Watta trip!!

Recently (December 3-6, 2009), when my office nominated me to a seminar in Paris, – the city of Love/Lights/Fashion - little did I know that it would turn out to be probably the most memorable of all my trips till date. Though the official program was only for two days, I had decided to stay over for the weekend to look around the city and take it as much of its rich culture as possible. The program ended on a fairly decent note with a fair amount of knowledge sharing across the participants and I acquainted people across other EU nations. After the conclusion of the trip on the second day (4^th December), I had literally dragged my boss who was with me to visit the famous Eiffel in all its lit up glory. So, there I was – leaving for the evening outing not knowing that a long night awaited me on my return.

By the time I was back to the hotel, it was about 10.30 pm as per their local time. My primary intention behind taking the laptop was to keep downloading pictures on a daily basis and make space for fresh ones in my digital camera. I took out my cam and looked around for my notebook – eagerly awaiting to see the results of my clicking on the screen. Then, there was the moment of dawn; that was when I realized that it was not to be seen anywhere. I turned my small hotel room upside down – searched every possible corner of it and with every passing minute, it was becoming more certain – that the laptop has indeed been stolen. My attempts at going down to the lobby of the Hotel and creating a ruckus saying I got to speak to the owner of the place, need to call the cops, etc. did not really help. So, there I was in foreign land, losing probably the priciest of possessions, unable to communicate it in their language, and really getting into a spin.

Even much later when I dialed 017 which was their emergency police number, I had enough reasons to conclude my attempts were going futile – none of the voices that answered my call at the opposite end spoke English. But, surprise, surprise, exactly in 15 mts from my call, there were 3 French police officials at my entrance with all their police wear, badges, raincoats in tow (it was pouring outside), waiting to help me. It was almost like a scene straight out of a Hollywood movie with me playing the role of a damsel in distress.

A series of interrogation followed – I answered questions on why I was in Paris, till when would I be staying, which organization do I belong to, etc. and was asked to show photocopies of my passport/visa and office ID. By this time, there was another twist in the tale – an American attorney who was in the 5^th floor (I was put in the 3^rd floor) had also lost couple of his laptops and a video camera at almost the same time as mine. After documenting the story in broken French and English, I was told that the case was too complex and would be transferred to a special officer from the ‘criminal investigative agency’. I was anyway furious and was in no mood to give up (would have even met Mr. Sarkozy, if need be). Naturally, I was only more than eager to await the next set of cops from the ‘criminal investigative wing’ to takeover. The process that followed was a repetition with about half an hour of interrogation with the new set of officials. Finally, I was told that I have an appointment the next day at the police headquarters of Paris to formally register a complaint.

So, after finishing a half-hearted site seeing tour which could not be cancelled since it was booked prior to this incident, I headed to the police HQ on my own. When my turn came up for the one to one with the officer, the special officer’s room resembled more like some rugby/baseball teams’ backstage room – had loads of baseballs, caps, jerseys and car/bike posters. The officer, who didn’t know one bit of English helped himself – and me – by organizing for a translator. The lady translator giggled more than she spoke and had one paragraph to translate to the officer for every single sentence that I told her!! During the process of explaining the scene, the biggest challenge for me was to explain whats a laptop!! Needless to say, I tried my best too – even tried saying it was a portable computer; finally, thanks to an advertisement of a HP notebook in one of the magazines lying around, I managed explaining the stolen object. Anyway, this process took about an hour and culminated in a six page report in French which was the equivalent of the ‘First Information Report’ in India. Phew!!

Apart from the above incident, I covered quite a bit of the “must-see” places in Paris - even squeezed in sometime on Saturday evening after my appointment with the cops to do some shopping for my people back home. The visit to Galeries Lafayette and The Printemps was awesome – whoever said shopping is the biggest stress buster is SO right!

Sunday began with a firm resolution that I am not going to let the theft incident screw up the one day left to look around. I made a list of places I wanted to see and covered almost the entire city by foot/the metro train network. They have 18 metro lines and 4 suburban lines connecting the entire city and the service is truly impressive.

The places I covered included a visit to the topmost floor of the Montparnasse tower (through the fastest elevator in Europe which traverses 59 floors in 38 seconds), the Notre Dame cathedral, the Montmartre Church, the Pantheon, the Eiffel Tower, the Latin Quarter, St. Louvre Museum, Tuileries garden behind the museum, the Grand Palace, the Concorde, the Conciergerie, and a final stroll of the Champs Elysees before hitting back to the room. But the best part of the day was the walk along the banks of River Seine. The river gives a classic feel to the entire city; the buildings along the banks of the river, with their historic architecture still intact, lend an almost dream feel to the entire stretch. I, for one, absolutely enjoyed the leisurely one hour stroll along the river and its picturesque banks after finishing my visit to all the above historical places. One of the flipsides I noticed about Paris was that every 4^th guy smokes in public places – for someone who detests smoking (active and passive), I landed up inhaling quite a bit of it.

