Vacation

A much awaited vacation
No work and no action

Yearning to go places
To learn the meaning of stranger's gazes

It is something about travel
Which stirs the mind's gravel

Makes me young and new
As my energy is renewed

Even if I feel home here
It makes me happy at the prospect of going there

Waiting for this break
So that I can shriek like a freak

But one things is for sure
Whether it is a sunshine or downpour

Back will I come
To you, sweet home.

Wisdom or the lack of it..

I was driving towards my dentist's office today morning and it sent me down the memory lane of the various visits I have made till date.

I remember when I was a small girl, I had gone with my dad to a very friendly dentist close to my home. He had extracted my tooth after giving local anaesthesia and my mouth was swollen like a football. While prescribing the medicine, he asked me gently "Beta goli chahiye ki sharbat"(Do you want capsule or tonic?). To give you some clarity, I hate medicines of any form especially tonic. Incidently, "sharbat" in hindi also means juice. And in my innocent mind, I took it as juice and imagined various Rasna flavors making my mouth water. I immediately said "Sharbat". I don't remember how I gulped the tonic down my mouth. Either my mom must have performed some trick or I must have just refused to drink it. In any case, I was fine in couple of days . (Just a thought: If I refused to drink the tonic and I got fine, do we really need medicine? But with mom around, is it possible? )

The next visit to dentist was when I had excruciating pain because of a wisdom tooth trying to come out. The dentist had recommended the removal of wisdom tooth. Incidently, it was a few days before my wedding. Maybe it was God's way to making me wiser or maybe not :)

After coming to US, I had more "regular cleaning" dentist visits. In all these visits, the hygenist invariably pointed out how bad my teeth were. Somehow I found in hard to believe a I do not have any tooth problem except wisdom tooth . But I have that concern in general life too- wisdom. Anyways, that's a different story. She even went to an extent saying, I should have teeth cleaned every 2 months even if I need to shell out money from my pocket. After all, flashing off a beautiful smile is important. Fortunately for me, even if my wisdom tooth gave up on me , my wisdom helped and I stopped heeding to any of her advice.

I had another wisdom tooth attack . My second wisdom tooth suddenly thought it needs to see the light of the day and started piercing through my jaws. Never made to the surface but gave a jolt to all it's neighbors. The dentist argued, why not remove all the remaining 3 wisdom teeth. That would relieve me of any pain (and wisdom ?) . He also mentioned the face won't swell as the medicines used are different. A myriad of thoughts went across my mind - my last swollen face, sleepless nights , icecreams ( in India, you were allowed to eat lots of icecream when tooth was extracted and I used to love that part). Since my chain of thoughts ended in icecream bringing a smile to my face, I said yes without listening to what the dentist was saying. So an appointment was made to remove all my three wisdom teeth.

I came to the office on the appointed date. It was in the morning so that H could go to work. All my wisdom teeth were extracted and I seemed to be doing pretty fine. H dropped me home and went to work. Then, I started feeling pain. Maybe the anaesthasia was wearning off now. I felt tired too. Thought I would eat and then sleep. Now, the hell broke loose. I threw up what ever I ate including medicine, started having head ache along with tooth ache. Wait a minute, wasn't the extraction done to relieve me of pain? My face got swollen and I could barely open my lips, let alone eat or talk. I was all alone in the home. H would call me and I would barely murmur and he could not understand what I am saying. I can still remember how the whole day went by. I appreciated simple facts of life as eating and talking. For the next couple of days to H's delight, I was the one who did less talk and more listen. My family would pull my leg at every opportunity to check if I had any "wisdom" left. Unanimously, they agreed it went away with my teeth.

For the first time today, the hygenist acknowldged the fact that my teeth were looking good and I must be taking extra care now. To be very honest, I have done nothing special to my teeth except brushing. But what she said definitely put me in a good spirit.

Wisdom or no wisdom, I have a reason to smile :)

Window to the soul

In a life where
people don't meet
feelings doesn't meet
hearts don't meet
destiny doesn't meet

In that times
I met those eyes

Compassion at its epitome
Words speaking of wisdom

Which made my heart smile
And follows me in my life's each mile

Which quenched the thirst
Of my mind's eternal quest

Which is the light in the dark
In the journey that I embark.

