I've Learnt That

I’ve learnt that…sometimes, my best experiences are my worst mistakes
I’ve learnt that…sometimes, being right still makes you the loser
I’ve learnt that...sometimes, I could do things just because some said I couldn’t
I’ve learnt that...sometimes, living well is the greatest revenge
 

I’ve learnt that...you can be by yourself in a crowd
I’ve learnt that...sometimes, you are given a dream, without the power to make it come true
I’ve learnt that...you can be alone, yet not lonely
I’ve learnt that...thinking of you when I’m lonely makes me content being alone

I’ve learnt that...bravery is being the only one who knows you are afraid
I’ve learnt that...courage is knowing you may not win, and trying when you know you can lose
I’ve learnt that...just because you’re necessary, doesn’t mean you’re important
I’ve learnt that…sometimes, people treat you like you’re invisible, until they actually want something

I’ve learnt that...that you can care about someone and yet they wouldn’t care
I’ve learnt that...you can run all you can, run some more, and still get nowhere
I’ve learnt that...you can close your eyes, think of someone and say a little prayer
I’ve learnt that...you can look into her heart and wish that you were there

I’ve learnt that...it’s hard to let someone go when you are not sure how you feel about them
I’ve learnt that...not letting go can pull you down
I’ve learnt that…a smile, a call, a mail from her can make my day and simultaneously sadden me
I’ve learnt that...sometimes, a smile is a veil for a grimace

I’ve learnt that...someone falling asleep at that perfect spot on your shoulder is the most peaceful feeling on earth
I’ve learnt that...you can wish good for someone even if you don’t feel good about it
I’ve learnt that…sometimes, there is no “special someone” to be found, and you have to become the one…or something like one
I’ve learnt that...Faith is a hard thing to come by…but it still can work wonders

I’ve learnt that...disregarding a certainty does not turn it into a possibility
I’ve learnt that...someday you can catch yourself wishing the person you love never existed
I’ve learnt that...I’d rather be me than be someone else’s idea of what I should be
I’ve learnt that...one day my life will flash through before my eyes and I have to make sure it’s worth watching

I’ve learnt that...sometimes, the road less travelled is less-travelled for a reason
I’ve learnt that...sometimes, I can’t choose my circumstances but I can choose what to do with/about it
I’ve learnt that…someday the laughter will return to my eyes
I’ve learnt that...I’m no longer afraid of goodbyes

Lessons in Courtesy

Things you should and should not do as a fellow cubicle-er: 

1. When talking on the desk phone, irrespective of whether you are talking to onsite, to your kid/spouse/parents or to the maid in your house, please keep your decibel levels to a limit that ensures your voice reaches the receiver. Currently, the only people who are unable to squirm when you talk are the cremated and the interred. 

2. When attending to personal calls on your cell phone, especially with your spouse, please make it a practice to move away from the cubicle and converse. People who understand Telugu start smirking 2 minutes into your conversation, and later provide me with a vivid translation of the same, despite my vociferous protests and robust attempts to block my hearing. 

3. When making a call from my VoIP phone, please do not use the speaker if you are the only person at this end, just so that you can rest your massive forearms on my desk, on my chair or on my shoulders. None of these "beasts of labour" are resilient enough to withstand the load or the "sweet fragrance" emanating from certain places. Oh, and if you happen to be standing behind me, please do not press up against me. I'm single, I'm not desperate. And you are married and have a kid. Of SEVEN years! 

4. Privacy is a much-sought form of freedom, as is the Freedom of Expression. While you are free to look about as much as you want, please desist from exercising the liberty to view my screen when you are using my phone or when you just happen to be sneaking up behind my back. Who I'm chatting with, what mails/documents/programs/websites I have open or the big fat stain of your drool on the back of my shirt are none of your concern. 

5. If I have a pack of cookies/wafers/anything-palatable-to-your-all-consuming-appetite on my desk, please make the effort to ask me before digging in. Your effort will be a rhetorical one, rest assured, but the no-formalities-with-me approach can be exercised by only a few people and you are not one of them. 

6. When in a conference room, attending status calls and the like, please stop staring at me, or in my general direction if you are staring into space. It makes me want to push my fingers through my nose and pop my eyes out. Please look at the beautiful golf course and the lavish open fields and hills stretching away into oblivion, right next to B18-19. 

7. My name is EBY, pronouced AE-BE! Not YE-BE or YA-BE! And definitely not E-BAY! BLEEEEEEEEEPPPPP!!!!! I love my name, please do not turn it into a grotesque nightmare! 


PS: I do not use the term "cubicle-mate", because the monstrosity of a female, sitting diagonally opposite to my seat in my cubicle, is not my mate (meaning 'friend')! 

PPS: Despite the title, I am aware that this post is anything but courteous 

PPPS: Being Nice is one Vice I totally do not suffer from! 

Feeling: Unsure

Listening: Aa Jao Meri Tamanna

Eby and his Idiosyncrasies

What is it with some people and their innate propensity for drama??? Just WTF!

