Direct Dil se....

Thanks...

2011-09-18T11:35:00.000-07:00

M&P for loving me no matter what
D&A for your eternal support
MP for thinking like I think
ST for the long walks
JG for the nights of the exams
SA for the maggi and for being who you are
AKS for making me feel beautiful
AS for being the guy I regret not having a crush on
ASV for being my first real crush
AR for teaching me that every guy who flirts with me does not ‘like me’
KS for using my shoulder to cry on
SG for being the shoulder that I cry on
CP for being awesome at times
KG&MJ for being a cute couple
AP for that cute gesture u made on request of MA
MA for reminding me that sunk cost is not considered while taking decisions
NG for being the most understanding roommate
R,S&S for being my friends
SiA for being nice to me
VK for coming only because I called
I10 for the little fun I had
O11 for helping me get through tough times
G&B for a unique experience

Some Things are just not meant to be…

2011-09-18T10:46:00.000-07:00

I have always longed for some things, but then who hasn’t. But I never tried as hard for anything as I did for this. If I look back I think some things went wrong right from the beginning. I didn’t realize at the time and kept hoping that my past would just go away abut that never happens. So at least there is one take away from all this, this time I will accept my past and I hope my past will be accepted.

I tried and tried to become someone I was not. To try and change the way I thought. But you can never really change who you are. But what if I am someone I don’t like. What if I am that person my parents warned me against? Where did I go wrong? What could I have done differently? Probably nothing! Nothing I did could have fought with that fear, that mistrust. It had to catch up with me one day. I was an eternal optimist and truly believed that one day it will all be worth it. Like any romantic comedy my life would have a happily ever after, but there are no ever- afters in life. Life is less like a movie and more like those never ending daily soaps where each day is a new episode. Each day will come with its own list of things to deal with and at the end of the day you can just pray “let tomorrow not be worse than today”

It is amazing what the human mind is capable of. In the past 4 months I have felt so many extreme emotions that I did not think possible. Everything in my life is going normally but there is a part of my brain which just does not forget. There is always the same thought with dimensions ranging from longing, hate, anger, fear, relief, pity, doubt etc. Questions haunt me at night. I ask myself why? I scream into the valley “Why?” The echo comes back “You know why!” But I don’t.

I want to be free now. To start with a clean slate, but can u ever really clean the slate. I guess you can but in the end it’s just a clean slate not a new one. We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. But it is proving much more difficult than I thought .

Longing

2010-03-21T12:36:00.000-07:00

Not much has changed since my last post, but still very subtly things are improving. I want everything to work out so badly that I spend almost all my time as if I was on a tight rope walk just waiting for this time to pass. I do realize that this is not a good thing, for, by setting these elusive expectations from the times to come not only do I destroy my present, but also endanger the future.

A french proverb says...
"The first half of life is spent in longing for the second - the second half in regretting the first”

I just hope this is not true for me because right now I am clearly in the first half of my life, longing for the second...

Heartbroken...

2009-11-15T13:05:00.000-08:00

Yes ladies and gentlemen I am back after a big break, a lot has happened In this gap. I have been deliriously happy and hopelessly miserable. I have been really busy and super vella all at once. I had wanted to come back, to revisit this private sanctuary of mine for a very long time. Well many reasons have kept me away; sometimes there was no time, sometime no laptop and internet connection, at other times I was just plain lazy. The truth is that I write only when I have this urge to scream out to the world the things that I can say to no one. Though the past few months have been an emotional rollercoaster and yet I did not feel this need because I always had a shoulder to cry on, and somebody to share the laughter with. I was in the false sense of security that the reassuring words can give you.

Today I was rudely woken from this dream to realise that one should not take any thing in life for granted. And so here I am with my self esteem shattered to bits all due to this all but expected revelation that the shoulder which I was using as a support actually thought of me as a weight. It’s a miserable feeling when you are being pitied and that too by people who are supposed to love you the most. A part of you is what u think other people think of you, and today I wanted to kill that part of me when I realized that the relations that I thought were the very building blocks of my survival think of me as a sad mistake of their past which they regret till date. Is this what I have been reduced to, someone else’s redemption?

No one is perfect and neither am I. I know this is a lame excuse for all my wrong doings, but that small tiny bit of self respect that still remains inside me tells me that I definitely did not deserve this. In a way history is repeating itself, I seem to be the person who does not learn from her own mistakes. A very dear friend of mine once told me that we should not let anybody have so much power over us that they can make our lives miserable, just by uttering one thoughtless sentence. My only regret is that this time it is much worse than the last time. This time I am really left all alone.

Today I don’t know what tomorrow holds for me... let’s wait and watch.

I pray for optimism

2009-04-29T12:31:00.000-07:00

I thought I was I fast decision taker. That was before I actually had to face a situation where decisions start becoming tough and they threaten to have ever lasting impact. My life is currently as good as it can get. I have people who love me beside me. I have financial security. And I have what can be called a great job. In short it is the exact opposite of “Your job's a joke, you're broke, your love life's D.O.A.” But still something inside me kept pushing me to reach out for something else. What that something else was even I am not sure but a do realize that if I did not listen to that little voice inside me I would remain restless for a long long time. And so here I am ready to put my life and the comfort zones that make it so beautiful at stake and go looking for that light at the end of the tunnel. I don’t know what that light represents but I can’t help being drawn to it like a moth. I hope everything turns out to be fine. My best laid plans have always gone haywire, and frankly luck has never really favored me and so I am really scared.

