That call came all of a sudden. I was balancing a plate of food, an overstuffed purse, and a mobile in my hands. The mobile hadn’t lost its ability to display the incoming number, and I was thankful to the fossil (read: mobile) for that. I kept the plate amidst a gang of cheerful friends, pressed the ‘answer’ button (which God willingly hadn’t been damaged yet) and moved apart.
It was an official call. The caller was melancholy. In another five minutes, it all happened. My performance ratings for the fiscal year were not even close to my expectations. My spirits faced a mighty downfall. My smiles collapsed to give room to expressions of indifference and frustration. I was facing away from my friends, and I could still hear them laughing. I stared through windows into space. The guy had already disconnected the call, but I was pretending to be on call. My eyes welled up. I am not an over ambitious techie who expects a double promotion with an onsite project in these times of recession. The right to desire the minimum is still mine. The passion and loyalty behind it is genuine and as real as life. I felt like being dropped unfeelingly from the top of a mountain into bare vacuum.
Holding the mobile closer to my ear, I rubbed off that tear with my dupatta. I was still on pretending mode. I was told that the guy who did my ratings had left. There weren’t officially anyone to help me, even though there would always be peers to join in my disastrous performance ratings and console me. My eyes were still fixed on nowhere. The urge to go back and join them at lunch was declining by the minute. If I go back now, I knew that my face would declare aloud the frustration which I do not prefer to disclose. It would spoil the only brief camaraderie which we all enjoy during lunch hours. I dint want to put the fly in the pudding.
I grabbed up some fake expressions, painted them beautifully on my face, and walked back merrily to the bunch of friends who never stopped eating. I talked and laughed as normally as I would always do, and left the cafeteria gradually, showing no signs of the fast depleting courage.
Back in my den, I leaned back and got lost in thoughts. I called up my sister and talked the matter out. Its almost out of my head now. But there are traces.
These ratings sure left a mark of despair,din't they? Not to let history repeat itself, is still in my ever optimistic hands. Safe until the next fiscal year.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Dear Papa... With Love.. :)
Happy Birthday Pappa…!!!
I am short of words here, but expressing completely my feelings and love for Papa is next to impossible. Here is a composition of a few things you might not have known.
Whenever I order cold coffee, I am reminded of you. Cos you used to make cold coffee for me and try to wake me up from my long afternoon naps. After repeated failed attempts you would say that the cold coffee would get cold!
I still don’t wear nail polish on nails of my right hand, because you don’t like it.(I know you don’t like it if I paint my left hand nails too, but sorry, that’s unavoidable!)
I used to appear annoyed and freaked out when you genuinely say that there’s no change in my appearance after I come back from the beauty parlor. But when you’re not noticing me, I would laugh my lungs out!
Even to this day, I don’t wear anything other than salwar while going to church, because you don’t like it otherwise.
Mummy , sis and me are in fact a welfare association trio effectively operating and functioning for you . We hold online STD meetings too. Beware we will soon come up with a bit insensitive decision on smoking.
My school friends love you more than me. I know that they dial my number to talk to you. You are a superhit among us girls! (Sorry Mummy)
When you drop me at tuitions, I would look at my watch and depending on the expected time that you reach home, I would console myself saying that you must have reached.
I still don’t know how to bind my books, as you did them so neatly until I passed out of Engineering College! (Anyone who reads this might say that you were responsible for pampering me, but I say that you made my books last longer!)
Even today, I am obsessed about Bata footwear. (Remember Bata ballerina school shoes..?)
You may just coldly flip pages through my drawing book, but I know you are proud of me when I hear you telling others that I make beautiful pencil sketches.
I loved it when you gifted my grandma ‘Junior Horlicks 1-2-3’.
I know you’ll be furious to know that I am not at par with current affairs and I am scared when you talk about it, but I am also proud to see my Papa knowing everything in the world.
You are so systematic in calculating my taxes, renewing savings and updating all financial stuff ..! Keep up the good work..! You are also my personal tax consultant!
Snoring during church sermons is not appreciable, but being able to summarize biblical verses and being wiser than the priest himself surely is.
