With your guards down

In a less obvious moment we do things that we cant fathom to do in company. While driving and on some not-so-dull moments while waiting for the traffic light to turn into green, I noticed these from my car’s rear-view mirror.

? People screaming, whispering and talking on cell phones. -You could tell the difference.
? Couple looking out in different directions – r they working out a scuffle.
? “Soccer mom’s” with van loaded with screaming kids – desperately hoping for a much needed vacation
? A single parent with the kid listening to their mp3’s. – hello ! talk to ur mom, and avoid the paying the therapist later.
? People making out as if there’s no tomorrow – get a room, people.
? Two women in a deep conversation – catching up on stuff.
? Car full of family with resounding silence – try talking.
? Huge trucks with men in deep vacant thoughts.
? Young girls syncing their lips to the songs and playing the invisible guitar in the thin air.
? Boys drumming their heads to the rap.
? I have even spotted people with a tear running down their cheeks.
? Women doing their makeup routine….trying to get that last dash of lipstick / mascara.
? The gross ones are people picking their nose, men trying a hand at electric razor.
? People enjoying a bite of their b’fast / lunch.
? Women reading directions and men looking closely at name of the street.
? People with blank faces just waiting for the light to turn green.
? I have even seen a mini fan, screwed to the dashboard, don’t ask how !
? People like me, looking at their rear view mirror.

The new verb

Just when you think, Oxford Dictionary has officially finished publishing it's new version to add "Google" as a new verb to mean search, a new website has emerged to give us more choice in our searches. Maybe the next word in dictionary will be GahooYoogle

How I met the maestro…. Ustad Bismillah Khan

I was at a wedding ceremony in Vizag, a daughter of my dad’s friend was takingthe vows and we were all there. We were almost ready to wrap up to go, and I overheard few of my dad’s friends say, "oh! The father of the bride is playing all these filmi music." Thankfully, it was sparingly not too loud, but with the backdrop of lush gardens, with lotus flowers in the nearby pond and the splashes of water fountains, beautifully laid shamiana’s, fragnance of basmati whiffing in the air…somehow the music wasn’t justifying the esteemed presence of all highly acknowleged poets and artists. Then I heard my dad say, only the shehnai of ustad bismillah khan would be the cream of this décor.  In a hurried state as if it was forgotten, the father of the bride, somehow managed to get the tape. Within minutes, the tunes and melody of the great maestro Ustad Bismillah Khan’s shehnai started to waft in that balmy air. While I was sitting there as a child no older than 9 or 10, I was converged with the rhythmic notes he was creating with his shehnai. Subconsiously, i hung on to this memory, and thought maybe i should do this for my wedding too...

Few days ago, this memory dashed to my mind, while reading some article somewhere. There was also a picture of the young maestro in his humble abode, cross legged on the floor, in his white kurta and pyjama -- you could see that with his eyes closed his heart was pouring out of the shehnai.

But today, as I opened deccan.com, one of the headlines said “Shehnai’s purest note dies”… at 90 with cardiac arrest, he bid goodbye, he rested doing what he believied in … I continued to read that he didn’t celebrate his 90th b’day (quote DC) “as a mark of protest against the Varanasi bomb blasts.” My eyes swelled at it. Here there are people with such hatred for other communities, and here's a man trying to bridge his love for his land in his own way. Unfortunately, we lost this great mind on 21st of August, 2006.
 
I’ll always remember him as a simple person who created grand music that’ll always linger in the air.

Pictures courtesy of www.rajatgoyal.com

Refuge me!

After an exhaustive day at school (St. Francis) deciding if I should take French or German for my second language, and practicing school dance at Shivani’s home and with an almost empty wallet, I was waiting for my bus ‘1A’ to get home from Secundrabad. This was pre-kinetic days.

The bus stop was full of college crowd, since all my friends left already, I was looking at the bustling street ahead of me, longing for the bus to come. Then in the scorching heat I felt a chill, an icy slice of something clutching my feet slowly….

I let out a small cry and pounced in fear and looked down to see what could it possibly be. What I saw is a little girl, in grime, scruffy hair and torn clothes, must be 10 or 12 years old. She just looked at me with her palms wide open, I have never felt a persons hunger in such an up-close manner. Her icy hands were passing the tide of her state to me and I couldn’t understand the drain of energy. I gave her whatever I had in my wallet and hailed for an auto in a rush and started home. All through the ride, the thought of the chill fingers were giving me the frights.

I’ve heard people talk about poverty and I’ve seen poverty very close too. But feeling it on my skin was just very threatening to all that we build around in our safety net.

As I was splashing water on my face at home, the mirror looked back at me with a superficial emptiness of our lives and the powerlessness of the poor soul in me. A small part of me died in those little girl’s cold hands.

