Tale of two cities.

Bangalore. Hyderabad. Bangalore. Hyderabad.Banga..

The old conundrum. The two cities my life revolves around in a seemingly seamless world.

It all happened that evening on a cold winter day. The heart was hesitant but the mind, unwavering in its resolve. It was THE chance. I had got an offer from the best company in the world and one that I had admired for years. How could I say no to that?

But the heart, resented. "Are you going to leave all this behind? The family, the friends, the city that you root for ever so vehemently, just to work in a celebrated corporate? are you going to....sell out?

Needless to say, the mind won. "It's alright. I'll work for a year, get a taste of working at this company  in a new city and come back."

A year flew by. When I was not looking,  two. Almost 3 years are rolling by now and I'm still there. And here. I make a note of all that has changed since I moved out. I run out of space.

One part that has remained constant though, is see-sawing between my life in Bangalore & my life in Hyderabad and being unsure where I really belong. I wonder if the difference really just geographical or something much deeper? At this point, I look back about 20 years when the biggest choice to be made was simply between a juicy lollilop or a fun candyfloss. But I really liked both.

Now another cold winter evening right now, I sit on my couch, watch TV with my dogs on either side of me. A simple , ordinary part of anyone's day. But for me this is unreal. Too comfortable to be true, maybe. This is my home. I live here with my flesh & blood. But I know this won't be there tomorrow. One journey of 12 something hours and a completely different world awaits on the other side, until the next trip home.

But I know I go back to the world, that I made and chose for myself. 'My' home as opposed to 'our' home? It's a world where I live life on my terms, it has people that I worked at bringing in my life. It's where every moment , every day of my life, is my responsibility and my own decision. It's the place where I believe I have found my calling, discovered who I truly am and grown as a person .

Then why do I keep coming back? How do I find myself on the next ride to back here at every given chance? Am I just living a constant trade-off between my independence and my roots. Or is this the world I never really left and all I'm doing is reconnecting with it every once in a while. I guess a part of me is afraid, afraid of losing this side forever, if I didn't keep lubricating the hinges of this connection, every now & then.

Maybe it's all pages of the book, I read with much relish and held close to my heart but in reality it's been read. All I do is flip back to the old pages and smell that familiar , comforting smell and then some.

Maybe I just live the best of both worlds.

I am not sure, which way I want it to be . Maybe I belong nowhere. Or somewhere in the middle.
NH7 to be precise.

At this point, it would be nice to paraphrase extract from Maya Angelou in Letter to My Daughter

Thomas Wolfe warned in the title of America’s great novel that ‘You Can’t Go Home Again.’ I enjoyed the book but I never agreed with the title. I believe that one can never leave home. I believe that one carries the shadows, the dreams, the fears and dragons of home under one’s skin, at the extreme corners of one’s eyes and possibly in the gristle of the earlobe.

Home is that youthful region where a child is the only real living inhabitant. Parents, siblings, and neighbors, are mysterious apparitions, who come, go, and do strange unfathomable things in and around the child, the region’s only enfranchised citizen.

We may act sophisticated and worldly but I believe we feel safest when we go inside ourselves and find home, a place where we belong and maybe the only place we really do."

Amen.

The Great Indian Local Bus

If you have ever lived in any part of India and have been privy to its everyday affairs, you have witnessed either through observation in passing or first hand, what this picture depicts.
These buses are the lifeline of million of commuters every single day, employers to thousands, not to forget, the most eco-friendly & economical mode of transport in a country where the Ferraris and the BMWs are still far & few in between.

Now I'm one of the privileged few whose daily commute to work usually involves watching the world go by in all its flurry and hurry from a comfortable distance from inside my AC cab. That and the few trips I have taken in various local buses, all the more makes me appreciate the average Indian local bus travel & classify it as an experience on its own.

Inside a local bus you will see a microcosm of the real India. Men, women, children, old people, up and ready with a determination to get somewhere. Seat or no seat, direct or multiple bus changes, nothing deters them from this bus ride, with a lot riding on their backs. (pun unintended).

The fact that a bus meant for 40 manages to pack around 120, comes as no surprise to anyone in a country that goes by the leitmotif "chalta hai" and the bus forming a seesaw because of the weight pegged on one side, is not a rare sight.

I don't know what training military aspirants people go through to build strength and resistance but I would suggest commuting in a local bus to learn some important life skills & appreciate the everyday struggle of a class, that you as a non-bus commuter & a better-off person financially, might be privileged enough to not witness.

The first learning is logistics management. That is, finding out which bus number goes where and from where! Chances are, if you are in city with a strong regional language, the bus route would be written in that language. So your best bet would be asking fellow waiters at the stop, the driver/conductor himself, depending on his willingness to entertain another millionth query about the bus's whereabouts to doing some research online if your city is savvy enough to have its public transport mapped online.

