Ripples of my Reflections

I think, therefore I write

Category: LIFE HAPPENS (Page 17 of 25)

Double Standards

April 16, 2013 / / 14 Comments

I was standing on the balcony of the plush apartments and stared at the amazing city that spread far and beyond. The sun was slowly going down painting the horizon skies a splash of orange and red. The tall buildings were a splendid sight displaying the grandeur and how much we have developed. I stood basking in that glorious sight.

Then I looked down.

There was a small slum by the side and a gutter was running down the side lane. The garbage was dumped in the empty land opposite to the slum. The road had no lanes and the traffic was heavy. People were driving without a damn about the traffic signal and rules. Some people were riding their 2 wheelers on the pavement. Kids were running across the street not caring to look out for vehicles.

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This is nothing but a vignette written by me to express the irony of our nation. This concept has been nagging my mind for a long time.

And where are the haiku posts you ask? Well, knowing me you should be better off without asking. Anyway, the problem with me is I do not have strong-footed consistency in anything 😈 I look at one thing and get interested and halfway I jump to another thing! I am not saying I won’t write them anymore. (Ajay – You have some consistency man!) I still love the challenge of writing  haiku but I will not confine myself to that. Also, my eyes fell upon this other challenge called A-Z challenge wherein you write a post on any topic but in the alphabetical order. I might also take it up and then again, I might jump ship :mrgreen:

Until later 🙂

Jibber Jabber

April 4, 2013 / / 7 Comments

Hello all,

How have you been? Yeah, I know that I have gone missing for a while, no need to start accusations right away :P. Let me first tell you that I had gone on a long vacation to my native. And then my site was pulled down by my techie admin for maintenance purposes. Ok, that is not the truth. Before the site was down for maintenance, K had a whole week to write. It is not like she didn’t have internet access which was usually the case when she is back home. This time she had so much of time and also an okayish internet connection (though the speed is pitiable). The real reason – she was downright lazy!!

Ok, my alter ratted out on me and I have no escape. Yes, I was so lazy but not without reasons. I had gone back home after a looooooooong time and my mom was incredible. What with her cooking and pampering! So here is what happened to me from March 23, 2013 to April 1, 2013 – Crispy Dosas with a chaotic variety of chutneys, Drumstick Sambar, Awesome rasam, Mushroom Rice, Mushroom fry, The yummy paapad that you usually get in the exhibitions/fairs, Soft Idlis, Pesarattu (Only that we call it parupu dosa back home), Hot Gulab Jamoons, Mosambi juice every evening, Coconut rice with Onion Raitha, Tender Coconut every morning, Fruits given to me in ready-to-eat state and it went on.. These are just the toppers of the list.

Can you blame me for doing nothing except eat and sleep? Okay, let me move on. I am getting edgy because I am back in Bangalore and reciting all this makes me want to go home again. So except for a few useful things like applying for Aadhaar card, submitting my voter id for the long pending correction of my name, getting my lost debit card from the bank and helping out mom here and there, I was totally jobless. I spent the idle time by gossiping with mom, fighting with dad, playing with the stray cat that has made our home its regular haunt, feeding the dog which visits our house at mealtimes (otherwise, it has its own kingdom 🙂 ), bursting the bubbles on a huge bubble wrap sheet, reading novels, sleeping, talking over phone to my bro, sis-in-law and Aditya. 😆

So that’s about it. And I am back in Bangalore only to find that the climate is worse. I have never felt this drained and sweaty in Bangalore. The city as I remember when I used to visit my aunt’s place for summer vacations was always pleasant and drizzly. Now, that city is no longer here 😥 Anyway, it was hotter back at Trichy and hence I would rather be here climate-wise.

