Why, oh why?

I've been having a lot of conversations in my head lately. Conversations that I should have been having with someone else. I'm afraid I'm going to start forgetting all the things I still have to talk about because the inventory is too high already!

Why do I feel like I'm the only who is concerned? Why is there a communication hiatus when there's no reason for one? Why does distance between cities have to determine the distance between minds? Why do I feel left alone to deal with it on my own? and for whose sake?!

Only questions in my mind, no answers. The answers, when they come, will determine what path I take. Still searching...

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"Needing someone is like needing a parachute. If he isn't there the first time, chances are you won't be needing him again."

If wishes were horses...

A recent post by a friend reminded me of what I'm still missing. Some music comes to mind. It comes close to what I'd want to say:

My Wish Comes True

Hold me, let me feel you
In my arms again
Softly you whisper my life
My best friend.

A moment is all I'm searching for
Just a moment in love with you
A moment so special so beautiful
In a moment my wish come true

Save me from the future
Take me back in time
the words they have no meaning
Without you in my life

Let me walk the rainbow
In times of sweet surprise
To when I was a little girl
And I had you in my life
Time has no answer
For words left unsaid
For words have no meaning
There's no road ahead

A moment is all I'm searching for
Just a moment in love with you
A moment so special so beautiful
In a moment my wish comes true

I am looking for a reason
To smile once again
Through every changing season
The pain I can't explain
I see the magic all around
Shining down on me
With you my life would be so right
If only it could be

May be this world is a mystery to me
But if you could be here for eternity

A moment is all I'm searching for
Just a moment in love with you
A moment so special so beautiful
In a moment my wish comes true

My wish comes true...

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Love does not ask, "Do you love me?" It only says, "I love you."

Brushstrokes - red, green, yellow

"Do Not Disturb". The red sign had been outside my door most of the past week (or was it more than that?). Inside my room, I sat intently at my desk, churning out carefully crafted MS-Powerpoint slides that eloquently laid out unbeatable "corporate strategy" for my client. The "big" presentation was on Wednesday and I had clever "deliverables" to ...well... deliver!

The "big" day came and I was quickly changing gears and moving into overdrive, ready to dish out fantastic "strategy" that would power the client's top line and wipe out their competition...

Haze...not red, not green...purple?... maybe (shrug)... My brain activity seemed to have dropped from 115% to below 11.5% in a matter of hours after the meeting. I needed the sleep, I knew, but there was work to do: de-brief with the Manager on the meeting, lay out follow-up agenda, check in with the client on the agenda to ensure we were reading from the same page, provide status update for the benefit of the new Manager who would be taking over charge from the current one...sigh (I'm really going to miss this Manager, he's been a darling...tch), solicit feedback from Manager, and begin preparing for the next presentation that happens next week. Phew!

I wanted to put up another sign outside my door, "Getting Ready", but for an indefinite period of time. Needed to rest my nerves, spend some time with myself, see my family again, mull over other issues that existed in my life (I realised how I was quickly taking my leave of the life outside work...not healthy at all...), and recharge my batteries.

Packed my bags and took the next flight home. Have not done the smallest bit of "work" today and am feeling quite proud of the fact. "Deliverables" are important but so is my sanity. I'll get back into action soon, refreshed. Tomorrow.

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"La perfection est atteinte non quand il ne reste rien à ajouter, mais quand il ne reste rien à enlever."
(You know you've achieved perfection in design, not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away.)

Great expectations

'Sometimes I think I understand everything... and then I regain consciousness'.

So runs the post-script on the title bar of my chat msngr. I think I understand why I am here, isolated in my hotel room for the second consecutive day, working my third weekend in a row, passing up opportunities to spend time with friends the way I want... I get paid for it, right! This is a part of my job. I accepted the possibility of the occurrence of such situations when I signed the contract with the employer.

I think I understand why my folks cannot quite figure out, at the first instance, why I am almost screeching my frustration into the phone's mouth-piece... I gave them no warning! The last time that I called them, a week ago, I had assured them that everything was on track, that I would be home when they expected me. I also explicitly asked them not to call me. How would they know how the circumstances, perceptions changed?

I think I understand why my friends are almost shocked that I could be so rude, when I snap at them, hang up the phone without warning, refuse to respond to their concerned probing, make them look like the enemy... They are after all different from me. How would they know what's been going on in my head over the past week that I've not spoken with them? I didn't provide a context, did I?!

And yet, I expect! I expect to be elsewhere on my weekend, on a well-earned break! I expect that my folks would be able to tell that I'm not in the best of moods, and calm my agitation! I expect that my friends will call more often and check on how I'm doing, or at least promise to do so...

