A memorable year 2012

It has been an eventful year. There have been only a handful of memorable years for me, of them 2012 is the best.

The year started with registering a property in my and N's name. The biggest achievement till now. I never had so much freedom to think about till I joined my current company. Financially speaking I am sound than ever. Doesn't mean that I have leverage of living a King's life, but spending as much as I haven't done before.

Chinni's school admission was another step. There was time when I sometimes didn't believe I am a father. And this year, I got admission to my kid. Uuffff, unbelievable!!! This was quite revealing, as the school is near to our home, hardly takes 15-20 minutes to reach. I always wanted Chinni not to travel far to school and thankfully we got a good and economy one near by.

Avenger, my first bike (although I had a scooter, but bike is a bike). This wasn't a dream. I just got attracted to bikes very recently and it happened immediately. It was such a co-incidence, Deepa and Vijay also got a baby on the same day. And also N's Dio arrived this year. So we bought 2 two wheeler-es this year.

Trip to Singapore. This was totally different. The trip reminded Hong Kong everyday. It was an awesome trip and a good break during stressful days.

Naina is carrying. Another baby expected in the first quarter of 2013. I am really waiting, will get back the memories of Chinni :)

Jyoti and Navneet returned to Bangalore. We got a good companion in them. A trip to coorg, couple of times we stayed at their house and weekend visits have made really a sought after friendship. During our stay in Vijaynagar, it was Deepa and Vijay's house.

Another unsuccessful year in my professional life. Didn't get a promotion this year as well, I was expecting it though. I have the skills, the expertise, a 'will' to accept any task, complete the assigned task and the all the ingredients, but still I am not 'there'. Definitely there is something missing in me, don't know exactly what!. One thing I realized (after publishing this post), that I lack ownership. I feel, I don't own the product I am working on. In simple words, I don't take up work by myself. I do take up tasks myself, but not always. There is an inconsistency in this regard. One has to work towards getting the product through all the odds. 

Its been 8.5 years. The initial years were bad. I had lack of concentration, didn't understand what I have to do and just finished my job. Truly speaking I didn't get a hang of it. All my peers moved to next level, I was left alone. Couldn't bear this and changed company. I improved a lot in the next company. Technically I grew, but the lack of ownership had just begun. This has been haunting me till now. This is my nature, a built-in feature, its in my genes and little hard to change it. This happens not only at office, but also at home. N knows this very well. She is a victim of it. For eg: Chinni makes the living room a mess before going to sleep. N makes her sleep and comes back to see the mess still lying around. And I am watching tv as if I have nothing to do with the mess!!! Just takes 2 minutes to clear it up, but I don't do it. 

These things have to be taught in childhood. And in my childhood, I haven't done anything on my own. I was never taught/told to do things, cleaning, washing, small small works at home, helping mom etc etc. So I have grown up without taking responsibilities on my own. Now I find it difficult to do it myself. 

This was a good realization. Blogging is making me realize a lot of things I never think of. It's good to get to the root cause and bring a change in me. Wish I had a friend who can "discuss" all these stuff. Well, the least I can do is teach my daughter. I don't want her to blame me when she grows up. The biggest responsibility is teach her.

Ufff, this post is going in all directions of my thoughts. Will find a new post for these thoughts.

Hoping the new year party is going to be a rocking one :)

Good bye 2012. I will always remember you.

Teaching good and bad to Children

One of the most difficult phase of your(mine too) life is teaching your child(ren) what is good and what is bad. Every parent and child goes through this phase and very few parents are successful in this task. I am not complaining that parents don't  do their job properly, but they don't do it in the right way. And the result you see it in the children. 

Don't you find your friends/colleagues/neighbors complaining that his/her child doesn't obey to what they say ? Parents just see the result part of it, what one should be thinking is "why" is the child not obeying even after explaining things. Do you get the drift ? This is when the parents will get an understanding and find the exact solution. Even I have been through this phase and still haven't come out of it yet. But I think I got an answer, just need to implement it. Hopefully I will be successful in teaching Iksha the good and bad part of life.

And wait, I am not done here, read on. If you find this helpful, then please thank Lakshmi, who shared and made me realize the things i was doing in a wrong way.

Normally, we elders (consider aged above 18), understand what is told to us in plain simple words. Whereas children don't. They do understand, but don't realize. This is the gap between elders and children. So how do you fill this gap ? You need to tell a story. 

