Been thinking, if I could meaningfully apply Herzberg’s two factor theory to human relationships! Just seemed like an interesting quest to figure out what helps keep a relationship going – and what could make it blissful and what could possibly be screwing it up without realizing it.

Maybe, there are a bunch of things he can do, that would make a lot of difference to her – and he wouldn’t even mind. Only if he knew that is.

According to Wikipedia, Motivators  give positive satisfaction, while dissatisfaction results from the absence of Hygiene factors.

So how does a relationship work -one could easily put together a large wishlist of things that one expects to have in their partner – a lot inspired by theoritical premises than by a deep understanding of ones own needs. Obviously, men will be men.. and women will be what they are!

The absence of these would break it up for the guy :

Shared Interests : Having enough to do together – we’d never get bored of talking to each other/ hanging out / chilling.

Easygoing Nature : OOPS! if she’s a control freak! She’s a paranoid. She’s so stubborn, nitpicking – it gets painful.

Freedom and Space : Bummer! if she persistently forces me to do things her way / she’s always clinging to me. I just can’t go anywhere without her. she doesn’t have a life of her own!

Family Approval: WTF!! she and mom are in a constant cold war!

And what would a guy be delighted by

Shared Dreams : we share what we want from life

Social Approval : I’m proud of her / I can show her off. She gets along well with my friends!

Body / Looks – As long as they’re average or above.

Homemaking skills – cooking / keeping the house in order.

Special treatment  - all the attention when I need it.

The Friend – she’s the friend when I need her to be – no questions, no demands.

The third head is a set of things that don’t belong to either sets. We don’t care about them enough to let them impact the relationship. In significantly good way or bad.

- She’s got a great sense of fashion or style – has the best shoes / bags in town.

-

And Girls?

Will make her pine away to not have this!

Acceptance and Security – she doesn’t want to be compared, she wants to know you’ll be around no matter what. She needs to know you approve of her.

Attention: If you’re seen to be ignoring her interests / preferences / her itself – repeatedly.. she’s likely to know and wouldn’t like it even a bit.

Appreciation and Respect : You don’t respect her, you don’t acknowledge / appreciate her presence in your life.

Delight them?

Attention / Indulgence / Compliments : Call me frequently / give surprises / gifts / plan holidays /appreciates my taste / cooking / looks..

Involvement : He helps me out with all my things.

Smaller things in life : make tea / breakfast, get flowers without occasion, help me with the chores.

Bordering on Irrelevance – doesn’t matter too much

- The mundane : routine odd jobs of life.

I’m sure there’s a bigger list – each of us would have our own, though we may not have classified it this way.

If you’ re being put off daily, it could ruin the relationship step by step.. and if instead delighted once a day, it could take the relationship places. Most of us live mixed up lives. If she’s delighting me one moment, she’s likely putting me off the next. We can’t fit each others needs like pieces of a jigsaw.

So what happens then? The Battles! You’ll keep putting me off and hate me if I don’t do stuff that delights you. You’ll shout at me daily for leaving my socks on the sofa- while you maintain that it’s not such a big deal for you.

It would be awesome to have some more hygiene versus motivator versus irrelevant – breakups – lists – and how they differ across people and across guys and girls.

Those intellectualizing this, were lamenting the reduction of conversations to 140 characters and over skype ‘let’s go for lunch’ instead of enough face to face communication.

While I don’t feel a lot is lost by conversing on any of these modern tools.. what does feel strange is if I’d be put with any from 80% of of the 1000s of people I’m connected to on FB – we’d run out of conversation in a few minutes.

So in a lot of cases, I don’t have things to talk about.. and thinking of the people and time when i didn’t have to ‘think what to talk’ and when intermittent silences weren’t awkward.. I don’t talk to them often anymore!

Why is 95% of all that I talk to anyone lately – so completely transactional in nature? It’s rather seldom that I talk anything without a purpose in mind. Every call or meeting has to have an agenda. Even friends are called up for a reason, very seldom for generally catching up!

Oh, and after the transaction is over, there’d always be an enthused and polite ‘Let’s meet up sometime ya.- Sure!!’ when both of us know well, we don’t mean it.

There was a chapter in my high school hindi book – about conversations – the author wrote with passionate poetic romance about the beauty of conversations. Of course, I was too dumb to appreciate it then – but having gone through a phase when a conversation could last through the night and yet not end – I know what he was talking about. Be it over maggis in the canteen, or over a walk by the lake-side or over the phone or gtalk..

