Animated Chuhiya and Hathi Raja

We are two fraands... Animated Chuhiya and Hathi Raja.. and we are celebrating our personal happy friendship day.. so this blog is dedicated to us!

Our names:
Animated Chuhiya: Swapnil Preet Kumar Singh Sharma
Hathi Raja: Ashish Eric Cute Chand Singal

Our Photo:

Our Songs:
Song 1:
hoooooooooooooo
ek chuhiya ko dekha to aisa lagaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
jaise dengue ka jaal
jaise clothes ka bura haal jaise
chuhiya ki pooch jaise
choti se mooch jaise
parde pe ho ek chadta chuhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
hoooooooooooooooooooo

Song 2:
chuhiya re... chuhiya re... kabhi to pinjare mein aa... baithenge, baatein karenge.......

Song 3:
saara zamaanaaaa.... chuhiya ka deewanaaaa... zamana kahe fir kyunnnnn... hai rat kill lagaanaaaaaaa

Our Pastime:
Facial Animation and Mono Acting

Our Latest Observation:
The water dispenser in our office is faulty. The water from one tap is always warmer than the other tap.. dont know why...

Transformation!

I won’t be surprised if I have had the weirdest career path in the world!

• I studied Non-Medical Science till class 12
• Then I opted for B.A. Hons. (English)
• Then my first job was apprentice in a glass factory
• Then I became an editor in a publishing house where I made books on all malicious subjects
• Then I became a business writer / editor for a trade portal
• Then I did my masters in Mass Communication (Media & Advertising)
• Then I became a Knowledge Management Executive doing mostly content management work
• Then I became a hardcore Knowledge management pro
• And currently I am going towards becoming a techie – I am turning into a MS Sharepoint specialist and doing Acceptance Testing on portals!

This is how my literature transformed all these years:

Atomic Number of Elements -> Wordsworth and Coleridge -> Glass production statistics -> 100 ways of Kissing -> Product Catalog for an export firm -> Theory of Interpersonal communication -> Process document for sending mailers -> Knowledge maps -> User Acceptance Test Cases & Functional Requirement Specifications

And now I want to do an MBA so maybe next would be RFIs and RFPs!!!

What a trajectory!

Romance

A dew clad tree in the morning chill,
a streak of light from a dark hill,
the dry leaf is clinging still,
and your beautiful eyes closing at will.
Time is ripe for a romantic kill.

Remembering You!

The Sun's so bright, and a moonless night.
The life's so stressed, upheaveled and dried,
like an ailing mother's baby just cried.
The body is pumping but soul has died.
Amidst all this there is a respite,
and that's only your sight.

Remembering You

Realization

One of my friends made me realize that I am wasting my talent! I have been writing original messages and sending to friends for last 4 years now! There are a few people who have been my audience all this while. And the bad part is: I dont have any of them now. Maybe a few of them are still making rounds as forwards but there is no way I can get them back.

So.. now I have decided that I will write all such things on my blog!

Watch this space for some interesting stuff!

My trip to Agra

This is my trip to agra but what's more important is that I am honing my photography skills... check this album.. hope you like them....

View Album

Get your own

Are You Expecting?

Don't get me wrong, it's about expecting from people and not expecting people :) . This discussion explores if we should keep expectations from our friends, loved ones, family etc. or not.

What started as my friend's advice to me, became a discussion and finally a blog. So, here it goes -

My friend wrote:

..life is best when we don’t expect anything.. the more we expect.. the more depressed we get.. We should be entirely self reliant..n help others when they need help. Maybe the person u want help from wont be there.. but for every friend lost, a better friend is made.. for such is life...

I wrote:

I know.. we should not expect.. that is the root cause of all misery, but I still don’t agree that we should not expect.. if we do not expect anything from anybody.. no friends, no family.. nobody… then we are just by ourselves, leading a solitary life. Isn’t this a form of existentialism where you don’t have anything to fall back upon?

Selflessness is good.. but is not applicable everywhere. These days, how many people do we have in the name of family? Our parents and a sibling? Parents are generally of a different era and sibling is generally indifferent. And after marriage, in most cases only the partner. If we are not allowed to expect anything from them also, then what is it that we call as "home"?

