3 yrs back I came to Mumbai… and like all transitions in life this one too was not easy…. Back then home meant only Pune… but now……
Then: Local Trains… just when u think one more person cannot get into... at least 5 manage to…
Now: Local Trains… just when u think one more person cannot get into... at least 5 manage to…yet these are the life lines of Mumbai…. Any number of bomb blasts, floods, accidents cannot stop them…!!
Then: Traffic…. Long line of non-moving vehicles that seem to stay there forever…
Now: Traffic…. Long line of non-moving vehicles that seem to stay there forever…well one needs to plan his travel according to it… otherwise there is no way to avoid them… which makes every Mumbaite great at time management… it probably can lead to inventing ‘stuck-in-traffic-activities’..
Then: Every place is so far away…
Now: Every place is so far away… yet people manage to make it to every occasion, whether it is visiting friends/relatives or simply having to watch a movie in a theatre two hours away… they are never too tired or too bored but always ready to move on…
Then: This place is full of slums…
Now: This place is full of slums… which are right next to breathtaking skyscrapers, beautiful architectures…. Yet nothing looks out of place…. Nothing seems to tarnish the beauty of the place…
Then: People… Busy, running, spending their life traveling…
Now: People… Busy, running, spending their life traveling…yet never thinking of any other place as home… Taking everything coming their way with a smile, sharing and caring even in the most disastrous times… not waiting for authorities during calamities but helping each with whatever is possible…
Then: The city that never sleeps…
Now: The city that never sleeps… as the spirit of Mumbai is undying and ever-growing…. Thinking back on what I used to imagine Mumbai to be and how I see it now after staying there for 3 years, I realize that this is not just one more metropolitan city in India (where Shahrukh Khan lives) for me….
Now it is Home…!!
Friday 5 October 2007
Friday 13 July 2007
Being Twenty Something...
Recently I read a piece called “Being Twenty Something” about Quarter Life crisis..!! It made me wonder… is it really a crisis..!! I’m in my twenties and crises, well….
In your teens most of the pictures you have in mind are painted by parents and friends, people who are around you… but moving into twenties, you start sketching your own images… some good… same bad… some downright ugly...!! But each one adds a little to “U”…!!
This phase in life gives the path you want to take and the understanding of what makes you happy… You start realizing how much your dreams and desires mean to you…!!! And that the easy answer “main bada hoke papa jaise banana chahta hoon” given to innumerable uncles n aunties, makes a lot more sense now… Or maybe just looking at your job you realize, that you had never thought of doing this and yet you are damn good at it.
Twenties is the time of your first job… your first brush with realities of life…!! The time when you realize all that your parents must be facing to make ends meet and give you a comfortable life… it maybe be due to the fact that no matter what u do, saving seems a impossibility… and then there is this whole new lesson known as Income Tax (which after working for 4 yrs also I don’t understand :) ) that u have to learn.
This is the point where you start juggling with life…. Dividing time or should I say making 30 out of the 24 hrs available…. Work, family, colleagues, friends from work, from college, from school…. And yet we don’t manage to give quality time to even half of these people…!! Well “kuch paane ke liye kuch khona paadta hai”….
Twenties also puts you to understanding independence… coz now it is not simply fighting with your parents to be allowed for late night parties or wearing all kinds of clothes, but now it is about being responsible for your life… making decision which would decide your future… well it is tough….
A lot of things happen very fast during this time & yet I think this is the most exciting phase of your life... Not only do these years decide the rest of your life, be it your career, the person who would be your life-mate; but these years also carve the person you are meant to be… these years define you in many ways….
So crises… hardly… I think this is the time to get to know yourself like never before… the time to fall in love with…. well “U”…..!!
In your teens most of the pictures you have in mind are painted by parents and friends, people who are around you… but moving into twenties, you start sketching your own images… some good… same bad… some downright ugly...!! But each one adds a little to “U”…!!
