Lost Laugh!

29th May – An unforgettable day, a historic day, a day which just left us numb & shaken & blank. It’s exactly one year today since I would have had a:

A laugh,
A hearty laugh,
A carefree laugh,
A true laugh,
A loud laugh,
A wholehearted laugh,
A laugh like this;

A guilt free laugh! Yeah, today even if I laugh there is an immediate guilt, an inner guilt, a guilt of realization that I’m actually laughing without Amitesh Bhaiya & Kishu! It’s exactly one year today when Amitesh Bhaiya left us all shattered & traumatized. But as if that was not enough, God decided to take Kishu also away just after eight months, leaving me, Ma & Kaushik mourning and devastated forever. Can life change like this so much in just 1 year? Yes, it does…kya se kya ho gaya!
Bhaiji (As we used to call Amitesh Bhaiya lovingly): Saying that we miss you will be an understatement, in fact we never have forgotten you even for a moment to miss you. Remembering you today badly on this dreadful day & pray for the peace for your soul…

Note: In the pic from left to right – Amitesh Bhaiya (though not blood relative but far closer to me than my own brothers), Kaushik (my youngest brother) & Kishu (my younger brother who left us this February). This pic was taken last year when we all had met during a festival for the last time "together" at my native place.

The Jane Austen Book Club

Well, finally finished reading this book & it was like yawwwnnn! It definitely gets listed in my “drag-gone” category; yeah it was draaaaggggging & finally was gone after lots of effort! Uh the thought of writing about this book itself makes me feel zzzzzzz. But still I will write about it in the interest of those who can pick up this book reading all the good testimonials mentioned on its cover. In fact I had picked up this book with lots of expectations myself esp. because had heard whole lot of good things about the movie based on this book & secondly the cover page of the book really hard sells it to be a great reading. My general assumption is that if it’s a movie based on any book then generally the book is better to read as compared to watching the movie but guess I was wrong in this case. Book was definitely not worth the hype.

As the title suggest, “The Jane Austen Book Club” is a story of six members of a book club who meet & discuss Jane Austen’s novels once a month. The group consists of 5 women – Jocelyn, Sylvia, Prudie, Allegra, Bernadette & 1 man – Grigg. Jocelyn who is the initiator of this book club believes that it is essential to reintroduce Austen into your life regularly & that’s why she starts this book club. Each of their monthly book club meeting unfolds their own stories & some association with Austen’s novels.

Personally speaking I loved Austen’s novels & hence thought I might like a book which is based on a book club of Jane Auten, but then I will say I was disappointed. Mainly because this book lacked the grip to hold my attention, after a few pages itself I lost my interest & found the flow of the book to be very confusing. Till last I could not understand the main point which author was trying to make. I know it was meant to be a light & fun read but somewhere it never served that purpose. So, from my side it’s a thumbs down for this book totally.

Other details of the book:
Author: Karen Joy Fowler
Price: I had bought it a dirt cheap price in a book sale :-) but think the original price of the book is Rs. 560/-
Special Note: It took me 7 weeks to drag & finally finish this 243 paged book. Reason – couldn’t read more than 10 pages at one go!

I’m off to “Marrying Anita” now, was supposed to read “Outliers” but guess I need to read a funny book after this Book Club thingy before I go for a serious read :-)

Updates from Marketing Chit-Chat: 21st April'09 - 25th May'09

Posted these on Marketing Chit-Chat in last few weeks, would love to see you there:

• Kingfisher Holidays – IPL promotion: It was the last commercial break during IPL last night & guess the 1st ad being aired in that break??? Well, it was for a holiday site asking to book tickets for South Africa to catch live IPL match! Read More...
• Zoozoos popular than celeb endorsers?: Well, it’s Zoozoos & only Zoozoos all over, be it any marketing meeting which I attend or a casual chat amongst group of friends, “zoozoos” is definitely one of the topics which has to crop up in any such marketing discussion these days. Read More...

Introspection

And my spine disc problem is back, that too with a big bang. Intense pain along with stiffer back. All the extra work load & hectic schedule for last so many weeks finally took its toll on my health. Week was but naturally full of medicines, injections, traction, IFTs and other physio sessions. 1^st half of the week was bed ridden and had to take off from work & 2^nd half somehow managed to drag myself to work for few hours. Yeah had to go as it was impossible to neglect work, so much was pending on my head along with a completely new management team to deal with! Every day when I went to work, it reminded me of the expression which doctor had on his face this time, he had his standard suggestion ready on his lips – “madam till the time you won’t change your lifestyle & work habit I really can’t treat you completely. You need to exercise regularly & reduce your work hours otherwise you’ll keep on coming back with same problem & disc prolapse again & again”.

