the second one this year, last one was on 15th of January. So what was special about this one that it merits a write-up? I learnt a few things. This was my first official half marathon, before this all have started from the pavement in front of our home and ended right where they started. Among other things I am an optimization consultant and my job is to extract the maximum amount of juice possible from web servers. I cannot for the life of me justify a trip to the start line which is >1 km away from home, let […]
an old someone-from-school sent that image on the school group recently…. my response as expected was an over reaction…. thought provoking…. I usually do not make sense to most people but then anyway here goes (my two cents as usual)… “depends on what one considers cheating…. with fitness there are rest days as well as reward diet days…. of course it’s difficult to see how those would work in a marriage context…. but then again it need not be such hard work either…. after a point marriage like fitness like marriage (yes that repetition was intentional) becomes a habit and […]
On what’s going on in the world today….. you see it’s a strategy…. earlier the right wingers (both in America and in India) used to point to an enemy in a different country-region-people (Pakistan always for India and the middle east for America… always Muslims). That yielded a rich dividend for them as the gullible eat-up-all-the-shit-that’s-dished-out-by-the-government-idiot population used to lap up the nationalistic pride argument and happily support every act of terrorism that the state indulged in using the military. Today it’s becoming increasingly difficult to wage those wars outside. You never know who is sitting on a nuclear bomb. […]
“What’s sex got to do with love?” …”money, the real sort, is silent, all five letters”.. couple of my oft repeated phrases…. couple of the more controversial ones as well. I recently did some degree of reflection on these “to live life by” rules of mine and the new realisation, interpretation is heart warming if anything… reiterates my other inherent belief “good people always win”. Sex has nothing to do with love, at all. It is as mundane and trivial a physical interaction as say shaking hands. Standalone at least that’s how “huge” sex is. You might as well be […]
today’s been a fun day…. I received a package from China, a replacement for the window switch for my car, it’s a Ford Fusion which was rare while it was still around and now that it’s been discontinued for over 5 years it’s parts are rarer and costlier still…. so anyway my fusion buddies (fellow enthusiasts) discovered that Aliexpress stocks parts for our cars and I being the fool (who rushes in where devils fear to tread) went ahead and placed an order for the switch… so yeah that arrived and within 5 minutes of signing off the couriers manifest […]
Monku was growing up to be an exceptionally inquisitive and smart monkey. He loved to read and what he didn’t understand he would go and ask grandpa, dad or mom, sometimes all three. So he was reading this book which talked of leprechauns and how they hide pots of gold at the ends of rainbows. Monku wasn’t so convinced so he went and asked gramps, “is there a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow?”. Gramps thought about it for a second and then said “no, but then no one has seen the end of a rainbow either”. […]
with no brakes….. Growing up we used to read ideals handed down to humanity by thought leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, some of the doyens of human civilisation….. prominent amongst them were the ideas of equality, freedom, restraint, team work, living within means, elimination of greed, focus on intellectual growth rather than materialism and more such…. all important ingredients to a stable, peaceful co-existence with our fellow human beings. For decades these ideals, these ideas have served humanity well. They have helped keep us all together and helped us stay, broadly speaking, peacefully sane. These ideals somehow are […]
Thoughts become things think about what you want and not about what you do not want in your life say yes to what you want If you do not like something don’t say “no” to it instead think of what you want instead and say yes to that. For instance if you do not want poverty do not say you do not want poverty instead say I want plentifullness. Focus on what is good in your life and appreciate it everyday do not let a situation anger you or disturb you as all that is achieved by being disturbed/angered by […]
One of my very frequently revisited tenet of life is “if you want it done right do it yourself”. Today we want perfection in everything however are we doing our bit to make it a perfect world for ourselves? The thought was triggered by a recent tirade by a dear friend. He was worried about the mushrooming slums in the vicinity. This is Mumbai here slums rub shoulders with 40+ storey buildings… slums that house the huge support staff. Our maids, drivers, painters, plumbers, security guards, dry cleaners, istree waala… everyone who makes sure we are able to live comfortably […]
Monku was 7 years old now and fast growing into a rebellious pre-teen like so many others in his age group. He questioned everything and never agreed to anything without a trade. Dad was growing increasingly anxious and impatient with the boy. This was a time when things could go horribly wrong or beautifully right for a growing monkey kid. Like every morning the day began early. At the breakfast table though it was only dad and son as mom had left last evening to visit the grandparents. Dad moved the glass of chocolate milk in front of Monku and […]
ever notice how a dream that wakes you up all agitated and disturbed at 5AM proceeds to get completely wiped out from your conscious thoughts within moments of you waking up…. He was in town with his wife to visit the boy and his wife….. at 72 years of age this was quite the journey. At this age it was something he never did anymore…. all his life he had travelled the world, his job had taken him to the remotest of places and the two soul mates had gone without complaining in fact actually enjoyed their travels…. but now […]
I posted this to parents at my kids school today…. sounded like it should feature here as well”. So I got scolded at school today…. had to happen I was misbehaving. As we were inching our way to the gate I asked my daughter to hop onto the front passenger seat (the rear ones we have child lock enabled on to prevent any accident), put her bag on her shoulders put the bottle in the pocket (you know how kids are sometimes even the shoes come off in the journey from home to school)…. all this while waiting for the […]
A recurrent theme in my life has been the constant and ever present choice I’ve had to make between fight and flight. Mark it up to excess adrenaline, excess testosterone or whatever the science nuts will have you believe but it’s always been the central fight of my life. I would like to believe there are a lot more like me, like 100% of humanity has to make these choices on a daily basis type more. So essentially this is not something unique to me it’s an everyday choice that everybody needs to make, some do it faster almost imperceptibly […]
For forever now I’ve been meaning to write a book. Everyone who’s ever read my stuff wants me to write a book. So why have I never written a book? Today I think is a good day to start writing a book. A dear friend suggested that I could always write the book later on but for now maybe the better thing to do would be to put together a collection of my notes, the ones I keep publishing to Facebook, and putting that out. Build the audience. So that’s part of the plan. The other part is to start […]
So we walk a bit… the three girls and I…. 31st evening we figured lets go get some gifts for friends…. so we walked to a nearby mall. Ira loves this particular stretch of walking as it involves crossing the nearby Vashi railway station and she gets to see a lot of trains. Once at the mall she insisted on making a grab for the car keys which I was carrying just in case the girls felt too tired and I had to come fetch the car to ferry them back (it’s 1.5km so could have happened)…. after a lot […]
It was the night before Christmas…. 50 years they had been together. Roy had no regrets…. well maybe the thought that he could have should have had a fling or two on the side…. but then that was not exactly a regret just a thought… Kyra was in no way inadequate on the contrary she had been the one who had rescued him from certain disaster in more ways than one, turned his life around multiple times and always for the better… in fact only last night she had given him a haircut… It was probably just that remanant of […]
What is it about our nation that has the whole world salivating over it? I was thinking about something else in the shower when this question came to me…. the answer is pretty obvious, in fact if I were to open the window to let in some air it’d be staring me in my face…. numbers…. we are a nation that has so much population that it has become the root cause of all problems….. infrastructure is clogged even before you can get to the drafting table with up-gradation plans leave alone actually upgrading it to take on the volumes….. […]
A short story that I made up on the go while trying to put the kids to sleep last night…. (and now its on repeat play) Once upon a time there was a baby monkey, lets call him Monku. this picture is for representational purposes only…. no relationship with the real Monku…. oh and no animals were actually hurt/tested or harmed for the writing of this story :))His parents were a worried lot because he was five years old and he did not speak properly. In his class at school also the teachers and his fellow students had given up […]