my CEO coach friend

i met him on the first day of my third job... he too had joined the same company in its pr department a few day before me... his employee number was 1482, mine 1495... we were the same age, same academic batch, came from the same city, spoke the same language and lingo... so the bonding was quite close... what intrigued me about him was that he was a total misfit for the job... he did not remember tasks assigned, lost papers with impunity, made no excuses for not working late, or coming on holidays, went for comparative mythlogy classes at Mumbai University on saturdays afternoons, while i slogged away with one publication after another...in a word he hated all routine work and took interest only when we had to meet the chairman/MD for ghost writing their speeches... he did these well... but amongst 10 jobs assigned, he completed 4... so he was moved departments and locations... we maintained touch... then he went west... that was the last we met sometime in 2001...
some months back, googled him and now he is a CEO coach... wow! what a fanciful occupation, he hobnobs with the brightest minds, hops business schools across continents, sent him a mail... pat came the reply and i knew that despite being the coach of CEOs, he was his old self... my friend, simple, still a misfit in routine, now of course it does not matter since he has secys to do them... wish you all the best in life...

a daily report card

preposterous it may seem, but every day beginning yesterday, as the parting shot, B and i are getting an assessment scores from R which she showed privately to me since she is not talking to B.
yesterday's read like this: "Ma: very nice throughout the day. suddenly in the evening, became a tattling looooooser. Pa: haven't seen him thorughout the day. came home and started criticising me. so tomorrow i will be talking to Ma, though will not be friendly with her; with Pa, no interaction whatsover." notice the lingo, was my first impulse, though i managed to put a brave front in front of the umpire.
and all this because, we tried to tell her that she needs to sit straight while reading and that she needs to have more water.
i haven't as yet told B since that is what i have agreed not to... but i am not sure whether i should be worried about this one or not...
one person who would be genuinely happy about the treatment from our projeny is my late Dad... screw them tighter, he would have told his pet, whom he saw all of two and a half years, no more...

why i hate PROs

though i was one for a good number of years, why do i hate them? let me go experientially first. as a pro, one is just supposed to be doing what one is told (as a beginner)... it is always the business that dictates the necessitities and the pro has to go on churning out the orders. this is digestible, may be, when one is younger... but with time, with exposure and experience, one develops a mind of one's own and it gets increasingly difficult to carry out orders... that is clear indication that time has come to pack up...
this is autobiographical, so i am so pretty sure, since many a times the orders that come do not match with internal calling... like relations with journos... told to cultivate them, the direction changes the day that journo has written what he/she feels is correct and the pro is told to just dump that journo. how is this possible?
so the pro is expected to change with the business, sweet talk with all and sundry (not knowing who might be of help when), use and throw people and do all this very very effortlessly... while the first few years were ok, i got sick of this soon and left the day i found something different... while i stepped from the frying pan to the fire (of that some other time)... i was out of just pleasing people...

once a mom, always a mom

how true... even in this day and age, when communication is all about being net savvy, mine prefers to write letters... she feels it is more personal, calls for more involvement and most importantly, bears the touch (both of the mind and the hand)... and this when letters take aeons to come.
she writes a letter one month, posts it herself and right after that, calls me to say that she has sent a letter... when the post is on the way, whenever i call or she calls, one question definitely is: have you got my letter?
all this to say small details of her life, things which many a times, seem very trivial, but she needs to tell me, without bothering for a reply...
most of the questions in her letters go unanswered since how much information can one pack into a call (i have gone out of the habit of writing letters) and right after one letter has recahed me, there is always a promise of the next...
so the days when i come to office to find the pink envelope on my table, with the familiar handwriting, that same one which taught me my first alphabets, my day is made... feel i am on cloud nine.

colour, colour... no colour, no colour

there was a time when all my lip colours were dark reds, shining pinks...
then there were only browns... plain browns, frosted browns (some dubbed them as horror show colours), pale browns...
now i have made that simpler on the eye... only colourless frosts, with a pencil to define the edges... understated, it looks good, to my eyes, of course.

attitude & success

which breeds which? i mean, is it success that brings in attitude, or is it attitude that brings in success?
i feel, it is attitude that paves the way to success... so if one has the right attitude, one can not only be successful, but also handle that success in a sedate manner.