I pray to god to give me that strength that I may not regret my decisions whatever may be the outcome of them. I don’t pray for all good things to happen to me but I do pray for optimism. Several small incidents of my life have made me a little paranoid and thus at the eve of what should have been the greatest achievement of my life, the one thing that I was sure would give me happiness all I can feel is the fear of misfortune lurking around the corner.

How little we know ourselves. What is important and what is not? What are the things that really matter? How to maintain that perfect balance? I thus set out in quest of the ever elusive answers to these questions…

The Blogging problem...

2008-06-23T13:15:00.000-07:00

I had almost forgotten about my blogging account and for a long time I have kept myself busy with other things, then what is it that brings me back here? Well its the blogging problem.

Everybody blogs these days. I for one certainly see no problem with that, as I feel its a good medium of expression and also that my blogs will form a good read for my own self in the future (maybe I'll get to retrospect a lil on reading my own blogs), so as far as I am concerned the blogging problem is not about blogging at all, but its about people who write stuff and then expect me as their friend to read what they have written and give them my "genuine"opinion on what I feel about their literary achievements. Now its very natural to mellow down your response to suit what your friends actually want to hear from you, but a recent incident made me realize that I can really be very rude to people who have actually considered me worthy enough to ask me how I felt about their blogs.

So here goes the story, this friend of mine, who has recently joined my friend circle (and so does not know much about me besides any first impressions he has got of me) asked me to read and correct a movie review he had written for his blog. It seems my name had been suggested by another friend. It also came up during the conversation that this honour was bestowed upon me not because of my literary skills but because of the fact that it is generally don't say no when my friends ask me a favor and that in all my friend circle I was the one least likely to make fun of the obvious lack of composition skills of the newbie. And thus began the very highly irritating two hours by the end of which I had wrote some nasty comment or the other about almost every sentence of the said writeup.

I sent the reviewed document back to him not expecting a reply after the way in which I had criticized his work, to my surprise I received a mail with the corrected version and a note which thanked me for all my efforts and reminded me that "you know you should sometimes tell lies to keep up the spirit " . Later that evening he sent out the link to his blog to all his friends including myself and on top of the blog was the line "A big thanks to Shivani to help me out in putting my expressions in words." I was kind of happy and embarrassed by this gesture. The writeup was still pretty much the same except that it was free of the most glaring of its grammatical errors and so I was making my peace with the situation. All of us met for dinner and somebody asked the newbie when his next post was coming. As I listened to the answer I secretly hoped that this time I wouldn't be asked to review...

Too many thoughts... too few words

2008-05-13T08:40:00.000-07:00

Wanted to write something for a very log time, its not that nothing has been happening, rather the reason that I have not been regular is that a lot was happening around me and I feel that I just don’t have the literary range to express so much. I don’t really know when I reached that point, but now I realize that the reason for all my mental unrest is the fact that I care a little too much of what the people think of me.

Few days back my fortune cookie read “Don’t worry over what others are thinking about you, they are too busy worrying what you think of them” which was very enlightening. After this I thought a lot and realized that I have to learn to love my self, and thus I should be careful that I don’t hurt myself by my own actions. For this I also need to realize that all actions do not have immediate consequences, so there might come times when I’ll be sorry for the things that I have done but I guess you can learn only by making mistakes and what the heck… every one is entitled to their set of mistakes in life. And to the people who are out there judging me, well in most cases you worse than me.

Both sides now..

2008-02-03T02:23:00.000-08:00

I would like to share the very beautiful lyrics of a song by Joni Mitchell...

Rows and floes of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons evrywhere
Ive looked at clouds that way

But now they only block the sun
They rain and snow on evryone
So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my way
Ive looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
Its cloud illusions I recall
I really dont know clouds at all

Moons and junes and ferris wheels
The dizzy dancing way you feel
As evry fairy tale comes real
Ive looked at love that way

But now its just another show
You leave em laughing when you go
And if you care, dont let them know
Dont give yourself away

Ive looked at love from both sides now
From give and take, and still somehow
Its loves illusions I recall
I really dont know love at all

Tears and fears and feeling proud
To say I love you right out loud
Dreams and schemes and circus crowds
Ive looked at life that way

But now old friends are acting strange
They shake their heads, they say Ive changed
Well somethings lost, but somethings gained
In living evry day

Ive looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
Its lifes illusions I recall
I really dont know life at all
Ive looked at life from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
Its lifes illusions I recall
I really dont know life at all

Great words.. :)

To be or not to be ...

