Life’s turned a full circle in kanakapura Sangama!!!

Some 4 years ago, had been to Sangama in kanakapura, Chunchi falls with a party of SBM employees and their families.

I wonder if life has completed a full circle since then. There I was thinking what I’d do after my final year of graduation and now I am thinking of what to do, to break the mundane routine that I am in.

Anyways, on the occasion of ‘Gandhi Jayanthi’ or probably just an other occasion when we wanted to hit out of Bangalore, around 10 guys in 2 cars decided to head towards Sangama which basically is a confluence of two rivers – Arkavathi and Kaveri(Cauvery) and further to Mekedaatu(5 kms from Sangama).

This place has always given me memories of losses. Be it personal or materialistic…

If at all, he had not ventured into the water, if at all he wasn’t so adventurous. But I know … ifs and buts’ do not count in real life. It can happen only in flashback. A lively fun-loving guy is what I vividly remember Vinay Sreedhar as. He was my PU classmate and a good volleyball player. But now when I think about him, and the place which took him away from us, I can only say… “Who is bigger than nature”? Alas, if he’d only understood this!!!

Materialistic loss, well it’s nothing comparable to this grave loss of life. But since I am talking about losses here I rather include this one too. I lost a wallet here, right in front of my eyes, when my over enthusiasm got better of my senses that made me think my cousin was a good catcher. Don’t know if my throw was bad or it was she who dropped the wallet into the flowing water. Like a fish that doesn’t leave a trail, there was not a clue left behind. I could only stare at the gushing water helplessly.

This was all last time. This time around I started the trip thinking, four years would have brought in lots of changes in me regarding my outlook towards life. I had sort of forgotten the sense of loss of this place had given me. We embarked on our journey with gaiety and excitement reached the place and had fun. We went to mekedaatu after going around Sangama. Everything completed and we started to leave, when I realized the loss syndrome that had hit me again. I found my favorite sunglasses missing, as usual the sense of dejavu haunting me now. Anyways, like some people have happy hunting grounds I have some sad losing grounds of which this is one.

Signin off by dedicating this passage to my deceased friends Vinay Sreedhar(in the pic) and Arvind. Hope their souls rest in peace.

~Sanj

Life's Caricature !!!

Recently I was faced with a situation that many if you might have come across. Yea... the usual childhood crushes and romances... thing.

We have all had infatuations, crushes some which get turned into full blooded romances and some that don't. I passed this phase too, with my attempts largely falling under the later part.

I am a great believer that everything happens for a cause, was evident when i found the caricature artist convey this message to me with my caricature.

And the next day I hear one after the other, that all of them thus involved in my life, have got or are getting married. Thinking about it now, when i have remained away from the crush syndrome for a while now, I can only laugh heartily and wish them all the luck for their big step. As for me I think on.... "for sure this ain't happenin for me"!!!

~Sanju

Life's such a master!!!

What can be more heartbreaking then to find all your well laid(made) plans destroyed by new unwelcome developments.

Today i am realizing the true meaning of "Man proposes God disposes". No! I haven't lost anything nor have i failed in something. These are repurcussions that I am seeing out of the situation i am in. Am i thinking too much ahead??? Am i reading too much into the script???

I am starting to realize that doing this will only lead to unwanted tensions and unknown pressures. Here's what i plan to do. Leave the situation as it is and wait for the right time to understand more.

Live for the day... think tomorrow.
How I hope that this philosophy is correct.....

"Grenoble to Bangalore - April 10, 2006"

What a day it was!!! A day that put me in the reckoning is what I can write in the hindsight. It does not happen every day that you wake up knowing what’s in store for you and still have a tinge of anxiety, excitement as you wait for it to happen.

It was on last Thursday that I had absolutely no mood to work nor could I gather enough concentration to finish off the work at hand. My situation was so comparable to the typical Bangalore weather that it suddenly rains when the mercury crosses a threshold temperature limit. So much work in the past month or so that my saturation levels had gotten down to its all time low.

My Thursday blues being answered suddenly, when I got a mail from Anne-Caroline, program manager from EMEA, mentioning about the present that she wished to ship to me celebrating the completion of the phase2 of Electronic communication infrastructure setup in SUM (eCISS). Was really grateful for her mail and I thanked her. Also we communicated on Friday as to how she would send it to me from Grenoble, France. Thanks to Soumya, who was fortunately traveling back to Bangalore from Grenoble after her month long onsite stint and readily agreed to bring along the parcel that Anne would give her.

