Serendipity

Lately I had been feeling a little irritated carrying my mobile phone around with me. Actually there was no issue with the mobile; the irritant was its cover. Almost two years back, my son had talked me into buying Samsung Note 2, which at that point-in-time, was one of the finest had gadgets available in the Android range (I still thank him for that!). Having paid a handsome amount to own this piece, I did not even blink an eye to buy a beautiful yet expensive flip cover for it. Normally I am quite a careful guy when it comes to maintaining the things I own, hence both the mobile and its cover were doing quite well till the recent past. However as luck could have it, due to very frequent travelling, the mobile cover got debilitated quickly. I  inquired  from a couple of shops for a new ‘original’ flip cover, expecting that it would be available at a very reasonable price, since I’ was asking for a cover of a mobile which was launched almost two years back. To my su...

Now-a-days life moves on like a Formula One car, maybe faster. I was not surprised when one of my college mates sent me a WhatsApp which beautifully described the kind of life I was leading until a few days back, which goes something like ‘Alarm rings, WhatsApp pings’. Before I could thank God for giving me one more day to live, few pings on WhatsApp, series of office e-mails from colleagues in countries who start working much earlier than we do in India and a few uncalled-for personal e-mails welcomed me. So, the tone for my day was set by them, not me. Weekdays - A quick shower, a quicker bite (many times on the way), min. one hour drive to office on my ‘University on Wheels’, series of Live Meetings with various colleagues from a few countries, a quick lunch with local colleagues, some decisions made, close to two hours of drive back home, few ‘Viber’ calls - to parents, family, friends on the way back and time pass thru’ FM radio or at times movie / YouTube in a very slow tra...

Life is all about expectations. I think the expectation from us starts even before we enter this world. And it continues even after we leave this world. I’m sure you understand what I mean. Expectation gives the expectant a sense of hope, something he or she can cling to. It’s a fascinating motivator, a mood booster, a great leveler, and what not. So what has the title of this blog to do with expectation? I think a few of you, who have already watched this movie, can relate to what I call as falling short because of over-expectation. The kind of hype which was created for this movie, especially just before its release, led to an over-expectation in a movie buff like me. So when I watched it, although overall I liked it, however somewhere it left in me a feeling of wanting more. Interestingly, even if this movie is much better than many which have been released lately, it still has not been able to provide me an oomph factor. Expectation up to a limit is a positive; however ov...

Claimer: All characters appearing in this work are real. Any resemblance to real persons is purely intentional. The recent heavy rains in Mumbai have prompted this reminiscence. July 2005 is and likely to remain unforgettable for most of the Mumbaites for a long long time. And so shall be the case for many like me who were visiting Mumbai, especially on the 26 th of July. I love Sales & Marketing part of my job, because it offers me an opportunity to travel, visit different places, meet various people, learn diverse cultures, enjoy multifarious foods and most of all gather lots n lots of experience. It was during one of my such visits, this one to Mumbai, where I experienced what I call until today, an epitome of customer delight! I landed in Mumbai on the 24 th evening for strategy discussions with my HQ planned on the 25 th & 26 th for two very large projects which we had targeted to acquire. We reached a decision by the afternoon of 26 th . My supervisor ...

Ego is the “I” or the self of any person; a person as thinking, feeling, and willing, and distinguishing itself from the selves of others and from the objects of its thought. Going by the above definition, certain amount of ego is essential for our basic existence. What we will be, if we do not possess any bit of it! Then why raise this point at all? It’s fine up to this extent. The problem starts beyond this. All of us, one time or the other, many times deliberately and a few times unknowingly, exert our ego. This creates issues between family members, close friends & relatives, colleagues, neighbours, etc. Nobody can remain unaffected by it. Many times we have seen the business flourishing when two brothers are working together towards a common goal and invariably one fine day we find that they have split. Barring a few cases, the reason is ego. The elder brother may think that the younger one lacks experience & maturity and on the other hand the younger one may fin...

Invariably anybody who starts learning driving a vehicle in India at any age understands sooner than later that ‘Gaadi kabhi seedhi seedhi mat chalao – warna thuk jayegi!’ Our entire eco-system on the road exists on one principle – never follow your lane and to some extent it goes even beyond this – never allow anybody to follow their lane. My early lessons of learning the art of driving happened on our humble white Maruti 800. I call it humble apropos of today’s swanky cars plying on our much improved roads. Going back in history, we had to wait for eight long months to possess it. I remember our (I & my brother) much younger cousin sister one day driving in a Tata Sumo to our place. For a moment everybody in our lane who saw the Sumo approaching felt as if the Sumo was being automatically driven (like a Google car), till the time they saw her screeching it to a halt and jumping out of it. She became our quintessential choice as a driving teacher from whom, during our vacati...

Each one of us loves to share our bit of successes with others as it makes us happy. Many times our Medals & Trophies are a proof of our success. Generally as a student, the more we have, the more successful we are perceived to be. It gives us a sense of pride to have them more in number than our closest friend or foe. There are also other forms of Medals & Trophies which may not prove us to be successful however surely convey how adventurous we would have been in our childhood and growing-up years. Quite a few of them remain with us for our lifetime, sometimes as a living proof of mischievousness. Guess what am I talking about? For me, the first Medal I received was in Class III while I studied at ‘Chukha Public School’ in ‘Cimakothi’ @ Bhutan. Being a hilly & forest country, you could find rocks emanating from ground anywhere & everywhere. There was one such rock which occupied practically 15 to 20% of our school playground. One day, while I raced with my fe...

