Kleptomaniac......is there one in you?

Disclaimer: Totally borders on being offensive, but no personal attack intended and Im all for freedom of expression.

 A lot has been happening of late (good things for a change :D) so haven't been able to focus. Anyway, back now. I'll leave the place I got used to spending 10-12 hours at, daily and getting paid for doing so. There's still time, but I am trying to get in to the third person mode and learning to look at things more objectively, which clearly gives a lot of food for thought. 

Like I've mentioned earlier, I work at a pretty nice office, with fully stacked micro kitchens and a rather elaborate spread at the meal times. The micro kitchens are stacked for munching between meals and clearly attribute singed-handedly for all the extra body mass floating around. Anyway, so when I say stacked, really they are loaded, with all sorts of mouth watering distractions, ranging from chocolates, muffins, instant noodles, fruit cakes, aerated drinks, milk shakes, fruits, candies, health bars, yogurt, and what not. You get the picture right. 

Ideal behaviour - Go to the MK, take your fill, to munch away while working/gossiping. Laze around and waste time around a plethora of food.

About Acceptable behaviour - picking up your share of junk food or whatever have you, to address the hunger pangs en route home.

Unacceptable behaviour -  clearing off the racks, and loading the huge laptop bags. In an attempt to do justice to everything, picking fruits, beverages, junk food, and pretty much everything that can be carried in the backpack. 

I know we are like a developing 3rd world nation and all that, but really folks coming from well-do homes, educated lot, (clearly if you were hired, I'm assuming you ought to have received some, and I don't mean accumulating degrees, but education which is a lot more than being literate) cleaning off racks. And these are definitely not your survival kit, unless you are in the business of maintaining a daily supplies store, which is yet another line of thought. 

What can be the temptation? My mind forces me to arrive at only one logical explanation 'there's a kleptomaniac,' in a lot of us. 

The minute there is free stuff and no one's looking, something triggers the devil into action. Do you generally clean fridge racks etc at friends places too (its free and no one will suspect)? Or unattended aisles at departmental stores, but oh there's the bloody CCTV, making operations difficult and the damn tags and codes.

So if you are secretly associating yourself with the third category (Come on how long can one be in denial and point fingers, we all know deep down who we are), then may be its good to curb this devil, no? 

All Things Money can(t) Buy


Ok this might sound like a Mastercard advert. But I will try my best to not make it sound like one.


This somebody I'd like to call pseudo Kate Middleton has been bragging about her rather grand wedding plans. I have been forced to absorb a lot, we share our bay (quite a bit of luck there), my poor ears and subsequently senses have been tortured quite a bit. My brain feels like scrambled egg at the verge of getting totally charred due to overheating.  Why did I choose Kate Middleton,
well first she was Not a blue blood, second several thousand people watched her getting married, third, there was such a fuss about her marriage, it was made out to be THE wedding of the decade.  


I don't plan to give you a download of the sensory overdose I was subjected to, but it sure got me thinking. All things money can or cannot buy:


A real nice top of the line car, the most latest model in a color of your choice. It has to have the best music system fitted in, cause whats a drive without music. What about a wonderfully company who hums along with the music in the car, in a voice so good that it makes your heart take flight.


A princess like well planned trousseau, grand celebrations, swarovskis and diamonds, a pricey photographer, exotic locations, guests being flown from beyond the pacific, and the works. What about the knight in shining armour all those classic literature books would have us believe? Forget the shining armour, but at least just the right guy. 


A villa to call home, fill it with some staff members to maintain the property and a dog to keep the staff busy. What about some people in it, to drown the deafening silence?


Wonderful holiday destinations, breathtakingly beautiful photographs, picture perfect moments captured to a T, what about the priceless memories with some loved ones, which are beyond SLR abilities?


Gadgets, places, things and more...... I wanna be a billionaire so freaking bad, buy all of the things I never had!

Making love out of nothing at all...


As you may have figured by now, I too, like a lot of others, work for an MNC, which is known to spoil its employees silly. I totally love the company I work for, and feel lucky everyday. However, getting to my place of work and back home is one long drive. The commute can get superbly monotonous and bugging in the absence of better things to keep yourself occupied with, whilst you are being driven back and forth. Not to mention I feel lucky again, that I don't have to mind the clutch and break and there's someone else doing that for me, to ensure I reach home comfortably in spite of battling all the traffic. Make no mistake, I do enjoy driving, but busy city streets with endless traffic, get to me sometimes. But anyway thats not the point. Like I was saying, I found something interesting to indulge myself in, to keep myself from feeling extremely bored. 