I get tired sometimes of being such a rational human being. "Logic", they say, is the ruin of the spirit. I don't want to be a robot that goes about the wordly motions based on what logical consequences of actions would dictate. I want to be a little irrational at times, to stop worrying about how I'm perceived by people around me. And I expect people to understand that! At least the ones who claim to know me... it can be too much to ask, I know. I might have hurt someone because of the expectation. I'm sorry, I really am. But I owe myself some honesty. And the truth is that I am only concentrating on myself, at least for now.

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"If you love something, set it free. If it comes back to you, it's yours; otherwise it never was. But if it just sits in your living room, messes up your stuff, eats the food you cook, uses your telephone, takes your money, and doesn’t appear to realise that you had set it free... then you either married it or gave birth to it!"

Jammers unite!

It’s 6.20 pm (Time Zone: GMT + 0700). I’m sitting in a taxi. Have been sitting in it for the past 45 minutes. I am now half-way to my destination. Ideally, I should have reached my destination ten minutes ago, but then how would I have got the chance to write today?! Guess what I’m thinking of at the moment?... the situation that I am currently in – a traffic jam!

Now I’ve been in traffic jams several times before this, in several different situations, in several cities, in several countries. The things that go through my mind in the first moment of realisation that I’m stuck, however, are remarkably (!) the same. How and why did I get onto this route?! What could I have done to avoid this? What are the follow-on effects of this delay??

Maybe I should be a little forgiving. Maybe I should think about other things that might actually make my life easier. So what goes through my mind in the next moments after that first one?

When I was stuck on Andheri-Kurla Road in Mumbai in peak hour traffic for 55 minutes on a stretch that should have taken 12, all because the municipal corporation had dug up the pot-holed roadsides reducing the motorable road to half its size, I thought about whether I would be around to see when the road was a four-lane highway.

When I was being driven to my home in the suburbs of Mumbai on July 27th 2005, I thanked God for keeping me dry and safe at a time when the incessant rains had taken so many lives in the city, let alone destroying the homes of tens of thousands more.

When I was returning from my local bazaar tour of Chatu-chak market in Bangkok, I took the opportunity to appreciate the colourful costumes of some of the older generation Thai locals, and the happy co-existence of the uncovered, polluting tuk-tuk (Thai version of the Indian auto-rickshaw) with the latest versions of luxury cars on the same road.

In Kuala Lumpur, I could see the Petronas twin towers (next to which my office is located) from the entrance of my hotel’s lobby. The distance of 1.5 kilometres, easily walkable in 20 minutes, took more than 35 minutes to drive through. I wondered whether mankind had traded efficiency, health, frugality and peace of mind for wastage, arteriosclerosis and environmental deterioration.

In London, I almost started to agree with the logic behind such a hefty congestion charge (GBP 5.00) for each entry into Zone 1, the city centre, during the peak hours.

Now, as I sit in this high-end air-conditioned taxi in Jakarta, protected from the sultry heat and smoke that’s on the outside, I think first of the cabbie who is being robbed, literally, because the taxi-meter runs on distance rather than any combination of that and waiting time. Yet he manages to smile at our predicament and proposes a solution in his broken English. A weak solution, but a solution nevertheless. I shall give him a decent tip.

Next, I think of the multitudes across the globe trying to get somewhere. The vehicles on the roads have increased by an order of magnitude from the number there were five years ago. Cheaper cars, more cars, more people, more cars, higher income, more cars, sometimes more roads too, but mostly, more jams!! Man tries to devise methods to reduce the time required for any activity. The better he is able to do it, the more he rewards himself – the youngest scientist award, the child prodigy, the fastest man on earth. Where do traffic jams fit in? I am now about a quarter of the way to my hotel, the destination. It’s 7.20 pm.

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The best way to forget all your troubles is to wear tight shoes. :D

Clean lines, straight lines, curved lines

Woke up this morning, brushed my teeth, showered, dressed for work, combed my hair, gave myself the first and final look in the mirror (for the morning), and smiled.

Was greeted by the maitre d'hotel at the coffee shop with a smile. Despite lack of recognition, I smiled back.

The concierge, at the hotel, saw the searching look in my eyes, smiled, and called a taxi for me. The look in my eyes transformed to gratitude.

The cabbie held open the door for me as I fumbled for my laptop bag and file folder, trying to get out of the car as elegantly as possible. In my embarrassment, I smiled, half to myself, half to the cabbie. He acknowledged with one of his own.

At the bank, the girl at the forex services desk greeted me heartily. I looked different from her and her people, spoke differently too. She smiled at my keen efforts to speak her language and to be understood. Although the job took a little more time than I'd budgeted for, I waited patiently, to be rewarded with an apologetic but respectful smile. I couldn't take objection to the delay.

