(Good) News......

No - its not that big neither that good..... i found today that 'deeptipande' is available in blogspot. when i had started my blog it was not and hence i chose 'pandedeepti' like my yahoo id. since it is now available - the other deepti must have deleted her blog - but her loss is my gain. so folks my new url in sometime will be 'http://deeptipande.blogspot.com'.

Keep visiting!

SUMMER OF 2006

A very funny, surprising and terrible thing has happened! I was idly going through my archives, just looking at my blogging frequency. While the average count was around 4-5 a month, in April 2006, i found that i had posted a total of 17 times!! I was jolted out of my reverie and had to sit up straight, letting my memories transport me to that summer, wondering what had actually happened! It was the summer of my summers! Hell, i was supposed to be training in my office! Bit by bit, i recollected the shelved moments and built the tapestry again, was transported back to the era. No wonder, i blogged so much - I was dealing with the loss of a close friendship and a dying relationship turned extremely sour. I have always turned to my diary to find moments of peace within me but a diary is a liability and must be burnt sometime soon. However, the best part of a blog is that you write only what you can face - you dont have to worry about disposing of it before it falls into the "wrong hands".......
Those were the days when i started on orkut. And i jumped from 11 scraps at the beginning of the summer to 1100+ at the end of the two months.

Its good to know that the summer was not entirely fruitless and I have an additional tangible takeaway from that summer -

I have my 17 blog posts in addition to my 1100 orkut scraps

But - i am digressing from the point here. What was funny, surprising and terrible was something different. It was this post. I read this post and was taken aback. I have no remembrance at all of watching this movie!! This is surprising since I watch very few english movies (the angrezi being beyond me) and hence i generally remember each one i have watched. And this one being one of the ones i actually liked!! Since all english movies at MDI originated from AG, maybe he will have some clue. The funny thing is that I still remember the line 'the heart wants what the heart wants' and this line keeps coming back to me periodically. But, as i said earlier, i have forgotten how when where i heard this line. The terrible thing is that my memory is going and here's the proof of my old age! abhi tak to shadi bhi nahi huyi!!

Maybe i ll just have to rely on decreasing the time out period and increasing the database refresh rate.

Deja Vu

For the past few days, the restless feeling has returned. I started suffering from this long back when i was in std 8 and it has plagued me on and off since then. I feel very restless, not able to concentrate on anything - with a vague feeling of disquiet and looking for something which keeps eluding me. That constant nagging thought that something is not right - this is not what i am supposed to be doing - life is passing me by and i am losing precious time - i am tarrying on my way to my destination when speed is of essence. i dont know why this is happening, and more importantly, i dont want to know why this is happening - i do not have the courage to look into myself and face it.

I have always listened to the head over the heart. The few times the heart has insisted on taking over have been disastrous (as is expected from a machine like me!). This time again the head says 'this is the path, forget everything and just step on it' while the heart keeps insisting that this is just a mirage and its better to wait and follow the path it will show.

This time, i ll make sure the head wins - even it means match fixing. No more complications for me, please!

Currently playing dedicated to current mood!!!

Challenge

For a while I had been thinking abt how my life was sooooo routine. Nothing out of ordinary or moderately exciting had happened to me in recent times.....the only event even ranking on the 'pata hai kya hua' meter was the royal burning of my sabji due to negligence attributed to engrossing 'charles dickens' (yes things are this bad) just before i was to serve dinner. And this coming from a person whose life was more a series of events with the daily living bits somehow accomodated in between.

Then, last friday, at a quarter to nine, i got a call while i was cooking lunch. The lady from Academy (division of Cognizant which handles traning and certifications) wanted to know whether i could take the Day 5 of a BFS training that day. Now, I have been taking day 4 for quite some time now. I had to really push myself the first time since it is no simple task to stand and speak continuosly3 hours, trying to explain the basics of BFS to a bunch of techies who are pretty bored by the 3 hour sessions they have to take the whole week. It is one thing to stand up and give a presentation in front of b skool students -since you know that you can faff your way thru any question. But, here, these people are relying on you to help them thru the big puzzle called 'finance' and you simply can't let them down by talking a lot of gibberish which you yourself wont understand. It becomes doubly difficult for a person like me, who cannot give a presentation to even b skool fellows if i havent read up the subject first. However, after the first time, i got a hang of it and it was better, though not exactly smooth, sailing.

I had been thinking of diversifying and taking other trainings but had always balked at the scary thought that maybe I did not really know enuf about the subject.

