To a great friend...

I met my friend, V, in February, 1994, and he immediately struck me as a bright guy with a curious disposition. He was never satisfied with just knowing something - he had to know the hows and whys as well. In December, 1997, if my memory is right, he got married to a great girl; someone I had met before he met her. Somehow, people always knew they were going to get married, perhaps even before either of them knew for V was always so protective. Anyway, unlike a good many people who break off connections with friends of the opposite sex after marriage, we kept in touch . And a few years later, I was accorded the honour of being godmother to their son.

V is a self-made guy with a great deal of commonsense. He has a mind like a steel trap. He will absorb information on subjects he knows nothing about and will surprise you with his knowledge. When it comes to computers and programming, he is nothing short of a genius. If there is a problem, he will find a solution, come hell or high water. It was he who, a few years ago, set up my sytem and then continued to maintain it - even now from another part of the world. Added to this, he believes attitude and faith is everything, that your thoughts determine what happens to you and, indeed, he is living proof of that, having come to where he is now almost from scratch with nothing but his skills, a hope and a prayer and blind faith that things will work out for the best.

When we visited an electronics exhibition some years ago, he reduced a guy in front of a tv stall to a blubbering idiot by countering his statements with his own. When he discussed stuff with a guy in charge of another stall, that chap was so impressed that he handed us some freebies. It is V I will consult when I buy a camera for he will not only tell me which one has the features I want but will also list the pros and cons. It was he who got my dad a Toshiba laptop at a good price. It was he who not only helped me choose my music system but even set it up at home. Somehow or the other, he is always able to get quality stuff at a good price.

You will say - there are a lot of people who can do the same thing. But more than his knowledge, V has one quality that isn't there in a lot of those people. A heart the size of the country he lives in now. For V is the type of person who will rush to your aid even without being asked. There have been times when he has just dropped his work and come over to help. I remember the time my machine was about to conk off. He came over the same morning, sat for hours, picked up a new hard disk, took the machine home, set up everything and brought it back. When my brother came down a couple of years ago, and wasn't able to get the router working properly, it was V who called from outside India, advised him and got it working. It was V who helped me when I didn't have the software necessary to urgently create some critical documents and get them filed. I was up against a deadline and he dropped everything on hand and worked till late in the evening so I could finish my work that very night. I have even known him to go out of his way to help friends of mine he never even met before they contacted him, when normally people just wouldn't care.

When I went through a rough patch last year a few days before travelling, I was very surprised to receive a call sometime after disembarking from the plane in Delhi. It was V calling to find out how I was doing. It was a sweet gesture and it made me feel that someone cared. Even today, if I'm miserable or in a crap mood, it will, more often than not, be V I will talk things over with. For he will not judge but analyse the situation objectively, let you know what his take is and give you advice you can follow, while staying upbeat all the time and making sure some of his positivity rubs off on you.

Thank you for being such a good friend, V, and for being there. If there were more people like you, the world would be a happier place. May you and your family stay blessed always.

Birthday presents...

They say that the only date a woman remembers is her birthday. And that as she grows older, she forgets that too. Perhaps one day I'll belong to that category as well, but not right now. For some of my friends make sure I won't forget, and make my day simply because they remember; indeed, one or two of them will call regardless of which part of the world they are in.

Like a number of other kids, I've had birthday celebrations - cakes with candles, ice cream, balloons, presents.... When I grew older, I stopped having the parties, of course, as I'm not a very social person besides the fact that I find it awkward being the centre of attention. However, some of the birthday presents (only birthday, mind you) I've received over the years still stand out in my mind.
Here they are. In no particular order.

