Reminiscent of the songs i grew up with!! Even now when they make a new album every other day...when a new artist or a new band emerges out of nowhere....nothing compares to the effect each song used to have when they really were songs! Most of the songs that i hear these days are rather abusive loads...about sex and drugs and about things i cannot feel or enjoy!! One of my friends at work once asked me why pretty keeps listening to all the mushy songs and keeps being in her own fairyland!! He suggested that i rather should listen to eminem, 50 Cents and some artists i cant even recall names of!! He said they make the real stuff...the mushy songs you listen to just make you long for a kind of love that doesnt even exist in the world anymore while these rap songs give the real picture of the love scene in the world right now!!! Jus rap your way and be happy...don think anything jus be happy!!! I was amazed that how come he was able to enjoy and love something that i cudnt even comprehend to being true! Was i really "OLD" for the real youngsters!!?? Why was i not able to forget enjoy even understand what one can enjoy in those stupid abusive loads!!
Today i was listening to all my fave songs from the past! Singers like Celine Dion, Richard Marx, Toni Braxton, Mariah Carey, Bryan Adams and some other old faves, they really made songs that could change your mood or your state of mind or actually give you relaxation. Gone are the days when music used to be a means to take your mind away from the present and make you time travel! It is not so that i dont like any of the songs of the present day but its difficult for me to "FEEL" any emotions listening to any of the songs these days. While i do like some songs by Rihanna, Lady GaGa, Eminem and others like Bad Romance, Rude Boy, Love the way you lie etc etc. but somehow these are the kind of songs that would not count on my list of all time faves. Its easy to listen enjoy and then forget these songs. While songs like Without you, Hero - Mariah Carey, In the Late of the night, Unbreak My heart, How could and Angel break my heart - Toni Braxton, Because you loved me, Its all coming back to me - Celine Dion, Everything i Do, Please forgive me, Summer of 69 - Bryan Adams, Until i find you again, Endless Summer Nights, Right Here Waiting - Richard Marx etc etc etc become something so special that you just cant write them off your minds and hearts. Even if the music industry is more advanced these days than ever and even if there are more platforms and chances for singers to come out and show off their talents...i must say...They dont make them this good anymore!
Was just wondering if anyone has seen this one :)
I happened to watch it last week and was amazed to see how India has advanced and to what extent things have gone in this "Cultured" country! I was never a supporter of things when some people used to say that India is a land of culture and we must protect it. I always felt that India is a land of Hypocrites where everyone does everything that they "claim" is taboo and accuse as being some rotten influence of the "West". Indians i always felt were the most non genuine people i have seen. I havent roamed the whole world but atleast among all the people that i have met and observed, i have found indians to be least genuine and most double faced! While in college i studied in a completely conservative college and people there used to really turn me mad! Everyone will talk as if they dont even talk to the opposite sex and consider such things as taboo!! For me friends were friends...it dint matter if it was a guy or a girl and if i ever were in a relationship i was not gonna lie about it! but after studying in a closed cultured place like that...even my basics were shaken! Those people will talk as if they are the purest breed of humans with no blemish in their characters and if a girl ever had a boyfrnd or vice versa it was considered a Huge Blot on his/her character!! I cant believe most of them who spoke big things about character and culture have had love marriages now! Thats what i hated in my class mates...none of them seemed like a genuine person who will talk and do the same things! And thats what i hate among indians as such...they talk something and do something completely opposite! If only whatever the indians do in private comes out in public some day i am sure even US of A will awe at what indians can do!! I am not a person who hates Indians...its just that i hate hypocrites and i hate people who cant talk what they really do!!