To sum up, though I did have the quintessential language problem which any non-French speaking tourist would face, there are several impressive things about the city and its people – they respect their history, culture and language immensely and are indeed very proud of it; at the same time, they are also accommodative in terms of embracing people from other parts of the world; whoever said that the French guys are normally rude and arrogant, my experience was quite different; the metro network – with its 18 criss-crossing lines – is superb; the French cops are extremely professional and helpful too (I get a response to my emails from them in about an hour’s time)– I cannot imagine EVER even in my dreams, an Indian police officer responding by reply e-mail to a foreign tourist on a theft complaint; direction sense of the people - natives deftly manoeuvring across the city with their hand-help maps and encouraging tourists to do so too – was a lesson in self-sustenance.

While I am extremely patriotic, I couldn’t help thinking of the several takeaways for my country in terms of the areas we need to improve to become more people friendly – both to natives and tourists alike.

On a personal front, it was, no doubt, an adventurous trip which boosted my confidence levels – for someone who has hardly travelled even within India, I, for sure, know I can manage alone in any country now amidst the direst of circumstances; however, it was also yet another reminder to myself on how to be a more cautious traveler next time around!!

A Dream Job!

Year after year, when its placements time, I hear conversations amongst some of my college friends, juniors, and alumni on who is placed where; who is coming to which institute; what is the bench-mark pay this year; which sectors are hits amongst students, etc. Of-course, in my case, ever since I got my current ‘Bharat Sarkar’ job, I have struck to it diligently for six plus long years for the positives I see in it.

Having stayed here for a while now, I have often observed there are various principles and ideologies in the system I am a part of that I do not entirely endorse; Being the Idealist that I am, I have attempted, albeit in baby steps, to change a few of these in my own ways and achieved limited success.

There were a couple of incidents this week in office and some subsequent discussions with colleagues and friends which led me to take a quick re-cap of these thoughts and to ask myself if there is one such thing called a Dream Job – if so, where does it exist. Instead, isn’t it possible to have a dream for the job that we are presently in and try to accomplish that dream.

Instead of cribbing about the so-called omnipresent “system”, at the cost of sounding clichéd, is it really so difficult to change this “system” through quantifiable, measurable initiatives that will yield some results. In the role and the job that I am in, my dream is to be a part of the organization where:

• it is perfectly fine to have a view of your own and debate it with open minds.
• meritocracy and performance alone rule promotion policies
• it is Ok to question words like “precedence” and “past practice” based on rationale thinking
• it is possible to execute your function without fear or favour
• the staff are genuinely ‘anti-red tapist’ - the mind-set that the bureaucracy and government set-ups are so infamous for
• all cadre of staff – right from the security guard at the main gate to the management is accountable for what they do and own up their work
• skill-sets and interests of individuals are matched with requirements of a work-profile to determine postings
• all unproductive meetings are curtailed, if not to save time, atleast to save on reams of paper that’s wasted, meeting after meeting
• the senior management refuses protocol and is on its own
• lunch breaks are not for 2 plus long hours to go to the near-by exhibitions/fairs or for shopping or a siesta in the library!

On a lighter note, something came as quite a surprise to me in this context. When I was sharing this with some of my friends in the private sector, barring a few of the above, their wish-list seemed hardly any different!! Is the grass indeed greener on the other side?

Any comments?

Do Opposites Always Attract?

Relationships - they are everywhere around us. Best friends; deeply in love couples; doting parents and kids; bosses and their men Fridays, teachers and star students; As I grew up, one question I have often asked myself is that for a relationship to tick – is it essential that the two parties need to be as similar as possible; or is it that opposites always attract.

There have been numerous examples in my own life. I have known the best of friends who are as different as chalk and cheese – different principles and ideologies; different likes/dislikes; different tastes in various subjects like art, music, movies, theatre, politics; different food preferences; they are simply not on the same wavelength. But still, they often seem to complement each other so perfectly that they hardly need a third dimension on any aspect.

And there is the other school of thought – Birds of a feather flock together; Individuals who choose to adopt this belief are almost like two sides of the same coin. They have similar tastes, likes/dislikes, characteristics, beliefs, opinions, preferences, et al. They want to do similar things all the time - the ones who believe that it is so much easier for people with similar attributes to carry on a relationship smoothly.

