A trek to remember!

As I was flipping the pages of my book at night, I got a call from Bhaiya asking “we are all going for a trek to mudumalai forest, one seat left in the car, you want to join?
The 14th August long weekend had just begun and I was all alone in peace reading at my home. I asked when you are all leaving. He said tomorrow early morning at 4.00 am and I agreed to join him and his friends. As ever Bangalore is a place of friends of friends.

I went and parked my car at Bhaiya’s friend home, where all others were waiting. I greeted them all and there it began- the life of roller coaster fun, peace and excitement.

As we entered the forest, we switched off the AC and put the window down and I felt as if I was not in India!
We reached our greenwoods nature camp and were welcomed with a hot tea and bright sky with the forest stretching in front of us. We sat for few hours out there, enjoying the scene, for all we get to see in our daily lives and in our offices are the wall papers of such beautiful places in the laptop.


No hurry, no one running around and it was like life had come to halt. I was watching a still life painting right in front of my eyes. I closed my eyes absorbing the moment as the wind hits my face.

After few hours of silence and serenity, we decided on the trek to forest the next morning and got to sleep soon hearing the insects and birds mild chirping outside our tents at night. Well we also heard a roar! Not sure if it was a tiger or a friend’s snore in the adjacent tent.

We all got up early and were ready. As we were wearing our shoes, our guide who was an old man entered the gate of our tent resort and asked “Are you all ready?” We all nodded and it was around 6.15am that we all set out for the trek.


It was all till this moment the life was different. And post the trek had begun, I realized life was no different from our daily corporate life.

We all followed the guide talking amongst ourselves. One of the friends in the trek asked the old man “have you ever seen a tiger?” and he was cool with it and said “yes couple of times” as if he was talking about having seen a dog in the forest. For next 15-20 min we continued to walk climbing a hill which had the path and there comes in the first challenge, a river to cross.

I shouted aloud “Don’t tell me, we are supposed to cross the river”. Every one turned back to me and said “ Shsshhhh…” no more talking or shouting as we are entering the forest. The old man asked us to put the phone on silent. I smiled thinking we do put our phones on silent before every meeting in the office as well. I have mentioned about success and failure transfers in my blogs earlier in which we convert our past failures and success into the future success and failures. In my last trip to mekadatu, I had to cross the river and as I was trying to hold my friend from slipping, I had impressively slipped and fell in the river with ice cold water. Well that was a moment of laugh for my friends and hot topic of discussion in FB for few months post that. But I was thinking of that failure transfer (slipping and falling in the river), wondering that might happen again.Lesson learnt: We do success and failure transfer in real life too and not just in corporate life.


We reached near the river and I let few of my friends go ahead, wondering I might try and do their success transfer to mine thinking ‘if they can cross the river, so can I’. I watched them all cross and finally bhaiya was right behind me “Go, start walking on the rocks, you can do it”. I said “ohk, I will”. I started. I looked down and flow of the water was way faster than I had thought it to be. Some where there were rocks and somewhere rods connecting the rocks. We had to walk on them. As I stepped on the rods, Bhaiya said “don’t look down, see they all reached, walk faster and try reaching them”.

I looked up and walked faster. I again shouted at my friends who had almost reached the other side “mujhe swimming nahi aati, do any of you know? If I happen to fall in river, do save me”. One of them who was walking behind me shouted back “ mujhe bhi nahi aati”. I felt like kicking him for those words at the wrong time. The noise of the river water was so much that we had to shout to talk. Another friend from other side shouted who called me ‘ghost eyes’ shouted “I know to swim ghost eyes, relax and cross it”. Ohk that was somewhat assuring and I walked a bit faster doing some circus type balancing acts. Lesson learnt: Knowing the targets to reach in life is as important as the corporate world and having a backup makes us achieve things easily.