Well, this lady calls up and asks me if i can take a different session that very day. I tried to look for a valid excuse which would get me out of the situation and not lower me in my own eyes (coz my standards are toughest for me). I told her that the sessions start at 10 and i would not be able to reach office by then since i was still cooking lunch. I hadn't counted on the lady being desperate. She said that the sessions now actually happened at 9 but she would postpone it till 11 am to accomodate me. I cud not very well refuse but had a lot of misgivings since the topic was Risk which had of course generated a whole lot of news and there would be n number of questions varying from why did lehman fall to whether their money was safe. I was doubtful whether i would be able to do justice to the questions.

Well, somehow i reached office by 10.30 and hurriedly went through the ppt. It had a lot of new stuff and i hurriedly went through investopedia and wiki also. And then, plunged into the session! On the whole it was pretty decent although i wonder if people didn't react because they were too exhausted!

Later on, i realised that this incident was a challenge which life had subtly put before me. I am not sure if i passed with flying colors or whether i passed at all. But, i am happy that my basics have not changed though my life style has - and even today i can look a challenge in the eye and take it up.

BLOOD!!!!

I was wondering (yet again) about the thing called "blood relations" - sounds pretty gory, doesn't it! While i was wondering (yes, the wondering bit is becoming a bit tiresome) whether it was worth putting down on my blog, i read shivi's post on similar lines and i continued with this post as a tribute to the conversations we have had, the phases and questions in life we have grappled with, and the struggles we have faced up to - some conquered and some not.....

There was a time when friends were the backbone of our existence. We used to look down with disdain on our parent(s) when they started on the subject of family and how we we were making the unpardonable offense of giving more importance to our friends but 'being family', they were graciously pardoning it! There were dire predictions of being friendless one day and then we would turn to our family - this was inconceivable to us starry eyed kids who lived with and shared a life with friends and could not imagine that such intertwining could ever unravel, we who shared each and every detail would scarcely exchange a hi periodically. In our first venture of living on our own, we felt we had conquered the world and what did our folks know - after all they lived with the family and had such a narrow world!

Well, to cut a long story short, all of us now know better and i need not go into details. The real wonder (yes, yet again) to me now is exactly how much we are willing to do for our family! The level of compromise i do without a second thought for my dad, the gravest things i overlook in my siblings, the unforgivable mistakes i forgive and try my best to move on - these hold me spell bound. Why is it that for these relations, we are willing to do everything to keep things going smoothly, while, for the most important relation for the greater part of our life - our spouse - we are ready to expect, think and behave at our worst? If we put in even 50% of the effort we put in for siblings, the rate of divorces would come down drastically - at least in India where we still believe in family, though we have increasingly started disbelieving in marriage. Why do we agree that every person is not perfect and 'aakhir woh mera bhai hai' but we do not say 'aakhir woh mera pati hai' and move on! Why if my brother does not fulfil expectation, i just heave a heavy sigh and do the work myself, but if my boyfriend dares to miss a task, i raise a regular war about it? Why do I stand by my sister through thick or thin but i am ready to run away and break up at the slightest sign of trouble? Why do i keep on giving to my family (and taking) but start weighing when it comes to my better half.

I do not know the answers to these questions. I just wonder (ok, i cannot help it!) that wouldn't it have been better if this most important relationship could be tied with something as strong as, if not stronger than, blood. Something called 'blood marriage' akin to 'blood relation'! Jokes apart, if we can ever believe in our better half half as much as we believe in our family, the world would be a better place and a lot of lawyers would be out of work. A lot of heartache would be avoided, and I would be a happy person today and maybe writing a different blog, 'wondering' about different (and maybe happier) things......

Note - On a different note seems i hit on something inadvertently with my musings here. Seems there is some concept on it and as expected, Shivi knows about it!

The craze for John Corbett continues....

.... The more i see him, the more i love him! That man has got the charisma, the personality and the attitude.....I think i would like a poster of him in my room! Now, that is one big statement coming from me coz i ve never ever had posters of any one in my room.....Once, when i was 10-11, i did put up a photograph cut from a magazine of Rajiv Gandhi on my wardrobe and uncles who knew me then find it hard to believe that i am no longer interested in the congress party! (though now that the charismatic and good looking Rahul Gandhi is on the scene, and he is still single, i think its high time i revisited my interests!)

Then there was the occasion of the poster of Divya Bharati put up in our room by my cousin sister while I was staying at my chachaji's place. That was one 'ugh' poster of one sweetly beautiful girl ( i call her a girl since she was just 19 when she died!)

After that, i remember there was some kind of collage in my room at RIT. Not sure what it was. I just remeber posing for pictures with it when i was leaving. 

