I know! I am a pathetic blogger. Blogs are supposed to be short and sweet and frequent. More than a one year gap in each blog posts does not qualify as even decent. I hope to blog more frequently from now on. However, since blogging is a way of expression shortening it down is not my cup of tea as of now. :)
This chain of thoughts started on my 3rd day of work at my company. As of then, I never had even the faintest notion that I could be responsible in anyway. But then, a gallup online strengths finder test said my first strength was RESPONSIBILITY! Seriously, I didn't think any questionnaire however detailed it maybe could predict a human being so well. Sure enough, here I am 3 months after joining in the company, no sense of responsibility professionally and personally. :P
However, kudos to my company, I have learnt so much about how irresponsible people can be. The corporate picture of the company was rosy and still continues to be rosy. Clean floors, excellent interior designing, excellent cafeteria practices, dustbins everywhere, neat washrooms, the list goes on... Then I came to the Plant where the manufacturing goes on, the atmosphere is as un-international as possible. I agree the plant is in the process of construction of a good interior design but the looks of it is not what I am going to talk about.
When I was a kid no matter what I learnt well, I learnt one thing. If a place is not my house, then it is somebody else's and it should be maintained with the same dignity. It was a painful lesson that I learnt when I was scratching with pencil on the house walls and my mother taught me the lesson with all the thrashing :D In our house, if we drink cofffee in a paper cup then we walk till the dustbina nd throw it there. In our house if mother gives us something to eat in paper plate we crush it nicely and throw it in the dustbin. In our house, we replace the doormat if it is too contaminated with outside dirt. However, in the plant apparently no one has an in-house attitude. Nobody has a sense of responsibility even towards the mess they created.
Every morning I come to the learning center to find the chairs kept astray. Not arranged in the positions they were kept. The paper plates with food and half filled coffee cups lying around. Thanks but I don't eat or drink leftovers!!
Even in college and even here, when I see such insensitive acts, I feel like going and littering the homes of the concerned parties. How much time does it take to walk till the dustbin and put it in there?!
Then once when it was raining outside, I wiped my leg in the doormat and walked in and my colleague walked in without doing so. I left more footprint trails than she did. So much for being concerned about keeping the hall clean!! I assume doormats also come in the foray of projects and viable payback periods!!
I am not highlighting these as a defect in my company. I heard from my friends that the situation is the same in most plants. My question is why do these companies go for an outwardly portrayal of responsibility in the corporate world while it is actually not so in the plants. Either make that dirty or make this neat.
Ultimately, I may not be the one who is putting those paper plates in the dustbin ( though I do it sometimes!). It will be one of those workers. Why should they clean the mess we created? Imagine how much sensible work they could do when they were not arranging our chairs or throwing food residues in the dustbins!
In all my years of academics, I was never an excellent student. I was bordering on average. It was a thing that always pained me. But when I came to college and here at work when I see some superiors who must have proven themselves well in academics, behaving so irresponsibly it really gives me some sense of relief! I did miss on academic intricacies, but I learnt much more crucial lessons in life that are apparently difficult to learn.
My question to everyone who do not put mess in the dustbin is just this:
"How the hell did you pass UKG?? Did you copy??"
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
FESTEMBER 09
It starts today!! I am hoping it will be more fun than what I have had all these years.. :)
I'll fill you all up after it gets over :):)
I'll fill you all up after it gets over :):)
Monday, September 14, 2009
ADDICTIONS
Every song has seven notes written over and over again. We find this whole generation hooked to it. We all have mobile phones & keep using it continually to the exclusion of everything else. In fact I have known of friends who simply looked at their mobile phones hoping it will give them solace somehow, as though it will suddenly utter words of comfort or transform itself and give us a hug. I have come to realise that these are much more subtle and difficult addictions to get over.. And so is writing and so is everything that lends pleasure to any of the 5 senses: the eyes, the ear, the nose, the tongue and the skin... And so I, who am an irrevokable addict to the calming feel-good breeze of bangalore, the love of seeing greenery all around me, the love of listening to music, the love of tasting good food, loving the kind tender feel the touchpad of my laptop has on me, the love of writing and expressing myself which leads to further train of thoughts sensually are all Vices I have to be beware of.
