A short novel

“ALL is Well…………...” My ipod played one of the recent Hindi movie song stored in it while I was jogging today morning.

5 days earlier - on the day I was supposed to catch a train to Mangalore at night to attend wedding of my cousin - I still didn’t had breakfast even after 11 am. The train was at 8.50 PM. I’m still glued to my system even after 7.30PM trying to close the work and leave for the day. I forcefully closed the work, packed food from nearby restaurant and catched auto. “Flat 40 Rs” he told before boarding. I looked at watch, it was 8.10 PM. Flat 1 hr to deadline. I boarded the auto without saying a word.

“Hey” I said waiving my hand to one of my cousin standing near the door of the hall. I barely remember anything about yesterday after I had food in train and slept. I had successfully made it to Mangalore by catching the train amidst the entire circus. My cousin tried to reply something which I was not able to grasp. My mother shouted at me to go and have breakfast soon as it is going to get over now. I rushed towards the basement of the hall with my uncle and elder bro leading me. As soon as I sat in one of the long long tables set for serving food for guests, I was served a plate of breakfast containing traditional south Indian idly, sambar, chutney , vada and a sweet. I lifted my head to take a look around. Not many ppl were there in the hall that time. As I rotated my neck in different directions I found that I have slight headache due to journey tiredness. Thankfully the train service to Mangalore from Bangalore had just started a couple of years earlier. Train being the best option for night journey, I don’t remember when I traveled to Mangalore last time in bus.

The wedding muhurat was actually at evening 7 PM. But they were completing other traditions now in morning. My Cousin – the Bride was looking weak and dull due to fever. She was given some medicine to be able to go thru the wedding day. It looked as if a broken car has been repaired temporarily in a small country side garage to be able to drive and reach the next city where it can be repaired in big showroom. There were only few people around. Most of them our relatives. The Bridegroom was dressed in traditional silk dhoti tied in a complicated fashion.

Few years earlier – when I was still a kid – I had attended similar function with my mother in Mangalore. We had shifted to Mangalore just a year before since my father got transferred there from Mysore. I sat beside my mom in a hall packed with ppl, all of whom I had never seen till then. The reason why I didn’t know many of our not-so-close relatives is all of them were permanent citizens of Mangalore, whereas I was born and brought up in different parts of Karnataka owing to my father’s transferable Govt job. They come to my mom, ask something related to family, exchange a few words and go. Some of them cared to give a smile to me when my mother mentioned about me. Otherwise I was not counted among the huge guest presence.

“Hey you are son of Shobha rite? Your name??? Ummmm Vishwas correct?” I said Yes. “Ohh nice to see you son. Where are you now??.........” series of questions. This was in today’s wedding function where though I was sitting away from my mom, I was recognised and subjected to sort of mini- potential-bridegroom interview. As they were telling something about me, the thought I mentioned before crossed my mind putting a question mark.

I completed half a round of jogging. My legs were straining. It was quite given the fact that I jog for 4km every day. I took turn now to complete another half…..

As I turned and crossed the road holding umbrella in one hand and mom’s hand in another, a white Toyota Quallis passed by. Mangalore being coastal city witnesses heavy rainfall during rainy season every year. It was one such rainy day when I was going somewhere with my mom. I told my mom that I remember the lady sitting in front row of the car. “Yes, she is related to us like this……” I didn’t give much attention to know the blood relation that my mom explained. But I kept wondering why she didn’t notice us at that moment as she could have helped us by dropping us home.

“Vishwas…. Vishwas…..” it was that same lady shouting my name at top of her voice standing at the stage of wedding hall. I rushed to the stage. “Come to the green room, let’s take group photo”. There was chaos inside the small green room behind the stage. Everyone wanted a prominent position to stand and face the camera flash. As I struggled to find a place for myself, the thought I mentioned above crossed my mind putting another question mark.

