Wake up when 2020 is ending

 I got a wake-up call today. I had to pay for my new course and wanted help from people in US who have a bank account in India. Since the last date is tomorrow IST I had messaged a few friends via WhatsApp. And imagine who declined. The very person who I had trusted beyond I should have. I am sure he had his reasons to do that which was not an issue with the funds. But I have a gut feeling that the trust I have is not reciprocated.

I got one resolution for the new year, one major resolution - remove people in that bracket from my social circle, and forgive myself for being so naive.

Of love, shots and other demons sparing Bangalore traffic

‘Do you know, love transcends all barriers and every constricts of the society’ she said with a sigh.

We were having our morning tea in her tastefully furnished balcony. On any regular day, I would have dismissed her. The thick morning fog and impending Bangalore traffic can shroud one's thoughts to create enough damage. But I heard a gasp at the end which is very unusual of her. I decided to let the conversation take its course.

After a moment of silence, she continued.

‘Men and women are wired differently. Men have this urge to spread their seeds to the maximum extent. Women, on the other hand, has more on the table. The lion’s share of responsibility to take care of the offspring emotionally and physically lies with us and it extends to most part of our sane life. So we tend to be very choosy when picking up a partner to procreate, to have sex.’

Well, I am not a deep thinker, and my reads are confined to pulp fiction and thrillers. So this piece of information was new and welcoming to me. I noted it down to be used later to impress my Tinder dates.

‘Love, deep regard, and respect are enough for couples to live together. Marriage is a societal construct so that even if the couple literally hates each other, they will live together. Essentially it is only for the protection of the kids, to give them stability, to have a predictable future that the institution exists. But the people involved are actually at a loss if they don't yearn for each other, and the majority of couples are not. Isn’t it a sad plight?’

Now that I am forced to share my opinion, I mumbled. ‘Sweet, I am not aware of the nitty-gritty of complex human relationships like marriages neither am I inclined to experience it in my lifetime.’ I gave her a look that begged to spare me from the embarrassment. Right then the alarm went off cautioning us to get ready for office. I knew that we are not done yet.

We got ourselves busy with the busy office schedule that the topic took a week to resurface. This time our thoughts flowed freely over two shots of single malts.

.. to be continued

Daughter Darling

 Today I suddenly realized that my teenager has still the mind of a little kid. She is still the small baby I have if I discount her nuances and straight-up attitude.

Today I am grateful to have her in my life

Of lost moments

A couple of days ago, I got a message from our school group. It was a dare, to disclose the regret that you have in your past life. I gave it a thought but couldn't find any, for every regret that I came up with I had a lesson that I learned. So I righteously declared that I don’t have any regrets.

Yesterday night, I went through a familiar feeling of unrest right before I caught my sleep - you know one of those days when you are so tired to sleep but the diabolical mind keeps playing games pulling trivial unsettling episodes from the past. My odd mind had decided to explore more on the seemingly innocuous probe thrown into the group chat. 

Do I regret anything from my past? It turns out that I do. It is not penitence per se. 

I regret not falling in love when I was naive and had an appetite for adventure. The romance was eschewed in favor of conformance to certain standards which right now I don’t embody or even remotely endorse.

Please don’t take me to be a resentful reclusive old hag. I love my job. I love my parents and my kids, and a lovely bunch of friends. I love the pitter-patter of raindrops and the soothing moonlight of summer nights. I love it when the cardamom-ladened wind rushes through my nostrils. I love the lullaby of the train as it takes me back and forth between Bangalore and Kochi. I have tasted all forms of love in my long span of years. But romance has always eluded me.

For a short time, while I was married, I earnestly tried loving my then-husband and his family. ‘Love is hard work’, ‘Physical love is a laborious task’, ‘Love takes time’, ‘You can be attracted to a person if you spend enough time’ were a few commandments I followed during my marital bliss. Post that stage, I concluded that ‘romance’ is just attraction with availability if you throw the right amount of naivety into the mix. It is nature’s way to make sure that our species would continue if arranged marriages ceased to exist.