Where are we going?

It must be one topic which must be finding a place in every conversation regardless of language or location. People in general are worried where are we heading and some are certain that the dooms day is just around the corner.

Generations have come and developed the world for better or worse. But people seem to be more concerned now. Maybe because this generation has progressed technologically faster than the previous ones or more importantly because I am living this generation and keep hearing it everyday.

But are we really heading towards a doom's day? That only time can tell.

In my view , genarations change and so do troubles. Each generation has it's own ways of resolving them. Some of these solutions might have filtered across generations but lot are learnt by surviving them. As it is said- practical knowledge makes a person wiser than theoretical knowledge.

The common concerns are less compassion and time for each other, severe competitiveness makes no time to enjoy simple pleasure of life. I feel each generation has it's own interpretation of "leisure" and "fun". True that people seem to be in maddening rush but there are lot of developments that cannot be ignored. Again whether it is for better or worse is the way we interpret it and the way we want to live life. Few to note : Individual dreams can attain reality now, Bonding the whole world through spirituality, going one step above religion.

There is always an "unknown" which lures us, there is always a "fight" that keeps us strong. In past, wars and conservative socities might have made it easier to know the "enemy". Even though we cannot put a face to what we are fighting for, we do feel the same urge to get evolved , become a better human, attain realisation. Deciphering the unknown and winning it is what makes the civilization evolve and sustain life. This will go on and the only thing we can do is survive it and attain the wisdom. Whether we are able to share the wisdom is the only struggle shared among generations.

Raindrops

Raindrops falling
My memories calling

I do not want to be beckon
As I am learning to carry-on

Memories always create a world beautiful
As they come with the times well cherished and wonderful

I am trying not to look at past
Then present goes by very fast

When will I learn
That to create a past wonderful

I need to live
my present bountiful.

All I can say

I was taking the elevator down to go to the parking lot. I met this nice gentleman who works in a company next to mine. Both of us work in the same profession , you guessed it - software. We generally smile and exchange greetings whenever we meet. He was enquiring about my work ? I said currently, we are walking on the razor edge. I guess it is very common in the industry I work that people attimes or all times work like crazy. I think it is basically we as a profession are pretty bad in estimating what can be done and pretty bad in managing our time.

He commented - "There were lot of sins done in the First and Second World Wars. Hence in the next life, God made them as software professionals !" . Well I dread to think what we would be in next life?

Opportunity knocks

A mind full of dreams
A heart full of hope

An ambition to fervor
A success to devour

You came again
When all I could say was in vain

How I wish earlier you could have come by
And I would have welcome you with ecstacy and joy

For opportunity might knock twice
But age knocks only once.

Random Musing

We do need to talk
But don't you think it would be better if we walk

To forget the differences
Dissolving the past references

We do need to care
Maybe good if less we share

Somethings are best unsaid
They sound more beautiful unheard.

Can it get any worse...

We are nearing our drop-dead date. If you are in software industry , you know exactly what I mean - yes tomorrow is friday and we have a release, work is not completely done but hoping to finish. You must be wondering if I am out of my mind. How much can you accomplish in a day? Well, believe me, miracles do happen. And I am so sure it would strike again tomorrow. Yes, our release day will get postponed :)

I was just analysing what all is left in my part to do. We are trying to migrate to a new version and also enhancing along the way. There is one particular section which I am missing out. I know I am supposed to migrate it but I do not find the code. I talk to my team lead. I do believe ghosts exist in software. How else can you explain the umpteen number of times something going wrong, you do all you can but no luck and mysteriously everything start working fine! Well, my teamlead says you are supposed to refer to our old code , go to "XXXX" project, checkout the head. Well, I did just that, I retort back but I do not see anything. Then I realise I had checked out a wrong version of the code. Sweet. One day to go and I am working on a wrong version. But didn't I tell you I believe in miracles. Waiting for it to happen...