In want of..

a miracle..very badly in want of a miracle..They say if you want something very badly, the universe conspires to give you..I want a miracle to happen in my life desperately..Universe, please conspire ..Its been loong since the craving/loonging has been there..How long do you want me to wait? Mother Nature, havent you changed me enough to be eligible to mother a baby? Havent I changed from the silly, short tempeterd person to someone who can atleast recognise when anger starts whoing its ugly head and try to calm myself? Havent I learnt enough life's lessons , given my age? Why me? why me? Please help..Someone please help..For every person who has consulted the same astrologer as I have got their predictiosn right..I was so hopeful of what one man predicted..I'm still hopeful..Theres still some time..Lord, I'm waiting ..I've rested my burdens of Thy feet, Please show me a path..show me the light..I've been in darkness for loong, have mercy on me..Yes, I'm begging you Lord, for I dont have anyone else to go to..I do get angry on you, Lord, sometimes I wonder if if You exist at all, for if your presence had been there, you would have done something about my suffering..Am I blindly believing in something that does not exist at all? During such times, even if I want to go away from you, the next question that comes is , where do I go? whom do I ask? Where shall I go , if not for you, whose door shall I knock if not for yours, ? please have mercy and bless us and shows us an end to this suffering..

Krishna's Bday

I take great pleasure to record here that this Krishna Janmashtami, all the preparations were done by me..This is what I prepared uppu seedai, vella seedai, thenkuzhal , payasam, drawing little baby Krishna's foot steps with maa kolam , a simple decoration in the Pooja room , ofcourse, the eadibles were made with help from S. Thank you S,for joining in the preparation , that too voluntarily..And the result..the edibles have come out well..I didnt have any specific intention in mind while preparing except that the though of when will I complete the whole thing..But, as my luck goes, when all these have come out well, my mind/heart is not at peace..This time because of the conversation I had with mom over the phone..I pained to hear her tell that she was down (at heart) and not at her usual spirits..She is upset about some internal family affair and that pains me..Krishna, would you please take the goodies that I offered you in neivedhyam and please do walk in to our homes and spread peace and joy? Thank you..Wish you many many Happy Returns, baby Krishna!

Letter to 15-year old self

Hi SM,
 You are now working really hard to achieve your goal..Yes, your goal right now is to fare very well in your exams, sail through the admission process in the best colleges , fare well in the colleges and get a job at hand through campus interviews and be able to stand on your legs (literally!) . yes, you are tired of the almost constant fights between your parents, you are sick and tired of dad controls the house and mom has no say over anything..Your hormones are raging, and your emotions and feelings are going unrecognized..You are even beaten up in the middle of the night for some silly reason..You cry buckets almost everyday, you pray loads pleading the Almighty to give you the strength to study well and do well in the boards..You want to be independent and you think that once you are on your own, you can question your father who is ruling the house..You are under the impression that once you start earning, you can be bold and courageous with your opinions..

Now, the results: Yes, your hard work is going to pay off.You are going to come off your boards with truly flying colors..You are going to be showered with many firsts and many awards and medals..Dad and Mom are going to be proud of you..You are going to get admitted in one of the prestigious colleges in India, its a merit seat..Your dream comes true now..Hurraay..You go to a far off land to pursue undergraduation..You'll make friends, foes...you'll move closely with boys for the first time in life..You'll be proposed, you'll have a good time and before you know, you'll be in the final year and have a job at hand..and before you know , you'll be married..It'll be a little late when you would realise that you had a child marriage..You'll experience 3 miscarriages which would shatter your world and it will be 6 good years before you realsie what you've wasted, what you have failed to relish and experinec, and with great efforts , you will try to recover and accept those that you cannot change..