Should I even get into the variety of topics – from physics to religion, to psychology to philosophy, to faith and feminism, from relationships to politics…..

It amuses me to note the number of lines some of my gtalk chat archives have! And it’s not a great feeling that none of those are less than a year old! And it amuses me to think of the times when I used to struggle to pay my phone bills – and had bought a cheap call rate sim in collaboration with another talkative friend.

I have a rather small personal phone bill lately. I’d thought that I’d be dialing more people more often now that I spend a good amount of time in the car – on the way from home to office and back.. but after a few months of having thought so – it doesn’t seem like I’m in much better touch with people I’d have liked to be talking more. Radio, and my lost world of thoughts is what keeps me company.

The whole social media thing – wonder if it’s done more harm than good – in enabling me to keep in touch with people. Commenting on their pics does keep me abreast with what they did on their b’day and the last vacation – but well, haven’t heard someone animatedly narrate the whole series of events lately. One could say that life’s so busy these days – where’s the time – but I really don’t think time is the culprit here.

So maybe then, it’s to do with the lack of motivation, or pre-occupation with our own travails of life – that keeps us away from delving too much into someone else’s life…or spare enough moments for a fulfilling chat.

So well, here’s to all the people who’ve shared those maggis with me, or taken those lake side walks, or stayed up late nights talking over the phone and gtalk.. or the ones that have exchanged lengthy hearty mails with me…and those who’ve filled up pages after pages of ‘classes and conversations’ on the last bench.

I miss you. What else would justify staying back in office, all by myself on a Friday evening – to say all of this!

And well, this in no way to undervalue the people in my life right now – who do their bit to keep the conversationalist in me alive.

Guess a slice of life – is what my rant is likely to be about. Nothing profoundly intelligent or stimulating. Just some things that make me step back and take a hard look at how life’s shaping up!

Guess I’m just being resistant to change! Some changes just suck!

Thinking about what’s the easiest topic to get on to – something that would make me seem rather witty – and what’s easier than – bashing someone or something! Radio channels call it the band bajaana, murga banaana, or topi pehnana – basically having fun by mocking something!

So, whom to bash? Our times offer a bunch of rather interesting targets!

Rahul Gandhi? with his repeated demonstrations of being a political lightweight?

MMS for all the acts of commission and omission – or only the later, with his personal integrity staying intact through the process – as intact as a fishbowl in an earthquake! So what if the fish is dead…

Or the BJP and the saffron brigade – accused of bigotism , active to spew venom on the web but yet to step out of homes to cast a vote? Or their adversaries – the new age journos who trade their journalistic ethics for coffees with the royal family!

Or Anna’s Team – on the mission to change the country via hunger strikes and media blurbs – with plans of creating a 20,000 strong bureaucratic system to fight the systemic corruption in bureaucracy? Or, their adversaries, sitting on their PCs / Macs – spewing out argument after argument – as to why they’re not supporting Anna on the streets!

Or the makers of the policy that  defines Rs. 32 / day as the line above which separates the poor from the not so poor..

Sania bhabhi?

our bollywood heroes like Viveik Oberoi?

Just pausing for a moment’s break gave me Chetan Bhagat as an idea! Isn’t he a great bashable?

Ah well, it’s getting difficult to choose. No wonder, those who’ve made bashing their blog type – never run out of subjects!

But then, I need to identify bashables that would give me the best return on time invested. Something that a lot of people would love to bash.. (or bitch about ). So what’s it that you hate , so much that you’d (love) to bash it – in brackets.

Jobs – and how they take the dear siesta away from you..

Bosses and how they would like to take the night’s sleep also away from you..

Girlfriends.. who’d rather be in your dreams.. siesta or otherwise..

Marriages.. that makes all the above seem simpler?

Or let’s find something less cliched!

But well, now as I do this, I realize that bashing is an art in itself – packing enough potshots in a sentence to keep it intelligent! With this new found wisdom, I thank the bashers for having kept the art alive.

Alright folks, give me something – that you’d really love to see bashed! I assure you I’ll try my innovative best. Left to myself, I’ll end up taking panga with all the expert bashers – in the attempt to draw their attention and then soon bashed out of existence!

Maybe you could start with bashing this desperate attempt at keeping my writing frequency from dying!