As I see it, "Live life as it comes" is same as "Live a meaningless Life". Even if you are doing charity, with no monetary or social intentions… but still you expect a smile from the needy and a blessing for you.. isn’t it?

I don’t know if I am making sense but this is something that has bothered me for long. I am fully convinced that we SHOULD expect. The question I don’t have an answer to is "how much to expect". How to decide when you are overdoing it? What separates expectation from over-expectation? Because expectation is also a relative term. What is expectation for me is possessiveness for somebody else. And what I see as my right is a breach of personal space for somebody else. That is the thing I fail to understand.

Also, it is a very difficult chemistry… I have seen this happening with myself. Some of my friends complain that I over-expect whereas others have not even felt it slightly. Some people, even if they never realize it, have this inherent quality to be at par with others’ expectations always. They simply do not leave any room for complaint. I am always sure that they will do something that they should be doing. I don’t have to tell them to do something.. it just happens as a rule. I have two such friends, probably that is why they are my closest buddies. On the other hand, there are others who could never do justice to my efforts.

My friend wrote:

All your point are VERY valid here..i really cannot contest it.. mostly cos yes, sumtimes I also become ‘possesive’ in my expectations – and sometimes I don’t like to expect at all

and this is not existentialism – it is nirvana – to live a life where you are content and happy and self-reliant. Read that essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson – read it once and it will answer these questions. Self reliance is not the same as an unhappy existence.. according to me existing comes when you expect better.. but when you cant get it

It is not easy – perhaps that's why sages reach such a stage after yrs of sacrifice, cutting away meditation etc..

--------------------------

This is it. Now I am reading that essay. But before that, can I expect your thoughts on this?

The Professionally Correct Attitude

We get two kinds of paths at every turn of life. One is the right path and other is the wrong one. And it is only for the courageous, virtuous and determined people to choose the right path. Those who choose the wrong path end up nowhere and eventually perish. This is what our grandparents, teachers, moral books and fairy tales tell us.

But as I see it and face it everyday in the course of life, the situation is absolutely different. Life does not offer us such easy choices. It is very easy to choose the right path among the two. It might be difficult to walk on it but at least it is easy to choose.

The real test of life is about choosing from two seemingly rights paths. This is what I, and probably many of us, face everyday. I encounter situations when all my alternatives weigh almost equally and then I am asked to choose one. Depending on the difference of situations, the criteria to choose also changes. Sometimes (rarely) we know the criteria and hence can find an answer. But most of the time, it is even more difficult to find the right way to choose the right path rather than choosing it. This is the problem I want to discuss here.

Since childhood, or at least since I remember, I have had an argumentative nature. If I am convinced about a particular point (not necessarily correct, but who can decide that anyway?), I can fight till my last breath to prove it. This doesn’t mean I have no respect for others’ point of views or criticism or feedback, I would be the first one to gracefully accept my fault and try to learn provided I have very convincing and fool-proof counterarguments. But then, that again is an easy choice because I have been proved wrong. It is easy to choose between black and white but life seems all grey to me. I would keep quoting examples and scenarios to prove my point. And most of the time the argument closes because of time constraint.

The problem that arises due to this confusion is that sometimes I almost cross the line between debate and adamancy. This happens when I have already had a non-convincing argument at length. After a while, if the opponent is not able to convince me, I am not sure if I close my mind towards his PoV. Every time it happens so that the discussion starts rotting and remains inconclusive.

In professional scenario, this behavior of mine has been taken negatively at few occasions. Mostly when, at a later stage, I am proved wrong. However, there have been more situations in which I am proved right.

Now, my confusion is: Till I am proved wrong, why should I leave my PoV? And if I stick to it then how do I judge that I am not being rigid? If I have not been proved wrong, then why should I accept an opinion which is not mine? The question here is beyond right and wrong because nothing has been proved wrong yet.

