An end and a beginning

It has been almost 14 years (more like 13.5 years) since I joined my current company. This week will be my last week there. Finally, after saying goodbye to a lot of my colleagues, it is now my time to venture out. It is quite a long time to spend in an organization on the same team, even though we have had different managers, the teams have been merged, reorganized etc. The worst and some of the best years of my life has gone by during that time.  I have worked in 2 other organizations but only for a limited amount of time. I hadn’t made any friends there. Acquaintances…yes. Friends, no. This is the only place where I have made friends and have retained them too. I have people who care about me and help me whenever and wherever possible. Like any journey, I have had people leave and new people join. But the best part of it is the experience. The experience of seeing the organization grow, the successes and failures, the growth of the people involved, all of it. The end of my Vanvasam (reference to Ramayana, where Lord Ram was sent to the forest for 14 years), as my manager put it 😉 or end of my Vanvasam & Agnyatavasam (reference to Mahabharata, where the Pandavas were in the forest for 12 years and 1 year incognito) which might be more appropriate in my case.

Now to the beginning of a new age. Literally. The big 4 O. Even though I don’t feel it yet, it is still a fact that I just crossed the big 4. Nothing dramatic happened. Maybe just the weather which turned a bit dull and rainy but the sky is slowly clearing up. I hope when I am back from India in a fortnight, I will come to a sunny spell. It is going to be a very short and very hectic visit. Given that I have 1001 things to do and not have enough time to do it all, my blogging might take a hit.  I might have my usual weekly prompts scheduled in place, though. Hopefully, there won’t be much of dramatic changes in the world until I am back. Stay safe and Happy Blogging.

 

 

Lyrical Progression on Relationships

Beginning of a relationship:

After a while in the relationship:

And when it spirals downwards:

Disclaimer: Just an idea I got when I heard these songs yesterday and how together, they told a story of their own 😉 .  Any resemblance to real relationships is purely coincidental.

O K K

This Sunday, went to the newly released Tamil Movie ‘O Kadal Kanmani‘. This isn’t about my views on the movie, although I should say that I was impressed by the storyline and liked the movie a lot. Good music, very good background score, handsome hero, beautiful and expressive heroine, understanding old couple… It had its moments of cliche’s and unwanted scenes, but overall was a breezy and nice romantic drama. This isn’t the first movie to talk about live-in relationships. There was a Thriller called ‘Pizza’ which had a small plot but since it wasn’t very important to the main story line, it got breezed over. But this being the romantic drama, the story revolved around that and also about Alzheimer’s of an older couple. It reminded me of the movie ‘Away from Her‘, which is so amazing and so heart wrenching.

Incidentally, just a week before, even before I knew the plot of this movie, one of my friend was coercing me , as usual, to get ‘settled’ in life a.k.a get married again. He is a little conservative in his opinions and beliefs. So when we ended up talking about marriage and live in relationships, he told me that it wouldn’t suit our culture. I told him that I ain’t as worried about the culture as I am worried about my comfortability with it. He wasn’t convinced, as usual 🙂 Having grown up in a conservative and orthodox family, until I started work, I had no clue as to what live-in relationship really meant. But then once I started work, and got to know about the outer world, I should say I was a little surprised, but then as long as people involved are happy and content, it is fair and OK with me. Once, a young girl in my hostel came to me and asked me what I thought about live-in relationships. I had no clue as to how to answer her, because  she sort of looked up to me and I didn’t want to be in a position to guide her in these matters, when I wasn’t sure what it entailed. This society being a patriarchal society even now, I had heard of cases where the women were the ones who end up being emotionally hurt (not to mention in some cases where the physical hurt was also involved) in such relationships. Not until 2005, cohabitation or live in relationships were even recognized. I told her that as long as the people involved were strong enough to handle the ups and downs of it as it would be in any relationship, it is fine with me.

There is a line in the movie, where the hero’s sister in law sort of interrogates the heroine suspecting something and when she is confronted, the heroine agrees to their living arrangement. So the sister in law asks if they were gonna get married. For which the heroine asks how does a marriage certificate would change anything at all with the way they live. Finally they do get married for a different reason, but that is entirely their prerogative and not because they wanted to prove something to the elders, who didnt understand their live in arrangement. Where do I stand with these kind of relationships? I don’t think I would mind a live in relationship to be with someone whom I like and can actually see a future with, if not forever at least a few years. If that has to be sealed, signed and delivered, for all practical and legal purposes through a marriage, then that is the path the relationship should go through. Does a marriage certificate really change the relationship ? I would say, yes, it does to some extent. It gives it a legal binding and we are emotionally attached to it so some extent. Some people need that kind of grounding and trust that comes with it. But not all.  I believe emotionally , it doesn’t matter. Until the emotional attachment between the people involved is strong and alive, the paper binding holds good and has value. Else…

I am glad that such topics are being handled in the mainstream Tamil movie and making people at least start talking about it, rather than in hushed tones.

