A loss....

One of my colleagues passed away. Today, in the morning we got a call saying that the doctors have given him two hours...maximum...
And 10 mins ago it was announced that he has passed away.
Reason? No one knows. He was admitted in the hospital last week for a viral infection. First was diagnosed for Jaundice, then for Dengue and then for Rickettsial fever. But, I suppose neither of these three was what he had.
What ever he had caused a multiple organ failure. He was on the ventilator. Kidney, liver, lungs were non-functional. He was unconscious. He is survived by his wife and his 8 month old son. He was just 31 years old. And he had come to work just last Wednesday.. and then, he was all well... but within a week... in a week, he is gone... he is just gone...
I didn’t know him that well. I didn’t have many interactions with him.
From whatever I know, he was a good person and this shouldn’t have happened to him and his family. His son definitely did not deserve to lose his father at such a young age. When he grows up, he wont even remember his father well. He wont remember what kind of a person he was. He will just have a photograph, framed and hung on the wall as a memory of the person who brought him to life...

May God bless his soul and may God give the strength to his family to move on…

Happy news!

Its the time where things have finally started going the correct way! (Touch wood!)
I am getting the expected responsibility in the office. i am doing a fair job. i am enjoying what i am doing. i finally feel 'set' in my career for the first time since graduation. i feel satisfied with what i have in my professional life.
On personal front, things are going good. me and S are finding enough time for each other. there are no invasions in the privacy (oh i wish it remains that way! ;))
i just got a call from S. He got his assessment results. well, he has been graded a rank higher than what he was expecting. and he is one of the few cases (who have joined recently in the company) to have got that! Oh i am so happy for him. So, tonite is going to be a celebration day. Co-incidently my maternal uncle is also in town and we all are going to go out together.
At the end of the day i am getting satisfaction of having done something valuable during the day!!
it feels good....

Updates...

Nothing has changed. Everything is normal!
We had a puja on sunday at our place. Not many people were invited. Just my parents and sushils side of the family. Sushil side of the elder family did arrive in time. The puja was planned for 12.15. It did start on time too. but the younger generation arrived just in time for ....... well.....lunch... at 2.00 p.m. they missed the puja.. intentionally or unintentionally, well, i dont know that and i dont care what the hell they do.. so, basically, you know... nothing has changed.. everything is normal.. and like a stupid person i was seeing a ray of light at the end of this pitch black tunnel.. at the back of the mind, i knew that when i would emerge out of the tunnel, it was going be a pitch black, moonless night anyways!
If i dont care about this then why the hell am i writing about it? Well, just because i want to keep this in my memory long enough because it did hurt S very much! and as i said a hundred times before, i hate seeing him hurt like that. so, thinking of some sort of vengeance.. vengeance is sweet! no?
Oh! i have become so bad!!
The accident issue is still not coming to rest. now the two wheeler person is asking for the original hospital bill inspite of the fact that we have paid it entirely. reason: he has to claim the insurance (for himself). Otherwise, he says, we will come and beat S up....
its a tough decision, but then i have decided not to relent to the request. why do i do everything that pathetic person asks? i have asked S to ignore all the calls and not talk to him at all. if it extends, we will just lodge a complaint with the police. One scratch on S, and i will make sure that man is destroyed for the rest of his life. its time probably i start trusting the police force of India and go and ask for help, the legal way!
Lets see what all happens..
Between, i got company in office. a new person just joined in my department. A female, my age, my batch (from a different college and course). No one knows whats her role is going to be. She is however on induction currently. RI is all the more confused.. he's sitting away at the other office and is totally unaware of the scene here! he shud be back this week... and then things should start to unfold.
I am a bit scared currently. there is a lot of expectation from me. i mean, people here want to push me ahead in my career. i am being trusted and given a lot of responsibilities. and that, is sort of scaring me a bit. what if i fail to satisfy all these expectations. what if i make a disaster?
God help me! when i shud be happy i am feeling sad and nervous. i think i have the illness (its some sort of depression..i dont remember the name exactly) which is mentioned in one of the Sydney Sheldons book (the other side of me) as i am showing all the symptoms (literally!!)

A project......