Wifey insists that I should write a blog.. I’ve not done that in ages.. and it just seems like a good hobby to get back to.. though I’m usually out of ideas or topics.. inspiration as they say.. as to what to write about..

The key challenge is the discipline it takes to keep the blog updated every week if not more often than that..

Am about to complete a year of working at MMI – in my first ‘job’ per se.. and well, I could also step back and take stock of my situation..

And well, I’m about to complete 2 years of being married – so can think aloud about how things have changed, tease that it’s for the worse…. and so on..

Or maybe I could attempt at answering the existential questions anyone my age may grapple with ( or so I hope). When you’re not entirely delighted with the way your life’s slipping by like a current through your fingers.. and you don’t know whether to accept this as normal.. or to worry that there’s something wrong..

If there’s something wrong.. it again takes stepping out of the comfort zone and taking a hard look at how you’ve become complacent or if you’re still holding on to that curiosity in your eyes.. the soaring spirits of a guy just out of college..

Is this what life’s supposed to be?

I don’t know if I’m going to blog a lot or not.. getting back to writing a diary does seem like a good way to show myself a mirror every once in a while.. and well, it does keep my verbal abilities from rusting away!

The stats say that no one’s visited this blog in ages.. like I didn’t know.. but well.. for those who’ve ever read me before – happy to have your view on what we can talk about!

Obviously.. I’m on the stage and you’re my audience.. I’ll not claim that I write for myself… wonder if anyone REALLY does that… or maybe they do.. and I just haven’t evolved to reach there yet!

Funny, how confused do I sound and I always thought of myself as capable of making worthwhile decisions fast.

i thought this would be a brief post so using the ‘quickpress’.. only to realize now that i’ve just been blabbering away!

Hello friends.. for all those to whom I’ve wanted to be in touch.. but never got around to writing a long mail to.. I’m back!

Wait – this is supposed to be a blog and not my personal long mail to buddies or sparks from the past!

And I don’t want to make this into a series of facebook statuses representing my current mood.. ‘ college life – I miss you’ !

Talking of Facebook – that does seem like an awesome idea to bash people who make half the world jealous by posting their frequent travel pictures leaving us lesser mortals confused about whether to attempt a Bali or a Times Square or a Eiffel Tower this week – and after tons of back and forth convincing wifey.. settling for an Andaman that can be covered under LTA!

On that – I wanted to put my caller tune as ‘mehengai dayan khaaye jaat hai’ – not that many people call me apart from work – but whoever does – the international partners won’t get it.. the desi partners might laugh it off or find it a bit downmarket.. some other well wishers will see my political leanings and intent to bash the government.. my mom.. would think it’ll indicate to the world that I’m not earning enough..and wifey.. who calls me often.. would think I’m trying to tell her something against her shopping sprees!

Ok. I’m fine without a callertune!

And they say life’s easy. And I’m independent. Who am I kidding!

perhaps I should’ve warned when I started that I’m going to blabber away.. but well if you have come this far.. might as well leave a note! I’ll send you chocs if you do.

I certainly would get an awesome ego massage to see the stats on this blog grow. and that might just motivate me to treat myself a massage at 90% off from Snapdeal!

Friends.. well wishers.. aren’t you supposed to wish me well? Now comment!

So how did you build your team?

I’d outsourced the implementation to a company, figuring out much later that it wasn’t a sustainable idea.

A. your learning of the lifecycle doesn’t happen if you’re not spending enough time with the programming team.

B. The partner company has their own priorities and compulsions.

C. It’s an expensive affair!

I did manage to convince my outsourcing partner to become a stakeholder – but it didn’t quite yield the right results. After a point, I could neither go on with that team – nor was the knowledge transfer easy – for me to hire my own team.

Also, I got one of my seniors from college, with a 5 year experience with an FMCG major – he had as little an idea about internet space as I did. So while lilling away – romancing our entrepreneurial pride – we had little clue about what needed to be done. We had similar strengths and weaknesses and no knowledge or focus on how to build the business.

We’d play with a new idea every day – make some pursuits – but not really persist with it to reach a conclusion.

You didn’t have any advisers to fill the gap?

When you’re 23 years old, just out of a nice institute, do you really take advise all that seriously? Sometimes I didn’t have advisers and some times I didn’ t know how to use the advice. And some cases, I just added a handful of salt to the advise- whenever I didn’t find it encouraging. Entrepreneurs defy conventional wisdom, or so I thought then!

