What would happen if I (read: a woman with Social Responsibilities) abandoned it all and went in search of enlightenment at 25 (if I get stupid enough to do that?!)...!?

Back in secondary school at KV - Syllabus A, we had a poem called Yashodhara ka Vilaap (forgive any speling mistakes) - about which I remember the feeling expressed than any of the lines.

It was a beautiful poetry about this character called Yashodara who is none othr than Buddha's very own wife queen; about her sorrow that her beloved left her and their only son in search of "enlightenment". 

It was a poem that touched me deeply.  I couldn't find it onilne right now (though I would like that very much), else I would share here.

So just imagine a rich king, abandons his wife and young child, goes off in the search of some peace or knowledge or God, however one may interpret - all vey noble and grea on his part but what about his wife and child. 

In the case of Rama, he abandons his wife (and unborn child(ren) as it turns out), for keeping with the thoughts of his people and upholding so called "King's duties to his people".

Now let us pause and see what is expected of these women or rather what do they end up doing? Worship their beloved husbands; Not giving in to their personal feelings and respecting them still.  And th worst part is - these apparently, not out of any compulsion...

They may be big hearted, but I am not.  I do not think the same would have happened if the roles were reversed...

Thes husbands  respecting their wives, understanding the causes that led them to act like that if they did much less worship them...!? Nien!  I do not know what is root cause - society, chauvenism, inert human nature... Whatever it may be, I do not know nor want to get into those...

Well, am I happy to be in this century of modern household and understanding and Gamma men...?!  Yeah Baby, definitely. :) 

I know even now they would not really apprecate if I left my house/family/"responsibilities" and went in search of "enlightenment" but atleast they are adjusting enough and understanding enough when need arises for an onsite... :)

Heights of Falling out of Tuch with being online...

I was groping around for the "New Mail" Tab while on GMAIL... And realized I prefer using the LN Domino Web Browser these days.... :(  SAD and PATHETIC....

Damn these Tubelights...!

I have found the answer to a question I have had for along time now.  Why do I, feel sleepy/glazed/dazed/go into a stupor/(as more spiritual folk would call it) go into a transcendental meditative state/(with more pride) go into a reverie every time I am a part of an audience listening to someone teach/take a seminar/lecture???

I found the answer to this today in one of those "I will speak inside my mouth-you try to deduce", "reading-it-from-a-power point presentation", drone sessions (effort appreciated - no offense), while I was slowly and dutifully losing consciousness, time traveling into a stupor-reverie-daydream - that my mind promptly deletes from it's neuron data stack the minute it hits a reality flag on (checked when the drone makes eye contact) - only to briefly nod in feigned understanding, while I had absolutely no idea as to what the drone had been saying till then.

As soon as the Drone turns to another con - most likely - or the "attention-seeker" (one to be found for sure in any and every herd of cattle waiting for their turn at the drone guillotine that refuses to kill but just slowly increases pressure and attacks at your brain) or to that one sincere-savior, my mind jumps into another of those blissful-subconscious state.

Those who have not come across the attention-seeker - either you are really naive or really stupid or you are one of 'that' kind and don't want to accept it - here is what it means:

   "attention-seekers" are the ones that do not really understand what the session is all about but tries to make a point or ask a doubt, that even he/she doesn't understand, and in the end confuses/amuses everyone in the room, managing to a positive feedback from the drone, in most cases.

Now the enlightment achieved through this meditation - the answer to my question - was "TUBELIGHTS".

Every class/session I was in had tube-lights on.  If you remember, they insisted on switching these tube-lights on even in the mornings, back in school and college.  Now!? Now there is no question , in these air conditioned environment that most of us are in for most part of the day... there is no question of not having them on.

Note:  They may be variations too, not just tube-lights but even the CFL versions have that effect on you, really...

PS: Wrote it on one frustrated day in the first or second week of February.  No offense to those who make an effort to take sessions, it's the God damned Tube-lights, see what I mean!?  Even I love taking seminars and sessions so really, no offense... :P

Primate army of the great mythological figure and the Pencil Vs Fountain Pen in the relative lesser gravity of the moon... Now what's the Point?

I was just reading the news about our "Primate army of the great mythological figure that has resurfaced" and that again their leader seems to have a gaping hole in his logic and action.

Earlier a couple of eons back, (According to the Hindu mythological calender) he wanted to check if his wife had slept with this guy - forcefully or not - who had kidnapped her.

This time the Army are behind every girl and guy moral policing.

So back to the point as I was thinking about this I started to analyze the technology options, from what's available and what I am aware of, as to how they would have tested her in the Treta Yug.

1) It is not a simple virginity test.
2) They gotta check the semen sample and see if they match?
3) But not necessarily, semen sample would be available, nor would the Enemy concede for such a test.
4) So they have got a way of testing where they don't need semen samples or genetic proofs.  Hmm...!?