I had completed one full round thus covering distance of 1km now. I started another round. An elderly couple sat at a bench giving out a tiring sound.

“I guess we last came to your home on may be a year back right? Sorry Shobha we hardly find time to come to your home. Though we come to chinmaya mission nearby your home every month, we won’t get sufficient time to come to your home. Please don’t mind ok, keep visiting our home whenever you get time.” One of my aunts said in one breath. She was housewife and her husband – my maternal uncle is manager in Corporation bank branch and going to retire this year end.

Exactly some 5 years ago – on a rainy day in Mangalore I was watching TV at noon after having lunch. My mom was just back from some function of one of our far relatives. I couldn’t accompany her owing to my crucial 12^th STD exam preparation. Suddenly somebody knocked the door. As my mom went to open the door, I looked out of the balcony window. It was still raining and the clouds were so dark that one will fear whether there will be cloudburst now. I went back to hall. “Finally I made it Shobha. Every time I come to Mangalore I would hear some or the other person saying that you shifted here last year as your husband got transferred from Mysore. So each time I plan to come but used to cancel at last moment due to some stupid reason. This time also driver told it might rain heavily, but I ignored him. And you know what; it was not difficult to come to your bldg in rain. But after reaching, I read in the board below that your flat is in 3^rd floor and there is not lift!! Just last year only my leg joint got operated for arthritis you know. But now I’m ok. I can slowly climb up the stairs. So managed to come.” She laughed for a while before coming to halt. It was so nice to hear her talking. She was talking very slowly owing to her age. A person close to the door in opposite flat could hear her breathing; she was tired to that extent climbing up the stairs. She was the owner of a very big enterprise in Mysore and their annual turnover was close to some crores. She was my mom’s aunt and loved my mom very much. I guess it was some one hour since she came to our house. As the discussion progressed, she mentioned “see Shobha, you might have so much of money today. But unless you have people whom you can rely upon, think that they can help you any moment you need, life is waste. If you think it is not possible it really becomes impossible. If you say you don’t have time, you would never get time” I was mutely watching her say the golden words of wisdom unaware that it will get etched in my mind even after years.

Today in the wedding hall, after my Aunt completed saying in one breath about her difficulty in finding time, this flashback crossed my mind. I wondered if some people manage to get more than 24 hrs a day.

I hate to carry mobile when I go for jogging. I absolutely hate the distraction it will cause. A guy walking in front of me went for his mobile in pocket and started talking when it started ringing – playing some old Hindi song.

“Hey what ya, why you people wanna disturb me.” One of my cousins yelled at his sister for disturbing him while he was talking on mobile. She wanted to call him to the mantap since he being the cousin brother to the bride, had to complete some tradition. He was just into 9^th STD now and was glued to mobile all the time I saw him in the hall.

I still remember the day when we were in Bellary. I was in 8^th STD then. It was 1 year since we moved to Bellary after my dad got transferred there. That day the guy from BSNL – the state owned Telephone service provider – came to our home to install the Landline. It was for the first time that we were getting the landline connection. Till then, my mother used to go to neighbor’s home for receiving the call from her blood relatives. And for making the calls she used to go to near by booth once in a week. Naturally the guy was treated like a celebrity till he completed the formalities of installation. We were so excited looking at the set and how it rang etc. We joined the esteemed group of a few million people in India owning a landline connection then!! For a few days, it was treated like a GOD. I always fascinated taking up the receiver, making action of dialing the number in air, talking something like the film stars etc. When I saw this cousin of mine so busy in mobile, this thought just came to my mind.

“Hey lets take a family snap. Lets all stand with the newly married couple please. Children will sit on floor. Their parents behind them, grandparent in 2^nd line…” said the Quallis lady I referred above. “Hey, ya nice idea! I don’t get time otherwise to meet every one. Let’s take a snap for memory atleast…” said my time starved aunt. “Ma, I will kill your daughter. She is disturbing me too much whenever I am on mobile talking to friends” said my ever-busy-CEO-in-make cousin. “Looking very cute Nikitha. What are you doing these days?” said my multi-millionaire-yet- down to earth aunt as she sat on the chair. The photographer adjusted our group so that everyone comes under the lens vision and Clicked Lens. A characteristic sound of the camera came followed by the

F-L-A-S-H.