my wish list

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

-- John Lennon, in the 1971 hit "Imagine"

... if this strikes as idealism, so be it. that is why i am putting it up here 37 years after it was sung first.

no new point... but still

circa 1995: while working for a financial company, my boss was 'scared' when she came to know that i had conceived, asking me every other day, "is anything wrong?" in the fond hope that i would say, "ya, i have miscarried."
not that she could have given me a designation change or a fat bonus at the next appraisal, but she deliberatley downgraded me since i had gone on maternity leave... my usual self, i fought against it and got my due... the point is, we women have to fight for what should come to us naturally, while B did not have to do any such thing... and we both became parents the same instant... .
circa 2008: someone i know is planning a family expansion... she has a son, wants to complete the square with a daughter... while i am all for it, she is in two minds since she is not sure of how well her workplace will take it...
when, pray when are things expected to change?
thus, i have told R that when she has a kid, i will look after the baby, so that she can work in peace... B is not sure whether she will still have her husband if i hang around too long...

my new wisdom counsel!

29 years my junior, R tells me yesterday, "Ma, good girls are bad girls who have not been caught".
and this when i tried to sweet talk her to doing something she did not want to do and called her a good girl.
who is the mom and who the babe? do you know since i frankly am confused.

snippets that take me back

after i parked the car and was walking towards the office, noticed a creeper that reminded me of the garden back home (even today, after 17 years of having left it, home sometimes denotes the place where a better part of my younger-hood was spent)... and there must have been a wistful look in the eyes... now firmly put behind glasses.
likewise, a certain colour, a certain furniture, a certain food, a certain song, a certain... many many things take me back home, where i will never go back to live... i now have another home, in the same city... a flat that is locked, cleaned once a month... a place which has to be made home once again... right now, it is still just a place, a house.

a sketch

i love to: sleep, write, eat, read, listen to music (joan baez, simon & garfunkel, beatles, lennon solos are some eternal favs) share good feelings and sorrow, chat (real and virtual), bitch at times (why not? i am human too), drink (again why not? but only with people i like), shop, be fast in whatever i do, learn new stuff (only in the domain of the upper storey), be upfront in communication (sometimes doing my own self harm, but have survived more than four decades of life, so will not change now), spend time with B and R (and with Ma, used to love the togetherness with Dad too, something i still yearn for and continue to do till i breathe), show off (very subtly, so that only the sharp ones will pick the signal), just do nothing once a while, clear confusion in any relation i care for, go great lengths for people i love and like (without expecting reciprocation)...

i hate to: do housework, do routine jobs, carry out orders of dumb and lame people (and there are quite a few in the world, i myself have met a number of them), put up with idiots, window shop, procratinate, engage in lengthy discussions, be unduly polite, keep a relation, just because we gelled once (cast off baggage is my mantra), make an effort to communicate (if the effort is there, then communication cannot be there), give up easily (but sense when i need to), make a choice (impractical that i am) though am very very choosy...

in both cases the list continues... will give an update

this is apparently one of my longest posts... big mouth, sorry big hands (i have keyed all of it in).

Dad, are you turning in your grave?

i know you cannot, since we did not bury you... but tell me, have you read my post on how i cook with my iPod on the ears? you must be laughing away... since no matter the amount of goading you and Ma did, i would not learn music... so you had to dispose off the harmonium that you had specially ordered in the hope that i will learn music and may be entrall a whole audience or that finding a groom for me would be a tad easier with some three songs that i could pick up...
no, i still do not sing, but yes, i listen to a whole lot of music, most of which we (B and i, together) have discovered, not by hearing you sing (in fact let me tell you, i do not listen to George Biswas or Kanika or even Hemanta, since the heart feels heavy)... i listen to 60s rock and some contemporary ones (including Pijus Kanti, whose rendering of Rabindra Sangeet is different)... but they are music too, so take some consolation from this one.