This phase in life gives the path you want to take and the understanding of what makes you happy… You start realizing how much your dreams and desires mean to you…!!! And that the easy answer “main bada hoke papa jaise banana chahta hoon” given to innumerable uncles n aunties, makes a lot more sense now… Or maybe just looking at your job you realize, that you had never thought of doing this and yet you are damn good at it.
Twenties is the time of your first job… your first brush with realities of life…!! The time when you realize all that your parents must be facing to make ends meet and give you a comfortable life… it maybe be due to the fact that no matter what u do, saving seems a impossibility… and then there is this whole new lesson known as Income Tax (which after working for 4 yrs also I don’t understand :) ) that u have to learn.
This is the point where you start juggling with life…. Dividing time or should I say making 30 out of the 24 hrs available…. Work, family, colleagues, friends from work, from college, from school…. And yet we don’t manage to give quality time to even half of these people…!! Well “kuch paane ke liye kuch khona paadta hai”….
Twenties also puts you to understanding independence… coz now it is not simply fighting with your parents to be allowed for late night parties or wearing all kinds of clothes, but now it is about being responsible for your life… making decision which would decide your future… well it is tough….
A lot of things happen very fast during this time & yet I think this is the most exciting phase of your life... Not only do these years decide the rest of your life, be it your career, the person who would be your life-mate; but these years also carve the person you are meant to be… these years define you in many ways….
So crises… hardly… I think this is the time to get to know yourself like never before… the time to fall in love with…. well “U”…..!!
Monday 12 February 2007
Lost & Found
Going through one of your old jeans that you haven’t worn in a long time, you find a tenner in one of the pockets, rummaging through that messy cupboard your hand reaches one of those lost books you loved as school girl…Or simply bumping into a “long-lost” friend….
Finding something committed to memory as lost is always fantastic! Have you ever thought of those first few seconds you go through when you find something? I have always felt them to be of wonder and sometimes sheer amazement….!! However recently I had a feeling of complete shock….I had lost my PAN card 5 months back in Mumbai… and 4 months back I was transferred to Pune (Panchshil, Vimanagar office to be precise)…After coming here though I kept reminding myself that I had to get a new one made, I never actually got around to doing it (this falls under the category of things that have a lot of time to get done, but we only end up doing at the last minute.. similar to sending in Investments proofs which I did submit on the last day 2 minutes before closing time J).
Well as it is said all that happens, does happen for the best. One fine day I was at my desk pressing ‘F9’ idly on my open mail box. (This I must confess is a compulsion with almost ever software professional – the manual checking for mail every 10 minutes is mandatory even if auto send-receive option is “on”. Don’t get me wrong, this is just the way we are.. and trust me when you’re sitting idle in office you will never receive some time pass mail to read no matter how many times you press “F9”… Frequency of these mails being 2/min). Anyways, I suddenly do get a mail, from an unknown mail-id with subject “You lost your PAN card???”
