Sometimes....

Some days you rethink everything
What's important, what matters, what keeps you going, what gives you a kick..

Some people, are more important than life itself because they make your life worth living. What would there be without them? A ghost of what you always thought life should look like, life looked like..

Some people, unbeknownst to you, sneak up in your life and become more important than their mere relationship with you. They mean more than they should and you cannot even say that out loud, you know!

Some moments, trivial at best, fill you with with such immense gratitude, joy, such immense sense of purpose..

Some times it just hits you
Carpe diem 

Why did I blog?

During an impromptu rocking night out with friends a couple of days ago, someone mentioned my blog. She said she has read through it(!!). I didn't think anyone did!! It got me wondering why I wrote it, why did  I stop?

The answer to the later part is easy. I found the magical word of 140 characters and convenience of quick photo publishing! It allowed me to throw my thoughts at the world at a break neck speed without much thought! But was this the reason why I had started to write here? Just so that I can consume the bit and bytes with stuff in my head?

I am an extrovert. I think aloud. I make most of my decisions - not prior or after - but during a discussion or debate. A dangerous habit! But a habit all the same! Did I write here to crystallize my thoughts?

Unable to pin down an answer I went back in time reading my entries. Remembered the circumstances surrounding each of them. Some memories pleasant and happy but some repressed purposefully came flooding back! So was this blog meant to be a journal? I definitely think not.

The only thing I remember about blogging (and I have not written anything in more than  2 years) is that it was fun. To compose thoughts and incidents in your head, to put them down hoping that you have touched the very raw nerve, the very essence of these thoughts or simply documenting some hilarity in life.. I think it was just the process that was fun! And now I know 140 characters are never going to do the same for me!

I should be here more often! 

I have been so far away from this blog for such a long time that the word 'neglect' does not begin to capture it!! Well, the suspects have been usual. The work, the study, and generally 'stuff' going on!! So much there was to write but the moments passed by and I never found myself visiting this page...

But occasions always bring me to the blog, as if to document my state of mind each year.. Well, the state of mind is usually happy and happening but I notice subtle changes as I push 30s! A couple of years ago I had all the time( ;) ) to do a pre and post Diwali posts. Then in 2007, Diwali was all about the much needed rest after the launch of BlueRidge! Bang comes the next year and my posts around Diwali are shrouded in the uncertain predicament of the industry and economy (albeit after one of the loveliest holidays that I an S enjoyed!)

So what's up this year?! For starters no holiday!! But I am not complaining!! There is much that I have been putting away to do during the Diwali holidays. Besides I need to get some studying done, too!

But this Diwali has something else to it. It is Optimistic. And that after the hellish year since last Diwali, is definitely something to celebrate. Some call is a 'V' shaped recovery and then some others the population factor - a blessing in disguise. I find myself being cautious still. All the numbers are looking good, be it inflation, industrial growth or the supposed increase in the real estate prices according to media - which by the way is as erroneous as were the media numbers on the decrease in prices mere quarters ago! But I still feel that we are rejoicing way too soon.. We need to give it another quarter or two before heaving the sigh of relief and getting complacent all over again..

Well, that does not, however, take anything away from how brightly this Diwali is going to be lit! I hope not by crackers though!!

Happy Diwali everyone!

Oh and I was a part the minority yet again! I voted. Voting percentage in my ward was 42%. This after a totally wasted holiday they declared for the State elections in Maharashtra. And then what did majority of the people do? They took Monday off, Tuesday was the election day and Voila! They had a long weekend on their hands. Pitiful. Simply hopeless..

The Window Visitors

Either these birdies know that they get posted online or the area around this office and the climate is really attracting the birds here!! A few more....
The Lunch time Visit! I think this is a bird very similar top common sparrow..

Can someone please help me identifying this very tiny and a very pretty birdie?

A rainbow at BlueRidge

This is what brought a huge and wide smile on my face in the middle of a nasty nasty meeting!!

Someone from office took this picture so don't know the camera which snapped this! But what is more important surely is how well the moment is captured!!

A new visitor on my window ledge

this time was a Spotted/Scaly Breasted Munia or Lonchura Punctulata. Here are some grainy shots shot using my standard BB curve 8900.

I am sounding all intelligent about the name of this little birdie, courtesy Google Image Search, what else?!

What? Me? NO! .... maybe..

Why do I keep getting freaked out about the things/issues out of my control?

Is it because I control everything within my control??

Does that make me a control freak???

Oooo...oo Scary!! Something to think about surely!


Image Courtesy: Google Image search and this

Sunday

Went to Alibaug for Lunch on Sunday!! Yeah, We are crazy enough to do that!! And at least there it was raining!

Sunday 14th June, 2009

I felt like such a ball of mush!!

