Detached in a Connected World
Fifteen years down memory lane: Communication between old parents and grown up employed kids was mainly through letters, trunck calls or STD calls. Kids would come down for a week or two every year to stay at their family home. A nice memorable reunion. Then parents would go down to celebrate important festivals like Diwali, Sankranti with their kids.
Memories from my past: I was in class 3 studying at my granny's. Every Sunday, the only holiday of the week, i remember writing a letter to my parents in whatever limited English i knew. Wouldn't address mom, dad and Pravin together. Had this peculiar habit of writing a separate paragraph for each one of them followed by a customised signature. Sounds funny today but they, in those days, longed to receive my weekly letter. And me too from them. Dad always wrote in english and i could read his paragraph. But mom wrote in Tamil and i would ask my granny to read it out for me, it had a personal touch to it. My parents would come down to Madurai to celebrate Diwali with their parents and that united me with them.

A decade ago: E-mails had started slowly replacing inland/airmail letters. But they were still limited to 1/2 e-mail per day as those were the days when e-mails were charged ( i think rs. 3 per e-mail at my college). But still the yearly reunion was very much in vogue. One month of dedicated time with kids and parents when nothing else took priority.

Five years ago: Chat became the order of communication.
Now: Age of webcam. See them while you chat.

People think you are in the stone age if you don't "yahoo" with your parents.
It would have been a good 5 years since i wrote a letter to my parents. E-mail them everyday - helps us stay connected but those sweet-little nothings are no longer my e-mail content. If i can find an appropriate subject for my mail i wriite to them, else i don't. My eyes no longer keep waiting for the 10 o clock postman to come, just to check if there is an envelope addressed to me.
Though very much connected, it is a detached life. No e-mail, no chat, no telephone call, no webcam can ever replace the physical closeness of a human. Those 50 paise inland letters had more warmth than today's monotonous e-mails. E-mails have killed the power of expression. No doubt they keep you connected all the time, thanks to that!
As technology advances, the quality time you spend with your beloved ones decreases. So busy are we with our own lives that there is little room left for those cherished family reunions. Living thousands of miles away, i have to be contented if i can see my dad/mom atleast for 1 day in a year. Maybe this explains me the reason why people in U.S and elsewhere have fabricated holidays such as Father's day and Mother's day. A reason to be with your close ones - makes sense to me.

In Search of Perfection
I want --
Perfect parents, perfect partner, perfect education, perfect job, perfect health - the search of finding everything "perfect" continues all our life. In my constant drive to attain that "perfect big thing", i miss the pleasures small things life offers. Strving for Perfection can turn out to be disastrous for a relationship. "Perfection" is relative. It all about setting standards and expecting all the people around you , all the things that happen to you meet those standards. What might be a perfect weekend for me might not be for my partner.
Perfectionsists lose their sleep worrying about the mistakes committed in some past projects, dates of travel, uncertainty of the future. Too many "what if's" occupy their mind all the time. "What if this happened, what if that happened, what would i do". This is nothing but an attempt to control and master the environment around us which is impossible. Planning is one thing but ensuring everything happens according to the plan is another.
Brought up to be a good child, a perfect child who is quiet, obedient all the time. Am learning to let go of inhibitions and act ad hoc. Sometime things done without planning can bring a lot of joy which a perfect plan might not. So much of time and energy is spent on achieving that perfection, that there is none left to enjoy it ultimately.
The earlier the realisation dawns up on me, the better it is. Someone said it well: Be human: make a mistake! Mistakes are opportunities in disguise.
So make a mistake :)

Damp Weekend - Weekend spoilt all our plans of going to Boston. So another weekend spent within 4 walls, in front of a TV munching junk food. Got so suffocated by evening that we went for a long walk in the cold weather. Our TV, no doubt needs a rest badly.
Lesson : Don't plan for weekends for weather in the East coast doesn't seem to cooperate.

Our journey
This day, last year, we got engaged. A big day of our lives. Commemortaing this occassion, i've just put together a collection of quotes that says our story
It all started with this realisation and experience....
Lots of people will want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.