A Flash made me also faint now in the park. Before I could really fall on ground and block the human traffic; I realized the need of the hour. My stomach was urging me to stop going round the park and take care of its need now. I made the exit from the nearest gate and soon reached the kitchen of my house.

crazy mind

Writing a blog has really become a difficult affair for me. I think of writing abt my own life & I say why to recollect the past, I try to write something philosophical & I say who am I to talk about philosophy, I try to write about current lifestyle & I say am also part of this current lifestyle and am living it even if it is gud or bad. The list goes on like this and before I can start writing, I turn off my computer looking at the time.

Well that was the daily affair that happens between the two states of my mind. One which compels me to write something and tries to search for a topic and the other which starts turning down every search result. This doesn’t happen only while writing the blog, but with every other good task that I want to start in my life.

Finally, after having done complaining about my mind,I feel very relieved now. The thing which had haunted me all this while is finally out in front of me in my own blog. I can read and realize about my bad state of mind and can overcome its negative effect frm nxt time.

Human brain is really a wonder piece. It has got tremendous power. And we can never judge its amazing and strange capabilities. The other day I was at office trying to come up with a solution for what seemed like a complex problem. No sooner did I made some break through, I rushed to my juniors desk who are working wid me in my project. I had made crash land on their workstation in order to tell them about the problem and my solution for it. But in the course of explaining it to them, I found out new and simpler way of dealing with the challenge. Not just that, I was able to analyse the scenario more thoroughly and that aided my effort of coming up with more simpler solution. I was elated at my ability. I went to my workstation with lot more excitement , with that smile on my face as if I defeated world champ vishwanathan in a local chess tournament. Really that is your brain for you.

The thumb rule that the brain follows is very simple – if you feel dejected and sad, the brain never gives you a solution to overcome that. It actually thinks more and more in the same direction adding the salt to the wound. You end up crying for the whole day with no solution in the long long way of life. But instead if you stop your crazy mind by applying brakes some way or the other and make it think on some solution (which is very hard I agree) or on totally different matter (some movies, friends etc) you can try to reduce the negative effects.

One of my colleague recently told me that I end my articles very abruptly. This blog is going to meet the same fate I guess. I need to work on the art of ending my blogs/articles/stories with good climax. The thought of writing a short story is also revolving in my mind for quite a few days now. Hope I get a nice idea for that and also I hope my bad state of mind leaves the better state portion alone and let it to do its work of digging into the ideas. Till then ---------!!!!!!!???????????????? I don’t know J

What is meant by Fair?

I started writing something, but now I’m writing something totally different.

Whenever I delete a lot while writing blog, it is very clear that my mind is neutral. I’m trying to hide myself frm some reality of life. Or I’m trying not to think about something. Yes and I feel it is very true.

One of my colleagues was badly hurt by corporate world politics today. “Why nobody is fair here” was the question raised by her. At that moment of time, I dint say anything to prolong the discussion. Since I was in no mood to fall into that thinking mode. But just wanted to find out the meaning of word “fair”. I guess I had discussed about this earlier also. There was one serial called Muktha which used to come in Kannada TV channel couple of years back. A guy develops underworld contacts for the sake of making money and hopes to take out his family from poverty. When his elder sis comes to know about this, tries to convince him to come out of it since they are not good people. The guy asks what is meant by good/fair? It all depends on how you view it. In my view, seeing my family suffer from poverty is not fair, so I do this. There is nothing definitely called as Good/fair in this world.

