The Bag Lady

Its 20 inches in length, 8 inches deep and 4 inches wide, tan goatskin leather, and I'm never without it.

Th other day, my handbag and I had to endure snide remarks from a colleague, about how I can stash a tiny person in the bag, when it is not filled with all sorts of unnecessary junk.

Lets just say contrary to an expected chagrin, I experienced a mild sense of satisfaction at the thought of being able to survive in a desert or similar inhospitable conditions for at least 3 days to a week (presuming we are discounting the luxury of showers and pampering.... I would be lost, after all).

Just to make sure I can substantiate this claim, I decided to conduct a quick run through, and here's what I found: A large bottle of water, a small bottle of black currant soda, hand sanitizer (yeah, I'll be germ-free if i have to dig underground for more water), medicines for mild fever, body aches and cramps, lip balm, moisturizer with SPF 15 (ultra light: halleujah!!), a phone charger (now only if they had electricity in my desert), an MP3 player, breath mints, an apple, a mini-pack of jam, low calorie sweetener, a wallet with cash and cards, loose change, keys (maybe they will also act as digging tools), and to soothe an anxious girl's nerves... some junk jewelery, hair accessories and basic cosmetics (now ALL i need is that handsome rescuer-man).

Somehow, what men see as "junk", I see as "preparation", and whats "unnecessary" for them becomes "fun" for me.... I love to be the one pulling out candy for kids at a traffic signal... I love to be the one handing out soda to a moody colleague, and I love to be the one handing out herbal eye liner and raspberry gloss to a panicked girlfriend....

I don't mind the extra weight.... and I don't mind the extra space.... but what do i do when all the stuff in there ever gets utilized? So if I'm a bag lady no more, I can always fold up the leather, tuck it under my arm, and use the "other" survival guide for women (a Sex and the City quote).... "Its not a bag, it's a "baguette"!!!

Making a Difference

Sometimes, making a difference can start with a small thoguht.

http://pratiksweblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/terrorist-strikes-in-india-and-larger.html

When you think differently, you condition yourself to act that way.

Here's to you and everyone like you.....

Marketing gimmicks v/s absolute truth

Wont wear off, wont kiss off, wont stick to your glass (or coffee cup), or your teeth, or his sheets. This is what advertisements for a major lipstick brand promised. The other day, I tried one of these lip colors. It was pure coincidence that I did try it on, because I was a self proclaimed veteran of identifying an advertising gimmick from the alphabet A. Or was I really? The morning after the party, when I woke up with bright pink lips which stayed the same annoying shade till my skin was raw, I was forced to rethink on my expertise.

It should be a great feeling actually. Imagine. Every nutritional need in a teaspoon, white clothes at the drop of a little detergent, even contraceptives that promise all night orgasms? Wow! Life really is getting better and better these days. If all the people we see on television with perfect bodies and blinding white teeth are not lying, but are in fact being paid to ensure we pay to make our lives perfect, we shouldn't be complaining. So people who sell you insurance for a below ground premium, or health care products with zero side affects are actually not lying to you, but are only being extra helpful.

But again, that would probably depend on individual definition of "advertising gimmicks".Some would say its about false promises about the product, that would make you want to buy it. Some would say distracting visual effects (women, pictures, glitz, lot of neon, ad balloons, the works), some may say freebies: samples, vouchers, refunds, rebates, offers(free tip to goa-ma'am; free makeover ma'am; hell, I'd even been to a mall which promised me "you will have men like the model in the ad falling for you if you buy this deo ma'am), others say advertising gimmicks are about actually distracting you from the fact that the product might be flaky (why would i want a supermodel washing my essentials? errm!!). Well, to each his own.

But is it that bad really? Is it such a bad concept to stretch the truth a little bit, just to make you feel better that you, after all, may be buying your money's worth? I am not advocating outright lying or justifying the fact that manufactures and marketers have the right to cheat us by pushing something substandard just because they sugarcoat it. I however, am keeping an open mind and trying to explore the other alternative.

What if everything we were promised is delivered to us? What if these set of people in wrinkle-free, stain-free, dry-clean-free suits, are indeed responsible for making our modern 21st century lives what it is? Do we owe them? My clothes are washed in one bucket of water but gives my baby rashes; one pill gets rid of my cold, cough, headache, and every ache in every part of my bosy i didnt know existed, but gets me addicted; I can wipe my kid's artwork off my walls without peeling off the paint but then my kid has reverse-evolved into 10000 B.C. and thinks he's the Neanderthal-era Van Gogh; I pay zero interest on my credit card bills and get 5% cash back, but there are "adjustments" made every year in my bank statement; i stick up my favourite china, only to fink a crack in the next cleave layer..... promises, promises, promises. Sometimes we also wish some of them werent true. How many times do we read something too good to be tru and then hunt around for the " * "? Way too often, even if on a sub-conscious level. It could be because we are cynical, but another word for cynical reads "experienced".