I was in blissful ignorance completely pleased with myself until I chanced upon meeting him. Chanced encounter with a person about who I had heard of for more than a decade. I am not going into the cheesy details, but he lived up to his reputation and I had a wonderful time with him. As much as tender and perfect it was, sprinkled with fleeting moments and sweet nothings, the emotions ran its due course and eventually surrendered to reality. While my mind maneuvered through the different phases I accepted one truth - that loving is easy, it just needs to be with the right person.

I don't know in this ripe old age, well past my youthful times, I would ever find a man who I can be committed and comfortable with, but I now know what I regret the most.

Simple silly life and the perils of perfection

Life sometimes up-skills us in strange ways. 

Whoever has had some interaction with me would recall that I am a reluctant student. Reasonably, life’s lessons were always a wee bit difficult and repetitive for me. But then there are certain times, certain encounters, that leaves us with very refreshing revelations, without putting much effort into it. Something like that happened yesterday. (Hmm. It’s debatable if the accidental coach found the encounter refreshing though. That’s a story for another day)

I love short and sweet stuff in life. Reading blogs is one of those kinds of stuff. One of the bloggers who I used to avidly follow revived his blog after a short break. But then the new posts lacked some zing. I couldn’t engross myself with gusto. Being a pompous netizen with a coveted desire to make my opinion heard, I knocked on the doors. I didn’t really knock on the doors for I don’t know where he lives, and it would be considered rude, with a likely possibility of finding myself in federal prison. I did the next best thing I could do - messaged him. I made my concerns clear, and he solicited.

‘You used to write refined stories, that I could drink from it. But the recent ones look like is written in a hurry.’

He concurred. ’I am writing in a hurry.’

‘But you used to write really good, I believe putting more effort would really pay off.’ I persisted

‘Everything is written in a hurry. If I spend too much time on a single article, I will lose interest and will never publish. So there is an optimum effort. More than that, the effort I put in is not worth it. Secondly, the more you write the better you become.’

‘You could perfect the art and post them, still’. Like a small kid-appealing for candy, I lingered on.

‘That obsession with perfection would prevent starting things.’

And that concluded the conversation. Left with no more arrows in my quiver, and I decided to sleep on it.

I love sleeping, me too you might be admitting, but believe me, I love sleeping with a greater passion. Maybe because I zealously slept, that my alter ego and my general-purpose ego decided to analyze the chat. Now, you might be wondering how I know that my two egoistic selves reviewed the whole thing. Because, when I woke up I had an epiphany, and I don’t get insights so easily with my pea-sized EQ.

So, the epiphany

When I am not procrastinating, I would be perfecting. I wait for me to have the right skillset in the right amount so that I can decide to fly before ‘life’ decides to push me off the cliff. It may not be only that, it could have also been because the reward is not good enough. When the effort is too much and the reward is not too great, we put off things. The revelation that we can reduce the effort to match the reward, and get things done more, it was new to me. I know it is a pretty straight forward axiom, but I was simply not aware of it.

I decided to put it in action today. I wrote a POC with whatever small information I had and gave that out for a review. I cleaned up a part of the house, keeping time as the limit against impeccability. And I kick-started an online course as well.

Point to ponder. Are you a victim of perfection as well?

& Lovely

A few decades ago, there lived a little girl living in a small state in the far south of India. The deep and dark lustrous nature bestowed upon her kids, all the lovely shades of gleaming brown skin. The little girl was born to run under the sun a wee bit more than her parents and siblings. Enjoying the comfort of her tending parents she grew up with her cheery soul.

All was well and good until this brown cherry stepped into her teens. On one such dull ordinary day, a piece of shit fell from her classmate’s mouth - ‘You look like a boy. You are dark and your hair is unruly.’