Let me quote two situations to substantiate my confusion:

Situation 1: I was in a conference where we had people from all over the world. We were made to play a game of cards. I was the junior-most in designation among the group. We were given a list of rules to read and then it was taken back. After every hand, people were shuffled between different groups. After the first game, there was confusion about the rules. Everybody was stating a different rule. However, as I remembered the rules of my table perfectly, I almost negated their points and stuck to my rules. After 3-4 hands, it was revealed that the game rules were different on every table, that’s why the confusion. I realized my mistake that actually everybody was correct, but I was so convinced about the rules that I simply ignored them.

Ques: I know I became rigid. I did not know that they were right, but I knew that I was absolutely correct. So, what wrong did I do if I trusted my memory completely? Can’t it be termed as self-confidence as against authority?

Situation 2: While discussing a new structure for an application that our team was developing, I proposed my plan for the same. I was in discussion with four other people (again, all of them senior to me). They all refused to accept it and started finding faults in it. They tried hard to convince me, but I offered equal number of rebuttals. Rather, I gave them real-time examples of possible problems in their plan. After a while, they all were against me and it was a 4:1 situation. Being junior to all of them, at most I pulled my idea back but did not accept there opinion. Two days later, our group manager proposed the same plan as mine and left no scope for arguments.

Ques: I earned a bad reputation for being extremely argumentative and rigid but when I knew that I was correct, why would I leave my decision and accept some other thought?

The outcomes of both the above situations were different but the corollary was same - I earned a bad name.

To all my professional guides, mentors, friends and philosophers, please tell me what the “Professionally Correct Attitude” is!

Transfers are Much More than Transfers

Transfers are generally matter of days, or at most weeks. But here it took me more than 2 months to come back to normalcy. I left Bangalore in March and have come back to blogging now!

But now that I am here.. I am hopefully here to stay.

Here comes my latest blog.....

Small Lessons..

I was in Delhi last week on an official visit. My office is in Noida so I had to book a cab for two days to commute. As it was sunday I tried to visit as many family and friends I could in that one day. I got very late to reach the taxi stand to book my cab. The drivers were already in half sleep. One driver woke up and made the booking. I thought he had a hearing problem because I was repeating everything thrice to make him understand. In the end I asked him who would come in the morning, to which he said it was his turn to go next so he would come. My first thought was no!! please get your hearing aids along or I'll get mad.

Next morning, he stood outside my house right on time whereas I got late. The office was very far, so it took us long to find the way and reach there. But this time, he was hearing absolutely fine. While coming back in the evening, he was in a different mood. Probably he was fed up of waiting the whole day so he wanted to talk. He asked me all types of questions - about my office (which he called factory), my company, what work did I have here, what are the work timings etc etc. I obviously tried my best to neglect him and escape his questionnaire but lost miserably. Then was his turn to talk about himself. He had a son and a daughter, daughter being elder and of marriageable age. While talking about his daughter, his voice turned from an illiterate driver's to a responsible father's. It had the tones of a poor man's helplessness and a father's worry.

My sister is also of the same age and we are also looking for a match for her. So, at a level I related to the feeling and empathized. The way he narrated his problems, doubts and experiences was so intense and powerful that I could see myself being swept away. For a moment it felt as if my own father is teaching me the hard facts of life. His clarity of thought, maturity, and choice of words was better than many of us 'educated' people. I saw an extremely broadminded and thoughtful father in him. Obviously I did not share anything about my family but that was something he didn't expect too. After a while I realized that he was talking to himself more than me. Maybe that is what gives him such strength and clarity in his thoughts.

For the next two days, he was always on time but was much quieter. Maybe he was regretting that he talked about his personal life to me. Don't know who is better.. him or me? While he regretted sharing his life with me, I am discussing it in a public forum.

Seems life teaches lessons better than books.

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In that busy trip, this feeling about the driver got buried somewhere. My work started in full swing the moment I landed in Bangalore. I would never have recognized the lesson life taught me through that driver if I had not read the blog of my boss in our official blog site. He also had an incident with a driver while he was in Chennai.

Maybe this is what our 'fast' life is doing to us. Our mind's archival system is working faster than required. We don’t register the small but good things in life.

History Strikes Back!

In a rather cold morning today, I was waiting for my mother to come out of the airport. It was her first air travel and that too, alone. Her flight had landed about 45 minutes back and she had still not come out. She was not carrying a cell phone and due to the Republic Day security, no visitors were allowed to go inside the arrival terminal. With every passing minute my worry increased. I was really anxious to see her now. After a fidgety wait, I finally saw my mom coming out of the airport. Her baggage trolley was fully loaded and she was accompanied by a young and beautiful girl.

