Traits a Gentleman should have to court a lady

This is the letter that expresses the the true feelings of a man who thinks he is just about ready to take upon the biggest challenge of his life.

Dear Lady Love and Future Wife,

With immense pleasure I would like to let you know that I hereby deem myself to have become completely mature and capable of having you as my girlfriend who without any doubt would be converted to my wife.

With every passing moment I have learnt how delicate and fragile can your kind be. I have also learn that you might take hours to get ready and decked up, however I should be up and there wherever you want me to be. This also helped me find an answer to one big question: Why do men not indulge in make-ups while women seem to make this a primary profession.

I have also learnt with passing time, that in spite of my trying level best, I cannot stop you from crying once in regular intervals of time, so I should only try to ensure that this is controlled rather than eliminated. All my ego and self-esteem should be reserved for the world when fighting for you, against you, these words should not be part of the dictionary, as otherwise they would mean dire consequences for me.

Since today's world offers all equal opportunities, therefore I should learn how to cook, how to take care of the house, and be accountable for waking you up as per your requirement. I should stand up for you whenever and wherever required, however when we stand against each other, I should always be the first one to fall.

I should be patient enough to hang around with you , while you are shopping, but finish mine in minutes. I should be smart enough to understand what you have liked, and appreciate the same, and know what you have disliked and express myself in a similar fashion. I should not have a different opinion, although we all know that no two individuals can think alike.

All in all this might have taken each of your traits to the extreme limits that can be defined for them, but the reality is, I haven't seen any moderate behaviour from you on those counts.

Yours Faithfully and Sincerely

Potential Boyfriend and Suitor

Gifty

I like the name, Gifty....her actual name is Grace Valentine, first time someone asked me for an autograph, not that I have suddenly become famous, but she is a 14 year old girl who is one of the latest entrants to the SOS village where I went today evening.

It is always so much of energy, when kids are around, this is a real gem of a place, the kids are kept so well, they are so good natured. I used my elementary drawing skills which I learnt after getting always punished and cursed in my primary school years, those days I always used to hate my drawing teacher, but today I acknowledge that he gave me something, which the kids were interested to learn!

We were nine of us, using the oppurtunity of the dawn of the new year to go and interact with these young souls, and as usual I come back revived, young at heart, pure in thoughts from this beautiful S.O.S village, although a tad sad for what destiny has done to these children, but happy that there are kind souls on this planet earth, who are there to take care of them still.

It isn't complete with the summation of the place and how beautifully the kids are looked after, thank you Raina for capturing the complete essence of it, and putting it in the comments section, without that part this blog post is not complete :)!

Never too late to act 'crazy'!!

It is never too late to get wild in life, one can do that whenever you want to! I went over to an A.R Rehman concert yesterday, it happened at the backdrop of the international airport in Hyderabad, which I must say is one of the best airports if not the best in India. It was supposed to be a huge concert with 50000 people expected.

The ticket prices ranged from 500 to 25000, which gives you an indication that if you buy the cheapest tickets, you are going to be in a hopeless situation of being able to watch the concert. Unlike the flight prices, concert prices come down as the D-day approaches, and this was no different although this was happening next to the airport!

Initially reluctant, but when the Rs. 500 tickets became worth Rs. 350, I decided, I can take it to experience this "Once in a lifetime" concert, and so I convinced my two friends to join in as well. Well after a drive of 1 hour and 30 minutes, we reached the venue. First thing to catch my eyes, rather should say 'ears' were the acoustics, considering that this was an open concert, they were really good, then there were the high-tech gadgets to recognise the bar-codes of the tickets, we are going the super fast IT lane baby!

But the arrangements for the people watching in the Rs. 500 gallery was as good as listening to the concert from the car park, as nothing was visible, the people on the stage seemed no bigger than insects. Interestingly there were no large screens near this gallery. We walked towards the railing(the farthest we could go), and started soaking in the atmosphere, it seemed so much like a-l-a the TITANIC ship, and as if we were the third class passengers in there! While folks in the higer ticket ranges were having chairs to sit and enjoy the show, we were standing and trying to figure out what was happening.

