then try, try and try again...

Been mostly lost in thoughts today.One could even say, i was feeling blue...... By the way, friends, why do we associate feelings of depression with the colour blue? I cant understand. Imagine blue skies with cotton candy clouds..ummm then blue-bells on a stalk or turqouise seas or babies in blue dresses.And imagine blue beads on a white dress mmm....(wanna go shopping:x ) I think blue is a joyous colour..... maybe not the sunny abundance which denotes yellow, or the wild passionate rapture of red, but the kind of happiness we feel when we hear a choir playing, or the strains of a flute or our very own jaltarang.. Before i get carried away in these musings lemme chase away the clouds for some time and tell you about the problem.
It started many years back , i was 14 , a schoolgirl.. There was this play going on in my colony on christmas eve and i had to write a report on it .( we had someone called Mr G.H Banerjee in our colony who was adressed as granpa by all the kids in the colony. He was the soul of all cultural activities there and we totally adored him.) He was constantly encouraging me to write and till date i owe much of my scant literary efforts to him.:) aneways, lets get back to the play... I watched it, enjoyed it and made a note of whatever i interpreted as funny inside it. For example the lead actor who stuttered over his lines, the actress who entered from the wrong side of the stage.. At night in my home, i sat and polished the entire report, busily adorning it with what i used to call"dry wit". We had this local newsletter kind of thing being published and the day

my article (read report) was published i was very excited. Ours was a close knit community and everybody knew everybody else and were mostly on first-name-terms with each other. The very first person to call me up and congratulate me was my friend annie. "Oh i totally adored the way u wrote, it was hilarious" Till date i remember the warm rush of pleasure i felt in myself on hearing the words. Well, then after numerous combinations and permutations of the same compliments i was feeling rather proud of myself as i walked down to the local bakery shop.

Suddenly i saw granpa standing there under his favourite krishnachura tree." Oh, how did u like my report" i asked with a bright smile. He turned, looked at me and said in a level voice"u have hurt a lot of people" I was younger then, and drunk on praise , the sudden jolt must have brought a flush to my cheeks... He must have seen it and so continued in a gentler voice "you are young, talented and so have a lot of strength in you. if u use the same strength to build instead of pulling something down, imagine how beautiful your world would become. whatever u wrote in that report would be forgotten by you in a week, but the people you criticised would always remember it--and not in a very nice way."

Granpas advice stayed with me for a lot of time, i was always careful henceforth on the way i used words. But as i said time is a great equalizer, in my exciting jrney from college to work to b school now, i must have unlearnt the lesson. After a round of (What i thought was incisive) discussion in the training and developement classes, i detected a hint of chill in the atmosphere, and no, it was not because of the weather. Come, evening and one of my good friends(d name is secret though) told me "u know u have this ability to put ur points in a effective manner, and ur voice has this attractive element in it.... but the saddest thing is that u use it to pull people down and hence u are converting ur biggest strength into ur biggest weakness".

And i was again transformed into the 14 year old kid under the krishnachura tree. Old habbits die hard i guess and i must try again...... It takes a lot of love and care between 2 people for one to point out mistakes to the other unhesistatingly. Thank u dear friend for caring so much....:)

a brief history of my tyme...

dear me... i seem to be becoming lazier, and lazier..ummm have been meaning to write for so many days. but then u know what, i jst got hold of the second season of F.R.I.E.N.D.S from somewhere and since i have been bewitched by Joey the first time i laid my eyes on him, so i was kinda busy...;)

Hey speaking of friends (i mean my real life friends) i miss some of them quite a lot. Waise, dont u think as we grow older we become reserved, less spontaneous, more choosy, less open and wear about 1001 masks ? I mean i can feel the change in myself, i can no longer relate to people as easily as i could say, five years ago.There is this newly developed tendency in me of being judgemental, sizing people up ( though i rarely admit it) I mean, i used to believe that people are essentially as good as we expect them to be. Set up high standards and let them know, they would live upto it. I still believe this i guess, its jst that i follow it lesser and lesser.

Speaking about friends my first real n one-of-d-best kinds of friendship was with Raheela (this would be fifth grade in school) Our friendship blossomed thru endless shared tiffins, scraped knees and copied homeworks. I still dont know, but how we completely lost touch with each other...last that i heard she was married.The funniest part is that she is the only one in my very very special list of friends about whose wherabouts i am completely clueless..Then there was kalpana,supriyo, junaid, vishal, zeenat,charan, avik.. I remember the way we used to bunk classes together, the delicious jhal muri, specially the way i and kalpana used to copy from each other at exams.Supriyo thank you for those biology diagrams, i could have never managed them on my own.. Junaid, i am sure that u dont blog at all but i miss ur one-liners like hell. Zeenat, vishal i miss those impromptu antakshari sessions a lot.

