शादी कब करोगे ?

Disclaimer : There is no intention to hurt any community or religion or person with this post. All characters and names are fictional and any resemblance to reality is purely coincidental.

A respectable HIGH STATUS industrialist family of Mumbai seeks alliance for their smart, good looking, EXTREMELY beautiful, charming, cultured daughter. Looking for a professionally qualified boy hailing from high status, well established, CULTURED business family.

That's an advertisement from a matrimony page of a famous newspaper. Shadi (Somehow, marriage doesn't give the same emotions as Shadi!) season is back and so is my frustration. This is my third blog on shadi and somehow my frustration has increased manifold with each post! 

I don't have any problem with the concept of shadi per se but it is the big hullabaloo created by our society around this 'sacred union of two souls' that leaves me exasperated. If one could have simply a sign-and-done kind of marriage instead of having elaborate functions with dress codes, I wouldn't mind it much!

The shadi industry is one of the few industries which is immune to recession; petty issues like global economic slowdown can't mar the spirits of your relatives who want absolutely nothing than to see you in a marital bliss. How your marriage affects your mamiji's brother's neighbour's grandparents is a mystery to me but they will still suggest your parents to marry you off because THEY consider it right! And once you decide to get married, it's just the blur of functions that you are going to have to count using a calculator. And I don't know if it's just a Punjabi family thing but the grander the arrangements, the better your image in your society. This again leaves me completely nonplussed because shelling out 25lacs on a single night is moronic!  The YOLO (you only live once) trend further propagated by SRK in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai that shadi ek bar hoti hai has made Indian weddings from grand to outrageously grand -

1. Ostentatious

One of my friends broke open her bank balance for her wedding lehnga. It was undoubtedly beautiful but is there any point in shelling out lakhs for something that is only one-time wear? If only she had spent more time talking and knowing her beau than she spent on that lehnga, she might not have to file for a divorce months later!

2. Destination wedding

This new trend has been picking up with Indian couples quite a lot. My FB was flooded with a cruise wedding the other day while another one showed a wedding in Thailand. From simply taking vows in a temple to destination weddings, Indians have definitely notched up their choices! All this show off and no patience for each other, why have such a hollow marriage?

3. Pre-wedding shoots

I don't know who invented this innovative concept but it's been exploited by the photography industry like never before! The other day, one of my colleagues showed me what she called was her announcement picture. I got confused and asked if it was her version of pre-wedding! She told me that a decade back, people used to go to the photo studio and got clicked their pictures in specific poses to announce their wedding! From those tiny studios, the wedding shoots have moved on to exotic locations like Italy and Dubai. I do hope that pre-marriage communication also gets just as popular so that we are able to nurture caring and meaningful relationships!

4. Series of Functions

People surely spend their entire savings on weddings! From Roka to Shadi, the bride and the groom have to endure at least a hundred ceremonies, each more extravagant than the other! Add to it, the Indian brand drama of relatives - hame kisi ne pucha nahi, hame nahi bulaya th toh hum kyu bulayein unhe; the functions become a total nightmare! And God save you, if you somehow are unable to attend the wedding, people will treat you with a contempt so bad that no apology will erase their prejudice against you! the only people who really enjoy a wedding are friends and cousins who dance their hearts out!

I might come across as a melodramatic wedding critic but believe me I am not as cruel as it appears to be. I am just a little limited with people I share my important personal events with. So all this extravaganza associated with wedding makes me both nauseous and scared, confused and flabbergasted at the way people just drown all their savings for a single event.  I am in no manner against people holding a lavish wedding or suggesting in any way that grand weddings are in any way associated with marriage not being a success; I simply believe that the day is important to YOU so you alone have the right to decide how you want to make it happen. Some prefer the pomp and show while I am one of those who would prefer a silent court marriage and a month long travel around the world to celebrate it. To each, his/her own! 

If only, I could hold a swayamvar and put these conditions for the probable suitors - 

1. Must be a great travel freak.

2. Knowledge and love for Harry Potter is a prerequisite.

3. Must be willing for a silent, no non-sense marriage and spend all that money saved from extravagant affairs of shadi on point#1.