Post this challenge we entered the real forest. Some of the guys ran and joined our guide, the old man. Rest of us were following them in bunches walking together. Well that did reflect our attitudes. Those who were eager to know things moved ahead to the guide. I, who prefer to be safe, walked in between where there were few of them before and few after me. There were few walking at the end were the ones who were not scared of what might happen at the back, but ensured people in front of them were safe. If I get deeper into the analysis, I believe the roles or the places where we work actually made us do that or may be vice versa.

In some of the places we were covered with thick trees that there wasnt place for two people to walk side by side also. In between the guide would stop. He would try to hear and was trying to analyze if there is a probability of seeing some wild animal. He was the visionary and we were all clueless about what he was trying to see or hear. Lesson learnt: In real life also, most of us are clueless about the path we are taking, though we might know the purpose. We may need a guide or a mentor to take us through the journey of life with the help of his experience and knowledge.


Then there was a roar that we really heard. We all stopped for a minute in silence. The Guide turned whispered “keep walking”. I wanted to shout ‘enough of the roller coaster trek, I want to go back’ and that lead me to think, if someone asked me to walk back, I doubt if I would be able to trace my path. Lesson learnt: In real life also, we can’t use the same path to go back in which we had started and there would be chances, when all we can do is to control the emotions and just follow the leader. Something that we do every day in our corporate life as well.

And finally we reached the middle of the forest, where it was open. Ohk , I can see in few meters around me and there wasn’t any wild animal.The guide announced, you all can take a break for 10 minutes and then we would walk back. It was worth the effort to walk to see this scene. For few minutes it felt like heaven does exist on earth.

Post clicking some pics, we started to walk. We asked the guide, “if we are going to follow the same path?” he said “no”. Oh some relief, as I didn’t want to face the tiger roars again. Lesson learnt for real life which applies in corporate life as well, path unknown is easier to go than to go in path where we know challenges exists.


The rest of the trek was smooth and the guide would show us the marks of animals on the ground and tell which animals had crossed this path and when that would have happened.

He told us about the trees and talk about different people who would come for trekking. In corporate world people brag about their degrees and universities. But how many of us do what we really like. He was far more knowledgeable than any of us, when we talked about animals and forests. The old man could have to gone to some city to work in some corporate company and would have earned more than what he was doing now. Lesson learnt: In real life also education and literacy are two different things. What we don’t do is to follow or do what we like.


I observed that no single leaf or the tree was same. All were in different shapes and patterns. Isn’t it same in the corporate world as well. No single individual is same and everyone has different capabilities which are so unique. We still expect the same results from everyone while working.


Finally i had the river to be crossed again.I managed the same way I did while going.I ensured that the friend who knew swimming helped me cross it.:p. All exhausted,we reached back to our tents where we were served with hot breakfast.As we ate,a friend announced – we trekked 14Kms, 166650 steps and burnt 750 calories. I looked at the food and said "I think we have compensated that by eating some 1000 calories in last 5 minutes" and everyone laughed. Lesson learnt: Who says goals of real life are not measurable.


While returing,I looked back at the forest looking forward for a trek again.

Cloud for Human Emotions and Brain Data

For last 15 days, all that I have been hearing is Cloud! Cloud! Cloud! Well not literally the 15 days, but for a long time which reminds me that, to get into the infrastructure team, my assignment was to create a flyer on cloud computing services 2 years back.

But for last 15 days I was eventually dreaming cloud in my dreams because of the deal I was working on or could be because of the cloudy weather of Bangalore, I don’t know. God, it rains every day without a miss. No let me not divert to rain, it’s about the cloud today.

There was a point when I was really tired while working. At the last minute of my submission timeline while flipping through multiple excel sheet, I started working on the wrong file thinking that was the final sheet. AH AH AH! Thanks to the version control practice of saving the document that I went back to the last one and once again had to make all the changes at the Nth hour.