Let me give an example. How do you tell a child that eating chocolate is bad ? You must have definitely told this a thousand times and your child must have eaten chocolate thousand and one times. You will always think that your child doesn't listen to you at all, he is ill mannered, he doesn't have understanding capacity and what not complaints against him go on air. Did you ever ask yourself "why doesn't the child understand" ? Now try to make a story of a boy who eats lot of chocolates. The story should go through lot of phases like he liking chocolates, eating it everyday, then getting a bad tooth, visiting a doctor, tooth decaying, show some pictures of bad tooth, then the tooth getting removed and the pain the boy goes through after removing the tooth and all in a dramatic way. The child will be able to relate to this story very well and the next time he gets a chocolate, he will definitely think of the boy's situation who ate lot of chocolates. Probably, your child will reduce eating chocolate, which is what you expect your child to do. 

Don't expect overnight results. Your child will take some time to learn things. 

You may ask, this is just an example of chocolate, how do I teach him/her what is good and bad ? Well, my friend taught me that too. What Lakshmi says is - tell the stories of Ramayana and Mahabharata. These stories have a lot of good and bad characters. You need to tell your child that this person is good and give the proper reason. Tell your child that this person is bad and give the proper reason. So the child will be able to relate the things that he/she does in real life and will definitely think that doing this is good, doing this is bad. FYI, there is a publication called Amar Chithra Katha, which publishes these stories with pictures. You can find many other stories and publication. 

During Lakshmi's visit to Bangalore, she gifted me one of these books, the Ramayana. That day I opened the book and started telling the story to Iksha. She was actually interested in listening to story. But I didn't know what to tell her. Every page I was going through had no meaning, I thought. What should I tell Iksha that Dasharatha, father of Rama, had 3 wives ? Kaikeyi plotted to send Rama to vanasa for 14 years ? And Ravana kidnapped Sita to marry her ? Iksha would have not related to none of these. The very next day I called up Lakshmi and asked "what book did you give me? this story is useless for Iksha!". 

This is when Lakshmi explained me everything that you read above and much more. Since then I have been finding the moral of the story in each story, good and bad in each character, if you have read my Talaash post you would understand.

Lastly, I would like to thank Lakshmi for teaching me all this. Thanks a lot Lakshmi.

Talaash: The Answer Lies Within

First thing first. Its been years that I saw Rani Mukherji onscreen and its still a treat to look at her pretty smiling face. I am a die hard fan of Rani, no way that is going to change ever. I literally have no words to explain at a greater detail and I am bad at that. Reema, the director, has portrayed her as an ideal house wife with all the simplicity and Rani fits in so well that every scene she appeared I wanted the time to stop right there so that I could have a glimpse of her more, more, more and more. Her eyes are simply mesmerizing, Aishwarya's are more attractive, but I still think Rani's eyes have lot more to say :)

Rani was her best in the white saree

Now the movie, Talaash. It's rightly named. Right from the first scene of accident I was tensed till the story reveals the answer. I wasn't really thinking of what's going to happen next, because I was so much involved in each scene and character. The way the truth is revealed is also so much in a surprising way and so instant, I didn't have time to react. Totally it was a journey through the emotions of a few characters. Kudos to Talaash team.

Now coming to the actual reason why I am blogging this post :)

As we came out of theater and headed towards home, N asked "what do they want to really communicate? that there are ghosts?". But also some praises to the movie. But this question caught my attention. There is lot of moral we can learn if you look the characters and the whole movie. Frankly, I thought over N's question today while I was driving to office and then realized about the morals we can endorse in our life. 

Sekhawat's character should be an ideal one for men. 

• He is dealing with so much emotions and going through so much difficulties, but yet he doesn't tend to cheat his wife. His character is given so much opportunity, he doesn't give a second thought getting himself out of stress with such a beautiful lady. 
• Not only that, the helping nature he offers to Rosy is also what one should look at. 
• There is one more ideology in the character, he doesn't blame his wife for his son's death, but blames himself. Blaming himself is also not good, but at least better than blaming others. It really takes life time to come out such situation, as explained in the movie and I go with the director.

Shreya's character is so simple and not much defined. But look at her carefully, you will find that even she knew that both, her husband and herself, are going through a rough patch, she agrees to meet psychiatrist to please her husband.

  

I think every movie has some moral to offer, only if the perception changes one can understand. 

This movie is special to me and N. After a very long long gap we had been to theater and watched movie together, probably after around 4 years :)

Update: If you have enjoyed Talaash, then watch The 6th Sense

Do you love yourself?

During my visit to Singapore, I met Barry, one of my colleagues in previous company. As far as I remember he equivalently had attraction towards these high calorie food like muffins, chocolates, etc etc. We went to  a coffee shop and thought of ordering something and have chitchat. 

There were lot of options I could hog. Was telling him I am not able to decide right now and settled in for a big blue berry muffin. I asked him what was he ordering and he says "I was so stupid before, I realized how much I hated myself and used to eat everything I liked. Now I love myself so much that I want to keep myself healthy". And he just ordered coffee.

Isn't what he said was so meaningful? Think about this when you are having junk food next time :)