Let The Life Flow

In 2003 I was  returning from Bangkok to Kolkata and was fortunate to be upgraded to Business Calss. And my co passenger introduced himself as  Dr Manas G Roy, President & Chief Executive Officer, Ceramic Components Division, EPCOS. An IIT alumni from Khadagpur this gentleman was based in Germany.  This was the first time ever in my life and in flight I had ordered for hard drink (because I wanted to bring two small bottles of drink for my husband! But I was ashamed to accept that and to show off as if I take drink in my normal life I had opened a bottle and had poured a capful of the drink in to a glass and filled the glass to the brim with soda. As I was sipping the drink with inner distaste and fear that I may get inebriated/ unconscious and lose my connecting flight from Kolkata to Vizag, he spoke to me ( I sensed he was irritated, do not know why) – directly on the topic, why he a regular drinker does not take drinks in the flight ( what a soothing relief! I...

The house where I stayed in South London is a beautiful building located in a beautiful locality. I was welcomed with warmth by Caroline, the wonderful human being and owner of the house. My room was at the upper floor and carrying the suitcase through the stairs proved to be quite an exercise! I realised that entire staircase is thickly carpeted – in London a common feature perhaps, coz I saw the same even in my friend Ravi’s house – probably a measure to cope with the extreme cold in the winter. The stairs creaked below my feet – it was a wooden staircase. But that was the beginning. The amount of wood use I saw in the house was amazing from what I have seen back home. Through the carpet not only stairs but also the floors were creaking. Yeah the floors were wooden in that three floor house. There were wooden doors, wooden chairs in the rooms and corridor, wooden tables, wooden cupboards, wooden racks, wooden almirah, wooden show cases, wooden photo frames and many other things pla...

Clarendon Drive in Putney, London (where my London colleagues had organised my home away home) seemed to be a posh locality. Beautiful houses stood in neat rows, on both sides of the almost empty roads. After reaching there suddenly I realised why the ‘videshis’ and our very ‘phoren returned’ talk about dirt and filth in India. The roads were absolutely clean, stretching from end to end between two houses on both sides. One does not get to see any cracked road, ‘broken at the edge’ road or ‘with pot holes’ road. The mostly brick colour houses at the first glance look perfectly uniform; creating a synchronised rhythm of visuals. But two days after my stay, a visit to central London and exposure to lot more beautiful structures, a closer look at each building revealed to me that almost all houses were different in their design. But the designs are so ‘in sync’ with the others in material, colour, design and size that they create an illusion of uniformity though they are quite diverse in...

Today – oh sorry it is already yesterday – being the Romance Day, let me come back to the feelings and emotions again. Think of it, if you LIKE somebody or something what is your instinct? You would have an inclination to know more about the subject/object, to spend more time on/with that. In opposite when you do not like some subject/object, then you feel like going away and not to deal with it. Try spending time with subject/object for which you do not feel positive emotion. You feel bored and burdened! A denser form of this emotion would what I will call as LOVE. You no longer only feel positive for this subject/object; you try actually devoting and spending more time and feeling happy in doing so. If this is for a person we also want reciprocation and try to do things to get the same. You take effort in becoming more aware about the other person and letting know about yourself. You feel attracted and drawn to this person and feel inclined to attract him/her. If the feeling is mutu...

Those who are in the field of disability rights, they will understand when I am mentioning about accessibility. But for other’s benefit let me give you a brief on accessibility. Have you seen a particular insurance company’s ad on TV where a young man sitting on a usual chair gets transformed into a wheel chair with one leg gone? Today you are going to a cinema and you never think of the stairs. God forbid, tomorrow if you meet with an accident and to save your life doctors ampute one of your leg and then you want to go to the cinema – would you ignore those stairs? Certainly not- your access to that building is gone if they do not have a lift. So suddenly with loss of your leg you become a lesser mortal and you do not have access to many places including the roads of our country. If you are on wheel chair, can you go on our pavements? Its a joke. Is not it? With almost a foot high our pavements do not give access to the wheel chair users at any place where they can get into the pav...

Being a pedestrian on Delhi roads is not an easy task. It requires a lot of learning the unwritten rules and on the job skill up gradation for an individual to be a deft pedestrian. In many parts of the city pedestrian strips are rare luxury – either they are not there or broken or occupied by some street vendor etc. So one has to use of road sides for the purpose – a difficult task though; with parked vehicles royally gracing the road sides and occupying one fourth of the breadth of roads. So one has to have real mastery over all sensory organs to keep them alert and coordinated to walk on the available side of the road and avoid being hit by a speeding vehicle. Crossing the road requires even more skill. If you are standing at the zebra for safe crossing, you are doing that at your own peril and with time get wiser to the fact that speeding vehicles come to a screeching halt at the end of zebra instead of its beginning. Even if the signal is green you must walk fast or run to cove...

When we hit the road of London in Peter’s car, London had recovered from the heavy rain of the night and welcomed us to a bright sunny morning. On my exclamation on the beautiful morning I was complemented by Peter being the lucky one to bring the sun. The next thing which absorbed me on my journey from Heathrow to Putney is the greenery both sides along the road. The beautiful shade of green (closer to the colour of tender leaves of banana) ran all throughout; sprinkled with small white and yellow flowers. The freshness of the air and the surrounding greenery was so infectious that all traces of tiredness just vanished. Familiar to the crowded and noisy roads of Delhi, suddenly I realised that roads are abnormally quiet compared to back home though they are not empty. And then you notice the smoothly and noiselessly plying cars on the road – absolutely, I mean absolutely no sound on the road! You try to understand what is so obviously missing on that road and then it gradually come...

Finally I thought of giving it a go – expressing myself. And first thing I want to tackle is the persistent question of my friends about the word on the right side of the Orkut profile prompt ‘Passion’. My first submission is ‘Love’. "How can ‘Love’ be somebody’s passion? Yaar, kuchh bhi likh deti ho!" Well, Is it so? In any case, was there any rule anywhere in this site about not writing ‘Kuchh bhi’! I suppose each one is out there expressing her/himself – trying to be as individual as one can in the milieu of the profiles. But I am here to explain and not take refuse in counter questions. So let me try. What is Passion? Go by dictionary and it will say –very strong emotion, an intense enthusiasm for something. Yes it also talks about intense sexual love. But let’s go by the context. When you say your passion is Literature or rugby or scuba diving or what ever ... what do you mean? You feel strongly for it and have intense enthusiasm for it. If your passion is cricket, you ...