Along with some personal thoughts running at the back of my mind, I realized the chai wallah bhaiya in my office was luckier than me as he was enjoying his holiday. Well that means, I don’t get a tea. Ahem! Ahem! With my never give up attitude, I went around office checking the coffee vending machines and found them to be switched off too. Coffee vending machines needs a break and gets their holiday too!:p! With desperate need of “tea” thoughts in my mind, I go back to work thinking I will handle the tea issue later.

That’s when the thought struck me "Can’t I have a cloud to store my emotions and data? Why can’t I transfer all my brain data and the emotions to cloud ,Can't I use only what is needed?"


Listing down the features and benefits of having a cloud for human emotions and brain data (now that sounds like a line from RFP document)

Productivity gain: - Imagine the level of productivity that brain would have? The speed with which brain would now process the data would be far better as we can bring down the related data on which we are working when we begin the work. Pay as we use our own data? Brain need not scan all the data but only the relevant ones. Sounds cool!

No storage limit: - Even now there is no constraint in human brain storage capacity, but then thinking of the human brain capacity gives me shiver. We talk about big data and organizations struggle to store the minimal data. Though transferring the human brain data to cloud would be a great memory booster, but on what ground are the kids going to write the exams in a country like India where all we learn is “Ratta maar” during the school and college days. We wouldn’t struggle to remember the mathematics formula or biology terminologies. Download, write the exams and put it back on cloud!

Paas, Saas, Iaas and now Eaas: - That’s Emotion As A Service. I use only the emotions that I would need. I know I am going to a party; I download all emotions related to party control. Super security and situation control of emotions that would be. I guess husbands and guys would then find a way to hack the cloud and delete the cry or nag emotion from their wife or GFs cloud. Lol. I want to be excited I can, I want to be sad, I am only sad. No chance of mixed emotions.


Public cloud/ private cloud or hybrid cloud: - well to transfer the human emotions and data, we would definitely need private cloud, but yes something that we want to share, we can leverage public cloud for that. That would save cost and no more would we need google to search data. It would all be available in the public cloud, search whatever you want.

Pricing benefits: - we may wonder why do I need to pay to save my own data? Better to pay now to transfer the data and emotions to cloud rather than facing medical issues in future and spending on the medical bills.

Who is going to manage these cloud:- Like the IT based companies, we would then have more cloud selling companies which would business to customer (B2C)selling rather than business to business(B2B). We will sell cloud accounts like how we sell savings accounts in banks now. And these organizations in turn would manage the cloud; handle the back up and security issues.


Everything comes with a challenge, so would be this solution

Challenge number 1: Handling the downtime would be an issue
Imagine a situation when a friend is in a severe need of you and is crying badly, and your sad and counselling related emotions are on a cloud and your vendor is doing some change management activities. You are unable to use your cloud. Your friend cries and you keep laughing at that!!! So that’s why you should choose the best organization and read all policies before buying your cloud.

Challenge number 2: Need a Service Desk to handle the calls
Imagine a second situation. You read all mathematical formulas related things before the CAT exam and was on cloud. The day before your exam, the network crashes. Not just for your but many. All try to download at the same time. You call the helpdesk to scream and they say we are fixing the network and CAT gets over by that time…..you would say brain was better.

Challenge number 3: Cloud burst
A physical device to store data can crash. Imagine the cloud burst in the technology terms. I wonder if that’s possible, but not impossible either .But do my brain have the choice to crash? Whatever it is , it has to work whether it is to express the emotions or to think of some real time work.



Now that you have read the blog, please use your brain to understand that this would never happen. Please smile (express your emotions which you do not have in cloud) and get back to your work!

Do you have the real “Sense of Humor”?

Came across an article in LinkedIn and really liked the following lines:-

Then there is a person who never gives you a straight answer – everything is a joke. The jokes are really a shield from getting to know the person. It can be funny once or twice, but not all the time.

A few winters ago, I was talking to an executive who was off to a vacation in the Caribbean. I asked, “Where are you staying?” I thought I would hear about some really nice, cool place that I could learn about – even if I could not afford it.