I waived to my mother but she didn’t notice. That girl saw me and conveyed it to my mother. They came out, I hugged my mother and then she told me that there was some baggage problem which took so much time. She introduced me to that girl. They had met at the Delhi airport and she helped my mother a lot during the travel. Although it was her first travel too but still having a companion makes things very simple. The girl called her brother who was supposed to receive her at the airport but had not arrived. He was coming from a far end of the city and hence I guessed that he would take atleast another one hour to reach there.

She looked very young, probably a higher secondary student but she was actually a teacher by profession, pursuing M.Com. in Delhi. For courtesy sake (actually mom’s sake) we had to wait there till her brother arrives. So we went to a nearby coffee shop. I was already stunned by the level of comfort they had with each other. She was touching my mom more than I would and my mom was talking to her as if they’ve been friends forever! While my mother got busy calling my family back in Delhi to inform about her safe arrival, we started a pep talk. She was not fond of coffee so I got her juice and coffee for me and mom. I was not at all surprised by the fact that she already knew much about me. “So, is HCL a call center or a software company?” she softly asked. No need to laugh on this, most Delhi girls (who don’t work in corporate) would ask you the same question almost boasting that they can differentiate between the two.

Then she started asking me about Bangalore, the weather, the hang-outs etc. She had a sweet voice, quite complimenting her cute face. Although she wore braces but that was definitely not the first thing you would notice about her. She was quite disheartened to know that her ‘aunty’ would stay very far from her in Bangalore so she won’t be able to meet her easily. At this point, it was quite easy to ask for her number but as the connecting link was my mother I refrained from that.

After about an hour, her brother arrived. From no angle he looked a three years younger brother to her but I had little choice in believing that. Then we did a hurried bye, my mother hugging her (ofcourse) and we proceeded towards an auto.

“Aditi’s brother looks very old for his age, isn’t it?” my mother asked after boarding the auto.
"Hmmm.." I nodded uninterestingly.
“What... what was her name?” I asked after an uncomfortable pause.
she plainly replied,“Aditi Gupta”.

Meeting parting meeting parting….

Science & Tech is supposed to simplify our lives. Its main aim is to make our lives easier, happier & more comfortable and it’s anybody’s guess that the reality is absolutely opposite. We are more prone to tensions, diseases, discomforts and dangers than our previous generations. There sure are better people than me to talk about the ‘technical’ or ‘technological’ hazards we are facing today. What’s bothering me today is the psychological aspect of it. What mental effect does sci/tech have on us? Atleast one aspect of it is that our “social” circle has lost its boundaries.

Meeting and parting is the way of life…
In earlier times, we had to believe that once parted we wont meet again, which is sad, but which is so good too. We just needed to “live for the moment” and then forget everything. Do whatever you want without thinking about future. Your past would never reflect on you again and hence you are absolutely free! Every time you are free to start relationships afresh without any tensions of past goof-ups/ experiences. So, meeting & parting was such a great way of life!!

It’s a small world…
With the development of communication channels & all ‘izations’ happening, the probability of re-meeting people increased. Now we were just not sure if we are parting for ever. There grew a possibility of planned or unplanned meeting in future. So we started becoming cautious. If not all “well & good”, atleast we tried to end on a good note (so we prevent future embarrassments). But still, we could fairly believe that we would not meet atleast 90% of people we part with.

The ORKUT world…
Now has come the time of all misery and trouble. We are creating a web of ‘contacts’ in our life. Each and every person whom I left in history is coming back now. So much so that people I had met for a few months.. or weeks or just once(!!) are coming back and they talk as if we never lost touch. (and btw… many of them fan you too)

By friends I mean a bunch of few guys I relate with.. like to spend time with.. and can share my thought with. Do I need hundreds of “friends” for that? I really don’t think so. Another problem that has risen is that now I cannot part with people. Would that mean I’ll just keep adding “friends” all my life? And when I’ll die there would be almost a national mourning?