Then a 'GOD-SEND' guy, started walking along the boundaries of the Rs. 1000 gallery, also the border of our gallery, and asked if someone was interested in the tickets. No one was really asking questions of him, thinking he might be wanting to sell the tickets. But I am never a step away from the next question, and there I went, if he would give it to us, and would also charge us for it. Bang came the answer "FOR FREE"! Boy do we still enjoy getting something for free, even when we can afford the same by paying. We said we are three and he threw the tickets to us.

Super excited like teenagers we jumped and grabbed the tickets only to find, that there were only 2 valid tickets, as the third one was without the counterfoil, which would not be valid for entering. Now we have a situation where there are 3 guys and tickets only 2. If we get out of the 500 gallery, and don't manage to get into the 1000 gallery, then we loose the oppurtunity of watching anything at all.

A meeting took place, nothing similar to the ones we have in our offices, where they last for hours and we get no results, this one was for 5 minutes and all plans up there to make the operation 'Rahman' succesfull.

We convinced the gallery 500 guards that we needed to pick up the video camera and would be back in 5 minutes. After a hard deliberation which defied logic, 3 guys going to get a videocam, we were let off. Now was the bigger challenge of getting into gallery 1000. One guy on the phone, with 2 tickets and his 'checked' ticket. Two guys supposedly late to the concert, meet and greet th first guy, and swipe the two tickets and 3 people inside the gallery 1000. High fives exchanged as if a major victory was achieved.

Suddenly the concert seemed larger than life, not knowing if it was because we managed to save 650 bucks per ticket, or because we could see better. Whatever it was, the next 2 and half hours were quite electrifying, if we leave aside the political diplomacy of the introduction of the guests on the front row, while we were busy catching up on some food during that time.

This was the time when I should have been getting into the 2500 gallery, but I was doing something that I would have been proud of doing during my college days, but do I not enjoy doing it now, the answer is a resounding yes! Why not, who said that with age, everything you do has to reflect maturity!!

Two learnings, never book the cheapest tickets to a concert, rather not go! If you still make the mistake, never hesitate to get a promotion, at a cheap cost if you can, dont bring your self-esteem or ego in the way!!

A day with Underpriviledged children

Finally I have decided to jot down something after quite a long time, nearly 4 months. As always I write and think only when I am alone, which means in the last few months I have really been occupied with my work, new found friends, and rumours of recession, which partly have been true as well. This one is for all my friends who have been under the clamour of job insecurity and uncertain market conditions thereby leading to the fear psychosis. Read through what follows and you wouldnt really feel that there is so much to worry about.

Of late I have been visiting a few different places, where I can be of some service socially. This has ranged from visits to schools to Old Age homes. This last one was with a team from Microsoft to this place where there were these underpriviledged kids who had been either found in the railway station working to begging on the streets or abandoned by their parents. I was spellbound to say the least by the talent exhibited by these future stars of our country. These children have a beautiful range of talent starting from painting to acting.

The thing which impressed me about them, was their thinking, which was positive and always forward looking, along with their awareness of the society as a whole, this was commendable because the people about whom I am talking about are in the age group of 6-14 years of age.
The cute enactment of a skit to make people aware of our environment and the importance of trees in that, to the aspirations they have in life, everywhere there was maturity in demonstration and a sense of responsibility in them.

There were about 150 small youngies, and we were a group of around 30 volunteers, with loads of prizes and gifts for these children, which offcourse made them happy, and also us a happy lot to see them so excited. For the first time, I felt as if I was giving back something to the society from which I have got a lot. There was a sense of satisfaction, which I havent even got when meeting with success either in work or academics.

The thing which stood out for me, in the evening we spent with the kids was one boy, who a bit different from the group, didnt want to become an engineer or a doctor or an actor, but wanted to become the HOME MINISTER of our country, because he wanted to make India a better place to live, before you start thinking how old this boy might have been, let me tell you he was only 6. I don't think I even knew what a home minister is supposed to do, at his age.

Finally to wrap up the day, I was presented with a beautiful piece of drawing, which showed the pure thoughts of a small boy, who had drawn all kinds of birds, with the clean water and fishes in it, and the sun and clouds were all smiling !! This to me, summed up the souls with whom we interacted.

To sum it up, I have become a lot more secure and happy with what I am doing, would encourage all who have the capability to contribute to the society in their own capacity and make this world a better place to live in. I have now learnt a lesson from this younger lot, who although young but have a fresher outlook to life than most of us, who have been running around in this fierce competitive world, trying to outwit one another.

