Just Sold My Car !

I just sold my car today - my first car - a Ford Contour. It was a saddening moment looking at her go because I knew I would never see her again. I just stood there wishing the new owner treats it with as much respect & care as I did. I am left with fond memories of the car, all the good times I had in it with people I drove it around with, how it seemed to have driven me home safely after those late night parties, the rainy morning when I was just praying it doesn't die on me while I was wading through those high waters & it didn't & many more such moments.

Here are our pictures, the day just after I bought it and just before I sold it.

I know, I know.. we made a good pair though I still can't tell what color she is - I just prefer saying a shade of grey & green!

After 3 years.....

Well, that's that ! If ever my car is to read my blog, I would like her to know she will forever be missed & it was not easy saying "good-bye".

What I want to do, What I am doing & What I should do ?

Life would be so much happier, had I answered the same for all the 3 questions. Well, given that there is no one scribed way to achieve what I want & not so surprisingly, there isn't just this one thing that I want to achieve, I end up hoping around bending decisions resulting in 3 different answers to the above 3 questions !

Going back home after a long innings in USA, seems to help me converge the 3 questions together. It doesn't seem to favor so much in minds of people I know, but it does seem to make sense to me which I guess matters the most. I don't blame the reasoning behind any of the comments & advices since what you want, depends so much on where you come from, which then, tends to govern where you are going. Do I make sense when I say, "Not all of us want to go the same place and there isn't just one route to reach that one place ?" :)

As long as one is happy in the persuit, each day proves it's worth in one's life.

IT Service Model

Being in the IT world, specifically, a victim of onsite-offshore model of work, I have witnessed on several occasions hints of discrimination. I must admit it is unintentional but sadly, seems to me as an act second to their nature. I think this behavior is far more to do with where I come from than anything else. Perhaps, a European would enjoy an elevated platform of respect to 'begin' with as opposed to me.

Well, if one knows what's happening, it doesn't take long to realize why it is happening. It isn't just movies like 'Slumdog Millionaire' which fancy a one dimensional poverty ridden view of India to an audience quick to frame an opinion on India & everybody in it. At the crux of it all, is the fact that the IT Service model of onsite-offshore model bears a very cheap price on it's tag. Hey, you are worth your pay check & if you think about it, quality is seldom cheap. Its affordable to have few bugs at half the price, than no bugs at twice the price! Moreover, the word "Customer" really weighs us down with a servile temperament. The phrase 'I don't know' just isn't in the dictionary for the fear of insecurity. If we are pushed, we don't fall behind from out-doing our peers. Apart from professional, on a light social arena, we share a limited involvement in conversations, mostly respond either with smiles & chuckles to their humor or with some vague remark which is hardly close to anything humorous. Needless to say, we don't really leave a lot of open ends for socialization.

So, generally speaking, it does leave their attitude reasonably o.k. but what saddens me is the state of affairs any IT professional has to go through, rather doesn't mind going through.

Displaced from Home !

We left the house with little thought. It was more out of the need for comfort, the need for having access to internet, the cool air of an A/C & of course, clean water, what we otherwise take as granted. There was a blend of adventure in it as well, just taking off in a car with no real destination in mind. The ride was pleasant, well guided by GPS of the car. We were looking out for lights and whichever, town looked unaffected, was a land of opportunity for us. We weren't the only adventurous ones, they were many who fled homes from the fear of a life with no power and no water. They had already infested these places. Quick to realize that all the big motels would be booked already online, I presented the idea of inquiring at relatively smaller ones and we bingo'ed onto a Desi motel. Though denied a room upfront, the owner or perhaps the husband of the owner :) let us in to a room on the pretense of only 2 people in the room. He chose to ignore the fact that we would squeeze in one more. It helps to meet a Desi sometimes! Desi and "vegetarianism" more often then not, go hand in hand and I was sure it would be quite an effort to find vegetation to graze on that time in the night. But this time, prompted with lack of patience, stopped at the gas stations, filled in some chips* n bear and headed back to our home.

We slept till noon the other day, a dreamless sleep. The room we stayed in was determined not to hint us any bit of daylight. It still felt like mid night when I go it up to check my watch and it showed quarter past ten. I got up with my tongue bit between my front teeth as if I got late for a meeting. There wasn't a meeting, not a soul waiting for me. It was just me amidst the snores of my room mates. I tried to head back to sleep, couldn't get sleep for a while with fear of being left behind and world running ahead of me. I told myself I had to take it easy. I had to kill time and putting myself back to sleep is an ideal way to do so. Next time I opened my eyes, it was so close to noon that I felt ashamed of getting up that late. The daylight was wasted to the core. I grinned to myself in the mirror how my existence or lack of it didn't make a difference to anyone at the moment.