I don’t want to argue on the boy’s view. But I’ve got instances to support it. The priests at Murdeswar temple, unhappy with the govt decision to handover the temple admin to some swamiji, hatched a plan to tarnish the image of him. They tried to create photo’s / porn videos of swamiji and circulate it in order to bring him down. Who is bad here? Priests can say that it was injustice to snatch the temple from them. Hence they did this. Who is fair here? Take the example of Nityananda swamiji. I read some comment in a newspaper where the writer expressed his support for the swamiji saying that it is nothing bad to have sexual desire for a human being since it is as necessary as air,water & food. Who is fair here? There might be several examples in our own life, among our friends or relatives or family members itself. We might have felt bad at several occasions. But how you will judge who is fair there and who is bad?

Every person will have a different background. Each one of us are born and brought up in different environment. Whatever we learn rite from our childhood, Creates a person inside us who will tell us this is bad or this is good. We call this decision from inner self as conscience. Just to give a simple example, there are some people who use the rest rooms so cleanly that you will never know if it was used by someone before. These people will never like to make it dirty since they feel it is bad to do so. But majority of people never bother about the cleanliness of the rest room once they are done using it. Reason: I’m done with my job, why to worry about anyone coming next. There is nothing wrong the person has done. It is his conscience which feels that it is never bad to do so. Because in his childhood, nobody told him it is wrong. And the person inside him got trained that way. I don’t mean to say that it is entirely parents responsibility to train their kids. There are kids who take wrong path even though their parents are from decent background and vice versa.

We can still train the person inside us. But it is not easy as before. We might not change our conscience decisions until something happens. Emperor Ashoka was always fascinated about expanding his kingdom. Never was he moved by seeing the dead bodies of the slain soldiers. But the deadly battle of Kalinga changed his mind. Suddenly he was shattered seeing the huge loss of human lives because of that war. He was a completely changed man thereafter. So much so that for the rest of his life, his only aim was to improve the living condition of his people by providing better infrastructure and also to propagate peace around the world. Thus it took a deadly war to change the mind of a human being.

"I'm so happy that you all are coming to my marriage" said my friend cum colleague while going to temple in the morning. Today being Ram navami, we decided to visit the hanuman temple near our office. Why I remembered this suddenly now is that the statement is not just name sake one. She really meant it. There was 1000watt glow in her face when she told that.

I got a mail today which explained about how people with different sunshine behave at workplace. After reading each line I was laughing since it was like a mirror to my behavior. The fact being I had myelf so many times thought that I’m like this. So when that mail clearly listed them out, there was no option for me but to laugh while I read that.

Suddenly my love towards my sister is growing like anything. She is just brilliant girl. I want her to get into some excellent software company. I feel like giving her whatever I get as prize for myself. Last time I got a big 20bucks Cadbury choc and my stupid bro gave it away to our neighbour’s kid. I felt like slapping him, I wanted tot give that to my sister. Just yesterday I got a pen from our client in office. I’m just dying to go to her place so that I can give it to her and see smile on her face. I hope I’m not greedy here trying to create an impression that I’m the only guy behind her super success. But whatever it is, she is my sister. And I will do whatever for her to become successful.

Never it is easy to do anything in life. unless it is forced on you. I feel like I will do this, I will do that. But unless I initiate that task, the days just slip out like anything without our notice. I am planning to take up the certification in capital markets, but I’ve not yet got my photo scanned which is the only pending task. I’ve been carrying the photo in my shirt pocket from last 3 days hoping that if I carry it in shirt pocket, I will not forget. But unfortunately I’m not able to do it yet. But my target is this week. And no matter what, I will get this done this weekend.

