On getting cheated

Hmmm.. To cheat is a great skill, coherence of lies should be maintained.
To get cheated is an equal as well. Needs no talent, no brain is to the advantage of a cheater.
But what do you think of someone who can cheat so intellectually. Showing that someone's a good friend, still have mal-intentions, outwardly genuine, inwardly, scared to think what this person will be inwardly!

Wow! Getting cheated by someone whom you trusted is such a great feeling. Am feeling the stab for the second time in my life. Wow! It feels great, really. Each time you get stabbed, its a wow, just wow. The feelings that follow is utter horrible. But the moment of stab and the time till it gets sinked in, it is just euphoric. Out of the world, out of mind, out of the sole purpose of life. Wow! Just Wow!

My dear cheater, you have won my heart in many ways than one. How coherently you have been lying to me all these days! How did you manage to not miss the continuity! How good a story did you form! And kept it so logical, so logical that I believed everything like a blind goat. Is this how a friendship is supposed to be? But I think I got outta your trap at the right moment. The things you started sharing with me, I thought it was true friendship, but now I can see what other intentions you might have had?! What if I had let you continue the story? Where would it have ended?

My dear begone friend, I feel so stupid and dumb for my own self for having spoken all those words of concern to you, for having shared all your "troubles". I feel so stupid on seeing how could somone be so stupid to have got cheated this way! You have made me make like a fool of myself, thank you. Thanks for showing me how bad can I get cheated.

The first time, I knew for quite sometime that I am getting cheated. But this time though it was an unexpected blow. Thank you very much for that. Thanks for showing me that cheaters can be of any form, can manipulate people to whatever extent. And most of all thanks for showing myself, How I get cheated easily(?!) Ha, you really won my dear betrayer friend.

My Valentine's day

I generally do not like to put up posts on my matrimonial relationship. This post is because a chain of thoughts were triggered when a couple of colleagues asked me what plans I had for the Valentine's day that just passed. Main reason for that being I had a love marriage, well I chose my partner, my valentine :) (He fought real hard to marry me <3 <3).The answer for the question was, I did not even wish my husband on the Valentine's day!

Now, I was very worried at the realization, the immediate response was has the love vanished?
But something said, no.
Then a fleet of questions followed.
What happened to the wishes? Gifts?
Calling at 12 in the night (morning?!) to wish on valentine's day? Meet ups?

The answer to all those questions is this post. This is more like a note-to-self kind of post :)

I feel so amused when I recollect Valentine's days of the past. How we weren't able to spend any Valentine's day together before we got married :D The couldn't-be-with-you-this-valentine's messages, Miss you messages, cheesy ones, angry ones. Stealthy meet ups, secret gifts and calls, what not! :D :D

Numerous love yous and miss yous replaced with reached office and reached home replaced with kid's back home and kid ate well. I realize that the love has not vanished but has matured with us, grown with us. In yesteryears, we used to express our love using words, wishes, gifts. Now those are replaced by actions and thoughtfulness.

When I was in great pain after my c-section on the hospital bed, he said I love you in the form of a kiss on my hand when I expressed my pain. My acknowledgement to him for the same was when I decided to get back to work after resigning my job to share his pain of finances though I knew it pains me to leave my kid under the care of someone else.

When he agreed to wear a poonal just because he has to have one to do certain rituals with my family, I got myself accustomed to his family way of praying and celebrations. Can there be a better whatever-for-you message than this?

This morning, when I was not even able to get out of the bed, he just said be-there-for-you-forever by making breakfast and getting the kid ready to school. He got the reply back when I helped him when he was struggling to feed the kid.

These and many more. Oh, yes, I did not wish my husband, my valentine, on the Valentine's day that just passed. But we wish each other and pass messages of love each and everyday through whatever we do for one another. Am so happy to experience this next stage of love :)

Post dedicated to my dear Valentine G <3 :)

Vacations

Vacations!! Vacations are supposed to be relaxing, rejuvenating, recreating or rewinding you to the time of life you lost not so long in the plethora of life chores. If vacations happen to be just the opposite, you come back more tired and exhausted than before. I just had a vacation of the latter kind. Feeling more log-like than when I left, more tired than I was before and more irritated with the routine.

One reason why it turned out sour was that it was a trip that was meant for the unmarried/ married couple and not for family with children. We visited places over places every day with little time to rest. Starting early in the mornings and ending very late in the evenings, kids you know.