Anyways...so watching this season of Emotional Atyachar i was amazed but also happy at the same time cuz i felt atleast this will help some kind of hypocricy to go away. India has a long way to go if it has to ever become strong as US or UK but atleast there are some channels like Bindass which speak the real thing. Its kind of heart breaking to see that more than 95% of the cases in EA2 are cases where girls suspect their spouse/boy frnd/fiance' and hardly any cases of girls being untrue. But even more heart breaking is to see how detestable guys and their ways can be!! Atleast 99.9% of the cases where the girl has suspected her guy, he has failed. Sometimes it is easy to see that the girl is innocent and just a brainless beauty, but some other times it is hard to watch a 8-10 yr emotional relationship break. Sometimes it is even funny to watch the guy being axed to the nerve! As of now it is one of my faves on TV and i am enjoying it thoroughly! Atleast the poor girls who become so emotionally attached to their partners in a relationship that they are ready to give away everything for it...have a platform to authenticate their relationships. I know everyone agrees that TRUST is THE most important thing in a relationship and there should not be a space for any kind of breach or authentication! But c'mon the people in that relationship should also know how to keep up that Trust. Its not one person's responsibility to keep the trust on the other and also maintain that trust on him/her self. Until we come to a world where relationships become pure and amaranthine...lets just watch EA and spill out the beans of our thoughts :)
Its 9/11 and i cant stop myself from remembering the same day last year when i was able to witness the commemoration of the dreadful day 9 years ago which took the lives of so many innocent and highly skilled people. My office was located at the 14th floor of the 1st tower of the World Financial Center and the view of ground zero was absolutely clear from the window next to my cubicle. It was a busy rainy day in New York and my office had announced free breakfast and lunch to all employees as the traffic was going to be heavy owing to the visitors of the 9/11 site. I can clearly remember the large amount of people i spotted in and around my office building right from as early as 8:00 am in the morning. Usually while walking towards my office i would be crossing the World Trade Center Tower 7, the World Financial Center Tower 2 & 3 on one side and Ground Zero on the other and all these building being open to tourists, were always hustling with numerous photo enthusiasts with their SLRs or just people from other countries with maps of NYC in their hands and gaping with awe at Ground Zero and the posters bounding it. But on that particular day i couldnt escape noticing numerous numerous people not with SLRs and Maps but with flowers in their hands, with pictures of their loved ones who became ashes with the WTC, with rosary in their hands and never ending prayers on their lips, with eyes still searching for hidden embers or some signs of their loved ones...with may be never diminishing hope that one day some of their loved one will come alive from the ashes. It was a pathetic scene and i prayed that atleast some of those people's pains should get washed away with the rain in the hustle bustle of New York City that day. But i guess its not so easy that you pray and the next moment the pain ceases to exist...and i couldnt escape seeing how much pain and longing was present in the eyes and hearts of everyone present there. Even with the downpour refusing to halt for a single moment, not even a single person lost his patience but waited eagerly for his/her chance to get to the podium and offer their prayers for their departed ones...or may be touch the same place where their loved ones lost their lives. I cannot imagine what pain or loss they go thru each and every day of their lives...having lost a part of their lives to ashes, but seeing just their patience on a rainy day like that made me get a shiver within myself. It is very easy to sit on our confortable lazy boy recliners and watch news channel...but when we are in a place where the news is actually happening...its nothing less than experiencing a shock treatment in itself. 9/11 was a huge shock treatment for the whole world but it was more than just a shock for the ones who were affected...but even more than them the real victims are the ones who have been left behind...who have nothing else left but their ever searching eyes, their ever longing hearts and their ever hoping thoughts.
Do you remember what the fashion scene was when you had first started noticing the world around you? Could you imagine what was the "HEP" or the "IN" thing in the year when you were born? ok leave fashion...the kind of fashion freak that i am may be i cant think of little more practical things.. :) Lets talk about the school curriculum...can you imagine what the curriculum would have been when your parents were in school!!?? Ya many of us might be parents already...and lets compare what we learnt and what our children are learning today. what our children study at school these days is not even close to being similar to what we learnt!! Ok Lets think of something more popular...TV!? Do you remember the first tv serials that you saw as kids... which made you so glued to your tv screens that your mom had to scream to make you switch it off and finish your homeworks!? i still remember how i was so careful in finishing my homework just becuz i dint want to miss my fave tv serial..."Malgudi Days" or how i used to be glued to watching "Tenali Raman" or "The Jungle Book"...so many sweet thoughts come to my mind when i think of my first faves on TV. But when you just start even thinking about TV in these days...you dont know which channel to start with...there are so many channels and so many options. TV has changed from just a simple mode of entertainment to being a big part of our day to day life. If we actually think about some aspects in life...small things in life like brushing your teeth to the bigger things like taking an international holiday...almost everything has changed with time. Some things which we could not have imagined in the days that we were born are somethings which have become so very common these days. We have seen globalisation affect so many aspects of our lives that i doubt if there is anything which has remained the same since the time we were born. Can you think of one thing which has not changed since the time we remember? While watching GOD TV recently, i happened to watch an ad about the way ministry work has progressed since all these years. I couldnt help but gape in awe at how matchless HIS awesomeness is! He has been the same yesterday, today and will be forever. There is no change in the BIBLE, in the way the various pastors and reverends have been working on spreading HIS word and the GOSPEL remains the same yesterday today and forever. Its really awesome to know how things have changed in and around us in so many years but HIS word just remains the same. Being a Christian it gives me so much happiness to know that i have put my life and trust in an everlasting and living GOD who is the same yesterday today and will be forever and ever!!