One of the great pastimes for me is observing people. It not only helps me spend my time interestingly, it gives me an insight of how people behave and sometimes, why they behave as they behave. I go even a step further; based on my observations, I tend to classify people. The results are revealing, interesting & astonishing. I do this all the time I travel. I have been doing this all the time I have been travelling, starting from my college days. I picked-up this habit when I used to make innumerable bus journeys from Delhi to Chandigarh during 1988 to 1992, while I studied @ PEC. The crowd in a normal HRTC (Haryana Road Transport Corporation) bus used to be much different from the ‘elite’ class who used to travel by an Air Conditioned bus. It was so easy to mingle with the folks travelling by a normal bus. There used to be an atmosphere of ‘gap shap’ (chit chat). Most common language for conversation was of course Hindi / Punjabi. At any given point in time, there was ...

Recently a casual chat with a close friend led me to walk through the golden days; those days which were spent more care free than now and because of this, their memory is etched in my mind forever. Those of you who are around my age would easily relate to the times when out of many houses in the lane, only a handful of one had a TV. Luckily our house was one of those. The ‘Chitrahaar’ on Wednesday evenings and the ‘movie’ on Sunday evenings on ‘Doordarshan’ used to be a grand affair. I still recollect the max. count of 19 neighbours on a Wednesday and 23 on a Sunday, in the drawing room of our modest two-room flat in Delhi. For us, organizing such a gathering used to be a privilege as well as a treat! While we (I & my younger brother) enjoyed this privilege, we suddenly found ourselves a little wanting when one of our ‘foreign-returned’ neighbours brought with them a ‘coloured TV’. For our friends, the sleek SONY was fast becoming a popular attraction than our voluminous...

How do you define a long drive in a country like India where the distances are as vast as Kashmir (Jammu & Kashmir) to Kanyakumari (Tamil Nadu) - 3617 kms and Kutch (Gujarat) to Kumki (Arunachal Pradesh)- 3494 kms? My experience tells me that any single drive beyond 500 kms is a long drive; if not by distance, definitely by the time consumed in traversing this distance! Long Drive is one of my passions and since 1994, I’ve done many such long trips, in different states, on different road conditions, in different cars. Over the years, the road and associated infrastructure has tremendously improved however the traffic increase has kept pace with it, maintaining the criteria of defining a Long Drive intact. In the recent years, I’ve had many occasions to drive to & fro Mumbai-Ahmedabad. Today, going by the road conditions, it would be one of the best 600km Long Drives (home-to-home) you can aspire to have. With newly-built flyovers all along the way and with an exceptio...

What’s the best alternative to swimming? Once, during an assessment of my routine medical report, a cardiologist told me that the athletes, especially who walk and run a lot, have the healthiest of the hearts. While on my short vacation to Amdavad (Ahmedabad), as I couldn’t get a good swimming option, I took to morning walk. I recollected a spot which had maintained its attractiveness for avid walkers by not giving-in to the pressures of modernization. I was delighted to find it as untouched as it was a couple of years back. Only the enthusiasts, who would like to utilize such a rare facility, had increased in number. I’m talking about the campus of the ‘Sardar Patel Institute of Economic & Social Research’ located at the junction of Drive-in road and SG Highway. The natural beauty on both sides of the entrance road is the first welcoming sign which sets in your mood for a good walk. The gradient of the climb is so perfect that it puts enough pressure on your legs, so a...

There goes a popular saying “Everything happens for a reason.” I am a firm believer in this so naturally I relate to it quite often. This episode very much fits the bill. Well it so happened that many years back when I was working in Delhi and was about to visit Mumbai for an official meeting, my team member, who was posted at Mumbai as part of company orientation, expressed his keen desire to have me attend his final project presentation, which was the most important part of culmination of the orientation program. I couldn’t praise more his sense of timing. And I confirmed my availability. I flew to Mumbai early morning and found it all wet in the month of July. I headed straight to my office in Kalwa and completed a very successful meeting in the first half. In an upbeat mood, I started for Kharghar where the project presentation was to be held. My driver asked me whether I would go by Thane-Belapur road or I would prefer Palm Beach road instead. Although I had been to Mumbai seve...

In a typical Indian scenario, a parent, especially a father, would be wary of certain events when his son is reaching age where he can flirt. In my case it was different. My son taught me flirting. I know that reading this; you all are raising your eye brows. Calm down. He taught me how to flirt with the swimming pool! It all began when we shifted from Nerul to Kharghar (both in Navi Mumbai). We had landed in a brand new society which had just been occupied by a few families. Out of all the things which caught my attention the most was the swimming pool; clean, full of water, with brand new blue tiles, reflecting the azure sky. It was almost mesmerizing. Being a water zodiac, I was naturally attracted towards it. Having born & brought-up in Delhi, somehow I had never got a chance to have the luxury of a decent swimming pool. Also, the weather of Delhi did not allow continuous swimming throughout the year. So when we shifted to Mumbai, swimming was one thing on top of my mind...