When you realize
You want to spend
The rest of your life with somebody,
You want the rest of your life
To start as soon as possible. When Harry Met Sally (Movie) --Sally's wish, my wish--

Love begins with a smile, grows with a kiss, and ends with a tear.
Love is hard work; and hard work sometimes hurts!

It hurt and i wanted to part but he taught me ...

Never say goodbye if you still want to try.
Never give up if you still feel you can go on.
Never say you do not love a person anymore if you cannot let go.

Love: a temporary insanity, curable by marriage... my insanity cured on June 21st ,2002

Love has its own time, its own season, and its own reasons from coming and going. You cannot bribe it or coerce it or reason it into staying. You can only embrace it when it arrives and give it away when it comes to you.
--Kent Nerburn

Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish it's source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.

I don't want mine to die. I want it to be a miracle.
Love at first sight is easy to understand; it's when two people have been looking at each other for a lifetime that it becomes a miracle.
--Sam Levenson

Art of making friends for a lifetime

Vivek once said to me "The only people you can choose in this lifetime are friends. So make as many as you can and cherish it. Relatives are given by HIM and you got to accept them whether you like it or not." How true. It takes time and effort to make and retain friends. I see it with the few people i know.

Am a highly sensitive person with a caution to everything in life. The red alert antenna in my brain starts blinking at the drop of a hat. Am opening up more now, have started talking freely to people. Its definitely going to take sometime. Unwinding 23 years of lifestyle is not all that easy. Have been brought up this way by my family and circumstances.

Pravin and I are stark opposites, he never had to go through what i had to as a kid. He never had to stay at a relative's place during schooling. I was barely 7 years old when i studied at my granny's. No doubt they are good people. But small incidents can leave a permanent scar in a kids mind. Abusing the kids parents, talking about their financial status and asking the helpless kid why didn't your dad tell me before he left that we got to pay for your tuition this month, makes one more reserved. Having grown in such environments i started being so careful about money, that i couldn't kick the habit when i started living with my own parents. Never asked them to buy me anything, never asked them for a help. Grew up with a feeling that it is obligation to ask parents for help. But i did get the courage to ask for something big in life, fought for it and got it.
Till this day, i don't ask them if they can help me out in anyway, if they understand my needs and offer i have learnt not to say a no.
Talking to strangers, especially boys, was considered a stigma. Branded a flirt because i said "hi" to one of my cousin's friendds at home :(

Its a commom perception that people from down south in India let money rule their lives. Maybe its true, maybe its not. In my case it didn't have anything to do with my origin, its just what i was subjected to. If one had to think twice before asking for a 100 page notebook that costed Rs.5 back in 1993, then its not all that easy to change it.
It definitely hurts a lot when my own call me a miser.

Am glad am opening up. I want to be a good friend and help my friends in whatever way i can. That will help me come out of the very small world i have lived all these years.

Interpreting Dreams

All of us get dreams when we sleep. Some of us remember when we wake up, some of us don't.
The reason i say "we get dreams" is because it is not a volunatry action initiated by us. Dreams are patterns of images that we see subconsicously in our sleep. Our brains continue to churn out images while the body is resting. I have been told that a sound sleep is devoid of dreams. Dreaming is a somatic process, nothing supernatural about it. I have observed a specific pattern in my dreams. I remember them only if they have been bad and disturbing. Over the past 2 weeks, dreams of murders, suicide, extra-marital affairs, divorces have haunted me. I wake up with heavy head on such mornings. Two years back, when i was going through a difficult phase of life, i used to get bad dreams. They communicate the state of mind, body and soul. Restlessless, anxiety, fear of change are expressed through dreams by different symbols.

