all sleep no coffee

There was this day in office when there was no coffee.... no coffee in the vending machine... there is no coffee shop near office where you can just go pick your coffee and come back... you have to go there.... pass pleasant nothings .... order coffee... have it and come back.. Europe style... you are not supposed to be in a hurry.... you are supposed to do everything slowly.... enjoy it while you do it... which you can't do on a break from work..... Because there are only 24 hours in a day and there is loads of work to be done!!
End of story there is no other option for having coffee than the vending machine(i used to hate vending machine coffee before i came here... never had it.... but see what no options does to a person) and the vending machine is broken! Imagine my plight... i walk up to the vending machine... I press the button on the menu and it says something in French (on the microscule display) which I understood must mean "cannot dispense" this after pressing the button some 10 times.... then I selected another drink... again the same French phrase which i am assuming to mean u know what... well after selecting a few more drinks in a priorit-ical order and getting the same response I realized there was something majorly wrong with the machine and it wasn't just those one or 2 drinks....
I came back to my seat all sleepy eyed but with loads of work waiting for me.... and that too with the knowledge that there might be no coffee throughout the day... there was a small ray of hope... that hope against hope... that may be.... but deep inside I knew... there would be no coffee today... and I had to live with it... go to the VM a few more time... only to return empty handed... but go nonetheless... may be the VM Gods are happy and bless me with a few coffees... after all you never know when you get sweet rewards! but no it wasn't that sweet a day that day I spent the entire day without coffee... and the day after that....
Now that i have set the perspective the mind frame that i was in i will continue with what i really wanted to say... i was working and thinking what is the value add my work gives me (of course it gives me financial value add).... why am i working.... on the same technology for last so many years... why cant i quit and do sweet nothings all day... something like wake up in the morning.... make a nice cup of coffee.. sip it while reading the newspaper... worry about world in general... talk about how everything is going wrong while looking at my garden and watering my plants... removing dead leaves from one sprinkling water on petals of another... look at light being reflected from the droplets... make breakfast... take a nice long warm water bath... eat breakfast which is still magically warm.... now go out do some necessary grocery shopping or the other boring things... come back... teach some poor kids to read... who obviously come daily and love coming to my place.... then its time for lunch... make lunch.. have lunch... now bake a few things... smell the cakes.... the smell of hot cakes… the taste… and ofcourse there will be cookies…and coffee and tea and what not……

Anyway… so much for a fantasy now to real work and ABAP!

you gotta work hard

They say things in life don’t come easy… they say nothing comes easy…. They say you got to work at everything…. Everything from real work to fun… from life to relationships… you got to work hard…. Sometimes I wonder why can’t I stay the way I am…. in my comfort zone… not come out… stay here…. What makes me come out of my comfort zone… fear of what future might being… fear of what I may have to face then and prepare myself now… why prepare myself now… why work hard now… why not wait for the future to become the present and work hard then… may be it wouldn’t be that bad… I am just taking other people’s word or my extrapolation that it will be hard… or that things will change…. Who knows they will or they won’t…. if they do may be I will have to work extra hard…. But I will be doing it for a surety not for a surmise or for a may be or for other people’s experiences…. It will be for me… for my present for my now… who cares about what future brings…. For all I know I might not be here for the future I am preparing for…. Because frankly, you cannot trust anybody or anything… not even yourself…. Because right when you think you have it all figured out a small change in someone’s life changes everything in yours…. That is if you still have a life… I don’t know what I want from life…. And sometimes I don’t want nothing from life no more… and then I question life…. And then I look at people who have had real hard lives and think why can’t I be thankful… but then I am unable to …. And then I wonder…. I wonder do I deserve all the nice things in life… do I deserve life if I am not even thankful for it…. I wonder and I ask myself….. I question myself…. And I keep on living…. The way I have lived…. And do u know what the sad part is I don’t know if I live this way because I want to or because I am expected to… and this is what really pisses me off…. Not believing that I am really living life on my own terms…. And I want to run away to a life I don’t know to people I don’t know… so that finally I find somewhere I belong…. The nowhere……. Because right now I don’t think I belong where I am…. Because right now I don’t want to belong where I am…. Right now I want to have the courage to break free… to speak my mind to follow my heart to be a free bird…. To be away from everything…..

I don’t want to work on a regular job… may be just have enough to survive…. Quit everything…. Work as a waitress in a small unknown town may be…. Only after I have blown up all the money I have…. Only after I have absolute necessity to work… then work again as something…. Someone… a librarian a helper in a shop…. Work hard for sometime save and then blow it all up on a pendant that I like just at that moment and even when looking at it I know that I wouldn’t like it the next day.. but nto even think about it and blow up all my salary(if I can call it that) on it… that’s what I want right now…. To be not sensible… to be not mature… to be arbit… to be someone beyond logic… to be someone who really follows their heart… because what’s there in the world if there is not heart…. And what’s the fun of living if it is not for your heart…. I know I can convince my heart…. But do I really want a convinced heart????????? Till then can I really say “apna jeena to hai jeena…. Tashan mein tashan mein tashan mein tashan mein…”

Even when I am writing it I know it sounds more romantic on paper than it really is… but this is exactly what I don’t want… to be sensible…. to know things…. To feel the right and wrong…. Talk about a paradox!