Beware of??? Its what I have been doing all my life... You would understand the gravity of my situation if you were as helplessly dependent on any one of these for your day to get along well.. If doing anything else depresses you and drives you to one of these activities...... Say sms-ing in your mobile, switching on the television as a resort to depression.. These are few everyday-life things that we as technocrats are used to but do not understand the grave danger the addiction to these things cause. They all just eat into us and our heads in ways that we cannot understand. It is a virus which does not exhibit any symptoms until the matter becomes very serious.
My father used to tell me a story of one angulimaala (in sanskrit or prakrit this means a person who wore a garland of fingers around him). This angulimaala was a bandit who lived in the forest. He lived by robbing people who entered the forest off whatever possessions they had and then brutally murdering them and then wearing their fingers around him as an honour for having done the heinous act. The Buddha being the fearless and all-embracing soul changes him through an exchange of intellectual dialogues which I have forgotten (forgive the ignorance and the memory failure). After Angulimaala becomes his disciple he comes to the village as all his other disciples and has to live just as they do: by begging for food from the villagers. The villagers livid with anger at his crimes and not ready to forgive him, threw stones at him when he came on his first round for begging. He was severely wounded. Then the Buddha who comes for consolation gathers that Angulimaala has been more injured at his heart than his body. Angulimaala breaks down to the Buddha as the heavy burden of Guilt descends down on him. He explains to the Buddha that he did not bother about how many more physical injuries he sustained but he could not bear the fact that he had committed such heinous crimes and he did not if he was worthy of forgivance at all. The Buddha assures him that much more heinous crimes could be forgiven and all that was required was surrender.
Whats the connection to this and my first paragraph must surely be what you are all wondering. The lesson I gathered from the above story is that crude and simple minds understand through simple words. A murderer who does not understand more than ten words can be brought to the right path by explanation through those ten words. But its difficult to get across to a so-called educated and intellectual mind which knows more than a million words. In other words, these subtle addictions that I talk of: glorification of the 5 senses in anyway is a worse addiction to get over than the murders. Because a thief knows he is wrong but connoisseurs of music who cannot live without listening to music think that they are not wrong. That they are doing the right thing by being addicted to music and even if the Buddha came and told them about it they would probably be very cynical about the advice. They would not heed to him immediately like Angulimaala did. Fancy the Buddha telling a college student proud of being hooked to sms-ing that it is wrong to be addicted so much to a sensual pleasure, he will definitely get a deaf ear. He will also get a few blows if he is lucky. As I hold it, it might take some superman stunts for the Buddha to get across to the present world. The situation is that none of us are looking for a master. We believe we are masters of our own lives. We seem to know where we are to lead ourselves. For example, I would not take one word from my friends to decide which direction I should take my life to (though I seek a lot of reassurances from their side). So whats the point of this excruciating blog?? My point is that we are all addicts in subtle ways we do not recognise. How to recognise if we are drawing the line appropriately?? Keep an alert look out for senses. If they like your present way of life too much then its better you learn to withdraw slowly lest you should become helplessly addicted. Thats what I am going to do.
Beware of??? Its what I have been doing all my life... You would understand the gravity of my situation if you were as helplessly dependent on any one of these for your day to get along well.. If doing anything else depresses you and drives you to one of these activities...... Say sms-ing in your mobile, switching on the television as a resort to depression.. These are few everyday-life things that we as technocrats are used to but do not understand the grave danger the addiction to these things cause. They all just eat into us and our heads in ways that we cannot understand. It is a virus which does not exhibit any symptoms until the matter becomes very serious.
My father used to tell me a story of one angulimaala (in sanskrit or prakrit this means a person who wore a garland of fingers around him). This angulimaala was a bandit who lived in the forest. He lived by robbing people who entered the forest off whatever possessions they had and then brutally murdering them and then wearing their fingers around him as an honour for having done the heinous act. The Buddha being the fearless and all-embracing soul changes him through an exchange of intellectual dialogues which I have forgotten (forgive the ignorance and the memory failure). After Angulimaala becomes his disciple he comes to the village as all his other disciples and has to live just as they do: by begging for food from the villagers. The villagers livid with anger at his crimes and not ready to forgive him, threw stones at him when he came on his first round for begging. He was severely wounded. Then the Buddha who comes for consolation gathers that Angulimaala has been more injured at his heart than his body. Angulimaala breaks down to the Buddha as the heavy burden of Guilt descends down on him. He explains to the Buddha that he did not bother about how many more physical injuries he sustained but he could not bear the fact that he had committed such heinous crimes and he did not if he was worthy of forgivance at all. The Buddha assures him that much more heinous crimes could be forgiven and all that was required was surrender.
