Memories...once again.

Today, as I was going through my little, 4 month old, niece's (my sibling sister's daughter) photos, I could'nt help remnicising about the summer holidays we used to spend in pune at my uncle's and grandparents' place.
My mother has a younger brother, who's my uncle (obviously) just like my case, where I have an elder sister, who has a younger brother, that is me. Her daughter is my niece and I am her uncle, just like I have my uncle (I couldnt have made it simpler !! hehehe!!).
So anyway, its like I said, my sister and I spent almost all our school summer holidays at pune. My uncle was a fitness freak (still is, as a matter of fact.). He had played cricket for the state and the west zone. And he was into muscle building. He used to take us to the S.P college ground in pune. (S.P college is a famed college in pune and the organization which runs this college 'Shikshan prasarak mandali' also govern other colleges like Podar college in matunga, welingkar institute in dadar.). S.P college ground had a gymnasium, which was a typical 'old school' type of gym. The gymnasium building was old, and had a thatched roof structure. It had a side entrance into an open verandah which served as a sort of entrance gate to the main ground and doubled up as a pavilion. The building was at a metre elevation from the ground. Once you climbed the stairs to the elevated verandah from a side door, you could see the full ground from that position. A declining set of stairs led you down onto the ground. The amazing part about public ground or private maidans is that you'll see so many games being played, so many teams playing side by side, different people in different coloured clothes....some playing football in shorts and colourful jerseys, some very 'official' looking cricketers in full whites, some in just shorts and bare chested having a round of volleyball, some in tracks and sports tees jogging. It used to be fun just watching them, at times !! There was even a sand pit on the ground for practicising long jump. Our uncle had bought us each, a nice pair of track pants and shirts and a jacket to be worn after we had finished our exercises. He used to take us (me and my sister) for a jogging round, a small round, which seemed very big at that time and by the time we finished our round, we used to be tired and all sweaty. After this round, my uncle used to go the gym building to have his workout. And we used to do some stretching exercises uncle had taught us. It was fun to see my sister, not being able to do some of the stretches, which I could easily perform !! My uncle had instructed us to wear our jackets for some time after jogging and exercising ("Put on your jackets after exercising, lads, otherwise the breeze blowing on the sweat will make you ill !!!", thats what he used to say !!). After that we used to sit on the verandah and observe the other 'sportsmen' on the ground. After some days, many people who were regulars were familiar with us two kids. There was workout instructor who used to give free weights training to a few potential 'body builders'. He was an old, but big fellow with a long mustache. I always thought he was a retired colonel in the army (I had the funny impression, at that time, that army colonels had long mustaches !!). 'Sir' they used to call him. I was always scared of him and remember being afraid of going past him and into the door..... to go inside and call my uncle, whenever I felt he (my uncle) was taking too long at the gym !!! But he was a kind old man, not because of anything else, but after some days, when he was used to seeing us everyday, he gave us peppermints to eat, everyday !!
After my uncle came back from his workout, we used to head home.
Its was one of the simple things in life you enjoy and remember. Going to the ground with my uncle and the enjoyable hour and a half was one of them !!! The ground still exists, but they have changed the old building. Its been reconstructed.

Happiness of the stone age man !!!

Sometimes, I wonder whether technological and scientific development are so important ?
No doubt we have all the luxuries and the tools and techniques of doing work quickly, but then do we have to actually 'work' less even if we have all the necessary appliances? It is obvious that this is not the case. On the contrary, work has increased, lifestyles have changed for the worse, have become more hectic and tiring, relationships strained, overall health has declined, even though recorded death rate has decreased. Our happiness has become materialisitic and whether you like it or not, it has to be that way, if you want to stay in the race. We have even started spoiling nature and its resources in the process. We have evolved so much , yet, looking at the bigger picture called life, we have gained little and are fast approaching nothingness. It makes me wonder....Was stone age man happier, even though he probably didnt know the meaning of happiness?

Strange times, strange people.

These days, in times of recession, when no one is much loaded with work, I have learnt to appreciate how many 'namoonaas' there are in office. We have a fellow, who coughs a lot in the morning times. But its not one of those normal coughs that you have during a cold. Its smoker's cough and the 'noise' that he 'produces' is both loud and disgusting. In fact, it sounds like he is being voilently sick (throwing up.) when he coughs. Today he produced such a variety of sounds, that I am actually thinking of recommending his name to a 'animal sound recording' studio man. He coughed in the morning, then yawned openly, belched loudly after having his lunch, stretched and groaned and then while leaving office hiccuped like a drunkard. What is he? A poor sick soul? or a disgusting bastard?