And then came the famous collages in Surat! A whole lot of handsome young eligible men with Deepti.....Made by the rmad group (of course the rma part worked and the d part got the prize!)....it had a mix of good looking guys across geographies, industries - in fact 'a very healthy mix' in b skool terms.....and one very stupid picture of me in the middle.....i dont blame the rma people for the stupid pic because i did sport a stupid look in those days - what with the extremely short hair and the huge boys shirts which Meenal rightly called 'frocks'!

I do remember that there was one other collage but again i am unable to recall what was it. i think archana, the eternal noter, would have noted it down in her memory :-)

but no posters.

So, getting a poster is a big deal for me. its difficult for me to idolize somebody in that way. but john corbett the guy and aidan the character deserve it. That guy's attitude can put any girl in a dilemma - which is better - his looks or his sensitivity. If our normal run of the mill guys had even 10% of his sensitivity, caring and understanding attitude, we women would never crib about the guys in our life!

I am not able to accept the fact that Carrie can make the mistake of letting such a guy go. A guy who gives you space and still loves you and is still there for you when you need him. Maybe, that is the problem. He is too good to be true. So i ll forget the character as a person and concentrate on the hero as a good looking poster in my room!

But i can empathise when Carrie is uncomfortable when Aidan moves in. I can also not imagine sharing my room - my space with anybody. I come home, make tea, come and sit in my chair and enjoy the silence and my tea without thinking, saying, doing anything for 10 minutes. It is a big winding down for me. I cannot imagine how it would be to come home and then have to talk about how your day has been etc etc. I dont think it would be appreciated if i took my tea to my (our?) room to have it alone! The silence is soothing and it gives me the energy to cook dinner.
apart from the silence, a normal room is not big enuf for two people! My wardrobe is made to fit my clothes! I love that i can do whatever i feel like in my room  - i can clear out my bed or leave it unmade full of clothes - whichever way i want. I can leave my desktop switched on with just the monitor off without having to explain to anybody about why i felt like doing so! i can read on my laptop in my bed, and just leave it on the other half -again, without having to explain.

I can go on and on but i realise that it is just old age and i have become set in my ways - something like the situation where if my dad wants a sabji made in a way - it should be made in exactly thaty way. That is why they say, girls should be married off early before they realise that they can actually think for themselves and the more dangerous thing - before they start liking doing that!

P.S. Please send me any good pics of John Corbett. I like his second look better. Short hair and the softened look suit his rugged frame.

AND SO STARTED THE CRAP FLYING.....

The effects of the economic slowdown has shown its the first stand alone face -  a double dhamaka showing how a bubble bursts and how the economy copes with a slowdown...and how things suddenly fall apart as a result..... Jet has fired over 1000 staff in an effort to cut down costs......the booming aviation sector has boomed with a big boom and an accompanying bang.......the rising costs of fuel, the lower passenger traffice, a poor future outlook which makes expansion senseless - all this had to affect the business and some fallout of this kind is to be expected.....you cant expect a giant moving at the pace of 100km/hr stop suddenly and not give a loud *thump* and take down everything with it......the basic law of inertia demands it!

Till now, people associated with the US economy in some form or other were feeling the heat - but this is something much closer home. And this is what is frightening - that this can have a rippling effect on other aspects of the Indian economy.....I wonder what purpose the people agitation against the Jet authoritites will serve. I know that it sounds heartless of me to say this but it is not as if i dont have sympathy for the folks who are suddenly out of jobs, who would have loans and kids, whose skills are suddenly out of demand, some of them maybe too far in life making starting afresh very difficult. I can empathise because i also have a loan (in fact my situation is such that if i am done if i dont get my salary even for a month) and i can also find myself in the same situation (getting more likely day by day!) but at the end of the day the purpose of a business is to make profits and the management has to take decisions for the shareholders' interests......These are the negatives of a capitalist setup and this is the price we have to pay for the fast growth rate we all have been hitching a ride on......It was because of this setup that these people got the job in the first place - if aviation had not been opened to the private sector - these jobs would never have been created - we, from the middle class, would never have thought of air travel and never have experienced any of the benefits. Protesting against unfair treatment is not the point because they would have signed a contract at the time of joining. Its a different matter that they would have never thought that today could be reality in future when they were signing the contract. I heard some Jet employee on TV saying that at least Jet should give them 3 years salary as the separation package! It is hard to believe such a condition in a private sector enterprise!! The 30 day package being offered is much more realistic......

