From the 'Times of India', 21 Nov, 2008

hmmmn

Market down...

Came across this in The Statesman today. Interesting :O) Thought of including it in my blog

It happened yesterday...

Yesterday morning, while coming to office, I saw a woman being taken on a stretcher by railway men. This is not something new in Mumbai (if you are used to traveling by local trains here, you would know what I mean). The sight of the blood-splattered body was really disturbing. Haven’t been able to get her off my mind…

She was in a hurry!
What was the hurry, I wonder?

Maybe she was in a hurry to reach office on time,
Scared that she would get shouted at again

Maybe she was in a hurry to drop her daughter/son to school
Scared he/she would be punished for coming in late

Maybe she was in a hurry to reach the hospital
Scared she might not make it in time to say adieu

Maybe she was in a hurry to buy a present (her hubby’s birthday), on her way to office
Scared she might not get the time later in the day

Maybe she was in a hurry to be on time for the interview
Scared that the first impression might ruin her future

Maybe she was in a hurry to reach home
Scared no one would have given her ailing in-law her medicine

And in all this hurry, engulfed by all these thoughts
Maybe she didn’t see the train coming towards her
And finally when she did, it was too late…

I fear...

I fear when I am in a crowd…
It makes me feel unsafe…
I fear when I am alone…
There is this eerie feeling, that something bad is about to happen

I fear when I say ‘c u soon’
What if I don’t get to see them ever again
I fear when I think of a happy tomorrow
May be there won’t be a tomorrow at all

I fear when I see people running,
My heart skips a beat, my mind races
I fear when I see people still,
My eyes wander, wanting to pick up cues

I fear when the telephone network gets jammed,
Is this a signal?
I fear when someone doesn’t pick up the phone
Did something just happen?

I fear when a stranger is good to me,
I can’t trust him
I fear when a stranger is indifferent,
Something’s surely up his sleeve…

Every moment I live in fear
Every moment …
I fear being a victim of one of these blasts
I fear someone else being a victim of it.
I fear losing someone closest to my heart to it

Day by day I fear something inside me dying
Every moment I fear losing my faith to fear
Every moment I fear…I fear

Inspired by mehndi

Finally!

The arguement continues...

A week

Toilet signs for a pharma company

How I got my surname...

A Fairy was going from North to South,
Carrying Neena in her mouth.
But when she saw that Neena was a nut,
She dropped her in the Gupta's Hut :O)

Over the weekend...

Sex ratio of India - The picture says it all

Power naps //winking

Why serve in the first place?

Each time I make a trip to my home in Siliguri, I normally take a connecting flight to bagdogra. So it’s Mumbai-Kolkata-Bagdogra. The distance between Mumbai and Kolkata is covered within 2 hrs 15 mins (only by Jet Airways) and that between Kolkata and Bagdogra within 45 mins (again, only by Jet airways). I am not too bothered about other airlines anyways. I would rather cancel my trip than travel by any other airline (you call this brand loyalty //winking. If only companies paid you for being this loyal //wish)

Anyways, what I am talking about here is ‘Why serve in the first place?’

This is not the first time this thought has come to my mind. It comes invariably each time I am on the Kolkata-Bagdogra flight. 45 minutes to serve freshners followed by drinks followed by a main course followed by coffee/tea (whichever you prefer) followed by sweets besides the safety instructions, collecting donations for the NGO they support, distributing suggestions’ slip and later collecting it, checking if passengers have their seat belts on…yes they have been trained to carry these out. Fine! But, all within 45 minutes? It’s insane.

My focus at the moment is just on the food they serve. They always serve lovely food. Today they had parantha, palak kofta, rajma and rice besides salad, brownie and frooti.
They get less than 30 minutes to serve food to approx. 174 passengers. These 30 minutes include the time for them to collect the leftovers. Why am I whining about it? I am not the one on gas. I am not the one being pressurized to perform. I am not the one whose job is at stake. Why do I care? I care, may be not about them. But I do care about myself. Before I’ve had even a few bites of the yummy food, she/he is there to collect the food tray. Why this early? I haven’t even tasted the kofta leave aside the yummy dessert. And the salad and the frooti? (I am by no chance a glutton nor am I too fond of food). What I see is when these air stewards come to collect the food tray they are equally embarrassed for forcing you to hurry up. They can see you haven’t even kind of started. Yet they are bound by time.

I will mostly happily agree on something which I get to finish than on something which is so elaborate that all I do is have my mouth water, something which I never fully get to relish. Why don’t they just serve a quickie – a veg/non-veg puff and a brownie or something alike. That’s about it. It’ll save them so much of a hassle and atleast the passenger wouldn’t feel disappointed about not being able to finish their meal.

Hmmmmn? Makes sense?

There is a time…

"A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to break up, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose;
A time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew;
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate;
A time of war, and a time of peace."

- Eleven Minutes, Paulo Coelho

A beautiful poem

I came across this poem a few days back in 'The Telegraph'. Written by someone called Janhavi Malhotra from Chandigarh. Only child of her parents, this 14 year old is stricken with cancer. Her poems are remarkable...

"As I look into the mirror,What is it I see?
A familiar face, staring back at me.
It is the same face that everyone sees,
But as I gaze into her soul, I know there's more to me
The unspoken thoughts, the mindless fears
The truth and the lies, the uncried tears
The umpteen wishes to fly high,
The hopes and dreams to touch the sky,
Mirror Mirror on the wall, I ask
How do i look today?
The mirror doesn't reply.
But I start my day anyway."

I hope Janhavi recovers soon and wish she has a long, happy life.

Why me?

Down with viral. Was reading ‘The Children’s Mahabharata’ when something on Bhima brought back very unpleasant memories. No No No…I do not resemble Bhima by any angle – neither do I look like him nor is my appetite like him…Yet I don’t know what triggered it and one thought led to another and those moments came right before my eyes.

“Beta let’s check your weight first…”, said Doctor Uncle. The next moment I had disappeared from there. Weight…no god no… why me? I am fine…ask mumma…why are you doing this to me doctor uncle…why can’t you just check my pulse… What followed was a big ‘Neena hunt’ in the house…why couldn’t they leave me alone…

I hid in my dad’s room...finally safe. Suddenly I felt a pair of hands digging into my armpits and I was lifted off the floor. I hated the triumphant look on my brother’s face. I hated him so much at that very moment. Why was he doing this to me? Wasn’t he supposed to help me?

So finally I was made to stand on that god damnit machine…tears rolling down my cheeks. I promised myself that I wouldn’t speak to anyone, ever again. “She is overweight.” Well you could just look at me and tell me that, couldn’t you? Why this humiliation?

Life since then has been no less painful…Still trying to shed off the puppy fat, as they call it.

Nikhil keeps telling me that he just finds me so cute, that he doesn’t want me to lose any weight. But that doesn’t help me. KA says “It’s gotta do with constitution”. That doesn’t help me either. My question is why me?

We all live under the same sky, but we don’t have the same horizon.

all you need is love

Peace to Piece

Notes to each other

From your wife, your life

to my man, my lantern
who brightens up my life

to my life's date, my bedmate
to my bumchum, my cute dum dum

to my love, my life, my breath,
to my wishes, my dreams, my desires

to the one I love, adore, worship
desire, possess and protect

to you from now till the end
with love your wife, your life

Prisoner of thought