Little Women and Good Wives

Post contains spoilers

These books are by Louisa May Alcott and translated in मराठी by famous writer, poet शांता शेळकेas चौघीजणी. Set in late 1800 and early 1900 USA, the March family, was my moral barometer as a kid! When I read it for the first time, I was way too young to understand the reasons for that. But as I grew up this book taught me something new every time I read it though there's nothing groundbreaking about the story, though it is set in late 1800s, though the girls wear muslin gowns, floppy hats and go up the slopes to collect pine cones and play croquet!!

It maybe when I was in standard 5 or 6 when the translation was launched and आई bought it. I think she must have mentioned that she would let me read it once I am a little older! That did it!! I HAD to read the book right then!! I managed to read almost a quarter before I was caught and आई had to give up and let me read it!!

I instantly fell in love with all four sisters. Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy. And being quite a tom boy myself, Jo - the tomboy and non-conformist sister of four - was my personal favorite! And the boy next door - Theodore Lawrence aka Teddy was in my opinion the epitome of a great buddy!!

Since the day I have read Jo calling Teddy, well, Teddy, I have hoped that some day I shall call someone Teddy!! And shall have in him all that Teddy stands for!! Many friends (V and Sid especially) have come close to it but never quite made to high standards of Teddy!! Closest till date has to be S and well, though Jo didn't, I accepted my Teddy's proposal!!

I have longed to read Dickens because March sisters loved it and have wanted to have a weekly paper published! But I think my sister was never the types and I, too, never had enough creative juices for it!! But drama society, well, that was quite different!! I tried to fulfill this dream in school!

In my teens I had a big dream to backpack in Europe and the germs of the same can be traced right back to this book!! This book gave me the idea of a surprise gift bought with your own money for the first time and my family has had to endure a lot of those right to a pair of socks for dad!!

I have cried buckets reading about Jo's loneliness when Beth dies. I can still remember the typical summer afternoons when I would be cocooned in some corner of house and reading and crying and feeling all sad.. I remember all too clearly the tug at the heart and sting in the eyes. I have (as I grew up more so) understood Meg's struggle to keep the marriage on even keel and not lose sight of things more important while battling everyday demons.

It is so amazing that more than 100 years later and in a completely different part of the world I have related to this book all my life!! Simply because it is talking about some things so fundamental! If you have not been privileged to be acquainted with these sisters, I suggest you hit the classics section of your bookstore right away!! It will be worth it!

Late in the May! Well, early in the June!

It is that time of the year again!! My most favorite time to look up at the heavens is back!! My office is basking in the afternoon sunshine just like the last year!! But the lawn that was just stitched up last year has stabilised through he year and the transformation makes these days even lovelier!!

On a side note, we had a glowing, radiant Beer and yummy, blushing Cosmo this Saturday night at a joint we frequent!

All photos courtesy my (new!) Blackberry Curve 8900!! Not a great camera but an amazing phone!! I just love how it made that beer glow!!

Being Lazily Happy

on weekends means getting up at 8am and feeling like getting up! 

Having a great coffee, breakfast and conversation at Wad with S, X and R. 

Visiting the up and coming construction site that I am so invested into (pun intended).

Finishing veggies shopping in time. 

Lounging at ma's with nothing to do.

Having a chillaxed lunch.

Getting a long and happy nap! (Highlight!)

Going shopping in a cute little boutique with S and R and finding some lovely stuff!

Buying some good books.

Having some great 'sabudana khichadi' and Kingfisher Draught Beer!

Watching IPL final and Deccan Chargers claiming the cup!!

Perfect~!!

Image Courtsey: Google Images and this blog

The World of Extremes

This world is so full of extremes! We all know it and still it continues to surprise me almost every single time!! 

Case in point - recent political and therefore, impending economic developments in India. Two people expressed two opinions to me in a span of 24 hours. While one thought now within a 100days(thanks to Mr. Singh's plan) the face of India will change, India will decouple fully (please note that all the reforms he kept asking for were to do with liberalisation and increased global exposure!), the other distressed that Congress will be 'themselves' for another 5 years. (Ask him which party was his choice and why complain if by being 'themselves' UPA indirectly grew his salary ten-fold in last five years and you won't get no answer!) 

What do people want?? Everything?? Or they simply do not know what they want??! 

Another fine gentleman said to me, now the real estate will zoom past the earlier highs in no time. Why? Was UPA buying/hoarding real estate across the country?? Then why will this happen overnight - even proverbially overnight?? The equity market is allowed to swing wild and show a thumping sentiment but not a market like real estate will behave that way! And another nay-Sayer on the other hand insisted that real estate in on a doom's day path as government will 'actively' (note the choice of words) bring the prices down! Where are we? In a Communist run country or a disctatorship?? And which prices? Only of the end product or the raw material as well? Is it impossible for the new business models to emerge in such a scenario?? And in any case this chap is buying a house to stay!! Talk hypocrisy!! 