Falsifications v/s Utter Honesty. Its like a game.. We just need to keep turning our heads side to side to see whether we prefer gimmicks we know are gimmicks so we can cut some slack and lower expectations, or whether we prefer hearing wonderful things about the stuff thats there in our shopping basket. Score. Love None. Ones just as bad as the other.

Its irritaing to see 8 feet high toilet germs in malls handing out free samples of toilet cleaner (with real lemon, mind you), or trying to wonder what to do with the voucher that yu need to scratch to get another voucher you need to sctarch to win a lucky card that you need to scratch to put into a box for a lucky draw to win two tickets to Malaysia. But then again, its equally irritating to clean out a longstay lipcolor (which, I incidentally removed with a scrub that promises "total gentleness, wont even take out the extra oil off your skin", or to shop for a whole new wardrobe because the color from your clothes bled out from that lovely detergent, or to get half the electric wiring rewired because of the "high power" refrigirator, or to grab an entire crate of energy dink for a night of non-stop action.

Maybe we want to have our brains teased. Maybe we enjoy the gimmicks. Maybe we enjoy being treated like royalty to such an extent that Hollywood's or Bollywood's superstar has to sell us soap. Maybe we like to hear the nice things that accompany it. Put succinctly in the words of Homer Simpson : "It takes two to lie. One to lie, and one to listen".

Burrrrrrp!

Yup, that time of the week again, after almost 2 months! I met Jo over lunch.
Nice place (Boca Grande - I can NEVER go there on a date. I will always picture Jo sitting, and us talking about the girls and the noises ;-) we all would have made if we were eating there at that moment), yummy drinks, and pretty decent food.
Jo pulled her lunch hour till like 3 pm, and that, more than anything else was sooo nice!

So what was it all about? The girls, jobs, boys (yecchhhh.... who needs those when yu have 50 pairs of shoes and a pound of chocolate at home? argh... BIG time damage control due now!!!!), dirty jokes and anything and everything under the sun.

The best afternoon meal I have had in such a long time. But one point to remember, next time we skip the Tiramisu.

Sometimes........

Sometimes, we think we are knocking at closed doors. The truth is, we may actually have been knocking at doors that dont even exist.
Sometimes, we want to be let in. Truth is, we are in deeper than we can ever imagine.
Sometimes, we just want to find someone to love us. The truth is, we may really want to find someone we can love the way we want to be.
Sometimes....

Night after Night....

The night is an excuse
The darkness is a ploy
Sleep is a passage to the escape of dreams.

You know what you see
You remember it all
As I wait for you, in the shadows of the moon.

And I stand watching....
And hope anchors me on
That written in the blowing wind, is the purpose for us to meet.

Out here, I'm fully aware
Out here, you're really here
While back in two different worlds, our eyes lay closed, our bodies supine.

How can I not call out to you now?
How can you not hear my cry?
While in my pitiful ignorance, your own call to me brushes by.

Sin, it is to want so much more.
Sin it is, to not realize that fulfillment.
Forgiveness, to us, will happen after many more mornings to come.

How, until then we will sleep....
How we will moan in our different worlds.
Even as in our common world we seek what we want to find.

Now it may be happiness we want...
Now and again it may be something we will never know
Is it something from each other we seek, or is it just ourselves?

You feel a tear in the morning.
You don't know that I feel two.
Rudely pulled back into lucidity, we wait, but separately for our excuses.

I still do not find you, night after night.
I softly depart from where I last was, just out of your sight.
I will wake up morning after morning
I would have lost you all over again.
I tread through my day and wait for the dark.
I know I've waited for another night of pain.
Do I seek you, to seek joy, or
Do I relentlessly pursue joy to see you?

But , oh why,
Do I
or You
or the Night
or the Moon
not revel in the truth?

We share one Dream.

Sunset

As she turned the bend in the bumpy road, she saw the blob of orange in the dirty grey sky. The size of it struck her immediately. She was also surprised with the intensity - so low, that staring into it didn't even give her spotty vision. Even the colors were faint streaks, screaming out into the sky to get more visibility, but failing in result. Everything was blurred, unclear, hazy, yet sadly beautiful.

She never felt more understood as she did by the sky at that moment.......

Say it with flowers

The whole train of thought started with s statement I overheard "If you are really so sorry, and if you love me so much, why cant you do something small, like just give me flowers?"