Come weekend, forgot about this and played leather ball cricket after almost 5yrs. Good old memories of hitting helmets with red cherry coming back to me. Of course, altogether different question that I had become a Prasad now from a Srinath, bowling just line and length rather than make the batsmen smell cherry. Feel just great to play good old cricket again rather than just being glued to watching cricket on TV. A good long evening spent with old classmates with a bottle of port wine that I got from Goa on the same day made my saturday complete.

Sunday, yea you guessed it rite!!! My limbs had started creaking up and making noises as if every bone were to break with every step of mine, giving me the memories of those gym days. But pain is enjoyable and especially when it is out of sports after a long time. I hope it doesn’t remain for too long though.

Back to Monday, April the 10th. I eagerly wait for my mailbox to open up and I see nothing special again, but I remind myself of that special parcel from France. I speak to Soumya and fix up 5PM as the time that I would visit her in her office and would pick up the parcel.

Come 4.45 we finished celebrating Vaibhav’s birthday celebration and then I made my headway towards Al-Kareem, Sowmya’s office with Vinay, my partner in crime. Soumya came down from the stairs holding the parcel which looked pretty long.

Took it to my hand, thanked her and took her leave. Feels the world is such a small place, Grenoble and Bangalore. Rather I guess it’s the people in the world who make it small and livable.

Oops sorry, moving away from the topic.

My parcel, it’s a 1982 Chateau Pomone, one of the great French red wines. Almost 25 yrs old, quite an irony that the wine is elder than me. Vinay already making plans of when the bottle is to be opened. Anyways Vinay and his dumb plans… Never mind.

Here’s the masterpiece.The photo of the bottle , not the one with it's owner. Thanks Anne.

Rode back to office and showed it to my teammates with the note that thanked me for my contribution in the project. Hesitantly show it to my manager, who at first thought, that it was something that I was giving him.

Anyways, on seeing the note, he immediately took me to a conference room called his colleagues and highlighted my achievement. It feels just great to see your work being recognized and your colleagues applaud you for the same.

Phew!!! What a day! Friends, never avoid feeling blue, if you are. Never know luck might just be waiting to smile upon.

Childhood- the unparallel time in man’s life!!!

My childhood is full of vivid memories really. Being a bank official’s son I couldn’t complain of not seeing enough places.
I opened my eyes to see this beautiful world first in Bangalore, when my dad was working in Davanagere. What a feeling I wonder now! Sleeping on grandma’s lap with not a care of the world? Are babies really like this … I ask myself wondering sometimes if it was really me that were in the snap with my grandma in front of the cooking stove in the kitchen? Funny it seems remembering the hutch ad which asks people not to click pictures without permission which my dad did. Kids mentality changes with generations I guess, which made me coming from the past generation strike an awesome pose to my dad’s camera rather than throwing his camera away. How I miss my grandma who stayed only some 4 years further.

Some 2 years old and well… I can’t forget making my mom carry me around the whole locality to finish up a small bowl of rice with rasam, helping her gain a few more friends than she would do otherwise. Davanagere to Hubli and pictures of the Lions English School get painted in my head as if I am in a net-meeting with my past. Memories of a silk white kurta-pajama clad with a handkerchief pinned to my dress with hair combed so skillfully by mom as if I were going to some ‘baby show’ rather than to school makes up my kindergarten memoirs. Come 1st standard I remember my tryst with the mixer grinder. That day mom was getting ready with the mix to prepare dosa, and my uncle who had got engaged to his soul mate recently visited us. Guess it must have been to greet them that I pressed the wiper on the mixer, the dosa contents in it the container showered upon the to-be weds as if it were the sacred blessings of elders.

Memories, well they are just so fabulous. It was astonishment, jubilation when my little sister came into the world. It was like growing up all over again watching her grow. We started playing all the pranks we probably could, like putting a wet notebook sheet on mom’s leg when asleep and running away before she could catch hold of me and beat the daylight out of me. Of course being elder comes with a cost to pay, in my case a handful of slaps on my back.
Time passed by and I started feeling old by the time I was in my 2nd. I started thinking how could be people so silly, calling me a kid (Mari) and passing comments like ‘chooooo chweeet’. Thus started my childhood giving me a platform to youth-hood, of which the memories are as sweet if not better. How I wish I will grow to be a person who can take his children out in the world to live at different places, letting the different cultures and people bear indelible experiences on young minds of lovely children.

The angle at 45 degrees

Table Tennis, the fast and furious game to see is no more so tough to learn. I am a fresher to the game of Table Tennis and I found this out after the special TT coaching sessions being provided to us by HP.

