where am i?

This is where i am nowadays:


http://scribbles.bravediary.com/

Wind Chime

An angel spoke to me,
In a soft dreamy rhyme.
Like a gentle poem,
Like the whispering wind chime.

Then the angel giggled
at my helplessness.
I was smiling too,
and wafting in weightlessness.

Prometheus' Deception

Conceited Mortals, How could you forget

the hand that crafted us?

Upon trivial comforts you whine and fret,

while our Creator hangs over Caucasus.

Hephaestus' gifts of fur and feather

were not lost in vain;

Our clubs clothe us in leather,

Behold! the provider of clubs and plough,

passes each moment in pain.

While your blood curdled in the cold,

and through the torments of diseases untold,

did you not grumble and curse?

Remember mortals! the heart so bold!

Remember the wisdom of fire he bestowed!

You cooked your kill

And sat around the bright fire.

Warmer, and healthier are the blasphemers,

but none the more wiser.

O Prometheus!

Prometheus, our maker hangs in the cold

and Ethon the eagle pecks upon his liver!

What hath come upon you all?

Do you not hear Prometheus' bawl?

Unconscious by Pandora's gifts

and lulled by the camouflage of conceit

you squander away time in deceit.

Alas! mere mortals, you do not see,

this is how Zeus wanted things to be.

While you are blinded by earthly needs

On Caucasus your hero bleeds!

Prometheus suffers for his care

and his helplesness he did share,

with his sister Anesthesia.

Anesthesia, the dreamy eyed!

She cast her enchanted spell,

and into slumber Zeus fell.

Our master then braved the Titan's wrath,

and brought us the gift of fire .

Zeus awoke and nobody spoke,

but the king was to understand.

Prometheus pays the price of affection,

but the Gods, they call it,

Prometheus' deception.

Afternote: I always loved the story of Prometheus. During the reign of the Titans, Zeus was the King of Gods. Prometheus is the creator of humans, unfortunately he takes too much care and time to create humans that he forgets that his brother Hephaestus has been using fur, feather, fangs, claws and other gifts of Zeus on other creatures. Finally when Prometheus completes making the first human, he is left with no more gifts to give. Humans are born weak, so Prometheus starts to teach humans secrets of the heavens, like farming, hunting and brick laying. This makes the humans comfortable and in their new found wisdom and comfort, humans forget the Gods above them. This enrages Zeus, who forbids Prometheus from making a visit to earth.

Prometheus, lured by his fatherly love and care, asks Anesthesia to put Zeus to sleep and makes one final visit to earth and shares the secret of Fire. Zeus wakes and comes to realize the deceit. He punishes Prometheus to hang by a mountain while an eagle is made to peck at his liver. Every morning, Prometheus' wounds heal automatically, and the eagle starts pecking all over again.

If you like ancient greek mythology, let me know.

The Story So Far

After being tagged by Prmod and having passed the buck to others, I was just about catching my breath only to find myself re-tagged by White Magpie .... re-tagging is against the rules, even in case of a new tag, I just referred that from the Official Rule Book on Tags.


3rd June Saturday. One of my friends(A) was leaving to Bangalore and so he hosted a party in our friend’s(S's) house. Music, food, lights and booze was arranged for the party. The party was kick started with a toast; within seconds people were dancing, hooting and having a great time, while in the background snaps were being clicked. All of us were unaware of the world below us. Slowly my speech became slurry and I felt tipsy, and all of a sudden a fat old man barged right into the middle of the party with his sons…he wasn’t one among the invitees. This is what ensued:
Fat Old Man: “What the hell is going on here? This is not a disco…blah blah blah”
A: “Sir, Actually…”
Fat Old Man: “…blah blah…Residential Area…daughters…blah blah… alcohol.. girls..dancing…blah”
A: “I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and I assure…”
Fat Old Man: “blah blah blah…this will be your last warning!”
…saying this the Old Man and his sons disappeared in a cloud of cigarette smoke.

Music off. Silence.
A muffled curse…a few giggles.