Honestly!!! The right of speech in democracy is so well abused!! 

Including by your truly!! :)

After a long hiatus!

The only thing that this post is - is Random!

I have realised I am the minority in this city. I voted.

Barring the fact that the lady at the booth got over excited with the painting stick it was a quick one.

I saw a man wearing a pink shirt riding a pink scooty!!

The reptile friend visited my window cill again!

A very very dear friend lit up three weeks in April! Hugs Snigi! Loved having you around and re-connecting and talking and laughing and bitching and partying!! She actually prompted me to take a half day off and travel to Mumbai to party! Very unlike me!! But we had a great time!! 

Pre-Monsoon Showers

It is raining like mad house right now!! After a very hot afternoon about 4-4:30pm in the evening it suddenly became very breezy and by 5:15 it started raining and it is more than an hour now and this is relentless!! The sound of the rain is so loud in this metal topped single storey structure that it is useless to talk on the phone and we are almost shouting talking to each other in the office!!

Rain is treated with a mixed emotion on any construction site. It is a very painful season to work during as water wreaks a havoc on speed. But it is always a welcome respite for a worker after the endless and tiring heat! We treated this rain with exact same emotions!!

I wish I had a better camera though. My Blackberry curve camera is the most unsuitable apparatus for catching the light and motion.. But still I took pictures because I wanted to remember this rain.. how it felt.. how it looked.. 'cos some things about these days I don't want to forget in the usual marathon that my life is!

Interpreting Data

I read a fabulous article in Wired yesterday! It unravels beautifully and simply what happened in the US that led to the credit crisis. Read it here. It is a total must must read!! 

The last paragraph of the article goes like this:

"In the world of finance, too many quants see only the numbers before them and forget about the concrete reality the figures are supposed to represent. They think they can model just a few years' worth of data and come up with probabilities for things that may happen only once every 10,000 years. Then people invest on the basis of those probabilities, without stopping to wonder whether the numbers make any sense at all."

And OMG, I soooo agree!! I have seen a number of 'analysts' in analysing real estate projects ONLY on excel sheets and wondered if they really understood the reason why money will be made! The money will never be made because the calculations say so but if and only if the assumptions are executed verbatim on site. And most of the financial analysts and deal makers I met never really understood this. Some of them paid heavy price by both over investing or letting go of an opportunity! I am so glad someone's penned it down so well!! 

Crisis of ...? And the Clinical Optimists

A number of times in the past I have read that current crisis is the crisis of confidence and not cash, at least in India. This is not referring to the ever plunging indices. There indeed it is a fair lot of foreign money that was buying has been selling. But the statement above largely refers to the contraction of consumption. Consumption of goodies in malls, supplies in supermarkets, vehicles in auto lots, houses in residential markets and all those other purchases that have been either cancelled or put on hold by millions of Indians, fearing, hmmm, well, what??? Job loss? Respective industries going to dirt? Erosion of savings? General fear for financial well being? Impending political changes? Terrorism? Perhaps, a concoction of all these has made a drink potent enough to pull the rug under our feet. And rightly so. 

There is never a small talk over coffee or drinks that does not find this topic creeping into it these days. A topic of how robust is India's internal consumption story? To what extent are we export economy driven? We all agree we are no China (didn't we mourn that until not so long ago?) but we do not seem to be able to place the economy on the continuum of worse hit to less hit. (There is no one, in my opinion, who is unaffected.)  And it is through these conversations that the pessimists slowly start turning this crisis of confidence into the crisis of cash! A Self full filling prophecy! 

When does our collective caution turn into a collective disaster? Are we there yet as a country?? I strongly believe not. I am no expert in other sectors. But for Real Estate (I am no expert here either, but it is just that I work in this sector!) I always felt that February would bring a small cheer. And it has been the case. This month has been substantially better than anything we have seen post September 2008. For a variety of reasons! The 'doomsday predicament' of the buyer has at least changed to a 'fairly glum outlook'! And the media since the beginning of 2009 has decided to belt out relatively positive notes as opposed to what they were doing for 12 months prior to it. Most of it is still as ill-researched as it was then but now they are spinning the web the way the people who pay for fancy adverts want. Survival! I believe the month of April and May will again see a change in outlook for two reasons. First is obviously the political uncertainty will start to get reduced and secondly because the common folks  would know whether they are keeping their jobs next year and how much is their expected income! 

Even then the pessimists will cry foul. They will try to tell that it's is not over till it is over and over it will never be to these good Samaritans who are spending their hard earned cash on making this a crisis of sentiments and therefore, for the good of the entire country including those sly pessimists! Ha! 

So kudos to you people, who take a more balanced view. Who decide to cross the bridge of a total utter failure of financial world when we (if we) get there! Who look for opportunities and make a grab at them! Who understand the sinusoidal curve of life! Who can see, relatively well, through the BS of extreme negative and dispairing (and if you care to remember the extreme positive and euphoric) sentiments. Who are driven by logic but understand sentiment.