Columbus, TX is a town close to 80 miles west of Houston. It is a pretty small town, I think you can run through the length of that town and it was so un-alive that evening, made me wonder if lives are ever brought up here. Most shops close down by 6 in evening, so when do they ever do business? Somehow, I also felt peace there, a calmness which you wont get any part of a city. We hunted for a coffee shop around the town and literally, at the point of giving up, saw a restaurant still open at 6! Wow ! A typical Texan restaurant serving steak, fries* and beer. A small portion of it is quite large for an average guy, I thought. Anyways, we chatted through all topics we can think of, and I was surprised how soon we spent out an hour or more. The rest of the evening was in the hotel room watching movie and chatting with friends online. We checked out the next day at 11 in morning and headed back home in the most casual way possible. Usually, every trip ends with the urgency of heading back home but ours was different. We were killing time all along and had all the time to drive those 80 miles back. Started with a quick breakfast at McDonald's* breakfast special, we stopped at starbucks or any other place we thought was worth a break. Reached home late that afternoon and to welcome us was a damp smell in the house with no power. Taps had running water which was a blessing. You don't wanna know whats cooking in your fridge after two days of no power. Our fridge was a biological weapon. We had to defuse it off with gas masks and gloves. What a waste of food, some of it was anyways rotting before the power cut and most due to the power cut. It took patience, will power and tolerance to sanitize the fridge and get it to a decent level. We ate what smelled good which was mostly cookies, chips* & soft drinks. I never had so much of junk food together one after other. If you happened to notice all the asterisks, it was to indicate all my diet past few days was fried unhealthy stuff. There goes my gym ! It took the whole week to return back to normal. Meantime, we placed ourselves at my friends place who got power the very day we reached home. He had dragged himself home with the intention of getting a change of clothes back to my place but his phone call, as he reached home to discover power, reversed the plan there. We headed to his place to find him with a proud look sitting on the couch of his newly leased apartment. What a choice! This was to be our home until lights turned back on at our place which happened by end of that week.

Well, it was not a terrible experience as such, I had so many conversations with my friends which I wouldn't have had, if not for the forced power cuts and lack of alternatives. I came to know them better than before, found some new perspectives and lot of interesting stuff. Some of those conversations were pretty upfront and some just happened in the dark, so never knew if they were making faces at me or actually listening to me :).

Am I knowing myself better or Am I doubting myself?

I got the job that I was aspiring for & all the brag about being the man of vision, dreaming big of aspiring career and "follow your heart & money will follow" seems to fade away as reality gives a chilling touch to my bare warm feet.

Now, I am feeling I am not cut out for it and all the aspiration to be "this" seems to lose hold on me. I am not sure if this is a dip with every change or something worse. Does any winner have his doubts or is he so busy trying, that he doesn't look at these obstacles ?

I am tempted to get back to more comfortable waters where my word holds meaning, where I lead with confidence and experience. Here I look for spaces among conversations to open my point but before I sum up the words, the conversation is over, conclusion drawn and I am left with own thoughts and words useless in a matter of seconds. I feel embarrassed inside out for having added nothing but a silent nod to the table. Does this how everybody starts or am I the ugly duckling who is soon to be shot down? I don't know & I can't guess.

Let me take a step back and get back at it. Let me take a shot at it every morning with where I went wrong the evening before till I am not allowed to. Let me accept every meeting with the anxiety of adding value to it till I am not invited anymore. Let me try until I am proved not worthy. Let me know myself better.

If..then. else..

When you look back, your life is full of decisions; taken either by you or for you. These decisions govern your pesonality and your success in life at all levels & aspects.

There is an option in windows which we use very often but this is not enabled in the real world, the option to 'undo', the option to 'roll back' as if nothing ever happened. How much ever you try, you can never get back back to that period in past. Being a programmer, I can relate to how a mere 'if..else.." governs some important patterns of a program, similar to every bold decision you take.

Saving grace is that ppl say No decision is good or bad, its the way you live it, I am searching the positive aspect of the perspective, until then, it's just a bad decision. :)

Love doesn't make the world go around, But it sure makes the trip worthwhile !!

Recently, I heard some of my friends trying to define love. I chose to be out of the conversation but then, it did stick to me. I deal with that emotion day in and day out, and still when somebody is asked to define it, scratching of head and a lost look, is uncommon. Consequently, that gesture is followed by a lot 'eerrr.. eehh.. hhmmm...' etc before the philosopher takes over.

Having done the above as a customary practice, let me skip directly to the blabbering part. My first reference for an exact definition of love, was the dictionary which led me to read up to 22 different meanings to it. Perhaps the simpler the word is, the more difficult it is to explain it. How about trying to explain 'simple' in English? :) Displeased with the Oxford dictionary's way of defining things, I found it better to refer to my 25 years of existence on this planet and infer from this long innings what I understand of the second most widely used 4 letter word (any idea what the first one is ?? ;) ) .

So, I found myself nodding to the fact that Love is the mother of all emotions, feelings of jealousy, pride, joy, anger, possessiveness, sacrifice, devotion, dedication are all off springs of this great emotion. Sounds reasonably good doesn't it? Now with such powerful emotions left to us to express at our disposition to whomever and in whatever amounts, life is bound to be like a wave. Generally speaking, relationships which are inherited by you, pain less compared to the ones you make by choice, so you basically choose to get into what you end up getting into. You see, I personally differentiate in the way we love people and the way we love matter, the difference is just as fundamental as the difference between matter and people - people think and matter doesn't. We love people and we expect them to love us back, we love matter but we don't expect matter to love us back. A tear down the cheeks when expectations are not met & a lovely smile when they do. Lucky are the ones who get related to the ones they choose, but the other way around isn't bad either, love grows naturally and its as natural as human tendency to move on in life. I am an average guy with a history of broken and breaking hearts and in all facets of it, I have seen love healing what love wounded.

Before I keep building on my chain of thoughts, let me see where does that leave me in the pursuit of the definition. Love is not just an emotion, it is a way of life, in fact it adds life to your existence. Whether you accept or ignore it, love helps you get out of what love pushed you into. Not debating that time is not a great healer, but without love, its as hopeless as a healer as hhmm.. mm...I would be as a belly dancer !