4.Handle the relatives and their taunts for committing the so-called social crime enlisted in point#3

5. Say 'Surbhi is the best' 10 times a day, with or without any reason. 😁

So, anyone for a date? 😆

उड़ने को पंख भी थे, ये भी भूल गए...

ऐसी आदत है हमें काम करने की 

कि उसी को सबकुछ बना लेते हैं,

उसी रट में लगे रहते हैं, उसी को ज़िन्दगी बना लेते हैं 

उसी से शिकायत है हमें

और फिर उसी पर जान न्योछावर,

काम काम नहीं होता 

अगर आदमी काम का नहीं होता  

I came across these lines while casually browsing through internet... and they reverberated deep in my heart for quite a long time. I kept pondering over these mainly because they left me introspecting...

Let me build a bit of background here first. I was always one of those people who had her life sorted since the beginning - getting good grades to get a decent college and then a job to make myself financially independent. I was, in simple terms, that cliched person who utters the words "working sincerely... giving my best...proving an asset" in interviews and then slogs the ass off to mean these words. But when I entered the corporate world and saw its ugly face, I realised the pretty picture I had in my mind was a mere illusion. The 'just out of college with her degree' me could not understand a few fundamental things plaguing the corporate culture -

1. How is sitting late a proof of efficiency? I mean, I could clearly see that a certain work can be finished in x hours but people will sit for (x+x) hours just to show that they are committed to the organisation, come on holidays, leave behind their families for work... I mean to say that I am not against working per se but it is the pretence of work that is beyond my comprehension and the fact that who have mastered this art are the star employees. And if I ever discussed this with anybody, I either got lectured on feminism or the fact that "kaam to aise hi hota hai..sab manage karte hain toh tum bhi karo, excuses mat do".

2. I don't know it's just the Finance department thing or a CA mindset thing but people will just NOT work till it's nearly the last day. I guess, the deadline pressure gives them a high or makes them more innovative? Not unless they pull all-nighters with all the free food and mugs of coffee/chai, shall the balance sheet be perfect.

3. Indian office culture is about making you feel guilty if you take a planned leave. Sometimes, taking a leave on a gazetted holiday (yes, you read it right!) will make you unreliable.

4. Don't even get me started on office politics for promotions and recognition. Even the thought makes me nauseous.

What's worse is that it is a never-ending loop. Everybody is doing it because their seniors did it. Anybody protesting against is the most useless employee.I don't know , it's either me who's wired not to fit into corporate culture or there's is something grossly wrong with the way we have made our lives centered around our work. My father cancelled a family trip for work and that's how I got the time to write this long-intended blog. See the irony?

Off late, I have been questioning my choice of field or the way I define success. True, I have a degree and a job that thousands of people aspire for...but if it is not making me happy, is giving me constant health problems, is changing my psyche and my behaviour; is it even worth? But then, if not this then what? From that sincere person who gave her one hundred percent in every endeavour, I have become that person who goes to work just for the paycheck, relegating to the backburner, that strong urge to do something unconventional at the back of my mind , day after day. That voice inside me that says live your dreams, grows feeble with each passing day because the reality is gnawing on the dreams like a hungry dementor. 

 The bitter truth remains that nobody seems to find this disturbing because most people think that this is not something that matters...  so I have stopped discussing this with anybody at all. Notwithstanding the fact that if what you do makes you unhappy and is altering the way you respond to everything, including yourself, this problem goes unnoticed. The only way I have come up with is to stop taking work/ office personally, minding my own business and focusing on personal growth and goals. It seems to be working so far. To conclude, I'd like to quote Nida Fazil - 

सफर में धूप तो होगी , जो चल सको तो चलो 

सभी हैं भीड़ में , तुम भी  निकल सको तो चलो 

किसी के रास्ते राहें कहाँ बदलती हैं 

तुम अपने आप को खुद ही बदल सको तो चलो |   

On the other side of 25.

They say age is just a number... a matter of mind... if you don't mind, it doesn't matter. But in our country and society, age serves as standards against which your wisdom and important life- decisions are measured. 25 is a difficult number - You are done with your college and have a job, you are legally allowed to drink; it is an age where you are assumed to have acquired maturity but are not experienced enough to take life-altering decisions.