Well speed up to my grads my roomies were and still are my best friends. Tap and mou (Tapapriya and mahua).I could go on writing pages about them and still not finish. We had this wonderfull routine of having phuchkas for breakfast and watching cheesy bollywood movies. Oh and those wonderfull shopping sprees, and our tastes in clothes have undergone a sea change from then... but the bonding remains unbroken. well, then there was abhishek i would be eternally grateful to him for introducing me to the best ice-cream shop in d whole world( now dats a secret;) ........over to my post grads, well there are three prominent names, shikha, shireen and duxie. Shireen and i used to have this set of theories about guys (read men) and were the best agony aunts/dating gurus for each other. Shikha is so amazingly sweet.... we were as close as siblings. Apart from Tap,nemo and my darling sis tumpi, she is the only person who knows me inside out. Even 2day i can unhesitatedly pour out my heart to her..

Here in b school with all these theories and marketing fundas and h.r theories, the little innocent girl in my mind has somehow climbed up a tree and now refuses to look at people in the eye...Neverthless i have grown close to people here, but the depth of my attachment remains untested.. well guys i know almost all of them blog so here goes, aparna and gincy i think you are both crazily wierd and marvellous so please dont change. Nams i admire a lot for her lets-go-and-get-it-done wala funda. kavita because she is so balanced and a stabilising factor in my mad, mad world. Arjun because of his wonderful blogs and comic chatter. Debarshi and minaxi because of our bong-connexion..and beecoz both are such warm humans...
the last 2 and the most important people are not exactly my friends but they have been my strength- always... my lovely sis tumpi i would always love god because he gave me u as a sister.Nemo, for being there for those 6 am alarms (i couldnt have given my third sem exams if not 4 u), yellow duck, those paintings,that stolen rose, the hat and for reasons i cannot comprehend thank you... He is perhaps the per son i had taken for granted ALL of the time. I always believed i had a short memory, but its when u try to 4get someone u love that u understand how powerful memories are. Oh... and before i forget today is the day i first went to live in kolkata and subsequently spent the most wonderful 6 months of my life.
i love u all.....
been reading somewhere---u should not say i love u unless and until u mean it and when u mean it u should say it often. People 4get n its good to remind...

what dost thou think.......

friends.....
a very very belated happy new year. After some lazyyyy days at the begining of the year i am back again . So how was 2008 for me, umm...... lemme think somewhat like a thikha.... papri chat. It was impossibly delicious but my eyes watered often. Well but then that has a lot to do with me being an eternal optimist. Case in point being, its so easy for me to throw things away. Only a wild optimist throws away what is most precious, whats so rare and satisfying , impossible happiness just because he/ she is so sure that he/ she will find it again around the bend. The gods have always been my best friends but then every passing year keeps on adding oh-so-tiny drops of caution to the fearless magical potion which i call LIFE.......
The best thing which happened to me this year was bimtech.... Now i know what fellow-blogger -bimtechians are going to say to that, what with this being a lousy year for placements and stuff.....But seriously guys, i have met some very hungry people here. They are so alive that they can take an idea and run with it into, like the fifth dimension, and all you have to do is let them make it happen for you, while talking to them i get this feeling like i am the absolute monarch.........
by the way friends, what was the high point of 2007 for u? do lemme know:)....... thou shall comment on it....

a little noise...

Its an old story with me... Sometimes i am outside taking a walk, trying to mentally sort things out, only to find that my mind is also in constant purposeless motion like my legs. Dont know where i wanted to go, maybe i had known once but the fog is really so thick in december , that i cant find my way now. I want to do something but dont know what it is so i read a few books and then pass a few exams too.......But that didnt make me happy. I tried to think but i wasnt really good at it and i kept on hearing a thumping noise which bothered me.

I was jst becoming sad cause i had no idea from where the answers would come from when i saw the bright cherub- the one who lives in my heart and oh- so -very rarely makes her appearence in my mind sometimes. I asked " cherub cant you stop this thumping noise so that i can figure out where i am supposed to be?" She only laughed " silly girl....... dont u know thats the sound of your own beating heart" listen to it... it will take you home.
But my heart is where my home is, or was it the other way round? i wonder........

jst got thinking......

hello people

I had wanted to see akshardham for such a long-long time and after a dozen (plans- gone-haywire) i finally saw it yesterday.:) And the effect on us was mesmerizing...... Dont get me wrong, it was not because the deities brought about a sudden fervor in me. (in fact i totally adore the metaphysical concept called GOD but me not religious at all) . It was the sheer beauty of the sculpture.... the perfection of those lines , the expressions which brought the cold marble to life ; every single murti was different- right from the arrogant expressions on the kings face to the ethereal goddesses who were in profusion. Maybe because it was the first time we saw akshardham , me and aparna were totally lost in the sheer magnifecence of the sculpture; when a few shoves and pushes brought us back to life. Then i noticed something strange, people were staring straight ahead just concentrating on the deity and not even stopping to look at the beauty around them. I saw something more sad. There was a young couple pushing their child on a pram inside the temple. Akshardham is not jst a temple, its a work of art ... i cant understand do we allow the public to bring prams inside the taj, the jama masjid or to any of our other historical monuments.

