The new Bird in my life

Today on 21^st Dec 2010, I have introduced somebody in my life. It is my new Royal Enfield Thunderbird. I had been waiting for this moment for 5 long months. I spent an impatient day in office fretting that the time was not passing quickly enough. At the last the long awaited call from the dealer came confirming that I can come for the delivery. The wait finally got over on this cold evening and I found myself in front of this gleaming monster of a bike. No amount of drooling over other Thunderbird bikes had prepared me for the ownership of one. It was love at first sight. The moment I pressed the starter button, the machine roared to life and I knew that I was hooked for life. With my love(my wife) astride on the bike with me, I felt on the top of the world..ready to rule the streets.

It has been a really long time since I have written on my page. Partly due to work load and party due to sheer laziness after the work load reduced. Things are not helped by the fact that I have taken to writing a diary. It is not a diary in the purest sense that I note down what happens in day. It is rather a continuation of the urge that drove me to write a blog on the items that I desired. But today as I sit in the office early in the morning attending a call that I need not attend, I have this overwhelming itch to put some words onto my blog instead of the diary that I habitually carry around. To be fair unlike other times, I don’t have any particular topics to talk about or some discussion close to my heart. Today I just want to type few sentences and then watch them reflect on my page. My page has been static for nearly 15 months now. I feel sad and sometimes, if I allow myself, a little guilty. Perhaps putting down few lines today is a way to assuage that feeling. So here goes my first post of the year and most probably the last. Though I will try very hard not to make it the last.

Sounds of Ganesha

Today is "Anant Chaturdashi", the last day of the Ganesh festival. If you are a native to Pune and happen to live near Peth areas, then you would probably understand the joys (or pains depending on how close you are to those mountainous Dolby speakers) of this festival. The immersion parade is a culmination of the 10 days of the festival and it seems that the whole of Pune flocks to the roads to see this magnificent procession.

When I was a school going kid(I am talking about really ancient times) we used to celebrate Ganesh festival in the colony that I used to live in. Many a times I also used to participate in the procession and share in the wonderful experiences. But processions rarely bothered with the song and dance routine that is more of a norm these days. Then, almost exclusively it used to be "lezim" and "dhol" for all the Ganesh Mandals. But times have changed and so have the tastes of the people. The "lezims" and "dhol" still feature, but item numbers rule the roost in the processions these days. Not that I am complaining, since I can still see the same fervour in people who take part in these processions today. The only difference is in the sounds that we hear.

Now I enjoy the processions from the comfort of the balcony when they pass by. Sometimes I wonder how will it be when I grow old. But then I guess that it will still be as good as it is now, the same as it was when I was just a school going kid. The only difference would be the sounds of Ganesha...

Potli Baba Ki - Continues

It has been a very long time since the last post...

But all these days the story telling has continued. And it has actually been a tough time..thanks to my kid as always. Last time I mentioned that he gets me to tell stories of the combinations of animals that he makes up for that day. Well if you thought that was hard, try doing it with cars.

Yes..my son has inherited my craze for cars. These days he is so much into cars that the only conversation that I seem to have with him these days is about the various cars in the world and which happens to be the fastest. And that's not all, whenever he sees a picture of a new car he invariably wants to know how fast it is and how it compares to other cars as far as speed is concerned. This means that I have to keep track of what I have told him as he corrects me if I give the wrong info. Talk about the difficulties of parenting. :)

Well..back to the point. I have to tell stories of cars racing each other and I have been mandated by my son that each car has to have its own distinct personality. Add to it guns, bombs, police cars and helicopters and I think that if I were any good at creating computer games, mine would have been selling like hot cakes. Ohhh..the stories I tell are so thrilling..all those ferraris and lamborginis..I am awed at myself for the stories that I create everyday. Well..you can't fault me for indulging myself a bit.

So it seems that the "Potli" of this baba still has enough material to keep his son happy..the legacy continues.