Here is how your life changes once you are on the other side of 25 -

1. Settle ho jao,beta.

Notwithstanding the fact that you might have an emotional range of a teaspoon, maturity level of a 2.5 years old, but if you are on the other side of 25, you got to answer your relatives on why you are not thinking to settle down yet. You are constantly suggested proposals, your family suddenly wants to be your 'friend' and wants you to share everything with them; the mere fact that you are on the other side of 25 is reason enough for you to settle down in life because you have no better thing to do! Even as I type this, there is somebody sitting in our drawing room giving out an invitation for wedding, mentioning the myriad of functions they are hosting (read shelling out lakhs). I don't have a problem with people getting married but I have issues when they force that decision on others - arre bhai, tumko karni hai karo, hame kyu bol rahe ho... hame jab karni hogi hum khud dekh lenge! Go, mind your own business!

2. The dreaded 'First Gray Hair'

You can have oodles of protein in your diet but the stress and pollution will wreck havoc and your body will start showing first sign of degeneration in the form of gray hair! I used to be obnoxiously proud of my thick, lustrous hair but once I saw that strand of gray, I panicked and started all sorts of remedies. FYI, nothing has helped. I guess, we just have to accept it.

3. Facebook

There is a wedding-wave going on FB, I open my account and a friend gets married. Another problem with FB these days is the older generation getting suddenly tech-savvy and hyper-active on social media. Of course, we are all free to do whatever we want in our country but adding your Aunts and Uncles is not a good idea in a country like India because your Facebook accounts are scourged to look for potential marriageable materials in your profile - somehow the comments from a certain XYZ are enough for your family to conclude that something might be brewing. You have to change your privacy settings because your friends tag you in posts that might be considered objectionable by Sharma Aunty from your neighbourhood who doesn't battle an eyelid before shouting it out in front of your parents!

4. Sunday, tum kab aaoge?

I crave for weekends like lovers pine for each other.  Sunday is to me as a donut is to a to-be-bride on her diet, a curvy colleague is to a married guy, 40 marks are to a CA student - Bhagwaan! ye dila do bas. After enduring office and its stress in form of politics and deadlines, Sunday is the sacred place we all sincerely pray for. I don't know how can some people move their asses out of bed to malls; For me, Sunday means sleeping and binge-watching. Well, to each, his/her own but the bottom line is that this day is the brightest day of the week and I am not saying this because it is named after the brightest star!

A few things that never change, no matter which side of 25 you're on -

a) Acne !

Oily skin combined with tendency to get high levels of stress without realising results in this irksome forever-buddy called acne! From as long as I can remember, I have had serious acne issues. I envy people who have clean and clear skin in their genes.... I mean with negligible effort, they achieve that flawless skin while I battle a zit each week.

b) Harry Potter

Everything in life might be going awry, but this faithful ally has stood by me... giving me hope, nourishing my soul with the warmth of its essence - love and friendship, breathing in me the belief that things set out right in the end if you are brave enough to face the adversities and that "help will always be given to those who ask for it!"
If anything has touched my soul to the core, it's this wonderful story. <3
Some people often term it as fandom, addiction or kiddish behaviour but this story is a part of who I am.

c) Letting Go

I have realised that each passing day is an act of letting go... at the end of the day, only when I let go of the events of the day, I am able to shut down my brain and sleep. As a kid, letting go meant losing a toy or a game. It was easy and didn't bother me much as the next day meant a new toy or a game. As an adult, letting go has taken an altogether different perspective. You got to let go of people, sometimes your dreams and your emotions.The hardest is to say goodbye to people you treasured the most due to various uncontrollable factors like death, distance or apathy. It is not some summer vacation kind of goodbye - when your school reopens, you get to meet the same people again. This one is permanent and can't be undone. 

The constant thing about the art of letting go is that twinge of pain you feel in your heart and the fact that it teaches you to be on your own since nothing here is permanent. 

d) Best friends - insulting you was/is/will forever be their birthright.