If we think through a possible rationale for like-minded people to be attracted to each other, it could be because they are least prone to any conflicts and are almost hassle-free - you hardly need to convince anything to your own mirror image.

However, my personal experience has been that even those who fiercely believe in like minds getting together, discreetly wish that a devil’s advocate existed in reality to bring forward different perspectives - after all, what is the fun if you do not have someone near you who can give a reality-check on your way of life. What I have also seen is that the choice to adopt either of the tendencies mentioned above are, by and large, dependent on the circumstances that one goes through at various points of time.

I am yet to figure out myself what works best for me – or whether is it possible, or even necessary, to distinctly skew towards either of these approaches; nevertheless, in most cases, a co-existence of both these tendencies appear almost inevitable!!

The Curious Case of the “Forward” Button

I am a self-confessed email addict – the kind who would refresh my inboxes every 5th second even on a super-hectic day at work. I was one of the early users of the internet / emails ever since school days and this habit has somehow struck even after commencing my career. Currently, apart from official purposes, I use the medium as a tool to connect with friends and family across the globe.

However, I notice more often than not that emails go much beyond sharing updates in lives with your near and dear folks. There are greater mail freaks around – the ones who find it so much fun to share not just worthwhile mail content, but also any kind of jokes or scenic pictures or stories/pictures of religious leaders/gods, celebrity gossips, man-woman gender based fun, and the list can really go on and on....

A little amount of pondering on what can be the reasons for this insurmountable urge to forward mails for no rhyme or reason led to the following possible thoughts:-

• too little work at office, too much spare time;
• it could be like a short break between hectic professional schedules or other chores;
• just an effort in reminding the recipients you still exist;
• you genuinely wish to forward a content that you have received over an email
• the mail you had received had threatened that catastrophe shall strike if you do not forward it to 50 email recipients within 5 seconds of your reading it;
• the originator of the mail had promised to ship across a mobile if you do not break the chain and forward it to 50 mail IDs (I wonder how even the most literate and rationale ones fall prey to this).
• a corporate house has agreed to sponsor the medical facilities of a cancer struck kid for every e-mail forwarded by you in the loop.
• no time to actually write out a mail – so forwards are a novel way to keep in touch (with absolutely no effort other than clicking the forward button)

While I do not delete any mail without reading, I must confess I do not enjoy bulk forwards which are merely transferred without any personal touch. I forward very very rarely, and send only the stuff which I feel MUST be reached to my friends. For someone who hates to have a cluttered mail box, my mail history would hardly be a day or two old at any point of time; and forwards sent on a one to many basis is normally not the most prioritized of all the mails - not even in personal inboxes. I find it more exciting to see my friend’s holiday snaps than the wedding snaps of some celebrity; similarly, its so much more insightful to introspect yourself than through some philosophical quotes forwarded on power-point presentations with soothing music and scenic background pictures.

If only we use our online presence, time and the bandwidth in a more useful manner – it could be for the simplest of joys like catching up with friends and sharing events/updates with the ones who matter or browsing through things which are customized to individual preferences or reading stuff which can bring in some value addition to our lives...

If only we learn to move beyond being rudimentary messengers transferring un-altered content from one inbox to several others, the world-wide web could indeed be a better place to stroll through.

Go, Kiss the World - how about starting with your own Country?

Shortly, its going to be that time of the year again. Schools are in the brink of a vacation close. A time when children and adults alike look forward to taking a break from their hustle-bustle city lives and schedules. My kiddo cousins in the family have already started planning their winter vacation. One of the things that struck me is a trend that I noticed has caught up in a big-way as a trend in the whole concept of vacationing – holidays to foreign destinations.

I was one of the unfortunate (feel rather fortunate, in hindsight!) ones who while growing up in Chennai always had my immediate relatives and family friends in around Chennai, at the most, in and around Tamil Nadu. So, my holidays - if at all I rarely had any time for it after being done with my holiday tuitions and special classes - were mostly a trip to some of my relatives’ places within Tamil Nadu. Of course, I had great fun with my cousin and immediate sisters and our small gang of girls did have a rocking time. It helped me develop a great bonding with them all which continues till date.

Anyway, the circumstances today are very different. Our societies are increasingly getting cosmopolitan by the day. Today, its more a question of peer pressure and it is considered inferior if you do not go to a foreign locale during your holidays and share your holiday stories. It often makes me wonder – how many of the current generation kids have even visited a fair portion of their own city or acquainted themselves with the rich history that India is bestowed with. Though I cannot claim even remotely that I have visited all the “must-see” places in India, I can, with a certain sense of modesty, say that the extent to which I have explored my country only left me feel wanting for more.