together, yet not too near

Let me start with this: I don’t believe in love-at-first-sight (except for in the novels,which I absolutely love to read, if written well) and I don’t think work place romance or office romances are good. Recently office romance was something I kept hearing from various sources and that prompted this post. A few weeks back one of my friend told me that he fancied a girl in his office. Even before he could continue, I told him ‘It’s not that I am discouraging you from romance of any sort, but if you ask me, I won’t encourage office / work place romances. If you really want to find that someone, try finding her outside of your work place’. His argument was that since he doesn’t go out much, he could get to know about people in the work place much better and what was wrong with that. Well, nothing wrong with that, unless the people involved are matured enough to handle things in a decent manner if things don’t go that well between them. Also there are lot of policies that you need to adhere to while at work place, which makes it all the more difficult. Honestly, that is a bit too daunting if you ask me.

Let alone romances, I personally don’t feel that a couple should work in the same company. Of course, I have been proved wrong by a lot of couple’s who found each other in my company and have been happily married and are still here (and I have been in this company for more than a decade now, so yeah, I have seen quite a few of them right from their initial stage of romance). Even in my first company, one of my close friend was married and I didn’t know that her husband worked in the same company and in fact in my department, while she was working in another department. I knew about it only because she mentioned him. I would have never guessed it. They hardly saw each other, never acknowledged except for a ‘hi’ , treated each other just like another colleague-from-another-department. When I asked her why she wouldn’t want to hang out with him, she said ‘its more than enough that we have only each other at home, otherwise it would get very boring’. I agree with her on that totally. Imagine looking at a person and being in each other’s space 24/7. I am sure to go mad after a couple of days. I remember Khalil Gibran’s quote

     You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when white wings of death scatter your days.
Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,

….

Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together, yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.

I have seen the downside of a couple being in the same organization. In my first company, when it got downsized, they had a policy that they will allow the couple to choose on who is going to remain in the company because they rather retrench from the set of couples instead of keeping both of them in the company and letting go of others so as to be fair. I am not expert on human resource stuff but from a couple’s point of view, just imagine the kind of pressure on them. Also recently, one of the companies has announced that they are closing down their offices completely.  If a couple is working there then at a single shot, both of them will be out of work. Its just not easy. Especially if they have kids, loans and other commitments.

So yeah, no office romances, no couple working in the same organization and no love at first sight. Hmm.. I thought I was romantic!

SoCS: Oh! the Horror of it

I read Linda’s post on Horror and then this week’s SoCS prompt came in and the first thing I remembered was the incident that happened in the “The House of Horrors” in Universal Studios, during my visit there with a few friends. What is House of Horrors got to do with being funny? Well, here it goes. I am not sure if I have already written about it and I am too lazy right now to check my posts, so pardon me if it is a repeat.

We, i.e 2 of my friends, a manager along with his wife and myself, had been on a two day visit to Los Angeles. We went to the Universal Studios on the second day and had a very nice time until the afternoon (or rather early evening). I am not a very brave person as such, but except for the surprise factor I am not easily scared. My home more or less looks like a haunted mansion at night when the moon is bright and if anyone else should be scared of then it should be the Ghosts or The Others who plan on visiting it because I can be more scarier sometimes. OK, coming back on track. When we entered the House of Horrors, it was decided that the guy friend will go first because he opted to lead the party, next myself and then my close girl friend (hope she reads this 😉 ) and then the manager and last in the line was his wife. Its a nice thing in there because they don’t touch you. So you are safe. “Things” come at you and stop so close to your face and all and the sounds and all the other effects (lights , shadows etc) are the ones that actually scare you more. So we were winding our way, screaming a little, giggling a little, laughing a little, uffing a little until we landed on the monster Frankenstein (I hope that it was him and no other monster). There he was sitting and waiting. You know these horror houses, if you notice very carefully, leave out the first or at least the first two people to make you believe that it is safe and then pounce on your feeling of safety because that is when you get scared a lot. So the guy almost was out and then I had almost crossed the monster followed closely by my close friend when it suddenly came forward and stood very close to that manager. We all turned around and stood shocked for a second because he shrieked very loudly. And then suddenly he pulled his wife before him and said to the monster ‘Take her, Take her, leave me please. Please don’t touch me’ and then literally vanished from that place (he ran so fast crossing all three of us standing before him that it was almost cartoonish) and his wife was standing before the monster dumb struck, wondering what in the hell happened there. It took us a few seconds (or even a minute of so) to come out of the haze before we started laughing (and no points for guessing what the wifey was feeling) and as soon as we got out, we sat down , right on the road, because we were in splits and our stomachs were hurting so badly with all that laughing. He was standing there looking sheepish and was getting a good dosage of reality from his wife. I hope he didn’t have a life of horror after that incident, even though I thought he deserved it. After all that laughing over the incident, we did feel bad for that wifey.

Was it funny/hahah or funny/peculiar ? I will let you decide.

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Post for this week’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt.

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: funny.  Funny/haha or funny/peculiar – your choice. Go at it!

SoCS Badge by Doobster @ Mindful Digressions

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