Pinku-Enchanted Life

The office decided it needed to give us massive targets to achieve, for the current financial year and so it took us on an offsite seminar to a 600 year old fort called Neemrana in Rajasthan. The trip was actually the sugar coating on a bitter pill, as we got to know while sitting through the day in a stuffy seminar room, as figure after figure were rattled off…..the good, the better and the ugly they called them. What were these? Basically the revenue for last year, the figure by which we exceeded the target and the money yet to be collected…in that order. And then came the ugliest…huge targets for the ongoing year. We sat through two beautiful days cooped up in a small room….as nature and history stayed richly displayed outside…..can you believe, it actually rained in Rajasthan in May and we didn’t enjoy it at all? The fort is nice, though through so much refurbishing and recreating its now difficult to make out which is the modern installation versus the original. In the distanc...

The café was half filled with chatting couples. She glanced again at the entrance, the guy was late, she felt ready to bolt. Her long felt irritation at arranged marriages surfacing yet again. She spotted him before he saw her. The guy was the kind the girls would have discussed over giggles. Just as he identified her and started her way, a man blocked his way. He looked over the fast chattering guy’s shoulder and sent a non verbal plea her way. She nodded and shrugged. Her dad’s sms came asking if they had met up. She answered back with an ‘yes, will call in a couple of hours’. He finally shook off the chatterbox and came to her table. ‘Hi! I am Puneet’s colleague; he was unable to come and asked me to convey the message since I was coming this way to meet my wife.’

Its been two years since I started blogging. Like with many others it started with visiting a friend’s blog http://sundary.blogspot.com and her insisting that I have one of my own. I mulled over the idea for some time, thought it a bit disturbing to actually share my ideas with strangers and infact even having acquaintances read some of them felt uncomfortable. But then I did take the plunge, and have not regretted it since. In the beginning the blog was my way of sharing my thoughts which for paucity of time and opportunity I couldn’t share with someone who mattered a lot in my life. Later as a few bloggers did visit at random and left messages the temptation to write for a wider audience grew. Much later I felt comfortable enough to share it with close friends and many of them continue to visit the blog and though they don’t comment on the blog, at times their mails mention something I have said in a post and I know they have been reading too. It’s a lovely feeling to be connected i...

There is a blogger friend who wants to have a baby. A baby of her own. She is not married, no she doesn’t even have a boyfriend. Infact she doesn’t like boys, she prefers girls. There is another friend, she was married for five years before she was able to conceive after many, many visits to doctors. In her own words ‘she hungered for a child’. Someone, whom I have come to know well, wants a family, wants to get married and have a place of her own. She is a successful professional, has a retinue of friends and yet she yearns for a family. After years of resistance she is even willing to settle down with someone her parents choose. Another friend told me categorically that she won’t give birth in India and she would ensure her daughter would grow up in a safer society without discrimination. She was adamant she would have a girl and that was when we were in college and she didn’t even have a boyfriend. Me, I had the opportunity a long time back to have children, that time I passed the ...