Now, I long for my kinda vacation. This my kinda vacation has different meanings based on the phase of life I am in. When I was unmarried, I would have just loved my recent vacation. When I got married, the recent vacation would have been ok with some amount of romance put in (this was more like a ladies and gents separate, college kinds vacation :/). When I have kids, now, I would like to wake up at my pace, relax, spend more time with family, talking and see places that can be seen at a leisure pace. So, after having a real family with kids and all (!!) vacation definition changes to more of relaxation and more family time than exploration and adventure.

Of Mediocrity

There are three kinds of people on this earth -

          Those who excel, those who don't care and then there is a whole lot of "mediocre".

The first two kinds of people do not have much to worry about when it comes to anything in life. The former has it easy and the latter does not even bother. The only category that is hard-hit in any and every aspect of life is the mediocre.

And this post is about
         Those - who have high aspirations but do not know where to start
         Those - who have great ideas but have no idea on how to turn them to reality
         Those - who cannot accept going down to the don't care category
         Those - who can do anything and everything to go up to the excel category but without a clue how
         Those - who, every time, struggle to get things their way
         Those - who are the mediocre.

Living a mediocre life is not easy, yet they form the the majority of the world's population. They can neither wholeheartedly follow people who excel nor give up. However, they make good followers. They have great ideas and can argue well. They weigh advantages and disadvantages of any situation but are scared to take the leap. Their aspirations are sky high but implementation capability is ground zero.

They are the people who have great belief in "Someday and One day". They seem to be the store house of energy and enthusiasm but deep inside, they live a life of misery. Unable to decide, unable to take the leap, unable to take risks, unable to think with a long term vision, unable to foresee situations, they accept whatever comes their way though that whatever is something they wanted never.

They sometimes do not have the knowledge required to take a leap of faith, they are never spotted from the crowd, oh yea, they are after all not excels. They look at excels with a jealousy admiration.

Yes, this is the weirdest post I have ever written in this blog. It lists out the characteristics of mediocre, uses the word mediocre a lot, it is very serious, it maintains a low key and not enthusiastic, it is not fun at all. It is because I decided to write about myself. My mediocre, mediocre self who does not know how to take a step towards changing my life to better, who is a slave of life's commitments, whose dreams and ideas are arrested inside a brain just because it is mediocre.

Yes, you can think of this post as a lament or the voice of a lazy woman or the reflections of an irresponsible human being. I will try hard to prove you wrong as I am a mediocre who cannot give up and go down but fail each time. 

Few Thoughts - actually a note of gratitude

I read a post on writing on the Litagram page on Facebook. It read something on these lines:

 "When it does not come roaring out, don't do it
   When it cannot manifest itself, don't do it:.

I am doing it today as it came roaring outside, it wants to manifest itself. I had the least idea of writing a blog post at 10:17 PM in the night of a working day, but the post wants to get written :)
Even when I write this line, I have the least idea of what am I going to write on this post or am I going to write something at all. It is so fascinating, this writing thing!

I have had some really crazy, hectic times at work. Those times made me realize several things in life. My strength, what  I am capable of, what is my actual weakness is vs. what I thought was my weakness. Most of these things came as a by product of working for KGS for a short time (no, I don't work there now). Which in turn means the realization came as a result of the interactions I had with people at KGS - a wonderful team of people there. If anybody gets a chance to work there, go for it without a second thought. They are the best lot I have ever worked with - real professionals :)

So, people who we meet in our lives shape up our life into something we might not even have imagined of! And that fascinates me a lot! Howsoever matured or capable or grown up you are, you still get influenced by people to a great extent. How one comes out of the influence is up  to the individual's ability. I am so glad that I realized the right things at the right time and all credits go to the team I mentioned above :)

People are fascinating! :)

I did not even think I will write a note of gratitude to my ex-colleagues and friends, but there it has written itself. Feels light, the post is over. Thank you for reading! :)

The Road Not Taken..

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

What has been the aim of life of most people in my generation? There was a well-defined path in the career front paved by people who were older and we had to take the same. The reasons being:

    1) It lead to a safe life style, a proven one with less chances to falter.

    2) We were unaware of any other path or had very less knowledge to boldly venture into        one.

    3) Our parents were afraid that if we do not take the used path, we may end screwing up        our lives.

    4) Parents did not have the time or money to support our dreams.
    5) Parents were unsure of how a job like musician or writer or instrumentalist could help          make a living. 

