The Other Side of Life

 ...Durust Aaye That was the theme of 2021 for me. Realising some things late but feeling happy about realising these. For instance:  Life is not measured by success at work. Reading more books is not as important as reading meaningfully. It's ok to start from scratch and learn something. Taking a break is good. Not having clarity isn't necessarily bad. Eating consciously is good. Movies are long and patience is important. Entertainment need not make me think. Dumb jokes are good enough for me. Social media is a waste of time. In other words, I have become old. Or, to put it in more flattering terms, I have wisened. 😇 Other than that, 2021 was alright. I finally got to come to India towards the end. And that's all that matters. Dear 2022, as always, keep it simple - I want more family time, less digital, more real world. Rest of the things will fall in place.  Here's to a more fulfilling 2022 for everyone. Hope it is really back to normal now. Done with new normals. Ju...

And just as soon as the clock struck nine, He opened the app to check cabs online. Without wasting a moment, he hit book, He had beat the rush by hook or by crook. In the cab, he tapped his fingers in impatience, Thankfully, he had company to match his cadence, A driver who honked till the road gave way, Together they both were now in the lead, yay! He got off at the airport and wheeled his luggage in, And then stood in the long line for check-in, The line was moving too slow for his speed, So he broke the line saying, "sorry, my flight's leaving, indeed!" Despite all his efforts, the flight was delayed He paced around impatient and frayed. "Ok, parents with infants board first.", They said. He was the first to follow, the parents right ahead The flight got further delayed  on the runway, Trapped in his seatbelt, he loudly chastised the delay. When finally it took off, he drifted into sleep. Probably dreaming of Usain Bolt's sweep. The fl...

I am so miffed at myself for not writing. I love writing.  I have no idea why I am being so lazy.  Maybe because there's too much disruption in life. I am watching the show, "The Good Wife" and one of my favourite dialogues in the show is when someone asks the protagonist if she is happy with what's happening and she says, "I just want my world to stop spinning."  That's my status message for now. The world must stop spinning.  Disruption is overrated. We must celebrate normalcy. And write I must. Hence, I am starting my own blogathon. Readers or no readers. I am going to write everyday for the foreseeable future.  Ok, one month. Fine, let's be realistic. One week. Let's take it a day at a time. I will write tomorrow too. I hope. Cheers Preeks

In crass Hindi, this moment would have been aptly defined as "Laut ke buddhu, ghar ko aaye".  Exact translation would mount to "Fools return home" and that's what this post is. So, after taking a break from work, doing a second Masters, getting a job in Singapore and moving countries, I am back on the blog.  Who would have thunk? An year back, I had no idea this is what I would be doing in an year. But then again, do we know what we will be doing an year from now?  Lesson learnt. No planning, no guessing.  Just keep exploring, keep doing new things, keep learning, keep meeting new people. Things will happen. Trust. Like a fool (who returned home!) So, while I discover this part of my life, Singapore, I thought I need the blog more than the blog needs me. Because moving countries is not in the least as glamorous as it sounds.  There's the whole deal with selling all belongings which you have hoarded lovingly over the years. A...

I still remember the total Solar Eclipse of 1995 vaguely. It was on Diwali that year and it was visible to the naked eye in India. We got those special viewing glasses and made a mini-picnic out of the day.  I can't remember seeing too many eclipse visibly after that. Unsurprisingly, yesterday's lunar eclipse was big on my agenda. Only problem - my laziness did not keep pace with my excitement. So, when I started seeing the red moon and people walked in with their cameras and tripod stands, I was ridden with guilt. I ran upstairs, only to discover my camera was not charged. And that the husband never taught me how to use the tripod. So while I ruminated on this, the earth's shadow came, took bites of the moon, gulped it in all, made it red, and stealthily, left the scene to leave us with a supermoon. And I got none of it on my camera. However. I woke up this morning at 6:30 am and looked out of the balcony, to see the supermoon hanging over the city, looking so gor...