And, no marks for guessing who has come to the rescue! yes our very own Raj Thackeray (lovingly called RT by us) who has threatened Jet over firing staff! I really wonder what he aims to do. Jet is a big enterprise and a far cry from the poor Bihar immigrants and bullying is simply not going to work this time.....you cant force a private company to keep staff and pay them.....unless RT can manage to convince the govt to pitch in!!!!....I would like to know from him how his threat of not allowing Jet flights in Mumbai would resolve the problem. At the most, it would help in increased fares of other carriers! And this would help the very people he is threating!! but who am i - a mere mortal - to question the wisdom of our great leader!! Hail RT!!
On a serious note, let this be a lesson to us to spend money wisely and save for a rainy day.Let us pause before we take up more loans. Let us think before we spend 5k in one swipe at a mall.....This is gyaan and I should be the first one to take it to heart and more importantly, mind.....

CYG - Whose game is it?

Yesterday the much hyped and much awaited (??) Commonwealth Youth Games finally opened in Pune. A lot of road construction and repair work was started (and of course never completed). Whatever small percentage did get completed was promptly undone by the end of the first day of the rains.....The hype and hoopla increased exponentially as the day came closer with RJs on Radio Mirchi desperately selling "merKandise" (i wonder nobody pointed out the pronunciation - after all youngsters are going to pick this!! but maybe it is the maharashtrian pronunciation, smthg similar to the Indian or in many cases the ever popular Bihari pronunciation we have)....

Well, cutting back to the inaguration ceremony - which i had to witness given the fact that my Dad watches Doordarshan (he should be given a medal for being probably the last person to still stick to it) and it was dinner cooking time for me. As a rule, I never watch TV but now i do get to listen a lot to it owing to the high volume dad generally keeps as a rule.....
The CYG is supposed to represent all the commonwealth nations and the games has participants from 71 countries. So, it came as a shock when the dignatory (unfortunately i dont recall the name) welcoming the participants kept lapsing into marathi!! This was still OK since his speech was so short that it ended before we had time to recover or react. Then came Suresh Kalmadi, our honourable MP (who regularly appears in Page 3 of Pune Times - and no your eyes are not reading it wrong!) His speech was more of Marathi than English.....The climax was when he welcomed the participants in Marathi! (fortunately he translated it to English promplty otherwise the participants wouldn't even have known that they had been welcomed so warmly).

His welcome speech then went on to brag about Indian performance in Olympics (and no, i have not been able to figure out the context till now).....listing each of the medals individually (which i am sure everybody knew and those who dint were probably not interested in that bit of info anyway).....The triumphant conclusion of this section was the declaration that India would win most of the medals here also - wouldnt be surprising considering that India has 148 participants compared to the max 40-45 from other countries.....i just wondered how this whole thing figured in the role of the gracious host he was playing.....

This was about the welcome to the foreigners.....Let me move on to the treatment of fellow countrymen. He declared his magnanimousness by inviting all indians to use the sports complex....everything in it is ours and we are to feel free to use it.(did he make it with his own hard earned money??).....i wonder whether the Sports Authority of India had asked him to extend the invitation on his behalf!
And then another climax.....he said that Pune was the Sports Capital of India......everything seemed to go still around me - Oxford of East - yes, Detroit of India- yes, Sports Capital of India- impossible, not even extremely doubtful! (in fact google tells me that the sports capital is delhi - but i am not sure if i shud believe google over Mr Suresh Kalmadi)......even as i wondering about substantiating the claim - he went on to say that the Olympic Association of India was born in Pune (something not substantiated on the official website.. )
This coming from the President of the Association might carry some weight but his next claim of Pune giving all the good badminton players made it doubtful. Google tells me that Pune does have some relation to badminton - the first rules were written by the British station in Poona cant.....So at least he is not that away from the mark!

By this time my dinner was almost done and i thankfully took refuge in my room....one other noteworthy thing happened - some firang was giving a speech - written by these people and the poor guy concluded his speech by saying 'Jai Pune' and 'Jai Maharashtra'....Since i was not actually watching the whole thing and my images were formed by listening - for a second i thought i was listening to a Shiv Sena or a MNS gathering rather than the opening ceremony of a Commonwealth games....

All this makes one wonder - who is the games for? Are the participants just stooges - guinea pigs used to show the rest of india that marathi will be spoken here - to hell with the occasion and the audience! i wonder, i wonder......and what does this tell us about the people who think of this strategy? i wonder, i wonder.....i have sometimes started feeling ashamed of being a Puneite....

John Corbett

I am hooked to John Corbett (Aidan in Sex and the City)......I must say Carrie has it all, or pretty much close to all - Chris Noth was gorgeous and John Corbett is..........