Sounded complicated.

Note:  I almost believe in a different versions (or a similar one here) of God and Mythology (More on it later).


But then it stuck me, hey they just have to check if there had been any recent sexual activity - she's supposed to have been away from her husband for a real long time - just that.  Sounded simple.

Sounded like the Fountain Pen Vs Pencil in the relative lesser gravity of the moon.

I really have no idea what the point of this discussion is! I am sorry.  :(  :P

I feel like some sci-fi movie clone that's in an identity crisis...

Don't you all, all you out there, working for a big brand company (IT industry), probably campus placement, that everybody recognises ur organisation back home but not doing anything unique... Well...

came up with the line (title) wen i wanted to comment on:

Brand Factory

nice blogs he's got there...

Disclaimer: no this is not a promotion, i do not know this guy apart from following his blogs...;P

22 Jan, 2009... onwards...

I am not a person who remembers birth dates of friends and family, not at all a thing to boast I agree, but one dear friend of mine is Durgha Murugesan and her birthday falls on the 22nd January.  I am talking about this day because this date, of the year 2009, happened to be one memorable day of my life, not in a good way I tell you.

The morning felt nice and good.  I, as I used to at that time, reached office early in the morning, around  7.45 AM.  As I walked out of the rest room to my ODC, I realized my dear little mobile, that was just a 2 yr old toddler, was not in its usual cozy cradle, a little side zip in my hand bag. Though I am known for my clumsiness and carelessness, I have lost really valuable possessions only once before, in that case, a pair of floaters from lotto, and that was a theft, nothing much I could do about it you see.

So this came as an unbelievable shock.  I knew these things happen but never really thought it would happen to me.  EVER.  I mean, losing a mobile, is NOT a joke, even though it was always a subject of my friends' joke that I never bought any of those fancy and/or costly mobiles, you see, it was a 2600 Nokia basic phone, an improvement relatively (I used a Nokia 6530 earlier, the blue screen one, an object of sentiment for it was the first mobile phone in my family, my bro used it before me, a service of 5 years, before I Reluctantly replaced it, only when it's battery died, even then after having a huge debate in my head as to whether I should try and fix it but gave up at the end - blame the peer pressure...)

So I thought the day was bad, adding to the uncertainty and mental chaos, for I had been tagged to a new account and was to be interviewed and monitored for a while to be given a roles in a project (basically about to be given work) . As I went here and there around the campus and on the immediate roads off the campus of my company, to try and find my mobile, in vain, trying out various theories and canceling them constantly, I was quite exhausted mentally and of course, you guessed it, UPSET.  Still I tried hard, called up the bus depot, tried to trace the bus and in fact dropped in to the office and inquired, if there was some miraculous way I could retrieve my little one (what was I even thinking, I used to commute by Govt. Transport).

This was followed by my blocking my SIM card and obtaining a Duplicate SIM, no problems here.

But my troubles had just started, I realized soon.  I had to withdraw some 6K for I was going out of town and had some things to settle and some big expenses.  I went to the ICICI ATM, at my office cafeteria (while I had an account with HDFC, not an unusal thing).  As my luck would have it, I only got a receipt for the transaction and a poorer bank account, but NO Cash!  When I saw the money refill guys, whatever they are called, my exhausted mind illusioned me into a moment of joy and relief (refused to let my reason be heard) and led me to them, asking if they could somehow just verify that the money was still there and hence just give it to me, nice and smooth.  SOMEHOW! For I really needed that cash, else why would I choose to take it right there, from a different ATM? (Just across the road, a few meters, I had the HDFC ATM, for you see, the amount of running around and procedures involved in reverting the cash becomes exponentially reduced when it is an intra bank problem than in an inter bank issue). 

And so it began, a series of running around (for about a month or more), not to mention the nice soothing advices I had to hear from the ever caring and ever doting Family, for my carelessness.  Grrr!

This was followed by getting caught dozing in the room where we were supposed to be learning and interacting - after a tummy full of lunch and a sore mind!!!  Oh, ya and the new duplicate that SIM I had got - it wouldn't get activated due to server issues, for the next two weeks when I was away, usually done in less than 24 hours.  HA!

Well well well... So on the 22nd Jan 2010, I thought that once I get to office, I would observe two minutes of silence for my beloved mobile (I took a real long time to get over my sweetheart) and to thank my life for not giving more days from hell, like that one.  A little nag that started two days before "the day"as to what if I lost something this time too, peeked its meek head with a glint of mischief in its eyes, and I shhssd it clutching my mobile tight in my palm. 