In this context, I cannot help but recall a couple of recent trips I did with my family. Firstly, we had covered Southern Karnataka in March - more to fulfill my Mom’s long desire to cover some of the ancient temples that side. Karnataka, truly, is blessed with tons of natural wealth and dense forests. We got a chance to visit some ancient and famous temples each of which had a story to tell from the past. An add-on bonus was some breath-taking scenic landscapes through which we traveled. We covered about 1500 kms extensively by road in about 3 days and the hilly terrain and interior, virgin hill-stations we passed by simply rendered us awe-struck.

Ditto for the 1 day trip I did recently to cover interior Tamil Nadu (Tanjore and Trichy). My parents filled me in with their memoirs of my fore-fathers and their up-bringing in our native places. Some of these places would make for fantastic educational trips for today’s urbane school-going kids. Even the simplest and closest of them all from Chennai (the place I grew up), DakshinaChitra (www.dakshinachitra.net), was popularized to Indians only by NRIs and foreigners who flocked that place to learn about India’s rich cultural history.

But, an un-enterprising Tourism Dept. in India and lousy domestic infrastructure coupled with “I love anything foreign” attitude of parents have ensured a slow and steady burial of a whole body of fantastic history. Today, Singapore is far more superior than Srirangapattinam as a holiday destination; Johannesburg a far more exciting place to visit and freak out than Jaipur.

While its wonderful to embrace the world in all its myriad hues, cultures and continents, its also time we opened ourselves to learn and nurture the places we live in.

I have not written this piece with a closed and territorial mind-set to emphasize that India is better than ‘A’ or ‘B’ or ‘C’ – either as a holiday destination or otherwise. But, before you explore the 7 continents across the globe, doesn’t it feel proud and confident to patronize your mother country before the world. After-all, Home IS where the Heart should be!!

In(ter)-dependence

Amidst pouring rains, choc-a-bloc traffic and blaring horns of co-travellers, I had an interesting chat with a colleague over the level of inter-dependence of single (and independent) women in our societies. On one side was she – married with two kids, financially independent, but with a strong support system at home in terms of her family – narrating how her life has changed post-marriage and the role change she has undergone; and on the other side was me – single, with a fairly decent career, staying alone in the Big, Bad city of Bombay, and most of all, “Independent” – Well, technically, I was, but, didn’t realize my level of inter-dependence until I asked myself a while ago if that part was literally true.

The conversation did let me ponder over the levels of dependence we all have with various elements of the society – to begin with, am hugely dependent on my family as a support system too – though I stay in a different city from them, I land up calling home more than 4 to 5 times even on weekdays; dependent on close friends and the near and dear ones – for all the love and affection and the cheer they bring unto you on days, when you are low or even otherwise; dependent on your pals/chums – for all the fun things to do and make life a lot more lighter; dependent on colleagues – for all the professional assistance required; dependent on maid - for all the household chores and meals; dependent on neighbours and the society that am living in – to take care of any SOS requirements…..and the list goes on.

And I thought I was someone who could survive all on my own by myself even if I were to exist in an Island someday. Well, today was a wake-up call. At the cost of sounding clichéd, it did make me thank god for all the wonderful people in my life.

Independence - Seriously – Does that word even have to exist in our Dictionaries?.

Expressions

As a kid, I had often wondered how sometimes it is difficult to communicate not just with oneself but also with your dear ones. Words would falter only at the most critical of times, even to the most articulate of them all. This could be more prevalent in stages of adolescence where teens tend to become more reclusive. Deep down somewhere, I was probably one such person who found greater solace in expressing to the inner self – Have believed in this part of it, till date.

Thus, began my quest for writing. Initially, it seemed like a Face 2 Book conversation which was more a monologue. But then, as years pass by, its amazing to read through stuff which I have myself written say, 10 or 12 years back, with the mindset and maturity levels I had at that time. When I had gone home (native place) recently, I spent a decent amount of time flipping through my old school/college time Diaries, scrap-books, all the farewell autograph notes from my friends, etc. – in a way, it was more like re-visiting the past.

Blogging, really, is only a more contemporary variant of the same. You document stuff based on your real time experiences in life, the people you interact with, or thoughts that strike you at a particular point in time. As days, and you, evolve, its nice to recall what you were going through during that phase of life. In a way, its like an expression of your ideologies and principles on various things that you experience in your day to day routine – A fabulous medium to express your views and thoughts to people whom you wish to. And So I thought, So here I am.