Need we say more!

In the picture perfect copious look alike back roads of America, this one stop sign said it all. I couldn’t control the urge to go back the next day to capture it. Another one down the lane said “STOP WAR”, but that was cleaned spotlessly, by the time I got there!

As I drive past the “STOP” sign, my soul torments me with myriad thoughts...can the minds of evolving world be ever uncontaminated! How many “Cindy Sheehan’s” does it take for a point to make? how many Abu Gharib incidents have to be repeated ? How many silent tears have to be wept by the orphaned kids, widowed wives, grieving parents and despondent men before this or any war stops….

Is peace worth the effort if such blood is shed for it! 

With a grim reality in face and a vain anger I drive past the sign to make peace with my day.

No, thank you !

In the dark night, your tired mind drifts away to a vacation, on a misty morning, you land on a patio on a B&B, with a cup of tea, feeling the breeze in your hair and a smile spreads on your face.

In a sudden turn of events, you are tightly wrapped in this dark gear, and you are going down and further down, the pressure in your head is building up, the uncertainty of life is catching up with you and then you are whisked away to a lodge under sea…WHAT! Hold on! That cant be true, did you have a rough day that you are hallucinating things. But wait, no, I’m there….you are there…we are in a lodge under water. http://www.jul.com. - made this a reality for a lot of people. The windows exhibit the sashay of under-water sea life all around you, there are no long queues for checking-in the room. You are with the element. For now, I wake up and shake the thought, this is no joke for claustrophobics.

A fair aisle

Does anyone wonder how your words might impact others? …do we make a difference to strangers or friends with how we choose to respond? Can we contribute to a level where people stand corrected.…can their or our opinions change.

In an everyday moment that happens countless times in our lives, an incident emerged which made me wonder that way. I always shop at Giant near home, but due to unforeseen circumstances, that day I found myself in the canned vegetables aisle of another supermarket in King of Prussia (a near by town). Unaware of where things are placed in this store I was pacing left, right, back and forth many times looking for this and that. In that routine, I noticed a middle aged, African American lady dressed in a beautiful salwaar kurta (a dress worn by women in India). Commending for her choice to wear clothes of other origin, I moved on. But we bumped next to each other in that “Canned Vegetables” aisle. I couldn’t pass the opportunity to tell her that she was looking pretty in that dress. She gracefully said thank you and asked me if I was from India. Obviously, my skin tone and dark hair gave it away : ) Anyway, we moved on to get sucked in the daily grind. Incidentally, we came across each other in another aisle, she then approached me to chat.

In matter-of-factly way, she mentioned of her recent trip to a hospital, where the nurse (another African American lady) spotted her in the same dress and complimented her. So this lady asked the nurse how did she know what country this dress was from, and the nurse replied “oh ! my daughter in law is a Indian girl”.

While saying this her face clouded with thoughts and she said, “I was surprised that a Indian girl married a African American guy. I know that Indians don’t like marrying into African American families” and with brows high in pensive mood she was moving away.

This is “wrong”, I couldn’t let this lady go on feeling this way…at that moment I carried the burden of speaking on behalf of my fair thinking fellow country people.
I stopped her and gently said, maybe what you feel is an old school thought and that doesn’t hold true anymore. I cant vouch for all but I know a distant cousin of mine who married a African American guy, and you wouldn’t find a happier couple like them, they have 2 kids to prove it too. If I wasn’t happily married and was asked out by good-hearted African American guy, I’d go out. I wanted to say more, but that was not a moment to go on a spiel. With a glimmer in her eyes, she gently patted my shoulders and walked away smiling and nodding her head.

At that split of a second two people from age, culture and thoughts apart were standing together as one with the same thought. We struck a fair balance.

The hours into the day continued to unfurl but my mind didn’t stop wondering, “Did I make a difference, would her opinion change the next time she sees a girl from Indian Heritage!”

Tone it down

As in the work culture across the world, my office laid the same stage for us in IT dept to wear “Business Casual”. Business casual is the new black of office couture for the past many many years. Everyone looks alike with the same Black or grey slacks and plain or striped shirts on Mondays, plaids and khakis on Thursdays, with occasional formal attire for a “high priority” meeting.

But when is it ok to tone it down, further….

The East of West is tempered with sky-high hot temperatures for the past few weeks. On one such simmering day, a colleague who reminds me of Bruce Wills, but much taller, with a goatee and husky voice, with a strong build, who must be at least 69 if not more, came to work in Khaki shorts. Hmm…..it doesn’t matter to us, since the HR is in the other bldg, nobody is going to hunt him down to read the rules. By the way, just to set the record right, he almost always is dressed in the best form of “Business Casual”.