In hindsight, I know I should’ve had some sort of a Board / someone to be accountable to, and some personal mentors who ask the right questions and help clarify the vision. Still don’t think advisors help. You have to figure out your own answers

You were clear about what you wanted to do, weren’t you?

When you start thinking of a concept, you naturally end up imagining a wide variety of possibilities and these manifest as additional features in the product. We couldn’t really focus on the key value proposition -  and for a while deluded ourselves into believing that people will come if we add this feature or that.  With the homepage content, or the invite emailers – we weren’t adequately clear about what we wanted people to do on our site. We were to afraid to exclude an important TG, so didn’t focus too much on any specific TG either. We were trying to solve too many problems – so again, the sharpness in communication was missing.

Fundamentally, we didn’t know if we wanted to run a niche personal diary or a social network. Part of our failure was perhaps in being driven by network effects – someone told me that ‘conversations are the only thing that sell on the net’ and rather whimsically, I took that direction.  We needed virality and organic growth for a web 2.0 system! But as a nemesis, that brought us together with the plethora of social networks of that time – and diluted the personal diary positioning.

I don’t know today, if personal diary positioning would’ve been a better approach – but it’s definitely a better experiment – than the social net or the confusion.

You got to be able to articulate the concept in a single line. I couldn’t help describing features in this single line!

So we had a huge spike in traffic when rediff wrote about us – but the people didn’t come back. Partly usability, partly confused positioning.

But one of your advisors, did tell you to build use cases – long before you started?

When he told me that – I didn’t know what “use case”  meant. Did some google and wiki – but it ended at that. Even as we launched, usability was an unfamiliar concept to me – the first part of LiL was done when I was attending classes – thanks to my obsession with launching alpha on convocation day – so I was able to give limited time to the way I wanted things to look like. I learned the principles of usability by reading blogs and it was reasonably understood only much later – when I made the new lil – which, thanks to technical delays – never saw the light of the day.

Besides, like a bunch of other things, I was totally dependent on someone else to work on the performance – and completely handicapped myself- despite knowing that it was seriously hampering user experience. I think I should’ve learnt coding – if I didn’t have a techie co-founder and still wanted to do it.

What do you know about product lifecycles today that you didn’t know then?

That you have to keep the releases really simple. That the first release doesn’t have to be the perfect one. That you ought to have consumer feedback while building the product and not after having built a whole lot of features. That in a consumer platform – development never ends. You can’t get something made by someone and be done with it. That the main thing is to let the main thing be the main thing. Build the core first, sell it, get user feedback and THEN think of bells and whistles.

LiL had better privacy systems than Facebook, and smarter content organization / calendars /search than twitter. It had become too complex a product for an alpha.

You did have some revenues via consulting assignments – wasn’t that sustainable?

I did some assignments and got some things done here and there to generate revenues – but LiL was nowhere on the road to making money. The financial markets were crashing through the second half of 2008, and despite knowing it in advance – we weren’t able to raise funds from professional sources.  I did have relatively easy access to funds from personal sources – but in retrospect – that added to the indiscipline – as I was hardly accountable to anyone – and we didn’t really keep a serious cap, on the funds we were ok to spend on it. I never drew a line. Not having the money creates  a desperation that opens doors. We never reached that stage, and took the easy way to get the money.

Are you more Hands-on with things now?

I still somehow feel I bank too much on people – I just tell them things to do and take it to  be end of my responsibility – by just banking on them to do it. It’s somewhat of an escapist behavior. I didn’t naturally get into details – or get my hands dirty – or do a thorough run through of anything. Now, I’m consciously particular about articulating expectations. Vagueness wastes a lot of time and effort. I get my hands dirty more often now – with the boring detail.

So what were you doing all this while?

I was too intimidated by the idea of making a CV, of applying to companies – appearing for interviews – being rejected. The transition from being full time on LiL, to being part time, to leaving it behind – was a consulting assignment with a small mobile vas company – where I was working directly with the CEO – on myriad things. Despite the learning curve, this was somewhat of a reckless decision – a tad more reckless than doing LiL perhaps – not the best utilization of my time with the lack of focus and crunch of resources. I was working from Bombay for a company based in Kolkata – with no clearly defined targets. I was too inexperienced to really contribute in the manner the company needed – and drew excitement in all the new technologies I was playing with – only to realize with time – that the play isn’t resulting in real business.

So do you regret having opted out of the campus placements?