Whats the connection to this and my first paragraph must surely be what you are all wondering. The lesson I gathered from the above story is that crude and simple minds understand through simple words. A murderer who does not understand more than ten words can be brought to the right path by explanation through those ten words. But its difficult to get across to a so-called educated and intellectual mind which knows more than a million words. In other words, these subtle addictions that I talk of: glorification of the 5 senses in anyway is a worse addiction to get over than the murders. Because a thief knows he is wrong but connoisseurs of music who cannot live without listening to music think that they are not wrong. That they are doing the right thing by being addicted to music and even if the Buddha came and told them about it they would probably be very cynical about the advice. They would not heed to him immediately like Angulimaala did. Fancy the Buddha telling a college student proud of being hooked to sms-ing that it is wrong to be addicted so much to a sensual pleasure, he will definitely get a deaf ear. He will also get a few blows if he is lucky. As I hold it, it might take some superman stunts for the Buddha to get across to the present world. The situation is that none of us are looking for a master. We believe we are masters of our own lives. We seem to know where we are to lead ourselves. For example, I would not take one word from my friends to decide which direction I should take my life to (though I seek a lot of reassurances from their side). So whats the point of this excruciating blog?? My point is that we are all addicts in subtle ways we do not recognise. How to recognise if we are drawing the line appropriately?? Keep an alert look out for senses. If they like your present way of life too much then its better you learn to withdraw slowly lest you should become helplessly addicted. Thats what I am going to do.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Selfish
Face it! The world is full of it. Not even a soul who doesn't possess this vice. And I am not going to be a holy saint who preaches to people saying "My dearest children, we must not be selfish and kill each other". There is never a sentence in calvin and hobbes that is wrong and hobbes is right! "We are here to devour each other".
Now why does it require special mention? All of us are grown up enough to know we are not good people and we dont require a "Hi Everyone :):)"blog to tell us that. Lets rewind our lives back to the time when we were innocent children (yes even if you knew everything about life then you were still innocent!). Ask a child and it will tell you that it wants to work towards the environment, it wants to do good to the society etc., As a kid I too wanted to do good to the environment. But look at me now. I have become this painfully mediocre person who does not care about anything other than herself. A full day will pass and I would not get even ten seconds to think about what good I am to the society. Maybe I am wrong but at least in my friends circle I see people working hard everyday and achieving well, not to do good to the society or the environment but to themselves.
Yes thats how it is. The world has become a savage place. But if we have the slightest inclination to save our future generations then we would think about whether we should be so selfish after all.. Fossil fuel reserves will exhaust very soon, CO2 levels will increase to unprecedented levels. An appropriate evaluation is a summer in Bangalore. 4 years ago a summer in bangalore would be equivalent to a winter in trichy or chennai. Now, its only slightly better than a summer in chennai. This is what each of our selfishness put together and magnified does to our society. It can make a "pensioner's paradise", a "garbage dump".
In another year, I am going to graduate as a chemical engineer and all my friends will graduate as some engineer as well. But I dont know out of the 700 of us who are going to graduate how many of us will involve ourselves directly in the good of the environment. (hardly 2 or 3, and I am being very generous) And we are supposed to save mankind in another 20 years, during the prime of our lives.
I did not blog to say we all should drop all that we have at hand and work towards the environment but we can do little things that can save the community. We can segregate plastic waste. We can switch off an extra luxury light that we may be using. In future whatever work we do, maybe we can set aside a portion of our salary towards this cause. But something has to be done!!
Now why does it require special mention? All of us are grown up enough to know we are not good people and we dont require a "Hi Everyone :):)"blog to tell us that. Lets rewind our lives back to the time when we were innocent children (yes even if you knew everything about life then you were still innocent!). Ask a child and it will tell you that it wants to work towards the environment, it wants to do good to the society etc., As a kid I too wanted to do good to the environment. But look at me now. I have become this painfully mediocre person who does not care about anything other than herself. A full day will pass and I would not get even ten seconds to think about what good I am to the society. Maybe I am wrong but at least in my friends circle I see people working hard everyday and achieving well, not to do good to the society or the environment but to themselves.
