Eyes Wide Open

Now, that I have finalized on my school, I dont even feel like working. I havent gone to office for the past 2 weeks, but thats also because I havent been able to walk around much owing to a ligament tear I suffered when I twisted my ankle a couple of weeks ago. The doc says, it will be atleast a week more, before it completely heals.
I have a couple of feature enhancements to the tool, that I am just dragging out. I am almost done, though I was supposed to be done by it almost a month ago. Anyway, thats not really important at this time. If I come back to the same company or same team, if things dont work out, THEN it would  be a problem..
Well, I am kinda glued to my laptop all the time, looking at gradcafe, scouting potential studios where I am going to stay, and all kinds of stuff. I know I am not being professional and all, and after working for nearly ~5.5 years, I should be more professional, but I just dont feel like it. I am just saturated at my current job, frustrated at the no-progress I was making. I tried to take on extra assignments, but that didnt work out as well. So, here I am, sitting in front of my laptop, all excited, ready to begin a fresh chapter in my life

picture copied from here : http://nykmayank.blogspot.in/2010/07/how-to-identify-software-engineer.html ( I dont know this guy, I was just googling this pic), found this

Peace, or the lack of it?

I see so many people around me who are at peace or make peace with so many factors in their life. I dont want to be making peace with something. I want to be able to live, eat, drink,travel, fumble, regret, enjoy , diethe way I want to. Is that a wrong thing? It is a little selfish, some may say. Shouldnt we be selfish atleast to this extent? If we dont give wind to our desires, who else will ?
Dont mistake my rant/aimless mumbling to any complaints or dissatisfaction with my life. I am just speaking my heart out. 

Waiting

It is a weird time in my life. As I wait on the decisions from the universities for my PhD, I am anxious, scared,   saddened, elated, all at the same time. Anxious - would I get into a good program in a good school? Scared - How would I fare there? Do I have it in me? I am cringing right now, I have always been plagued by an element of self-doubt. Always! Saddened - I will be leaving behind family, and from the looks of it, would be staying apart from my husband as well. Elated- Finally i get to do what I wanted to do, Get to go where I wanted to go!
Hmm.. Part and parcel of the journey called life! You make some terrible decisions, you take some bold decision. Fumble, regret, try to do the right thing this time around and the cycle repeats.

Threshold

She knew this day would come and sooner or later she had to face it. She had dwelt on the subject of death,afterlife once too often. She had once before seen the scenes when a lifeless object( yes, that's what you become, dont you? when you stop breathing) is brought home. People screaming, crying, cursing god to have taken their loved ones away from them. At those times, she had thought how horrible those scenes were and had shuddered at the thought of ever being in their place.
But nothing had prepared her for this. She saw the cadaver brought in and kept in the verandah. She stared at the closed eyes, half open mouth, dry lips and lifeless hands that lay outstretched. She didnt feel a thing. She even wondered why she didnt feel anything. She tried to make a conscious effort to feel something. Nope.. Nothing.. There were no tears rolling down her cheeks, no questions asked, no explanations demanded, no fingers pointed. She felt something is terribly wrong with her, as if she was incapable of emotion, incapable of thought, as if she was lying right next to him ready to taken along with him to the other side of the world. She left she was in the same state as he was.. he couldnt feel anything.. no pain.. no emotion..
People around her made an effort to talk. Strangely she responded that too normally as if nothing has happened.. As if everything was as it was before. As if this is some dark dream from which she would wake up to a beautiful sunny morning to find that everything is just what it should be like
What people didnt realize was that even she was standing on the same threshold as he was... Nobody saw that.. Nobody made an effort to understand that.. Nobody bothered...

Blabbering

I havent written in a while. Hold on! wow! The last post that I wrote was over a year ago. Really??!! Hmm.. Hard to believe it!. So what made me think of writing today? Just to vent out my frustration.
May be what others say about a bride-to-be is true! The girl actually turns into a bridezilla! and needless to say I have turned into one myself. I could feel this transformation happening within me. The whole ritual of shopping and shopping and shopping ( which I absolutely hate! ) turned me into a total monster. So when next time any of my relative comes to me asking whether this color saree will suit that occassion or whether it is the right shade or whether it matches her complexion, I will seriously scream my lungs out! I have had enough outings to Chikpet ( the saree market her e in Bangalore), that I swear if I ever have to go there again, i will puke my guts out!
Indian weddings are never about the bride and the groom, which is what really really upsets me. The constant thought of if we do this, that person might be offended or this person might think this or that, just defies any common sense to me. Anyway, I have cracked my head enough now to understand that you never have a say in this anyway. So just step back and
watch the circus.
Then there is Murphy's law which showed its ugly face right at the right time. The work pressure was mounting around the same time. My health went for a toss. Boy! I thought I was having a nervous breakdown. If there is really a god out there and if He is listening then, "Please O God! Let me win a crore rupees in lottery and I will swear I will never ever ask a thing again". Now if god really does grant this wish to me, i will happily resign, and just laze around happily ever after. I desperately hoping this comes true.
Until then, keeping my fingers crossed!