“Lets all go on a long drive…whadd’yall say”?
Cheers. Flourish.
Ya, I know drunken driving is illegal, but nobody admits to being drunk at times like these.
Some of them wanted to be dropped off at their/friend’s homes. The others joined the drive. 40 kms from where we started it started drizzling, a very thin sheet of rain. The drive was through paddy fields and marshy areas. Our headlights startled a host of rabbits, rodents and other scurrying animals that fled away from the road. There were eriee noises and an orchestra of crickets and toads. Slowly the drizzle turned to rain. Most of us love getting drenched in the rain. So we all braved the rain. Sneeze. We got lost, and discovered a new way back into the city. Sneeze. Got home at 2:30 am. Sneeze. Zzzz…

04th June Sunday. The whole ob nesht day went bery norbal, eshcept obcourshe for the darn cold.

05th June Monday. I started feeling feverish as I approached office in the morning. I brushed the feeling off as Monday blues and recomposed myself. I scanned my official mail for threatening mails, found none. My Project Lead passed by with his characteristic snicker, and just then I felt an eerie sickness overcoming me. It was like a sour, cold thing passing through my body. I was feeling cold. Concerned colleagues told me I looked pale and gave me weird looks all the time. Soon people started standing up and sticking out their necks from their workstations to catch a glimpse of the medical disaster that was me. All the attention psyched me into sickness. We have this very good lady in our project who came up to me touched my brow and asked me to leave by the very next bus. God bless her. I went home with an aching throat and slept.

Next day(06th June Tuesday) the doctor told me I had Pharyngitis. (Defn: Pharyngitis is the inflammation of the pharynx). In English, we call it throat infection. I was advised to stay at home for at least two days and follow the course of antibiotics. I was to gargle with some diluted brown goo that I imagined to be tasting like turpentine (No, I haven’t tasted turpentine). After my buddies left the house I started to miss being in my workplace. I tried watching TV, there were ads of great programs to be aired the next week, meanwhile I had to watch repeat shows of Investigation Serials and football match highlights. Suddenly as i surfed the channels, I happened to see this cooking show and a lamp glowed over my head. I called the provision store below our appartment and asked them to send over the grocery required. I started cooking. I made omlettes, French toasts, Macaroni and lots of Tea. 3 days of rest, cooking and Roald Dahl followed.

Soon the weekend arrived and early Saturday(10th June Monday) morning I flew for Bangalore. Bangalore had a great weather. My sister and my nephew (8 yrs) were at my parent’s in Bangalore for the summer. I spent most of my time playing with the kid. Puzzles, scrabble, computer games. I suddenly decided that the kid needed more activities outdoor so armed with badminton rackets and a shuttle cock I dragged him out and handed him the racket. Soon we were playing a great game; he loved to smash. Things were just turning to be good fun, suddenly the kid trips and bruises his knee and ankle. So much for physical activities. Something told me my sister wasn’t very pleased with the outdoor activity idea of mine.

I wanted to take the family car out for a spin. My dad told me the car had ‘some’ problems, I agreed to look into them. When i took the car to the service station the technician told me the battery had to be changed and the headlight switch assembly had to be changed this was going to cost a lot of money, and the fuel prices put together I was as close to being broke as I had ever been. I used most of the money I had left and bought myself a bus ticket back home.

This week one of my buddies went back home as he is getting married on the 22nd . Nothing else happened this week. Absolutely nothing.

The Weird Thingy Tag

What you need to do:
1) post a blog with six weird facts about you
2) tag 6 people at the end of ur post...victimize them unawares and pass the buck
3) post a comment in their blogs letting them know that they’ve been tagged and ask them to visit your blog for info.

6 weird facts about me:

I speak gibberish – There are these solitary moments when I don’t have anything to do in particular…and nothing to cook my noodle brain with, well at these times I speak nonsensical stuff. I can converse with a 1 year old baby in her own lingo. I can coochikoo with the ladies without making sense.

I like the classical styles of poetry – I like the works of Shelly, Keats, Wordsworth and Edgar Allan Poe.

I like wet messy kisses – u heard it.

I watch Cartoon Network and I like reading comic strips – Bugs Bunny, Dexter’s lab, Pinky and the brain, Johnny Bravo, Courage the cowardly dog... are my fav shows. Calvin and Hobbes, Dilbert and Garfield are my fav comic strips. Conan the barbarian, Batman are my fav action heroes.

I love to burp out loud – All the girls I have ever known think it’s barbaric. I love it when I conclude a good meal with a lion like roar. It’s a man thing, I could never explain it to the girls. While I believe that a burp is a symbol of power, the ladies would like to think that it’s a fart that lost its way!

I love to procrastinate – We’ll speak about this sometime later.