reminders

my mobile works 24x7, 365 days... no i do not get that many calls or am not calling always... it is the alarm... to call the electrician to get th AC switch fixed, to call the banker (B's) to find out if the account has been opened, to remind me of my next blog idea. and this puts the husband off... he has threatened to throw my cute lil thing out of our 4th floor flat, the next time the reminder rings...
just that i have to put a reminder to remind him for getting his certificates translated, a requirement for some visa transfers, that have been in the pipeline for some half-a-year, since i forgot to remind him. huh?????

problem of getting started

i have this one too (as well as the problem with being stopped, something i have told you about already), the quagmire being that this too relates to food... not in eating but in cooking. fridays, the fleeting once-a-week day that we here call the 'weekend', i generally cook (well, forgot to add, have to)...it is weekend for the cook too... and in all my efforts to bring in democracy in whatever i do, i have to practise what i preach (it's another matter that no one listens, including him and R) and believe... so i, after a late morning, stroll into the kitchen, putting it off by one TV programme, one more chapter in the book, cursing the programme director for the short programme... or the writer for the five-page chapter...
now, of course, i have the perfect recipe for making this burdensome exercise much more enjoyable... i am armed with the iPod, which R loads with the latest songs and charges too... so with music in tow, i have already fininshed cooking the lunch... it is a different question that he may (or may not) like what i have rustled up or R might just linger in the lunch table... so that at the end, i just give up and say, "ok, leave the rest"... you see, i have done my bit, and the democratic person i am , i give them right to not eat or not like what they eat, as long as they do not say it...now i will have a peaceful siesta... diiner i do not have to worry... he will be off for a wedding, R and her mom will call for food.

sediments of time

yesterday night, R and me, played a new game. we put adjectives to describe each other.
R for me: loving, devoted, with strong opinions, not calm, gets angry fast, hard-working, fast... etc etc
me for R: very loving, honest, graceful, lazy, needs to put in more effort for studies, adjusting, versatile... etc etc
in the darkness of the room, i could suddenly see a gloom falling over her face, which the maternal instinct said was not by virtue of what i had said then... i probed, cajoled, left her alone for a time... slowly, i could feel her hand over me... the ice had melted... what she told me thereafter scared me, "i remember all that you have told me over the years..." there was no recrimination in her tone, just that she has held her sorrow at what i have said (and B) close to her chest... with a cold feeling running on my spine, i held her tight...
as i pen this down, i just have one thought: have i been always correct as a mom???

obsession with dates

i have to get rid of this one very soon. one, it is very fast clogging the mental space since i have this stupidity of remebering distant people's anniversaries, birthdays, their children's birthdays... so on and so forth.
two, this creates an unsaid expectation in the mind that they reciprocate mine... that is a problem on since people whose dates i remember may not necessarily consider me that important to be able to remember mine... but the mind bugger feels sad... so either i get rid of the expectation or remember to forget dates... let's see which one is easier.

busy with busybee

currently one of the books i am reading is "Best of Busybee" (1988-89). for the uninitiated, busybee was one of the best writers (and a journalist) who turned around the tabloid culture in india's financial capital, mumbai.
what i am enjoying about the book is of course the sharp wit that one identifies with behram contractor... added to which is the yawning nostalgia that he has evoked in me... mumbai was the city where we set up our first home way 17 years back... it has seen my struggles, professional directions and re-directions, my becoming a mother for the first and only time... it is also the city where i met some of the most influential people... not that i liked all of them, but each of them have left some impressions on me...
busybee's writings have brought back moments tucked away in history, names which defined eras and rewrote some defining moments.
and this space that i enjoy so much... much of it is unconsciously following busybee... who blogged on his paper every single day.
hats off, farzana (busybee's wife) for keeping the tradition alive...

this is me...

A winters day
In a deep and dark december;
I am alone,
Gazing from my window to the streets below
On a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow.
I am a rock,
I am an island.
Ive built walls,
A fortress deep and mighty,
That none may penetrate.
I have no need of friendship; friendship causes pain.
Its laughter and its loving I disdain.
I am a rock,
I am an island.

Dont talk of love,
But Ive heard the words before;
Its sleeping in my memory.
I wont disturb the slumber of feelings that have died.
If I never loved I never would have cried.
I am a rock,
I am an island.