Content of my dreams, as everyone else's, remain obscure, absurd and incomprehensible when I wake up. Wondering what such dreams meant and if i could interpret them i started looking for articles on the Internet. I realise that in reality, they are susbtitues of our own thought processes, with a hidden meaning. I have started viewing the hazy negative images in my dreams as pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The pieces put together gives
me a vivid picture of my subdued thought process or perhaps whats in store for future. Most dreams concern primarily with future. However interpreting them analogously will certainly lay to rest some of the fears of the inner mind. For example, i woke up this morning narrating my dream to Vivek. I had seen a 20-something committing suicide followed by 3 murders. "Dreams on Death" signify a major change in one's life. I interpret "suicide" characteristic of a change that is to be forced on me, for which i might have to be prepared.

Sigmund Freud, in his work "Interpretation of Dreams", encourages one not to suppress his ideas even if they are irrelevant.
In his words, "Undesired ideas are changed into desired ones".
I can correlate it with my experience. One afternoon, I suppressed some thoughts that i perceived as non-sensical. I dreamt that very night of images concerned with the same subject, not understanding the relevance the next morning when i woke up. Now i know why!

Lesson : Do not constraint your thoughts. They are bound to surface in dreams sooner than later.

uhhh....i better stop now..else i can go on for sometime on this topic.

Anger
Do u learn from the lessons that life teaches you, the events around you, movies that you watched on a Friday night or from what your friends have gone through? Or are you the kind who likes to get your fingers burnt and not learn from others mistakes? Or are you the kind who gets fingers burnt and still doesn't learn? I fall under the second category. Vivek tells me "Life is not a technology to be learnt and grapsed overnight from a book or a website" Observe, learn and improve.
In the movie "Anger Management", Jack Nicholson talks of two types of anger - explosive and implosive. Friday night, 2 hour movie, $9 spent yet learnt nothing. Two days later he gives me a suggestion for something and tears start rolling down my cheeks. ( I know i know girls are good at crying. And am the best of all at that. I still recollect dad making fun of me everytime i have cried. He used to say, "stop crying baby, i will get you a crying fruit" and i would wonder what fruit was that :) )
Worried if he had something wrong, Vivek asks me what happened. In my characteristic careless tone, I say " I don't know, Forget it". Five words that have no meaning and no solution. After a lot of effort from him, i tell him the reason - relating the suggestion to an incident that happened 3 months back. Though i claim that i have long forgotten it, feign indifference to the event as though it didn't matter to me anymore, IT DID. But i was not willing to accept. This is "implosive" anger. There's more to it than it appears. Had i shouted back at the person who hurt me, i wouldn't have been crying today. Implosive Anger takes different forms at different stages of life when you are least expecting it. So if you are one of those kinds then follwo this principle - "Shouting is a lot better than keeping quiet" It will make you a happy, cheerful, come-what-may attitude person.

Inner Fears
Separation. Uncertainty. Confusion. Frustration. Repeated Failures.
These states have not made me immune. They have not made me strong. They enhance the inner fears that i live with. Almost certainly they show in my face and voice without my realisation.
I am struggling to come out of it - low on confidence today.
Developing application don't make me happy anymore. Advance in IT doesn't intrigue me. Me, me, me - enough of it. I don't want to bother about myself so much that it causes me disappointment, unhappiness. Am i going into the Ayn Rand era - no doubt in a confused state of mind. i know for sure i don't enjoy what i do. I know "Passion pushes one forward. So do what you know and love."

Our system has to change. Why is it that Indian Parents want their kids to become a MBA, doctor, software engineer, engineer - in that order? Why not a civil service worker, a librarian or an administrator? Why is it that their dreams are forced upon kids? I fully agree that am an independent person and maybe succeessful for many because:
1. Am an employee of a "TATA" company - the stigma attaced to TATA BIRLA is still prevalent in India.
2. As a consequence of 1, I get a decent salary at the end of every month to sustain myself.
3. Its a job in the most successful and talked about industry - the money minting software industry.

After a 4 year stint, i am NOT happy. I exist and do the work, rather create work so that i ensure i have a job. "Insecure" feeling creeps in any software engineer's mind who has been out of work for more than 2 weeks. The devil's workshop churns out numerous questions like this :

Am i replaceable?
Am i a overhead to the company?
Will i get laidoff?
Have i lost my importance?

