(B)reaking Bad

I wanted to write about this epic television series. This series has converted me. I never watch  soaps. I remember some Hindi serials like Junoon and Swabhimaan being aired. I  followed them for some time, since those used to be the programs when we came back from school and had our food. I was glued to them for some time. Till I lost  all interest. I used to follow Byomkesh Bakshi which was   a crime series. It was one of the best made in my opinion. Somehow could never digest any of the Ekta Kapoor genre. My mom and granny are avid followers of some programs like Balika Vadhu, Mahadev and recently Mahabharat :) For me its all white noise.

 

I was never much into sitcoms either. In college most of the populace raved about F.R.I.E.N.D.S; I used to find it utterly mundane. Only during my maternity leave, for the lack of anything else in the 1400-1500 slot, I watched all the episodes. Post marriage, thanks to K, I started following Scrubs, Fresh Prince of Bel Air, My wife and Kids, Seinfield, Everybody loves Raymond and a few more. Some of the recent ones we watch together are HIMYM, Don’t trust the B in apartment 23, 2 Broke Girls, Happy Endings, New Girl, Rules of Engagement, Episodes and of course BBT. There are some British comedies which are funny like Bad Education and Pram Face. I watch them, more as something that is running on the television. I am not too serious and would not mind missing an episode. Though there are lots of chances to catch up on any missed episode, I have rarely brought myself to view them.

 

There was a lot of hullabaloo about Breaking Bad. Since I am not into serials I did not give it much regard. One fine Sunday afternoon, to utilise the unlimited broadband, K downloaded Season1. That very fine Sunday afternoon, for the lack of anything better to do, we watched E1 S1. It was all right. I could not ascertain why was it so popular. Since we had a free download, we decided to watch the next episode. There was some time, we had no plans. We watched one more episode. Till we sucked into the vortex. It was very easy to dismiss the first episode. It was just as easy to get glued onto the third and subsequent.

 

The first thing that impressed me was the acting. The lead characters of Bryan Cranston, Anna Gunn and Aaron Paul are phenomenal actors. I have an  itsy bitsy crush on Bryan Cranston. ;) The actors have emoted the characters with  dexterity. Bryan Cranston who plays the moppy but highly intellectual under achieving chemistry teacher is very playful and vibrant in real life. Aaron Paul's portrayal of a 'Yo' kid is phenomenal. He injects the humour element without being a caricature. He makes over the top stupidity feel valid. Anna Gunn who plays the uptight wife evokes the rage and empathy of the viewers in equal measure. On one hand she is this idealistic wife who does not see practical aspects which strikes as ridiculous, but on the other the extent to which she believes in some virtues strikes as commendable. The lead characters are very well supported by a cast who are on par in acting.

 

The second box that the series ticks is the wonderful writing. I like the way the story is woven. As the viewer is taken through the journey, it all ties together. A big role is played by chance. I am a bit of a fatalist, who believes in fate and destiny. If some things are destined to happen they will. In the story there are many instances I have exclaimed 'What are the  odds!?". Does that not happen oh so often?  History is speckled with instances where chance played a major role and changed the entire course of events. Any epochal event has a chance incident as its instigating factor. Similarly providence plays a major role throughout the script. Else it could have well got over in season 1. I like the way known factors are matched with unknown which are then altered due to the actions and personalities of the characters in question.

 

The third element is the element of suspense. It is no whodunit, the story revolves around happenings of people wanting to make a life of crime. They land in pretty precarious situations. The point till they extricate themselves can take one's breath away. There are so many such instances and each one is fantastically executed. Much praise is due to the actors who make the scenes so real and life like and make the viewer a part of it.

 

Well, I have been recommending Breaking Bad to everyone and his dog. As is custom, I have been late in jumping this bandwagon, but now I wear my love for this fabulous program on my sleeve!

 

(A)shma

Have I told you about Ashu? My super cool friend who goes by the dictum hum isse zyaada cool hote to freeze ho jaate?

I must have mentioned her quite a few times and I keep popping in her posts once in a while too *lucky me*. She was the one who started me on blogging. She is this brilliant mathematical and logical brain with a near photographic memory. One fine day surprise surprise she started blogging. I had already missed the boat though I always thought of myself as a 'writer'. When I saw Ashu's posts, I was impressed by her clarity and her vocabulary. That really inspired me to claim some space in the nebulous digital world and start writing. Yet again she has motivated me to get on with the A-Z challenge, where every day we post a letter from the alphabet. I am late for this too, I had seen people do this. This was supposed to be in the month of April(I guess). I am late by a good month. Ashu did ask me to get on with it, but I was too flaccid. Seeing her posts and the lack of mine, I thought – why not? So lets get ready for 25 days of rambling and ranting and bla di bla from yours truly :)

As I mentioned earlier, having the more scientific bent of mind, I did not associate anything literary with her. Which goes on to prove how prejudiced am I. Or maybe just how multi faceted is she! I had the first look of her during counselling for engineering seats (the process where successful candidates are granted admission into various colleges spread across the state). She was just ahead of me in the rankings and as we were going through the acceptance procedure I congratulated her. (I doubt if she has any memory of it at all, because she is a bit of a goldfish when it comes to attention span :P. I know this on one hand and a beautiful mind on the other – that’s Ashma!) Fate was to bring us even closer, since we were dorm mates. Coincidentally, our beds were adjacent. For the initial few days, she was practically at her local guardian's house. I got very few chances to meet her, till the laboratory sessions began. After which we got along famously.

