Let live in peace

This has been going on from few years now and now its not a big deal anymore! people have started taking it as any other news as common as sensex fluctuation.
I dont know who is doing all this, who is spreading the fear, who is disturbing the peace and harmony, whoever it is, deserves to be hanged to death not once but over 500 times! Once for every life they took.
On friday afternoon, we were in office and this news spread out that there were serial blasts in Bangalore and at places where most of my friends worked. Everyone was shaken and tried to reach people to ensure their inner circle of friends and family were fine. The phone lines got Jammed and that caused even more panic as there was no other way of reassurance. I had experienced a fear that I never experienced before. Fear of Death. A fear of What If a bomb wa splaced right in our office, what if its there near home, what if its there near Naresh's ofc building.. and several other fears combined with helplessness and anger on some unknown force who was doing all this. I wanted to screa at the top of my voice .. Live and let live people.. you dont have any rights to do this.. to take lives of innocent people.. to spread terror!!
I dont know as citizens of this country what and how we can do something against them coz I know the entire police force is not enough to protect this country of n billion people. We cannot just get used to these thngs and read it in paper and forget about it in a day. This is horrendous.
All of us need to come together , react and retaliate strongly. We clearly outnumber those bunch of terrorists and thats our strength.. we must do something about it. Coz this is not the world we would like to live in and this is not the world we would want our next generation to come in to :(

Jet Set Go!!

Sometimes in life, you do some things and you feel really really proud of yourself. Then there are times when you feel extremely disgusted about yourself for something you have done, and you just want the earth to split in to 2 and eat you up!

Sometime back, my husband and me decided to go to Anantapur to visit one of my relatives. Anantapur is around 3 to 4 hours by road from Bangalore.
We can directly go to the bus station and board a bus without any prior reservation for such short travels. But I don't know why I wanted to be extra cautious ( Strictly against my true nature ) and make a reservation well ahead, lest we get the back seats. So I went to this reservation counter, confused the ticketing guy thoroughly asking him for the availability for Friday evening, Saturday morning, Friday afternoon and all other possible routes. Finally I decided on the Friday evening 7 o clock bus to Anantapur and booked 2 tickets. I had cross checked the ticket and clearly saw the date Friday, 7:00.

As is always the case, Murphy's law sprung in to action and I was really busy at office on Friday and I was struggling it out with some issue. It was almost like a nail biting India Pakistan match , here India being me and Pakistan being that irritating issue. 6:00 pm Code change, build, deploy & test --> 6:15 pm doesn't work --> code change build deploy test.... this kept going on and at.. 6:30 pm I just got worked up and finally gave up and told my manager I have a bus to catch at 7 and will look at the issue first thing Monday morning. Poor guy .. I didn't leave him with much option, before he could say anything I was gone.

We had exactly 30 minutes to reach the Bus station which is around 18 kms from our office and it was a Friday evening peak rush hour. Things couldn't have been worse! My Schumacher raced at a speed, zig zagged in the traffic, honked, took all shortcuts possible and finally reached the station JET!!! I could sense the tension and fumes coming out of him, as he suggested me not to make any reservation and second, I didn't drop the travel plan in spite of being stuck at office till the last minute. I knew, I should've cancelled the plan but.. I don't know why!!

So you might have already got the picture by now, I was feeling half guilty for what I did, half ecstatic for we made it in time for the bus!! We got in to the bus and saw that someone else was sitting in our seats. I went to them and said, excuse me, these are our seats, please get up. They didn't ay much and showed us their tickets. Same numbers assigned!! We went and started an argument with the conductor and driver as to how they can allocate the same seats to 2 people and etc etc. Then somewhere in the middle of the heated discussion, the conductor checked our tickets and a very sarcastic smile came thru his idiotic face. He said, Madam, these are today 7 o clock tickets, and I was like yeah so? And then it stuck Naresh, when they say 7 in the ticket they mean 7 in the morning and for evening the timing shudve been 1900!!!!! And here we were, fighting vehemently for our seats which were never ours in the first place!!!!