We are really thankful for letting us accommodate our kitten at home after overcoming a lot of hesitation from your end . I also remember those five injections for which you diligently kept the dates and took me to, after it hurt me and disappeared. I’ve not asked you this, but I know that you know how it disappeared.
When I asked you whether we could adopt those three kittens from aunt’s house, and you said that I should choose between you and the kittens, I embarrassed you by taking a while to decide. But that was just to irritate you. I was sure I would choose you.
I am totally jealous of your friends, because, to this day, I couldn’t find one like you. But chill, I have YOU!
When you twisted my ear for losing the 151st umbrella you bought me, I was totally in pain. But I use those ear-twisting memories for being more careful.
You taught us to be patient and to shut our mouths tight when we’re angry and are in catastrophic situations. I appreciate the way you do it, but I don’t have one thousandth of the virtue you have to follow it.
This blog is dedicated to you, Papa, my best friend ever. Rock solid at life’s turbulences, soft hearted to your little girls, epitome of patience and good will, fountain of wisdom, and whose love is endless and boundless…that’s my Papa, who is the reason for who and where I am today, my role model, sole strength and support. My love for you knows no ends. Luckiest in the whole world I consider myself, for being born your daughter, and every day I thank the Almighty for giving me YOU. Love you loooots…!!!!
Long live His Highness Papa dear!!
MUAH!
I am short of words here, but expressing completely my feelings and love for Papa is next to impossible. Here is a composition of a few things you might not have known.
Whenever I order cold coffee, I am reminded of you. Cos you used to make cold coffee for me and try to wake me up from my long afternoon naps. After repeated failed attempts you would say that the cold coffee would get cold!
I still don’t wear nail polish on nails of my right hand, because you don’t like it.(I know you don’t like it if I paint my left hand nails too, but sorry, that’s unavoidable!)
I used to appear annoyed and freaked out when you genuinely say that there’s no change in my appearance after I come back from the beauty parlor. But when you’re not noticing me, I would laugh my lungs out!
Even to this day, I don’t wear anything other than salwar while going to church, because you don’t like it otherwise.
Mummy , sis and me are in fact a welfare association trio effectively operating and functioning for you . We hold online STD meetings too. Beware we will soon come up with a bit insensitive decision on smoking.
My school friends love you more than me. I know that they dial my number to talk to you. You are a superhit among us girls! (Sorry Mummy)
When you drop me at tuitions, I would look at my watch and depending on the expected time that you reach home, I would console myself saying that you must have reached.
I still don’t know how to bind my books, as you did them so neatly until I passed out of Engineering College! (Anyone who reads this might say that you were responsible for pampering me, but I say that you made my books last longer!)
Even today, I am obsessed about Bata footwear. (Remember Bata ballerina school shoes..?)
You may just coldly flip pages through my drawing book, but I know you are proud of me when I hear you telling others that I make beautiful pencil sketches.
I loved it when you gifted my grandma ‘Junior Horlicks 1-2-3’.
I know you’ll be furious to know that I am not at par with current affairs and I am scared when you talk about it, but I am also proud to see my Papa knowing everything in the world.
You are so systematic in calculating my taxes, renewing savings and updating all financial stuff ..! Keep up the good work..! You are also my personal tax consultant!
Snoring during church sermons is not appreciable, but being able to summarize biblical verses and being wiser than the priest himself surely is.
We are really thankful for letting us accommodate our kitten at home after overcoming a lot of hesitation from your end . I also remember those five injections for which you diligently kept the dates and took me to, after it hurt me and disappeared. I’ve not asked you this, but I know that you know how it disappeared.
When I asked you whether we could adopt those three kittens from aunt’s house, and you said that I should choose between you and the kittens, I embarrassed you by taking a while to decide. But that was just to irritate you. I was sure I would choose you.
I am totally jealous of your friends, because, to this day, I couldn’t find one like you. But chill, I have YOU!
When you twisted my ear for losing the 151st umbrella you bought me, I was totally in pain. But I use those ear-twisting memories for being more careful.