Instead, her answer was tongue-in-cheek, “Oh we are staying at a cheap Holiday Inn.” While I have often stayed at Holiday Inns (some cheap, some not), I was supposed to find the answer cute or funny. I did not.
The reason I did not find it funny is that I really never could get a straight answer from that person. Talking to her became a stupid, exhausting game. Conclusion: "Spending less time with her was a gift to myself."


I had come across people who had or rather who thought they had good sense of humor. Others appreciated that and loved to be around such people, but I was never comfortable to be around people with high sense of humor or the ones who thought they had one. After reading the above article I realized I wasn’t the only one not to find others stupid answers to a direct question as cute or funny.


Next time, if you wish to highlight your “sense of humor” as a great attribute of yours, please give a second thought.
Some of the things I believe people who think they with high sense of humor suffer with are listed below. No human being is right, so I have the right to be wrong, and if the blog offends those with the high sense of humor, then they don’t have good sense of humor and that they only think they have one. Else this could have been a topic of humor as well!

•Need an audience to laugh - let there not be right set of people to laugh, all their sense of humor would be lost
•Need a targeted topic or a person to project themselves as a person with sense of humor– Making fun of a person because they are bald, dark or short are definitely not good sense of humor. There are some things which an individual cannot change about themselves.
•They are not patient listeners and attention seekers- Be around a person who thinks to have a good sense of humor, you can never complete what you wanted to say. They tend to crack some joke in between on what you said and would have grabbed all the attention towards themselves. You would keep wishing you got the space to complete what you wanted to say.
•Extremely bad sense of timings – You would have had a bad fight with your boss, mother or your spouse. Never dare to discuss the problem with such people as that would have already become a topic of laugh and floating in the air amongst people. These people, who think they have good sense of humor, do not understand the situation and time and always on lookout for topic to crack some silly joke to entertain the audience around. What may be important to you is only a topic of humor to them.
•Like to watch some crappy shows - I tried watching some of these laughter shows (wouldn’t name them here) couple of times and I never found them to be funny. The host claims and flaunts to be a person of Good sense of humor at the cost of insulting the live audience sitting there. Whoaa!! People get paid to insult people and we happily watch in the name of “Good sense of humor?”


Please call yourself a person with good sense of humor if you don’t have your own audience to laugh, it is not targeted at a person who is helpless about something and you have allowed the person to complete what he or she wanted to say before cracking the silly line, which you think would be a joke!

We do say laughter is the best medicine, but I do wonder do we always need good sense of humor to laugh. Today these “assumed to be happy creatures” are making fun of others in the name of sense of humor, is there a guarantee that you wouldn’t the topic of their humor tomorrow? If you are ready to face, be the audience. Else please treat only the people with real sense of humor as entertainers and don’t be all ears for rubbish jokers.

Note: The blog does not intent to offend feelings and sentiments of anyone other than the people who assume they have good sense of humor!:p

Unlearn what you learnt!

I am back to my liberator (writing) from some frustrations, well not exactly frustration but some dilemmas that I have been facing off late! Back to my B-school days, ohk I am not from tier1 B-school, but I still learnt the same business which an IIM guy would learn. Well an IIM might feel this to be an insult, but I don’t care because that’s not my business and that’s not what I learnt in my tier-3 or probably tier-4 B-school.

Got diverted as ever! On that note, one more diversion, my sister hates me using “!!!!” which is there in most of my messages and blogs these days as she says it’s a symbol of frustration and I shouted back that it’s just a disconnect between two sentence instead of a full stop. That’s all! Well I started to write about something, I don’t know what that something was supposed to be, but this is where landed to!

Some of the learning’s which I learnt in my life, are now turning into some big disasters, no not as big as I think because small and big is situational! At this point of time, they are big, well may not be tomorrow or the moment you are reading this!

