A few observations.

The dew drops on a Lotus leaf. Neither can they declare attachment to one another, nor can they ever seperate ways.

The flower that blossoms in Sunshine. One brightens the other everyday, yet expects or recieves nothing in reciprocation!

The water fall! The rocks so arranged that fall of water is the only fall on earth that can be beautiful!

Sights so beautiful...ah, why wouldn't they be. After all, acts of love without the fangs of possessiveness are supremely beautiful and priceless.

Further to a suggetion of a good friend, I herewith record 7 improbable(if not impossible) things i want to do:

1. An around-the-world trip in a hot air balloon.
2. Act in a Shakespeare play in the Royal Albert Hall, London.
3. Be witness to our Armed Forces battling it out there with the militants(The former deserve any and all acts of tribute)
4. Learn swimming and then, swim across to Vivekananda rock(Ah! some men are so worth to be imitated, yet so difficult..:) )
5. An evening in...oops...with Paris (Hilton) ( i call it improbable because i wonder if that event will ever end, once started !)
6. A vacation in Space ( Ah, those martian instincts)
7. (another thing I want to do is to complete the 7th point)

Any help from the blogger community to help fulfil any of the above points will be highly appreciated.

Thanks Vishnu, for having brought me into the loop...

Seven things I plan to do:
1. Get my drivers' license for a four-wheeler
2. Complete a marathon race without a "pit-stop".
3. Watch 4 movies back-to-back in cinema halls in a single day!!(Its fun to test endurance)
4. Make atleast one visit to Kailas-Manasarovar(The beauty is simply bewitching)
5. Take to yoga for better fitness.
6. Blog more often than I do now.
7. And I better take my Distance Management course seriously....got to take the exams coming up.


Seven things I can't do:

1. Sleep beyond 7 hrs.
2. Take a dog for a jog.
3. Cook
4. stop liking sweets
5. shop for more than 45 min.
6. stop reading and re-reading Shakespeare's works(..and each time its all the more interesting)
7. dance salsa!!!

Seven things I say most often:

1. Okkk
2. gosh!
3. ahaaa...Oru K(g)ruppa thaanya alairanga(comedian Vadivelu's punchline)
4. Naaye ( Vishnu and I are custodians of Points 3 and 4)
5. maga
6. well...
7. Good

I now pass on the baton to Nidhi.

“Unbreakable imported” Chinaware or Jalandar ki lassi tumbler

Friday workday was ethnic day at office. I reached office a little early than usual…me in a kurtha, jeans and chunri. Strike 9 am and the flow started. Men and women marched in their Patanis, Kanjeevarams, Mundu veshti, Sherwanis, Mysore Turbans…so on and so forth. I am not exaggerating when I say that each one looked as gorgeous as the word could mean and sound. One colleague in his Kodugu gown and head gear caused enough excitement among ladies for their hearts to complain of being over-worked in blood pumping. Not to mention that lady clothed in a Gujarati style saree…so very beautiful. I have always endorsed whenever elders at home discussed the importance of being dressed in our ethnic attires when the occasion arises. I strongly feel that the ethnic attires of Indian women are a celebration of feminine beauty! Anyone who wears those looks so gorgeous. Its just not about the looks, that is just a by-product. Its about colour, about the care and thought with which they have been designed, its about adding beauty and grandeur - grandeur so well blended with simplicity, without having to expose our skin to this atmosphere, this atmosphere whose Ozone is considerably depleted!

We have masses swarming shopping malls hunting for techni-colour tops and patched jeans. Hello! Please throw a glance at that beautiful Sherwani hanging on that stand with such simple majesty!

I was at a shopping mall yesterday looking for a Chinaware dinner set for a relative. The kind shopkeeper dug out half a dozen varieties, he even slammed one against other to show me how unbreakable they were. He even showed me his trump card – chinaware imported from US of A ! Whenever did Uncle Sam become such an excellent potter!!
I was very wary of it all, yet decided to go for it. As I gingerly felt my pocket for the wallet, I heard a wise lady quip rather emotionally in Punjabi, “ You call this unbreakable? I tell you, they can never match the endurance and grandeur of the Lassi tumblers of Jalandar!!..Ahh” The shopkeeper tried hard to hide is endorsing nod, lest he be viewed of breaching integrity to his business.

That very statement induced a chain of thoughts in me – I of course did not buy the dinner set. Instead I walked in to a cyber café to pen those flowing thoughts.

Chennai Marathon for a cause

The Marathon at Chennai will be held on the 5th of Feb 2006. Check in to http://www.chennaimarathon.org/rules_regu01.html to know about it all.

See you all there.

The Marathon:

Check out the picture of my good friend Vishnu and myself(Chest Tag #06152) just after the Bangalore Marathon held in May 2005. What a great experience it was!