Anyway, I overheard a conversation where he was saying maybe I should wear a board across my neck, which reads “yeah ! I’m wearing shorts”, so that nobody asks me, if they missed a memo to wear shorts on Tuesday. To that I thought “at this age if he can’t do what he wants to work then it’s a shame ”.

But the next hour, I was contemplating on that thought. Why does age relate to that level of being and expressing who we are. Are the stakes low, is there less to prove…could he carried away with his nonchalant attitude in his career forming years.

Why as “Dilbert’s” at work, do we care less or not as much, once the worth is proven.

And when is it Ok to tone it down…and why?

A girl with 5000 messages

My life was happening right in front of me and I was living every bit of it, straight out of college, working in a cool place, riding my kinetic to work, meeting new people, going out with old friends, parties, movies, concerts…et al.

One such day, my dad anxiously announced that the application process is completed and I’ll be heading out to Griffith university in Gold Coast on Feb 3rd, aieh aieh aieh… I had something planned for that day, and it was my dad’s birthday, how could I possibly go.

The next few days went puff in the air…my mom is either shopping for me or hollering at me to shop for this and that, meanwhile in the background instead of helping me do whatever that needs to be done, my brother would teasingly sing “tu kal chala jayega tho main kya karoonga”. My sister who recently got engaged was busy giving me words of caution of how to manage, how to behave like a grown up.

The day of my departure, dad faxed a letter to inform my uni’s of my arrival and to have someone pick me up at the airport. My dad briefed me for the 100th time “don’t go anywhere”, “stay put at one place”, “don’t wander, be careful with your passport and luggage”. I was leaving India for the first time and neither my family nor I was ready to let go. I couldn’t keep things straight let alone all the advice that was coming from left and right. He gave me US $ as I’d need it for stuff. Wasn’t I heading to Australia!

From Hyderabad >> Madras >> Singapore >> Brisbane >> I reached Gold Coast. I patiently waited for 10 full minutes at the airport. Since it was Sunday, I wasn’t sure if the uni’s coordinator checked my dad’s fax about my arrival. But each waiting minute was only gravitating against home; the stillness of the situation was too much to bear. Before I knew I was sitting in the back seat directing the cab driver to take me to uni. He was like “yeah ! I know where this place is…” and I silently hoped that he did, bcoz I didn’t : )

The novelty of the place was almost getting to me and I was absorbing the city, the endless blue water, the yachts floating on bay, streets brimming with life, surfers heading to the beach. Meanwhile, my rational personality was reminding me that I wasn’t in a city with familiar alleys and nooks like Hyderabad, the night when my brother yelled at me for driving back home late in the night was coming to my head. During this fight of personalities, I realized that the cab was slowing down to the point of halt and the pager on the dashboard was beeping with messages.

The cab driver excused to make a call and I braced myself… though my thoughts were going haywire. The cab driver returns to ask me “do u know what just happened!”, and with my adversity creeping up on me, I said I’d know if you clued me in.

With his thick fingers and tattoed hands he showed me his pager, which read, if there is a young Asian girl in your cab heading towards university, please call this no. He continued saying that my coordinator didn’t find me at the airport and is getting worried ! aye lo ! and sent a msg across all the cabs. He just got off the phone with her and now she wants you to come to this address instead of the university. My practical side of personality was still in mild conflict, but the chirpy side won! We then headed to the residential address.

In a reflective mood he shared this was his first time in his cab driving expereice that one msg was relayed to all the 5000 cabs at the same ditto time and I smiled pondering that it was a first for me too.

After a long haul of 20 minutes, the cab stopped right across a beautiful spread beach. As I climbed down the cab, I was soaked in the warmth of the new sun, and I found myself at the entrance of a white fence of my new abode.

I tried to pay the cab driver but he smiled and said he takes only Australian dollars….

Baday dino kay baad....

The letters for the room mates were left on the kitchen table, going through that stack of mail, the emotion of randomness in finding a letter with your name on it, is not something we experience these days with email. The click of a button does it….before email era a letter from home would stir up a sensation of .....of the way, you’d open the door and find a long lost friend at your door step.

One such day, a letter arrived from my mom. I grappled the moment, made tea, closed the door and tore open the letter…. and to my surprise all there was in the letter were the lyrics of Pankaj Udhas’s song “baday dino kay baad”... my mom also wrote -- remember how we use to listen to this song, in the living room watching chitrahaar and use to wonder how did the singer wrap such strong sentiments in few lines….

As I was reading the letter, I realized i wasnt alone, I was in that living room with my mom, sitting casually with no care in the world.

Many years later, one day while driving back from work, i heard on a FM show that Pankaj Udhas will be in town, so i pulled over and jotted down the contact no, got 2 tickets for me and vamsi. I couldnt wait for the day to dawn any sooner. On the day of the show, an idea struck me, wouldn’t it be nice to tell Mr. Pankaj Udhas how his song influenced me. In case i meet him, I thought I'd give the note to him and so I penned down my thoughts.

