No Time To Stand And Stare

Three days back, I was downstairs staring at the road, expecting my cab. I was late to office and to my dismay; the driver had informed me about another ten minute delay due to the traffic block somewhere in the city. After few minutes a kid came out of the elevator followed by his caretaker. The moment he was out, he started running around the corridor, excited about the wide space around him. A minute later another tot of his age came out of the same elevator. The company seemed to get more exciting and the two ran after each other ever happily.

It was a great pleasure watching them having a gala time. They were not bothered about how the rest of the day would go. They were not bothered about their nationalities. They weren’t bothered about the two caretakers who were running behind them. They weren’t bothered about their back packs. They weren’t bothered about the weather. (It was a cold day.) They fell on each other and began to rise immediately, but weren’t about the fall as well.

To put the scene to an end; came the school bus. The name read ‘Salmiya Play School’. Now it was the caretakers’ turn to put the back packs in place. One of them grabbed one of the kid’s arm and dragged him towards the bus. The other kid started down the few stairs, when he stood for a second staring at the bus (not sure what was on his mind). The next second, the caretaker shook him from his thoughts, directing him towards the bus. I wonder if the kid would get another minute of the whole day to stare at anything.

Then is when I realized, I had a few minutes to stare. Thanks to the traffic. Since then, it’s taken me three days to pen down this post.

What is this Life if Full of care
We have no time to stand and stare!!!!

--William Henry Davies

The woods are lovely dark and deep
But I have promises to keep
And Miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

--Robert Frost

Gone Are Those Days

Gone Are Those Days
When I sat beside you
Listening to the tit bit jokes
You read from the weekly.

Gone Are Those Days
When you gave me all I wanted
As surprise gifts all the time
You never let me ask

Gone Are Those Days
When you gifted us
With the best games to play
On the last day of school

Gone Are those Days
When you drew the patterns
On the floor for us
Only to fill up with flowers and colours

Gone Are Those Days
When you consoled me
After every concert
I didn’t do well, though

Gone Are Those Days
When you treated my pals
With your best dishes
Any chance didn’t you miss.

Gone Are Those Days
When you made my dress collection
It was time for me to leave school
Only to see me a budding graduate

Gone Are Those Days
When you got me to perform on stage
Standing behind the curtains
It was all your effort, you rejoiced yet

Gone Are Those Days
When you celebrated
Every Milestone I reached
With all the pride in the world

Gone Are Those Days
When we spent every moment
Merry and Happy
Will I treasure these all my life

Now Are These Days
When I cherish our every moment
With a smile lighting my face
Heaviness befalls my heart though

p.s: It’s seven years since she bid adieu, but What I am today is all what she did to me. Dedicated to my beloved Mother.

Vacation Fever

Being severely affected by the vacation fever for the past few months, am slowly recovering to write this post. The attack was scheduled only for three weeks, but the symptoms existed for quite a long time before that.
Since the time I left my country, vacations play an important role in my life. It’s the big factor that keeps you going for the rest of the year. Below is the sequence of events involved in implementing a successful vacation.
1. Decide on the dates; let others at work know about it so that there are no clashes. This is normally done at the beginning of the year, when leave balances are credited.
2. Search for tickets; Login to all the websites and check out the different flights, routes and cost and book the tickets. Lesser the choice it’s easier. This step is time consuming with a huge number of airlines providing too many flights and routes; the cost varying based on the route and time. To worsen things here, all of a sudden you will find all flights are being filled like crazy in a day’s or may be even an hour’s time. Finally you land up booking the tickets based on availability. This step is normally done at least 2-3 months before.
3. Time to start shopping; Think of every person in the other part of the world and decide and shop the suitable things. Of course not to forget yourself, shop whatever you haven’t done for the past many days.
4. Inform your buddies about your trip; just thinking of a possibility of meeting up.
5. Time to think about official submission of the leave application; Now you may have to slog to avoid rejection of the application. Try to achieve near to impossible in the next one month if you got to get things right.
6. Roughly plan the trip; the visits, the movies to be watched, the malls to be visited, the pleasure trips to be arranged, the shopping to be done and what not. Everything is on the list and at this point of time it seems possible to do all this in the scheduled 3 weeks.
7. Now you are almost done with the near to impossible target, so submit the leave papers officially, praying for the right things to happen. Yes and finally it’s done.
8. Dust out your suitcases, empty the contents and dump them somewhere and start packing; Fear of excess baggage prevails until everything fits in and the baggage is weighed and checked.
Out of sheer excitement, it’s difficult to get a glimpse of sleep for at least a week before you travel. Then the big day comes, when you leave home with the luggage and your heart beats faster when you reach the airport. Flying seems to be really interesting.
Now landing at the destination, the first thought is about the return journey which will start from the same point. The time starts flying from this point and in no time you are back at the same place to board the flight for the return. This journey normally seems like a never ending one and sleeping during the entire flight becomes the only solution.
All is not over yet. Cleaning, unpacking, sharing experience and photographs continue for at least a week. Now Gear up, you got to get back to normalcy. And yes start planning for the next vacation.

