Random thoughts

Been a while since I wrote..there are times when I really want to say a lot..but during those moments I am invariably never near my laptop...and then when I am I just am not inspired anymore. These combo moments don't happen often so this moment is definitely something that needs to be cherished..

By who you say!! :) well noone but me and me alone...

I am not a great writer and have also been told so by people who's opinion matters, but hey this is MY Space...MY Queendom. And this is MY online thought keeper. I don't even expect people to read any of what I write, leave alone comment on it...so what the hell!

A couple of years ago while I watched a play at Rangashankara the first thoughts of what I want to pen down now were seeded into my brain! I had probably just about turned 30 then.This character from the play came forward and was trying to explain what being 32 was all about! He was funny and I remember to have laughed then without actually understanding what he meant...

I do not remember the exact words but in essence he was trying to explain that being 32 now meant he would not be in his 20s or younger ever again. He would not probably ever be Mr.India or be 5 feet 10 inches tall. Or be the youngest genius to have achieved a feat et al... he said it real funny..but the underlying truth to what he said has just about hit me in the last few days..

Am not unhappy about being 32..thats not it at all. Its not a great feeling to be getting older but 32 is definitely not old...

But lately its hit me that there are these small things that you secretly always wish will happen and continue to strengthen that belief each time you see something relevant..and these are almost always your own secret beliefs and wishes....and then POOF! you realise that time has actually flown past......but you still don't actually realise that it has!

All those little things that would have mattered had they happened would now never since the time has gone by!!

And now I know what experience was telling me at that point and I did not have the experience to listen to experience then...

An Eulogy from friends..between friends...I wonder !!

Even before I begin this blog I'd better put down a disclaimer saying "these are my thoughts alone and are not intended to irk/spite anyone or everyone in particular"

Was going through FB (got plenty of time on hand off late) and came across the posts that have been put out by friends and well wishers of some well known people who have tragically passed away recently....and it brings about this strange thought in my head as to what could an eulogy written for me read like?

Been around for 32 years now and its been one helluva journey to date...i know its a weird thought but each time I watch a western movie which portrays a scene wherein a memorial service is being shown it never fails to make me wonder what would people say (if they say at all!) when I pass away....
Loads of you may say- chey!! what a stupid thought it is...OR why the hell would you care as to what people will say or do..
but hey thats me...it aint gonna change now..

I would like to think I have been a good person (most times I hope!!)...atleast my intentions have been good (thats what matters at the end of the day doesn't it - hopefully not the outcome which is 99% of the time disastrous with me looking like an idiot at the end of it all!!).
Have tried my best to be there for people when I believed they needed me or directly told me that they needed me to be around.....(and overstepped boundaries when I thought I was needed when I actually was not...this is especially the part where I meant my intentions have been good).

But as I do sit back and think , I sometimes wonder what friendships really are meant to be.......hundreds of people have come and gone in my life till date and quite a few of them have made an impact in one way or the other......
Some of them I would like to think I still know (which by itself is a highly debatable topic that I could write a lot about) , some of them I hear about and over time we have drifted apart, some more I remember but have no clue whatsoever about what they are upto and some ,I have clearly forgotten.
.......but each one of them I have called a 'friend'.

How can this one term be so generic and specific at the sametime? Do we really know one another well enough to be called friends or are these just glorified acquaintances? Does friendship really mean a licence to say /act the way you think is right and expect to be accepted? Is 'a friendship means no sorry no thank you' - just a cheesy bollywood line?

I wonder...I really do! And all this said and done I wonder if its even right to wonder about an Eulogy..maybe those would be just words too...
If noone thought of saying it & meaning it when you are alive whats the point in saying it after you are gone right?

Of the days and games gone by.....

