Me, Myself and My Attitude

My attitude, never let me fall in love. I could never understand this stupid act. What finding ‘True’ love takes? Nothing, but time, lot. Time is proportional to the kind of love. I realized. I never had the time. Not true. I was too lazy. Perfect. I could never convince myself spending time on this. There was this most beautiful girl; I met at my college railway station. I couldn’t take my eye off her. She’s the most beautiful girl I ever met in my life so far. I figured she comes to the station 0815 sharp. Well I tried, she smiled. But 0815 consistency was too big a task and easy to give up. It’s hard – forgetting the girl but 0815 was harder or may be hardest.

I never followed but was followed. People say that’s the attitude. Change it. You’ll never find love. I can never for my attitude is what I’m. Did you count the ‘I’? That’s dominance and that’s attitude. I started liking it. I started liking myself. You have to for you are the only one. Am I ashamed? Oh, never. I boost of it. Yeah, I can cover up and act good. Why bother? People will hate, who cares! How many think of soda as gas contained in a liquid contained in solid? That’s complex thinking. Well I like it this way.

Girls, the topic of most guys interest. I talk too much girls. I do, I hate them. I talk to hate them. I say they are gorgeous to hate them. Why hate them? For I haven’t got one to love, so I hate them all - Could be. I don’t see what I’m looking for! What am I looking for? Its complex, most won’t agree with me. A career oriented, independent, not in look out for a guy to lead her life but won’t mind a guy in her life. The inner meanings of all are the same. There are lots of deceptions roaming around. I got deceived couple of times. From the very small percentage of this rare individuals, finding one is real hard. But I like to succeed in this. Again, I’m not on the look out but won’t mind one.

Who writes something like this - I do. Will someone care to understand or even read after first two words? I doubt, but then, I don’t care. May be my soul mate will…

End is Abrupt...

All he could hear was the ambulance’s sirens. He knew he was in it but what he wanted to know was the destination – Heaven or Hell? He preferred Earth though. He had whole life waiting for him, he can’t die. God has never been so cruel to him and he’ll never be. He could feel one of his important organ is missing, but couldn’t figure out which one. He felt as if he was unconsciously conscious.

Life had been very easy for him. He really didn’t have to struggle much for he was happy about what he got. A mischievous school life ended with a good academic record, good enough to put him in the best of the universities. Then a playful college life earned him a good job in a reputed concern and also the love of his life, Shalini. Vijay was quite contented.

He proposed and she accepted to his surprise for she hardly knew him. This even scared him as he was afraid the relationship won’t last. But it was as smooth as his life so far. After three years of their college, they informed parents. Both the parents were considerate and no surprises here too. Marriage was fixed on Jan 24th, the day he proposed to her. It was like a dream life he was living for he had always heard other people cribbing about their life. He felt he got all he desired. Sometimes he even wondered whether he deserved them all.

That day, Vijay called her asking her out for shopping. After the engagement, they could hardly meet. He felt like meeting her that day, so he made up the shopping thing. He picked her up from her office in his bike, another darling. The best time he ever had was when he had both his darlings together. After some shopping at the mall, they sat in the couch of their favorite coffee shop. They had spent long hours in the same couch. Chatting about everything that existed and everything that they wish existed. Not only the onlookers but the lovers themselves wonder sometimes how they could ever speak for such long hours staring at each other. After the coffee, he dropped her home. On his way back home, he felt he was the happiest man on the world.

Just then, from no where, the truck came and hit him from behind. He had no clue what happened. He felt the pain for one tenth of a millisecond before he became unconscious. Then, he could hear the siren of the ambulance. At the hospital, he could see Shalini crying loud, his parents, her parents, everyone was crying. Then he realized he was dead. It’s all over so abruptly. When your life goes as desired, means God had his math all wrong and to correct that, he rubs off the entire calculation abruptly.

CRUSH

I thought I gave up writing. Really was running short of ideas and also time to think of one. Like bolt out of a clear sky, amidst my hectic work schedule, the word “Crush” stuck me. Have heard and talked a lot about crush, but suddenly realized that my brain would associate just one name when I think about Crush.

Setting the context, it was a year after I joined Infy, Mysore. One of my college mate, who works with Infy, Bangalore had come down to Mysore for some training for a week. We planned to spend the weekend roaming around Mysore in my then new bike. We were having brunch on Saturday when one of his friend called him to inform that she was in Mysore with some of her colleagues. They had a planned trip to Mysore and they were on their way to sight-seeing. I was a bit excited when I learnt that her colleagues were group of girls. You know how guys play diplomatically, they start teasing the guts of the other guy – “Dude get some guts now and call them out for dinner or something” He denied saying that they had put up in one of her colleague’s home and they can’t have dinner out. We dropped the topic there and started off with our plan of roaming around. In the evening, I dropped him back to his room, to pick him back for dinner latter that night. When we started off for the dinner, our gutsy guy called his friend to ask where they were. They were shopping (???!) @ DD Urs road. He then told me that we’ll go to Urs road to meet them. I told him : 'dude this is not what I was talking about, you call them for dinner in a proper restaurant' I had to back out now :) that how things are with guys you know!

