What's outside my window this friday?

Fridays are Blue-Blue symbolises the heavens if am right-Once in a blue moon they arrive with all the hype.All the cliches about the upcoming 'weekend' are on air and mails,which make me wonder why the hype was not so relevant a few years back.Ofcourse it must have been a different kind altogether.


Come to think of it Fridays are indeed delightful.Like today it is too.In my favorite tortured and tatterred blue jeans, with the upturned blue waste bin for a leg rest,and music playing in my ears, am rested and self-sufficient.The other day I changed my cubicle.With my new bay positioned next to the french windows, things could not have been better.As I lift my eyes to look up from the monitor the blue sky spreads out in front of me.Yeah in my honour they are a light blue today.No puffed up clowds.The heads of an array of Coconut trees(Coconut trees are glamorous enough!!) positioned against the side walk next to the windows delightfully obstruct my field of vision.As the tree leaves fan the sky the thin white clouds move freely like cotton bundles.A lamp post among the trees destroy the romance, yet it would have added spice when the day grew old.


Curbing my reel of mental images, a pair of squirrels play peekaboo on the trunk of one of the trees.An eagle swarms around the tree which makes me wonder whether the scene I had set up was going to turn bloody.But it was not to be.I caught the innocent eagle romancing its partner.Yet I thought it would have been even more romantic if the set had a pair of pigeons.Eagles seemed a little out of place,right?

So what was it that was making me unlike the Me?Was it the friday or the scene in front?Must be both.As I gaze cozily at the scene spread out in front of me am unaffected by the fact that my Team Lead sits only an arm's length away from me.My CPU has been cleverly adjusted to hide my dormant monitor from his line of vision.

But all beautiful moments wither away a little too soon.And this time the villian is the fact that windows have to be cleaned too.I watch with increasing despair as the maintenance boy arranges a ladder against the window, climbs it and commences his job.As I gaze at the alien in my set sloshing liquid soap onto the glass panes ,the set blur like that tear which blinds the eye.

What an anti-climax! But then when he is done maybe, the friday will look brighter,maybe my set will look spotless.

Woke up lost

When was it that I was wide awake last?The rays din't blind.Neither did it seem right.A well defined red sun.No anger but surprisingly firm and decided.Had it chosen the rise or the set?The air was calm save for chirps from birds.Were they off to prey or back with it?A barely noticeable breeze.The direction of which could not be gauged.What scent did it bring along?That of the glory or the primrose?

Are the evils obliged to disappear or still hanging around?Who will light the time ahead?The sun or the moon?Was it a bad dream that woke me up or the call of time?Close my eyes and it is a deep crimson.Open them its the same crimson.The twilight played games again.Woke up lost...

Odysseus' friend

At the end of an eventful one year of handling millions of mails a day ( forwards to be exact) , scrolling repeatedly through the available contacts in Google Talk,taking commendable number of tea breaks in between socialising through mails and messengers,bitching about Project Managers,Tech Leads or anyone of their kind who ever tried to throw their weight around, I came to be known as one year experienced .Or rather the realisation came in its full force when some of us, the 1-year experienced, were asked to give a piece of our ""hard-earned knowledge"" to the Oct-2007 fresher's batch.The task was simple,mentor a group of 200 odd 'just out of college-eager to get into corporate life' (yaaawwwnnnn) or 'just out of college-give me a project' (double yaaawwwnnnn) proffessionals.

And an irony it was that the topic of mentoring had escaped all the 4 years of study in college.We had a big white book for the subject.It would not even have served as a head rest as it would position the head at 90 degree to the torso,thanks to its volume.If I had to open that book today I would find the fossil of the ant which got in between its pages as I opened the book the first and perhaps the last time to savour the smell of new paper.The last nail to the coffin was laid the day when the coordinator for the whole mentoring program distributed the slide show for the day of mentoring.What little notion I had about the topic had gone down the drain.

The night before the mentoring Letha and I sat on our beds with giggles that could not be escaped.Ever since we came the engineering ways we had been inseparable be it in sharing a room in hostel or doing the final year BE project.In the next day's act we were again comrades.Flying the slide show hard copies we pulled the blankets for the day.


On the D-Day we dressed smart,an act to look unreachable and distant to the freshers.Would they not shun from asking you their doubts regarding the topic if you put on an act and tried to look condescending and intelligent(which requires hell lot of effort and practice ofcourse) .The act crumbled as soon as we entered the lecture hall,swimming with young,ready to pounce faces.Without further delay,the session started and the mentors for the day were introduced."Seek their help whenever you need it while you solve the problems for the day".....GULP...."Give over your solutions to them.They will validate it for you"....MORE GULPS.. with more gulps to come.


The dare-devil 'act' had given away to kitten in hot water looks.I must have looked very reachable for they summoned me for discussing every thread of thought that passed their mind.I retorted in the smallest decibels, lest another guy in the next aisle got to hear my template answers .I went "Errrrr dont you think this solution involves more number of iterations" or "dont you think that is not an optimal solution" or "yes!absolutely!you are in the right track" gags.God lone knows the number of times I repeated the same comment to a single person or perhaps some angry young men steadfastedly attacking their problem had counted too for I wondered whether there was a depreciation in the number of summonings.However it is worthy of much praise that we ,the mentors, escaped unscathed.Maybe they were saving the stones for another appropriate moment.


At the end of the day,when the session came to an end the coordinator complimented the mentors for their cooperation and without whom the session would not have been a success.So this was how people learned to make template statements in public.The first taste of it.