A full ton

Read Smart Alec's blog today where she writes about it turning 50. This is my 100th post, in over three years. Not Sterling by any standards, except maybe Smart Alec's.

But let me not put any more pressure on this just-born-post by going on and on about it making that turn of the century. Let me just - write. Let this post be a mosaic of all these wispy thoughts that are flying around in my head.

Sometime back, I stumbled across a cracker of an idea - THE EXIT ROOM. A getaway. Every relationship must have one. It is to be noted that it is a 'room' I suggest, not a retreat or a farmhouse in the country, a villa in France, or a cabin in the woods. Point being, it must be a hop, skip and jump away. Your oasis.

Having spoken about wispy thoughts, they are getting wispier by the second. Getting increasingly difficult to pin them down. How can it be that I have nothing worth blogging about. Writer's block? Mid-life crisis? Ahem, let us not dwell too long on the latter.

Luxury. We all have different definitions for it. For me, luxury is functional. Non-indulgent. I would not appreciate monogrammed pillow cases. But somebody to do my taxes would be put on an engraved pedestal and fed grapes.

Mumbai is having a swim-athon. I dont like the rains, at least not when I am caught in them. I refuse to carry an umbrella. Who wants to go armoured against something as depressing as the skies howling their eyes out. I'd much rather go out in denial of their existence.

A member of my team recently resigned. He is getting a much better pay-package at some other company. He called to inform me and I was quite speechless. Not out of shock, but out of a genuine lack of anything to say. On a slightly different note, I call my line manager - Boss. It feels just awesome. To be part of that culture where he tells me - Shreya, you must really hump your people if they dont perform. And I say, Yes Boss, I will.

Tambakoo

Some things in life are simple.

The other day in Satana, which is a town somewhere near Dhulia - if you know where that is, I learnt that the government had made it mandatory to put pictures of cancerous crabs on local zarda. Which had resulted in a 50% decline in sales.

Wow. That's cause and effect. As simple as it gets.

Pain and Prada

I like Carrie from Sex and the City. That is one honest character. In all her relationships, she has never shied away from asking questions. Even potentially dangerous ones, which could leave her out in the dry.

I admire that kind of honesty. Most people struggle to get that honest with themselves, let alone others.

Why is it so that we so love to live in denial. Why is it so difficult to accept that our lives will have some troubles, that it will not be as picture-perfect as the Swiss Alps.

We need to come to terms with the fact that sometimes happiness does not fall out of the sky. Like marble has to be chiselled to be made into a 'David', life has to be worked upon.

No pain, no gain. Pain is the single most important constant of our lives. It's an indicator of the love we feel, of the effort we make, of the heights we rise to. It is at the center of all human existence.

Back-pack and a road-map

I don't know what it is with traveling and me. One of those infamous love-hate relationships. I have traveled more than most people I know. Have lived in numerous cities, had homes in four. Traveled eighteen countries and over forty cities in Europe. Been to the far east - the land of the stinky food and chinky people. In the last year itself, have been to more than seventy cities, towns and villages in India. And I love it. I love my job and my life.

Yet, yet. Most of this is not the kind of traveling that sets my pulse racing. I dont like going to places for four days, blurring past all the hot-spots, leaving with a lot less money and a zillion photographs in my touristy bag. I dont like squeezing out time from sardines-in-a-can like day to clock in some moments as a wander-lusty tourist, laptop firmly in bag.