He convinced me to take him there as they were waiting for us (yeah rite!). There were 5-6 girls, I missed counting, don’t blame me, my math is not weak but one girl was drawing all my attention towards her. You know I start to sweat when I’m talking to a girl looking directly in her eyes. I definitely was sweating that night but those minutes were worth sweating. I suggested the plan of them visiting Infy, Mysore campus, backed by my friend. We just got two positive responses from the group as they had already planned the other day for Sriranga patna. One of the two positives was my friend’s friend and the other was my friend’s friend’s friend or simply my CRUSH.

Interesting thing is how fast my brain infers. To tell you the truth my brain infers things that are favorable to me, may be it’s trained that way ;) They had told us that they’ll consult and let us know by tomorrow. Whatever, who cares, she reposnded positively and that’s all I need. You bet I could see the interest in her eyes, for I just was observing that one thing the whole time. I tried sleeping that night for long, when I gave up, I slept.

Yes, I did dream of her that night but Sunday morning oops noon was too lazy to think about what happened last night. Then this guy calls me and tells me that they are infact made up their mind to visit at around 2 and they have a train to catch at 4. Brain recalled and I woke up fresh. She was there and me too. We wore our colors, I mean she was in white and I was in black. That’s too romantic na ;)

We had lunch, we talked, we walked, we talked, I could hardly take my eyes off her. We were separated off the group though the group was just two steps behind us. In the very brief two hours, I was amazed to know we had so many common interests. Then I thought may be she’s flirting but then who cares, it's just crush. When I blinked my eyes for the first time after we met that day, she was on the bus to railway station. Though we shared so many things, we forgot sharing contacts. Well I’m dumb, I know. She had me locked in her eyes and it was hard for a moment when the bus went out of sight. I thought tears rolled down my cheek. I checked with my friend, he said he could see none. This crush is special, for, this is the first one I had after realizing what ‘Love’ is!

God! Show me one smart girl before I get married - G

My Big Story -- coming soon

Marks and Ranks - all Vijay worried about in his eighth standard when he joined the new school. The school was the best in that locality and getting an admission itself was a big thing. Eighth standard is when boys mature enough to realize love. Vijay wasn’t matured. He wondered why his classmates really worried about impressing a girl.

Onsite... Itz an experienz

"Onsite is my birth right" - says every software engineer today. Onsite is not only about money but also experience and knowledge. Well, some people may deny about the experience and knowledge but for me it was the experience which was thrilling than the money. In the perspective of a guy who has never entered an airport, working in US is sure lots of first time experiences in store. Peoria is the destiny. I had no clue of where this city/town/village is in US. All I was informed of was, it was somewhere close to Chicago. As if I pass by Chicago every time I go to my native, I used to say "Oh... so it’s closer to Chicago".

I got into this project at the right time, i.e., it started growing in number as I was growing in experience. This project gave me the feeling that: I’m no more a single person, there's a team to back me. Onsite wasn't a dream anymore, I could see it coming. As and when my travel dates were getting closer, offshore was becoming exciting and more memorable. It would have been real hard to part from my offshore team but for a really hectic last week, which kept all my thinking on to the work and never let me bother about leaving my awesome offshore team.

I'm born and brought up in Chennai but never had a chance to get into Chennai airport. I parted from my parents and friends at the airport gate, stepped into the airport for the first time. No problems with the check in baggage, as I was informed, I weighed it to make sure each was less than 22KG. The hand luggage that I could carry turned out to be one with laptop bag. I had an extra bag which was almost empty for a set of formals incase my check in luggage got delayed, which was very usual as people told me. The problem was I couldn’t dump my laptop bag into the other bag. I had to empty out the other bag and somehow dumped the set of formals in my laptop bag. There were other tit-bits in that bag which I had to dump into the cargos that I wore. All my cargo pockets were stuffed with things like my camera, backup batteries, key chains, gifts from my friends, and of course freshly minted 100 five rupee notes. Yep, my mom gave me as she always does when I'm traveling. Thanks to the invention of cargo and thanks to my teammates for gifting it to me on my birthday.