I have my books
And my poetry to protect me;
I am shielded in my armor,
Hiding in my room, safe within my womb.
I touch no one and no one touches me.
I am a rock,
I am an island.

And a rock feels no pain;
And an island never cries.

-- Simon & Garfunkel

mid-life crisis?

of late, there is a great feeling of going something all the while... it is driving me nuts...whenever there is a little free time, i am getting bored. is this normal? like right now, i had no intention of wrting... but am...why? why can't i just let myself be... why do i keep flogging myself... aha, this is a phrase of an ex-friend, ex because we have just lost contact... at one point, we used to agree on everything and she was exactly in my present age, when she said this... mid-life crisis? though i seem to be happy otherwise... mid-life or no mid-life...

heart ache

i am missing the homeland like mad... i want to run right now to take that smell of the fresh rains on the earth, that wet feeling on the feet, no matter how dirty the feet become...
at times, i get tired of this sanitised existence... everything under my control... no sudden rains (yes, here it rains in winter, but that same feeling of getting wet does not come), no getting wet without the umbrella and no coming back home to anxious parents... the roles have reversed... now i am a parent, i am anxious, but am i as loving as mine were? not sure, not sure... have to ask the lil girl back home...
all i want is to go home, get wet and come home...
then i craved for freedom, thought once i am on my own will be happiest...
now am on my own, have tonnes of freedom... but am i happy just now...NO period. hope this is a passing phase...

Plain Jane vs Smart Jo

the tussle continues within. which do i aspire to be? while the former gets a lot of happiness which i term as 'bovine' since it is not she who is the source of her own pleasures but someone else, usually some man (be it father, significant half or the son, depending on her stage in life), the latter strives for her own happiness...
if this is the defining characteristic, then i certainly qualify to be the latter... and not without the usual heartburns, the usual midnight oil burns, or the usual toll... but at the end of it all, there is immense satisfaction...
also, by the standards of the former, i do not have two significant differentiators... neither a father anymore, nor a son... and it is i who prayer fervently for a daughter... any takes on who am i? if not any of the above, certainly different than the rest...

E-G-O, the driver, but why?

this is a question i have been asking myself. while i am into a lot of literature which talks of taming this, and i fully well understand the value of the logic, i am not able to get out of its clutches.
the other day, the CEO of a bank whom i had interviewed last year, recognised me in a conference... gave me a big boost.
some other day, got an appreciating comment from another CEO of another bank, who was the subject of my story some two odd months back, has agreed to write a piece for us and has sent it too... gave me another high.
while appreciation is something positive, why does the feeling of happiness follow it? why am i not able to separate what i do, as part of my work, from i-me-myself? any tips?

freedom at any cost

my mantra... i knew this all along, but yesterday, after quite a while, had some French wine... needless to say, while having it with the better half, must have overdone it... so while falling asleep was no effort, staying asleep was... and was awake by the wee hours of the morning.
without doubt, it is the natural that is the best... will have to keep that in mind... in the face of temptations... what says me?

nostalgia galore

long back, when i was merely a teen myself, someone had commented that i will engage in something creative... it suddenly struck me today... the commentator i have forgotten about but what he had to say about me has stayed on... while i took a long time to branch out into writing, i have...
these days i also recall my ex-boss... much of what i do, i have learnt from her, though while i worked with her, i hated the way she had to teach us... but teach she has... and apart from work, she had said once, "i relax by cooking". i was thunder struck; how could anyone relax dy doing a chore... now i understand, since many a times i too do it now... better late than never.

addiction for addiction

no, don't get me wrong... i am not talking of the normal addictions... i am just talking about the addiction i have for music... any song, any tune which catches my fancy, gives me a mental high, makes me happy... i tend to go over and over that again and again... almost to the point when i do not want to hear that again... i think i am funny, isin't it?

happier at 40+

this is the new paradigm amongst a lot of women i keep meeting these days...mostly on work, but with whom i tend to bond at a different level altogether... and all that we agree on is that we are far happier today than we were at 20+...
reasons? simple enough -- too much to prove, too much to achieve, too much to do then.
now? have proved some, don't care about the those that have not been proven; have achieved quite a bit, don't want to strive very much harder; have done quite a bit, don't care about the rest.
in a word, we have learnt to live life on our own terms... and that is what happiness is all about, isin't it?