Initially I felt “what’s the big deal in hitting the small ping-pong ball on a rectangular table”, but my views took the U turn when I started to hit it and I could not manage to keep the ball either on the table or over the net. Out of every 10 shots of mine more than 7 would hit the net and probably the rest would scrap through the other side. This was a bad conversion rate to a more than average volleyball striker like me. And to go with it I had started playing competitive table tennis in my office. Lo… behold… the hell broke loose for me with my limited skills in TT.

Then came in the multilingual Mr. KrishnaSwamy, as the TT coach on 14th October. I had a gut feeling that it could not have been better timed. The man looks old, but it stops only with his looks as the shots never seem to stop dancing and curving on the TT table. This should be a result of extreme talent I wondered; well it was but not totally as I found out later after chatting to him that here is a man who has represented India and has put in nearly 40 yrs of his good time to the game he loves.

He saw me play and told me that it was a TT bat that I was holding in my hand and not a hand-held fan. He asked me to hold the racket at 45 degrees and start playing with the change. And that day out of my 10 shots…. More than 8 of them couldn’t be picked by the opponents. Now!!! I thought…. Nobody can stop me… from hitting the ball sharply if not making it dance like the way he does. And now I hit the ball sharply… rather should I say briskly, I leave my opponents to tell you that ;-)

It was a win-win situation in the canteen that day. Wondering on hearing about the canteen? Well, that’s where our TT corner is there in Khanija Bhavan and it was raining people. For a change the rush was missing near the snacks vending place at 5pm and had moved to our TT corner. People were waiting on the sidelines waiting to get their chances to play and also showcase their talents to someone who knew the game. Well there were also people who wanted to show-off their skills to the coach. Some succeeded getting his appreciation and others got ignored. Some also thought it wasn’t a good day for them in TT and got back to IT which welcomed them anytime.

Thanks to the coach whose sessions have given me joy in learning another game.... and thanks to our pro-employee company Hewlett-Packard.

Under the helmet in Bangalore!!!

Blogger’s block even before I could start blogging!!! What a start I thought!
But, I had created the much vaunted login in the blogger site, the previous night and thus started thinking of writing … but what?

Thought process, they don’t come in that easily I thought. Thoughts do, but not of the caliber which can make your vocabulary resonate. Thus started my thinking amidst things like argument with a friend the previous night, why I thought I was right, how I would take this ahead, waiting for that all important SMS which never came etc.,
Thus past the night breaking into dawn with the 6’o clock alarm on the cell phone intended to keep up the visionary resolutions of the new year. Thanks to mom on whose insistence 7 became 6 for me and there I went jogging, the healthy ‘cooking oil’ ad which shows people running thinking of their favorite dishes like ‘butter chicken, alu-gobi’ creating traffic jams of thoughts in my mind.

Thus went on the time until 12.30 by when I finished my lunch and got moving to office still thinking about my to-be written blog. Waiting for the signal to turn green at Devegowda petrol bunk started to think about the most happening topic ‘Son [H.D. Kumaraswamy] defies father [H.D. Devegowda]’. Was thinking about how the congress government was going to be toppled by a person who could gel with people whom he thought about as the last people to be approached, in such crisis situations.

Then along came K.R. Road when I started to think about the blog again, when suddenly I came across the place where I had my tryst with the auto-rickshaw and had a broken wrist. Not for long, thinking about this painful phase I came to V.V Puram and group of really smart looking girls and guys from Jain College forcefully took hold of my thought and sight. Gosh!!! Times have really changed I thought after lecturing my sister in the morning on the kind of dress she wore.

Town hall’s vicinity brought in posters of spiritual leaders performing some yagna for the welfare of the Junta. Hmm… Whatever!!! My blog still waiting for a topic! The green light suddenly brought in honking as if there would be no tomorrow. And I moved on towards the next corner to catch three more signals in half a kilometer, biggest one being the Mysore bank circle. Notwithstanding all these signals my mind was continuously looking for things I could write about, simultaneously changing the gear to zip further when all of a sudden my good old friend the auto-rickshaw driver suddenly turned right as if he was mocking Schumacher driving an F1 race, making me hit brakes immediately to avoid any further breakages. We live life on such an edge; it really is a Danger zone I thought simultaneously singing this song from ‘Topgun’. Thus I zipped along the rest of the two miles saying to myself that being a roman in Rome is the best one can do. Reaching Khanija Bhavan I took my favorite 60 degree turn to hit basement two. Parking my bike and removing my helmet gave me a sensation which gave me the impetus to write.
This is typically how a 2-wheeler owner sees his day unfold in Bangalore under the Helmet. Smile is what that comes in writing this in my air-conditioned office.