geneva convention

My grandma does not know how to read (or write) English. When I was a kid I always used to wonder how she felt not able to read anything, everywhere you go in India things are written in English, be it the label on a jam bottle or the cooking instructions on a Maggi pack (I wonder how she knew how to make Maggi ) or be it the currency value on a note (she can differentiate between the currency notes though!)
I used to wonder how she felt; now I don’t anymore, thanks to Geneva (read it as Genève try the best French accent you can). Everything here is in French, the people the labels the currency the public announcements everything, sometimes I feel even the wind is so French it does not talk to me. I feel so strange, I can’t even pick up on random discussions happening on around me anymore. Do you know what is the worst part, the worst part is the keyboard! It types in English all right, but it is a French keyboard, which means what was supposed to be a ‘Z’ is a ‘Y’ and which means my mails now read ‘Hi, how are zou?’ and it also means I have to spend a good 30 seconds searching for a single quote on the keyboard!
All said and done, things aren’t so bleak here. There are farms filled with sunflowers next to office, infact these days its flowers everywhere, on the roads, on the roundabouts (reminds me of Chandigarh) on the window sills, everywhere! And what’s more, these guys know their perfumes (even outside FIRMENICH), their chocolates and their desserts. And what’s more I know the French for chocolate too  (‘Chocolat‘; in case u were wondering! ). Here’s to French, the French and the Lindt Orange dark bar lying on my table, room temperature the way I like it!

30-45

i normally take 30 minutes to drive to work... dont drive too fast dont drive too slow.... today it took me 45 minutes... no the traffic wasnt that heavy... it was normal traffic... but i think i was driving a bit too slow.... i wonder why?? (i wonder how yesterday u told me about the blue blue sky.... )...
anyway i was driving and thinking... actually i was driving more by instinct than really paying attention i think... and i dont know when i crossed what part of the road... and now that i think about it i wonder why do people say dont go too fast you will miss the beauty that is the journey... i was going too slow today but i still missed the journey... although i cant deny that the drive was a good 45 minutes spent with myself! for that matter i dont even know what i was thinking about... various scenes from my life were coming to my mind in no particular order... at one moment i was thinking of school and another moment of a particular holiday...and then about a song i liked... and then about a really embarrassing incident i had.... there was no thread binding all these memories.. other than these being my memories... they appeared in no particular order.... and when i reached work it was as if i had just lived all those moments... i was feeling so strange.... i was feeling so unlike myself... i wonder what would it feel like to watch a movie on my life...not very different from the experience i had....

sometimes....

Sometimes I don’t want to be practical no more….
Sometimes I don’t want to be logical no more…
Sometimes I don’t want to be real no more…
Sometimes I want to let go…
Let go of everything…
Everything I know…
Everything I know is right….
Everything I know is wrong…
Everything I know hurts me…..
Everything I know makes me happy….
Everyone I know……
Let go of it all… start afresh… start anew… Like a new day a new dawn… Without any prejudices without any hangovers without any hang ups…
Like a kid starts… from the beginning… when he does not know he has to be afraid of heights… when he does not know he has to be afraid of falling…. When he does not know not everyone can be trusted… When he does not know every time you trust you open a window (however small) to let the trust hurt you… to let the trust break you….
Or may be what I really want is to live in a fiction… where deep in your heart you know in the end they will “live happily ever after” in the end everything will be fine…. I know they say “in the end everything is fine, if it isn’t it is not the end” but I think this is just a cheesy line…. A line to get you through your worst days… however it doesn’t seem to work for me!!
For that matter I don’t even know what works for me…. Let me give it a thought… now that I do… I think I don’t know myself at all… at least I don’t know myself enough to put me in words… I don’t know myself enough to say what I like or what I dislike… may be if I gave it a thought I would… not may be definitely if I gave it a thought I would… seems like I haven’t given myself a lot of thought of late… seems like I have been doing a lot of running away of late…. Seems like I need to get rooted again…. Seems like I need to introspect again…. Seems like I need a change…. Seems like I need to get in touch… seems like this is a Monday… and seems like these are the blues talking…. But is it just the day or is it me?????

P.S: Sometimes even a new dress cannot get you through a bad day!

when everything's going right....

When every thing's going right... when u think life's beautiful and you have a near perfect day... something stops it from being perfect... something spoils it... something wipes that smile off your face... you tell yourself... yeah that's life... you ask yourself but why... and then u answer yourself... because this is the real world ... because this is life... because for every thing good there is bad...:-)
and then you tell yourself but that also means for everything bad there is good and this is life... and it is beautiful... and then you realize may be you are giving more importance to things than they deserve... may be may be not... but then again... its a few hours before monday morning... seems like the blues have already set in... may be its gonna be a bad bad monday after all.... and i had read somewhere "what do you expect from a day that starts with a monday morning" as one of my friends said "u expect it to be pathetic and be sure it will live upto your expectations!"

Cheers to life!

and finally i bought it!!! :-)

i am feeling really happy today... now... really really happy... the kind of happiness you can get only after money well spent... the kind of high only shopping can give you....there's this book i have had my eye on for close to 2.5 years now... i hadn't bought it till now because.... well i don't really know..... but i hadn't... it is kind of a collectors item... may be that's why i took time... dunno... had had my eye on it since one of my friend's had lent it to me... and i had read a few pages.... the moment i reached home i started reading it... infact before that when i took it to the counter to buy it... the shopkeeper had a smile on his face.. and he says... now that's a good book!! (that's a book shop i particularly like going to because the owners are avid readers themselves and give a very nice vibe!) and then he opens the book ... reads a few lines from it... we both feel good about it... talk to each other utter nonsense that makes one feel good... and i pay him and come back... now thats what i call the complete shopping experience!!! and a fulfilling one too!!!!

now i just want to get back to the book...

a couplet from the book:
sunte hain bahisht ki taareef; sab darust;
khuda kare woh tera jalwaa gaah ho.....*

*Bahisht: Heaven;
jalwaa gaah: home