Today I learnt, the exact way in which jet-lag works and my mind is boggled. I had the weirdest, worst possible understanding in my head. And I realized today, how wrong I was. I basically thought, your body clock matches the clock of the place you land. All you have to do, is catch up on sleep. For example, if you are flying to London from India and reach London at 11 pm, India time, which is 6:30 pm London time, it is just perfect, because now, you can immediately fall asleep and not wake up till 7 am, London time, which is 11:30 am India time. Now, you are all caught up on sleep. If you are confused, don't worry. This is the wrong explanation. The real explanation is this. Just because the time shows you gained 5 hours, does not mean your body knows that. (That I did not know this, when this is the exact definition of jet lag, is something so strange and surprising that I am amazed). You don't want to wake up till 7 am London time, but you will get up at 2:30 am Lon...

There was a man called Bob. He had a brother who was a bit of a moron.  Once, Bob was leaving for a long-awaited vacation for two weeks and asked his moron brother to take care of his cat, while he was gone. A week into the vacation, Bob calls his brother to check in. After the preliminary talk, he asks how the cat is doing. His brother replies, "Oh yeah, about that. The cat died yesterday." Bob was devastated. And also furious. He said to his brother, "How insensitive are you? Couldn't you have broken the news more gently, so I could be prepared?" The moron brother is confused and asks for an example how the news should be broken. So Bob explains, "On the first call, you should have said, your cat climbed up the roof, it's unable to come down. On the second call, you could say, the firemen are here, they are trying their best. On the third call, you say, we are all trying hard, but she's not coming and not eating either. On the ...

Of the many many things wrong with our world, the one that stands out is our emphasis on perfection, even though, we know none of us are perfect. If perfection didn't matter, make-up wouldn't exist. Filters on Instagram would be quite useless.   If perfection didn't matter, we would not fall over ourselves trying to tell the world how much we love each other. There would be no such thing as a perfect love story. There would be no ideal couple. There would be no "made for each other". If perfection didn't matter, we would not judge anyone, for anything. We would make peace with our faults and other's faults. And live in the joy that we are not A+. If perfection didn't matter, we would not make small talk with anyone. Just enjoy the awkward silence of two introverts meeting each other and not knowing what to say. To the world though, perfection matters. So, in a weirdly, twisted, complicated way, we try to put ourselves out there, w...

Do you have a happy place? I never did. But now, I do. Last month, Sherlock and I were on a trip of a lifetime. We went driving all around Ireland and Scotland. Here on, if I use the word beautiful anywhere in the rest of my post, please feel free to report my blog as Spam, because there cannot be a bigger disservice to the places we went to than describing them with an adjective as trite as that. It rained a lot there. Except on one day. The day we went to Cliffs of Moher.  On a bright sunny day, we arrived at the Cliffs of Moher. The geography of the place is quite logical - there are cliffs extending to both sides of the Visitor Centre. You arrive at the Centre and decided whether you want to go left or right. And then start walking along the cliffs. The trail is amazing, to say the least. It overlooks water and one step here and there, you can say goodbye to all that you love. So we reached the Centre and decided to walk towards the right. WIth sun out...

I am old enough to clearly remember the days when TV was not the all consuming entertainment entity that it is today. There were exactly two channels on TV - very creatively named DD1 and DD2. If you were not watching News, Krishi Darshan or Surabhi on DD1, it meant you had succumbed to the lure of entertainment on DD2.  By entertainment, I refer to the 2 weekly comedy shows by Sri Adhikari Brothers. Conversations in school on Wednesdays never failed to mention Sriman Srimati. (It just occurred to me, that as of today, the actors who played Sriman and Srimati are no more. Just made me feel a little older).  There was also Rangoli, the weekly show that exposed us to the big bad world of Bollywood songs. If "indecent" songs like Choli Ke Peeche were played, we were promptly sent out of the room to bring water or to set the table. Few smart people managed to record the good songs for viewing later. My grandparents were quite progressive in that sense. They would record ...

