A Bowl of Elusive

I have spent n number of hours stressing over my career. Things were actually going well until last February. Then I got promoted. Things were still going well on paper but unfortunately, I was moved into a different job profile than the one I was after. I wasn't given a choice in the matter, so I decided to give it my best. Almost a year has gone by and I still haven't fallen in love with my new responsibility.  Lately, I have been especially tense about the state of things. So I did a lot of soul-searching. I realized that even though I crib about the pressure of my job, that's not the real issue. I would not be this stressed out by the deadlines of a job I loved. And once this was clear, I gained clarity in a lot of related issues. The future is always uncertain. But we still hold a lot of power when it comes to molding our futures. So I have decided to stop being intimidated by the intricacies of my job and start relaxing a bit. Its definitely easier said ...

I am fed up with people distorting the meaning of what I write and then getting offended by it. If you're reading my blog, please stop assuming its about you. And most importantly, if you know its about you and you feel that I have accused you wrongly, then I apologize. This is an official apology for anyone who has been wronged in the past or who will be wronged in the future by my musings.   That having been said, here is a message for my readers. Kindly leave your personal prejudice aside when you read my blog. And if thats hard for you to do, please don't read it. Coz I hate it when I am lectured about how my blogs concentrate on negative aspects of things from people who themselves spend 24 x 7 speaking ill of others. ....

I wish all my readers a very happy new year. That said, I'd like to inform you that I will be travelling  for work  starting this evening, for the next 9 days after having barely spent 21 hours with my family, out of which I spent around  6 hours sleeping and another 7 over the phone with my colleagues trying to get things done. I apologize in advance coz this post isn't gonna have a very happy tone.  Lately, I've been asking myself a lot of existential questions. Let me start from the beginning. I moved to a new city, was placed in a new territory. Understandably, the work load went up. And that was fine. Until a few days back, when I faced the business end of a strange kind of corporate pressure. And it got me thinking. What does it all mean? What does it all lead to? I am aware that I am not the first one with these questions. And I won't be the last one. But its my life and I feel that, even if my problems seem silly to my superiors and the people I w...

A new place can mean new challenges or new opportunities. Life is what you make of it. I moved to Hyderabad ten days ago. And life got busier than it had been in the last few years. Apartment hunting was a pain. But the place is fun. People speak a strange accented Hindi which is very hard to describe in English. And the city is an amazing swill of cultures and religions. And "I have been busy" would be an understatement. Believe me, I have been trying to write this article since Day 2 in the city. I have always been averse to public transport, but the bus scenario here looks quite easy to access, especially while traveling between the different towns in the state. I am yet to give the city buses a try. I am actually writing this article to let you guys know I am fine. The last few days have been quite harrowing actually but the last couple of days were productive, to say the least, and things started looking up. It's a good feeling to feel accomplished and ...

Before the utter anonymity of adulthood settled in, were those six wonderful years I spent at St. Joseph’s Convent Higher Secondary School, Sambalpur. The school that became a part of who I am today. The school that helped me discover myself. I joined SJC in 2001. Class 7C. It was a whole different world inside the school premises. The mediocrity of the town it is situated in has absolutely no effect on the culture & class of this school. I was overwhelmed for maybe a second, after which I knew this was where I belonged. I wasn't a great student, as far as grades were concerned, but I was sharp and an extrovert. I excelled in the subjects that I liked, English in particular. And that always kept me in teachers’ radar. And I was a major attention junkie. So, I soon found myself performing on stage on every possible occasion. And that, I feel is the greatest gift that SJC gave me. From a nervous self-doubting 11-year old to a confident optimistic 17-year old, ...

It has been ages since I last posted to this blog. I have been busy, but not as busy as to not be able to write even a simple piece. So what was the hold up then? Its what a lot of people call a “Writer’s Block“. In my case, these blocks don’t really stop my mind from creating, they just stop me from putting my thoughts into writing. Rather inconvenient, you know. I have been toying with a few ideas, but they were really good ideas. Things that could be put into a novel. I wouldn’t waste such gold on a free blog site, would I? And I mean no offence to whatever little readership this blog commands. The fact still remains that I wanna be published. I want to see my name on the cover page of a novel. And I have wanted this ever since the age of 14. I wished to be a teen sensation with a couple of bestsellers to my name before I hit college, but that didn’t happen. And it wasn’t because I couldn’t write. I could and I did. But there was always something that stopped...

Ted and I spent the summer of ’09 in a small cottage by the beach. The rent was reasonable, the cottage was cramped and we spent 14 to 16 hours a day slogging at the Marriott Resort nearby. Summer Internship a.k.a Industrial Training, since we were 2nd Year Hotel Management students. Ted and I had been friends since the eighth grade and we stuck together till college. We got along very well in spite of being quite different from each other. He was universally liked and I was universally despised. He drank & I was a teetotaler. And that kind of sums it up, ha ha. We started out with our internships, all excited to be there. Posh hotel, flashy uniforms, big presence in the industry, we thought it would be LEGEN- wait for it -Dary!!! But soon, we realized that none of these things matter to the people getting into the premises from the staff entrance. A reasonable shift for an employee at an Indian Hotel is 9 to 10 hours, which includes breaks. But India being India, labor...