Then there is this one chap, who seems to come to office just to roam around and have tea, snacks and lunch. He never seems to be working and whenever I glance at his office PC, I can see social networking website pages. He takes a roaming round every afternoon in the office. Staring at everyone and their desks, he takes his own time observing people and their activities like a security guard. I swear he was one, in his last birth, or maybe he was in this birth itself !!! I dont know how the company has still retained him . Maybe because he's been in the company for a long time.....But I wonder what the company pays him for? For doing nothing from a long time???

Best days of life.

We grow up to be what kids call as grown-ups. Still, there is always the attraction of young age, of youthful behaviour and childlike lightheartedness. No one truly grows up. The child in us is always well and truly alive and it gets killed only the day you die. Being a kid, one hardly realises the golden period he / she is going through. Realization of it dawns only later, by which time, you have already forgotten what it was to be a kid. Some people brood over this too much, so much that they stop living their present life too !!! If this happens at each point of time, we are unlikely to be happy at all !! We humans just need to realise that every phase of life has its upsides and flipsides. Every moment of life can be enjoyed, if you stop cribbing about the fact, that things 'aren't what they used to be' and start discovering the new angles which exist now and which werent there before !!! I'd say, it was nice being a kid, but what the heck? After all, I hated studies. Work is better. At least there is no homework !!! And I get money for working...which I can spend.

Lessons learnt: Home alone

I have been home alone for almost 4 and a half months now. The day after tommorow, my parents return. During these 4 and a half months, I enjoyed full freedom in whatever I did. I could sleep, wake up at anytime I wanted (Not quite, of course, I had to go to office so freedom on long sleeping hours could be exercised only on weekends !!). I could go out for a snack, go out and eat ice creams and pastries whenever I wanted to, and could cook at home whenever I had a 'chef's whim'. To sum it all, I enjoyed my days as a totally free bird. I am looking forward to meeting my parents too, of course. But, I'll be fair enough to everyone and say this......These 4 and a half months, have been one of those 'memorable times' in life. A perfect stretch of time for being alone. Just enough so that you enjoy and not long drawn so that you dont get bored and lonely. A few of the things which I learnt while I was alone were:
1) Dont put the milk on the gas and go for a shit. Its never certain which completes first, the milk coming to a boil and rising or you completing your download and rising. However if the former event occurs first, you'll have another mess to clean up !!!

2) If a maid servant comes to do work at home, adjust your schedule as per her timings. It is most likely that she comes at the most inconvenient of times. My maid servant always came 15 minutes before I left for office. On top of it, she used to ask me everyday, "You are leaving early today, is it?". This made me retort, "I am not leaving early, you have come late."

3) You are most likely to miss the most important couriers. If you do miss one, hurry down to the courier company and collect the package, otherwise, they'll send it back to the orginating company !!

4) Make sure you dont get friendly with your boss and tell him about being home alone and doing all the housework. If you tell him that, expecting him to go easy on you, forget it !! He's not supposed to go easy on you. If anything he'll bring the roof down on you and derive a sadistic pleasure !!

5) Always remember to keep an extra set of keys outside the house. (Most of us do this even otherwise !!) The fact is, if you are alone at home, you are more likely to forget the keys home. No point in going for a night time walk in shorts and then discovering, outside the door of your house, that the keys are not in your pockets. You wont get a keymaker at night and you cant sleep out in the cold monsoons in just shorts.

6) Always sleep with a thick wooden stick at your bedside. If a burglar comes in and does not carry a gun, you could get him first. If its a false alarm and you are just dreaming of the house being robbed, not a problem.....even if you swing that stick subconciously, no one would get hurt because there is no one else in the house !!!

7) Make sure you set the alarm for the correct time. I once set the alarm for 0700 hours on a weekend !! (Hope you understand my frustration when I woke up !!)

8) Dont watch hindi horror movies at night when alone. I did so and could'nt sleep .............thats coz I was laughing the whole night.

9) Be ready to make some statements like "I am feeling very lonely" and "I am suffering a lot, I dont get good home made food." on the telephone, even if you are perfectly fine and enjoying a lot . Thats coz, people normally expect to hear all this, and if you tell them rubbish like "I am enjoying.", they dont think its normal. They'll think that you are taking undue advantage of your freedom and doing "bad things" in the house !!!!

All the best !!!

Believe in your dreams,
and one day they'll come true,

Believe in your happiness,
and you'll never be blue.

Believe in your family,
coz they'll never let you down.

Believe in laughter,
and you will never frown.

Believe in friendship,
And you'll never be alone.

Believe in love,
Your heart is not a stone.