You taught us to be patient and to shut our mouths tight when we’re angry and are in catastrophic situations. I appreciate the way you do it, but I don’t have one thousandth of the virtue you have to follow it.
This blog is dedicated to you, Papa, my best friend ever. Rock solid at life’s turbulences, soft hearted to your little girls, epitome of patience and good will, fountain of wisdom, and whose love is endless and boundless…that’s my Papa, who is the reason for who and where I am today, my role model, sole strength and support. My love for you knows no ends. Luckiest in the whole world I consider myself, for being born your daughter, and every day I thank the Almighty for giving me YOU. Love you loooots…!!!!
Long live His Highness Papa dear!!
MUAH!
Sunday, August 2, 2009
An ode to Friendship..!!
Its friendship day, the only day I actually halt and think of my friends who support and care for me… as, on all other days I take them for granted. I am not such a perfectly lovable and sweet person. I am weird , impatient and horrifyingly short tempered. But it is a surprise that I still have friends, who know me well and do not bitch about me anyways.
Here is a tribute to my friends, as they dint simply happen to me, I handpicked them personally.
Here is to you, my friend, for..
1. Giggling, passing notes, drawing portraits of the teacher during classes(yeah, Miss.D) and playing pranks throughout… we painted the town RED!
2. Making my days from Std I to XII at Holy Angels Convent, the chapter of my life most visited , missed, and re-lived.
3. For all the lovely Archies greetings, innumerable gifts, soft toys and 36756 friendship bands, and for screaming at me if I don’t wear those bands for the rest of the year.
4. For calling me up on my birthday every year at 12:00 am sharp and making me say that you’re the first. ( I usually say that to anyone who calls after that too..! sorry idiot.)
5. For coming over to my house and making my neighbors wonder if the Tsunami occurred within the small geographical area of the premises of my house.
6. For helping me climb the stairs at school when I’d met with that scooter accident, and for making creative stories of how I met with that accident anyways * sensored*.
7. For lending me maths homework to copy ( even though it was wrong..yeah yeah anyone can make mistakes..where did u copy that from..?).
8. For letting me call your names whenever we encountered monkeys on the way to our excursion, and expressing that helplessness of revenge (oh that was priceless,darlings), as there was a teacher by my name in our bus.
9. For saying, ‘If I could have given you some marks of mine, I would have done that to raise your aggregates’ … I don’t know if the person I’m referring to still remembers this, but these are a few words I will not forget in my lifetime, and it makes you immortal in my world of friends. And, there are tears of happiness in my eyes now.
10. For being the life saver at college.
11. For staying awake all night when I was bed ridden, that too during University exams, and making me lemon tea every now and then, spoon feeding me dinner when I just couldn’t move, ironing my uniform, and for being just like a mother to me. I am not just plainly grateful.. I am indebted to you all my life.
12. For making me feel like a VIP at your wedding.
13. For making office just like a college.
14. For being the perfect batch of good-to-be-with people and for making me laugh my lungs out.
15. For creating an air of college at the pantry every noon and making lunch seem tastier than it actually was.. Lunch times were awesome..!
16. For considering me one among the guys and picking and dropping me at office get-togethers, treats and lets-go-have-a-juice evenings.
17. For referring to me as ‘best friend’ and saying that I was an ‘angel’ who touched your life. No one ever told me that, I am not even close to being angelic, but I’ll remember you for it, even though you don’t feel the same about me now.
18. For lending an ear to my innumerable silly complaints, grudges, troubles, problems and laughing them away… those were actually adjustment cranks to the totally new environment. This is my new home and I do feel like home..just because of u!
19. For being the most sensible person around and helping me overcome every single thing I bother about.
20. For defining what it is to be a great friend..!
Thanks everyone who touched my life is more ways than the above…there are trillions of points I dint cover here, but still, I am thankful as always… Happy Friendship Day…Love u all!!
