its weird...how you want something all your life, you crave for it day and night, and have been,for as long as you remember, and when you get it....no its not that it doesn't matter anymore, its just that you realise its somehow not right for you....it doesn't fit, so you leave it, and then to make matters worse you see someone else with that perfect fit....

i went shopping a few days back, and found these perfect pearl earrings i'd been fantacising about ever since i was a little girl, and had seen movie stars wearing them, and when i tried them on..... all excited, ready to pay anything to get them....they looked horrible,ok ok i looked horrible in them....i was so disgusted, i didnt buy them ofcourse, but i was disgusted at the irony of life....as if to intesify the irony, the next day i saw a colleague wearing them, and ooooohhhhhhh they looked so pretty on her....maybe i should've bought them anyways...it was a childhood dream afterall, or rather, it still is.... :((

some more sketches...

India Shining?

"Come, join us",called out a rather fat aunt of mine,"dancing in the baraat is for good luck, achcha shagun hota hai", she was inviting me to join her and my other aunts,uncles and cousins, and an entire plethora of people,many of whom I had met for the first time, a few hours earlier, as they danced in the baraat of another cousin.
I declined politely. I am not an iconoclast,nor am I completely unaffected by the "achcha shagun" phrase, but somethings just fail to make sense and therefore, impact.Like dancing in front of mare will ensure a happy married life...umm I thought that happened through mutual understanding and...but well what do I know, I am not married yet. Maybe I'll hire a mare and dance in front of her every time I want to get my husband to do something for me, thus ensuring my happiness in the married life...

Besides, after having spent nearly 3 hours stuck in traffic, trying to get to the wedding hall, the idea of "dancing" to some archaic, incomprehensible tunes of the dhol with women laden with jewelery,makeup and stilettos they could barely stand straight in,was hardly appealing.

So I just decided to remain a mute audience, and dream happily of the inviting comforts of my bedroom and bedside novels and sleep....but walking is not a very comfortable way of dreaming,especially if you are not a somnoambulist, which much to my disappointment, I realized, I was not.

So I just started doing the next lazy thing, looking around at the people, and it was then that something caught my attention. As a keener look revealed, it was a boy of around 12, completely famished and starved. He was with the band, as one of the lantern holders, he could not have weighed more than 25Kgs, I am no doctor or nutritionist, but I guess he should have been at least 38Kg at the age of 12, while the lantern he was carrying on his head was at least 10Kg. His legs trembled under the weight he was carrying and he was almost in tears. Perhaps he had not had a single meal since the morning, or terrifying as the thought is, for days.....

I simply could not take my gaze away from his face, young, innocent, sunken with hunger,broken by poverty. All the other members of the band were much older, young to middle aged men, all 25 or above, but it seemed that being the youngest and the only child amongst them had not given this boy any advantage, he had not been given any lighter equipment to carry and was in all probability getting the minimum wages, besides a one-time meal perhaps, if at all.

I could not help but think of the lives we've had,me and the people around me, my friends and cousins, and the lives we hope to give to our children. We've always had plenty of comforts, if not luxuries, we never had to worry about where to sleep if it was pouring. We hated school and homework, and to us the biggest problem in the world used to be getting mom n dad to buy us something new, a new dress,a new toy...we never thought how it gets paid for. And today when I know, I hope to give the same to my children, the ignorant, innocent life that I was blessed with and if possible more....

I could not stop these thoughts rushing through my mind, as I looked at the stark contrast of the happy, well-fed,healthy & rich faces of my relatives, dancing away for the good luck and destiny of my cousin,and this boy whose only fault was perhaps that he had been born poor and for which perhaps he would pay all his life. The “economic-divide” had never looked so real,

I remembered, as a child, how proudly I used to declare to everyone that I'll be a pilot or a scientist when I grew up,whenever asked, and I realized how futile this question was for this child, and is for the millions of children of this country who are not as lucky as you and I are.

For them, the only question that exists, the one that never leaves their eyes, their faces, is where the next meal will come from,education,a bed,a toy,are things they can only even dream of, and any other question leaves their eyes completely blank, they don't understand what you mean. And its when you see that look, is when you realize that you've asked the wrong question...

This incident was years ago, but the boy's memory has never left me, and every time I read or hear or talk of India becoming a superpower, I almost instantly find myself staring back into his eyes.

Hungry. Pleading. Vacant.

headache

I have a splitting headache, and I've had it for over 24 hours now.
When a headache lasts that long...it can't be just the after effects of a meeting. Or Gas for that matter ,
It can be both though.
Nevertheless, a mammoth of a headache like this once needs a tribute of sorts,
deserves to be etched in the memory lane...
It started during one Requirements Analysis meeting yesterday afternoon, in which I was explaining to the client, her requirements, helping her realise what did she want from the application she was asking for, wondering if I would've made a better shrink, than a software professional.

Having done that with reasonable success, since I did not have this head ache then, I waited patiently for
the cab that was supposed to pick me up from my client's office and bring me home, ahem my own office,
(that's what a 9-9 schedule does to you). that additional 30 mintues of waiting made me realise, how
having-no-other-option can manifold your patience levels.