Yes thats how it is. The world has become a savage place. But if we have the slightest inclination to save our future generations then we would think about whether we should be so selfish after all.. Fossil fuel reserves will exhaust very soon, CO2 levels will increase to unprecedented levels. An appropriate evaluation is a summer in Bangalore. 4 years ago a summer in bangalore would be equivalent to a winter in trichy or chennai. Now, its only slightly better than a summer in chennai. This is what each of our selfishness put together and magnified does to our society. It can make a "pensioner's paradise", a "garbage dump".
In another year, I am going to graduate as a chemical engineer and all my friends will graduate as some engineer as well. But I dont know out of the 700 of us who are going to graduate how many of us will involve ourselves directly in the good of the environment. (hardly 2 or 3, and I am being very generous) And we are supposed to save mankind in another 20 years, during the prime of our lives.
I did not blog to say we all should drop all that we have at hand and work towards the environment but we can do little things that can save the community. We can segregate plastic waste. We can switch off an extra luxury light that we may be using. In future whatever work we do, maybe we can set aside a portion of our salary towards this cause. But something has to be done!!
Friday, March 13, 2009
Transcending all communication barriers!!
Three years of engineering in this place has taught me loads.
For example even if you get up at 8:15 you can reach on time to class at 8:30 but you have to sacrifice your breakfast. You can still finish ten experiments in your record note book if you start at 11:20 for a 1:30 lab but you have to sacrifice lunch. Its completely justified to while away all the remaining time.
Apart from all such trivial things there's one great lesson I learnt from the college. You should never evaluate a teacher based on his/her language.
Mrs.C is one of the best teachers we have in the department. A typical class of hers runs somewhat this way:
"How it is that that is you will do this way?? You should that is know what you are doingu.. ('u' is that typical tamilian 'u')" It never matters to us that she talks this way because she teaches mass transfer really well. "Partial Condensation will that is give more efficiency" It does not really matter that she said that in a not so perfect english. We still understood that partial condensation gives more efficiency. But Mr.A, nickname shushu by a mr.10 of my class :), has an additional problem. He has to breathe out and hiss like a snake in between every sentence. So a typical sentence in his class will sound like:
"The reaction.... ssss.. will reachesssss... (breath)... completionssss... (someone laughs) (so he goes to his place and hisses and than says) are you understanding or not?? now whats microfluid and macrofluid?? (thats a long sentence so one more breath and..) ...ssssss..."
But still I understood that he wanted to say that a reaction reaches completion.
Thats the most precious lesson that I ever learnt... That i can transcend all communication barriers now :) Which is why you definitely need to be a part of an institution like this :)
For example even if you get up at 8:15 you can reach on time to class at 8:30 but you have to sacrifice your breakfast. You can still finish ten experiments in your record note book if you start at 11:20 for a 1:30 lab but you have to sacrifice lunch. Its completely justified to while away all the remaining time.
Apart from all such trivial things there's one great lesson I learnt from the college. You should never evaluate a teacher based on his/her language.
Mrs.C is one of the best teachers we have in the department. A typical class of hers runs somewhat this way:
"How it is that that is you will do this way?? You should that is know what you are doingu.. ('u' is that typical tamilian 'u')" It never matters to us that she talks this way because she teaches mass transfer really well. "Partial Condensation will that is give more efficiency" It does not really matter that she said that in a not so perfect english. We still understood that partial condensation gives more efficiency. But Mr.A, nickname shushu by a mr.10 of my class :), has an additional problem. He has to breathe out and hiss like a snake in between every sentence. So a typical sentence in his class will sound like:
"The reaction.... ssss.. will reachesssss... (breath)... completionssss... (someone laughs) (so he goes to his place and hisses and than says) are you understanding or not?? now whats microfluid and macrofluid?? (thats a long sentence so one more breath and..) ...ssssss..."
But still I understood that he wanted to say that a reaction reaches completion.
Thats the most precious lesson that I ever learnt... That i can transcend all communication barriers now :) Which is why you definitely need to be a part of an institution like this :)
Monday, July 7, 2008
SPIRITUALITY? UH YES, OF COURSE, I UNDERSTAND
They say a father-daughter relationship is very special. I empathise very well!! To be very clear I can empathise only the daughter side of the relationship. I have never made any special effort to understand what maybe going through my father’s head every time I say anything. I only predict with 95% accuracy, what my father will say for anything that I have to ask of him.