Do you regret having fallen in love – the first time you did? Even if that gave you a heartbreak?  Not really. It was an amazing experience. I still think LiL’s a good idea. Might just redo it sometime with all the gyan I have now. It’s been two and a half years since the alpha was launched, and as you can see – the memories are still fresh! The post LiL time – could’ve been better utilized though!

Is there more to say..? maybe.. will do it in part III sometime!

Life’s moved in a fast forward, amidst the immature confidence I had at that time – a bit of mature rationality has crept in. I may not be able to take the same decision today. There was a recklessness to it – which the deliberation of today won’t allow.

Just like it’s difficult to come to terms with the first heartbreak, it takes time to accept an endeavor as a failure. You can move on – but you have to get the closure to be able to talk about the experience and not be affected by it.  At times, the mirror asks you questions and you fumble for an answer and what ensues, is a conversation with yourself – as you stare into space – you know it’s time to get candid.

So was it a good idea to opt out of campus placements and build a web 2.0 startup of your own?

Two and a half years hence, I don’t think I can conclusively say that it was a good idea or bad.

Perhaps if you’re the kinds who can learn and understand by listen to advice – it would be wiser to learn at someone else’s expense. But if you’re like me – you really need to experience things yourself for the lessons to stick – first hand learning.  So there wasn’t much wrong with the decision to start.

How’s LiL doing?

It’s up and live, I use it occasionally. I don’t see it as a business as of now, and am not doing anything about it professionally.

Why?

Not being a techie myself had come in the way – wasn’t happy with the non achievement of the milestones I’d set – and couldn’t see a way forward.

So what did go wrong?

A whole lot of things actually, if I were to point out the top few,

Not having a techie as a co-founder.

Not enough clarity in vision and thoughts

No idea about product life-cycle management / usability

No focus on revenue generation / sustainability

Not having an adequately hands-on approach

To be Continued!

Two and a half years after MBA and having gotten my hands dirty in different aspects of being on my own – having had the freedom from office routines and learning a thing or two about running a company, I’m entering a semi-corporate career!

Joined MapMyIndia in Delhi, as an AVP looking after Consumer Experience and Alliances. Good part is I get to work closely with the directors. The company is in a fast growth transition phase from being a startup to a corporate, while I was apprehensive to start with – the structures seem relatively easy to handle. There’s no painful boss, or someone staring at me when I walk into office or when I walk out.

There’s ample freedom to do stuff that I feel like doing – to shape the direction of consumer internet and mobile plans for a company that has been largely enterprise focused all this while. And I have a couple of product managers to lead!

Oh, and this also means I’ve relocated to Delhi. Bidding adieu to Bombay somehow didn’t affect me a lot – expect – the friends would be missed.

The time after college has been an amazing learning curve – yet to really let go of all the naivete of youth – and yet to learn the cynicism of the mature. Getting things done – even if it’s by sheer bull headedness – is something I’m trying to learn.

For those, who ping once in a while and ask how my startup is doing – well, lifeinlines is very much on and recording the story of my life and some others – and like I’d put it earlier sometime – like the first love of life – the first startup stays in your heart.. may not get you anywhere!

I’m told it takes an average of 5-9 attempts at starting up, before one really makes it. It would be a while before I set out again. The confessions from the previous one are yet to be collated!

Anyway, unlike most of my decisions, this one was made with ample deliberation – and guidance from new-found mentors! And well, so far it’s been great. It’s amazing how someone can help you through the maze of clouded thoughts and make everything seem so logical.

Will hopefully write more often now!

What are you doing with Your Life?

Came across this one from Bud Cadell’s works on whatconsumesme and instantly grew to love this depiction. Simple, yet powerful way to organize everything I do, or can do, and it’ll immediately decide how much time / resources I should be spending on it.

Though the self-help books wouldn’t get you to start writing your goals on a piece of paper, this one seems an interesting thing to do. – list whatever I do, or can potentially do, into one of the categories :

What I want to do but neither am I good, nor will it pay. – Travel consultant?

What I can get paid for, but neither am I good with  nor I want to do it. – Bullshitting!

What I’m good with, but neither it pays, nor I really want to do it. –

What I want to do and can get paid for but am not too good at – Dealmaking

What I want to do and am good at, but won’t get paid for it. –

What I’m good with, can get paid for, but don’t want to do. –

What I’m good with, would love to do and CAN get paid for! – Conceptualizing Solutions

But well, at 25, in the process of experimenting with your career before you’re required to stabilize, not all these questions are answered properly. Though if the last one is answered well enough, all else is irrelevant.