While on it, I might as well let out a few other rants. I told you I went to apply for the Aadhaar card right? I was happy to see a small queue and the person behind the counter operating a computer. My first thought was we could get it done soon. As Murphy would have it, trouble came when my turn was just 2 steps away. Suddenly something happened and the database was not returning the data when the person’s name was typed in. And this official did not have a clue of what to do. He was asking the help of the person in the next counter and that guy was also busy and in the end both the queues got held up. In this situation what irritated me was, the guy behind the counter had been trained to do the procedure of applying for an Aadhaar card. But, the trouble is he was trained for just that. He absolutely had no clue what to do when the DB had trouble. Then I suggested that him to import the data once again and he stared back blankly not knowing what import was. I could see an import option on the screen but I was not sure how they had gone about the entire application and did not want to mess it up. After much deliberation, I told him there is an import option and hence there must be a way to bring the data in. He confirmed this with the fellow guy and after a bit of clicking around he got it. Why can’t they train the people in the proper way? Teach them what it is that they are doing from the start to the end. Just don’t say click this, click that and then click submit.

Next comes the voter ID. It frustrated me enough that they had got my spelling wrong but that’s not it. They had also got the spelling of my father’s name wrong and they had given my dad’s name with the wrong spelling with the label as Husband’s name! Jeez! 😡 I wanted to change it when I got the card then and there but I was told that they would come for corrections later. So I had no choice but to let it go for the  time being. After waiting for 6 years, I decided it was time to correct it putting aside my laziness and making use of the time when I am in Trichy. (God knows when I might be able to visit next). I go to the corporation office and I had to roam around for an hour to find the place where they give the application form for corrections. Then another hour to file the application and finally they ask me to come and check after 3 months. If they had told you can come and get it after 3 months, at least I would have understood knowing the speed of processes in India. But, it seems I should go and check what is the status after 3 months. God knows if my application will be touched in the meanwhile. Topping this, the guy who gave me back the acknowledgement slip for my application didn’t sign it. When I asked him, he says sign is not needed, just the number on it is enough. How long is it gonna take him to sign it and it says on the slip that he is supposed to sign it! 😡

When I complained, my dad lectured me on this is how the system works and only if I come out and do stuff like this, I will get experience. I mean, this is not experience. This is just getting used to violation of rules, negligence and carelessness of the officials and stuff like that. Only in India, we call this an experience worth learning. 🙄

I guess that’s enough blabber for a post. See you around guys!

Until later,
Keirthana 🙂

Mental(ly)

March 13, 2013 / / 13 Comments

If there is one thing which is messed up beyond repair, it is the human mind. And we somehow manage to mess it up even more. So here goes the story of my mind giving me a hard time. To give you a preview of the show, I must tell you this – My mind thinks too much and all in the wrong direction. It will come up with the weirdest of all interpretations for anything, will get bummed up for no reason, will torture me with its pointless frustrations when I really have some useful job to do. So now you know that I am totally unable to control my mind. That’s enough preview. 😉

So, here comes. Up until recently, I cannot visualize things at will. For instance, when I go for shopping I would be totally unable to try to visualize the kurti I am holding in my hand against my jean in my cupboard back home. Color against color match or mismatch? No. Trying to visualize the design pattern? No. And hence I never shopped without a companion who excells in such stuff and they would do the mental movie playing part and give their approvals or otherwise. Then out of the blue, I found during my last shopping spree that my mind is able to do that . Not always. But flashes of it. More like, it does that when it really likes a dress I am considering to buy. But when I try it at will, it gives me a very hard time. The experience would be something like trying to reach something which is just their one minuscule beyond the tip of my fingers but am unable to reach it. 😐

The next thing is, well this requires a sub-preview. You must know that I cannot dance at all. No. Not one step. Not one move. I still remember the day when I had to (read was forced to) do at least one dance move during the Industrial Visit trip in college and I made a complete fool of myself being unable to 😳 . Moving on, people have told me to just let go and dance even if it is clumsy. I have got this advice a lot. Believe you me, I try. I have wanted to dance at such times. But no. There is absolutely zero body-mind co-ordination. So I came to terms with the fact that I cannot dance [Hoping that there will never come a time where I am held at gun point and asked to dance]. *Preview Over* (Enough 🙄 , move on)