• The Sheaffer fountain pen Dad gave me while in school. Dad would always give us fountain pens for birthday presents. And he had good taste. But this pen was exceptional. A heavy, black, metal pen that wrote like a dream and made me forget using Parker pens. As time went by, some of the black lacquer chipped off revealing lovely brass below. The cap is dented and some people would say it looks really shabby. But it still is my most used pen, and I have started every examination paper with it since it became mine.
• The picture dictionary Mum gave me on my tenth birthday. It was my pride and joy and the envy of everyone in class.
• The job I got with a huge organisation. I went through hell just getting to the interview (described in an earlier blog post) but I truly believe it was a birthday gift (I got my appointment letter on my birthday and I remember it particularly as I was wished when the letter was handed over to me) from the Universe simply because of the way things turned out. And it was here that I got my basic grounding without which I would not have been in a position to successfully deal with my jobs that followed.
• The note my sister wrote me years ago when I was going through a phase where nothing seemed to be working out. For it helped me believe in my self again. And made me realise that if other people believed in me, then I must be doing something right, after all.
• The spur of the moment, surprise birthday party that my Lehrerin and the students in my Elementary 1 German class threw me on a Sunday with whatever they could get at short notice. It was really wonderful though I did feel a bit embarrassed.
• The bunch of orchids that one of my directors based in Gurgaon sent me two years ago. It was a nice surprise and came at a time when I was going through hell at the workplace. Actually, that was like icing on the cake for around that time I had cleared my London ICSA exams.
• The diamond pendant Dad gave me in 2000. It was an advance birthday present but I got a job within a few days of getting it.
• My godson wishing me last year with the words, "Happy Birthday! Where is my present?"

Serendipity

This evening was to have seen me attending a corporate function at a high-end restaurant. While I'd been looking forward to this (especially the dinner), at the last minute, I just decided not to go and came back home instead. So, alighting from the auto-rickshaw and walking back home, I stopped humming to myself and turned back a bit to check if what I thought I'd seen on the road was really what I thought I'd seen. It was. A hundred rupee note. I picked it up not knowing whether it belonged to someone who stayed in the house, the staircase at the foot of which the note was lying or if one of the bodybuilders at gym next door had dropped it. I stood there for a few moments wondering if I should ask. But asking didn't appeal to me since I ran the risk of handing it over to the wrong person; so, I finally decided to keep it. Maybe, I'd find the person who'd lost it. Maybe, it was my abundance. Well, somewhere on the way to my house, I saw this guy searching his pockets and I asked, 'What's wrong? Lost money?' 'Yes,' he said, with a very dejected look. 'Hundred Rupees!' The look on his face when I handed it over to him put a grin on my face and a smile in my heart.

I never cease to wonder at how awesome the Universe really is!!!!

Being connected

Someone told me, the other day, that one needs to meet a person face to face to really know what a person is like. I disagreed with him silently.

All the years I've been working, I've had to interact with a number of people over the telephone and/or the internet, sometimes without ever meeting them. In course of such communication, I got to know some of them pretty well. I count one of them, a lovely lady I 'met' on the telephone in 2003 (if my memory is correct) as one of my close friends. Though we've met each other just a handful of times to date, it didn't stop her from opening her home to me a little more than a year ago and treating me like an honoured guest. Indeed, we became friends even before I met her in person.

Over time, I've met people from all over the world on the internet, something I would never even had envisaged around ten years ago. I've been in touch with some of them for years, exchanged views, shared confidences, sought advice, cried on shoulders and lent mine, and probably will go through life without meeting them. But I consider them as friends. Enough to divulge my postal address or even my mobile number - something I may not do with people I meet on a regular basis in real life.

Indeed, I know/know of some people who've gone on to get married to someone they've met over the internet and/or on the telephone and met just once or twice in person before tying the knot, started families and have been together for years. When asked, a few of them said, they 'just knew' even before actually meeting the person and went with their gut; everything else was not of consequence. And then I know those who've dated/been together for years before getting married and yet, the marriage lasted only a few months.

You meet some people in real life and take an instant like or dislike to them, without even knowing why. You may know someone for years, run into them everyday and yet not exchange anything more than pleasantries with them. Yet, you can talk to someone you've never met in person for hours on end.

So, isn't this just a bit weird? I don't think so. I may be wrong but I believe it's about being connected more than anything else. About energy. We're all connected to the same Source and the same life force energy that flows in me flows through you and everyone else. But the type of energy we give out - our thoughts, our emotions, our intentions - is what determines what or who we attract into our lives. Like attracts like. And energies change. Sometimes people come into our lives for a reason or we're brought to a situation only because we have something to learn from it. That is probably why the kid we were best friends with in kindergarten no longer is part of our world now. Why the person who spent hours with you or said he or she couldn't live without you at one point of time left, with or without saying goodbye. Ever had the same lousy situation repeat itself time and again until you realised what it was you needed to know and then things started to change for the better? I guess I'm digressing but I feel life is a series of choices. Your choice now determines how you spend the next few moments or days or weeks or years or even the rest of your life. We really can't say which way things will work out. And easier said than done but perhaps the best thing to do is let go of the past, drawing from it only that which we need to learn, listen to our instinct and make our choices knowing they're the best at this point of time and live in the present.