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
****Fancy title currently not available****
Yeah the tough is getting goin...deprived of time and thereby ignoring even the basic sensation to pee, spending day, night and weekends in front of a monitor with lots of pending activities on my plate, sitting across tables listening to high end technical talks with the most uninteresting people in the world, gulping down lays and cheetos for lunch essentially at 4:00pm, realizing that I have a gadget called mobile phone after hours of royally ignoring its existence and finding smses from HSBC and Airtel ads flooding my inbox, and so on and so forth. This is currently my situation.No imaginative exaggeration attached. Makes me think I was so virtously destined to toil four years at that fateful instituition to gain this.!I'm certainly not doing what I want to, but basically, I want to do this, I sometimes find it interesting, I am mentally and physically involved in my work, but man, I need a break!
There is a ten minute walk from where I am diligently dropped everyday at 9:00pm to my home, and this is certainly not a joyful stride.I am called to overcome faunal hurdles of pretentiously sleeping dogs which await my arrival to wake up and potentially alert the entire lot of street dogs in that locality.Back home, I thank God for helping me reach home, safe from the deadly jaws of street animals, and for my ego, I would definitely not want to die so early, and for a reason if that ever happens,being bitten by a street dog is ceratinly not acceptable.
Poor blog is cerainly mirroring my thoughts err , frustration now!Poor thing. Damn it! Thats what you are meant to do!Bear the brunt of my momentary contraventions... God, did I deliver my work without getting it quality-checked...oh Holy Lamb of God! Help this poor sinner realize that life is not always the weekend...how long do I have to wait to reach the Pearly gates?
There is a ten minute walk from where I am diligently dropped everyday at 9:00pm to my home, and this is certainly not a joyful stride.I am called to overcome faunal hurdles of pretentiously sleeping dogs which await my arrival to wake up and potentially alert the entire lot of street dogs in that locality.Back home, I thank God for helping me reach home, safe from the deadly jaws of street animals, and for my ego, I would definitely not want to die so early, and for a reason if that ever happens,being bitten by a street dog is ceratinly not acceptable.
Poor blog is cerainly mirroring my thoughts err , frustration now!Poor thing. Damn it! Thats what you are meant to do!Bear the brunt of my momentary contraventions... God, did I deliver my work without getting it quality-checked...oh Holy Lamb of God! Help this poor sinner realize that life is not always the weekend...how long do I have to wait to reach the Pearly gates?
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Golden eye, through my eyes!
A day at my hometown for a short weekend vacation would mean , tuning my ears to receive high frequency, high decibel sound from digital home theatre playing 007 movies. I have a bunch of little English-movie-savvy cousins too, enough to form a cricket team, who would totally get glued to it, and we would have to wait for the Tsunami to come if we were to make them get up from their seats and wash their hands for lunch/dinner. Small kids na, these are normal natural instincts of age, and that explains the fascination for Bond and his non existent gadgets.
Taking a little time off my errr..productively roaming around the house, I engaged myself to five minutes of ‘Golden Eye’ that they were watching. There’s a forest, Bond , a stunning woman whose name I obviously don’t know, near a small pond. In Bollywood this was a perfect setting for an item dance.
To my surprise, a large tower emerged out of the little pond, sequentially, meter by meter. Meanwhile Bond and the lass looked on. And there was the tower, almost as tall as the towers of our service providers. I screamed (I have to scream to get their attention as the volume was totally out of my hearing capabilities) ‘What is that’ ? ‘Tower’ came the collective reply in a microsecond. The faster they answer, the lesser the time they lose in between, as no one is allowed to distract; they were just trying to be nice to me. And my next question came in the next second itself. By this time, most of them had given me options enough through their facial expressions –It read- just leave or shut up. The former would be a more welcome choice. My next question was a concatenated series of unanswerable questions, may be to Bond himself. ‘ Tower? What do they do with that? What does it actually do? ‘ At this, the expressions I saw on their faces was priceless. Little Bond fans looking at each other and communicating eye to eye as to who will explain that to me.
So my question is answered. Its not just me!!!
Thursday, July 16, 2009
I.T woes :(
Have you come across formally dressed people carrying square shaped bags and a belt err tag around their necks,a woebegone expression, forever engrossed in conversations on their bluetooth devices which sounds more or less like, 'Yeah the con call is fixed at 5:00 pm.' ... 'Yeah I'll take care of the presentation'..'I'll do that...' 'Yes, we are working on Saturday..'