Watching this soap always makes me think of the eternal question - how do we really see ourselves - as we really are or as we want others to see us??

Which leads to the second most obvious question - how do we define "what we really are".....after all as i always say - much to my conviction and much to Pankaj's frustration - you cannot really define anything in this world - esp the parts about right, wrong, true, untrue - everything ranging from the color of your eyes to the color of the setting sun to the color of boiled milk - is made of shades, shades and more shades.....even absolute things like left and right are relative to something - i really think that the theory of relativity is the supreme truth of life!

So the phrase "as i really am" can mean different things to different people - after all there are people who find me healthy, plump, fat and obese!! I believe what matters is how I interpret it - since finally each individual has a unique interpretation of everything.....

which leads me to the second thing - how i want others to see me......I think finally our self image is a combination of the two- you create an image of yourself which you want others to see and then you work towards it......if you are not comfortable with it - its simply not going to stick - its not something what you really are! the biggest example in front of me is my transition from the very outgoing to the very reserved girl.....i was outgoing and talkative to a very high degree - and then there came a point where i believed that i could straighten up the mess in my life by being reserved and shy - which is what i wanted people to view me as - and slowly this is what i became - now i simply cannot open up in front of anybody - the biggest difference is that earlier where i simply loved talking to new people - strangers, old, young - everybody - and now, i hate talking - and have to convince myself to call up people even for official purposes!!! people who knew me then and who know me now will never agree on "what i really am".....

to be frank, i sometimes miss the old me - but i guess life is more practical and smooth this way - you stay out of trouble- but have to pay the price of mundanity....maybe this is how i want people to see me - but i dont really think that I want to see myself this way......but again, that is a whole new story......

BTW - any leads to meeting John Corbett will be appreciated :-)

ALL ABOUT THE BIG SCREEN....

We saw Kidnap today.....must say that i am pretty disappointed with the promising Imran Khan who did not quite live up to expectations.....upar se na story mein kuch dum aur na hi doosre actors ki acting....i really dont think minisha lamba should continue torturing us.....I never expected much from her anyway but Imran Khan cud have been better....his dialogue delivery was pretty stitled most of the time.....even vidya malvade was not convincing.....anyways am not too upset since the tickets cost Rs 35 each!!! and yes, it IS a multiplex!!! i luv hyderabad....although we had to pay 10 bucks extra for online booking but with the auto fare being 3 bucks - the movie was totally worth it!!
Ms Lamba reminded me of the dreadful movie - Bachna Ae Haseeno.....neither the characters nor the story was convincing....i really do not need to go into the b skool rigors deepika was undergoing....however, there was one takeawat in the movie- when bipasha comes to the airport and says that she will forgive Ranbir Kapoor because 'she needs to do that in order to move on' ......very true, it is very difficult and very heavy to carry hate and grudges in your heart and you have to bear the load......i had once read in an agatha christie novel - hate doesnt last, love lasts and hence there are more crimes of love as compared to that of hate.....again very true - i cud do a lot of things for love (??) which i wud never do for hate.....
tomorrow i will be seeing the IMAX screen again after a long long time....my last movie had been Matrix Reloaded with Rohini - i wish i cud meet her again! how we willingly put in our hard earned money for that 1.5 hours! she was fun and i miss her still......in fact, now that i think of it - hyderabad has been pretty nice to me....even if i have not been terribly happy here, i have never been terribly sad either - something which unfortunately i cannot say for pune.....also the happy time i ve spent here have been with people who have naturally drifted away from my life - so the pain of forced separation is also not there.....
somebody has put in a comment on my previous post asking how anupam kher knew where to find naseeruddin shah.....unfortunately since the comment is annonymous, i cant sms the answer to whoever it was....i also had this question which pankaj answered for me - the hacker was able to locate the address- somehow i had missed that scene.....coming back to the movie, one of the various pluses of the movie that it was very fast - while typically a movie of that kind is mostly slow (i think Kidnap should have taken a leaf from here - it was too slow!!!) the dialogues in general were good - climax being the best of course - in hinglish, the kind we speak- but the best is when a bollywood actor named Khanna goes to anupam kher (police commissioner) to complain against some threatening calls he has been receiving - and says that he is being targeted since he is from the minority community. Kher obviously asks him that how can he be from the minority community? Khanna answers that the majority in Bollywood is Khans and he is a Khanna hence minority!!!!! and yes, again, jimmy shergill looked real good....and again, he should not do chocolately roles - Even the guy Jai Singh was good.....well enough of wednesday - i shud go to sleep now so that tomorrow will come soon and i ll meet Aparajita!