If this was the only prejudicial remark that happened in her whole life, it wouldn’t have mattered. That was just the beginning. As the girl bloomed, the taunts took new shapes and forms. And like every brown-skinned girl of that era, tubes of ‘F & Lovely’ were emptied on her face. And then came the stiff evaluation, baap of all baaps assessment of a woman's charm - groom hunting in an arranged marriage. She, being blissfully dumb about the intricacies of the society, was not aware that her market value is pretty dim with dark skin.

On one such dull ordinary evening, a revelation came, in the form of a badly timed call. Her parents were outside when she picked up the phone. On the other side of the call was a lady searching for her future daughter in law. After the initial pleasantries, the lady eagerly asked - ‘Are you white?’ The readers should have by the time realized that the protagonist of the story is quite dense when it comes to picking up the social cues. She, with every vivacity and enlightenment that a 20-year-old woman can claim, replied, stupidly - ‘Kerala, Indian’. Followed by a short pause, the other side rephrased - ‘Are you beautiful? Do you have flawless fair skin?’ ‘I have pimples, but I am fair.' went the reply.

Partly baffled partly excited, she narrated the whole incident to her parents late in the evening. The dismay on her Dad’s face was hard to miss. ‘One more down the drain’ he said. Maybe because she looked totally naive or maybe he wanted her to handle the future calls better, he explained - ‘You shouldn’t have said fair. Fair stands for very light skin like your friend B. You have a wheatish complexion. And then there is dusky skin like C. If you had noted down their number, we could have asked them not to take the pain of visiting us’.

Before the reader go tch. tch. tch, let me tell you, she found her better half in a gentle soul from a faraway land in her 30s.

I wouldn’t have written this note, had I not overheard this amazing conversation she had with her 8-year-old sun-kissed daughter. We were having a candid discussion on the recent turn of events about ‘& Lovely’, assuming that the kids were occupied otherwise. The little girl was miffed at her mother for some silly reason and hollered: ‘Mamma, you are not so pretty as well.'

I could read from the mother’s face that she was taken by surprise. She took a minute and replied calmly:

‘I am aware that I am not pretty as per the conventional beauty standards. But you know what, I also am in luck when I find people who are interested in me. Shallow ones are winnowed out by Mother Nature.’

The child softened. She asked: ‘Do you think I am also not beautiful?’

The mother approached her child and nonchalantly replied: ‘It’s up to you to decide. But you should also accept that good looks are one of the many qualities that humans possess. And like with other qualities each individual will have it in varying measures. It's a quality like intelligence, grit, eloquence, creativity, resilience, etc. Not everyone embodies every quality.'

I found it an empowering take on the whole subject. Instead of telling our kids that everyone is beautiful, we should be telling them that it doesn’t matter. It is ‘Ok’ to be not having the features that the society attributes to being pretty. It’s 'Ok' not to be stunning. If one is quite pretty, well and good. If one is not, that is well and good too.

Lock down with my teen - 1

I was trying to learn basic ML when my rhapsodic offspring started nagging. To get her distracted I kept my session on speaker. The talk was about classifiers. Mid-way D requested me to pause. She had an epiphany - Amma, I think its the 'k-nearest neighbor' that are being used to predict 'which character you are'. (The teen is pretty obsessed with taking personality quizzes to find which fictional character does she resemble the most with)

Lesson learned - In case the kid eats into your ears, make the kid's ears work for you.