Back in our days, we had a practice called 'ragging' or what the seniors claimed to be ways to increase interactions with new comers. One trick question we were often asked was our hobby. You say anything, you were digging a hole for yourself and sometimes for some others too. For the lack of anything better I had stuck with reading. When asked my favourite novel (people were very well read ) I had claimed Gone With The Wind. Which undoubtedly is a very nice novel and is definitely in top spot for me. Another fact that worked was, it was the only novel by Margaret Mitchell( actually written by her). So that helped me a bit. So I was not harassed on questions regarding her other works. The genre being quite typical was also not much of an issue to handle. Thornbirds being the only other which stake a similar claim. That was another book I loved at the end of my first year. I digress, its not about me :D

Ashma being the truthful soul as a typical Aries had said, watching tv was her hobby. Thankfully she spent a lot of time at her local guardians, but the days she was in town, she had to write quite a lot of stories of quite a lot of soaps :) Looking back it all feels hilarious though those days were very stressful with classes, inductions, assignments and what not. She had never read a book till she entered engineering. By the end of it, I am sure she could state reading as one of her major hobbies. She is now a voracious reader. Having good speed reading skills (me jealous) she could devour books in a single sitting. She also had this habit of not putting a book down if she was say a 50 or 100 or 150 or even 200 pages  away from the end. There were many times when she was reading well into the night, and would have a couple of hours of studying and would still ace the exam. Talk about being gifted :)

Post graduation, we moved on to our separate career paths. Ashu and I were… hmmm… wait a minute. I might as well take a cue from the soaps Ashu used to watch and leave the rest for another day. For I got 25 more days to blitz through.

Rest in the next episode ;)

I would hate to be my mother

PS. A very candid personal post ahead, might bore a lot of people :D

To have lost her father when she was a child. Mummy says, being 8 years old, she felt the gravity of the situation like a torrent. Life was never to be the same again. Granny had to fend for 3 daughters. She had to complete her Bachelor in Education and get a job in a school. Very scrupulously she saved money and fended for her kids. Being the eldest quite a bit of the onus fell on Mummy to support granny's endeavours. As a child, helping in the cooking, household work and care of her sisters. As she grew, in the choice of the courses she could take dependent on funds (she is a brain). Then in the time she could keep delaying her marriage. She was dismissed sometimes for being 'dark' but eventually she got my 'fair' dad as her life partner.

Marriage came with its own baggage. Papa had a big family with 7 siblings and he being the one in the city - a lot fell on him. There was a lot of cost cutting on the part of my parents. But I remember my paternal grandparents till their dying day say that my mom and dad took them to Calcutta. Which was a very big thing for them! Mummy always says their blessings were a major reason why we are where we are. (May they rest in peace)

As soon as sis and I were a bit grown up, Mummy had to take up a job. She says it was because Papa encouraged her, but I am sure there was a bit of financial pinch behind it all the time. She joined as a lecturer in a government college. Government job came with transfers and movements. I was too young to understand, but I remember a span when I was with Papa and my sis with Mummy. I never gave it a thought till much later, but I imagine Mummy living away from one child and her husband – I feel it is a lot to cope. There was a phase when she had to live in another town all by herself and sis and I stayed with Papa to not discontinue our education. She used to make an over night bus journey to come and see us over weekends and holidays. Much later when I joined NIT and used to make over night trips in the bus, I could feel some of the pain Mummy must have. We used to travel in groups, so some small talk between us group of girls would distract me from the thought of my family. But imagine having no one for company and waving your kids and husband goodbye from the bus window. I remember my eyes singing with tears every time. Sis being the kiddo used to cry out loud.

Not only the emotional aspect, the journeys were physically taxing too. In the winter months, the buses would be veritable refrigerators. No amount of clothing can protect one from the chilly winds as the bus sped through deserted hilly terrain. Mummy used to say, during the rainy months, there would be sporadic landslides. The bus would need to take a detour, but the only way to reach a point where a detour could be made was driving in reverse for something like a kilometre many a times. It sounds a very desperate attempt to keep on working, but I feel the needs must have been that dire. Sis and I never faced any sanctions on our demands. We were given the best education and infrastructure to progress. I know many of my friends whose parents had to curtail some of their wishes to make ends meet. I really appreciate what our parents did and how they maintained the perfect balance by never spoiling us. Till date, sis and I understand the value of each penny we spend.

My parent's struggle makes me a bit less judgemental of some of the choices my peers make. Now a days I see a norm being rampant of partners not being co-located, being even in different continents. I know it sounds bizarre and beats the whole purpose of being a family, but then I feel, its human nature to stretch and see if something works out, 'this one-time'. If they do, and God willing the situation does not arise again, its all good. If it comes over again, the first stop gap solution makes them undertake the venture again. If they came out of it once, they can surely manage again. Thus goes on a vicious circle. I am no one to interpret other's lives, but I surely am not quick to jump to conclusions when I come across such scenarios.