Bookshelf

This is one of those days I am working from home. Most days I invariably end up working all day long, sometime into the night. But there are some days when I either dont have much work or it is something which does not need immediate attention. I hate to admit that , even at my workplace, I work on the "rocket principle"(Engg grads are very well acquainted with this word :-))
which , well, speaking in the true sense does not make me a very "efficient" employee. Anyway, I am not here to discuss my workplace efficiency .

So, well , till about sometime back , I has my eyes fixed on my ;laptop screen and was feverishly typing (coding). Just then when i took a moment's break, my eyes just wandered to my bookshelf . I felt a pang of sandness looking at them . All of them screaming out loud to come and immerse oneself in their big, beautiful magical world . Every time I look at them , its like there is some unexplainable force that draws me to them like a magnet . A month ago or so , I had been to Blossom's bookhouse , one of my favorite bookshops in Bangalore in Church Street, I had picked a lot of books(I usually end up buying a whole bunch of them whenever I am there , whether I have time to read them in the immediate future or not ). I have had time to just read two of them over the last couple of months .
The rest of them are there waiting to be picked up : The list of these include

1.Lord Of The Flies - William Golding (Currently reading)
2.The Girl Who played With Fire -- Stieg Larson (I throughly enjoyed reading its prequel The Girl With A Dragon Tatoo )
3. A House For Mr.Biswas -- V.S.Naipaul
4. The God Delusion --- Richard Dawkins
5. The Historian---Elizabeth Kostova
6. Ulysses --- James Joyce
7. Fight Club --- Chuck Palahnuik (I am looking forward to reading this)
8. Shantaram --- Gregory Roberts
9. The Savage Detectives --- Roberto Bolano
10. Anna Karenina ---- Leo Tolstoy
11.Comrades --- Robert Service ( Reading in parts)
12. The Trial --- Franz Kafka
13. The Sound And The Fury -- William Faulkner
14. Catch 22 --- Joseph Keller ( I started reading this , but somehow did not go father than 20 pages )
15. The hitchhiker's Guide To Galaxy -- Douglas Adams
16. Cold Moon - Jeffery Daver
17. Simple truth - David Baldacci
18. Split Second - David Baldacci
19. The Catcher in the Rye --- J.D Salinger
20. Couple of Agatha Christie

Hmmm... well and I am eagerly waiting to grab my hands on
1. Lord Of The Rings --- J.R.R Tolkien (The tru ebooklovers out there would gasp in disbelief !!! I know , I somehow never read it to date)
2. 2666 - Roberto Bolano
3. The Lost Symbol - Dan Brown (I am not one of those Brown maniacs , but I am just interested )
4. Her Fearful Symmetry ---Audrey Niffeneger ( I must say I loved her last book , The Time Traveller's Wife)
And most important of all
5. Lolita --- Vladimir Nabokov (I have been trying in vain to get a copy of this book :( )

Well, I dont know when would I get the time to read them , but I sure miss those days where I pick up the book and be a silent observer of a totally different world out there.

Just another post

I havent blogged in quite a while. It was partly due to the schedule I have had over the past few months which has actually made me optimise the amount of time I spend in front of my laptop. Which is quite the reason why I have not been watching as many movies/series on the laptop. :).. I didnt blog even when FEDERER WON BACK TO BACK FRENCH AND WIMBLEDON title!!!!!! That actually speaks volumes in itself about the fact that I have preferred to stay back in the real world than let myslef get absorbed in this virtual world of internet.

My overworked mind needed some rest and it was the time for the body to take over. Overworked, I say not only because of the work load in the office, but in general, the mad rush of the routine day -to -day life sort of, had(still has, i guess) created a perpetual restlessness in my mind that the usual weekend routine of "eat sleep and rest" didnt seem to wash off.

Thats when i decided I need to get away . Simply leave everything behind and get away . I had, I guess, a year back, had registered in the Bangalore Mountaineering Club (bmc) online, As a result of which, my inbox was always spammed with countless number of people sharing their trek/trip experience, and a lot of mails on the upcoming events , which s when i came across the trip to Mullyangiri-baba budangiri and Kemmangundi . I had long wanted to visit these places and had bugged my uncle , who is a trekking enthusiast, innumerable times. It never did materialise and when bmc organised this trip, I made up my mind to go for it. Asked my friends, some of whom readily agreed .

In the recent past, there had been times, that plans were made, and I had to drop out of it due to one reason or the other. But this time I decided to go for it, no matter what .

For a change, I wanted my body to rule my mind and not the other way round. My eyes craved to savor a sight which was not mad traffic or the ugly concrete jungle. My lungs longed for some fresh air . My legs wanted to wander about just on plain grass. Which is what I found in there on the last weekend when I went on trek . Some sanity restored :). And like the famous saying , "Miles to go before I sleep........"

This post is not a travellogue, hence I wouldt not go into the details of the trek. which probably is up next in the list of blogs . Next weekend I am going to Sagar for Ganesh Chaturthi . I plan to just wander out in the beetel plantations and go around in the village with no absolute purpose. Sit on the verandah chatting with my cousins and aunt and see the sun setting down on the beautiful village side. These two years of professional life has made me value and appreciate the beauty and simplicity of the life in the rural, which in the past I have always taken for granted.