Stay tuned for a discussion on the Marathon, 'cause thats what's in mind now. :)

In a vessel upstream

As I walk hurriedly down the busy pavement I accidently overhear a cellphone user, "what the f@#@!! mein(man), I thought you said 5 30...ah.......yup! yup!...chiao meinnn....lets catch up the coming weekend...you rock till then ah! YO!
I walk past him and then it hits me...arre he is our old chum Parandaman!! We are both glad, we give our typical swinging hi-fis(oh, we have not forgotten them..great!).
"Hey da Parandaman, how are you doing now-a-days"?
"Paddy mein , Paddy is the name"
Errrr...gulp. We gulp a quick drink at a coffee joint, exchange contact details and get up to leave. He doesn't shake my hand, instead, puts a queer signal, the forefinger and little finger outstretched and the other fingers folded in. "Yo mein, nice meeting you, keep in touch ah"

Now, Paddy aka Parandaman is the personification of fashion, attitude, hep-and-happening.

We have our hair gelled up to look in all sorts of ways, our jeans is so worn, that it fights hard to defy gravity and stay up there(I once saw a gentleman pulling it up when he thought no one saw him. Uncomfortable that he looked in that attire, nevertheless he had to keep pace with his fashion-breathing comrades!), you got to show you are cool by saying kewl, you will be grunted at if you said ok...its ookkiiee!
This is fashion, this is attitude, this is help and happening.
We live like this because 8 out of the 10 people in our office shuttle bus live this way, or talk about living this way. The fear of being left out of the pack, or looked down upon due to not keeping up with trends, is as intense and perennial as the fear of death. We do all that’s possible to overcome it.
No matter how scenic the downstream route is, how enjoyable and easy the rowing is, we prefer to row upstream because 25 out of the 30 rowers decided to go that way. Perhaps our emphasis of staying in the herd is stronger than the joy of true beauty and comfort.
Now a few observations:
1. Walking down the ramp with your mom makes you look macho.
2. Greeting your Significant Other in your traditional, rich ethnic attire will give him /her immediate goose bumps and sleepless nights of pleasant dreams.
3. Fashion, style and attitude are in the heart of the wearer and not in eyes of the audience.

What do you feel?

Pain!...its thought-provoked??

For the last 3 days I have been brooding about problems that have been plaguing my health, rather insistently. Besides that sickly weak feeling and the lose of appetite, its the disappointment of losing the rythm of running 6 kms everyday, which I took weeks to establish. Now I pant and heave even when I climb a flight of stairs!! Ahh, depressing.
But hey..wait a minute, its not been 3 full days of disappointment and resentment. These bouts of problems have been well punctuated by long sleep innings. They have been a welcome respite from the brooding.
So, why does sleep put me out of this despair? I did exsist in sleep, still none of these pinpricks touched me. A little retrospection shows that the only thing different in sleep is the non-exsistance of thought, thought that is attributable to the intellect and ego.

So is the feeling of pain and despair, a mere game of perception? A game where the ego is the judge and intellect, perception and expectations the jury?? Does pain exsist, and if it does should it bother us and our routine to any extent at all? Do we really have to stand in the court of ego awaiting a judgement on whether a particular event should give us happiness or sorrow?

Extrapolating, are all positive and negetive emotions at the hands of our discretion? and if so, is it possible to always choose the former?

Your views pls.

The thoughts that flowed into this piece were triggered by an article in the blog - bhartie.

A day in the battlefield...