The problem is not as simple as it sounds. Now I have to watch my every word, every action and every thought because there is nothing like “buried in the past”. The mistakes I did when I was 8 can ruin me when I’ll be 80! And that means I have to please everybody now. For God’s sake… how can I please everybody at the same time? Previously it was so easy to just let go. But now this attitude can have lethal repercussions. Imagine.. I slapped a girl in kindergarten and my wife calls me misogynist for that!

No… I am not blabbering… this is not just a bizarre fad… today I “met” a guy with whom I explored my genitals in my early adolescence!! Imagine the level of my embarrassment! I mean we didn’t do anything as such... you know what I mean. I can’t say or think more about that. I’ll throw up.

SOS!! Please give me a permanent way to part with friends!

That Morning...

For us it was a drift from bad to worse. We had made a niche for ourselves in a far end of the city where we stayed for almost 2 years. My job compelled me to shift to the middle of the city, take a costlier yet worse house and inhale more dust and pollution everyday.

It was our first morning there. After a tiresome session of shifting the previous day, we had just started settling down in this new house. You could not even call it a house. It looked like those deserted jungle lodges. Walls and floor darkened by dry algae on the cement, decades old paintings and posters hanging on walls, dimly lit lampshades most of which were broken and about to fall, barely minimum furniture lying here and there like a rat’s nest and above all, the place was unusually silent.

At first it really felt like an adventure trip in which we are left behind by our group in the middle of a jungle. The silence was so loud that it seemed to engulf all other noises. Even our own voices sounded like unwanted disturbances there. The only thing we wanted to do at that point was to somehow break that stony silence. We switched on the TV, refrigerator, fans etc. and started talking louder than usual. Then life started pumping into that deceased shack.

Sleep was the only agenda for us then. The room, again a dingy crash pad, was haunting enough to take away our sleep and breath. With almost half the lights on in the house (for obvious reasons), we managed to get some sleep. We slept over an untold quest if we were at the right place.

Next morning, we got up quite early. Another unusual sign for us but there was no probable reason to deem the house responsible for that. I got up and went straight to the bathroom. When I came out, still rubbing sleep off my eyes, another scare was waiting for me. I could not find her anywhere in the house. I thought she would be in the kitchen but she was nowhere to be seen. The place still had its unusual lull and the door was left bare open.

I stepped out and a cool splash of fresh and cold mist softly touched my face. As if I am far from the toxic city of Bangalore, amidst the snowy abodes, the springs and the streams, the orchards and the tufts of nothing less than heaven. With a slow recovery of my instantly benumbed senses, I noticed stairs in front of me which seemed endless in that mist. I climbed up each step and the dry leaves crumpled under my feet making my rise significant and conscious. My eyes reached the terrace before me from the top of the last step and there was a divine sight waiting for me. Just across the terrace, at the far corner, there was she, in her off-white satin gown which gelled completely with the morning mist. Inseparable yet distinct like moon and moonlight. The hem was reaching the dark floor to make it appear inferior in contrast. Her one hand rested on the wall while the other held a cup. Bearing such warmth and passion in them, how could they both look so serene, intense and cool.

Her lightly flowing hair on the neck looked as if the night is dominating the day and asking it to wait a little more while dreams crown up and minds onset. Her eyes gleamed like first rays of sunlight that embrace the ground and her lips looked like a kiss of fresh dew. I saw her gazing at the sky as if streaks of light were cutting the heart of darkness and reaching for the horizon.

It was a scene to behold. As I panned my vision through the terrace, everything had a pious and soothing effect. I almost forgot the world for sometime and just lived in that moment of ecstasy.

As the last leaf crumpled, the din of life came back calling. Although the feast was over, we savored the taste. We had a satisfactory smile on our face which needed no explanation. The next one hour, we were involuntarily a part of the silence around us. There was no more a wish to disturb the sanctity of that silence and it felt as if now the silence had started speaking. There were words, there was music, there was joy and there was calmness. We let all our windows and doors open and the mist and silence seeped in and filled every corner of our soul with the celestial grace.

Now the house didn’t haunt, now the city didn’t daunt. It was not just the beginning of a day, it was embarkment of an exploration.