I can never ever forget the look I got from my husband, for the 20 minute bike chase, 300 rs bus ticket waste and the vehement argument with the driver and conductor for the seats!!!

Peace be with all ... Amen :)

Living with the dead!!!!

Last week my friend and me had to go to office in the night shifts as we had some conf calls with the clients. The whole office looks so desserted in the night. Except for the security guards and us, there were no one else!
One night, in the middle of the week, at around 1:15 in the night , we realised that there was absolutely no one else in the floor, and even the security guard had gone somewhere. And after that we started hearing some wierd sounds as if someone came, but there was no one and we heard double clicks of the mouse when thee was absolutely no one else!!! The girl along with me freaked out completely and started saying sai baba prayer and me.. I was all tensed from inside but had to put up a brave face outwards else she would have freaked out even more! Both of us then decided to leave immediately.
Yesterday it was all the more freaky. We went to the internet kiosk in the breakout area to check our mails. It was around 2:30 then. It was all so so soooo silent! We sat there for 15 minutes checking our mails and then suddenly the coffee vending machine started off with a loud noise and our systems got restarted (with the message "Windows is shutting down"). Both of us jumped out of the chairs, screamed and ran back to the security guards. I was almost in the state of shock and never more scared than that.

We told the guard about what just happened, and that idiot started laughing his dash out!! He said, the coffee vending machines do a self service every four hours and discharge water to maintain some temperatures and the systems at the internet kiosk restart at every 15 minutes. Our sheer bad luck was that both of them happened together and we thought it was some tech savvy bhooth!!!

Isse badda poppat.. kabhi suna kya?? :)
And I thought coming in night shifts only meant lack of sleep.. now I know it has lot lot more to it!

Govindaa Goovinda!

We went to Tirupati last weekend and believe me, this trip has been more than just a trip to God, but also been an eye opener for me in more than one ways.
I had to come to terms with the fact that God is easily accesible to the rich and influential. The other ones {like us} have to struggle n struggle a lot to get a glimpse of him!
We left on friday night and reached Tirupati by 3:00 am. We went with simple plans that we would get 50 rs sudarshan token and get a darshan of lord at whatever time it is available over the next 2 days. We went to sudarshan ticket counter at the bus and were taken back to see a mile long L shaped queue already waiting for the counter to be opened. It was 3:30 am then. We joined the queue hoping that it wouldnt take much time, once the counter gets opened they process very fast After we joined the queue, we got to know that the counter would open only at 5am. We took it easy and felt, as we came on weekend, we had to do some standing in the queues. Time ticked very slowly and it seemed like an eternity before it struck 5! I was eagerly waiting for the queue to move but even at 6 we were at the same place in the queue! Then the queue started moving at ants pace, but we were moving. Then a little later we realised, people were not very keen in following the queue system and lot of people were starting their own side queues(somewhr at the middle or beggining) and joining the main queue. People like us at the far end of the queue, stood where we were!!! and by the time we realised that even we had to do the same thing it was pretty late I guess. and believe me, it takes a lot of guts to join somewhr in the middle and ignore the angry glares and not so good to hear language of the others in queue.

But when we reached that turn of the L shape queue, things worsened. people suddenly started pushing from back, and people in front did not have any place to move. We found it almost impossible to ground our feet! Sandwiched is the right word. And all this after standing 4 hours in the queue. It was 7 o clock then. But what kept us going was that we felt we were almost done, for we were now at the shorter queue that took us to counter. But we were so wrong.. so so so wrong! There was this light at the end of queue whch we thought was the ticket counter and when we reached there, we realised that it was just another turn and the counter was still far far far away!!! and before we reached the counter we had to survive a few more sandwiched turns!!