Here, again, i am doing projects which have nothing to do with my job profile. But, have a lot to do with my personal interests. These are the kind of projects that capture my attention instantly. Something, i really love to do...
okay, this is not something great. Actually we are planning to give our office canteen a makeover. currently, it is in a wonderful shape. but it would be so for new comers like me. for people who are seeing it for the past 11 years, it has definitely become very boring and dull and gloomy!
So, how did i get into this? actually it was across the table when we were having breakfast. there had been an audit of the canteen few days previously and it was found that there could be a lot of improvements. well, so we were eating and BB suddenly told MM that the wall between the seating area and the kitchen needs to be transparent so that the kitchen wud automatically be spick and span. so, MM suggested that we need to change the cutlery and furniture as well.... actually need to change everything..
we were 3 females sitting on the table apart from this lot and BB suddenly announced that renovation of a place like canteen is best done by ladies. So the ladies sitting at that table at that point of time got the job. it was me, k, and moe
we had our aamby valley day coming closer and we had to practice for our dance too, so we accepted the target at that time but gave a farther deadline.
Aamby valley was over and we had to act now because everyone was asking us for the status of the project that was handed over across that breakfast table!!!!
So we went on a expedition to all the canteens where our caterer serves to. and, we were depressed seeing that. we'd thought, our canteen was out of the ordinary, exceptional.. but the canteens we were seeing were far better. of course they were all just 2 years old and ours is almost 11..
anyways, so we started with a list of things we saw and some photographs to back it up. We visited 3 places that day and the last was canteen of a school called Gurukul. It was amazing! the school in itself was amazing. The facilities and also the fees are ofcourse exorbitant. its a residential school and later i was wondering if at any point of time i would be able to afford the fees if i want to send my kids to that school.. well.. may be.. hopefully..
So, after seeing the canteen and kitchens in all the areas, we started our journey back and got stuck in traffic for over an hour and a half! that was the irritating part of the day. but rest was great!
so we got a general idea of the latest trends and started renovating the canteen in our minds eye.
We made one more trip after that and went places, mostly to the suppliers seeing the various types of cutlery that would be available. it was hot. stuffy. but we had a very good biriyani that day which practically compensated everything else. Lastly we went to Big Baazar to find the largest variety. the entire day seemed waste as we realised we shud have visited big baazar first!
Anyways, so all the data gathered, we were then planning to visit Mumbai to see the crockery and cutlery because it would be around 30% cheaper there than here. but, that never happened cauz BB thought, we were breaking our heads too much on this project. So he asked us to present the data we had gathered and then hand everything over to the company who manages our canteen facilities to do the rest!
well, then armed with the rapidly made presentation we headed upstairs to show it and then came the unexpected. Phones were dialled and within a minute, all the managers in the company arrived to have a look at it. i have never seen people assemble so fast. ofcourse when the boss calls you, you better be there!
So, only the presentation done, we were not at all prepared to speak in front of a dozen others. 'Phew! alright, lets get over with it'
and then, we began. Hardly any questions, many nods, many smiles..... we were succeding..
everyone liked our ideas. appreciated what we had done. gave their suggestions and some tight deadlines too! We were ecstatic!!
one comment, 'you are really taking efforts to do all this. and you have done well. just remember that after all this is done, people will still make annoying comments'
Well, we already knew this, but we really appreciated him telling this!
afterwards, there was a definite upswing in the mood and somehow this has boasted my confidence which i had sort of lost during past couple of months.
So now, we are on mission canteen with a tough deadline to meet.
The joy of creation is lovely. we are not creating anything, its just a renovation... but... well, lets say creating a new canteen. I hope it turns out to be beautiful...
this will definitely be an experience which will teach me a lot of things and which i will remember for a long long time..

Trapped...

The silence.. the silence before the storm. That’s what I am feeling like right now.
Actually, nothing to worry. Everything is going great. But, that precisely is the reason for me to panic. Everything is going fine!!
Why have I become a moron like this?
Good question! I don’t know. I don’t know what is happening to me. There is this connection between me and badly timed depression. And it is getting stronger by the day. Every time, when I should be happy ideally, I feel sad. I feel afraid of the happiness. And I feel so angry.............all the time!
I feel like a bad person desperately trying to become a good person and inside my own head I am unable to communicate what I want, what I want to do, what I want to become, to myself even.
I feel so.............................trapped!!

Save the earth...

Please read here and join in.....
Join in On March 29th, at 8 pm in whichever part of the world you live, turn off the lights. For one hour. One single hour....
Thanks...

Pravs World....Let go...

Let go of the Past,
Only then you move towards the future.

Let go of the Regrets,
Only then you move towards the happiness.

Let go of the Presumptions,
Only then you move towards the truth.

Let go of the Problems,
Only then you move towards the solutions.