Many experts are of the opinion that very soon machines will be taking over our jobs. I am happy to report that as per my calculations, these experts are quite precisely wrong. At least as far as India is concerned. Take the self-driving cars that the tech world is so pumped about. I am willing to bet my car's never used 5th gear on this, that these over-hyped machines will not even survive the 3 km stretch from Silk Board to Koramangala in Bangalore. Here it is, cruising along at a glorious 6 kmph, with all its sensors showing a safe cruise ahead because the traffic light says green, when all of a sudden a hand pops out bang in front of the dashboard. It is, of course, the royal pedestrian (and 17 more people who decide to follow this man, as he leads them to freedom into the other side of the road), whose need to cross the road is so paramount a requirement, that the world must come to a grinding halt and watch the procession, led by "the hand", cross the road int...

If you have never taken a real hit on your self-worth, may I suggest you to try giving your car for service?  The service person's diagnosis of your car will make you want to go home and tear into shreds that precious Engineering degree certificate that your parents have saved so proudly, along with a picture of you in the black graduation robes, and go join whatever course the chap in the blue uniform took, that gave him the ability to give such an astute diagnosis with such intellectual sounding words. Like today, my service technician told me that, "There is an urgent requirement for me to get a zinc oxide coating on the Silencer because the existing anti rust treatment of the underbody was not sufficient for the silencer, since the special alloy based chemical composition of its exterior makes it immune to the anti rust coating and hence, is susceptible to damage from water and hence, the need for me to spend a holy Rs 4500 on getting this absolutely essential zi...

The other day, I was getting my daily dose of depressing news from the newspaper, when my maid pointed to a picture of Sasikala on the paper and asked me if I support her or OPS.  I shrugged and said, noone really, I don't have an opinion on this matter. I could literally see her image of me in her head come crashing down and her dusting the remains of my broken shattered self image into her dust pan. She was disappointed in me for not having an opinion! I don't blame her. We have become an opinion hungry society. If you are not a card carrying opinionated bigot today, you are an uninformed person, living in a cave, trying to light a fire with two stones. You are expected to have an opinion on everything. On topics related to our lives - Apple or Android? Beach or Hills? Eat pizza crust or leave it? Dogs or Cats? Books or Kindle? Books or Books converted to Movies?  On topics not related to our lives directly - Trump or Obama? Right or Left? Amma or...

Amongst the many mysteries of the human mind, the one that will go on to enthrall curious psychologists and social behavior scientists for long, will be the innate hurry the human being is in, while deboarding a flight. There is almost no logic on earth that can explain that impatience. For the longest time, I thought this was a very Indian thing. But on a flight to Rome, I had that same familiar nudge from my co-passenger - "Go, or let me go." and I realized, it's not an Indian thing, it's a human thing. On one of my numerous Mumbai-Bangalore trips, I decided to design an experiment. I genuinely wanted to know what hurrying up in those few minutes leads to - Do you progress in life faster, do you get promoted, is your work-life balance better, are you happier and the other not-so philosophical questions. So this time when my excited co-passenger nudged me to give way, when the flight tires had barely even experienced the friction on the runway that caus...

If I had to describe the year 2016 in one word, I would choose "Meh". That's exactly how it was. Work, which occupies a majority of my awake life, was meh. Sure, we did some exciting stuff, but nothing the way I would have wanted. When I don't use my brains and start agreeing with others' plans, I become meh. As always, there was a lot of travel for work, which was also meh because it was mostly Mumbai or rural Karnataka, both of which I have had more than enough of.  The one thing I always look forward to is meeting more people and learning more from them. That didn't happen much this year. So, another point to Meh. I should have done something to change things, but that did not occur to me till the end of the year. By the time it occurred to me, looking back at the year that was became agonizingly painful. Meh. Meh and meh. On the personal front, Sherlock made some changes to his work, which was good. But we asked ourselves a lot of...