child lock

i haven't put this on my TV... and many a day, my preteen is at home while i am at work...the doubt crossed my mind yesterday when a friend who had come for dinner said that his kids -- the son 11 and daughter 6 -- were allowed only two channels on TV, and despite the fact that their mother is full-time at home... this while my preteen was busy with a song-and-dance sequence...
while i think the mention was just to make us feel a little doubtful of our parental skills, i have settled the doubt once and for all -- how will my child get to know what is happening around the world, if i allow her only two channels, though i often have to goad her to watch news. second, when will she enjoy vicarious romance, if she can only watch what we want? why can't she watch chick flicks and laugh all by herself?
when all this was crossing my mind, i was driving home from work... when i got back, i looked at her face, her eyes searchingly... and all i could see was innocence writ large...
i have done ok, i told myself.

have forgotten to relax

speed... that's the essence in whatever i do... writing, eating, watching the TV... how can speed come in the latter? simple... when something un-happening happens (that which does not excite my mind = unhappening) on TV, i tend to surf...
i eat very fast... i recall when i was a child, or even later in college or university, i used to take aeons to chew the food and swallow it, i literally used to enjoy eating... now it has reversed... i cannot eat slow, just cannot...it is as if, i have to somehow finish the food and head off to fly an aircraft... before every meal, i try to tell myself that this meal will be slow... but by the time i have sat and started eating, i just speed...
similarly when i start writing, i just carry on non-stop...it is as if the keyboard would melt in a while... when an idea pops up, i just have to put it down...
i just have forgotten how to go slow... i wonder where am i headed this way?

gain or loss?

not able to decide whether in all of my 17 years of working, how many have given me creative satisfaction...well, for all my life i wanted to be a writer and finally started doing that close to my fourth decade in life... slow starter, must say.
that's one way of looking at it. the other is of practical wisdom...back home, i always dreaded travel and if one has to write (i mean, a journo) one has to travel... younger, inexperienced and needing more money (to meet all those worldly expectations of others and the self -- you know those -- the house, the gadgets, the car...), i went into stiff bureaucratic organisations... yes, the house got built and furnished, i rode the car, but the inside was far from satisfied... i was feeling claustrophobic throughout... i was carrying out what others had thought... finally when we shifted countries, got the opportunity to write... the material hunger had, by then, died... only the soul was left to be satisfied...
again, those stiff hierarchies showed me another side of life -- how the small ego can become larger than life... so cannot dub those years of unfulfilment as totally a waste, huh?

hitch-hiking into history

this is not my phrase... it is Anne Lammott's whose book "Bird by Bird" i am voraciously reading. it is a book on writing... and in the remotest corners of my heart, the book has raised a dream -- to be a writer. unrealistic it is, but which dream is realistic?
now to get back to where i started from...Lammott says that any writing endeavour is an effort in hitch-hiking into history... if that is so, even this bolg should qualify... but how would she know that... when she wrote the book, the virtual world had not raised its head. i have somehow convinced myself that even this suffices, though published writers then will always be in a different club. can i become a member of that club? big question...

shoving them out... keeping them for keeps

i have a habit, call it good or bad, it stays. when it comes to relationships, i can be pretty demanding... the odd fact though is that it takes a long time and a lot of thought to get into one, but once i am in it, i expect a high level of reciprocity... and when the other side gets bogged down with the demand, i tend to move on, leaving them behind and never ever looking back...hurtful, vengeful me... but that's the way i am...
that's one side of the coin... there are some other relationships which i have solicited... some odd quality that i identify with, some trait i love... here, too the reciprocity rule stays... but here the burden is less since i nourish the feel that they give... and in all cases, since they understand what i stand for, the chances are, to that extent, less of going wrong... it is these relationships that i look forward to, growing to love them as i grow with them...

freedom, are you knocking at my door?