My travel itenary was: Lufthansa from Chennai to Frankfurt, Lufthansa again from Frankfurt to Chicago, United Airlines from Chicago to Peoria and then Rudresh's Car from Peoria Airport to Hollow Creek Apartment. The funniest part was I had to empty my cargo packet at each of the airport where I had to transition. The guards were going crazy as I took at least 5 minutes emptying the pockets and couple of them became curious to know about the jazzy paper cuttings I carried. I bet they wanted to have one when I told them it was Indian currency, a five rupee note. Chennai to Chicago, right on schedule, thanks to Lufthansa. But yet another experience was waiting for me at Chicago airport. My flight to Peoria at 1600 got cancelled due to bad weather. The next flight was at 2130 and unfortunately had no seats to accommodate me. The help desk informed me of bus services each one hour to Peoria from Chicago airport. Well, I tell you Chicago airport is really big. A tram runs inside the airport to take you to terminals-1, 2&3. The Lufthansa from Frankfurt dropped me at terminal-1. I went to terminal 2 to catch the domestic flight to Peoria. Of course emptying and refilling my cargo pockets at the security. At 1800 hours the flight got cancelled and I had to stand in a long queue for an hour to get to the help desk. After learning that I can catch a bus to Peoria, I caught a tram again to Terminal-1. When I figured out the bus terminus, it was 2000 hours and the bus to Peoria left at around 1920 hours and the next bus is at 2230 hours. I thought of giving the 2130 flight a shot. Purely depending on my luck I ran back to Terminal-2, emptied my cargo and refilled it again at the security. Got a wait-listed ticket and was praying god at the boarding gate. Lucky again and I was onboard on United Airlines flight to Peoria. Vivek was there to pick me up in his Volkswagen, oops sorry 'Simran', as he named it.

US is so different from India. Yes, everything is huge, big and grand. I know all mean the same but that is US as I saw it. A small coffee here would easily qualify for large in India. But now, I'm starting to feel may be back in India things were small, meager and less. The cultural difference is also big. The next thing you'll not miss noticing is the attitude of people here. Courtesy and optimism is spilled all over or may be I was lucky enough to meet only those people. ‘Excuse me’ s, ‘Sorry’ s and ‘Thanks’ s are used like water here. Bet Americans cannot survive without these words. In my fifty days experience so far, I had never listened to something which was negative or not encouraging. No sarcastic comments but just words of praise. You are praised for what you are expected to do. I told myself "Be extremely careful of this as this is very new and very addictive". But then, I slowly sensed that the responsibility, those ever positive comments were inducing in me and my performance is improving day by day. The logic was indeed simple: " You don't have to extract work just encourage"

I consider myself lucky to be in this project, for this project is all that I earned and all that I have. I'm just working towards the project feeling the same about me!

The Wrong Love

This should solve most of the problems, he thought, for he just had one problem. It was already the next day he still wasn’t asleep. Heart had overtaken the brain. The very thought of her doubled his heart beat. Brain didn’t like it and kept telling his heart “Girls are all bitches” “Never fall for one”. Heart would never listen as it was trying to command the brain – “Go for her” “She’s the one whom you were waiting so long”… When two of your most important organs clash you can clearly say you are in love with the wrong girl. You are never this clear when in love.

All he could do was to switch the channels in remote showing all his frustrations to the poor TV remote control. Why are girls like this? Playing around with poor guys emotions??? He had known her for the past eight months but the last eight days were different. She was slowing entering him, he thought, but before even he realized, she had control on him. It seem like he meekly surrendered. But for his brain, he was falling on her feet. The chauvinistic attitude that defined him was no where to be seen as if it lost meaning like his life would without her.

You can’t live without her, go die… Heart commanded with every beat. Heart needed pain, more pain and more pain to survive. Think of her, Hurt yourself, Feel the Pain: Heart commands. He couldn’t sleep for she was in his eyes. “Someone help me please” he wished he could yell out. It wasn’t clearly the ‘LOVE’, the rational brain digs out example from his own life but all that doesn’t suffice at the moment. Just ask her to speak for sometime, I’ll fall asleep…

Man her voice, her looks, her face, her voice…: Heart was pounding
And her boy friend… It is very obvious that she had one : the Brain
Never Mind, go ahead propose…: Heart

Intelligence and brilliance were of no use to him now. Just like the virus which takes over immune system, she was taking over him. All he wanted to do was to cry out loud “I love you”… Doing this might calm him for sometime but then what stops??? Brain! Yes it can't make him get so low…
“Heart Beats but Brain Thinks” – realize and get back to sleep, he told himself.

Yes, I Do

When she noded, he had to nod back just to convince her, he didn't even know the reason for her nod. They were going around quite sometime now and really starting to understand each other. He had a very different feeling now, she is entirely opposite of what he dreamt of. Now his heart was saying "NO" but the brain "YES". why "YES"??? - the money, the intelligence, the family and blah, blah, blah - things which were of least importance when he used to dream. But now it was too late. Tomorrow his marriage ceremony at the Goan chruch. This again was her dream - for both of them weren't christians.

"You take her as her beloved wife..."

"Yes I do" - the brain and the mouth in perfect sync, but the heart... :(