What is it about the festivals in India, that creates a buzz? I so love the festivals. The colours, the lights, the excitement in the air. The similar excitement that I am feeling right now. Just a day and I'll be home. And just two before Diwali. Maybe that's the reason why. 


But then what about the time about 4 years back. The winters right after I started working.
 December began, and I could sense a sliver of excitement in my own self as soon as i would step out of work. I felt everyone is nicer. Felt everything is brighter.
A couple days gone by, a happiness generally for the impending Christmas time and the winter break set in.
Wait. What winter break? And what Christmas time for that matter?? I was working then. Not in college anymore. No breaks no "festive season frenzy". Office every day. Same work every day. Then why does the mind do that? Why do I feel the excitement, even though nothing physically around me has changed? 


Maybe because, Festive is, just, a state of mind.


Have a good festive season, enjoy! :)

Live without

Somebody posted on FB - 

"Don't fall in love with someone you can live with, fall in love with someone you can't live without."

I say, how silly. And at so many levels.

Right now I don't even want to dwell upon the fact that nobody is indispensable.
More important is the question that how does one first be as attached to someone so as not to be able to live without him/her. And then fall in love. 
What were you doing while you were actually getting attached to them in the first place?!

The networking blacks and whites

Every body says the world is shrinking. Is it really? Am I the only one who feels otherwise. They also say social networking is getting us closer. Really? 

Okay it does get us closer. Maybe in certain ways world is shrinking as well. But it is also making us impolite, rude and intrusive.

The downsides of excessive social interactions are many and at various levels.

No?

It somehow brings out our worst…

When we call people again and again, despite them not taking our calls?

Or when we don't answer people's calls, despite them calling us again and again?

If there were no mobile phones, we won’t have had the incessant need to call, neither we would have been so accessible. In the older times, a phone call was precious. Both, for the one making and for the one receiving. I miss that.

When we invite people with merely a tagging on the Face Book?

Or when we don’t respond to the e-invite?

If there was no email penetration or social networking we would have called or at least made the effort to post a note to the people who we want to invite. For the rest, well, we would have just let them be.

When we gawk at all the good looking people’s pictures in our friends’ list?

Or when we swear at acquaintances who ‘like’ or comment on our pictures?

This is something I don’t understand. I have seen people who actually keep a tab on other women/men’s lives who are not even their friends. Seriously don’t understand the need to do that. Have also often seen intelligent, well-read married/committed men check out other (read hot) women’s profiles. That only makes me wonder if we are that desperate or if we really are that short on entertainment in our lives. And what about the ones who first put them up on public display?

… and the best…

Oh, how I love what technology has brought us. The ease, the comfort and the closeness of relationships.

Thank God for the Mobile phones. We can actually talk to whoever we want to whenever we want to. Distance, time, location no bar.

The time, the effort and the costs involved are all saved when we can now just send an e-invite. I can’t imagine how difficult it must’ve been for the generations before ours who had to actually pen down names and addresses on each and every one of the 500 envelopes they sent out for weddings! So much more we can achieve in that time saved!

We are all so far apart. Can’t share the day to day activities with the ones who matter. Can’t share the thrill of new places we have been to. But now we actually can. I love the ease of social networking when I can just post the pictures and my friends and family can view them. I love it when through such pictures their lives actually become a part of mine.

It is all relative. Isn’t it?

Bangalore Metro - Namma Metro!

Maybe, coming from Delhi - the city of the unstoppable and unprecedented Metro expansion, I am not awed by the 5 stop metro stretch in Bangalore. Or also because I feel that if this is what has been achieved in 5 long years, it is too little too late for the Bangalore people.

But still, happy I am, cuz now I will finally be able to get to Indiranagar from MG road in 7 minutes. And save the additional 23.

Sent on my BlackBerry® from Vodafone