Potli Baba Ki

When I was a just a kid in school, there used to be a TV serial called as "Potli Baba ki" every Sunday. The storyline was about an elderly character who used to roam around and the local children running behind him pestering for a story. And that man used to oblige the kids with a wonderful new story every time. I don't remember much of those stories except that they had us glued to the idiot box. Actually I loved stories in any format..be it a printed book or a TV serial or a story told by somebody. As I grew up my liking for stories continued in the form of reading books.

Now I am a father and see the same attachment for stories in my kid. I guess all kids have fascination for stories. So it came as no surprise to me that my son started demanding stories during bedtime. Now that caused me considerable panic, for while I have read a lot of stories and can recall quite a few of them, I am an absolute dud at story-telling. I had hoped that my wife would take up that particular activity and spare me. But I miscalculated, she already had the same plans for me and was more prepared for the eventuality. She convinced our son that I was a master story-teller as I read a lot of books and I could tell him many stories. So to cut a long story short I got nominated formally as the story-teller.

Since I had no faith at all in my story-telling abilities I took the next best way out. Fortunately, I had a good collection of the Tinkle Digests. It contained some good stories with supporting pictures. I started telling those stories to my son along with the pictures. This way I memorised 4-5 stories and then took to repeating them one story every night. This went on for a while and I congratulated myself for the danger averted.

I was premature in patting myself. My kid is in the habit of visiting his grand-parents every weekend and his story listening continued with them. Now as with grandmothers and grandfathers the world over, they have quite a good supply of stories with them. All those kings, queens, prince and princesses and fairies and witches started appearing and started making life difficult for me. And when the animals from the jungles made an appearance then my life was just shot to hell. Now my kid started demanding stories with particular characters. The Aesop and Panchantra helped to a certain extent. But one day my son demanded an animal story that I didn't knew of. I should have refused, instead I somehow made up one with the help of my wife. It just gave my son an incentive that I could have done without. He started coming out with different combinations of animals. I tried to blunder my way through, and with my wife laughing her head off in her pillow nearby, it was very discouraging. Many times I tried to dissuade my kid by saying I will tell him the normal stories, but he used to be adamant and insisted that I tell a story for the combination he had prepared for that day.

Gradually I noticed that I had actually started enjoying making up stories during this activity. I noticed that after I completed a story my son appreciates the story and then goes off to sleep. Occasionally he makes a return to the normal stories, but mostly he likes the stories that I make up as per his wish. This is now a pleasurable activity for both of us and I found that we have started bonding more with each other. I also noticed that he tries to make up his own stories. All this has had a positive impact on both of us.

I guess that when I become a grandfather, I too will have lot of stories to tell my grand kids. I will have then joined the rank of story telling grand parents like the world over and I have my kid to thank for this. This makes me think that I too now have what my kid can refer to as "potli baba ki".

New Year Resolution

It was that time of the year when you prepare yourself for the most pleasurable task of all. Preparing the list of resolutions for the new year.

I am sure that many of us would agree that the exercise of making resolutions is such a fun activity, especially when you compare your list with your friends and find some unique items for copying. Making new year resolution is that time when you feel that you can will yourself to do just about anything. The only constraint is that there are so many things to do and so little time that you have to take a very hard and painful decision of cutting short the list of things that you would want to do. I am also sure that the same people would also agree that actually doing those things in the list isn't as much fun. I mean look at all the efforts and the time that you have to spend to stick to your resolutions. I mean it is simply not worth it. So all these years I have had a enjoyable time making such an impressive list of resolutions....and not sticking to them.

But this time I thought let me buck the trend and actually stick to my resolutions, at the least one. With this in mind I started to think of the things that I would want to do this year. It was proved to be very difficult. The resolution lists of the earlier years were of no use at all....I mean you don't seriously think that I would think of doing all those inhuman feats like getting up early in the morning before the sunrise or even worse go out for a brisk walk or jog for that matter or horror of horrors cut down on my intake of all those yummy items like icecreams, shakes, pizzas, sweets etc. to get in a shape that no longer resembles a bean bag.