I got off the elevator on the wrong floor. The restaurant I was looking for was on the floor below. I asked a passer-by for the way to the staircase, so as not to hold up lunch-time elevator traffic in the 27-storey building. She realized I was hungry and kindly led me by hand to the front of the elevator door and pressed the button for me. I smiled my thanks.

The gymnasium was empty when I entered. The trainer-cum-attendant called out a greeting cheerily, almost surprised to see me again. I replied with a wide grin.

A junior colleague called to ask how my day was. He's on his first week of his first project in his first job during his first international trip. Today was also his first day of return from work before 10.00 pm. Subtly, the greenhorn asked if I'd had dinner. I smiled. He wanted to talk, to be heard, to be with someone who knew. I invited him to join me for the meal.

30 mins to midnight. I think about all the reasons that one looks for to be happy in life. Am I happy? I'm happy to be here, to have a job, to enjoy my work, to have great work-mates, to use my time the way I want, to anticipate a new experience when I go out the door of my room, to talk to those I love and care about, to pray for them. How much does it take? Just a curved line?...

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"The Happy Virus"
I caught the happy virus last night
When I was out singing beneath the stars.
It is remarkably contagious
- So kiss me.

(Have to admit, I couldn't resist copying this one!)

The White Horse

That was the name of a pub on the way from Oxford city to Headington - The White Horse. Never got around to entering it but the name always stuck in the mind, whenever I passed by that way. Never really stopped to think why. But now that I have given it some thought, I know what subconscious images it brought to mind.

"The" white horse or "a" white horse?... Hmm... I guess the latter makes sense but since I have now formed an association between the visual imagery and the subconscious urge, I'm going to stick with "the" white horse.

A vast expanse of land, ocean, fields, ... just anything, as long as it is expansive. The only condition is that it must be pure. Purity, cleanliness, the endless sameness of matter that is indistinguishable in any one patch from any other. Almost like the purity of "white", like snowfields in Siberia (and now I think of Kira Argounova in We the Living).

The expanse is my playfield. The fact that it is so homogeneous is not disturbing, but rather, encouraging. Now, I am not a gullible kind who'd be easily led by anybody, anything. But I am an optimist so the coast looks refreshingly clear from where I stand, just at the edge of the field.

There must be a way to get to the other end. What might I find there? How long would it take? Will it be worth the effort? Questions, doubts, directions - too many - too much clutter. I'll do without them for now. I'm content to take a few steps unquestioningly and brace myself for the journey ahead. Something makes me feel it's going to be a great ride!

Did I just say "ride"? Of course, that's why the horse. It's white, reiterating the qualities I'm beginning to yearn for.

The homogeneity checks itself in time to give rise to a picture that's becoming clearer by the minute, and I daresay, more beautiful, as I go along. I was probably naive, even impulsive, maybe a little restless too. But I was hopeful, willing to explore, and eager to learn. The white horse, my companion, my guide, my friend, the reflection of my aspiration to see the world, experience the myriad hues, and enrich my soul, will take me there...

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"Voici mon secret. Il est très simple : on ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux. "

[Here's my secret. It is very simple: it is only with the heart that one can see rightly; What is essential is invisible to the eye.]

Giving "gyaan"

I can't believe the number of people I've recently played counsellor to! I didn't realise what I was letting myself in for when I first signed up to be an alumni champion for my alma mater, where I went to b-school. Now, it seems like every long phone conversation I have is with a bright-eyed (I am tempted to add "bushy-tailed"!) aspiring b-school candidate! And when I'm not speaking to them, I'm typing to them... sigh.


It's one thing providing information about the school and telling them about what they can expect and what not. But it's quite another thing pretending to be a career counsellor or Admissions Committee member either providing possible career options to look at and/ or assessing a candidate's chances of being selected to his number 1 school. Of course, I have a standard disclaimer in place when solicited for such "advice".


Hmm... am thinking I may be actually laying the ground-work for a potential career alternative... especially since most people seem rather satisfied with my "advice"! hehe...


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"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

As for the future, your task is not to forsee it, but to enable it. "

the first time...

There's a first time for everything. I'd believed that my first blog would be posted two years ago but, as with most things in life, this too happened only when it had to. Nevertheless, I'm excited! Excited that my musings will be on air (almost literally!) The magic, I suppose, might be more difficult to capture.

But we keep trying, don't we!

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Life is not a journey to the grave, with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body ... but ... rather, skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out and loudly proclaiming, -- "WOW! what a ride!"