But well, I lost my new ear phones, much to the delight of the little phantom and my dismay, in the very same fashion! - Left behind in the bus.  I couldn't believe it.  This time I knew the sequence of events that led to it and cursed myself even worse, for I had been on the improving scale for the past few months when it came to my carelessness.  And that the pair was new! (Oh, did I not mention that I had lost the ones of my new mobile (in the bus!) just about a couple of months back? Looks like this new phone has not found its soul mate earphones - blame the Paulo Coelho books-thoughts in my head, they seem to have influenced my little mobile that interacts a lot with, well, my head)
So after a lot of cursing, muttering, running out of and into, the office, in just a space of 5 minutes, being called back by the boss, I was only grateful that it was not something worse (I was determined that I would not take my laptop to office, for earlier, the little evil phantom in my head kept stealing looks at it when it thought I did not notice, but you see I had noticed, and till that morning acted like I had not and at the last minute - much to its disappointment, left it back at home.  HA! Will fight till death, you little rut...)



So that is the legend of the 22nd January.  Hope it doesn't continue, at least, doesn't worsen... I believe it will not, for you see, I seem to have lost my ear phones and done such careless things even on the other days... :P I shouldn't have added these lines, it actually nullifies the whole object the earlier paragraphs, but couldn't resist... :P

Declaration: I am not suffering from Schizophrenia... :P

The Beard, the pale fair skin, the foreign sound to the Hindi...the FEAR...

There enters a man with a slight, grizzly beard and a dull fair skin, slightly colored (that is a very Indian way of saying not the usual black/brown colored) eyes and you instantly recognize the unmistakably Islamic look about him.

He is in formals with his work laptop slung down his shoulder and shiny shoes intact with the regular - office going joey look on. But he is on the phone and is talking in what sounds like a varied form of Hindi or, is it, wait a second now, Urdu/Arabic? Now the nagging something at the back of the minds of the post 26/11 Indian bus crowd starts to manifest into an inexplicable, obviously biased fear. IS HE...?! CUD HE BE ONE OF THEM?! You try to avert your eyes. But you do not succeed in dragging your minds away as you did your eyes. After a lot of determined efforts, you control your mind enough to just let your eyes dart back to him “occasionally” on their way to “spotting/recognizing/processing and transmitting some other visual stimuli to your brain". But the mind goes on. If you are generally not the paranoid kind it starts to lose its fear/seriousness after you have gotten comfortable with the sight of him being “harmlessly” there and it sort of becomes a joke thinking up possibilities of how “he would blow the bus up or you point your finger at the “terrorist-in-the-regular-joey-disguise” and goof up when he turns out to be a normal citizen after all. And then you proceed to laugh at the extremely hilarious Russel Peters joke that ends with the buster line “I am just listening to my instructions” with every minute detail of the expressions he accompanies the line with that adds a whole new dimension of laughter to it.

Hmm... Weird mind and its weird jokes... And oh ya, the weird and hilarious Russel Peters... ;P

PS:  I am completely aware of the fact that not many people reading this blog might agree with the line of thoughts described here but well I just had to imagine... Please no offense, my islamic/pro islamic friends.  I am not "Islamo-phobic".  I was in fact educated in a Islamic institution and am very grateful to the community for the awesome food they provided me with then and the great set of friends not just in that school but otherwise too who I am still in contact with.  This is merely a sarcastic note to all those people I have met who seem to be completely biased and even sometimes violently irrational when they need to judge a person especially when it comes to islam.

Note:  Guys I wrote this one like ages back - of course post 26/11 would have conveyed it - but was just clearing up my blogs and saw this one was still a draft.  Then said y not?  

Stranger in My Native Land...

Stranger in my native land...
Alien to the society that forms most of my country...
Scared among my own sibblings...
  -  To live and let live...

Am I a native, Am I foreign?


I wear strange clothes...
I speak a different tongue...
I live a different life...
I am completely different

To those people whose sweat mixes in my soil...
To the people that plough on, their lives on it...
To the people that float on its floods...
To the people that survive its drought...
To the people that starve in its famine...
To the people that struggle to be...
To the people that are - my country...


I am kind if I give them a seat...
I am generous if I share my food with them...
I am down to earth if I exchange niceties...
I am envied for what I am...

                       A foreigner in my own land...

I am pretty if I don't share their skin tone...
I am progressive if I defy their traditions...
I am independent if I am selfish about my dreams,
          which I build on their support and exclude any credit to them...
I am looked up to - if I am foreign...

I am  frightened to mingle with them...
I depise this struggle for life...
I pity their state of affairs...
I am disgusted at their very standard of life...
But Oh!, I am gentle when I "tolerate" it all for a while...



I pride in rattling along in their compartment
I find adventure in brushing shoulders with people like that....

Yes I am a national... But yes, I am foreign...