Let go of Yourself,
Only then you move towards the divinity.

Renovating the house

Well, we are finally doing some changes in the house. There are a lot of things that need to be changed, but we have settled on redecorating the living room only for the moment. So yesterday, the entire day was spent in going around the city and exploring various shops. me and S were quite clear in our minds about what we wanted so the actual shopping did not take too long. Everything was finalized and we are getting half of the things tomorrow and the rest on next sunday. I was happy to have been given the free reign to do what ever i wanted and buy what ever i liked and that too by my ils (when this was said, i just stopped short of having an actual fit!). And well actually i was amazed with this sudden change of attitude and on top of that the readiness to sponser most of the things (i did need a bit of support to stand after hearing this)! i mean, knowing them (rather him) this was entirely unexpected in this lifetime. MIL wasnt entire convinced of his spending money and did retort saying that no redecoration was needed. but that indeed was a feeble retort and she didnt stop us in the end either. to cap it all, the sofa sets what we have selected are a bit trendy and out of the league of the conventional ones. well, they didnt seem to object that either! i was feeling.... well, cant describe in the right state of mind even.
I dont know what has caused these things. probably my patience paid off. probably Ss patience paid off. probably their happiness of going to the 'other house' (i doubt it though) paid off. whatever it is, i mean, this was a complete transformation.
i pray to God, for the first time for my ils: 'may the love, sanity and understanding never die!'
no one would ever imagine how jealous i felt on seeing an entire family together, laughing, enjoying. we never had this problem on my side of the family. Unfortunately, as sis isnt stationed in our city, our entire family get-togethers are limited. but we do make sure to make the most of them when we meet.
This attitude has always lacked on Ss side of the family. i dare say that it is almost stupid to expect this from b/sil and i know that they would never want to be family ever. but with this attitude change from ils, i do see a tinge of hope, a ray of light at the end of a long tunnel. I want to run towards it, grab it in my hands and never let it go... but i am afraid that by the time i manage to cross the threshold, it will just flicker out. I am afraid that someone will not be happy to see that i am managing to live happily. Someone who i feel has always been on a lookout to hurt me. someone, who feels that i am responsible for them to land up in a state they have. A fear, that is always lurking at the back of my mind. A fear that i would see the omen again.
But as i write these lines, my fear abates. My resolute comes marching forward along the widest highway of my heart and gives me hope. Gives me a new strength. A strength to fight my deepest fears. and there is a sudden warmness that floods my fingers which had gone numb writing those lines. A warmth that makes me think clearly and a fire which says that i am even ready to kill, if i have to, to stop any pain, frustration or anger from reaching S henceforth.....
yeah.. too philosophical. but its just what i feel. its just what i had in my mind and i spelled it out....
So back to redecorating the house (in my minds eye for the moment).... catch ya all later.......

In tough times....

In tough times you will often find two hands... eagerly waiting to help you...
and those hands will be at the end of your own arms.....
Believe in yourself!!!