Now I think to myself, this happened 5 months back when I was in Mumbai (this is to refresh), so someone in Mumbai must have found it… Well I do a “reply” to confirm that I had and trust me this time I did a ‘F9’ 50 times in 1 minute. But got a reply after 2 minutes… L Anyways the person “X” (I’m not calling her ‘X’ to conceal the person’s identity, just that I haven’t told her about this piece), replies stating that she did find my PAN card & she sits in Panchshil on 5th floor(I sit on the 3rd)… Now my brain starts working… this is not possible... I lost it in Mumbai, 5 months back (this is repetition only for effect)…how can someone in Pune find it… someone is trying to make an “April fool”… But thinking really hard I couldn’t get a way to find out if someone was in the ‘Aprilly’ mood… So I thought… face your fear, make a fool of yourself…. But I thought 2 fools would be better than one, so I asked my best friend to come with me to the 5th floor to check out… Now normally my friend is the type who can write a book titled “101 Ways to Think of Not-possible Scenarios”, sub-titled “For any events in life”…but here she simply says “Praj why do you need me to go to 5th floor” when I expected her to think of 101 scenarios of why someone would write me that mail and ask me to come to 5th floor… life is full of surprises…
Anyways I know how to persuade her to do things, which I did and we went to the 5th floor…
You wont believe this but turns out that “X” DID find my PAN card, lying on the road, along with a small passport size photo of mine ( I know passport size is small.. that again is for effect..) and she remembered seeing me in Panchshil… Reaching her cubicle and seeing my PAN card were the moments of “shock” for her which I mentioned earlier and well that day the feeling of shock never left me… I saw the card at least 20 times through the day just to make sure that it was mine….. This was one of those days that I will never forget…!! Lost in Mumbai... 5 months back (this is just what I said to “X” as a reply to “how did you lose it”)… Found on the road…!!! (This was pretty much to myself)
Well I’m the kind of person who has lost lots of things in life… sometimes just out of sheer negligence, sometimes due to Murphy’s laws working and most of the times due to simple bad luck…. But rarely do I have the experience of finding these again… That day however I did believe in miracles (it could have some other very plain explanation but miracles always sound good)… and just hope that everyone one day experiences this miracle and finds at least one of those things that has faded away as a lost memory….
Finding something committed to memory as lost is always fantastic! Have you ever thought of those first few seconds you go through when you find something? I have always felt them to be of wonder and sometimes sheer amazement….!! However recently I had a feeling of complete shock….I had lost my PAN card 5 months back in Mumbai… and 4 months back I was transferred to Pune (Panchshil, Vimanagar office to be precise)…After coming here though I kept reminding myself that I had to get a new one made, I never actually got around to doing it (this falls under the category of things that have a lot of time to get done, but we only end up doing at the last minute.. similar to sending in Investments proofs which I did submit on the last day 2 minutes before closing time J).
Well as it is said all that happens, does happen for the best. One fine day I was at my desk pressing ‘F9’ idly on my open mail box. (This I must confess is a compulsion with almost ever software professional – the manual checking for mail every 10 minutes is mandatory even if auto send-receive option is “on”. Don’t get me wrong, this is just the way we are.. and trust me when you’re sitting idle in office you will never receive some time pass mail to read no matter how many times you press “F9”… Frequency of these mails being 2/min). Anyways, I suddenly do get a mail, from an unknown mail-id with subject “You lost your PAN card???”
Now I think to myself, this happened 5 months back when I was in Mumbai (this is to refresh), so someone in Mumbai must have found it… Well I do a “reply” to confirm that I had and trust me this time I did a ‘F9’ 50 times in 1 minute. But got a reply after 2 minutes… L Anyways the person “X” (I’m not calling her ‘X’ to conceal the person’s identity, just that I haven’t told her about this piece), replies stating that she did find my PAN card & she sits in Panchshil on 5th floor(I sit on the 3rd)… Now my brain starts working… this is not possible... I lost it in Mumbai, 5 months back (this is repetition only for effect)…how can someone in Pune find it… someone is trying to make an “April fool”… But thinking really hard I couldn’t get a way to find out if someone was in the ‘Aprilly’ mood… So I thought… face your fear, make a fool of yourself…. But I thought 2 fools would be better than one, so I asked my best friend to come with me to the 5th floor to check out… Now normally my friend is the type who can write a book titled “101 Ways to Think of Not-possible Scenarios”, sub-titled “For any events in life”…but here she simply says “Praj why do you need me to go to 5th floor” when I expected her to think of 101 scenarios of why someone would write me that mail and ask me to come to 5th floor… life is full of surprises…
Anyways I know how to persuade her to do things, which I did and we went to the 5th floor…
You wont believe this but turns out that “X” DID find my PAN card, lying on the road, along with a small passport size photo of mine ( I know passport size is small.. that again is for effect..) and she remembered seeing me in Panchshil… Reaching her cubicle and seeing my PAN card were the moments of “shock” for her which I mentioned earlier and well that day the feeling of shock never left me… I saw the card at least 20 times through the day just to make sure that it was mine….. This was one of those days that I will never forget…!! Lost in Mumbai... 5 months back (this is just what I said to “X” as a reply to “how did you lose it”)… Found on the road…!!! (This was pretty much to myself)
Well I’m the kind of person who has lost lots of things in life… sometimes just out of sheer negligence, sometimes due to Murphy’s laws working and most of the times due to simple bad luck…. But rarely do I have the experience of finding these again… That day however I did believe in miracles (it could have some other very plain explanation but miracles always sound good)… and just hope that everyone one day experiences this miracle and finds at least one of those things that has faded away as a lost memory….