These are typical techie conversations.These guys almost drive the nation, and are nothing more than high-level-programmed robots, who has eventually forgotten to smile. Some conversations in their day-to-day lives goes like this.
Husband is onsite. Wife is trying to chat with him on Yahoo messenger.
He: Ok, so bye for now. I have to prepare dinner.
She: I just started talking…I have so much more to say..
He: So you are saying that I should go to bed on an empty stomach after a tiresome day at office?
She: *expressions of despair* Hmm… I will prepare dinner for you. I just learnt how to make omelets.
He: You gonna take it up as ‘remote support’?
Mom of a techie had a sprain on her ankles. She had taken a week off and is on self imposed bed rest.
Trring..Trring…
Mom: Hellooo…did u reach office? Did u have breakfast? Did he go to office too? What did you cook for lunch? Is that dress I sent you fitting you properly? Did you call your in-laws? How is his work?
Techie (diplomatically ignores all questions): Tell me fast what is the ‘current status’ of the pain on your leg? Any ‘issue’ ?
He is sleeping overtime on a week day, and she tries to wake him up. After a few minutes,of consistent shaking and poking, he responds.
‘Key in username and password’.
At never-ending annoying queues of the cash counter in a super market.
She: Why cant this guy buy lesser items? Why does he need 3 packets of tea powder anyways? Why don’t they enhance this by having more sales guys and counters?
He:‘ You’re right. It is a 'high priority issue’
Auto driver : ‘ madam Mere paas balance dene ke liye 2 rupya nahin hai’
Techie: “No issues”.
A techie friend on phone: “ Did you know about that new movie? SRK is the villain as well as the hero. He is a…... ‘global variable’.
Techie to the maid: Pick her from school, and bathe her first. Keep an eye on her always, and make sure she finishes her homework. If she asks for me, tell her that I will come home early today, by 11 pm.Else, if she asks for her dad, convince her tactfully that he is spending the night at office.Else if she asks for food, prepare her favorite dosa with ghee in it. END IF.
These are typical techie conversations.These guys almost drive the nation, and are nothing more than high-level-programmed robots, who has eventually forgotten to smile. Some conversations in their day-to-day lives goes like this.
Husband is onsite. Wife is trying to chat with him on Yahoo messenger.
He: Ok, so bye for now. I have to prepare dinner.
She: I just started talking…I have so much more to say..
He: So you are saying that I should go to bed on an empty stomach after a tiresome day at office?
She: *expressions of despair* Hmm… I will prepare dinner for you. I just learnt how to make omelets.
He: You gonna take it up as ‘remote support’?
Mom of a techie had a sprain on her ankles. She had taken a week off and is on self imposed bed rest.
Trring..Trring…
Mom: Hellooo…did u reach office? Did u have breakfast? Did he go to office too? What did you cook for lunch? Is that dress I sent you fitting you properly? Did you call your in-laws? How is his work?
Techie (diplomatically ignores all questions): Tell me fast what is the ‘current status’ of the pain on your leg? Any ‘issue’ ?
He is sleeping overtime on a week day, and she tries to wake him up. After a few minutes,of consistent shaking and poking, he responds.
‘Key in username and password’.
At never-ending annoying queues of the cash counter in a super market.
She: Why cant this guy buy lesser items? Why does he need 3 packets of tea powder anyways? Why don’t they enhance this by having more sales guys and counters?
He:‘ You’re right. It is a 'high priority issue’
Auto driver : ‘ madam Mere paas balance dene ke liye 2 rupya nahin hai’
Techie: “No issues”.
A techie friend on phone: “ Did you know about that new movie? SRK is the villain as well as the hero. He is a…... ‘global variable’.
Techie to the maid: Pick her from school, and bathe her first. Keep an eye on her always, and make sure she finishes her homework. If she asks for me, tell her that I will come home early today, by 11 pm.Else, if she asks for her dad, convince her tactfully that he is spending the night at office.Else if she asks for food, prepare her favorite dosa with ghee in it. END IF.
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