Get this for a famous Chinese Proverb: When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other.
or
God loved the flowers and invented soil. Man loved the flowers and invented vases - Jacques Deval.

Flowers-another area where different people have phenomenally varying views. Some of us may hate to pluck or even touch them, some of us get into relationships to have bunches of them given to us, others like me look for occasions when I can buy flowers and give them out. They are great to brighten a room, for an "exotic" hairdo, to decorate clothes, wedding venues, food, and to play "he loves me, he loves me not".

I was randomly browsing through a social networking website. A friend of my friend put it very very succinctly: "From my relationships, I have learned that flowers are not a waste of money". There you go. Wish this common wisdom was imparted to men from the age of 5, and women from the age of 35. From a simple "I'm sorry for your loss, I'm sorry I was being rude, I love you, Can we be friends?", the list is endless.But its simple. The beauty of a flower or flowers, they say what you want to. And what you cannot articulate, they do that for you, no matter what the situation may be.

In the days of hook-ups at bars, and rehashing of pick-up lines found over the internet, flowers seem to be a direct connection to the days of innocent, clean emotions. So if a picture is worth a thousand words, I guess flowers must be worth over a million.

Running Away....

I run scared, I don’t run free
I run in the open, for all to see
I run, but not from you, I run from me

Keep the Faith!

Decisions, Decisions!! Life is full of them. I stand at the brink of one of the most important ones I have had to take, just a few weeks from now.

When I cannot decide on something, I turn to help. Trouble with that is, you get way too much help! 10 people will give me 15 different opinions, which would make it worse.

For me, the trick is to understand that being unsure is ok at times, but being indecisive isn't. Unsure as in whether I'm doing the right thing, or whether I'm doing it at the right time, or what may happen once I do something. Shouldn't stop me from doing it, right?

Me, Myself and I

Off late, I spend a lot of time by myself. Very different from my completely out-of-the-cage-bird I used to be even until very recently.

But I like being here, where I am, in the now, rather than being out there, looking around me, and questioning my magnitude. In other words, I would feel tiny, one in the crowd, a drop in the river, a hair in a feather. But now, its all me, no questions, and if there are, I have most of the answers. At least for now.

S & M

No, I have not stayed in Delhi that long so as to have developed "offbeat preferences". Nor am I referring to Metallica.
In an introspective mood, I was merely pondering over the masochistic tendencies that smart, educated, intelligent, good looking women possess when it comes to men and relationships. It started with a general conversation a friend and I were having, about a "prospect". And then I recollected a dumb mistake that she made a couple years ago. Then it struck me how wrong I was in judging her. We have all made our dumb mistakes. Some time in our lives.

All our dumb mistakes seem to have one or more of the following in common - they are charming, great conversationalists, make us think they have killer smiles, are "interesting" to be around and have a pretty nice social circle. In other words, they may not be really different from the guy we are with right now or the "normal, nice guy" we seek. Yes, it is a scary thought. What if the guy we are with know goes down in the "Hall of Fame of our Dumb Mistakes"? or What if they dream guy we meet happens to be another dumb mistake? The funny thing is, none of us spare ourselves. I know I didn't. Neither did Rachel Green from FRIENDS. Even power women, politicians, heads of $100mn companies, sportswomen, et al., have not spared themselves.

What is it then, about is, that makes us enjoy the fact that we let men treat us like a pile of decomposing garbage? Do we need relationships so much that anything goes? Do we like hurting ourselves? Does it make us look heroic to reflect and realize that we have been through horrible times with "a man we really loved", even if we ourselves were responsible for tolerating that treatment?
Himani, 23, is one among the most no-nonsense, sharp and careful women I have known. While recounting one horrible phase she put herself through about a year ago, she stops, looks at me and says "How could I do something like that". Or as incredibly talented, outgoing and friendly Swati, 26, says "I never knew he would be like that". No darling. You never knew, but we all did. So what makes us open our eyes a little too late? It does give me hope to realize that we take off our rose-tinted designer eyewear at some point of time, but when do we know its the time to do so? Ironically, it's not just the "ex"-men we allow to make us feel bad. Marie, 25, happily married to the man she could never visualize her life without, still recalls the early days of matrimony when after a certain incident, she confronted her husband and got a prompt reply "You always knew I was like this, so why do you have a problem now?" Luckily, it was a relatively harmless cause of trouble, and it is now behind them, but these things do temporarily hamper your confidence levels in a lifelong commitment.