The six plus hours of power shut down today actually prompted some good family conversation time at home. The topics obviously varied between some family bashing, gossip and a special trip down memory lane...these moments are rare and far apart, and I do cherish these moments dearly.
We were talking about how we hardly see any today's kids play any of the games we played during our childhood (some of the games from my parents childhood were hilarious - that i must agree that i'd not heard of them till today).
My brother in his profound (he prefers the word "infinite") wisdom said kids today have other sort to games to engage themselves with. These range fromthe latest video games to cricket gear. They are pampered with the newage stuff which we in our times were deprived off. Firstly our dad would not have been able to afford this at that point and to be fair I dont know if any of these gadgets existed back then (even if they did, I definitely had no clue)
All I remember of those days is coming back from school.Getting rid of my tie,belt, shoes and heading out onto the road. My working parents would not be home yet...and my routine games of Kalla Police , Kallo Mannu, Ice Spice (I believe it must have been "I Spy"), Lagori, etc would engage me till my dad or mom would finally come out looking for me by around 8 pm.....
During the weekends and long vacations if I left home in the morning my mom would not be able to locate me till the lights faded out in the sky. Most days I would not even be home for lunch cos I almost always managed to snack out at good ol saroja aunty's house (my neighbour lady and my childhood playmate's mother).
And when it used to rain we would huddle up indoors to play Chowka Bara, Pagde, Algulimane,Kawade etc...
These according to me are some of the most amazing games ever. The outdoor ones were amazing entertaining with loads of physical exercise and the indoor games were brain sharpeners...
I wonder how many of the kids of today's generation have even heard of games such as these lest played any of them.... Sad that they are blissfully unaware of what they are missing out on.
I most definitely miss the days gone by..........but what saddens me most is that all of these games are now dead and gone......
I know for a fact that if I were do have children then I'm most definitely teach them these...they may not know of anyone their age who knows how to play these or I might even risk them thinking that their mom's uncool but then what the hell...........these games taught her a lot of fairness ,failure, strategy et al...and more importantly these were plain unadulterated fun...

To Blog or not to Blog is the question....

Everytime I travel between home and office I seem to get so many ideas of what I should actually express my valuable opinion on....and I even formulate all the words in my mind.......but then I never get down to actually saying it all........it just seems to go away ---POOF!
Hmmm.... so many thoughts to pen down and so little time to do it all........
I remember the day I started my own blog. It was one of those hot lazy summer days in '05 and I was chatting with my cousin and cribbing to him of my boring life. He was the one who urged me into keeping an online thought keeping account... hmmm and this is how far I've gotten :)

Promises to keep and miles to go before i sleep and miles to go before i sleep

The Indian Train Journeys

India is known to have one of the best railway networks in the world with millions of people using its services day in and day out...and i had not thought much about it until recently...
My personal train journeys have been quite limited...
when i was a kid my family hardly went on family vacations so that pretty much ruled out many journeys by train...the one that i can vividly remember is the trip to Delhi we took as a family when I was around 12...and that too was in AC - 2 tier - quite a luxury back then.
after that my train journeys were quite infrequent...until I joined Mico -now Bosch India...as a management trainee we were eligible to travel by AC 2 tier and all our trips to Mumbai were by train..so for 2 years I traveled to Mumbai- Bangalore- Mumbai by train to study...and once i joined work full time I have only been flying....until of course my latest job.
My current job requires me to travel to atleast 2-3 cities in a month...and due to the cost structures, travel by train are frequent..so in the last 1.5 years I have had quite a few train journeys..down south.
What prompts me to write this blog is my recent trip (personal one) by train to Hampi..since I was on a personal budget travel my friend and I decided to take the Sleeper class to Hospet from Bangalore....and boy oh boy..had i forgotten what a "Crowded" country i live in...
it amazes me that in this country a reservation bogie means little or nothing to most people...With confirmed tickets we had to hold on to our seats and guard them. Being a long weekend the train was bursting at its seams with people...people who had got in with RAC, WL or even just normal tickets....anything to just get to your destination...the bogie looked like a market place with over 15 -20 people in each coupe meant at best for 9 people...(these are the trains that now have an extra side berth - a la garib rath strategy).....and to top it all we had the top two side berths in the middle of the bogie ensuring us a good view of both parts of our bogie..
through the night there were people haggling for seats, grabbing each others personal space..and what not...by early morning..we had people stretched across every available bit of space in the bogie...funnily every time a few people got down at their respective destinations more people got in at that station to continue the fight for space...
this also reminded me of the lyrics from the song toofan mail....about how life is one long train journey which brings in new people at each stop.....
anyways...the return journey was a little less entertaining (also the fact that we were completely tired added to it)..except for this woman and her son who had gotten in at some station prior to hospet and had conveniently occupied our seats..well it definitely didnt seem like they had not gotten tickets because their journey was a hurriedly planned one (sometimes i understand that people have to make some journeys - considering air travel is not cheap and they risk traveling with RAC and WL tickets cos when you got to go sometimes you just have to go) since they were carrying their entire household with them (including plastic chairs, tv etc)...come on -when you move house you definitely dont decide to do it overnight.... do you??
anyways to cut a long story short...my friend and I were in no mood to be sympathetic to this woman and her son . We just waited till the clock struck 9pm and politely asked them to vacate the seats so that we could make our beds and call it a night......
when i woke up in the morning i realised that the duo had made good use of the plastic chairs they were carrying...they were comfortably sprawled out near the toilets with their make shift plastic chair beds.........
thats the Indian rail traveler for you...am sure the general compartments are a lot worse..i cannot even begin to imagine what those journeys would be like...
at the risk of sounding like a bigot im definitely going back to the relatively safer havens of AC travel...