News Flash 1: Eby is never online on GTalk. Period. Never. Ever. So if there is a green colour blinking away to glory next to Ebyster on your GTalk list, it is a small (in)significant cog of a massive cosmic conspiracy, because Eby is never online! Eby is always invisible on GTalk. If Eby is ever actually online, he will respond to your ping even if the response doubles up as an expletive! Unless you are Mamta Kulkarni or worse. So if you find Eby not responding to your pings, do not call Eby up and start yelling at him (going all shrill and whiny IS yelling), because that is bound to get him angry and he will label your behaviour as "melodrama", which it is.

News Flash 2: Eby is old school! He becomes drowsy by 6 in the evening and nods off at 8PM. And yes he wakes up at 4AM. So if you call Eby after 8 in the evening and he does not pick up, it means he has slept. Would you really want him to call you back at 4AM, when he wakes up?? You don't think so? Well, neither does he.

News Flash 3: Eby has never been fond of long conversations on the phone, unless it's with someone he really really likes. Platonic or non-platonic. Butterfly calls me, I love talking to her, I will talk for hours. My brother calls me, I will talk for hours. My best friend calls me, I will talk to her for days! So if YOU call him up and say (in a cloying voice) "BOLO", he has nothing to "bolo", if he had something to "bolo", he would have called you up and done the "bolo". I mean, Jesus Christ, do people never realise that sometimes they act like the humanoid equivalent of Valium???

News Flash 4: Eby does not like being taken for granted. There are very few people who have that liberty. Actually two. My brother and my best friend. So if you think you can stand by quietly while your pathetic boyfriend (who, by the way, is also a pathetic excuse for a human being) can threaten Eby about his balls not remaining in place, and Eby will grin and bear it, you are wrong. If you think, you can disown Eby and get away with it, you are wrong. If you think you can explain all the crap away with a "I took you for granted only because I trust you so much Eby" (Did you even listen to this when you said it???), you are wrong!

News Flash 5: Eby is an insanely private person, where "insanely" is insanely insufficient in instantiating the intended intensity!! He does not like irrelevant trivia about him being sold like hot cakes to the rest of the world, for eg: which book Eby got from his brother when he came to Pune. He also doesn't like suddenly being handed the phone from which you have called up some mutual acquaintance, especially if that acquaintance happens to be a pretty girl, who, because of this out-of-the-azure-blue call, might equate Eby with the word "CREEP"!

Oh and if you assume all this is pertaining to you only then you are wrong! All this has been written about a lot of people. You are not the center of the universe. A person can be pissed about a lot of things. So if you ask him, "What did I do now?" or something similar, you are bound to piss him off a lot more. His world does NOT revolve around you.

Corny, sincere request, no corny comments please! You don't want to be lambasted, left, right, centre and, for good measure, up the centre as well.

Feeling: How do you put "AAARRRGGGHHH" in words?

Listening: Diagon Alley - John Williams

The Religion called Hypocrisy

This may seem like a sequel to the last post, but it wasn't intended as a follow-up... This post isn't worthy of even holding up a candle to the sheer brilliance of that one! This was brought on by a completely different set of events... 

Prologue: I am a firm believer (wasn't always, though) in the Higher Power thing, and I choose to worship that deity as Jesus. So you could say, I'm an ardent follower of Jesus, but does that make me a devout Christian...? Negative! 

Disclaimer: Content that follows is sure to rile up the church-going, God-fearing Christians and probably even my parents the day they read it, but well, I always scored poorly in the "aiming to please" classes :)

I've always had qualms about the way the Church has fallen from being the Temple of the Lord to becoming exactly the kind of place from which Jesus drove out merchants who had turned it into "a hideout for thieves", in Matthew 21:12-13...

I remember this particular time I had been to some church in Trivandrum, when some  church elections were going on there... Frankly, it was disconcerting to see alleged  men of the faith running around handing out flyers saying "I'm contesting for finance head of the diocese, please vote for me"... And these are the people who are supposed to be shepherds to us lost sheep! What the bleeeep!

Rather than a place where believers gather to sing praises to the Lord, the church has become yet another establishment that takes in money in the name of God and doles out canonization to people who close their eyes, flutter their eyelids and in loud voices claim to have received a vision!

Jesus was born a Jew and in all the prophecies regarding Him, He was also hailed as King of the Jews. Yet He never said that he had come solely to save the Jews, did He? He came to save those who believed in Him. To Him, it did not matter whether the person who came to Him was a Gentile, a Roman, a Samaritan or a charlatan. His love was unconditional. Why then does the church have an ID check installed on it's doorsteps??

Non-Christians who go to church are still looked down upon from the awfully long, high-and-mighty noses of member Christians. Back at the church at home, after the service got over, the priest read out the letter of a non-Christian guy, who had married a Christian and expressed an interest in converting and joining the church. The priest proceeded to royally ridicule the applicant, his intentions, his marriage and his English, and all this from the pulpit of the church.

Such are our evangelists. Those that claim to go-spel the Word of the Lord. Sent to gather the lost sheep, they make fun of those whose only fault were that they were not born into a Christian household. And they make fun of a person's writing, when they themselves cannot put together a grammatically correct sentence in English, using multi-syllable words.

I am as close to attaining salvation as Kabul is to Barbados here. But I think I'll go to Hell knowing that for once I stood up for what He believed in.


Feeling: Distressed

Listening: Rocky Road to Dublin - Young Dubliners