•I learnt : Change is preceded by chaos
Wrong-It is also followed by one. Change is not only preceded by chaos, but followed by a change is also a chaos. I join a new job; I have no clue what I am supposed to do. And worst of it all, every few months I have a change of boss (Luckily I have had all good bosses, and that the change was for good always) but then yes I have to change the work style and understand their ideology and work such that I make them happy! By the time I do, boss changes!!!! Yes one thing I learnt the most of my experience in the corporate world is “the key to success is to make your boss happy!” I just hope, none of my blogs are read by my bosses as I assume they wouldn’t have time: p!

•I learnt -Every day of our lives is learning processes!
No waz! We are supposed to behave we already know everything. A Tier 1 B-school guy already knows everything and I learn things every day. Well that’s what differentiates me and him or her for that matter.

•I learnt –Sun doesn’t shine the same all days!
Wrong! It has to shine with the same intensity everyday! And it has to be EVERYDAY. A single day miss and you lost the game. Slightly you lose of the level of your performance; some other smart guy takes over.

•I learnt -What we learn is never applicable!
Theory and practical are two different things! Who says? Presentation skill is all what we require which we DO learn while doing an MBA. That’s what my Marketing prof made me do! And all my statistics prof taught me was the excel sheets which definitely is coming in handy to make some good looking graphs to impress the customers. Well I wonder wouldn’t they have some MBAs like us to do the same analysis? I guess they would hire people with the same skills at a higher cost! There, now I talk like a business analyst. May be they would hire a Tier-1 B school guy at a higher rate to do the same!lol!

•I got trained to work 10 hours a day during my Post Grad!
Wasn’t absolutely needed! My college made me work 10 hours in college saying get used to corporate world. They also taught us that there would be no work life balance and all crappy things which possibly could happen in corporate world. I first proved them wrong when I was in my first organization striking an awesome balance between work and life. Now I can prove them even more wrong! If they really had to teach us the real corporate world, they should have made us work 24/7! Another learning to be negated-No 10 hours concept, we need 28 hours!

•EQ-Emotional Quotient an important factor along with IQ to succeed.
I wonder why do I need an EQ? We do a work from home! Sitting in front of system, I don’t even have time to understand the emotions of the family. Either I have too much work or in bad mood because of consequences of work! And if at all I go to office, I don’t have any of my team member as they all are doing a “WFH” and I don’t even know the name of the lady and guy sitting next to me on my either side! Well I can write one whole blog on how work from home concept would be a flop in country like India with day long power cuts which are common and I often land up rushing to office in rain, but let’s not focus on that in this blog!

•I learnt –Learn to unlearn
Unlearning is more difficult than learning! Man who cares! I have seen some exact replica of presentations and ideas which were there in my old organization, now in new ones! A guy who is replicating all possible ideas and thoughts of old place is a champ! And those trying to come up with new ones are definitely the fools?

•I learnt –eating Etiquettes
We learnt eating etiquettes in the B-school! This topic has some mention in one of my blogs earlier too! But all that we eat now is S***! Let me be more decent with it, I mean unhealthy food and what is more important to think is how many of us have time to eat? Gone are the days when we would sit in front TV and mom would keep giving rotis or dosas! We would keep eating until she comes and shouts of how many more you would eat; you already have had 10 of them. Not that I would have literally had 10, but you never know, I was concentrating on TV! lol!

By the time I finish writing the blog, all I learn is I wasted my time writing and we learn as kids: TIME wasted is LIFE wasted! You have wasted few minutes of your life reading this! Unlearn what you learnt and get back to your work!!!!!

Things really do change overnight?

I saw people sitting on the roads with big boards and screaming at the mid of the night “ Bijli do , bijli do, dilli sarkar bijli do”….and I suddenly got up realizing it was a nightmare.

Well it wasn’t a nightmare but a flash back of reality which had happened some 20 years back in Delhi. During a peak summer season an area of Delhi didn’t have current continuously for few days including our house which was on Delhi-Meerut highway. And finally one night people sat on the roads blocking that highway and not letting the any vehicle pass by. I stood by at my balcony holding my parents and asked them “kal tak bijli aa jaegi na?” At times when things are not heard, we have to make things to be heard!