Two hours before the show, Vamsi called to say he cant make it as he is stuck at work. It was too late for me to think of canceling the show, so i pulled out my rocky (my xterra) and drove to this far out town. Meanwhile it started to pour, it was 7.30pm on dark cold rainy night. After many missed exits and bad turns, i reached but sadly the show started, that didn't waver my enthusiasm to enjoy the show.

At break time, i went backstage, but met him only after a silly indian lady wanted to get his autograph for her soon to be son-in-law! The way she asked him was what irked me... So, my turn came and I gave him my note, exchanged pleasantries and returned to my seat.

An hour into the show, I looked at my watch and wondered maybe I should head back or it’ll be too late and i had to stop at a gas station too. Just then Mr. Pankaj Udhas announced that the next song "Chitti ayi hai" will be his last for the evening. He also added that "i want to dedicate this to 2 people here in the audience, when i call names please do stand up". First he said, he wanted to dedicate this song to his friend who organized the show and second for the young lady, Imtiaz, who gave me this beautiful note, it's for both of u, who gave life to the meaning of the song…

I was dumb struck, could it be true, it was unreal, while we stood, the whole auditorium rang with the resonance of claps and whispers and i cant tell u how profoundly this moment had stuck to me since then. Then he sang....that beautiful song and I as I looked around, I realized that the grand concert hall was transformed to my living room, where me and my mom were watching the song on tv and sharing a moment...

I found my Murari Lal !

 here's the thing, people who know me, know that I love my rocky ! well, it's kind of offbeat but it's the name of my SUV. I know I know...everyone who rolled their eyes, just bugger off...

People who drive yellow-xterra's share a thick kinship of unexplainable overbearing pride, kinda like Harley-davidson clan's, or so I'd like to continue to think. So, whenever a yellow xterra would drive past me, I'd give a quick nod or wave my hand to show my respect for the same taste.

V would see me do this and say nobody really cares, they are driving at such a speed that they wouldn't even know, I don't know why you keep doing that, and on and on. But I knew deep down in my heart, that I'd find a person, that one person, who shares the same respect and return the good faith gesture.

So, one fine morning, rocky, me and V took a drive to the near by book store and after a cup of starbucks that ran deep into our blood and woke our souls, we picked the books we wanted and started our drive back home.

There I see a shining yellow xterra closing the distance between us by inches, and v looked me and said no ! please not again, cant we just go, without you doing all the charade, so I disapprovingly cast a glance at him and while I was saying whatever, my comrade, the one person I was looking for gave me the wave and nodded even before I did.



Vamsi smiled and said finally you found your friend ! and i quoted rajesh khanna in the movie Anand....mujhey mera murari lal milgaya, babu moshai...mujhey mera murari lal milgaya, babu moshai...


My search ended.

Meeting on a Friday afternoon ?

it's Friday afternoon...on a humid sunny day... we all know what Friday afternoon's mean in the work life. It's the high point of the entire week, u are this close to being out, u r this close to having an almost perfect weekend ( dream on !), anyway, my crazy team lead mentioned something to my PM and he called for a "Meeting". Don't be worried now, we have a application upgrade and it was to go over who's doing what, who's calling whom and what's going to happen at what time.

Anyway, the dreaded meeting was scheduled from 4pm to 5pm. As soon as I received the invitation, I was like "what the hell, not on a Friday", well it's a unwritten rule, almost like a unspoken declaration that everyone hates late Friday meeting, we all wanna prove that we have a life outside of office, we have it or not is another question. But as a rule of thumb we don't like being here after 4pm on Friday. right ! rye...t!

So, while confirming my invitation to my PM, I just included my comments as "4-5 pm ?" I was secretly hoping he would get the hint. Lo! he did....

He rescheduled it for 3-4pm, well my life can go on now. I confirmed the meeting with a reply of thanks. As soon as we entered the conference room, my PM saw me and said, oh ! Tia (I'm called that at work BTW) was going to have my head off if I wouldn't change the time of the meeting.

I was almost embarrassed but heard the laughter in the room ! That broke the ice in the room, everyone started cracking up laughing and agreed in union that somebody finally voiced their thoughts, it was a moment of glory, a silent war that I battled on behalf of the people in the meeting and I / we won.

The meeting was over in 20 mts.

My first blog !

Hi...this is my first blog...even as i'm writing this, I can feel the creative juices flooding into my head to write more, write something, write what i feel, this is my space, the lightness in my heart is so compelling that i cant consume myself to think further. I'm going to ramble a lot...hope you ( who r u !) get the drift of my blathering drivels !

By the way, you are most welcome to add your comments !