Proffessional Blogger :D

After a long time again...... :)

I'm smiling a lot... reason being i've customised my blog site for the first time after i started blogging. Always used to wonder how come people have got so much of time to customize their blog page. Now i know the secret behind it. Creativity has got no limits. This applies to both - the blogger as well as blog site developers. The blog site has got so much to offer for our varying taste and demand. Only thing is that we bloggers need to have enough time to utilise them. Well finally i managed that ;)....

i always feel that creativity creates a pressure. Take a simple example -Titan watch's design development center. You got creativity, you join there. But how far your creativity will work? At certain point of time, your ideas will drain. What next?? Nature's law of permanency - "Nothing is permanent in life ". Got to move on. There is no answer.

Today the creative me wanted to do this long pending task of redesigning the web page which describes me in the www forum. I never believe in Orkut or its rival FB. It only helps to keep in touch with even your unwanted friends. But never lets you express yourself completely. Of recently, they have been largely used for conveying about your big achievements more than anything else. "XXXX now enjoying in London", "YYY having New year blast". Fine, agreed that you are having blast or you are at some corner of world, but why publish that?? And there are his so called fans or friends who want to comment on that. More out of jealousy than true admiration or friendshipness.( Remember the reaction of Farhan and Raju after finding out that Rancho is first sem topper in 3I??)
Today evening again i made a frustrated attempt to realise my dreams of owning a house in Blore. SBI's Home Loan exhibition was truly good. But i'm very urgent in realising my dream i guess. Need to wait still more i feel.
This week there is going to be a chance of me becoming a white paper presenter if Creative team junta in my project feels i've it in me. Presented a abstract already. Keeping fingers crossed.

during a lunch break in office

a quick blog

Never thought that i would see this in my life. I was waiting for lift to go to cafe for lunch in office. One new joiner girl(damn innocent) came to me and asked a doubt related to her work. i immediately came to know she has commited a mistake. But knowing her nature, i tuk care not to let her know that. But my reply made her realise she has done mistake. Her eyes turned from white to red and then became moist. She couldnt speak and nor did i. I was so aghast. It tuk few secs for me to realise whether such innocent ppl will be there.

I pray to god to make that girl strong enough to deal with this bad corporate world. God please give her all the strength, will power and knowledge to deal with this world.

Unconcious and concious part of brain

Needless to say that after another long gap this blog is being written by me.

I was explaining one of the concept of accountancy to my friend cum colleague in office. The subject is part of JAIIB exam. Since it was long gap after I passed the exam, I had to go thru that chapter and then explain her about it. We chose a conference room to discuss on the subject.

While explaining, I was telling the things which I never realized that I know. I mean I was explaining in a very simple manner. When I read it alone, I never conceptualized it like that. But to explain it, I was telling in that manner. It indeed helped me to realize how beneficial it would be if you share your knowledge. I think when we understand something, the unconscious part of our brain would grasp the concept. When we want to get answer to something related to that part, an action gets triggered from conscious part of the brain which invokes and gets the answer from the unconscious part. What lies in that unconscious part will not be known to us till we discuss or interact with someone about it and speak on that. The key to that understanding would come out then. Indeed god’s creation is so complex!!.

Last few days was devastating for the people of N.Karnataka, & AP. The floods created havoc in the region. 11 districts got affected in Kar and the loss is estimated to be 20k Crores! It was very sad to see people climbing on whatever they could to save their life. The sadest thing of all was that even Mantralayam was flooded. Swamiji was being airlifted from there to Raichur. It was really horrible. When I type this, I tend not to write much of the sufferings people faced. The reason being that I cannot console myself. My ma watched a documentary today in local news channel in which they told that Brindavan in Mantralayam was not affected by the floods! A real miracle. I was really damn happy when I heard that. What made me happier was the generousness that people of Bangalore and corporate are showing. The CM of Kar was able to collect 100 Crores in a single day by doing padayatra. Hope he will do more such padayatras to collect more funds as he announced. Let me not get into politics that central Govt is playing with our state. It is indeed cheap to see people taking advantage of even situations like these. As always I pray to the god to teach the guilty the lesson and also help the victims of Natural calamity.

Going to bed now. Good Night.