The venn hasn’t told me what my Hooray! is, but it has told me the way to think, if I want to get there!

Also, it’s given me an interesting thing to play with, to make new venn diagrams that’ll give me new ways of looking at life and what I’m doing.

AND , a cool piece of gyan to draw on tissue papers at coffee shops, and give away to people – with due respect to Cadell!

The mind that works on its own..

- You’re eating something and using a newspaper below it to keep the space clean, and as you eat, you end up pausing, engrossed in reading the article in the paper, how much ever dated it might be.

- You’re in the middle of explaining an important argument to some important people, (prof, client et al), and all of a sudden, in a flash, you lose your chain of thought, and end up having to complete with some random gyan, trying to hide your embarrassment. And, mostly, your listeners still nod their head.. leaving you to wonder what they must be thinking about you!!!

- Ok, this one’s a cliche. The polyamorous feeling : I love her, but I love someone else too.. but I’m not a bad guy!!

- You hear the door bell, go out to open it, to not find anyone. You come back and ask people around you, if the bell had rung. It hadn’t.

- You take the phone out of the pocket, thinking it’s ringing, of course, it’s not!

- You walk out of your home on the 13th floor, decide to take the stairs coz the phone you’re talking on, will go conk in the elevator, go down a floor, check your pocket for the phone, and almost climb back a couple of stairs.. to go back home to get it. Then you realize that you’re TALKING on the phone!!

- You write long mails, pouring your heart out – with a piece of your mind to top it up, then give it one final read before you send it, and end up saving it in your drafts, to never send it. And then, later on, you thank your sensibility in not sending that mail. (at least 50 out of the 300 drafts I have must be like this. I post a lot of them to lil these days)

- The days I wake up early, are the days I am really late! I don’t know what I end up doing!

- You enjoy writing things down because they help you organize your thoughts and purge the clutter from your head.

Socially,

- Bumping into them out of the blue, you forget the names of people you’ve known for long(old classmates/colleagues), and are looking for ways to figure it out, without embarrassing yourself and them…

- At dinners or get togethers, for a few passing moments, you try to be a part of the groups that you don’t exactly belong to, but don’t get around to participating somehow, and just get out.

- You wonder why can’t people talk straight, and wonder if they’re just making casual conversation or dropping signals that you need to pick up and keep in mind!

- You feel jealous of that funny guy who gets all the attention, while your sense of humor takes a while to get rolling, and has limited laughter-quotient.

- You can happily talk away to glory when introduced to a new person, so much so that you can say you love meeting strangers – but find it rather difficult to walk up to someone to introduce yourself and start a conversation.

- Extension of the previous thing – You can talk away for hours to a new person you started talking to, onboard a flight, but you find it tough to have conversations with people who’ve been your classmates for years!

The shy/ withdrawn / self absorbed loner?

- In a variety of situations – you get a strong feeling that you don’t belong here. It has happens at home, at college, at my b school, in student body meetings, in parties, at pubs, in conferences.. just about every social situation you can be in. But you’re not so much of a loner either!! You just find it difficult to blend in.

- You’re sometimes overly withdrawn, because you don’t want to come across as desperate.

- Your shyness is sometimes (or maybe often) seen as snobbishness, and while you don’t know how to explain the difference, you pretend to ‘not care’ and let it pass!

- You wonder sometimes if people actually mean those kind words they tell you, or they’re just being polite!

- You get embarrassed at the overenthusiastic praising and complimenting by certain relatives / extended family.

- You don’t call up friends / ping them when you see them online, coz you feel you don’t have much to talk about, and they might be busy with their own lives – and you fall further short of conversation material after every such missed talk!

- Your busy status on messengers, is perpetual, and you don’t change it ever. It amuses you when that ppl use this as an excuse you to not talk to you for a long time.

- You don’t exactly love the ‘post on your wall’ or ‘scrapbook’ b’day wishes, which only came coz the person saw your b’day on orkut / fb. And you don’t like wishing ppl that way either. Except, a few cases.

- Gathering courage, you initiate a conversation with someone, or drop a compliment, and are endlessly embarrassed into being silent when they respond rather coldly!

- You like disappearing into the woods sometimes, for extended periods. You like it if ppl ask after you, with concern, but are really pretty ok if nobody does. You’re ok being in your own world!