Basically if someone will make this country weather and come out shining much better is those 'clinically optimistic' people!!

Republic Day Getaway!

The whole W and J clan went away to Kumarakom, Kerla over this Republic Day weekend (and a few more days' of extra offs!) Here are some snapshots!

The whole idea of the trip was to do nothing!! A lovely lovely thing one gets to do never!! We stayed at Taj Garden Retreat in Kumarakom which fronts the famous Vembanad lake. It is a lovely rustic hotel! Cleanliness in the hotel could have been better but I think they have a formidable task on hand given the setting they are in. The biggest credit to them is definitely their hospitality! Taj's service is legendary and we find ourselves seeking a Taj wherever we go. But the team here was par excellence even by Taj's standards!! Apart from the lovely ambiance the best part of the hotel was also some excellent and delectable variety they served us thrice a day (minimum that is ;) ) We had some superb chettinad preparations of prawns and chicken and feasted on the traditional vegetarian Kerali cuisine of Appam and Avial and Toran and Payasam!! 

We took the much necessary trip to Kottayam for shopping and eating dosas in the local hotels and we were not disappointed a bit!! We rewarded ourselves to multiple Ghee Dosas after a tiring(!) shopping experience at Seematti. Kottayam is a funny city I thought! It has way too much contour for the part of the world it is located in.... We kept travelling up and down the streets - quite literally!! I once again realised how urbanised the city of Pune is where I live. For good or bad Kottayam is about 15 years away from that level of urbanisation...

Large rooms with wooden sloping roofs were complete with dormer skylights. 
But the best part of the rooms certainly was this sit out that overlooked the hotel lagoon.
Toilets opened on a lovely (locked from outside!) courtyards! It took me some getting used  to!!!!
This hotel shares a boundary with the large bird sanctuary of Kumarakom and thanks to this lagoon there are a lot of lovely birds inside the hotel premises as well. If you cared to wake up early (well relatively!) and sit out by the lagoon you could see a lot of them! Following is the picture of cottages from across the lagoon.  
A lot of varieties of Herons were seen and I am no expert in identifying them but we tried and captured them in the lens as much as we could!
The hotel had lot of water bodies woven through it and such water fountains were created at a number of places which served as aeration mechanism for the water.  
We saw a wood pecker here up in the trees but he refused to let us take a picture!! I loved its triangular head!! 
Ain't these lovely?? Look at their colour!! They were almost transparent!
This was the West side end of the hotel. It had a lawn with couches that you could lounge on endlessly! They also served snacks and chai in the evening here making it lovelier still! (Yup I am a certified foodie!) The Vembanad lake seen till the horizon...  I was mesmerised by the size of this lake.
This picture should be named melancholy... Though I wasn't feeling particularly so when clicking it!! 

This is the view of the Baker's bungalow across the lagoon with the beautiful island in between. They have a restaurant in this bungalow now but it has been preserved well from its colonial days.   
The hotel had a lot of fearless rabbits! I and R discussed that rabbit or hare does not explain the squishiness of this cutie as well as the Marathi word 'Sasa' does!! (For some reason the links to post in Devnagari have disappeared from my toolbar. Grhh)


Though aplenty birds could be seen at the hotel we took a 0600 am (on a holiday! I am so proud!!!!) tour through the bird sanctuary. The weather was mildly cold (Yes, we were indeed in Kerla!!) And according to the guide all the birds populate the Hyacinth in the lagoon that separates the backwaters from Vembanad at this time of the day. And well I must say he was quite right!




There are about nine varieties of Kingfishers here. We saw two kinds! Every time it took a flight it dazzled with its brilliant blues! I wish we had a pro camera...  
This is an eagle with its catch!! Kudos to S for snapping it!

This ubiquitous Heron I nicknamed as The Hunchback of Kumarakom!! :) 

Such a small birdie but what rattle it was making!!  
Can anyone tell me what flower this is?? It was 'planted' in large vessels filled with water the way lotus is usually, well, 'planted'! The total life of this beautiful creature was only a few hours of the day.. 

Sunset point again!

We just loved these creatures!! 

This silly bird sat every morning around the same spot for hours on end!! 
All those black forms in the tree are Herons actually!! They have turned that Green tree White by doing you know what all over it!! There is a covered walk way beneath these trees to save the mere mortals from continuous droppings!! 
View of the cottages from the Baker's Bungalow
At night they would light diyas (panatya) all along the lagoon! Such a simple and inexpensive idea, albeit with a lot of efforts involved! But what effect!! This picture hardly does justice to the magnificent site that was!!  
Overall a rocking trip!! Well all the holidays are always like that, aren't they? :)