A day at Aamby Valley

A day at Aamby valley! well, i was finally there.
The journey to the place started at 9 in the morning, and we were there by 11.30 a.m. Welcomed by a parade of 'dhol taashe'and a huge crowd from the event management team. Armed with the keys to our cottages, we headed towards them in a battery operated open car. it was like travelling thru heaven. the place was so beautiful, so clean, so organized, (well, i am not proud to say this) it didnt feel as if we were in India!
Freshened up, we went for a magnificant lunch (which eventually became heavy also) and then headed up for a treasure hunt! Well, this part was not really fun. The basic purpose was some sight seeing and playing the game. but it all turned out to be just running around and getting baked in the sun! i will need a month or probably two to lose all the tan that i've got in these two days.
Next came the evening party, where we were to perform. We got all ready and came and sat in the open air theater to see Navjot Singh Siddu standing in front of us on the stage and addressing the crowd! And we were standing there, dumb struck, and cried out, 'Oh My God!!'
well, the performance of Siddu was as usual fabulous, in the end giving the message that if you want to excel in something, all you have to do is be yourself. That is what will make you different from others! how very true!
The performance was followed by a presentation and a award ceremony. The award ceremony was punctuated by our performances. We sung first. And i'll tell you, it went pathetic. The orchestra was horrible, we missed our pitch and everything went hay wire! Well, we were not doomed by that because our main performance was yet to come. So after that, we went in for some last minute practice for the dance. We danced on "jhoom barabar jhoom" by the way, from the new movie with the same name.
and suddenly we were called upon. We went on stage, all ready, all excited and all with a strong want of winning the prize. In our positions and the song started, "mungala, mungalaaa, mungalaa.. main gud ki kali...." we were just standing there, waving our hands at the music co-ordinator, looking bewildered and wondering 'now what to we do???'
well, the music co-ordinator was confused because the boys from our troupe were also going to perform on the same song.. it was not entirely his mistake! Anyways, so music stopped, and we resumed our positions, the song started (correct this time) and we danced our way thru as never before in practice. Perfect syncro, all with full energy and we had a blast out there. People were excited because of the performance, and we received a once more! (well, we were going to receive it anyways. with a full support from the entire factory staff, what were we going to expect?) But when BB came over looking as if we had already won the prize, congratulating all of us, then we were quite sure that we had indeed given a spectacular performance!
Then came a surprise, the boys asked us to dance on their next number (mungalaaa) and that was so sudden! we didnt know the music, we didnt know their steps, nothing! all they told us was that when we sit down and do a rowing like action, you come in and do something. and there we were, setting the steps for our guest appearance. All was set, we had gone and changed into our party clothes and then, finally we were called. They went in, started their performance and then suddenly, AM calls us and say, 'come on.. come on..' We enter, though this was not they entry point decided previously. And then SG and PS look at us and mouth "you are early". 'What do we do?' and then AM throws in the answer, "ab kuch bhi karo" (now do anything you like). and then we went ahead to give one of the most chaotic and unsynchronised, on the spot performance of the century (i suppose)
But anyways, this performance was the most fun of all! we enjoyed and danced carelessly without any fear or consciousness. It was fun all the way!
To our greatest surprise, we won the first prise for our dance (not mungalaa, for jhoom barabar jhoom) and gave another of the worst performances on stage when we went up there to receive the award.
The night after that was, well, rocking.. We danced till 1'o clock in the morning and then stayed on till 2.30 a.m. or so, singing songs and cracking jokes and laughing till our stomachs hurt! 2.30 a.m., our HRM finally threw us out of the place and ordered us to get back to our rooms. Well, not so easily we said, we didnt take the car, but decided to walk back (4 kms! :)) but unfortunately after walking 1/4th of the distance, the event co-ordinator got the information somehow and hit us with the information that 'it is so unsafe wandering around like this in a totally secluded area in the middle of the night on your own!!!!!!' (yeah right!) so he sent us a car and we got back to our cottages safe and sound.
After reaching back, we had a session of gossip about the hot-shots in our company. Listening to the stories, all i was doing was rolling about with laughter. OMG! the gossips that go around and the stories that have been built up are absolutely hilarious! I could believe it for a second, but when people (reliable resources) started telling what they had actually seen, then the things started dawning on me. I am not going to spell out any of it of course, not even with the abbreviated names. it wont make sense to anyone anyways, would it?
So, finally we slept at 3.00, for four hours, in a wonderful soft bed and then the deep sleep was shattered by the musical alarm of my mobile phone. Getting out of the warmth of the bed, cursing myself for having slept so late, i still eagerly got up and got ready because i awaited the coming day with much anticipation.
With a stumptuous breakfast gone down in the stomach, we then relaxed into one more gossiping session. That, was broken though because we had some more games lined up for us. Caterpillar race (i dont want to explain it now), tug of war, a cricket match.. and everything again right under the nose of the blazing sun! Anyways, so with the end of games (our team: team blue; won by the way!! :)) we had the closing session where everyone was given blue and white balloons which we let go of together.. and they went higher and higher up in the sky. That was one beautiful sight!
After lunch and heavy deserts, we settled in our buses to head back to our homes. We were so tired that deep sleep engulfed almost everyone and we got back up after we had travelled almost half the distance back home. And it was hot inspite of the A/C in the bus. That was saturday.
Sunday was spent eating and sleeping; eating and sleeping; eating and sleeping and doing nothing else (i did cook food in the morning though). But the entire event was now turning out to be very tiresome! Every inch of my body from the tip of my hair to the nail of my toes was screeming with pain. Sleep was the only alternative, which i did. But not fitfully. I kept on getting wierd dreams, which gave me a very disturbed sleep again. Probably the fear that now my happiness should not get shattered in the depths of troubles and irritations and anger and frustration. But fortunately nothing of that sort has happened.
So this was it.. some photographs from aamby valley are put up on my orkut album just in case nyones interested to see that..
Now, to get back to work.. but will write soon.. till then...