Recently, when I hear peppy numbers, my mind starts to dance, if I may phrase it that way. Remember it is the mind and not me. It is as if there is another me inside which is doing the dancing part. No, I am not just visualizing someone/myself dancing, instead I feel my mind doing the dance. When I try to catch hold of what it is doing, it is as slippery as an eel. If I try and do it again on purpose, there are flashes but never the whole picture. It drains me. It is like learning Occlumency from Snape. 😯 The crazier thing is my mind is so far able to do its awesome dance only for peppy numbers. [I am not exaggerating when I say awesome, yesterday it did a superb choreography for “Everybody tells me” from “Another Cinderella story”. That’s gotta be something.] So when I am listening to melodies, or songs which have lyrics depicting the situations, my mind tries to do something and obviously fails. And I have to go through the ordeal of watching the clumsy attempts which leaves me more drained. 😐

Now tell me, isn’t my mind the best place to be? 😈 In case you are Sheldon Cooper and didn’t get it, that was sarcasm for you! Re-read the title of this post. I should be removing that (ly) right? Well, I am not gonna 😛

What do you say? Alter-ego? Might be, for who knows!

Until later 🙂

Once upon a time…

January 22, 2013 / / 0 Comments

There are times when you look back at your life and don’t recognize yourself doing all those things which you once did..

We always want what is not in our hands. And if by life’s grace we get what we want, we just find something new to long for. Reflecting on life –  I have done a lot of this subconsciously and I have had a lot of realizations but I have to honestly accept that they have not yet sunk in or rather the skewed human mind doesn’t allow the sink in process. You know that this is how things are and will be, yet the human nature does not accept it. Acceptance is a big deal – Acceptance of everything, the past, the present and the future. I never gave it a second thought before. Now that I know how important it is and how many problems it will solve, I want to embrace it. I try every single day. When I get up in the morning, I tell myself “Accept life! It has never failed you, though you might have misunderstood that it had during some tough times.” It is just harder than it sounds but I intend to keep trying. Also, the flashes of nostalgia about one’s life so far gives a very different perspective of how things are and how things should be.

There was a time when I had nothing but tears and fear in my heart about Hyderabad. There was a time when I got used to the city and whiled away the time in neutrality.
There was a time when I wanted nothing else in my life than to get out of the city.
Then there was a time when I started to think that the Hyderabad episode was not that bad.
Then there came a time when I realized that I had an awesome life there and just that I didn’t realize it back then.

There was a time when my first company seemed so special.
There was a time when I didn’t care about it.
There was a time when I started thinking that I am getting nothing out of it and wanted to just get out.
Then there came a time when I realized how much the company has shaped up my life even beyond my career and today I tell people I was treated like a queen back then.

There was a time when I entered my new company with excitement.
This is the time when the excitement has turned into fear because I have to meet up with a lot of expectations.
And I know there will come a time when I look back and laugh at myself for having feared about such things.

I wrote the these lines just to come back here in future and check how I feel about them! I have seen myself and many other people always just reaching out for the next step. It is fine as long as we take a moment to be thankful for where we are now. Every person’s life, if written down, will start somewhere and will end at a place which is nothing like the starting point. Sometimes, I find myself wanting to be in that comfort zone without getting out because of insecurities. I know it is not right. So, I chide myself and move on. This post is for the people who think they have achieved nothing so far and feel insecure. Think back on your “Once upon a time” moments and you will know how far you have come. It is good to think back as long as you remember that there is a tomorrow that you cannot avoid 😉

Until later,

Keirthana 🙂

Life | Freedom | Pride

August 31, 2012 / / 4 Comments

Just for a minuscule moment
She thought that she was free again;
And then again the insecurities and the darkness engulfed her
She gasped for breath, fighting against the darkness
Trying to raise a hand against the unjust life
All the while, knowing that it’s a lost battle
Yet, knowing that she tried her best to stand up
That’s what gave her the satisfaction
That she did not bow at any instant
It was her pride, until the end.

Until later 🙂

P.S: Do not ask me why I wrote this, because I do not know 😉 Sometimes, words frame themselves best, when given the free reign 🙂

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