Baby's day out.

One of the most exciting thing that keeps me glued to my job is that there is always something new happening in the office. New Year raffles, Christmas parties, Diwali Pooja in the Indian style, Hamukkah, the Chinese New Year, charity programs, the French Bastille day and each month has its own exclusive agenda to look forward to.

Another initiative taken by the top bosses was the "Bring your children to work" day since most collegues have children and there schools had closed for summer break. The idea was to inculcate a sense of respect and belongingness among the children and also to let the parents spend some more "quality time" with the parents. Good intention but bad out come.

Here is how it all started......... my workplace has a majority of women staff (much to the envy of men) and mostly married working mothers with children aging from 3 month old babies to 17 year old teenagers. The youngest ones did not stop howling in an attempt to adjust with the new envoironment that they were thrown into, the kindergarten students were busy trying to prove the fact that their mothers were the most loving mothers or that their dads were stronger than Spiderman. The 10 year olds were looked as they had just landed from the outer planet and had endless questions begining and ending with "what, when, why and how".

And then there were the most curious of them all - the 13-15 year olds who could neither be classified as kids because they were'nt and neither were they the big enough to talk global warming and new playstation about. This lot somehow came well prepared with a whole bag ful of Nancy Drews and Hardy Boys and Enid Blytons, since there was no escape.

Finally there were three 17 year olds who had that confident look of being "almost there", the most annoyed of the lot. They spoke of new things and new issues and in each sentence tried to convince me that they knew a lot more on every topic including a software that I had been using since long. They seemed to be in a hurry to grow up and were facsinated by every object around that had anything to do remotely related to physics and it made some kind of a noise, which includes the paper shredder.

Eight and a half hours later with a day full of babies screaming, children pulling my stole to grab my attnetion and losing all my stationary to the little "angels", when every parent leaves with the apple of their eyes, some single and young people liek me are left behind and forced to volunteer to clean up, clean up all the baby food that the little monsters threw up when the mothers were forcing it into their mouths somewhere in the middle of trying to finish an assessment report, clean up the crayon and colour stains that the budding painters and artists left behind on the carpets and walls. Arrange all the books and maps on the shelves, throw away all the paper craft works which the 10-13 year old army had left behind in their quest to know and learn more and try to arrange all the furniture which was ransacked by the still older generation. The elder ones in order to prove their extensive and newly acquired knowledge about MS and the world on their fingertips with the internet had left 2 systems with viruses downloaded straight from the internet and 3 broken mouses, I was forced to change my perception about "quality time".

The most happening place

Whats your ideal idea for a perfect weekend? Are you a regular visitor to the dance clubs and discoes in your city?????? May be you go there to take your girlfriend out in style, maybe thats just your idea for having fun or do you like to enjoy the look on the faces of otherwise decent and cultured faces of the society going nuts on the dance floor after a couple of drinks and some rocking music or are you just a big fan of dancing and the groovy beats.

Whatever the reason be, whatever your idea be to spend your night out in a crowded, dark and smogy atmosphere, most people certainly miss out on the real action in these so called happening places. Any guesses where the most "happening" corner of these colourful nights is....... the washrooms. Trust me when I say that.

Like most young people my age who look for fun things to do after work hours and to spend time with friends, I went to this place called "Bottles & Chimmney" in the sub-urban area of Hyderabad. The ambience was good, drinks were free for women ( and we made the most of it), the crowd was grooving and the music was just right, the DJ was awesome and the bouncers alert (they looked like grumpy men who were denied their share of booze for the day).

Anyway, so after a couple of drinks we set out the dance floor to remind ourselves of the college acts that we learnt and did so well, and the drinks were going along too.
Suddenly my friend decided that she is not in a position to handle her drinks and rushed to the washroom. For the sake of courtesy, I decided to accompany my friend (who was now rather drunk and could not even walk properly).

While she was busy throwing up in the washroom and I'm was cursing the moment when I decided to miss out on all the fun and accompany her. One rather skimplily clad girl walks in, bangs her head against the mirror and starts to cry. The hidden angel inside me wakes up and I decided to comfort her. When I asked her the reason for her sudden outburst, she said her boyfriend (now ex I'm sure) was eyeing other girls and she was upset about it.
I simply gave a piece of advise that he is so not worth it and then she walked out. The last I saw of her was she sitting right next to the bar .
I had barely taken a sigh of relief when another heavily drunk woman walks in and starts howling, her reason was that her ex-boyfriend (who she had walked out on) was out there dancing with another girl. (WOW!!! so much to my amazement).
I had not even finished up with her when a couple of girls walk in and start to strip...... excuse me.... was my first reaction. Oh, one of them said, these girls had bunked school and were now changing back to their school uniforms to be able to go back home.

Even though I took my own moment to digest what was going on around me, I decided that I've had enough of a pleasent evening at this "Happening" place and it was time for me to drive back home my friend who was really out of her wits by now and others who were tired after exhibiting their dancing skills.

But yeah the moral of the story is that if you are the kind of a person who wants to know more about other people, you know where to head for.

Crazy is the word.

What is that one thing that Jayalalita, Paris Hilton, Sarah Jessica Parker,Celina Jaitely, Dia Mirza, Aishwarya Rai and my next door neighbour have in common........... they are all crazy about one thing........ SHOES.

What is it about the strange passion that makes each one of them (and a hundred million other women) go to a shoe store and spend the last penny in their wallets for a new pair of shoes.

Stilletoes, boots, slip-ons, keds, slippers, flip-flops, sandles, cow-boy cuts and a few hundred other designs and colours ranging from the basic black to unimaginable purples, blues, reds and even bright yellows, women want it all. This one for work, the other one for a camping trip, this one for a party at the boss's, that one for a girls day out, the reasons for buying shoes are countless and as ridiculous as " oh I just saw them, liked them and bought them."

The other day I heard a woman sitting with her girl-friends in an upmarket restaurant planning her 25th birthday party and asking her friends to buy her a pair of high heels, the new Vercace designs and so on and so forth for each one of them, since her husband was now sick of her buying them on her own. I found this too much to digest for my sensibilites.

Strangely enough, it appears to me that the "infection" for buying shoes among women has assumed mounting proportions since I often hear my carpenter that he is extremely busy these days desining glass cabinets for shoes and that orders are pouring in from women all across the city.

I was taken aback when I went to use the rest-room in a friend's place only to discover shoe shower curtains, a shoe coaster, a shoe shaped dustbin and catalogues only for shoes. My friend took the last breath out of me when she showed me her newly acquired much talked about possession.............. a shoe shaped, diamond studded necklace.

The only thing that keeps me going on.....

Dreams may come and dreams go, but what should not go is the heart that dares to dream.

My morning starts with a vision to do something meaningful in life.... and as the day passses by, the aspirations dwindle away, the dreams are shattered by the stones of reality, the illusions fad away into the oblivion and I tell the plans to go take a hike.
Every time I cry about something, I promise myself that this is the last time I'm letting anyone hurt me badly and the last time that I am letting a situation get out of control......... but history repeats itself. I often face a conflict between my heart and mind where the two think in opposite directions, each one presenting their own case with full explanations in the courtroom of my soul. My sensibilities go numb and education jumps out of the window. I doubt my judgement about issues and people in general.

These are just the "black days" when people tell me that I probably woke up on the wrong side of the bed.

On one such "black day", I hope the sun would smile out from somewhere in between the clouds and tell me that everything has been taken care of, people are not mad at me for some reason or the other and every piece of the jig-saw puzzle has fallen into place accurately.

I guess there is only one word that describes the feeling and we all live it....... Hope.