Promises during quarantine

I have been wondering for so long as to how to improve my abilities wrt work. I had decided to take up some courses. Dedicating time for the study was the problem.
I got that resolved with quarantine. I have plenty of time now. The only this that is lacking is the desire to study. Also, I started obsessing about someone far beyond my league. He has a fabulous life and going through his FB profile I realized that he has an adorable (read extremely pretty) wife and kids. The pics look as if they are taken out of a fashion magazine. My general confidence in my looks took a nosedive from there. One good thing that turned out from that is my resolute to work on my belly that has remained more or less the same after pregnancy. Who am I kidding! my extra-large tummy that had been my constant companion from idk 10 years? I hope I will atleast stop it from bouncing off and running before me :P
So, physical fitness is going to be a part of my life
The other thing, the most important one, is to be good with latest technologies. This is where I am stumped. How do I get into the groove
I need to plan out something

Life in the time of corona - part-1

Right before bedtime is the moment that D chooses to open up her profound mind (I see parents nodding)

 Yesterday I was really scraping at the bottom of my ‘leftover patience’ jar when she came up with concerns about her ‘safe’ future. She wanted to figure out the best way to live immune to the misfortunes of the world. The Indian mother gave her the quintessential advice - study hard, grab every opportunity that comes your way, be healthy, earn well and settle in a rich country.  That’s when she made her concerns more clearer.

“I don’t want to catch diseases like Covid-19. And even if I catch it, I want to recover fast.”

“We as a species is stretching beyond a capacity that nature can withstand, exploiting it and changing the biosphere brutally. New diseases are nature’s way of soft resetting. All you can do is to stay healthy and be in a comfortable position to seek medical assistance. Maybe staying in less populous, rich countries with better medical facilities will help.” I replied halfway through my sleep.

“Rich and better medical facilities are not enough Mamma. The government has to be better prepared as well, like ours. If I stay in a different country, I will have to hustle back to my nation when pandemonium strikes. I am probably safer here.”

I hope, in the coming days, we as a society will be disciplined enough to stand with our government and prove kids like D who are watching us, witnessing how we are responding to the situation, that we are worthy of their trust.

The sand under my feet

For a couple of months, I have been having this nagging feeling that my job and career may not be as secure as I thought it would be. Taken that I am working for an MNC which is infamous for their hire and fire policy, I am not supposed to feel comfortable enough in my job that I can take it for granted. But recent developments in my organization and the plight of a close friend made me wonder, am I adequate to survive? Can I grow? What am I missing?

In my previous organization, my astute manager used to give me two feedbacks, which I have to agree to. One is that I am not aggressive enough in a competitive environment. The second is that I lack the bigger picture, though I am good to focus on a particular issue and execute with laser-sharp perfection. Apparently, I am lacking both the most important soft skills that are needed for growth. To an extend I recovered from the 'aggressiveness' aspect of it. I can put up a non-emotional fight and convince the other side of technical discussions and designs. The second thing is really really hard to come by. That is when I tried to get a mentor who is shrewd and enlightened to guide through my stagnant career.

My lead started helping me with this. The points she made were thus. To get a bird's eye view of things, you need to start approaching the entirety as a solution and not as a requirement that needs a design and coding to solve. One needs to know where the component fits in the entire product and the impact that it makes. I can start this reading the available user-guide documents. Once you have an idea of the product, you need to know what are the similar products that are in the market and what are the solutions that they offer, as well as the new emerging technologies in the domain. For me it's security. Basically, I have to read, a lot of technical stuff, something I am not used to.

The next one she pointed out to me was that I have to do the whole thing in the same amount of time I have left with me. Just because I have to learn more, the days are not going to grow long just for me. There comes the need to be efficient at work. I need to cut the time spent on 'stuff' that are not a necessity - basically social media. I am planning to use the 10mts technique and slowly improve my efficiency.

She added one more point. If I am so worried about my job, I should be prepared with the latest technologies. The best way to do this is to take online training.

Now I am left with 14 hrs and I have to make the whole thing happen!!!
I can't think of a castle when sand under my feet starts slipping away. I need to build it when I am still standing on a firm ground.

Of perfumes and other delectables

After a month of vacation and sumptuous meals, I decided to start healthy eating in the first week of Jan. I wouldn't say I was totally completely ready from the very first day I took the resolution, but I managed to get through without many casualties for three days straight. Healthy eating, especially after a month of devouring dubious amounts of sweets, can put you in a crappy mood. And the said mood is very repulsive when you spend your time (read long hours) in office.