Ever since I was 13, I had observed drastic changes in my father. And I have this bad habit- I am never curious, especially with people very close to me. Every morning I saw that he used to sit straight in the very small enclosure that we had as a Pooja room for about 45 minutes and the house was forced to be silent. Well 7 o clock in the morning and 2 people have got to leave for work and one teenager has to leave for school, its not easy to maintain peace and quiet you know, so definitely one of the rest of us at home are sure to get chided. Maybe another daughter would have lived her life with an Oh-my-God-my-father-has-turned-spiritual edge to it, but me- well... I used to be the same girl who used to watch television to the exclusion of everything else and who used to preach English to her friends who studied in the kannada-medium school. My father being spiritual hardly made any difference to my life because all those times he thought I was too young to take the load.
Now I am 19 years old. Old enough to take any kind of load. His mother had 2 kids by this age. And so enters spirituality in my life.
I don’t know what spirituality means to me. Its supposed to bring some kind of a meaning into my life, I understand, and it has. Its 2 years in my life since I have had a strong desire for anything. My life is moving on. And I am taking every success and every failure in the right spirit. Maybe with little faults here and there, I have cried for a short while when there was failure and enjoyed for a short while when there was success. But I think I am allowed liberty to learn through errors and I am learning slowly, slowly. But I don’t know how to think of studies as a kind of meditation. Given a situation I don’t know whether I should do what I want or I should do what is expected of me to do.
A typical morning at home:
Father: what is it that you are reading?
Me: (some subject)!!
Father: what is this topic and what does it say??
Me: (I explain something about what I am reading)
Father: read with 100% focus and use it as a meditational tool to relieve yourself from other distractions. You understand??
Me: ??!!(I nod my head nevertheless)
(and now comes the most confusing part)
Father: “Who am I?” is the most effective meditation that you can do. It will lead you to liberation. You have to simply surrender to God and ask yourself “Who am I?”
Now today I was not going to just ignore it like this. After he went and I got enough solitude, I cleared myself of all other thoughts and asked myself “Who am I?”
I heard a voice inside me which said, “Well.... frankly I don’t think its a very intelligent question. You learn how to answer to such questions when you are in first standard”
And so folks, here is my problem with spirituality.
My father maybe right about whatever he is saying but I don’t understand this whole thing of meditating at all. These days people say sitting and meditating when you are deeply disturbed will clear your mind. So far as I have seen when I am disturbed I am not able to clear my mind and close my eyes and think. I only observe that mind is disturbed after a long time of delving into the disturbance and deliberately stopping to think about it. I asked my father about this and he said what I was doing was meditation. Oh yippee!! J What about Who am I??
Me: “Who am I??”
My inner voice:.................... Uh... um.. well its getting late how long will you keep lazing around like this?!
Me: Alright! I will go take bath in sometime. Meanwhile, who am I??
My inner voice: listen can we just drop this question for some time?? You got to finish your degree and earn something and establish your own life. Then one day at leisure you can sit and ask me the question and I will answer.
Me: Oh but if I don’t get any leisure time when I am working??
To this day, my inner voice remains silent for that question alone though it is very noisy for everything else that happens in my life.
So,
Father: The solution to all problems in this world lies in the question who am I. Do you understand??
Me: Uh........ Yes, of course, I do.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Hello
Its blogging, blogging and blogging these days. I thought I will try my hand too. :):)
Rashmi Bansal who started this blog called youth curry had come to my college once. At that time I had tried my hand at expressing my views online but I thought its just not coming on the computer with as much ease as it does from pen to paper. But just imagine first writing it and then typing it: will look like I am too jobless right?? :P Anyway this is what she said, "You will not grope around for topics to write on once u r observant about everything around you". I ll say I disagreed with her. You maybe extremely observant but what if you cant write them out?? Then of course blogging will not fascinate you.
Now that I have started blogging I would not like to feed my friends right on the first post with my opinions about everything. So chao..
I ll start everthing in my next post :P
Rashmi Bansal who started this blog called youth curry had come to my college once. At that time I had tried my hand at expressing my views online but I thought its just not coming on the computer with as much ease as it does from pen to paper. But just imagine first writing it and then typing it: will look like I am too jobless right?? :P Anyway this is what she said, "You will not grope around for topics to write on once u r observant about everything around you". I ll say I disagreed with her. You maybe extremely observant but what if you cant write them out?? Then of course blogging will not fascinate you.
Now that I have started blogging I would not like to feed my friends right on the first post with my opinions about everything. So chao..
I ll start everthing in my next post :P
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