Perish that thought...such resolutions are not meant for the likes of me. Simple and manageable is my motto when it comes to resolutions. I wanted to think of something sensible..something that I can actually execute without any problems..something like..like..you get the idea right. I wasn't used to making resolutions that I actually wanted to follow. So when I wanted to make one that I actually wanted to follow, I couldn't think of one..so after a lot of deep thought I convinced myself that I needed to borrow a resolution..and so I did. So my resolution for the year 2009 is...
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1024*768 pixels...what the heck, you can't fault me on this..a resolution is a resolution and I guess that I can stick to this without much problem.

Morachi Chincholi - The Peacock Haven

Last Saturday I had been to a place called as "Morachi Chincholi" about 60-70 kms from Pune off the Pune-Nagar state highway. The place is called as such due to the unusually high number of peacocks inhabiting in the profusion of tamarind trees in that village for in Marathi peacocks are referred to as "Mor" while "Chincholi" means a tamarind thicket or a jungle of tamarind trees.

We travelled from Pune in our car early in the morning as we were told that the peacocks are usually found in open at that time. As we left highway to travel down a small road to "Morachi Chincholi" the magic of the place slowly started to make its presence felt. The fields appeared on both side of the road. We passed a village the name of which I forget now. It had a typical rural setting. There were old villagers sitting at their usual "kattas" and the small kids eyeing us with curiosity as we passed through the village. These and other sights and smells of the village made me realise that how simple life is in a village. And it also made me realise how different and stressful life do we lead in our cities. I could actually feel myself relaxing in this atmosphere.


We were now nearing the village when we stopped the car for a break. Immediately the unmistakable cry of the the peacocks came to our ears. And they were so many of them. We went into the nearby field and immediately saw a small of flock of peacocks. One of amazing sights that we came across was that these birds were perfectly at home in the fields with the villagers working nearby. So used were they used to their presence that they frequently passed by within reach of the villagers. We were told that this is a common sight in the village as villagers actually took care of these birds. But for all their familiarity with humans, the peacocks were shy of any outsiders. However much I tried to get close to get decent photos of these magnificent birds they took flight. So getting a good enough snap with a standard 50 mm lens was nearly impossible. The one that I managed to click appears so distant that it is difficult to decipher whether the bird is a peacock or just a common cock. Suffice is to say that to avoid further embarrassment I have refrained from showcasing my photographic talents. All the peacock snaps are courtesy of a friend with us from whom I have borrowed few snaps (with permission of course).

The magic continued to manifest itself as we travelled further into the village. The villagers were very helpful in providing information as to the whereabouts of the peacocks. We could see the pride in everybodys face when they talked about how unique they were to have such a beautiful coexistence between the humans and the birds. We soon arrived at the local school which was situated on agricultural college research and nursery lands. The peacocks are said to flock there in large numbers given the fact that they are regularly provided with grains over there. But we were a bit late in catching that sight of feeding birds. Instead we spent what remained of the morning clicking photos of the many varieties of flowers blooming in the nursery.

We soon lost ourselves in the restful atmosphere of the place. We just lazed around for some time in the cool shadows of the tamarind trees. However, soon it was time to leave. It was hard letting go such was the hold that place exerted on us. On our way out we enquired about accommodation availability. We were glad to know that the nursery grounds had basic accommodation available. So with a heavy heart and a promise to ourselves to return back to this magical place again, we bade "Morachi Chincholi" a good bye.

First Bus Journey

A few days back I was travelling from Kolhapur to Pune via the state transport bus with my 4 year old kid. Like any 4 year kid the world over, who has always travelled in the family car, he was excited about travelling in a bus. His reason for the same was pretty simple. A bus is much more impressive as compared to a car. At the bus station, he was at first bewildered by the chaos that you always associate with these places. But soon he started enjoying the sights and sounds of the place. A packet of popcorn and he was set. He then took to suggesting which bus he liked and we should be taking to Pune. He wasn't happy that all the impressive and big buses were for other places and none for Pune. He extracted a promise from me to escalate the matter to the "Boss" of the bus station.

