewing prospective s/w engineers?? The more nontechnical I think I am … the more I get into the ‘geek world’. However, it was a completely different experience. I was more nervous than the candidates… I am getting good at pretending so acted super cool. Two panelists interview each candidate (thankfully) so I had a co – panelist who was, as a matter of coincidence, my namesake. So the introductions went.. "Hi/Good morning… I am Pallavi, and this is my colleague, Pallavi.” Always got a smile from the candidates on that one ( I think most of them thought it was a joke!). Got to hear all kinds of south indian English accents there can be!! But it was interesting. Kids most of them, fresh out of engineering colleges from across the country (mostly south and mostly andhraites!) The most difficult part was to understand their English … heard sentence contructions in all the tenses except the correct tense…Examples:

Tell us something about yourself?

• Myself, xyz, I am doing my school from Guttakal district, After that I am doing college from Hyderabad. I am doing specialization……’
  (Doing??? What?? Havent you done that already?)
• I will be doing schooling from…., and engineering from …..
  (Will be doing..?? aren’t u born yet??)
  

Most of them like to talk in present continuous whether it was in past or will happen in future. Was quite exasperating that way. But then most of these were kids with 75% marks in ‘electronics and instrumentation’ field, Math whizzes, scholarship holders, gold medal winners.

Intelligent but hilarious at times. Confident inspite of poor communication skills.
Here is an example of a conversation for ‘Singh is King’ fans ( my favorite)
(On the application form there is column which says ‘Citizenship’.. this guy fills in ‘Patiala’!!, Another column ‘ Any recent major illness/ surgery :’ he fills in ‘Fever in November 2004’. (Seems like decided to completely ignore the words ‘recent’ and ‘major' !!)
We decide to give him a second chance for the citizenship part.

‘ So, Rakesh.. you are a citizen of…??’
‘Patiala’ ( with complete confidence and a wide grin!)
(We look at each other and think he is a open and shut case!!)
'Oh ok.. so what is Patiala famous for??'
‘ oh.. I will tell you.. as u know, there is a song by Jassi called ‘ kudi gujraat di’. There he tells us about patiala..( sings the line about ‘patiala’… which is apparently famous for silk ‘naalaas’)
( my co –paneslit is a kannadigan so cannot help and bursts out laughing!!)
No madam, this is very truth and Patiala is also famous for ‘jootis’ ...Punjabi jootis of excellent qualities.. and lots of foreigners come to buy jootis……blah blah..”
We decide to change the topic…
‘ Rakesh, tell us something about the sports you enjoy’
( starts with cricket and how he has been a captain of some team in his college… and goes on and on.. so my co – panelist..asks to talk about tennis’
‘I think that tennis sports is excellent future. I think sania mirza is a ‘boom’ to the nation.
“Oh you mean ‘boon’?”
No no, boom B -o -o –m’ (spells it out for us!!.. !)
( touché)
Incidentally, this guy has a great analytical abilities which he demonstrates by solving quite a difficult brain teaser in seconds!

Lesson learnt -Not only appearances, but accents and communication skills can also be very deceptive!!

Two days of interviewing and leaves me quite mentally exhausted. I decide to sit with ‘Shantaram’ and the soothing narration by its author. Ii am quite enjoying the book. The guy is writes amazingly beautifully. Here is one of the excerpts that left me quite touched..

“One of the reasons we crave love and seek it so desperately, is that love is the only cure for loneliness, and shame, and sorrow. But some feelings sink so deep in the heart that only loneliness can help you find them again. Some truths about yourself are so painful that only shame can help you live with them. And some things are just so sad that only your soul can do the crying for you”
Gregory David Roberts

Hard to imagine that coming from a guy who was once a hard core druggist and a criminal. Past...also very deceptive!!

Learnings and more learnings!

Bandarr ka Munkey

My sister sent this picture ystrdy. And since then i am so dying to see my munkey. Isnt he is so goddamn beautiful?? And i adore him more than any kid i have adored in the past 27 yrs...
I guess he is the only living being on this earth who has the ability to wake me up from my deepest slumber without annoying me. He just comes near me and cluthes my 'nose' with his soft plump tiny hands.. yeah nose.. the nose ring is maybe what always attracts him the most!! I just smile inspite of myself.
Unlike me, he is a happy kid.. .. always giggling his infectious giggle! U gotta meet this guy to believe the infectiousness! !

He has started to mumble and repeat words .. heard him on the phone last week..
My sister asks "Maasi kahan hai?"
"Bang' gol" pat comes the reply in the cutest voice ever.

I sigh and try to smile at the same time. Oh mannnn...!! How i miss him??!!!


Quite a kid, this one!! has to be... my siter's genes after all!

i miss u munkey!! :(( and i miss my moti!
(we call each other 'moti' since i dont remm when, coz we both were extremely thin!!)

till next time!

PS: the previous blog about the 'getting used to' is ................Bull Crap!! Its not getting used to.. its 'giving up'!! )#%*@#*%$#@%&)@$)&%^@!!

just a matter of time...

I sit out in the balcony with the fat copy of 'Shantaram'. .Just the thought of reading a book that fat (963 pages) makes me happy. It just goes on and on and the characters grow on you. You begin to feel a part of the whole story. Its nice.
Its a beautiful day outside. Its raining. Its amazing how it is always almost a very 'polite rain' in this city. No angry clouds, or winds, or water lashing at the windows. Its a very quiet rain. Calming. Drenching the buildings clean of dirt, soaking the palm trees into the richest green. It even stops after a while for sometime, as if giving the all the rainwater some time to get soaked up in the mud. Then, it starts again.
I am still amused by the climate of this city. Its almost perfect. Like Delhi in early December.... Or like Rajgarh on the day we left. As I sit in the balcony admiring nature in all its glory, i wonder why arent any more people enjoying this beautiful sight? But then i realize its just a matter of time and i will also be sitting inside preferring to watch television or finishing some daily chores. Its surprising (and a little sad maybe), the way we get used to things whether beautiful, wonerful, painful, or ugly.
However, I believe thats the key to human existence..getting used to things.

till next time!