Reaching my office I realised all my patience has pretty much snapped, and I went home, where I slept like a log for over 4 hours. My roommate finally had to roll me off the bed, well nearly, to wake me up.
I woke up to a throbbing head, apparently the "nap" had done more harm than good, as I had very conveniently forgotten to take a pill before crashing. Not that I had any patience to look for one anyway.

Thanks to my roommate, who coaxed, nagged, did everything it took to force something down my throat hoping food would help. IT didn't though, nor did the massage she gave me lasting over an hour, I must've done some great deed to get that...anyways, I fell asleep at 3:00 in the morning,when fatigue finally took over. I got up at 10:00 this morning, my office begins at 9:30, I was better, if only slightly.
My companion seemed to have settled itself quite nicely in the only head that I have, with no immediate vacating plans. I dragged myself to work,you can't take a sick leave everytime you have a headache, well I can't, and collapsed, literally, on my seat with the firm decision of not getting up till it was time to go home, not even for lunch. I didn't trust myself to see straight and was kind'a worried people would ask questions. Or talk. To me.

Around half an hour later, I got up for breakfast, hunger can be a pretty ruthless master.
After another hour or so, my friends, dragged me to lunch, "skipping meals is not going to make you
feel any better", I wasn't hungry but then, they weren't listening. On my way back at around 2:00, I got a call, I had another meeting at 3:00, at the client's office. I had forgotten, this was weekly meeting.
I couldn't miss it. Why would I even want to, my manager wondered aloud, specially since she couldn't make it.
Well why would I....

So there I was, back to my client's office, a different office and a different set of clients this time,
and my dear old companion, no I don't mean my colleagues, exactly 24 hours old,happy and thriving,waiting for me to give in and pass out. And there I was, explaining to the clients, their requirements, helping them realise what they wanted from the application they were asking for, wondering if I would've made a better shrink, than a software professional....

The BRS would come in by tomorrow, but I'm sure I still did a pretty decent job, this time with my headache

I'm back, at my seat, waiting for this article to finish itself,hoping my dear companion would tire itself out
and leave me in solace...
I have to go for a movie ,you can't spoil everyone's plans everytime you have a headache, well I can't.
I am hoping though, that all three of us would have fun, me, my roommate and the HeadAche....

A visit to a tea-factory

Yes, it does remind me of school time essays too, and that is exactly how I felt on visiting this factory,
a school girl marvelling at the animals "behind the bars",;P... only now the school girl was inside a
near-sterilized(we had to take off our shoes, wash ourselves before entering :P) environment, concentrating hard on the highly technical words our barely educated escort was using to describe the tea-manufacturing process.

Frankly, it was quite a blow to my post graduate, glib s/w professional ego, when I could not even recognize, let alone understand, half the words he used, :P and no he was pronouncing and using them correctly, as I later confirmed from the tea estate manager (I wasn't going to give up that easily ;) ) ....

Back to my field trip, we were first shown the tea garden itself, where people were collecting tea leaves,
with the "movie style" baskets hanging over their heads. Deftly sorting out only the healthy, fully grown
leaves and dropping them in the baskets, these workers collect as much as 2000 Kg of tea per season (2-3 months) from a single garden. Ofcourse, the weight would depend on the number of workers and the size of the garden,but we would leave so many dynamic variables for my article on theory-of-relativity...I will write it someday :P




The gardens were not guarded by people, but highly trained dogs, who were so good at their job, that sitting atleast 20 feet away, he started growling the moment we bent down on the plant( picking leaves, quite obvioudly,was not allowed), and sat back the moment we stood up...






These leaves are then taken to the factory, and so were we, where they go through the process of becoming what we drink...

The moment we entered the factory premises, a very distinct smell engulfed us, of fresh tea leaves, mixed with wet soil...sort of the leaves had been spread out on open sheets to dry up, shaded very carefully to avoid direct heat from the sun.
This is called weathering.

They're then spread out on a big roller belt sort of a machine which performs a sort of seiving of the leaves from accidental twigs etc.

They're then segregated into various varieties depending on the size, color of the leave, since these
two are the most important indicators of the ripeness & taste of the would-be-tea. this step is called
grading and is done majorly manually with very little help from machines. And yes this is done in a restricted area,a truly sterilized environment, where we could only peek into through the glass erected specially for such tours as ours, I presume.



Beyond the above three steps, having long been stripped of my camera and cellphone, and not provided with a notebook & a pen in return, my memory refused to remember anymore of the complicated machinery, names and mechanisms. :P

After the grading part, all machines only grew in size, and each turned the fresh, damp, green leaves to a smaller, drier, powdered form, and it became more recognisable and less beautiful...

In the end, the escort showed us various varieties, ranging from Rs.250/Kg to Rs.2550/Kg ...!!!

Frankly I never knew making tea was so technical, and drinking it could be so expensive....

But then, I also never knew, that my word power was so restricted to s/w ...:P

All in all, it was fun....just like schooltime, and I am hoping I can do this again some time soon,

my next target,ummmm...I dont know, may be paper-manufacturing ... ;)