உன்னுடன் தோள்கள் உறசி உரையாடுவதில் பெருமை கொள்கிறேன்...
                                                  நான் எவ்வளவு பாகுபாடின்றி பழகுகிறேன்...
என் போல் ஒரு நிலையுள்ளவள் உன்னுடன் பழகுவதில்
                                    நீ வெகுளியாய் பெருமையில் புன்னைகைக்கிறாய்...
அந்தப் புன்னகை எனக்கு உண்மை உணர்த்தியது, நீ என் மண்ணின் மைந்தன்...
நான் வேற்று மண்ணிற்க்கு அடிமை...!!!
இதுவே இன்று எந்நாட்டின் இளைஞர் நிலை...


PS: Wrote it when returning to Bangalore from Hubli after a friend's wedding, on a Fast Passenger shuttle train between the two, courtesy a very thoughtful friend of mine.

There were throngs of people on the Reservation compartments (too!) that traveled clinging to each other and finding seats wherever possible for their two hour ride to a near by town.  The TTR, conveniently for them, checks performs his duty only after their station.  When asked about this, they said that they had tried all means from peaceful (bureaucratic) application processes to rallies and rages.  Nothing worked.  We did not get a chance to ask the TTR about this.  We concluded through "intelligent" discussions among the "literate" reservation passengers that it was probably not as simple as adding a couple more of 'unreserved' compartments, for may be after that station there might not be many 'unreserved' passengers taking the train.  Well, we were quite scared for our belongings and in one of those local stations when we could hear scuffles and a mob of people trying to solve some issue between a couple of guys, we were scared for our own safety too.  And then, naturally, one of us said, "enjoy the adventure, it's ok, when will we get to do something like this again"... The thrill of it gave me a jolt to reality... *SIGH*

Victory of Good Over Evil... yes, tat was the topic given to us for the creative writing competition held during the Utsav, a diwali celebration, at our company today...

there was the dark, the evil, the cruel that every1 hated...
and there was the light, the fair and the just, all appreciated...

darkness billowed... and silence ensued...
the fiery eyes scorched the crowd...
the cruel tongue and the menacing force scared the wits out of everyone below...
the creature of awe and strength, fought to regain its rein and reign...
the power exhumed with every movement, the others watched with bated breath...

now it was the turn of the fair and the just, to slaughter and kill the rotten evil...
for everyone around was shouting for blood, the evil blood of the satan, the rot...
now was the turn, the long awaited, to take over and rule the welcoming herd...
now was the moment, a time stop show, in the ever iterating history of life...

yes! A moment that has been repeated too many times in this biased world...
the one that favors the light and the fair, over the dark...
no one remembered who decided the good - evil distinction...
no one knew wat was, the demarcation...
all they cared for was being loyal... like all their ancestors, to the good, the fair...
no one paused to think wat wrong the dark did, apart from seeking revenge for its centuries of hurt..
centuries of discrimination, that enraged it to cruelty...

n now was the moment of glory for the ever adulated fair, the light...
that it wud not miss, for anything in the world, for history has to be repeated...
the dark sulked inside its empty soul, its own shadow... for it knew the history too...
but it stood magnificient and aweful... to fight back once more...
for it was not coy but brave... it was not tricky or clever like the manipulative fair... the one that had mesmerised the crowd already...
the dark knew the sin of its ancestors and why its lineage would never be accepted...
but it also wanted to avenge the crushing of its struggles without reasoning...
thrashing of its foregenerations for wat one at the very beginning did... avenge for the destruction of its lineage for the act of that ONE and never having been forgiven...
for never having been given a chance... for all the discrimination and the bias...
a long standing fight, before it was trashed away as the spiteful... before its bravery was forgotten along as the cunning of the fair would be....

for the fair would win... IT DID... hail the fair, the just, the ruler for generations tat have been and many yet to come...
yell with joy, ye welcoming herd, for ur loyalty has been rewarded...
ur sentiments for ur forefathers, who wer a victim of the first defaulter, the first dark, have been answered and justified...
u have sought revenge... miseries that may have prevailed if the dark, coming in the bloodline of the very first cruelty, had taken over, have been avoided...
no, we would never give anybody a second chance... not risk it...
no, we would never pause to think... even if our prejudices prevail for generations it is fine...
for the classification has been done... finalized... there it would be, fair, the light, that wud be good...
and there, this cruelty would be dark, and wud be destroyed... and we would never pause to think abt the means with which this was achieved...
no matter how "dark" the means may be...

hail light... let’s celebrate the victory of the light over the dark....

PS: First of all I did not want to write anything under this topic... Then I saw an entry (tat got the second place, which I thought deserved the first) and got inspired...

So, three things, no, four things actually... one: the poem was too long for a competition, imagine this in a hand written copy... Duh!!

two: I know it's not gr8 material...

three: the content is too dark and sarcastic to compete in a festive mood... n well, I confess I knew it already and just wanted people to read it... Atleast a few wud read, understand and well muse along... :) :)

FOUR: NO... NOT SOUR GRAPES... :) :) Past all tat stage anyway...