Cheers! Hope you liked what you read, and sorry if it was a bit boring.

ATTITUDE is "MR. KNOW ALL" and "I DON'T MAKE MISTAKES"

A lot of us knowingly or unknowingly suffer from this syndrome which many term as 'MR KNOW ALL' or / and 'I DON'T MAKE MISTAKES'! This is what when we don't have words to define, call it 'ATTITUDE' or 'EGO'.

A funny thing I find, when I visit a lot of social networking sites, and the profile of various people from different backgrounds, everyone has this common line in their turn offs "I DONT LIKE PEOPLE WITH ATTITUDE". It is even funnier that most of them(sometimes even me :-)), behave like the ones having tons and tons of these things which we don't like to percievably not see in others. To put it in simple words, I wouldn't like to come across another person who has attitude to show like me ( me goes for people above).

However sometimes I know genuine people, who are extremely humble in their behaviour being termed the same way, not because they are of that nature, but because who are classifying them are "JEALOUS" of the achievements of those succesful people.

But one thing is for sure, you must be thinking how so much humble you are, since you keep analysing yourself critically, but the truth is, till the time someone doesn't come knocking on your door saying that you are having a bit of 'attitude' or 'ego', you don't really realise that unknowingly you might have also picked up the disease.

So I always believe in getting scrutinised by others than by myself !

LIFE=STATISTICS=LIFE

There are a lot of people around I see who are bored of the word "STATISTICS", but my life essentially revolves around this word which I think is good enough actually to define your whole life. Essentially, everyone of us, indulges in this partially atleast. Think a bit, don't you sometimes count, the speed at which you are driving, don't you sometimes think the number of glasses of water you drink in a day! Ok forget all of this, don't you think of getting to work/school or anywhere at a particular time. What is all this, it is statistics.

Some people(read me :)) over-indulge in numbers. I simply love defining everything in terms of numbers. Starting from the game I play, to the project I work in, the number of times I listen to a song, to the number of times I eat at a place. Life therefore looks simple to me, but complicated and boring to a lot many others. But I get a cool feeling being able to churn out numbers for my explanations.

But a word of caution, this tool of life, can be influenced and shown in the light in which you want to show it, and not necessarily the light it deserves to be shown in!! A common example of this is the cricket statistics, which can sometimes raise a player to the stature of "GOD", and the next moment doom him to "HELL".

Advice for all is : Do use statistics to some extent, don't over-indulge in them, but they sure can make your life interesting!!

SATISFACTION IN SAYING "SORRY" and ways to say it!

In life, people often think that the most difficult thing to do for them is to accept their own mistakes, and saying sorry. Yes, at the first instance when you are defending yourself, it is! But the next moment, you think calmly and analyse what the other person did/said, you feel like apologizing, don't hold back then! Go straight and say it ---"SORRY". It is like a jinx, trust me, once you do it the first time, the second time is even easier, and then it comes naturally. But doing it the first time requires you to do a lot of soul-searching.

I didnt say "SORRY" till I was in college, but since I have been a happier person, satisfied that I can accept my mistakes if I make them.

There are multiple ways of saying "SORRY" :
1. When you say the word, just as another word in your vocabulary, it actually isn't what you really care about, which is even worse than not saying the word. Most of us do it!
2. When you say the word, crying(girls, girls!!!), that makes the person to whom it is being said feel sorry for his actions( I am biased to say him here not her), becuase guys seldom cry and say sorry
3. Saying sorry with a smile, this is the one which is all-conquering and actually shows your acceptance of the mistake. This is the one which is really genuine, and wins hearts!
4. Saying sorry being scared, this is actually not being sorry, but we say this because we feel the person with whom we are dealing is stronger than us, and if we don't comply we are going to get punished. This never helps both ways. This is one of the worst ones.
5. This is the last one, where you keep making the mistakes and keep repeating this word, then it has no value, because you are not learning what you should, and you have become so shameless to keep repeating the errors and even more shameless to accept it by saying "SORRY"

The day one goes with the option of number 3 above, he/she gets the maximum satisfaction in life, this is when you become pure. You love your life for some moments after you do this, a feeling which cannot be described, not comparable to anything else in life maybe........

Look back and think now, after all is it so difficult to "SAY SORRY"!!!!!!