2008-01-10T23:57:00.000-08:00

CAT result was out on 8th, and I avoided seeing my results till the 10th, as it happened many people were more interested in knowing my result than I myself was and for two days all kinds of acquaintances kept asking me what my result was, and finally I had to see my result just to satisfy their curiosity. Getting 98.42 %ile is strange. Though you don’t get any calls, still people feel that it is a very good score and that it is their moral responsibility to congratulate you and console you at the same time. I was a little surprised to see my own result, as far as I remember I had not done much in the paper, how I got even this much is a mystery I have yet to solve.

Why am I discussing all this when this years result has hardly affected me is because all this drama brought back the memories of last year when on the day of the result I had cried my eyes out when I had failed to get calls from any of the IIMs. I seriously thought that the sole aim of my life was to get admission in a good B-school, I did get admission in a few colleges but I myself don’t know why I did not join (though I don’t regret my decision as working with Adobe has been a great experience). But in the past six months I have changed a lot. I have asked my self again and again, do I really want to go for further studies? I am not sure. Do I have to be ambitious only because that is what is expected of me? I have started realizing the importance of such introspection, and so should thousands of others who are running in this rat race without thinking for even one second what their true calling is. Many of my friends joined different B-schools last year, when we meet now two common comments I hear from them are that “I don’t really know why I am doing an MBA” and “All they teach you in MBA is how to dish out a lot of crap and still sound important”. Which just goes to prove that not all people who do an MBA really enjoy the experience, so what is the guaranty that I will? Do I really want to waste two long years of my life just waiting for those two years to get over? But if not this – then what? Lots of times it is said that everyone has their own set of special talents and abilities, so to say everyone has a ‘calling’, well, even if that is true, I have yet to discover mine. So till the time I do, I will continue to celebrate CAT as an annual festival…

Six months ... Three trips...

2008-01-03T22:02:00.000-08:00

I am back after a long break... We have a ten days shutdown at Adobe for Christmas and New Year. I had gone to Shimla, and near by places in this break- great experience. Saw snow for the first time in my life, and will have to admit that it was definitely one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen.
It’s been six months since I have left college and started living in Noida and in these six months I have been to three different hill stations (Manali, Nainital, and Shimla). All three trips were very different from each other in many respects. If I had to rate these places in order of scenic beauty, Manali, Nainital, and Shimla would go first, second and third in that order, (Here I am talking of the main cities, and not the near by places). Though besides the scenic beauty there are a lot of other things which contribute to the experience of a holiday.

We had gone to Manali around September for company a team trip. Back then I was very new to the company and did not know many people. It was the most well planned of the above three trips with almost every minute detail taken care of well in advance. It was a good trip in the respect that I got a chance to interact with many of my colleagues and my comfort level with them increased manifold. Highlights of the trip- Rappelling, shopping, and evening drinks and dinner with colleagues. Missed paragliding at Rohtang due to bad weather.

The Nainital trip was the first of its kind. It was only seven people including me. Though it was a very short trip, starting on Friday night and ending on Monday morning, and November is not exactly the best time to go to Nainital still it was definitely the most enjoyable. During this trip we stayed at a place near Nainital called Kausali. It is a beautiful place, mostly devoid of tourists at that time and thus very peaceful. Most of the time there was spent dancing around the bonfire and gossiping with friends (Had some very interesting discussions with friends about Dil Dosti etc. ;)). Thank God for wonderful friends.

And now we come to the most recent i.e. the Shimla trip. The longest trip of the lot, took a total of five days including the traveling time. What makes this trip different is the fact that I gave up going home in order to be able to go on this trip, which is definitely a first. I had gone expecting to see a white Christmas at Shimla but was disappointed in that respect (thankfully our plans included going to Kufri and Narkanda where we got to see all the snow we were looking for J). Shimla is full of tourists at Christmas; it really surprises me that so many people can actually fit in one city at once. It is a completely commercialized tourist destination where the mall road resembles any large shopping mall with the showrooms of most big brands present. For people who do not have shopping on their minds there is nothing much to do. We did eventually get a chance to do ice skating and skiing, had great fun (though I will have to admit that I am not cut out for winter sports L). Overall a good trip.

I do hope that this trend continues and I get to see more places…

Had to start sometime...

2007-12-21T01:57:00.000-08:00

So here comes the first post of my blog
I’ve been planning to do this for a very long time now, don’t really know what was stopping me, I guess it was just laziness.

So now that I am finally here I would dedicate this post to what to expect from this blog in future. Basically I have started blogging because recently I have started feeling that there are a lot of things that I would like to tell people but something or the other prevents me from doing it. Sometimes the right person is not around, at other times I am too busy. Even when both these factors are not the reason there are times when I am just unable to express myself, let’s just say I am not articulate enough even to express my own feelings. So in short this is going to be my own private cribbing place.
Another thing which u can expect to find here is a lot of quotes and lyrics of many songs. Up till now when I came across nice words while surfing the net, I would show them to friends and once in a while put them on my gtalk status bar. But recently I have felt that the status messages are becoming just a little too long, and that my friends getting more and more weary of reading all the crap I keep sending out to them, and hence I would put an end to this sadism.

Disclaimer: I will be copying a lot of things from here and there and pasting it here so, I just hope I would not be accused of plagiarism…..

How useful this will be, I have yet to discover, but at least I should give it a fair trial…