I google “KIA bus issue”, “BIA bus issue”, “Bangalore airport bus services issue” and nothing relevant was found.
Background: 2 weeks back, I board the airport bus KIA-8 on a Thursday to reach from my office in Manyata to Yelahanka and reached home safely. On Friday, I tried getting into the same bus at the same time and the conductor tells me it will not go to Yelahanka. I was confused, got down and waited for the next bus. And the incident repeated as the conductor said, it will go on the flyover and hence wouldn’t go Yelahanka or Kogilu cross, where I was supposed to get down. I still got into the bus and the driver explained that the routes have been changed from today and going forward all the Bangalore airport bus would go on newly constructed flyovers. I had to get down in midway somewhere and I took an auto to reach back home, which was late at night wondering things really change overnight in Bangalore.

Well two new flyovers have been constructed, one is almost an 8 km stretch and other one is about 12km, though I am really not sure about the second one. The availability of airport busses was the only reason why shifted to Yelahanka as I thought I would avoid the traffic and travel easily to reach office, although the airport bus fares are not too less.

Young population of Bangalore is sleeping: The day I reached Bangalore there was some “Bandh going on”. I still was on road because I had a necessity to search a house or a hostel. And that day I saw a guy with his SLR camera capturing the photos of vehicles running and shop which were open and I admired that the young population worked and held the responsibility in this place. And almost a year and half after this incident, I faced the airport bus issue and when I reached back home, all the neighbors told the same .There were so many young people taking that bus, when I asked what they are doing now? They said “they are switching 2 busses now”. Agreed that it was the most practical decision, but couldn’t they have worked towards achieving a better “win –win” for all. But no one did anything. Well you may ask “AAP ne(as in me) kya kiya?” .That would get answered in the later part of my blog.

Media is sleeping: I wasn’t able to digest the fact how the system can make such big changes overnight and tried googling again and again. I went through newspapers to see if there is any update on the changed bus routes, but all I got was no news found, no result found. I never thought media would sleep to this level.Has media lost the courage or was this was a very small issue to have been noticed by the media? Well I don’t think so it was small, because at least 100(Random numbers, no background check I have done, it’s a random guess) commuters have been affected on daily basis by the change of this route of the airport bus services whose regular travel route would fall below those newly constructed flyovers!

Environmental control teams are sleeping: So what was the result of the change? People had to arrange for an alternative transport, either public or private. The result was we added some 50 more bikes and 30 more cars to the Bangalore traffic? (Random numbers again, no background check I have done, it’s a random guess). We have added to some few decibels of noise pollution, to some level the environmental pollution and common man is not to be blamed, because at the end of the day, we have to reach office on time however we reach. No one accepts the delay in the time due to changing of the busses that I have to do or I get struck in the traffic!

Legal system is sleeping: As a result I took out my scooty for my daily travel to office. The distance is not less, but I do not have an option. It was only one day that I was hit by a truck when I was standing at the signal. Luckily nothing happened and I turned back to see what was the vehicle that actually hit and I saw it was a truck and in mean time 5 people come defending the truck driver saying it’s your fault. Not breaking the signal was my fault, as I saw the lights going red and I had stopped. Apparently the truck driver would have expected me to break it and go hence he forgot to apply the brakes! Whatever!!!! The traffic police (not one, there 3 were watching it happen), and they continued to watch without doing anything. Luckily I removed the helmet and seeing that I was girl, most of the people who came to fight, left. I didn’t prolong it long either, as I had the constraint of not knowing the language and I wouldn’t have got anything by proving that the truck driver was wrong. Actually one more interesting thing to note is, Police or the traffic control team also works only in general shift (mostly between 9am to 6pm) in Bangalore. At night we can hardly find them at signals, except few places where they do the alcohol test, with their selfishness to get money from the drunken people.