Havent we always been taught that there are always only 2 solutions to any and every question in the world? One Right and the other Wrong!!?? Well that is how i have been judging every question in life till now! For me everything is either right or wrong, i have never been able to judge anything as anything in between the right or the wrong. Viewing everything as a simple play of black or white is what i have practiced...i have never been able to view world as a shade of grey. It is usually hard for me to think that there can be more to judging situations in life. If there was something that was not right...it was always wrong for me. Recently while taking one of the mandatory trainings for Accenture new joinees i learnt about the right vs right situation. The whole training talks about how diplomatic resources have to be to survive in the corporate world and one of the most important aspect which rules diplomacy is not judging every situation as having a right vs wrong solution. We are constantly learning something or the other in this world and being someone involved in the IT industry i guess we learn pretty more volume of things at a faster rate. When i was leaving HCL i thought i have had alot of experiences both inside India as well as outside India and was well versed to face the IT world. But i guess theres a vast ocean waiting to be conquered and thats so vast in myriad directions that its not easy to conquer it with just a 5 yr experience here...i am here for more time now and am just hoping that i learn enough to survive the right way. :)
Traversing in the grand ocean of IT, we often have to take decisions which might not be the ones which make us very comfortable, but we have feeble chances of escaping them. Going thru the exit process @ hcl i never really did realise that it will ever come true that i am out of HCL. Since the time i came back from US and had put my papers with this company, i just felt the whole exit process to be more of a struggle rather than an official process. First when i was still giving resigning HCL second thoughts owing to the L1 visa that i was holding, i did not get any positive response from the HCL team. When i asked them if they could provide me a transfer to Bangalore they said no there are no projects available and we cannot transfer you there without any projects. Then when i asked them if they could provide me some UK project as i was interested in Onsite and wanted to be in a UK based project as my husband keeps travelling to UK, they said no right now we dont have any openings! After trying almost everything possible on my hands i put down my papers. Even then when i wanted to exit sooner by buying out the notice period they simply denied saying its out of policies now. I wrote numerous mails to managers i did not even know, explaining my situation to them but they just never responded. Finally after the long 2 month wait of the notice period when i came back to Chennai for my final formalities, they wanted to retain me!!?? The HRs woke up from their deep sleep just then as if the numerous calls i had made through out my notice period were non existant. The exit HR asked me one day before my LWD (Last Working Day) what actually my problem was and what the HR team could do to retain me!! I explained them why i had insisted on a transfer to Bangalore so much and why i had asked for UK based projects etc etc. Finally the HR was not ready to sign the no dues, rather she told me to meet her the next day and she said she can definitely provide me something promising by the end of the day. She asked me to give her a call by evening. I was kind of happy but i had made up my mind on joining Accenture which had already offered me a better CTC package and a job in Bangalore. But still i was expectant of something good coming up. Next day (which was my LWD) the HR said that they have a long term role coming up for UK and they can definitely refer me for that given the good feedback i had from my previous managers. They also said that i would have to wait for abt a month for that oppurtunity to come my way! But by then my bitter end of endurance had already shown up and i just decided to get my No Dues signed and collect my Resignation Acceptance Letter that day.
I couldnt believe i was actually sad at leaving HCL. It was a simple organization with some really stringent and unproffessional people i have seen in my life. But somehow workwise i was never lagging when i was with HCL. I always had challenging work and best of all...it gave me my one year in NY which was the BEST part of my proffessional carreer. Even while waiting in the montieth Rd Office which was the same office where i had attended an induction 2.5 yrs back, i somehow felt the comfort level which i am not sure if i will ever feel in Accenture. I knew a lot of people in HCL and somehow i was quite popular as well and i liked that feeling of being Ms. Popular! I liked the simple work environment where all people were bothered about was work!! It was boring when i was working there as the glamour quotient of the work place was way below zero and there was all work and no fun! But somehow me and some like minded teammates had found ways to find our own fun and relaxation times even in that busy and demanding work schedules. I cant believe i am saying this but i really wish i can relive my times in HCL. I am definitely gonna miss this one!