By then I convinced him that the green and white "asiad" buses were actually better as they were faster. I think that were boys are concerned "fast" is a magic word. This dialog took me back to my childhood days when I too was attracted to multi coloured tourist buses and we inevitably always got on the red&yellow state transport. My father used to convince me that the bus that we were travelling was the fastest. And then I used to be happy as we passed almost all the vehicles that were passing in the same direction. I guess that some things never change.

By now my kid was impatient why the bus that we were in was not yet in motion. I had to be inventive in my responses to ensure that he didn't get bored. Eventually the bus started and the smile on his face when he heard the roar of the engines start was worth all the pestering of the past 40 minutes. A window seat ensured that he was occupied with all the sights and sounds of the travel. Throughout the travel he kept the questions coming thick and fast and thankfully I gave satisfactory answer to most of them..

Well in all it was a successful baptism of travel by bus for my kid. And through him me, as I relived all my childhood memories of travelling long distances via bus. Hope both of us have many more such travels together.

What ails us?

Today I was on my way to a 'halwai' to get some sweets for Dusshera. Today also happened to be a day when the Common Wealth Games rally was in full swing in Pune. That meant the roads were full of policemen to oversee that nothing untoward happens to the good citizens of Pune. At such events I always wonder from where do all these police personnel materialise from..but I digress.

So here I was waiting at the traffic signal as any good law abiding citizens are wont to do, when a bike rider alongside lost patience seeing the vacant road and went ahead to wait at the next signal about 20 meters ahead. His action was observed by a traffic policeman, who went to that rider and started pointing out his mistake. The policeman happened to be new recruit and the biker observing his raw status started answering back. Observing the argument, a relatively senior policeman nearby came over and on understanding the reason behind the argument asked his junior to move back to his post. And the rider was let off even though he did not obey the traffic signal. As a result of this I saw the junior was walking back to his post, his back stiff with outrage. The look on his face showed his confusion as to why his senior let-off the rider when the rider was obviously at fault. The fallout of this was immediately apparent. The wait at that particular traffic signal is a long one and after that incident I saw more riders go through the red signal and the junior cop made no attempts to enforce the signal.

This incident got me thinking that is this what ails us. We pride ourselves on being patient but then why do we take the easy way out..why do we discourage someone trying to do his job...why do we do it everyday ourselves...why do we set this as an example for everybody or worse the next generation...our children.

Just another day?

Whew!! What a way to start a new week? Nothing like your boss bawling at you to make an interesting start of the day....except maybe the customer doing the same to you. But thankfully the chances of the latter happening are remote in view of my ability to distance myself from any customer interfacing roles. I successfully pass them onto to more deserving candidates...or so I convince them. Though I must say that carrying a tag of manager does need occasional contact with the customer.

I expected today to be just like any other Monday..you know the kind of day that feels it shouldn't exist, a day when you are carrying the lethargy of Sunday..a day that you can do nothing more than just read the mails that have accumulated over the weekend sent by people who seem to enjoy working on weekends(a wicked part of me says that these people only work on weekends)....a day that.. okay you got the point..right?

So here was I expecting a routine Monday when I get a call from my manager who without beating around the bush asked me what did I think I was doing? I am sure that everybody would agree that bosses the world over aren't logical when they are angry. Though some ungrateful souls claim that bosses are never logical, I for one never make that claim. So when I was faced with this question, I tried to play safe and asked was something the matter. I should have stayed quiet. That set him off and he went ahead to give me a beating that eventually made me forget what it was meant for in the first place. I suppose it was something to do with forgetting to do something important. The likelihood of me forgetting something important is very remote as I don't do anything important in the first place..he..he..he