Believe that life is tough,
And you'll find it breezy.

Believe in your abilities,
and everything's easy.

Believe in God,
who made us.

Believe in simplicity,
and dont create a fuss.

Believe in breaks,
Coz you need some rest.

Believe in luck,
All the best !!!

-By me.

Colours.

First things that come to my mind when I see these colours....

White: Peace, Pleasant, bright, radiant.
Black: Sexy, dark, cold, tunnel, Trousers
Green: trees, Mountains covered with greenery after the monsoons.
Blue: Sky, Windows XP, Formal shirts.
Yellow: Smiley emoticon, shit.
Pink: Vallentines day, ampicilin, gelusil antacid. (Ampicillin is an antibiotic used to treat bacterial infections....when I was younger it was once prescribed for me. Gelusil as we know is an anti acid medicine and provides relief from acidity !!)
Red: Blood, Vampires, love, lipstick.
Brown: Rust on iron.
Grey: Grandma's eyes.
Orange: Juicy oranges
Saffron: Saffron, Jai maharashtra !!!
Purple: Royality.
Voilet: Fair skinned beauty.
Silver: Mirrors.
Gold: Necklaces.

Anyone is tagged.

Beggar industry.

The beggar phenomena.......You see beggars on alll major signals of mumbai. I feel that this beggar community must be having some sort of organized setup. I mean, just look at the lot. They have a sort of, world of their own. Each one is involved in a different 'profession' within their own group.
You'll see some of them, genuine, really handicapped, having lost a leg or an arm. Well, those are the honest working class beggars.
Some of them will pretend to have injured a leg. They'll walk with a limp, or push a small 'skateboard' like cart with rag covered hands. You'll pity the beggar, give him some money and will see him get up and walk off once he gets it !!!! So that's acting and marketing strategy all bundled up in a package.
Rag carrying beggars are more 'sophisticated' in nature. They will give you 'service'. The rag wipes your car clean...... or so it would seem to the rag carrying beggar (Car here means a part of your car 'bonnet') You will be troubled, of course. Because the rag is never clean.....and it just leaves greasy stains on your car bonnet. But yeah, they put up their hands and ask for money anyway. That is how their service industry works. Just like the other car service industries, which only clean your car, when you give it for servicing, the beggar service industry just dirties your car bonnet when they provide service.
Expediating beggars are rampant near bus stops. They chase you down till you give the money to chase them away !!! There goes expediating and the procurement industry of beggars.
Cultural Industry of beggars booms in trains. They will carry an instrument like a harmonium or something and will sing hindi songs like 'pardesi pardesi jaana nahi' in loud shrill voices which irritate your ass off and you give them the money and say 'Yeh le aur pardes jaaa be, dimag khaana band kar'.
There are many other such professional beggars. Begging for more growth rates, more income, more job satisfaction and in general begging for more.

Think less....dont crave for a pensieve !!

The idle mind is a devil's workshop......maybe. But a filled mind is like a nuclear bomb...waiting to go off the moment a fuse is lived. Sometimes I feel that humans need a source of 'thought-let-out' like the 'pensieve' in harry potter books. In case, any of you people havent read harry potter books.....a pensieve is a kind of basin where you can store your thoughts, memories and peruse them later on. Now, I wish it was for real. People might've used it. I wouldnt have, though. I never think and hence thoughts never come. In fact, I doubt whether I have a brain or not !! Jokes apart, a human mind is filled with so many thoughts ,that it is rarely easy to get rid of all thoughts. Another reason why I think, I dont have brains....I CAN get rid of things very easily. If thoughts go on piling up in your mind, it gets saturated, just like steam does (You heard of saturated steam? Well, I heard it today, I was doing some engineering calculations.........that was a bad joke....it really was.....I havent been that worse in years !!) So, coming to the point, I feel that, if you think too much, its bound to happen, the thoughts are bound to start troubling you. Just like everything else in our body, except the heart, our mind needs rest. But it never does, does it?. That is why we relate the heart and the mind. They say in hindi....ya to dil ki suno.....ya to dimag ki (Either listen to the heart or to the mind). Why this competition? Its probably because both of them work continuously, never resting, never stopping. But just like we can make the heart strong, by eating less oily, and nutrient rich food, we can make our mind stronger and less vulnerable to attacks by......thinking less. Give thinking a rest, all the activities in your normal day need not be thought consuming. In your free time play games which are less analytical, watch movies which dont need much thinking, eat something delicious everyday !! And at the end of the day.....write some useless posts and blogs like these which dont require any thinking !!! And you'll never feel the need of a pensieve, to store your thoughts which have filled your mind to the brim !!!