On one such afternoon (well today) I was trying to remain calm and sane concentrating on the work at hand. Morning two idlys - check, after-noon a bowl of salad and chicken - check. I have been successful so far. Alas did the poor soul (me) know what was in store for her. It should be some lad or a lady (definitely, a lady who is jealous of my upcoming beach bod) walked by my cubicle wearing a particularly strong scent. I suddenly felt a deep pang in my mind, or maybe in my stomach, or it might be my tongue. It invoked some deep-seated sensations which are not particularly conducive to the healthy diet habit that I am trying desperately to stick to. I suddenly started craving for a bucket of plain vanilla ice-cream.

I can understand people wearing the aroma of sweet-smelling flowers and other fresh things. But how can someone think that they would be more delightful when they smell like food! Well, don't get me wrong. I am not trying to penalize an unfortunate soul who might have accidentally poured curry on themselves. I am worried about those who decided to get themselves smell as yummy familiar food like pineapple, coconut, and in this case vanilla.

What is the exact point in reminding someone of delectable goodies? Especially in a public place where there can be people who are trying to make their palatableness under control. Cussing the unknown fruit (or vanilla beans) bearer under my breath, I had to excuse myself to a treat in Baskin Robbins.

The day I wrote my daughter a love letter

Today my precious daughter turns 14. Readers are most welcome to send gifts to her or to her mother. (You can ping me on chat. I will share the address)
This post is not a eulogy to the bond between mother and daughter, neither it is highlighting how she has made my existence decidedly more tolerable and the rest of the stuff. This is about a confession, that I always wanted to make, about one of my deepest insecurities that I unwittingly passed onto her. I am not big on accepting my follies. So I am going to downplay it in the post.

The photo accompanying is one of the rare pictures of Devi smiling ‘unconcerned’ of her appearance. I caught it in a candid moment. In her younger days, she was a girl very confident in front of the camera. As she approached tweens she started turning hostile to the lens. If you are wondering where my verbal diarrhea is taking you, it’s a reluctant confession that I am forcing out of me. The issue is close to my heart which I have been struggling with for a major part of my life. D has been battling issues with her skin tone and her appearance for a while now. I had prepared myself for the situation of self-image and body positivity from the time she was very young. But things didn’t work out the way I had imagined. She is more or less still hung up on her looks.

So, the love letter.

Last week, a day after the school reopened after Xmas vacation, D declared that she is done with the school and her classmates. I got worried and pried. Conversation roughly was like this:
D: I don’t think anyone likes me in my class
Concerned mother: What made you think so? Your friends keep calling you after class. For me, that is good enough reason to believe you have a handful of friends
D (shyly): mmm.. not that way. Nobody likes me the other way
Confused (dumb) mother: What other way?
D: All my friends have got at least one admirer in school. I don’t have anyone
Bewildered (still dumb) mother: You are pretty good in academics and extracurricular. I am sure a lot of kids admires your abilities
D (slowly losing her patience): Not that Amma, all my friends have got at least one love letter from their admirers. I don’t have any. I am not fair. Neither do I have straight pretty hair

After my initial eureka moment, I took some time to sink in the information and then came up with a lot of explanations that only a (previously dumb and confused now totally clueless) mother can possibly think of. Teenagers are generally not receptive to our brilliant excuses, and I saw myself stonewalling. She kept her fallen face and took solace in grabbing the smartphone from her remorseful mother.

As the day approached its final moments, I shared the story with my mother. My mother unlike me is quick to her feet in such tricky situations. ‘Your darling daughter is looking only for an admirer. She didn’t specify gender or age. You admire her enough to write her a love letter. Just make sure that while whipping one up it looks pleasing enough to be from a boy of her age.’

And thus that day my FB friends, I wrote the first love letter in my life.
PS. For those who are interested in the aftermath, it worked. She has a secret admirer now :)