Now, the main point of this letter is to let you know that the fire that you had in you : "to be old, to let out your opinions/suggestions, to give a piece of you mind to your dad once you are no more dependent on them, " all will be gone and you'll still be at the receiving end of their tantrums..You'll marry a wonderful man who doesn't believe in going to temples..Thanks to the miscarriages and trying to conceive saga, your parents will force you to convince your partner and to visit one temple after another because every astrologer your parents visit will prescribe a temple ..You'll turn to become a mridangam which will receive beatings from either ends..On one hand, you'll have to face/manage your parents who literally torture you to visit one temple after another, and on the other hand , you'll be at the receiving end of your husband who questions the very logic behind going to temples , asks you questions for which you have no answers, questions you on the effects that visiting temples have brought on your life..You'll still be controlled by your parents and many times, they will turn out to be the reason for the fights between you and your partner..For a long time, you wouldn't realize this, for you would always think the mistake is on your partner, for why can he not just come along to temples..Only after a few years of fighting and visiting temples and not having any result will you realize the time lost in mere fighting and dragging him to temples just because some astrologer claimed that going to these temples would cure all problems..You'll have to deal with your dad whose mood swings are highly unpredictable and who allows his mood to be controlled by the so called society . Your dad will grow to adore a person ,K who is also popularly called Guruswamy. This person, K will instigate your dad to ask you to sell the house that you would have bought, will ask your dad to bring his son-in-law for a darshan at Sabarimala and what not..Your dad will in-turn get furious and ask you to dance according to his tunes..Its quite funny how your dad will literally force you to buy a house during the early days of your marriage, make random comments , and after the house is bought, will praise the house and even after 4 years of staying in the house, since there is no progeny, will now force you to sell the house..Your dad thinks that the whole world should revolve according to his wishes and will continue to think so even after a decade..He is the person who is most worried about you, but in his anxiety , he will forget that he is torturing you and will continue to do so..Your love and affection towards your dad will prevent you from even uttering a word against him, you'll be very cautious in making sure that you don't hurt him, in fact you will be the one who will end up giving him the strength and courage to remain positive..But, your dad will not realize the fact that you are hiding your emotions and you are trying to put up a brave face to him..Instead of consoling you during hard times, he will continue to force you to visit temples, do poojas , sell the house and what not..Yes, you do agree that all this can be done, especially when it comes to temple visits and poojas..But, your husband doesn't believe in all these rituals and finds it very irritating when he is forced to do things that he doesn't like time and again..Your patience to bear all this will get saturated once in a while, you'll pour/vent to your mother , and regain the patience reserve..Just as everything else in the world, your patience levels also are not perennial, you'll reach a stage which you cannot bear and will want to sort things out once and for all..What will you do? A subject for another post..

Will I ever see the light

Come the month of Aadi, all the festivals start lining up one after the other..Festivals are the occasions for social gathering, festivals are also the occasions when I tend to get into a deeper cocoon, festivals are also the time when neighbors get an opportunity to prod me as to whether I consult doctors , when was I going to give the "good news", to know how long we've been married etc etc..

Every year, during each of these festivals, I pray/plead/request the Almighty to shower His blessings and bestow us the joy of parenthood and ask Him to grant us the blessing of experiencing pregnancy and place a request in His feet that next year, we year we celebrate this festival with a little one amongst us. I've done this prayer year after year with lots of hope and faith.Yes, there have been many times during the course where my faith/confidence  levels have blipped, but on the day of the festival, I would muster courage and be positive and plead God. Off-late, I'm not sure if God is listening at all, for there seems to be no indication that he is at least listening(forget about granting wishes), I start wondering if God can be this cruel..This year, I'm jist praying Him to please grant me the strength to endure whatever he is throwing on my way, I'm pleading with Him to show me the path..Just hsow me the path, where should I be going towards, please help me make up a decision and proceed on that..Please throw some hints, provide the guidance through some means..

Days, weeks,months and years have passed by..Please God, put an end to this suffering, show us the light!

In the organization that I've joined a few weeks ago, a few of my team members shared a gist of their career story and their stories are filled with bumps and potholes..I agree that they were not so easy ones ..But, theirs is a story which they could share..They could talk about..But stories like trying to conceive, miscarriage etc are perceived as problems with the man and wife , seen as issues that challenges the very notion of being a man or woman, hence these problems cant even be spoken about..Hence, people bury their concerns within themselves that at one point they simply get saturated and their self-esteem, confidence goes down spiralling, not to mention their social life and the energy towards life in general..let there be light..Universe, please conspire to bring us joy...please do put an end to this suffering..Its been long..

How is it going?

so far, ok..This is about the new place where I go to work everyday..It's going to be two months since I joined this new place and so far, I would rate the experience at 3 on a scale of 5.(5 having the highest satisfaction score).

