message in a bottle (02.2003 - 09.2008)

It is the third day in a row. I come back from work and see my family glued to television watching - not some spicy family drama - but the news. This news, by the way, is in no way less than the racy family drama that I just mentioned.  Let me give you the facts:

Monday - Breaking news about how a Bangalore-based Infosys employee killed his wife under the suspicion of cheating and then hung himself. The channels did not just simply state this news but showed the file pictures in a loop, dramatized the whole incident with tidbits about other such cases, and of course, invited a marriage counselor to discuss relationships and trust issues.

Tuesday - Breaking news about a Delhi-based encounter specialist being murdered  by a friend. Okay, I will give it to you that this is proper news. But repeating the same information in different ways, in different tones, with the same photos? No, that is not journalism. That is sensational television.

Wednesday - Breaking news about a two-and-a-half years old girl having fallen in a 48 feet hole. Channels are giving the privileged us live coverage of this story. For the past 30 minutes, I have been seeing a file picture of little Vandana and listening to a child expert tell us how city children are not as strong and brave as the village kids. All of this along with heart-rendering quotes that we hear in different tones and pitches.

Sorry, Ekta Kapoor. I think you finally have competition.

I am having the latter. It began when I got into one argument after another, thrice. All this on my way to work; I had a very important customer presentation today. On reaching office, I decided to clear all that had happened from my mind along with clearing any creases that might have appeared on my attire. Once inside, I heard a strange rattling sound accompanying the clicks of my heels. I rushed to the washroom to investigate and what do we have! Pebbles inside the suddenly punctured heel of my shoe! Yes, ladies and gents, pebbles. Inside my shoe. How did they come there? When did the heel get punctured? I have absolutely no answers to these questions. All I can say is that it all happened after I left home. Sigh.

Now, I am sitting in the presentation room, which is huge and very quiet. Every time I walk on the carpeted floor, I hear the rattle. Can you imagine how embarrassing it is?! And what it does to my self confidence when I speak in front of 10 suits?

And now I have an unplanned call in the evening and so, I am not getting home before 9 pm.

There are times when you write down something but do not get around to posting it for various reasons, yes? I found one such old post that I had written on the 27th day of February in the year 2006. Things have changed but this is one thing I still feel very strongly about - hence posting now.

There is no doubt that the world is divided in two halves, married people and singles. Time and again, I am forced to think if the married people of the world have united against the singles. Not a day passes without someone mentioning the M word to me. The whole world (alright the married half, at least) thinks I should get married. Do not get me wrong, I have nothing against marriage. In fact, I want to get married sometime. But the point is, why is my single status such a big deal to the people around me?

Is it my potential freedom that scares them?
Do they think all single women are out to get the married men?
Do they resent their status and want others to burn in the same hell?
Or maybe, they are the kind souls who are rolling in marital bliss and want the whole world to experience the joy, is it?
What is it?

I am perplexed by everyones interest in my marital status. I talk of a vacation in Goa, and they tell me I should get married. I talk about a job shift, and they suggest marriage. I mention a boring weekend, and they swear life can be turned into a fun ride if I just get married. It scares me, it irritates me, and it bugs me to no end.

 

To Misadventures of a Newly Married Girl or something to this effect. Ideas welcome. Na, wipe that smile off; we are not talking erotic stuff here. We are talking about blogging the instances when:

I happily ask the guest if she’d like some tea and then discover, after her enthusiastic nod, that I have no milk in the refrigerator and ultimately end up borrowing milk from the guest (who has her freshly shopped groceries in the car outside) to make her some tea.

Or when I walk in to a one-year-old’s birthday party empty handed because someone said something about getting a combined gift.

Or when I burn popcorn.

The fear has been lurking in some hidden corner of my mind for the past two-and-a-half years. It raised its ugly head every couple of months and nagged me for a few days before fading away, to return again.

They have finally gone ahead and blocked LJ at work.

I know many of you are going to say that it is alright. One is not supposed to blog at work anyways etc. If you want to lecture me on this, please refrain from commenting. Thank you very much.

I do not see the harm of blogging at work. And if you see my archives you will know that I do not make seven posts a day or something. I write seldom; averaging at four times in a month. Nevertheless, it is a Web site that allows me to relax after a particularly nasty meeting or a boring training or on a lazy day. Not once in the five years of blogging have I found myself writing a post while some important work sat waiting in my inbox. Sigh.

80% of Web sites, including wikipedia, cannot be viewed now. Great! Oh and did I tell you that one of my major job responsibility is research?

What does it take to make a girl happy?

A Hindi flick, a cool gadget, and a short impromptu holiday.