Chariots screech to a halt....half a dozen of them. Warriors and strategists alike, alight from their cosy vehicles and march into Ground Zero. Few hang around to take a puff or two before getting into action. As I get on to the ground after a smooth one-hour drive, an air of calmness greets me. Ironically, that gives me a tinge of excitement and an ounce of anticipation, for, the calmness is most often the silence before the storm.
The scene is a typical morning at the gates of my office, a company manufacturing electronic equiqments used in the field of medicine.
After the customary formalities at the security's, I walk in with my head held high, ready to face the field for the next 8-10 hrs. As I take position(log on my PC at my desk), Aramis walks in rather cheerfully. Two minutes later we are talking about the performance of one of the units that is right now, in an hospital in distant America.
I wear on my armour(the mandatory overcoat that one wears while in the manufacturing shopfloor), and march into the floor to meet my Legions of Volumes(my team of manufacturing associates who turn around our production numbers, thus winning bread for the firm). We spend the next 30 minutes discussing our performance against plan, problems, wins, loses etc...and over a series of jokes and chides we set our game plan for the day and for the week ahead. Positions are changed, few lines are stopped, few are loaded to increase capacity. All set to take on the day's foes.
Its close to one hour of war when I get back to my position from the production floor. The hall is already bubbling with activity...we have them all in full action, Porthos, Athos, Robert Langdon, Erin Brockowich, so on and so forth...and our Supreme Commander Jonah !
What immediately follows is an hour-long internal team meeting where the warriors talk about various operational and strategic issues that are and might effect or affect the course of the business. Each of the subjects are discussed in details, actions set in place and follow-up plans laid out. This meeting is one of the most effective tools that keeps the team going, especially when the battle is thick and tough.
Its now time for a quick break...tea time and juicy grapevine.
And then, the day charges up with gears being switched and heads down to action. Actions coming out of the internal meeting are taken up and followed. Strong calls go back and forth between the supply chain commandoes and the suppliers. Gosh, I really admire them for fighting those unseen distant entities(I would hate to call our suppliers, foes) on an hourly basis to ensure a smooth Operations. Now and then, we see Commander Jonah walk around and talk to his Generals on how the day is going. An integral part of the war is preparing for end-of-the-day tele conferences with collegues, higher-ups, suppliers, customers etc. Complicated data, volumenous and frighteningly complex in many ways get shared across the PCs in blinding speed through the LAN lines. Its close to 3 hours of intense war fare now and the stomachs start grumbling for attention.
Lunch time!...time for stomach filling amidst more grapevine, jokes and occasional business updates.
The tempo is maintained and very often stepped up during the second half of the day. New suprises turn in, some pleasent and some un-pleasant. The Legions continue to send out products. A comrade comes in announcing a major quality issue that brings the concerned commandoes in the office to their feet. In parellel, mails are sent across announcing the issue and a game plan to get back on track. Jonah has just announced an HUGE increase in the demand with very little time to react. The supply chain regiment takes it in bewilderment though it puts on a calm, strong face to it. General Langdon(head of Quality) points out a process flaw that needs to be corrected immediately. Almost simultaneously, one trusted comarade from the line announces his ill-health and thus his inability to carry on any further. I take a deep breath to make some sense out of all this. I decide to take a walk across the product lines. It fills me with joy when I see the products moving out in series of trolleys. I stop by to catch up with a few comrades, tell them how I feel about their recent improvement initiative, how much of a difference they make to the entire game through their endevours. I always try to put in a joke or two with my team, it helps to keep the tempo up. After all, laughter is the best medicine.
I am back at my seat and I have just realised that my "to-do" list is just finished the 20-point mark. The watch tells me that it is less than 2 hrs for the day to get over. Time to get going with the war. The next two hours have me glued into the Laptop. Spreadsheets get filled, mails get shot out, calls get made. I begin to realise that the "to-do" list is unsurmountable before the close of day. After due contemplation, I decide its wise to log out on time, to stay prepared for bloodier battles in the coming days. My innings at the laptop gets regularly punctuated with calls from the line announcing problems and soughting immediate solutions. It is these one-minute problem solving that interests me the most in this whole game. Thinking on the feet is a not a virtue here, it is the basic requirement for survival!
Its soon the home stretch for the day. My comrades for the battlefield fill me with the updates for the day which I put up on the production dashboard.
I give my curt comments as responses and send them back with the plan to think of for the coming day's battle
Meanwhile, few team members are already involved in a tele-conference with an engineering team in the US. I hear Athos greating the listener at the other end. We exchange understanding grins...tricky games these tele-conferences are. Its just about half an hour from the log out time, and I still have a dozen points to close. Recieving updates, mails, and other routine activities take me through the half an hour. Ah, the day has again managed to drain me out, but the thought of heading home is always a freshening one.
As I pack up my ammunition, a couple of comrades run into to give me the last minute updates from the production field. In my rush to catch the chariot, I shove the slip of paper into my pocket, promising to give my comments over the mobile phone.
I bundle up my back-pack and just manage to catch my vehicle.
As I settle into my seat, I close my eyes and grin to myself. Life is all but a theatre stage; we, the actors need to play our roles to perfection, though not to get involved overtly with any of them. The day's battle is won, but the war is still at open. Wow...now that gives the kick.

Note: Names are changed and thus geniune identities are withheld from the reader. Still, any names bearing to resemblance to anyone alive or dead is purely coincidential.
........(extract from the memoirs of D'Artagnan)

The Myth of Tuesday

Tuesday has this envious(or would I say non-envious) tradition of being associated with superstitions in various cultures across the globe. The Indians believe no new endevour must commence on a Tuesday, the Spanish believe the day brings ill-luck ... a proverb runs En martes, ni te cases ni te embarques (on Tuesday, neither get married nor start a journey).
The truth behind these beliefs(from an Hindu Mythology perspective) is that contrary to the popular belief, Tuesday is the most auspicious day of the week...too auspicious to be involved in anything worldly. The day is a special day for Lord Subramanya, the Lord with unbounded knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge leads to wisdom and wisdom at its profound best shows that worldly deads are mere illusions with no relevance to true happiness. It is perhaps due to this fact, Tuesdays and all days special to Lord Subramanya(the day of the Krithigai star, Shasti-the sixth phase of the waning moon etc.), are believed to be wrong days for any special activities other than routine.

...on a cold monsoon Tuesday evening of 26th week of 2005, myself Srikanth finally launched his blog, "leaves from the diary". I say "finally" because it was an act that was prolonged for months if not years. I did not plan it for a tuesday...in fact i realised this angle only after i pressed the submit button for blog creation. But then, I will not term this act "worldly" and hence will tell myself that I have not violated that unwritten, emperical rule.
I am yet to update my profile. I never thought of it that day, nor do I have any inclination to do it now. Perhaps postings here need to be given an opportunity to introduce the author to the world rather than mere profiles.

Kudos.