Better experiences so far:
 - Change of place, change of people, hence, my interest levels towards work is on the rising.
 - I'm clear about what I want from the job, my expectations from the workplace are clear now(compared to the muddled opinions I had earlier).
- New roles, expectations from me are more, this urges me to work better
- Following some kinda discipline, both at home and office front.
-  Being more conscious about time,
-  indulging in self-pity has become lesser..
- conscioulsy trying to stay in touch with friends
- spending time on hobby activities


Cons:
 - More work. In my previous organisation, I've had to perform only 10% of the work that I'm doing here on a day-to-day basis(project delivery times are not exculded here)
- Conference calls twice a week , scheduled for a hour nd a half but runs longer than the length o f a Hindi movie
- More work,..
- Huge team..
- Team members have grown old along with the team/company..So, they ar enot very receptive of new members in the team..
- Deadlines are close to one another, no time to spend working on innovation/process improvement related activities



I will stop here at the moment and will add to the list later..Overall, at a personal level, its been nice..Not sure if this feeling is because I've changed(irrespective of the workplace or the work itself) or the workplace has caused this change..Whatever be the reason, I'm liking this new changed me..I'm more relaxed, not panicking for petty things most of the times, know what to expect out of the job..

And the position is filled :)

Yes, I was hoping that the maid(who was appointed as mentioned in the post :  ) who claimed that she has worked in few houses for more than a decade or so would suit our place. But, how wrong my assumptions were..The lady came with her daughter the next day (her first day of work) and inspite of already agreeing to the the list of activities that she has to do as a part of the job, she flinched and refused to do certain activities. MIL got agitated bcos of this and asked me to speak to her the next day. The next day being a saturday, I was home and she mentioned that she cannot do certain activities and demanded extra amount that what what she agreed upon just a day ago. (look at it: she agreed to the work and the pay, now daughter comes, triggers her mom, now mom subtracts some portion of the job  and demands more pay ) . This lady who did all the sweet talk less that 48 hours ago , now is grumbling. Finally, I asked her to leave, but before leaving, she was the one who said she would continue to work and we settled on the final activities and pay too.. The next day , we waited till about 2 and MIl and I rolled up our sleeves and finished the cleaning job. madam comes after 4pm and demands money for the previous 2 days job.

I didnt know whom to contact since all the maids were expecting less work and more pay (when I say more, its 2000 bucks for sweeping/mopping and doing the dishes for a small house which has 3 people!). I tried many many times to contact my previous maid, but her number was simply unreachable. The next day, by chance I asked the watchman of the flat where she (the 1st maid,lets call her L) works if he knew whether L had returned from her native. He replied in the positive and my joy knew no bounds when I heard she was back. I had asked him to ask her to contact me after 6 PM that day (since MIL was out of town that day). all the conversation with the watchman happened in sign language as we dont understand each others language. That day, I came back from office only at 7PM so, had no clue if L came or not. However, next day, I'd given my number to the watchman and asked him to call me once he sees L. The watchman promptly called me and I spoke to L and asked her why left without informing us , told her that I felt bad that she abruptly left  and that I tried contacting her umpteen times and that he daughter did not respond properly to my calls, and asked her to come back again. When I returned home that evening, mil told me that L had already come and would come back for work the next day onwards..So, I'm now glad that L is back and the vacancy is filled with the right candidate :) More on sincerety of L, and the difference she makes to our house. Thats for a different post

Changed views..

We have seen a number of organisations/NGO's working to make the lives of transgenders a little easier, helping them to live with dignity,  and so far I was quite agreeing to such initiatives. All that was till y'day when I had a first hand experience of 2 transgenders harassing two young salesmen for about 30 minutes. This shop is a newly opened one (opened just y'day when this incident happened) with two salesmen literally worshiping before facing every single customer. Two transgenders enter the shop and start going about their business. When they were offered Rs.10, they started arguing asking who takes a meager 10ruppess these days, do the salesmen consider them(tg's) so cheap and below dignity that they give 10Rs, and demanded a whole figure of Rs.1000 (!!) as its a new shop. They literally told the figure out and was demanding the sum. The salesmen tried telling them that it was a new shop and they are yet to see customers and they would try to give them a better amount once sales pick up(if they come after about a couple of weeks) and all such conversation happened .
In the meantime, shoppers stayed away from the shop for fear of facing these two. We were now caught inside the shop and those two blocked the way , hence I signalled S to go upstairs and wait there till the way out is cleared. To our surprise, even after 20 minutes, the argument continued, now it was quite heated, and what do you know, the tg's were in the stairs proceeding to follow one of the salesmen who came to the 1st floor. Finally, they were shoved off with 100 bucks .  The salesman told me that that was the money he had for the days food and that was taken away forcibly.

I agree not everyone are of the kind who demand exorbitant amounts like these two did y'day or ask for a fixed price or continue to stay on at a place for long, but some of them do(like the ones y'day) . And when you are a witness to such incidents, you really start thinking if its worth at all  giving any amount to anyone who begs,rather demands as in the above case.