I would give you some attributes of that sandwiched queue.. Noisy, frustrated, sweaty, smelly, angry and everything else that I cannot put in words. What was more heart rendering was, people with small babies standing in the queue and people caring a damn for those babies and pushing those who were carrying them too!! The agony those angels were put to was just not done! I almost felt like standing up for them and shouting at all others, but there were others who could shout louder than me! :( and yeah so much for good management, for all the people standing in the queue, there was just one ticket counter and the person giving tickets was taking his own sweet time oblivious to peoples suffering! After all this, came the good news when we were at 500 mts from the counter. The tickets for Saturday got over and we had to come and go through the same queue on sunday to get a ticket for sunday. None of us were prepared to do that! Going through that torture again is something I would not do even if someone said they would give me diamonds when i reached the end of queue. No! No No No!

It was 9 o clock and we were standing there at the bus stop, looking like we just came out of a warfield, beaten, bashed, each one of us smelling like onions and ith no tickets ! We had 2 options, one to go back to bangalore without darshan, second to rack up each ones brains and remember anyone and everyone in our friends circle who in turn had some influence at Tirupati through some relatives. Finally after making some calls, we struck Gold. A person who almost seemed like an angel for us at that time said he would arrange for a darshan next day early morning and also for accommodation :) we couldnt have asked for more. We felt we spoke to Lord balaji himself :)

That was the first smile of the day. Then we left for Tirumala and on saturday as we had nothing else to do other than giving mokkulu ( my FIL n MIL had to offer their full hair) , we went around looking for barber counters (Kalyana Katta) . Here too we had queues, but glad that we had to wait only for 2 hrs :)

Next day we were in the darshan queue by 4:30 in the morning. In fact none of us could sleep all night, with the fear that if we missed out on getting up early next day, we might not get a darshan at all. This queue in another story :) people all decked up in jewellery, silk sarees, silk kurtas, pattu panchalu, tommy girl and JLO perfumes and inspite of all this, there was that tirupati typical pushing that we now mastered! This time we managed to hold some ground successfully without getting pushed with no control. But I suffered from some blows in the stomach and back. A lady all decked up in gold gave a me a blow in the stomach with her elbow, pushed me back and joined the queue before me. I was so shocked to even say anything and yeah before I could say anything she was far ahead in the queue :). people behaved as if they were in some big hurry and if hey didnt break the queue, they would not get a darshan. I dont understand what they fail to understand that everybody in the queue will get a darshan and their breaking the system is only going to make it take longer time {for people like us}

In Spite of all this, I tried not to lose my cool and concentrate on God. I realised the time, effort and money that we had put in and how valuable this darshan was. I then realised why my Dad during our earlier trips used to get irritated when I used to giggle and joke in the queue . He always used to tell me not to do that in the queue and concentrate on God as there was nothing more important at that time. Now I comepletel understand why yo scolded me then Dad. Am sorry Dad for all the irritation I caused you!

So this time, I was fully concentrating on Govinda. But there was something missing. Earlier, people in queue used to continously chant Govinda, one of them would say loudly Govindaa and others would follow him. but this time it was not happening. The only people who were doing it were My mother in law and me. She shouted Govinda first and I followed her. Sometimes Naresh joined us meekly :) And the worst part was, when we were doing this, people stared us as if we were a bunch of uncivilised shouting in the queue!! Whatever happened to all those in the past who used to Chant Govinda with full bhakthi. But now we ignored such glares and continued with our chant. It took us 2.5 hrs for the Darshan and those precious 30 seconds of Gods Darshan made us forget all the troubles and effort. It was worth all the way! Such is his charm.. Govindaa Goovinda!

life and luck!

Man proposes God disposes, Whatever happens Happens for good, Destiny, luck, chance, good time , bad time!!

There used to be days when I used to doubt the authenticity of all the above mentioned sayings.. I felt those were all said only to comfort and said only when something happened to someone which they didnt want to happen. I truly believed those were said just to create a comfort zone or rather say something to cover up their inability.

But these days, life has been taking hazaar turns which is making me strongly believe that there is someone or something that decided what should happen next in our lives!

Some events that seem so inconsequential when they happen, later on prove to be essential or a prerequisite for something else to happen. and hen we realise, goo that it happened then. Its almost like it has been all pre-written and we are only living our roles out here!

Am waiting for something to happen in the near future and will then write it out as a proof to my above given statements :)