Going through one of your old jeans that you haven’t worn in a long time, you find a tenner in one of the pockets, rummaging through that messy cupboard your hand reaches one of those lost books you loved as school girl…Or simply bumping into a “long-lost” friend….
Finding something committed to memory as lost is always fantastic! Have you ever thought of those first few seconds you go through when you find something? I have always felt them to be of wonder and sometimes sheer amazement….!! However recently I had a feeling of complete shock….I had lost my PAN card 5 months back in Mumbai… and 4 months back I was transferred to Pune (Panchshil, Vimanagar office to be precise)…After coming here though I kept reminding myself that I had to get a new one made, I never actually got around to doing it (this falls under the category of things that have a lot of time to get done, but we only end up doing at the last minute.. similar to sending in Investments proofs which I did submit on the last day 2 minutes before closing time J).
Well as it is said all that happens, does happen for the best. One fine day I was at my desk pressing ‘F9’ idly on my open mail box. (This I must confess is a compulsion with almost ever software professional – the manual checking for mail every 10 minutes is mandatory even if auto send-receive option is “on”. Don’t get me wrong, this is just the way we are.. and trust me when you’re sitting idle in office you will never receive some time pass mail to read no matter how many times you press “F9”… Frequency of these mails being 2/min). Anyways, I suddenly do get a mail, from an unknown mail-id with subject “You lost your PAN card???”
Now I think to myself, this happened 5 months back when I was in Mumbai (this is to refresh), so someone in Mumbai must have found it… Well I do a “reply” to confirm that I had and trust me this time I did a ‘F9’ 50 times in 1 minute. But got a reply after 2 minutes… L Anyways the person “X” (I’m not calling her ‘X’ to conceal the person’s identity, just that I haven’t told her about this piece), replies stating that she did find my PAN card & she sits in Panchshil on 5th floor(I sit on the 3rd)… Now my brain starts working… this is not possible... I lost it in Mumbai, 5 months back (this is repetition only for effect)…how can someone in Pune find it… someone is trying to make an “April fool”… But thinking really hard I couldn’t get a way to find out if someone was in the ‘Aprilly’ mood… So I thought… face your fear, make a fool of yourself…. But I thought 2 fools would be better than one, so I asked my best friend to come with me to the 5th floor to check out… Now normally my friend is the type who can write a book titled “101 Ways to Think of Not-possible Scenarios”, sub-titled “For any events in life”…but here she simply says “Praj why do you need me to go to 5th floor” when I expected her to think of 101 scenarios of why someone would write me that mail and ask me to come to 5th floor… life is full of surprises…
Anyways I know how to persuade her to do things, which I did and we went to the 5th floor…
You wont believe this but turns out that “X” DID find my PAN card, lying on the road, along with a small passport size photo of mine ( I know passport size is small.. that again is for effect..) and she remembered seeing me in Panchshil… Reaching her cubicle and seeing my PAN card were the moments of “shock” for her which I mentioned earlier and well that day the feeling of shock never left me… I saw the card at least 20 times through the day just to make sure that it was mine….. This was one of those days that I will never forget…!! Lost in Mumbai... 5 months back (this is just what I said to “X” as a reply to “how did you lose it”)… Found on the road…!!! (This was pretty much to myself)
Well I’m the kind of person who has lost lots of things in life… sometimes just out of sheer negligence, sometimes due to Murphy’s laws working and most of the times due to simple bad luck…. But rarely do I have the experience of finding these again… That day however I did believe in miracles (it could have some other very plain explanation but miracles always sound good)… and just hope that everyone one day experiences this miracle and finds at least one of those things that has faded away as a lost memory….