Finally what I did? The maximum thing which I could do was, to pick up the mail and feedback ID’s from the website of BMTC and airport authority to bring it to their notice about the change and told them that people who live below those flyovers are facing the issues, and requested them if they could find a solution for the same. Well I was glad for a minute that I got a revert back from the concerned teams which lasted only for few seconds as I realized that I just got a justification and not resolution. Justification that few busses are still running, which I can make use of! My Mail had clearly stated that both those two busses go straight from the Hebbal junction which is not right for people working in Manyata /Marthahalli and areas beyond them! But I was asked to make use of the service which do not fall on my route and that THESE BUSSES ARE MENT ONLY FOR AIRPORT TRAVELLERS! We work and do all analysis for foreign customer; can’t we do a bit of analysis before coming to such decisions? Please use the ticket dump (the electronic tickets generated in these bussed should have some records) not just for the revenue calculation, but also to see the routes and places where they are being used. And if the justifications are valid, I am sure people would accept it!

Aam aadmi is the sufferer wherever he goes. I wish I could sit on one of those flyovers, blocking them for few hours to make this issue heard by the right people. But if I am the only one going to do that, some truck would hit on and no police would be there to notice also. My life is too precious to let it go for such a petty thing which remained unnoticed even by media. I wondered if this issue could be reverted back overnight as it got changed?


Note: No offence to anyone or anything. I like Bangalore for its own reasons which every bangalorean is proud of! But traffic issue has been a thing for which we all want resolution. And this bus route change hasn’t brought anything good or rather added to the traffic problem. Feels bad that such thing also happens in my city of angels!

Fast Please!

I am going to write about the buzz word which I had been hearing for last 1 week. Loads of friend’s status updates changed on whatsapp! And as soon as I would switch on the TV, this was the only masala news they had to broadcast.

I was about to enter an important meeting on 22nd October at 2.00pm when I get a message “are you fasting?” from a friend. My reaction having been lost in my work was “WHOOATTTT FOR?????” The extra OO’s and TTTT’s were ment to threaten him meaning ‘don’t dare to send some crappy reply’, but still I got one “Karwa Chauth?” My reaction would have been worse, if my meeting had not started.

I forgot about the message as I was totally engrossed in work and thus my friend was saved until I switched on the TV in evening, waiting for my other friends to join me for dinner. As I was flipping through the channels I saw the news scrolling in the bottom of the news channels‘Patna me dikha Chand! Jammu me dikha chand! Dilli me dikha chand!’ and in few others channels were message from husband to wife and wife to husband. What was I supposed to do with Mr. and Mrs. Dholakia messages to each other on TV. Well there were others too but I found this name to be funny, which got registered in my mind and thus they get a special mention in my blog! lol! Well people don’t need TV to send messages to their husband or wife in this era of technology!

Should I call this an advantage or disadvantage of having a family member from media background, I don’t know. My sister used to walk with the next day’s newspaper at night and once she said “we didn’t get an update from the astrologer for tomorrow’s horoscope so we used last to last month’s newspaper, picked out the horoscope of some other sun sign, pasted it and work got over”. Not to mention the name, but I am talking about one of the largest daily newspapers of India. On the similar lines I was wondering if Mr. and Mrs. Dholakia were some imaginary characters of any news journalist and so could have been the messages.

I picked up my phone and replied back to my friend, “dikha chand janab? Mil fir, din me tare bhi dikhaungi tujhe!” and we laughed at that. And yes I did try to irritate some people asking the same question “did you fast” but ensured the timings weren’t wrong! :p

Before I go to sleep, I really wanted to understand the significance of this festival. I browsed through few sites and everything had a mention of how it is celebrated but none gave a reason of why karwa chauth is celebrated. Or rather none gave the actual significance of the festival. During my search I came across one article of Shobha de in times website, which said “it is absurd to do such a thing”. Well I have found loads of other rituals which I feel were absurd and often would get into arguments/trouble with people who said “things are important without any practical explanation behind the rituals!”