Sometimes, when Earth runs out on good things, God sends out little angels (read devils) in form of your best friends. And I want to thank Him for bombing down my favourite people who have been my constant support, no matter how much I screw up or am rude to them or take my frustration out on them or not talk to them for days. I want you all to know that you matter A LOT and I just can't do without you all. Thanks for being there (even if it was for making fun of me most of the time!!) and I appreciate your presence the most even if I don't ever say it!



Often the cause of stress with ageing is not being able to be the version you had thought you'd be by that age and your peers achieving better than you. But life isn't about who reaches the finishing line first because finishing line in this case means The End... on the contrary, it is about the journey... what comes out of this wonderful journey is what stays with you till the end. So, with another year coming to closure, I think it is the best time to bury the stress and begin the ensuing year with a new vigour and promise to self to just be with the flow and let the Lord decide what's the best course of action and more importantly, the right time for that course!
Cheers!

Chop! Chop! Chop!

Disclaimer : This post has been written by a dejected girl who has just had to part away with her long tresses at the hands of a stupid hairdresser. There is no intention to offend anybody and marketing or defamation of any product is nowhere intended.


Among all the foulest creatures that walk the surface of the Earth, the evilest of them all is the hairdresser. He/She has a power that even Lord Voldemort cannot match; to make you feel horrible about your hair. Let's have a look at what a harrowing experience it is to go for a haircut -

1. Alliteration D
One may wonder that if we take so much pain to grow our tresses, wouldn't we want to take care of it and keep it well groomed? But no! These inconsiderate hairdressers drone on like an irritating Justin Bieber song on loop - "dry, dull, damaged... dry, dull, damaged" 
(I know I have damaged hair, why do you think I am here ?! It's not my fault that the pollution in my city is outrageously high and the weather extremely out of hands!)


2. Which Shampoo?
It should be made a criminal offence under Ethical Code of Hairdressing to pester someone with this question. How does it matter which shampoo I use? Everybody is aware that all the shampoos do the same job no matter how fancy the name or how exorbitant  the price. Of course, it is all part of the marketing gimmick - they make you question your choice of shampoo and then try to sell their own preferred brand of shampoo.

3. Don't you oil your hair?
Another frustrating question. For a person who was made to oil her hair everyday of school despite the mockery it brought, the question is insulting. Even as an adult, I diligently oil my hair before every head-wash because I know that if I don't, my hair will resemble the guy from the center-shock advertisement.

4. Hair Spa le lo, Keratin treatment le lo!

Hair spa is supposedly the elixir for damaged hair! I, personally, find the entire concept a baloney because how can putting more chemicals treat your damaged hair? Another marketing strategy to mint out more money out of such treatments. But the fact remains, everybody is raving about hair spa these days but I find no difference in their hair quality !

5. 1 inch = 3 inches.

This is perhaps the most infuriating part of my visit to a salon. These people have a flawed scale and notwithstanding my constant plea for trimming not more than 1 inch of hair, they happily chop away 3 inches if they are merciful and more if they are sadistic bastards. And then, they have the audacity to ask - "is the length okay?"

Arre bhai, if I say it is not okay, will you paste my trimmed hair back with fevicol ?! Nincompoops.

I would like to mention that I have got a lot of compliments for my new haircut but nothing seems to be alleviating my grief of parting with 3 inches of my hair; I am currently planning to visit the Himalayas and seek nirvana plus those sadhu babas have long hair and can guide me how to grow my hair back faster.

Yours dejectedly
The girl with short hair

The Number 17

Disclaimer:  All thoughts expressed here are author’s personal views and no mockery is anywhere intended. I am responsible for what I say and not for what you understand.

So, it has been 1 year since the gullible girl got out of the gobbledygook of books and ventured into the real world. I have been meaning to write about my experiences but the cobwebs of the corporate world caught me up and I have been neglecting my introspection for long. But not anymore!

Before we begin, let me give you a bit of trivia. Everybody is aware that financial year starts from April 1^st and ends 31^st of March. But can we have a longer financial year? The answer is yes.