Traveling isn't a morning-evening journey. It isnt going to the famous Lucknawi chikan market on the way back to the airport and buying half the shop in a tizzy of excitement to carry gifts home. It isnt staying in the best hotel in Gorakhpur with toilet paper, but being too fatigued to get the ayurvedic massage in Varanasi. It isnt disembarking on the red-earth of Chiplun at 5 in the morning, having the best haafuz and pomfret that coastal Ratnagiri has to offer and then throwing-up after four hours of non-stop travel on those serpentine roads of the ghats. It isnt visiting a Sericulture farm in Kolar in between village visits, watching the moth and the female mate, after which the female gives birth and dies and the males are recycled. It isnt having the best filter coffee ever at T-nagar in Chennai in between gruelling interviews, or spending some now-missed idle moments at one of the beaches of toy-town Pondicherry in the midst of that one-week schedule packed with assembly lines, pack mats, gigantic distillation chambers and safety boots. It isnt having sweet bengali rasmalai at a dhaba on the road between sultry Kolkata and buzzing Burdhawan.

None of this is travel. Or atleast not the kind of travel that I can say I have a passion for. What is it then?

Traveling is - when you have a sense of timelessness. When you can get up at 4 in the morning and watch the sun rise, come back and sleep till noon. When you stroll aimlessly in whichever direction the wind takes you in, spend the day being a spectator, and come back with a sense of accomplishment. When you take the same buses and trams that locals take. When you shop at the same markets that they shop at. When you hang out at the same joints. You do visit the famous places, but you also revisit. You want them to become a part of you, you don't want to leave with just photopgraphs, you want to leave with memories - you want to leave the Eiffel with memories, of your visit.

But maybe I am wrong and need to get my priorities right. It is not about squeezing in a coffee when the flight is delayed at the airport in Kolhapur, but about squeezing in some work while primarily on a visit to the Ajanta-Ellora after having spent a couple of fully-paid-for-by-company days at the awesome Taj, Aurangabad.

White Hot

The sea was as calm as ever. More importantly, she was calm - it always had that effect on her.

Such an endless expanse of blue-green, a little scary at times. But she had grown up with it, seen it turn within a span of 10 years into less of the blue-green and more of the black-brown that this city is so famous for.

Why only this city, why blame only this city. Isnt that the way of life? A baby - pure as untainted snow, a water-cress lily. The entire transformative journey into adulthood and beyond is paved by dark encounters with this degenerate world. Any aberation is just that - an aberation.

She wondered - was life meant to be this difficult? Is that what the challenge of it was? Would we be just cardboard cut-outs of the Brady family if things were any different? Would she mind?

The waves made these swooshing noises. And some spraying noises. She could feel the salt on her face. It stung. Especially at the places where her wounds were still healing.

But the scars inside ran far deeper and were dangerous, as dangerous as righteousness. Righteousness gives us a special kind of anger, that seethes and seethes, sending out little sparks before engulfing all that comes in its way.

The scenes kept coming back to her. The smell of charred human flesh filled her dreams. Her anger was white-hot.

Where is my funny bone

I think I am getting unfunnier by the day.
I write funny no longer. I read funny no longer. No wait, make that - I read no longer.
I dream about work. Everyday. Every-single-fucking day.

Maybe I should turn up in office one day wearing just a jute bag, go slap a few people around me and then take a dive off the emergency exit.
Nobody will take me seriously after that. Ever.
Problem solved.

ASM-ing in the hinterland

Sunday night. Back from another one of those weekends.

Life has been so hectic in the past couple of months. All the new people and places. The responsibility. What gets me is that if I screw up, twenty other people get screwed too. I am not sure I am ready for that. It is a heady feeling, people saying 'Yes Boss' to you all the time. The first time I was called Boss, I didnt realize it was me being addressed. The flip-side to being this boss person are many, though. Like I said, I can't switch off. Then, I can't just do my own bit and mush-off. I need to remember who did what, bring it up in the right forum, ensure they get suitably appreciated/rewarded/promoted/reprimanded/punished for it.

Am I having fun? Most times, yes. Sometimes though, I wish I could just quit and run away from it all. Those times being Tuesday mornings, in particular, when I have to get up at the crack of dawn and head out of Mumbai.

Maharashtra rural. My playground, my workplace, my mecca. People - not from HUL, I tell this to, visibly wince. But I know that at this point of time in my life, nothing else would have been good enough.