- You’re sometimes skeptical of the overt depictions of camaraderie between people, wondering if it’s real, or is it just one lonely person reaching out to another, wonder if you wanna be one of those!

- Someone new starts paying a lot of attention to you all of a sudden and you feel weird, but secretly like it, and then one fine morning, they suddenly decide to withdraw, without any explicit reason and you start to feel weird!!

- You HATE it, when people leave without saying a bye. Exit from your life, effectively. Perhaps having taken offence to something, or choosing to withdraw themselves, or for some reason – leaving you restless with an unanswered why!

- In the flash of a moment, you think about someone, wondering what they’re upto.. and are surprised how come you didn’t ask after them all these days!

Of virtues and Idealism

- You wonder sometimes why people make such a virtue out of sacrifice and giving up.

- You like it sometimes when some people take liberties with you. Makes you feel they hold you close.

- Find half the heroes as false – wonder why and how they got there!

- Sometimes looking at the face of poverty, deprivation and desolation – you feel the meaningless of all your pursuits, if they’re not going to change life for the deprived.

Of Judging,

- Find some people pointlessly argumentative and judgemental, and feel like giving the discussion up and letting them be in their own world, rather than brew up an intelligent discussion.

- You wonder if you’ve become too objective or numb, to feel almost heartless at times.

- Having gone too far with being non judgmental, you sometimes find it difficult to see anything wrong with anybody! Everyone’s doing what’s in their best interest, and have their own reasons for it. And you can’t hate anyone for anything they say or do! Quick concluders turn you off though!

- And, despite the continued obsession with being non judgmental… you suddenly begin to judge closely, uncomfortably closely…

Random crazy instincts!

- You feel really tempted to jump off the train, into the sea, when it’s crossing a bridge.

- You sometimes consider dying, just because you’re REALLY curious to know what happens next!

- Wake up at 5 AM, because you have a huge chain of thought in your head, which you must capture. You capture it and go to sleep again!

- Sometimes, your chivalrous instincts are blocked by your feminist ones! You’d offer your seat to an aunty or an elderly person, but not to a girl your age, or offer to lift her luggage for her.. she’s your ‘equal’ remember?

- You feel scared of opening your monthly credit card statements, or other bills, and put it off till the last possible date.

Now, here are things I thankfully don’t feel… but people around me do. Do you?

- I trip over something or the other everyday!

- If you tell me about a disease and its symptoms, I get scared believing that I have it!!

- At every possible opportunity where you can see your reflection – a car rear view mirror, a restaurant spoon, or anything similar – you feel an irresistible urge to check how you’re looking! in passing cars with reflective glass, a clean patch i na dirty bit of broken glass, the cell phone when its not lit up.

I’m sure I’ll soon have a LOT more to add to this post. This feeling crosses my mind more often than I eat chocolate these days!

Meanwhile, if you related with any of the above, or feel something I’ve not included.. do write in!

So much for the light musings.. and baring some thoughts!

Starts with a ride on the Mumbai local – standing at the gate – to soak in the amazing weather,  as I rode across the bridge to Vashi – offering a long view of the horizon.

Followed by – a drive on the expressway – up the hill in lonavala – long stares into the valley – a game of cards, a picnic lunch, hot pakode, mist in the face,  rain to soak, clouds to surround , chilly breeze, growing into a wind as you see, a hot bhutta, a phone call to tell someone they’re being missed, a text to lil, getting back into the car, for a slow drive down the hill coz you can’t see beyond 5 meters…. with open windows so you still feel the rain..

A descent from Heaven, amidst the clouds! Loads of curves- the view still blocked -a famous vada pao, an extra sweet coffee and a drive back to Vashi.

Followed by a drive on the palm beach road, a glimpse of a cute home and family and some sweet childhood pics, and next a short but lovely bike ride with the wind in my hair as the pillion, a quick spin on a sexy bike, a small walk, some small talk and a conversation amidst beautiful weather. Some growing up.

Then zip back to mama’s for another game of cards – with jeering and cheering on a high.. a lot of pulling,  a dinner of pizza.. and a glimpse of India crumbling against west indies in the match. A peaceful sleep.

5:45 AM – the local again, again a pretty morning, to bring me back, to home, to my desk, to work!

Despite such a weekend, i’m saved the monday blues by my kinda work, my kinda workplace, my desk and the view from here!