Here is an excerpt from the Companies Act, 1956 (sec 129 of Companies Act 2013) for your reference - 

"Financial Year means, in relation to any to any body corporate, the period in respect of which any profit and loss account of the body corporate laid before it in annual general meeting is made up, whether that period is a year or not the period to which the account aforesaid relates is referred to as a 'financial year'; and it may be less or more than a calender year, but it shall not exceed fifteen months; Provided that it may extend to eighteen months where special special permission has been granted in that behalf by the Registrar."


So my year in the blog is going to start from January 2017 and last till April 2018. So we are still talking about Financial year 2017-18. (I am just justifying my inability to write my year-end blog, as my tradition has always been, by using CA jargon. :P)

Oh, what a roller coaster ride this year has been!

It began with my result last year in January.  CA results have always been a jittery affair. Primarily because they say that it would be announced around 2pm but they never publish the results before 4pm. Can you imagine the state of the student during these two hours? One can almost cook rice, such is the pressure in the head. I remember my IPCC results came out at 11pm; 9 hours of torture! CA final was even worse. The website crashed around 4pm and then a gazette reached me via whatsapp! It felt incredibly foolish to believe a whatsapp saying that I was now a CA but for a few magical minutes I was blissful. And then, a friend finally uttered sense – whatsapp gazette is false! Darkness shrouded my mind and I was gasping for breath. Then finally when I could see no way out, I dialed my favourite SharmaJi’s number (she is now my brother’s wife, such an eventful year this has been! :D) and requested her to confirm my result – her father is in ICAI, you see. Sharma Uncle confirmed my result and I heaved a sigh of relief! And then I did what I was dying to do since the inception of CA odyssey, I texted my father “All my life I have been known as a CA’s daughter. Now, you are going to be known as a CA’s father. Debit equals credit ”

Hallelujah!

A perfect ending to the CA journey. Ending, did I say? It was the beginning! Inception of the hard road that lay ahead! But before that, I had a few moments of relief and fun – GMCS 2. I met a variety of people- a few assholes, a few really good friends and a few forget-after-the-gmcs people. In a nutshell, it was an eye opener. It told me what kind of people I would meet ahead and the types of challenges that were going to ensue. I sat for one off campus interview at Deloitte which was a fiasco. Big 4 never really tempted me but as every person preached me that it was stupid not to sit for the interview so I went ahead. After waiting for 3 hours, I finally entered the room. Technical sucked. HR went good. Then I was asked if I had any questions. I asked the interviewer how had his experience been with Deloitte. He began in his monotonous tone that life was okay. (okay? OKAY? He told me that I would need to work 16 hrs a day and for what? An ‘okay’ life?!). Sometimes in my not-so-sane moments, I feel that all these big corporate companies are actually a secret organization and their aim is to plague the world with frustration. Frustrated people recruiting more guinea pigs to suck life and turn into zombies.

Anyway, so then came the campus placements! The interview could not have been more different from the previous one. The interviewer was COOL, there is no other word for him and I was laughing so hard by the end that I had to apologise! So I was selected as an Internal Auditor in the company. I was on cloud 9. I was a CA, I had a job… I needed no other thing in life!

How very wrong I was.

Once I joined, I realized that things were not so rosy. Firstly, my place of reporting was Gurgaon and I simply detest Gurgaon. All the tall glass buildings copied from the west by DLF irritated me (You put up glasses all over the building, leading to greenhouse effect and then install centralised air-conditioning to beat it and then fret over huge power bills and pollution!) and the traffic was/is/will always be crazy in Gurgaon. Shuttle rides gave me sore muscles and back ache. I felt like I had aged 20 years in just 20 days. But I met this wonderful lady here who turned out to be Virat Kohli’s cousin! (I did not believe her till I saw her picture with Virushka at the grand celebrity reception last year! I openly admit that I was green with envy, Kohli is the love of my life after Harry Potter.) After the introductory few days at the new company, we were sent off to its various branches for conducting the internal audit and then reality hit me – it was nowhere near the audit I had envisaged.  I was supposed to visit the customer place and confirm our company’s services and controls were in place. The heat and exertion from long travel hours soon took toll on my health and I resigned within 2 months mainly because of the safety factors – these customers lived in the JJ colonies, since my company was into micro finance, and I was supposed to visit these areas with a salesperson on his bike!