The 2nd challenge and the biggest, is to find a place in the bus! If it's on the weekend or after hours, getting a seat wouldn't be a biggie and you can feel like the king of the world but heaven save you if you're travelling in the peak hours. i.e 8:30am-7:30 pm on a work day! While getting a seat would be a miracle, scoring even enough space on the handle bar without group hugging at least 3 people or getting stomped on, would be a decent start.

Then comes tolerance: You build the tolerance to all that your senses are subjected to - the sights, sounds & smells. You would see old ladies happily chatting about, the sleepy kid drooling away on her mother's laps, ( or on your shoulder, more likely ) the creepy guy at the back, leching ever so confidently at you or someone else but mostly, just plain businesslike nonchalance to get to a place, go on, & carry on their business...You would hear chitter-chatter in multiple languages and accents, the conductor expertly wading through the crowd, shouting "Change illa" every now & then & the occasional screech from a speed break! The smells! The most overwhelming part! Right from a "New Axe: Chocolate flavour" to good ol' jasmine oil to just plain old sweat & muck, you have it all; Fragrances, smells & aromas of a country of a billion people, blending in a bitter sweet space.

Just when you are building resistance to not to frown at the decently able men who conveniently take the 'ladis seats' without any feeling of shame, regret or forboding, you will be touched by an instance of someone offering a seat to someone else more 'seat-worthy', just like that!

Lastly you build physical fitness in learning to hang from the bar and maintain your balance in a bus that goes more bumpity bump than a roller coaster! Why, you get learn some neat stunts by learning to alight the bus ever so smoothly so as to not to end up in a stampede at the stop. Though it's not advised at all, the seasoned Indian bus traveller knows how to get off the bus, even while it's moving without getting run over & breaking bones! Never try that at home, or outside!

It's true, if you want to see India (or any other developing country, really ) in all its local glory, amidst the hustle bustle, do try travelling by a local bus. Here you will see examples of struggle, of determination, of kindness, of indifference, and an intrinsic fabric of society running on those wheels. An experience of years in a few minutes' ride.

Next time an Indian says "..Nothing much, just hanging by the bar", you know what else they could be talking about :)

Things you can learn from losing a phone

I am no stranger to losing phones or losing anything for that matter. But phones have a special place in my track record. From flushing down a shining new iPhone or having a phone creamed away by one of my own friends at a drunken party , I've been on the receiving ( losing) end of it all! Not one to break tradition, I just have lost another and the best phone of my life yet, in the most curious way possible.

If you have ever lost a phone too, you know losing phones could be one painful experience, and a much bigger loss than the monetary one, of course.

Suddenly you're disconnected from the world, social life is in a toss, nothing to feign busy-ness on, the depression, the withdrawal symtoms, it's a big big mess!
Years of contacts and phone numbers just get lost, needing you to pretty build up a contact list from scratch. Not to mention the 1000 SMS & whatsapp messages you had saved in your almost unlimited-storage  phone just in case you needed to copy an old Diwali forward to send it again, this year.
But what's worse about losing a smartphone, which pretty much did everything : take awesome pictures, had the most advanced app for saving notes and organizing your music!  Pictures! That hilarious" Child Bear available here" signboard you clicked on the way to work or just a random moment with your baby nephew! All gone :(

Well apart from the feeling of being disconnected which could be a good thing sometimes, knowing that your family was about to post a 'lost' ad about YOU, not the phone, in the papers is , not so much.

Though, like every loss, comes a learning and since I've been through a lot of those, naturally it's come with a lot of learning. While my phone may be gone forever, here are a few things that might help someone else when they have lost their phones or prevent it from getting lost to begin with!

1) If you have a smartphone, always have a security app installed- from the word go and don't wait for something to first happen to!
I had an avast back up installed. Not sure how good it was since I'm still waiting for a registered phone to receive an SMS the moment the new owner of my phone inserts his/her SIM in it.

2) Can't stress this enough: Make regular back ups of your data! Phone numbers, important messages, reminders, music , pictures! Upload the important pictures on FB instantly, if need be, naysayers be damed. 'Cos the world may crash but stuff posted online seems to stay for posterity!

3) It can also be taken as an exercise in filtering your social life. Post that customary Fb msg about "lost my phone. Pls inbox your numbers " .The people who do, were worth having in your contact list anyway.
If you thought that midnight chatting partner was your soulmate in life too, but with the phone gone, he's also vanished like acetone from an open bottle, you know where used acetone goes.

4) Keep your phone fully charged when stepping out of the house. What's worse than having a phone stolen? Having misplaced a phone but not being to track it 'cause it ran out of juice minutes after you lost it!