Hmmm, I know & I know it sooo very well, after all this must be the 100^th time that he would have suggested me the same. But this time he was grimmer & so was I. The pain was so intense & so sudden that both me & N had got scared. Having experienced this problem lot many times I am very well aware of the repercussions of the same on long term life and I also know that there is no permanent cure to a disc problem apart from having a healthy life style and lesser hours of continuous work. But despite all my intentions to follow a daily fitness regime I always fail to maintain so. Reason? Well, on a normal day I leave for work at 8 am & by the time I come back late night I am dead tired to do any kind of exercises etc. And these days because of so many changes at office it has become worse, there is no time of my work getting finished, it can be anything between 8, 9, 10, 11 pm or many times even more i.e., past mid night. No I don’t work till this late hour happily neither I am workaholic by choice, it’s just that this is the demand of my job & current organization. Working in a start-up has its own challenges. While work wise it’s definitely very exciting & you get to learn whole lot of thing in a short span of time but then it requires some serious amount of commitment as well. I’ve worked in some large companies earlier & have been working in this start-up for last 2.25 years now & all I can say based on my experience is that such role in start-up companies really needs 24x7x365 kind of commitment. For some aspects of life it’s good & some aspects it’s bad too. And now when I’m at a situation of deciding whether it’s more good or more bad then honestly speaking I’m confused. N is upset due to my health situation and so am I; I’m not able to figure out how to handle all this. It’s really not pleasant to go through same pain again & again but at the same time it’s not even easy to decide whether I should re-look at my professional path currently. I know I can’t say no to work load in my current organization but then will I be able to sustain all this considering my frequent visits to hospitals these days? Do I need to re-prioritize certain things in my life right now? Is this hard work of any real worth? Well, I’ve been thinking & thinking & only thinking since last 3 days & have not reached to any conclusion yet…I’m confused, puzzled & totally baffled! I don't know what to do next...

Oh, how I wish!

Phew, life is running like crazy these days, seems to be always on some roller coaster or on curvy path with some huge ups & downs! And work life was never more hectic than this, I get home at all weird hours these days & the 1st thing which I do after reaching home is….well, with one hand I open that jar having potato wafers & with the next I open my freezer which is having 2 big tubs of honey nut crunch kept over there. Ummmm, actually it’s not 2 now, it’s reduced to 1.5 & it’s just 3 days that we had got those 2 big tubs. Yeah, that’s the speed of my consumption of ice-creams if it’s something as heavenly as honey nut crunch from Baskin Robbins :D :P :-). I decided to write a blog post today while enjoying my ice-cream but on second thought I think let me relish my ice-cream right now, I will pick up my laptop again once I am done with every drop of it in my bowl.

I’m back & hahhhh… all my work tiredness gone and the main topic of this blog post is also gone, right now I want to focus ONLY on ice-creams. Why? Because when ice-cream & that too honey nut crunch is in front of me, I can’t focus on anything else. Considering the perpetual right side inclination of the pointer on my weighing scale I know I should not eat this daily but isn’t it N’s fault that he got 2 tubs & kept in fridge when he knows that I simply can NOT resist this flavor of ice-cream? How am I supposed to not eat when this is just kept at arms away distance? Why on earth ice-creams only have all possible calories in it? Ah, life would have been so simpler if only:

• Ice-creams were like those green veggies with negative calories in themselves. The more you eat, the more left that pointer on weighing scale would have moved. And the best diet chart prescribed by nutritionist to lose weight would have then consisted of 1 “death by chocolate” in morning, 1 “almond fudge” in lunch & 1 “honey nut crunch” at dinner, ummm the thought itself is sooo exciting & yummy!

Now, I am getting some serious thoughts on my ideal diet plan, how about:·

• Having Maggie every day during lunch time along with “almond fudge”? Oh yes, I love Maggie too & I seriously think Maggie is one of the best gifts to mankind ever. If given a chance I would like to make it the staple food of the country.
• To satisfy the evening hunger pang, the only thing on which I am allowed to snack on is potato wafers!
• And in case because of all the dieting I feel weak or my blood sugar goes down, I am supposed to have one full big bar of fruit & nut chocolate!

Oh wowwww! Life would be so cool if ice-creams, Maggie, potato wafers & chocolates become the diet food for us. How I wish they either had only zero or rather negative calories in it and we could eat as much quantity of these as much we want. It would have been so much fun to go on a diet then & I would have been always willingly ready to eat “these” diet foods. Oh how I wish! OK, enough of wishful thinking now, time to get back to reality, while I was into my wishing mode, I think I have already had 2 bowls of it!!! Honey nut crunch is NOT with negative calories and this means some XXX amount of calories has gone inside me yet again. And then I wonder why I don’t lose weight :P!