And I was back into what-am-I-going-to-do-in-my-life phase. I started analyzing my strengths and weaknesses, interests and available options. Thoughts like ‘did I do the right thing by resigning; who is stupid enough to leave campus placement which is so difficult to get through; maybe I should have persevered’ kept plaguing me. Thanks to some wonderful people that God has bestowed me with, I could get out of it and got my next job in OBC after successfully clearing the written and interview. The month of darkness was soon forgotten just like a bad dream.

The number 17 continued to rule my stars. My CA result was announced on 17^th Jan. I joined my first job on 17^th of April. I joined my subsequent job on 17^th of August! And this is just the tip of the iceberg. ;)

The week-long induction training was my first experience in hostel and it was a memorable one. I realized why all hostelers kept cribbing about bad food – food at the mess was  extremely oily but the dessert always made up for the bad taste.

Obviously, I slept through the lectures but was wide awake during our badminton matches at night. And again, I met a variety of people – a bunch of idiots, some nice friends, a few I-don’t-even-remember-their-names and one adorable lady needs special mention here - Shraddha! She is one of the most hardworking, polite, sensible and decent women I have ever met!

At the end of our training, we were all given our postings. I was posted at Head office (Gurgaon, will you ever leave me?!) in large corporate credit department- I had to deal with the big fish, loans above 50 crores.  The next few months were horrendously challenging – I had to learn all the new stuff about loans, policies of the bank, RBI guidelines and more importantly, how to deal with people and how to coordinate between various departments I needed to rely upon for information! I tried my best but my pace was slow. I got scolded again and again. Again, some people who I call Gifts-from-God, helped me through each difficult day. Some days were so bad that I went home resolving to never be back but got up the next morning to face all the challenges.

Meanwhile, my brother got married. And a wedding, as enjoyable and wonderful and sacred thing may be, is a stressful affair! Shopping is as time consuming as it is financially-depleting. I tried one dress after the other till I settled upon this beautiful black-golden gown and a golden saree. It cost me my entire month’s salary but the look and the compliments overshadowed the monetary aspects.

After fun-filled 4 days wedding saga, it was difficult getting back to work. But what options do we have other than slogging our asses off for organizations who replace us within a fraction of second?

Just when I started to get a little hang of my work, life threw me a curve ball again!

I was transferred to the Accounts department! Out of the blue. Just like that. Personal grudge of the bosses? Or was it my slow pace? God knows how many times my mind berated me till I was shown sense (again by the good people!) that

•  Things don’t work like that in professional domain. Transfer is as ubiquitous in banks as chaai
• I need not blame my slow pace since I was a newbie and I was given 2 years to learn and train myself. Nobody catches bullet trains in 6 months, every body rides a bullock cart.
• Change is good. Change is inevitable. Moreover, wasn’t I so stressed and unhappy in that department so why not give the new department a chance?

And so I entered the Accounts department. So far, so good. My father worships Accounts, by the way. So he showed me all the positive (N.B. sarcasm detected!) side – balance sheet is the lifeline of any company’s finances, GST is the future of India, IFRS is the in-thing. He had said the same things about the credit department also… that credit department would lead to my holistic  learning as it would involve processing of balance sheets, application of tax laws. I have lost all hopes that I can ever be as much in love with CA stuff as he is.

Amongst all the anguish, I found my solace in fulfilling my travel dreams that I nurtured since childhood. I have covered Rajasthan, Shimla and Goa so far; sand, snow and sea. I fell in love with the sound of the sea. You have no right to be alive if you can’t take out time to watch the sunrise and sunset. Sunsets in Goa are proofs that not everything that goes down is sad and melancholy; it taught me to stay still and just be in the moment… the realization dawned on me that a higher power looks upon us all and I could feel all my stressed neurons slackening as the force of the mighty sea hit me. Nothing mattered anymore and I learnt just to be… in unison with my soul… at total peace.

All in all, this year was all about what they call as blooming and budding; making mistakes and learning from them; getting out of my comfort zone and most importantly taking note of my happiness and dreams.