always dubbed as someone who worries a lot, i was never free in my mind, or so i felt till a while back. my better half has bashed his car... what's there to rejoice, you may say? nothing except that the reason which he gave for this was his preoccupation with a thought... a cheque sent has not yet reached where it was supposed to... and no, this is no policy premium, no loan payment... it has been sent for some cause...
while i completely forgot about it and did all that i was supposed to do...write, coordinate, edit, get home to be with R for lunch, rush back and complete my day... to come home and read a book on writing, with some TV thrown in between...
am i improving?

camaraderie over a cuppa

it happened just a while back with my latest Russian acquaintance, Svetlana. the wife of a friend of ours, she has come to this desert land to be with het husband for a while...and she has shared a very coveted passion -- my love for pure Darjeeling tea.
when we called them over for tea, i was apprehensive about what i would serve them. to my utter surprise, she not only relished the first cup, but even asked for a second... i was amazed and happy. das vidaniya, Svetlana...

lexicon in want

that's Ingrid Betancourt for me. just now BBC World aired an interview of the lady... i have deliberatly refrained from putting any adjective before her since my lexicon contains none that can describe her.
apart from what the entire world knows about her, i was stumped by what i heard at the end, when the channel asked her how her six-an-a-half years in captivity has changed her...she replied, "I was always a fragile woman. the difference is that now i know that i am fragile and i take care."
my silent salute to this lady.

mommy on the remote

that's me... like many others may be, but my preteen has almcst grown up, with me guiding her (now that she can manage herself) or the nanny (when she was younger) forever on the phone.
may sound trendy, it is not let me assure you... for it is she who is always primary in my mind and no matter which time zone i am in, i always live (in the realm of the mind) in the time zone of my preteen... waking her for school, reminding her to pack in her keys so that she can enter home alright, planning out her meals at a distance, checking when she gets back from school, reminding her to have her meal... an entire day, on the phone...
Thank God for inventing the mobile...

a slice of reality

i cannot adequately describe what i am feeling -- happy, sad, mixed...a colleague of mine, junior in age by two decades, tells me that the guy she loves, has cancer. so casual when she mentioned, i was literally, stumped. i did not know how much to probe, how much to conceal my surprise... but one thing has lasted since i heard it... my respect for this little colleague of mine.
Insha Allah, as they say, things should just work out between the two young hearts...

problem of getting stopped

this is what i am going through right now. i can resist food till it is in front of me. in fact, even after that. but once i start, i just want to carry on. is this symptomatic of some problem? i do not know, but i clearly have this issue with myself. does anyone know what to do?

official agony aunt

that's what i have become... i knowingly do not go about throwing airs of a know-it-all attitude, then why do i get bogged down with people who only have problems to share? why don't i have anyone with whom i can share mine? why? anyone knows?

unfeminine me?

this is a doubt that often crosses my mind... no, am otherwise perfect (in my view, of course)... have a soon-going-to-be teen daughter... but i have never found it exciting to change the looks of my home. one good, solid reason i put forth is: since this is the 12th home that i have set up in 17+ years of marriage, i have lost the gusto...
and this is not an excuse... when i look back at the urge to gather knick knacks way back in the last century (yes, i was married by then), i am appalled... how could i spend hours scouting for that perfect side table (hours were not because of the lack of looks of the table, but the depth of our purse then) or the vase that would go with the centre table.
now, i just settle for the least effort, least hassle decor. and no pangs, honestly. this way i am happier... that is only what i strive for these days...

my greatest fear

it is claustrophobia. i always knew it, but it got reinforced a while back. had been to a lecture session. the audience was more than the room could accommodate... and lo! instead of concentrating on the lecture, i kept on concentrating on the clock... the mind and its power. since i dislike closed spaces, the bugger would just not let me put my attention to what was being said!!
sweating and feeling like passing out, i was happy when the talk got over...i rushed out to be able to breathe properly... what a relief!!
small little things that we take for granted, but how important these are.

frozen moments

i have achieved a small feat - deleted all the messages that i had carefully selected and kept on hanging on to. why? just to cherish the moment, the mental state in which i either sent out that message or recieved them.
how silly, i told myself. when all that i am doing with my mind is to get as detached as i can from everything in the world, why should some moments in the past be so important?
so i heroically deleted all of them. there are no frozen moments in my handset any more.
and i feel lighter, unburdened, free from shackles.