    What has our path been (at least to most of us)? We had to score high in our Higher Secondary Board exams as well as any and every entrance exam that made us eligible to join a Engineering course. Then choose a specialization of our liking (in Engineering, of course) if we had the privilege to do so (this is influenced by many factors like dream of our parents, cut-off marks we got, whatever course is available after all quota reservation, etc., ) or go with the one we were able to select at the counselling session. Score 70% and above in all Engineering papers so that we were eligible to sit for campus recruitment, fail in one or two aptitude tests, practice hard and crack the third one, clear interviews and wait eagerly for our names to be announced by the company HR in the selected list. 

    Many of you must be remembering how elated we felt at that moment, name getting called out in the selected list!! Woah, as if the whole world is under our feet! :D

    Join our first jobs with great excitement, work hard in training sessions, harder in the project we are assigned to, earn the goodwill of manager, start trying for an on-site opportunity and get one (this depends on many factors as well, let's not dig deep), work double the time we worked off-shore, get frustrated, switch companies, get a PR and citizenship of whichever country we work in, buy property, get married, indebted, think that we have got settled and be happy as if we have achieved everything in life just because "that" anna or akka did the same. 

    That had been our benchmark for at least a decade.

    Oh yea, there are ones who realized mid-way, "Oops, this was not what I wanted to do with my life" and started pursuing their passion - but this, at least in my generation, is a very less percentage, though this is on the increase - thanks to social networking, internet and ubiquitous computing.

    And there are others who want to pursue their passion but cannot really do so as they are afraid of losing monthly income, they are so indebted that they cannot afford to lose job even for a month!! 

    And there are also the ones who think that they were born to live the way described above and be happy and content with it - I respect you guys and would love to be like you, just that there is a problem with this heck of a mind of mine.. :)

    Looking back, I wonder what did I want to do with my life when I was 10, 12 and 15 years old and what I am doing now - My path has definitely got deviated from dreams of becoming a teacher, writer and architect to what I am today because of one of the reasons listed above. I am unable to get back to my dreams mid-way as I belong to the category of indebted.. 

However, there is still hope. I can still support someone who wants to live their dream - that someone will be my child. Yes, we can definitely support our next generation to live their dream life and help them realize and unleash their potential to the maximum possible extent. I am happy to see that kids of today do not have the "Following" mentality, they are more original and independent. With access to a whole world of information and contacts at the click of a mouse, the current generation possess what it takes to realize it's dreams and also make a living out of it. 

I would like to quote here my uncle's daughter Malini Venkatraman. She is a budding writer. Her imagination and creativity at the age of 8 is very mature. The flow of thought in her stories and the language amazes me. She is an example of how talented our next generation is. Her parents are very supportive of her and would still support her when she wants to take up writing or arts for a career. I am sure, this will happen with many kids of our generation. 

The next generation will have no regrets about the road they were unable to take because there will be none. 

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
     I took the one less traveled by,
     And that has made all the difference.

Storyline

What happens when a girl who does not want to grow up, who does not want to get into the "adult world" (as she calls it) has to go through events like marriage and child birth? What happens if she gets called "Aunty" by other kids when within herself, she is not even mature enough to be a wife?

What happens if a girl wonders at the task given to her at office - "how do they trust me with such a big responsibility?", what happens if a girl does not realize how old she is and what her responsibilities are and wonder at others of her age who act like "big" people?

Have you ever heard of a girl who wonders what her own personality is when she is just about 30 years old and feels lost? Heard of a girl who is in search of who she actually is and where she lost her identity in life? Known anyone who always attributed herself with people who she is related to and not build up a character of her own? Have you been friends with a girl for whom recognition from close ones means life? Know a girl who is always dependent on others?

Know a lady who does even the smallest thing wrong and gets corrected always and falls short in all ways? Who never gets appreciated for her small acts and so thinks that she has to work harder? Know a lady who did not realize what her self worth is for most part of her life?

Ever heard of a woman who realized all the above said when she was just about 30 and started mending her life? Picked up shattered pieces of her personality lost along the journey of life and put them all together to build up a whole new her? Who started realizing what self worth and self respect is? One who ponders often how does one learn to be responsible? How does one become mature?

I am thinking of writing a story about her. She who can be described as above.
What do you think about this girl? Please let me know. All inputs are welcome.

Thankful!