The constant need to prove oneself tires me in the long run. I grew up with a dream of becoming either joining the Indian Foreign Service. I wanted to become a diplomat because of my passion for traveling to different countries. U.S was one country that i never wanted to travel to. Canada was one that i always wanted to visit. The Indian civil service system scared my parents and they didn't want me to join.

I don't blame them because their dream is to see their kids settled in life. Not to struggle for a living. They have gone through the hardships in life, going to school with wet clothes because they had only one pair of clothes. Got beaten up for coming naked because there was nothing to wear but the passion to study draw them to school. Am very lucky for having everything. HUMANs can never be satisfied, you have it all, yet you want more.

Quiet Sunday
Spent a good portion of the day in darkness and silence. But it felt good for i was reading "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland".
Yes very unusual for a 25 year old to read fairy tales.

Movie of the day - Pretty Woman
Julia Roberts looks stunning in some of the scenes. She looks gorgeous in the scarlet dress in the opera scene.
When someone speaks low of you, you think you are worth only that.
Bad things are easier to believe.
You've got a lot of ptential. Don't let anybody tell you anything different.
Did you know that "strawberry brings out the flavor in champagne? :)
Ends on a nice note. Welcome to Hollyowod - this is the land of dreams. Some dreams come true, some dont. But keep on dreaming.

An early satisfying weekend
This week, weekend started Friday and ended Saturday. He starts working long hours from today until Thursday.
Books books and more books
Authorities at Immigration while we head back to India are gonna go crazy. People shop for clothes, electronics, chocolates and all that jazz. But both of us are very happy for what we did - something that will always remain our passion - buying books. One hard luggage is filled with about 25 odd books.
We bought a whopping 13 books in 2 days. What i like most about him is that he always acts on his first instinct. Last afternoon, at "Discovery channel" (@Solomon Pond Mall, Marlborough), I was contemplating whether to buy the $15 book titled "The century" or not. The minute i showed him the book, he was impressed and decided to buy. The book is a rare compilation of photographs from every year of the last cnetury (1899-2001). The last photograph shows an officer informing George W. Bush at a primary school about the September 11th attacks. I cannot recollect a single book that i have half-finished the day i bought it. But this one is almost done.
While driving back from Malborough, i causally mentioned to him about the library sale at the Framngham Public Library today where books are sold for either $1 or $2. His immediate reaction was lets go! A small room packed with about thousand novels, management books, travel guides etc. We were impressed. We chose about 7 books. The thought of carrying it all back home made us drop 3 and finally settled for 4 books. He presents them at the counter. The lady says "How about a quarter?". He is perplexed and shoots an inquiring glance at me. I didn't understand either. So i ask her "Is a quarter all that you are asking for this?". She says "Yes". We were speechless.
All set to exit the library we look at an adjoining room, which was about 10 times as big as the one we just walked out of. Name a book and it was there. There was nothing stopping us. It just made our day. All hardcover books. Gives us a good reason to stay back in this country.
I could see the flash in his eyes as they raced up and down the kids section flooded with books. He had read all of them but i hadn't. So i picked up bools like Alice in wonderland, A compilation of Fairy tales and Frankenstein. The satisfaction of having made it today is something materialistic things will never give us. We are glad we did it.

X2
Saw X2 last Tuesday. I can't quite understand why we went for that movie. The box-office hit put me to sleep. The war between mutants and humans, their magical inborn skills reminded me morre of those video games Pravin played as a kid. Crazy movies are made because crazy people like us watch them!

Random thoughts
1. You are at someone's place for lunch. The hosts get a call, talk in native language presumin you can't understand the language. The hosts tell you, from whom the call was. You discover 30 minutes later from some X that the call was actually from someone else. Have you ever gone through what we did? Does it make you feel like a fool? I don't think it should, though it did to me. Why give it a damn?

2. Lessons of life - Don't go out of your way to help someone. My dad has suffered from this all his life but he still continues to help people unconditionally. Vivek does the same too. Yet another similarity but definitely not a Taurean trait. But when someone doesn't even have the courtesy to tell him, it hurts me. I got to keep away from his official affairs is what am learning.