5) If you're a phone addict, chances are that you'll have the phone in your hand 24/7 anyway to really lose it, but Murphy works in strange ways. Sometimes those 5 minutes of leaving the phone unattended could be enough for a person with a bad intention to make his move.

6) Note down the IMEI number of the phone ( You can find it on the box or under the battery ) and somewhere and lodge an FIR at the nearest police station. I don't know how effective it but I have heard of a few rare cases wherein the police has been able to track down stolen phones from the IMEI number.

7) Always have a spare phone on you, however basic. Trust me you don't want to lose a phone when you're travelling and get stuck incommunicado mode when you needed to make those 100 important calls!

8) Check if you lost your phone at a place that could be under CCTV surveillance and if yes, make sure to have the store guys, run the CCTV footage in the control room, for you.  No need to say how it'd help.

9) Umm, this may sound ridiculous but I have actually done it a few times. Send a msg to your own number ( just in case the thief hasn't switched SIMs yet) and send a senti msg about what this phone means to you and blah blah blah. Even criminals have a soft side somewhere and may be just maybe they may get moved enough to return the phone!

10) If you had whatsapp on your phone : whatsapp on your own number,either with the content above or asking the 'thief' to return the phone- No questions asked- in return for a certain sum. Usually whatsapp is installed on a phone and not attached to a SIM. So even if the phone has a new sim, chances are that the whatsapp ac is still there and in that case the thief will see your msg.
The reward you offer him may be worth more than the phone to him! Try your luck.


Share this post and spread the good phone karma!

Internet loves the 50+ - Teaching those that taught us

They taught you your first words. They taught you to stand, walk and cycle.
The years piled on and you learnt to walk and much more just fine, but their knees got weaker.
While you continued to step ahead in life with the basic foundation of leaning set by them, they stepped back behind the scenes, just proud & happy to see you grow up and grow.

They are your parents and your grandparents. The people who grew up much before the age of technology and information at your finger tips that you grew up to or have adopted perfectly. It is time to gift them back.

And with that as the bedrock, was launched the "Internet loves the 50+" by Google - An initiative aimed at familiarizing the senior citizens with the world of the internet. To enable them to, if not master technology, to be comfortable enough with using simple features such as search, email, chat, online news & books etc. and stay connected with their loved ones as well as use the internet for simple tasks such as bill payments, reading news etc.

The pilot event saw a stupendous participation from 70+ senior citizens. A team of 20 volunteers led by Kirthika, planned, conceptualized and developed content for this event which saw its fruitation on Saturday. The enthusiastic but slightly apprehensive senior citizens walked into the Google campus, had lunch and proceeded to the training rooms where they were briefed about the session. Slowly but surely the event kicked into action & all the volunteer trainers got busy with a group of 2-3 participants each and sat with them with their laptops.

The trainers walked the participants through right from switching on the computer to using internet features like search, using email, reading news online. The event was not limited to Google products exclusively but also covered opening a facebook account and adding people.

The 'students' listened in rapt attention, worked their way around the laptops , asked questions and were enthusiastic children in a classroom again, talking with their 'classmates'. One student asked if it was possible to get free books online and was surprised when not only could he access and download free ebooks but free telugu books, just by running a simple search!

The highlight of the event was when one of the participants elaborated about Google+ to his trainer and astounded her with his knowledge!

The session was concluded by a live Google+ hangout involving a brief feedback clip of the participants, which was a huge hit with the participants, amazed by the possibility of multiple people video chatting with each other from different locations at the same time.

After a whole day of learning, sharing and interacting, the participants, left thanking us and blessing us as elders but it is the trainers that gained the most from the experience. To give back to the generation that has given us the most and yet is sometimes, pushed to the sidelines, was enriching and humbling. Truly you're never too old to learn or too young to teach was the theme of the day and it could not be more beautifully executed through the event.

We would consider this event a win every time a doting grandmother can see her newborn grandchild miles away, playing on video chat, the retired army colonel can pay his bills online & as Google's motto goes, information could universally be accessible- age no bar.

And here're a photo of the proud volunteers for the program who made this a roaring success

Don't wake up

How do you sleep at night with those demons lurking in your mind?

With all the wrong you're all about, how do you deserve this right?

When you wake up tomorrow think about that one person who would be happier, if you didn't .

Dream about your own life as lived by them.

Cringe in remorse, of shame, of painful revelations, in your sleep.

Someday you'll realise how you fucked up. But it'll be too late. Your soul would've been sold out.

Occupying a different person.

Empty. Dead.

Today stand in front of that mirror you preen to ever so often. Do you see an ugly truth or a pretty lie?

Remember that, you had the power to touch lives in ways that only you could. And all you did, was scar them.

Time will heal those wounds, the sun will catch up with the tears.

But what will you do about the soul-sucking demons you created & let loose for life?

You can't take the truth beyond those shut eyes. Or they'll burn

Don't wake up.