A Moment in Time

Do you remember, ladies and gentlemen, the good old days of camera roll? Half the excitement of going to a trip was due to purchase of a new camera roll, and the 32 precious 'clicks' that came with it. And not to forget the constant bugging by parents not to screw with the camera and pictures. Everything needed to be perfect before a picture could be taken or a 'click' would be wasted. And then when the roll was finished, we couldn't wait to get back and get them developed, wondering all the time how the pictures would look. And finally, after a week of waiting, the day arrived when daddy arrived with the developed pictures. Oh, how lovely they looked, with such shiny rich colours! They needed extra care or someone would smudge them - those 32 moments frozen in time that would never leave you. How precious they were!

And what do we have today? We now own the digital cameras - every 12 year old has one in his mobile, and there's no lack of stand-alone cameras as well. There are so many pictures and videos taken that we hardly bother to care about storing them or keeping them in a safe place. The problem is that we thought technology was going to help us reduce the cost per photograph (and the convenience associated), but the value associated with each photo has also nosedived. At the end of the day, we hardly care about photographs. And the memories, ah well, do we care about them as well? We do! Then why don't we care about our pictures and the great moments they hold within them? Go on, ladies and gentlemen, take some moments to go through some of the 'old' photographs stored on your computers or hard drives, and maybe you'll understand what I'm saying.

Office Ka Timepass

So I find out that blogger isn't blocked in office, and I, who doesn't even write a diary regularly, transform into a blogger overnight. And it isn't exactly that I don't have other ways of killing time in office, it's just that no matter how many ways you have, you always crave to find more.

Well, now that I'm here, let me take this opportunity to share a bit of my experiences of the 10-month stay at this place. Surat. I've never lived at a single place for more than 4 years, but Gujarat was still unexplored land for me. I was really excited to begin my career just 100 kms away from the place where my father first started working almost 30 years back. (And I will admit within parenthesis that that song "Dil le gayi kudi Gujarat di.." by Jasbeer Jassi also kept hovering over my mind during my first train journey to this place, though I'm forced to omit the later experiences in this regard.).

So when I finally arrived with my friend and asked for keys, the reception guy, after going through the list of names, gave a broad smile to my friend and said, "You've got the master bedroom, the A room." As it turned out, I got a C room and when I asked what it meant, he looked this way and that and replied, "Err...come let me show you the rooms." (C room is basically the H in a 2-BHK flat, which in short means that I was royally screwed.).

I expected the HR department to consume my first 2 days, and then the work that would make my life hell. But the HR guys took a week, and by grace of God (if He exists), the work never came. (Paradoxically, my work experience certificate still fills a complete A4 sheet.). In the next couple of months, for the first time in life, it really dawned on me that I actually love to work, and work hard. But there wasn't any! So my life basically turned into going to office, sitting idle, pondering over life, coming back, passing time chatting with friends and going out to restaurants. I still hadn't figured out if I was happy doing all that. But then IT happened. My roommate left the job, and I was left alone in a 2-BHK flat. Days became longer. Solitude lead to introspection and within a week I found myself engrossed in DI/Quant stuff. The vigil that started thus in beginning of August somehow lasted till the end. There were moments of frustration when life seemed too hectic, too futile. But all is well that ends well. I don't know what the future holds for me now, but I know I will survive, no matter what.

Well, I've heard that it's nice to end a piece with a quote. So I choose the one that has been etched on my psyche, and keeps me going. As said by Forrest Gump's mother on her deathbed, "I happen to believe that you make your own destiny, you have to do the best with what God gave you."