An Expensive Mistake

As any other day, I was passing by the other side of the department. An empty seat caught my attention and for a moment, a lean, ever smiling figure solving network issues on the phone flashed across my mind. Then suddenly I realized I will never ever see him in my life again. Yes, he was the poor victim of a ruthless car accident.

Drunken Driving with over speeding caused the death of a young boy and for no fault of his own.

Drinking for pleasure may be considered personal right. But drunken driving is just not that. Every nation has its own laws against drunken driving. But it is inevitable that the law cannot do much after the irrecoverable damage is done.

It’s normal to say people learn from their mistakes. But drunken driving is too expensive a mistake to commit.

P.S: The message that I am trying to convey by this post is not new and it has been brought out several times as chain emails, articles or by word of mouth. We hear about several similar cases, but when witnessed personally we realize the significance. I am just hoping that this post might enlighten somebody or other who takes a chance of visiting my blog.

Height Of Irritation

@5.50 AM
I peeped out of my blanket to look at the clock. I didn’t want to get out of the bed for two reasons. First of all, I wished I hadn’t another tough day to face. Two, there was less than an hour for me to leave for work. I jumped out of the bed, brushed my teeth and then sat on my bed sipping my coffee thinking of the day ahead.

@6.10 AM
I realized, I had about 30 minutes to get ready and I was still sipping my coffee. I sprang out and rushed to have a quick shower.

@6.40 AM
I picked up my shirt only to find that it was not washed properly. I picked up another and found that as dirty as the first one. The third time I pulled out a printed shirt, wore it quickly , went into the kitchen picked up an apple from the refrigerator, then sprayed some perfume and ran down to find my bus waiting for me. I got into it and sat quietly thinking, “Why did I make it to the bus just like every other day?”

@7.30 AM
I was on my desk switching on the dumb PC and sipping my tea. Being the last day of the week, I had no wish to take up new tasks, just wanted to finish off my pending tasks. I had one big item on the list, not a very interesting one to be done on a Thursday. I browsed through my emails and found one of the jobs done the previous day was questioned (not rejected though). “Oops, why does this happen only to me?”

@8 AM
I had replied to my emails by this time, including the “questioned” job. Then I walked across to my friend’s desk to check if we could sit together at 11 AM to finish of the big pending task and he was more than happy to do that with me. I got back to my seat to find one unread email on my Gmail Inbox. It was from my brother. I could guess that it was about an issue that was bothering both of us for the last week. We exchanged about ten emails. (Chat applications are disabled in office. So this is our way of chatting.) Yes, the issue is still not resolved. “I don’t feel like working today. When will the day end? I want to go home and sleep”

@10.15 AM
By now, I had completed couple of adhoc jobs and looked at the bottom right corner on my PC and was startled. “I am late for the meeting by 15 minutes already.” I slipped 2 pieces of apple into my mouth and picked up the required docs and ran to the basement only to find that none of the attendees were there and the meeting had been postponed. “At the least, allow me to do my work.”

@11 AM
After greeting all my colleagues in the basement, I went back to my desk to find that I had about 20 emails to read. There was one email that again deteriorated the working mood. It was intended to four other people in the department though and served as a warning for the rest of us. “Not just me. Others have had a bad day as well”

@12 PM
As I sat glancing at the email, there rose a voice beside me. “Swathi, there is an issue with the release that we made day before yesterday. I don’t know how you want to term it, issue or problem or serious .......” When he completed his narration, I said “It’s a disaster.” We both walked into his manager’s room first and then into my manager’s room to explain the situation, before they could jump on us. While I walked back to my desk, I thought “Why the hell is all this happening to me, that too on a Thursday. What about the job that was planned to finish today”

@5 PM
We sat testing the solution for the disastrous problem after I had taken a short 15 minute break. It was far beyond the working hours and almost everybody had gone home. We were a group of six people still sitting tied up. It happened so that all of them were at my desk for a break. As we started discussing the current state of affairs, we burst out laughing. Here is a group of irritated people laughing their heart out. All that I discovered is that every other person is as irritated as I am, though for different reasons.

@6 PM
Three of us got back to work, while the other three drove home. We quickly finished our testing. I completed the final documentation and sent the solution for implementation. My friend drove me back home as we discussed a dozen other things. When I reached, I felt lighter and had a better evening.

p.s:- There is nothing called a bad day. Perception matters a lot. Look around, you might feel better.