And what by the way are historical monuments and why are we in constant awe of them? Lets consider the Taj, when i saw it for the first time i was spellbounded. But does history always has to be put on a pedestal and the present carelessly squandered? People say the taj is an everlasting monument of love. I think its an everlasting monument to human talent that built it- those50,000 artists who lost their hands. While shah jahan was simply someone with adequate financial resources to fulfill his needs for self actualization, (all fellow mba's refer to maslows pyramid please)
But the world thundered..... this is history, cant you see. Its the absolute limit to all human abilities, which we can never now think of touching, much rather surpassing it. All that lies of our greatness now resides in our past and the past is holy and cannot be challenged. We should not think in any of these directions but just make a bed out of all feathers in our cap and then sleep peacefully. The taj is the absolute limit of artistic expression.
Expression? but whose expression ? Every building or monument has a purpose and a goal and the expression of every ones goal is different. why must something be sacred just by the virtue of our not creating it? why should the present pool of talent be restricted by the absolute dictates of the past? why must every principle and everyone be right as long as it is not us?why is accepting dictates of these "others" so very important? i dont know. i have never known. i would like to understand...........
Sorry if i have ruffled a few feathers. T'was not intentional.

christ-mes-sy thoughts

merry christmas to all the wonderful people here....... Well i just had a beautiful christmas eve. The air has a crisp chilly smell to it and the world seems to have burst into a profusion of colours-red, green, purple, fuschia........ sweaters. And there were three girls doing their most preffered activity ---shopping. I mean now that i think of it the way we shop is quite amusing. I mean go to a shop, check out something like 24 sweaters, turn around and then fall madly in love with the green curtains hanging in the shop jst across the street and then go there and buy it. The best part was our hunt for that perfect christmas star...well combining the fact that gincy wanted ONLY pastel coloured paper stars and the fact that nothing of this kind was available throughout the entire Atta market. Well finally we got hold of one which met her stringent requirements. And by the way the shops today looked like they had just descended here fron never-never land.It was all decked up bells and wreaths and so many santas with rosy cheeks smiling down on us,
There was somebody here who badly wanted to go home but then didnt get flight tickets . Somebody who was sad and not quite like her usual self today. And then there were five other would- be managers all trying to cheer her up and so they had this brilliant idea of organising a christmas party. Limited resources so they made up whatever was lacking by their imagination, and one of them even captured that special christmas snow effect with cotton wisps.:) amidst the cute little christmas tree which they decorated the smiles returned on the "sad" ones face and she actually became the loudest singer " in the impomptu pajama party. As the strains of "silent night holy night "floated in the air - all voices at varied pitches blending together in flushes of laughter- the true spirit of christmas was realized. case in point being ,i love my new lime green curtains but happy smiles decorate a room better.
hats of to all of us who were there 2day. who says we need to complete our mba to become managers.Huh!
I

crimson ties.......

Another exam over. wow again:) jst one more to go. Me and nams are currently somewhere on the peak of our efficiency curve, the number of chapters to be studied dont daunt us, we jst keep on sorting and piling everything on to our minds. Thats another matter that the retention ratio is about 25%. Seriously if someone does a survey- on the percentage of time mba students spend in studying we would come somewhere near the bottom of the list that is if u sort and arrange the data in a descending order.
BDW what am i writing? See this is what comes out of studying so much of terrible subjects like stats and finance at the last moment. Need to watch a movie fast in order to purify my brain.
People here in my college are rushing by today with glowing faces all filled with the joy of going home as soon as this one- last-final-akhri exam gets over. Thier excitement is palpable and i too feel a rush of warmth in my heart looking at this scene. See i come from a far- away land and for me going and coming back would comsume all my hols and more... so poor me:(
Which reminds me of the last time i went home. It was 7 days of pure bliss for me. When i was in high s chool i was somewhat a rebel. It was as if every sentence my parents spoke i had to rebel. Time has mellowed me down and now i can grasp- only grasp mind you and not comprehend the totally selfless devoted way in which they love me. Isnt it wonderful , i have two people in the world who belong totally to me. I always careless, forgetting to call, sometimes irritable, snapping back specially at my mom. Sometimes i am so caught up here in my own world that i do not even think of them for times together. An hour ago i stubbed my toe against the table and the first word which escaped my lips was "maa". It was then that i realized how much i miss them and sometimes i feel that it was in those times that i had not thought of them; that i had missed them the most. In our lives we see a range of relationships, from totally chilled out friendships to paissonate affairs to deep filial bonds. As we grow older we start spending more time and our world starts revolving around these people while our parents occupy a backseat in our minds.
Until the day we accidentally stub our toe.
This one was for you maa and baba though i know you dont read blogs.........