I'm definitely not including minor spats or even major disagreements in mutually beneficial relationships in this subject matter. Difference of opinion is definitely a necessity these days, with so much happening around us. Two people in a relationship would better benefit if they took in all they could about the world around them, and share that knowledge with each other, rather than just confining themselves to just that person and get time-warped somewhere down the line. But there is a point where repeated below-the-belt attacks become completely unnecessary. Or even repeated ignorance about discussed issues become commonplace. Then, it doesn't become something you can blame your partner for. Increasing elasticity in acceptance levels regarding the what or how much we tolerate becomes completely our onus.

From personal experience I remember the number of times I myself have used the sentence "Why do you do this to me?" or a more pathetic variation: " Why do you treat me like this?" The answer is simple. Because I let him. Exactly. Why do I let him?
Sometimes we're scared. That there may not be "anyone else". Maybe we are just too lazy, to move on. Maybe we don't like ourselves enough where we are ok with "just myself" our lives. Maybe we feel, that it may be "worth putting up with everything if it works out in the long run". Or the worst, maybe we feel we may have done something to deserve it. So considering all that, isn't what we are doing to ourselves much worse? We claim that no one can know us better than we know ourselves. If that is the case, why are we ok with relinquishing control and letting ourselves go.

During heated arguements, when I tend to let get sucked-into a quicksand of self-pity, my significant other advises "stop portraying yourself as a victim". Sometimes, the harsh truth of the statement hits me like cold water. We would think of yourself as a victim only if something happens to us. And in relationships, whatever happens , happens only if we let it. We may be someone who seems to have it all, so lets make sure we are actually that way.

Looking back, when I think of my "dumb mistakes", the dumber thing would be is to let it happen again. I may take it as a lesson learned, I may take it as a waring, or I may treat it as a well-decomposed skeleton in a hidden secret closet. But I wont regret it. That would be backtracking all over again. What the heck, at least he was great looking!!!! It is said that all great wisdom can be found on T-Shirts, so as one goes "While you are out there looking for the right man, have fun with the wrong ones"

Amen!!!!!!!!

(P.S. It may be obvious, but to reiterate, all names have been changed)

What I didnt learn in B-School

To all the B-School grads out there: there's something about your supervisor or manager taking the day off, right? How many of us do not claim to feel "free", or think we can "work uninhibited", how many of us would leave early, or how many of us would take a two-hour lunch break (or how many of us would sit and blog!)?

This got me thinking about basic HR 101. How many of us really require supervision? Do we respect authority really, or is it a necessary evil? Is a hawk-eye monitoring on us necessary, or is motivation more underrated than we realize?

True, there are some of you who are so motivated that you look forward to Mondays, enjoy working late, cannot think bad about your work. The reasons for this may be many. You may love what you do, you may just like to work, irrespective of what you are doing, or you may just feel a sublime urge to work, irrespective of whether you like what you are doing. I do not want to confuse self-motivation, for whatever reason, with external motivation here. But how many of us fall into the category?

Why do we want someone giving us that push? Why do we slip back 10 years in time the minute our supervisor walks off or takes leave? What do we want from ourselves to make us work without having to look over our shoulders to make sure no one is "checking up" on us? By "us", by the way, i mean the 20-something freshly-graduated workforce who is just happy that we are not in college anymore and get paid to a)work in a "corporate setting" b) make more friends c) learn things not necessarily academic. Sometimes, I see friends, acquaintances and co-workers who have not learn't fancy concepts, but instead utilized those two years to develop technical knowledge and skills. in terms of knowledge, productivity and self-drive I would definitely rate them much higher.

What they dont teach us is the difference between success and leadership. What they dont teach us is the difference between motivation and greed. What they dont teach us is the difference between working and finishing tasks. What I feel is that the terms like "rewards" "recognition" "ratings" are used more lavishly, than in a true context. Mark Mc. Cormack picks Harward to dissect what lessons the outside world can teach us. That holds true from wherever we have graduated.

Today, what I heard in my classroom are just words, what is there in my mind is just terminology that I recall, sometimes to my good luck, at the right time. But what we really cannot be taught is drive.

With that, I have to go make a to-do list. I think my manager's back tomorrow!!! Happy Working!!

A guy, a girl and a Pizza place

Date: An appointment for a specified time, especially a social engagement with the opposite sex.

Specified time: 8:30 p.m. 21st August, 2008.

Social Engagement between: Girl in a pink dress.
Guy in a suit (of course, the shirt has to be blue :p)

Venue for "Social Engegement": Well, not exactly a "Pizza place" but some excellent Italian.
An amazing setting -(shaded open air, scented candles, timed fountains and tall buildings), nice food and drinks (mocktails, ok!).

There you go, Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary!!!!!!!!!!!!!!