As the post title suggests I am one of those people who firmly believe that 2009 sucked more than all of the other years I have endured and lived through in my life span of 25 years. Seldom does a year that is so dull comes along. Few years have sucked the life of out my existence as 2009 did.

While life remained stable, it was without much fun. I have never spent so much time watching tv as I have done in 2009. Also I haven’t spent so much time craving to rush back to my parents as I did in 2009. I was simply not able to find enough reasons to step out of my flat during weekends in 2009. 2009 was also the first time in my life when I did not have enough friends around me. 2009 was also the year when I realized that NIT Jamshedpur was clearly and by far the best phase of my life...

Her name means heavenly and divine and she isn’t much different from the literal meaning of her name. Meeting her was a fortunate accident, the sort that doesn’t happen everyday and to everyone. She is a gift from the heavens and a very special one at that- an unexpected gift at an unexpected time. It is not everyday that we meet someone with whom we share a spontaneous rapport. In fact, I would call it a divine connection.

She is quiet and soft spoken but her silence makes itself heard. She is simple yet elegant, at ease with herself yet busy with the world and confident yet vulnerable. She has the innocence of a child and the faith of a saint. She has the sparkling purity that only the feminine can possess. Her laughter is soft but resonates deep inside the soul that feels it...

There is this one very dear friend of mine who is gonnna be out of town for six months due to some professional commitments. She and I decided to meet once before she leaves so that she could take my good wishes in flesh and blood :D. She was really insisting that I meet so I took some valuable time out of my otherwise extremely busy weekend schedule. I did not want her to leave with any regrets and miss me too much…I really care for my friends and she is no exception. Before she says “gasconade” I should get back to business.

So it was decided that we would meet at 1:30 pm on a Saturday afternoon, at the Great India Place...

Life,however beautiful as it may be, regularly presents us with dead ends and stone walls. Obstacles to our aspirations and our intense desires are not difficult to come by. More often than not they leave us and our loved ones between a rock and a hard place in extremely unexpected ways.Sometimes, it is the indecisiveness or lack of enough strength in some other person dear to us that affects us. Being attached to that person our natural reaction is try and make that person see what we perceive to be as a sensible approach. As we get more and more involved in that person’s troubles and the person does not budge from his/her indecisive approach, we end up feeling the same heat as that person. To be fair, the other person is not having a party either...

There is a lot of focus in these trying economic climate on the performance of an individual. People all over but particularly in the IT sector are being handed pink slips on the basis of poor performance. A lot has also been said about the below par skills of our IT workforce. But what has not been touched upon is the lack of a motivation for an individual to perform well.

Managers try to lord over all the resources under them. There is no importance accorded to an individual on the basis of the skills he/she posseses. Business criticality is the sole criterion that determines value. To me this approach appears to be extremely opportunistic...

The average city dweller in these times suffers from what I refer to as the monotony syndrome. Despite all the modern wonders the struggle for existence and the urge to stay ahead of the pack leaves little, if any, room for people to relax and explore what the world has to offer. We do roughly the same things everyday and what aggravates the situation further is that we end up doing the same recreational activities every single time we feel the urge to relax and pause a bit. We spend most of our weekends visiting malls, watching movies or going on short drives which we fondly refer to as “long drives” chiefly to satisfy our own egos.

In our bid to remain competitive(read relevant) we have twisted and even corrupted the meaning of simple words such as “success” and “winning”...

Recently Priyanka Gandhi appeared in a television interview with Barkha Dutt on NDTV. Upon being asked if she really held no grudges against Nalini for killing her father, Priyanka gave an answer that set me thinking. The straight forwardness of the reply struck me.

Priyanka said that she had been “furious” with the world for a year after Rajiv’s assassination. However now she has forgiven Nalini. She said that the realization that Nalini herself was a victim of circustances had brought about this change in her. As she realized that Nalini too was a victim and that she herself had suffered a lot, Priyanka’s own victimhood had disappeared. She said in a way both of them were victims. The absence of the feeling of victimhood had allowed her to be non judgemental...