So here are some of the practical reasons I thought why Karwa chauth is being celebrated (Warning: Some reasons may be too sarcastic to handle! Do not read further if you can’t take a joke as a joke).
•Women get to remember their husband all through the day as compared to any other normal day. Well if they talk about them on a happy note or angry note that depends…..!

•In today’s era most of us (married working women) don’t cook all three meals at home. Both husband and wife are working, so they manage to eat at office. Well weren’t guys doing it before they got married as bachelors? So they continue to do so after wedding also, which is OK! But yes this day of karwa chauth would help such ladies realized that if they cook, atleast once in the day, their husbands might remember them and be glad to have them as their wife! So they may get to know the importance of cooking lunch! But I believe most the married working women would react to this by saying “10 ghanta they didn’t remember so just for a minute of their remembrance, I don’t think it would be worth cooking wasting my morning sleep!

•This is not a sarcastic one. For those who aren’t working, this may be a good opportunity to socialize with women who are sailing in the same boat. And it may be a good opportunity to gossip about their mother in law or daughter in laws! ohh I think that again got sarcastic!

•I was taught during my MBA about the concept of success transfer which I have already mentioned in few of my blogs. Women tend to put on weight after marriage and it’s a process of success transfer to reduce weight. If women can go without food for a day, the success can be transferred to other days as well. Logically this looks like the most practical reason for celebrating this festival.

•And last but not the least, time to test your husband and their level of dedication. Thanks to Shahrukh khan of DDLJ, women do expect their husbands to fast too! Ask them to and test their loyalty. YES guys would have their own reasons and complaints that they are tested day in and day out post their wedding and they don’t need a day to prove themselves! BEWARE if that is the case, the same is applicable for women also.

For once in my life, I am proud to be an IYER. All that we do in all festivals is to EAT! EAT! EAT! Or is it just my family problem of eating, I don’t know!

Consequences of quitting Facebook

•People no more remember my birthday, nor do I remember anyone’s except for the close friends. So? Good I would have lot of time to talk to people on my birthday rather than taking calls every minute! And I save time as I don’t wish every tom dick and harry on their birthdays on Facebook!

•Some people thought I got married! Good imagination that was! But I did wonder why!

•I got to know who gossip mongers were, as they kept calling to know what’s happening in “MY” life.

•Some didn’t realize also, should that make a difference of having such people as my friends? I wondered

•Some very close and some not so close friends did realize and called me after few months “when did you leave FB?” my reaction was der hai andher nahi, you realized I quit!

•No more do I click self-obsessed photos to post on FB! And neither do I keep checking every minute of how many likes I got! Now I like and love my own self! lol

•I do miss out on some stupid jokes being discussed amongst my friends and colleague, but that’s ohk! Had I been on FB, jokes would have been on me only!

•Well my cousins got really angry, imagining that we took them off from friends list, without realizing that I actually quit! So we have some fights and yet going on with some! But they would eventually understand that FB is for socializing with friends and family would always be family , whether they are on my friends list in FB or I don’t exist on FB

•I have so much time for myself that I don’t know what to do?

•I don’t have to worry who is going to tag me in what comment or what photo!

•I don’t get to know about things like rose day and chocolate day or any other small occasions unless its declared holiday

•No one gets to know my daily mood, whether good or bad and I am glad unwanted people don’t mess around in that case

•Well I don’t get to hear from my friends “how bad my update was” or “how frequent they were” although I did realize they didn’t have any other business than to follow my updates

•I don’t get to see the wedding photos of people. Well I am sure I would soon get to see the photos of the kids of the same couples and I am glad I quit before that! The worst are the wedding invitations posted on FB.

Realization: In the name of social networking, we have stopped the actual networking with the real friends which is more important. The virtuality of life has taken over reality of emotions!

I wish I was on FB to see how many likes I would have got for my blog as soon I would have posted it!:p