Finding something committed to memory as lost is always fantastic! Have you ever thought of those first few seconds you go through when you find something? I have always felt them to be of wonder and sometimes sheer amazement….!! However recently I had a feeling of complete shock….I had lost my PAN card 5 months back in Mumbai… and 4 months back I was transferred to Pune (Panchshil, Vimanagar office to be precise)…After coming here though I kept reminding myself that I had to get a new one made, I never actually got around to doing it (this falls under the category of things that have a lot of time to get done, but we only end up doing at the last minute.. similar to sending in Investments proofs which I did submit on the last day 2 minutes before closing time J).
Well as it is said all that happens, does happen for the best. One fine day I was at my desk pressing ‘F9’ idly on my open mail box. (This I must confess is a compulsion with almost ever software professional – the manual checking for mail every 10 minutes is mandatory even if auto send-receive option is “on”. Don’t get me wrong, this is just the way we are.. and trust me when you’re sitting idle in office you will never receive some time pass mail to read no matter how many times you press “F9”… Frequency of these mails being 2/min). Anyways, I suddenly do get a mail, from an unknown mail-id with subject “You lost your PAN card???”
Now I think to myself, this happened 5 months back when I was in Mumbai (this is to refresh), so someone in Mumbai must have found it… Well I do a “reply” to confirm that I had and trust me this time I did a ‘F9’ 50 times in 1 minute. But got a reply after 2 minutes… L Anyways the person “X” (I’m not calling her ‘X’ to conceal the person’s identity, just that I haven’t told her about this piece), replies stating that she did find my PAN card & she sits in Panchshil on 5th floor(I sit on the 3rd)… Now my brain starts working… this is not possible... I lost it in Mumbai, 5 months back (this is repetition only for effect)…how can someone in Pune find it… someone is trying to make an “April fool”… But thinking really hard I couldn’t get a way to find out if someone was in the ‘Aprilly’ mood… So I thought… face your fear, make a fool of yourself…. But I thought 2 fools would be better than one, so I asked my best friend to come with me to the 5th floor to check out… Now normally my friend is the type who can write a book titled “101 Ways to Think of Not-possible Scenarios”, sub-titled “For any events in life”…but here she simply says “Praj why do you need me to go to 5th floor” when I expected her to think of 101 scenarios of why someone would write me that mail and ask me to come to 5th floor… life is full of surprises…
Anyways I know how to persuade her to do things, which I did and we went to the 5th floor…
You wont believe this but turns out that “X” DID find my PAN card, lying on the road, along with a small passport size photo of mine ( I know passport size is small.. that again is for effect..) and she remembered seeing me in Panchshil… Reaching her cubicle and seeing my PAN card were the moments of “shock” for her which I mentioned earlier and well that day the feeling of shock never left me… I saw the card at least 20 times through the day just to make sure that it was mine….. This was one of those days that I will never forget…!! Lost in Mumbai... 5 months back (this is just what I said to “X” as a reply to “how did you lose it”)… Found on the road…!!! (This was pretty much to myself)
Well I’m the kind of person who has lost lots of things in life… sometimes just out of sheer negligence, sometimes due to Murphy’s laws working and most of the times due to simple bad luck…. But rarely do I have the experience of finding these again… That day however I did believe in miracles (it could have some other very plain explanation but miracles always sound good)… and just hope that everyone one day experiences this miracle and finds at least one of those things that has faded away as a lost memory….
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