Anyway, the point is that the start of the first day of the week left much to be desired. So I returned to the apparent safety of reading and responding to mails. After sometime I made some headway in tackling the mails, when my day was again shaken for second time. I was reading a mail with the title "Resignation Letter". I groaned and started reading through it. Nothing very unique, just the usual thanks and request to be relieved from the services at the earliest. Only the person happened to be a senior team member on whom we had a lot of dependency on for a short but very critical period time. I know that nobody is irreplaceable, but we managers find a perverse joy in placing ourselves in a position that makes a reasonably successful attempt in proving this adage incorrect. We simply don't learn from our mistakes. We do a root cause analysis of why the situation happened and then setup a process and then...then forget about it. So sometime down the line the cycle repeats itself. So in the current case I followed what the tradition dictated and that is discuss with the resource, try to find his reasons for resignation and reason with him not to take such an extreme case. The discussion went on for nearly 3 hours with various issues being discussed. In end I succeeded...only in convincing myself that he had the right reasons for resigning. I was now faced with the question of what was I to do next? Finally, I gave up and sent the mail onwards to my boss with my comments.

By now I had started wondering which side of the bed did I get out of. I tried to get on with my work which is depressive enough on any given Monday, but today the depression assumed mammoth proportions. Things were quiet for the next few hours and the day was drawing to a close. Suddenly the phone rang. I prayed that it should not be my boss out to ruin of what remains of the day. It was not...infact it was my customer. And my cup of woes was now full. In his typically understated way he proceeded to tell me of things not going as per his expectation. He went on to ask what was I going to do about it. He threatened that if the issues were not sorted out soon he will have to escalate to my seniors. I started wondering whether this was a dream after all and I will wake up to a routine Monday morning. Guess that was too much to wish for...

To round of such a exciting day my laptop decided to quit. I supposed it was indignant that I was continuing to work after such a inglorious day. So I just gave up and closed shop for the day. What do I say...it was one of those days. Just another day...

My first blog

I always wondered how in the world do all the people who post blogs come up with all these things to write. I always thought that blogging requires one to be a born writer. And here am I with one big writers block..attempting to blog. I now have a new found respect for all the bloggers around the world for their blogging abilities. I have realised that blogging is less to do with being a writer and more of expressing your thoughts. And expressing is not altogether an easy thing to do, especially when you may or may not have any audience to give a feedback..I mean an instant feedback.

I am normally a very reserved person, not given to expressing freely. And that is perhaps why the idea of blogs seemed very alien to me. Blogging seemed akin to writing a diary. I am referring to the times when blog was not even a figment of somebody's imagination. People used to put down their thoughts in...well a diary (isn't that why it was called a diary). For that matter some dinosaurs might still be doing it...but what the heck...every man for himself.

Coming back to point, mention a diary and I always recall an incident from my school days. I had just picked up on the diary concept (dinosaurian of course) and ensured that I poured my heart out to it which of course did its job of recording everything I felt in all its juicy or I should say gory details. Now a funny thing about a diary is that however best that you try to keep the contents private, it makes itself conspicuous to others. It exudes an aura of forgetfulness when the owner is around and screams "Pick me up" when the wrong persons(from the owners perspective of course!!) are around. Now how could an exception be made in my case. So destiny followed its path and I forgot my diary at a place that was accessed by my family. My mother happened on to it and like all good mothers the world over who have the best interests of their child at heart..she read it. The rest is as they say history.

From then on I developed a paranoia that included not expressing feelings anywhere or to anybody..at least not very easily. But as days went by the juicy (or gory) experiences seem to have passed me by and that helped lessened the paranoia to some extent. Now writing this first blog, I am slowly realising that writing a blog is becoming easier as the sentences come forth. I don't have to torture myself to write something. The good thing about writing a blog is you can do it for the heck of writing a blog as long as it holds some meaning for you. That is the fuel that keeps you going or I should say blogging.

I must say that I have enjoyed my first blog very much. I have now promised myself that I will keep writing blogs frequently. I don't know what I will write about next time but write I surely will, even if it is a sentence or two.

So bye for now.