How often we tend to miss the beauty around us, in things big and small. So today when my cab came out of the basement, I made a conscious effort to look around and notice much more than I usually do. Instead of fretting over the seemingly endless queue of cars, I looked up and the sky was the most beautiful shade of grey. Water laden clouds, scattered all over, waiting to splash all over. As we drove on, out & away from the concrete structures around, there were tall trees, swaying gently to a rhythm of their own, like moving in a symphony, where God himself was the conductor of the orchestra. 


Before we knew it, the clouds burst and how. Lashing against the window panes, an endless stream of water, washing away the roads, leaving the sky clean, leaves glistening after being freshly washed, and of course the smell of wet earth. While rain was doing its bit, in patches of the way, there were vendors, trying to make some quick money, before getting soaked to the bones. They came selling odds and ends, but it was a bunch or roses which caught my fancy. Lovely, full, rich crimson red, half bloomed rose buds, with shining droplets of water on the petals (thanks to the rain) wrapped in quintessential cellophane. They were so gorgeous, that they just took my breadth away.


And no, amidst all this, I wasn't anywhere close to reaching home, but I didn't mind it at all. After the roses, I managed to spot a profusion of pink and white bougainvillea, again freshly washed and blooming. And there were these bushes with star shaped leaves, giving them company, while cars whooshed passed them. 


Somewhere along the way I realized, it had stopped raining, but what a trail of beauty it had left behind. The sky had different hues every few meters and I was almost home. This had to be the most wonderful visual treat I had had in the longest time, that too on these busy city streets. 

To smile or not to smile!

Oh! the burden of being human and that too a sensitive one among the species. Meeting people who are strangers but not quite, in lift lobbies, car dropping areas, at reception desks, around washrooms, in locker rooms, or at the gym. The expression of faint recognition, teamed with apprehension of being the first to acknowledge, deadly combination I tell you. I think women face it more than men. By personal experience I can safely say, men are more eager to exchange pleasantries than women. Most women that I happen to run into, walk around with this absolute dead pan expression. If you are reading this, and are a woman, my appeal to you please don't take this personally, and I don't intend to attack anyone. But I think I have been running in to this variety much too often.

The places you visit everyday, you happen to inadvertently become part of a larger group of random strangers. But there is an unspoken connection between all these people, that they all are at the same place, around the same time, for the very same reason. It's like being part of a silent reading group, where you know no one, but all of you visit the same library everyday, at the same time, and happen to sit around the same big table reading this and that. Like it or not, its about ok social etiquette to acknowledge the presence of any individual in this group and to smile at them. Chances are high that all the guys in the group would exchange pleasantries in the form of a nod, hand shake or just a smile. But the fairer sex can be a bit of a tight fist in this regard. She can be miserly in her smiles and a tough nut to crack even for simple acts of recognition.

Being a woman myself, I'm bound by laws of sisterhood (well or so I presume), but often I'm left wondering if its okay to be the first to smile. If we just let go of the apprehension sometimes, drop the dead pan expression, and bring some sunshine with a radiant unapologetic smile, a smile of recognition, a smile of acknowledgement...

Irresponsible, Ill-tempered, frustrated citizens...are we?

A commute through the busy parts of the city, will give each of us a rather up, close and personal encounter with the not so cultured side of Delhiites.

Honking cars, when there are boards requesting us not to Honk! Driving rash, like there is no tomorrow and all we have is today, might as well go a Long long way. Doesn't really matter if a few are trampled en route.... All this is not exactly courtesy the cabs which ply us between home and work. Rash, Lane-Less (I just coined it for convenience), and In sane driving is quite a common sight even otherwise. People are ready to pick up fights at the drop of a hat (even that would take longer). Irresistible is the desire to pick up a fight, and if its in the middle of a busy road, wow! nothing like it.

Enjoy the extreme privilege of commuting in public transport, be it buses, TSR's (better known as autorickshaws) and it breaks my heart to say even Delhi's pride 'The Metro.' Leering eyes, lewd remarks, completely un-called for rendition, of the most crass songs that have ever been created, by the 'Yahoo Male,'... I'm sure you get the idea.

And if this was not enough to puncture the pride we have for being who we are, we have men relieving themselves shamelessly anywhere and everywhere, spittles resulting from betel leaf chewing, making landmarks all over the city, garbage dumped everywhere except where it should go, in the bin. One can often spot even the rich and often assumed to be cultured sitting in luxury cars ( and I do not mean the uniformed drivers), just pulling down the window and spray painting the nearest surface with the orange liquid from their mouth. Disgusting as the mere description sounds, the sight is even more annoying and repelling.

I know all the above sounds more like a rant, but this is the sad realization which creeps in, on every venture outside the Clean, Safe and responsibly maintained confines of a home. . .