Prmod - Its all his fault...he made me do it.
Now for the nominees who will carry the baton (In alphabetical disorder):

Sophia - happy, loving, caring

White Magpie - opinionated, frank

Jac - flora and fauna

Aria - hello this is my world

Eating poetry - poetry personified

Ben - loves Sharmi

Fool's Dream

You are deeply mistaken,
Yet you continue to assume.
The castles you built will be broken,
Your paradise will be consumed.

What will you do my dear friend,
when nothing around you remains,
when realization brings you to an end,
when they finally walk away?

They'll pretend they didn't notice,
The moisture in your eyes.
You'll gift yourself a loser's smile,
and tell yourself you're fine.

Eventually the night will embrace you
A little colder it will seem,
With glimpses of a fool's dream,
A paradise that wasnt meant to be.

One wedding, a paper presentation, an appraisal and two funerals

I am all torn and overused like a stuffed doll. I was doing a million things, a few are worth mentioning.

Lets start with the wedding – ‘M’ who happens to be a friend and colleague waz getting married, and bcoz I have this additional responsibility of being an event manager in my workplace, I was blessed with the duty of collecting contributions for the combined gift, arranging transport to the venue and buying the gift for M.
Everybody contributed a little amount of money for the gift and a colossal amount of suggestions. Some of them held their contributions in their hands until they were satisfied with their elaborate description of what they considered was the ‘ideal’ gift. The ecstatic ones were performing incredibly with their unfailing frequency of an idea per second. “…Or we could buy her an ipod, u know it’s light and easy to carry…How about a dining set...A wristwatch maybe...”
As the auspicious day approached we were approaching some sort of agreement on what the gift should be. Many agreed on jewelry. The reason for the unanimity was partly because the planets had begun aligning themselves in a good way, and partly because the enthusiasts were dwindling in numbers fearing responsibility. The day before the wedding everybody somehow agreed on a pearl jewelry set, and swoosh!! the very next moment I turned to see everybody back on their desks with noses buried in their monitors. Okay, so I had to buy the gift myself. I bought a pearl set, arranged transport and finally made it on time with the team to the venue. Our team wished the newlyweds, the entire team shook hands with the bride and groom in a giffy and quickly took formation around the bride and groom and smiled into the cameras forever.

Next, the two funerals – last Saturday I lost a very dear friend from my school days. He died of a motorbike accident in Bangalore. My sister’s mother in law expired earlier this week. I was held up at work and I couldn’t leave Hyderabad to attend either of the funerals. May their souls rest in peace.

The appraisals – Our company has a scheme of annual appraisals where once every year the employees rate themselves on a scale of ‘Star’, ‘Meritorious’, ‘Adequate’, ‘Reasonable’ and ‘Trailing’(S.T.A.R) over various hard and soft factors, that’s the easy part. Next the associate’s manager gets his much awaited chance to vent his frustrations by rating the associate against the ratings that the associate had previously entered. Both of these ratings are then sent to the next higher manager who has the privilege of driving the last nail into the coffin.
At each stage the associate is allowed to disagree and discuss the ratings given by his managers. Flattery is to Managers what Diesel is to Trucks. Pea brained colleagues who made good use of their tongues verbally and otherwise, came out successfully with S and M ratings. I was given an A. Luckily a feeling of revolt mushroomed and I called for a discussion. I spent a valuable God given hour letting the jackass know that ratings were supposed to be based on hard work and intelligence. This involved reminding him my track record, drawing charts, keeping him interested in the conversation, comparing brain sizes of the various species in my project, displaying appreciation mails that I received from the client and a whole lot of persuasion. Finally he reluctantly improved my rating to M. Phew!

The paper presentation – We have an annual technical paper presentation event. Ten best papers are selected and then the best three papers are rewarded. About a month ago, A mail announced May 10th as the last day for the final paper submission. I sat long hours into the night combating sleep and drafting a paper. I worked beyond office timings because the last day was quickly approaching. In the early hours of 10th may, as the whole of Hyderabad slept, I submitted the paper and went home. I was back in office at 10 am that morning, and there was this unread mail in my mailbox. On openining the mail it read – “The last day for paper submission has been extended on public demand”. If some lawyer out there thinks I can claim a million bucks if I sued the company for all the strain that this ‘postponement of last date’ decision put me through, contact me, I’m willing to split the moolah in half.

I was living in an insane world the last few weeks…I am happy to be blogging again.