Holidays that do not happen

When was the last time I set my foot outside Delhi? Well technically speaking, this very morning but we are not counting the National Capital Region where one works, damn it.

I work like donkey and then I work some more. I live weekend to weekend, hoping that every new weekend will bring with it a bundle of surprising and fun proceedings. This does not happen.

Forget Vatican City, I cannot even seem to take a vacation in Kullu! And I do not even want to go to Kullu, if you know what I mean.

The inevitable ban on happiness

It has finally happened! The self-imposed ban on gadgets is here to stay. The unmentionable happened last Friday when I, high on music and cola, slipped my digital camera (nothing less than Nikon Coolpix) outside my carry bag. Slip it did, out of my hand; on to the floor of the cab I will never see again in my life. I will never see my Coolpix either.

Therefore, I have now been barred from buying, talking, or dreaming about any cool gizmos. I shall not buy myself anything technologically hot for a long-long time to come. I shall pine for a camera every time sun takes a refuge behind the dark clouds, every time my friends visit me, every time I have a moment. And that, ladies and gentlemen, will be my punishment for being careless.

Watching movies, a thing of the past

The last Hindi movie I saw was Rang De Basanti, and I caught it in the first week itself. This means that I have not seen a Hindi movie in the past five months. A movie buff is what I used to be, right?

Surviving ain’t easy people.

So the much dreaded Delhi winter is almost here. The days are shorter and I cannot read my book on my way home from work anymore. What does a girl do when she cannot read her book? Listen to music, of course. Now, I am this iPod-less poor girl, who has to make do with a select few songs on her cellular phone that has 41 MB memory only. Less memory combined with my inexcusable laziness in changing my playlist every other day resulted in boredom after listening to the same songs for the first three days of the week. On Thursday evening, I switched to Radio.

The good thing about listening to the radio on my cellular phone is that I can change the staion with the slightest push of the tip of my thumb. This enables me to listen to non-stop music (not necessarily good music, but non-stop nonetheless) by switching stations as soon as a song ends. Or at least I thought so.

I remember when the private radio stations first hit Delhi back in 2003, Radio Mirchi was my favorite out of the three stations. The RJs were livelier, puns were mildly funnier, and the jazz worked for me. Things seem to have changed now. I discovered, this Thursday, that Radio Mirchi hardly plays any music. I think they ask their peon to randomly pick some seven CDs from their library every morning and then play the same songs over and over, all day long. Sometimes, the peon takes an off, and they play the same music all week long. However, they do have a wide range of advertisements. So, everytime a 'Salam Namaste' song ends, there is a string of twenty two advertisements followed by a meaningless comment by the RJ. And, then they play a song from 'Neil and Nikki'.

On Friday, I realized that I cannot do this. I cannot listen to advertisements on three different radio stations all through the winter. Until the days get longer again, I have to bring out my GBA. So, here I am, with a spanking new cartridge of Ultimate Spiderman and a borrowed Advance Wars 2. Homeward journey should be fun again.

What do you want from life?

In my opinion, this is a pseudo deep question. When I close my eyes and think about it, the first picture that comes to my mind is that of the Nescafe girl. The one I see on the Nescafe vending machine - curly hair, cheerful smile, hot cup of coffee.

Happiness and peace of mind. That is all I ask for. Not too complicated, is it?



Of late, I have taken some decisions without consulting many and these decisions do not match with the general idea of a successful life. Why are you so rigid, Anupma? How can you say no to such an opportunity? I am not rigid, I have just made up my mind. And sometimes, opportunity lies in saying 'no'. You just have to figure out what works for you.

I have figured that living a life you want is possible. It is possible to be happy outside the boundaries the society has defined for us. There is something to be said about coming home to a warm smile and piping hot home cooked food, about sipping masala tea with your friend on a Saturday afternoon, about falling asleep with your book in the familiar comfort of your bed, about walking into a room full of smiling, friendly faces and cracking a bad joke every morning. I chose all this and more over what they call an opportunity.

The way I see it, it is the society that has rigid ideas. Let me take the example of my favorite topic - 'shoot me, I am single!' Society refuses to believe that a thirty something woman can be happy unless she is married. This high flying, free spirited woman with a great career is hiding her loneliness behind that matte makeup, they say. But what about the woman who finds herself caught in the web of a loveless marriage or, worse still, a hostile relationship? That's okay, life is not fair and one always has to work things out, they say. Hence, I rest my point that it is the society that refuses to budge.

Come to think of it, the solution is simple. All I need to do is to tune out toxic, close-minded people who spread nothing but negative energy. I refuse to measure the success rate of my life on their parameters. Is all.