I did not do much on Saturday and stayed in the hotel room
Sunday morning, I went to Paris in a train. Took the train to Paris and took metro to the Louvre (National Museum in Paris). It was wonderful. I took pictures of the Pyramid and Mona Lisa and last supper and a lot of other paintings and sculptures.
I am tired. I cannot write. My neck hurts. I am coughing my lungs out. I am hungry too.
It is 8:40 PM and I am sitting in office wondering if I will ever go home. The umbrella policy I am trying to create is taking eternity. Onsite co-ordinator says that if I do not test this defect today, project will go to some other company or possibly some American freelance developer. Application was down throughout the day. Client knows that for a fact. But apparently, OSC promised defect test delivery today and we got to deliver. Application is super slow. I do not know what to do. I am tired.
I am tired! I cannot write.
I have been thinking of writing this since the time I visited Matri Mandir at Auroville. Matri Mandir is not basically a holy place. It is a spiritual place. When I say holy, I mean a place of worship like a temple or a church or a Masjid.
Several years ago, I had a friend. When I say, I had, I mean I had. I no longer have unless I am somebody who doesn’t believe in death.
Now this friend of mine was indeed a very close friend. I never had before and after come across someone who is quite like her. She was a completely different person altogether. Her values, her humour, her style, and her manners were unlike anybody else.
She was perhaps not the unique person I imagined her to be but being my friend, according to me and in my sense of the word, is being unique.
We studied together for two years. We were friends for just more than a year but those were the days we were young and green and it did not take us ages to recognize best friends.
I left to join a graduate course in commerce in a college and she stayed back to make one more attempt for the Medical Entrance test (EAMCET - Engineering, Agriculture and Medicine Common Entrance Test). We talked often. I always wanted her to write to me. She, being what she was, never of course wrote and today I am left with nothing from her to read and linger in reminiscence.
As usual I called her one early morning at 6:15 for I was in a hurry to attend a training class for my ACS course which of course I never completed. Her uncle took the call and told me that she is not there. I called her hostel the day before and they said she went home on grounds of ill health I asked if she was doing fine as the people at the hostel told me that she was not well. He said that she passed away. I did not ask how and what. I went numb. I went to the class and came back home and had the upma my mother made and slept the whole day. I wept in the evening. I prayed to wake up next morning and discover that this is a dreadful dream and it will never come true. No dream it was! It was the bitter truth! My father offered to take me to her place but I was reluctant to go. I wept for months after that and in the night I had the wildest of dreams. After I reconciled to that idea that she is gone for good and dead people do not come back after all, I prayed for peace.
After all these years, I still find tears in my eyes when I think of her or I hear the song I often sung for her. She never liked it though. I almost always sang some note wrong.
I often wonder if she was thinking of me when this dreadful thing happened. The car in which she was traveling with her father and her father’s friend met with an accident and the three of them along with the driver were killed. I now know that she is not coming back. I also believe that she found peace in those last moments of pain, alarm, and agony.
I do not know what to do or think. I am not very wise and I still wish she were back. I want to talk to her about everything that happened to me after she left. I want to talk about my new friends, my new outlook in life, my marriage, my future. I know she is not coming back. None the less, I want her back.
It was 1:30 AM one Saturday and we were all on a night out trying to deliver some code. I heard my two team mates talk about God and interfered for I too wanted a break and what can be better than talking about God. One of them said, “I do not believe God exists”. I was shocked. It was such an ungodly hour and we were sitting from 9 AM Friday morning. That statement sent a chill down my spine. I asked him, “Did you pray to God when you gave your class 10 exams or your engineering entrance”. He said, “Ironically, I did! And such were the only times I ever prayed.
Arti walked out of Natasha Golf View Apartments with Alochana and Alapana. Arti is happy. It is her twelfth wedding anniversary today and also the annual day at Alochana and Alapana's school. She is now going with them to participate in the PTM. The threesome walked down to the metro rail platform and waited for the train to Mysore. Arti had offered to drive them all to school so that they can enjoy the view up, but the kids insisted that it would take lesser time by the underground metro rail and moreover they were taught that mass public transit is the preferred means of transit.
What is in a name? I might as well have named this post "toothpaste" or "shampoo". However, "Soap" occurred to me first and yes! I am talking about personal hygiene in general; perspiration and breath in specific.
I missed my bus today. I reached the bus stop on time. ISRO aunty told me that the bus has gone but she was not sure if it was mine. Of course! It was mine. All other CTS buses take the flyover. Mine alone goes via Domlur Shanti Sagar. I called Smitha and we decided to take an auto. ISRO aunty asked me if I am an engineer.
A week ago, I went to office in an auto rikshaw. There is nothing new about it. I saw a water tanker parked on one of the roads. It was leaking. Nothing new about that either. Yesterday I read that Bangalore is saturated and hence IT companies have been advised to move to tier 2 and tier 3 cities like Mysore and Dhavangere.
"You do not know what it feels like when your mother is out of town for four months! I know how it feels. My mother is still not home" sobs..
What is a blog really? What one goes through? Or what one feels? Well, I will write about what I think of what is happening around me.
Having unveiled my identity in my first post, a part of me is reluctant to go ahead with this one. But the other part says, "Come on! Go ahead! I never knew you cared so much!!!!!" Workplace and projects give us an opportunity to watch people from close quarters. We meet several people and perceive a lot of things. We like a few of them and are indifferent to others. And a few others, we would rather avoid. And those are the people closest to you. They appear everywhere. Your peers, managers, and your sub-ordinates. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the irony of life! A co-worker who you can put up with is almost always a member of the other team and another one who you can never stand is either your manager or your subordinate. The ones in the manager's category are more annoying than anybody else you have ever ever known. Or do you think, I am over reacting? Having been lucky enough to have managers who wouldn't need anything beyond a second explanation so far, I find it rather exasperating to hang around with pea brains and teach them basics (which, incidentally, is called a discussion) and in the end be tagged as being mentored by one of these buffs. Honestly, I am no great a techie myself, but hang on there! which one of you here is better than me?