Life went on and mom finally landed with an awesome job in a place where she could be with us! Hurray! But by that time I was ready to leave the nest. J The job was too good to be true. Location wise, salary wise, challenges wise, people wise. It was just splendid. If things are too good to be true, they are too good to last long. There was a decision to consolidate branches of the institution and Mummy was offered her position in Ranchi. Since by this time sis and I were on our own career paths, she did not think twice about calling it quits. I squirm to think how the decision might have felt for her. With still close to 15 years of service there might have been so many more accolades she could have attained. (She was always appreciated for her teaching, her personal involvement with the students and her fantastic presentation skills) Being a working mom, I quiver whenever I am presented with a choice of career vs. home. I know I always choose home, because I have only one shot at it, I always look back at career with forlorn eyes. Thankfully such instances have been few and far between, but I hope I am not presented with the calls that Mummy had to make.

Tomorrow Mummy reaches here to be with us for some time. Chiyaa's constant illness and my full time job warranted the need for extra support. We have decided to go the two pronged way. Chiyaa will goto day care one half of the day and Mummy would take care of her for the other (Since mil had left after a year's stay, calling her again would not have been 'safe' from a visa perspective). At least for the next 5 months we wish Chiyaa gets the customised home care that every growing child needs. It has been 1 year and 7 months since Mummy saw her only grandchild. There are video calls every day, but being there in person, hearing her giggles, seeing her tantrums, watching her sleepy eyes in the morning, holding her butter fingers, kissing that cherubic head, getting the wettest kisses and enjoying the countless moments every day  - it is something I would not want her to miss. As has been the glowing theme of Mummy's life, nothing comes without a price. She has to leave my sister who is not yet 'settled' i.e.  married. I know the thought will always bother her like a nagging scar. As she must have waved goodbye to Papa and sis I believe one half of her heart would be torn with the thought of leaving them while the other would be brimming with joy for seeing the kiddo.

At every turn in my life, Mummy's support has been momentous for me. She has always been the pillar who made everything seem achievable. She has shaped me, my opinions, and my attitude. She has remained away from me for long spans of my life, but she has never been absent. She has always struck the perfect balance holding me, shaping me and then letting me go, try and fail when the situation arose. She has been through lots of tough times, and I wish she one day has unadulterated happiness.

weSurvive IV

Taking a break and returning to work can be daunting. Taking one for maternity for a year and returning more so. 

Luckily for me I had the option of returning part time. I had mil for help while I could work 5 hours. It seemed like the perfect balance between home and work. Slowly I could enthuse myself to give more in each sphere. I started to see the option to move towards a change in my career. I also felt confident to leave chiyaa for longer hours and move towards full time. 

It all came with a lot of hard ground work. First there was the really trying phase of keeping her in daycare, initially half day then increasing it to full day. I had to start preparing for interviews , attending them and waiting with trepidation for the results. 

I am at a stage where I 'think' things are settled. But it has come with a whole set of routine changes. We love inertia and any change though it challenges us also unsettles us. Chiyaa quite does not like the idea of staying nearly 8 hours in the daycare. When I bring her home she clamours for my attention. Leaving me without the room to even get a wash. She's a bit famished as well and is irritable as a result. It takes a lot of effort to get her to eat as well since she is already past the reasoning threshold. I am not very keen on it, but I have to resort to putting some videos in you tube. 

I manage to cook something for her. I hurry through my dinner. Since she stays longer at daycare she does not have much stamina for any other activity. Thankfully K comes as a saving grace in this . Lately he has been able to get home around 1930-2000. I cannot thank God enough for this small stroke of luck. He is able to take care of chiyaa while I get on with cooking lunches and dinner for the subsequent days. It had been quite a while since we had freshly prepared rotis :(

Well that is just a small price that is of not much consequence . The only aspect we want to get sorted is chiyaa. We hope one day I can look back at all this too as 'just a phase'.

Random thoughts of nervous soul

Cos

... today is my last working day at my firm and I don't like changes

... I have no idea how I am going to fare from tomorrow in a totally new place with lots of new people and new kinda work. What if no body talks to me :( :( *sniff sniff*

I have a colleague of mine who is now a neighbor and I sometimes do catch him crossing the courtyard to work. From Wednesday if I see him, I am surely going to think about my last place. From my living room window, I can see the bus that used to ferry me to and from my office. Whenever I catch a glimpse of it, I am going to have mixed emotions.

I know in the bigger picture of things all this is going to melt away. Soon I will get on with my new work place, maybe get someone to talk to :) 

I was asked to join immediately post completion of my current role. Which means the big 'break' I was fantasizing about is never going to happen. I anyways have taken a couple of days off to get some shopping done, sort out my wardrobe, get the fridge packed with all grocery to last a week since I won't have the luxury of being able to shop after work. Why you ask. Oh I forgot to mention I will be working full time going forward. Which give the additional jitters. I have been used to working 5 hours everyday for the past 16 months. 5 hours makes the morning and 2 hours of the afternoon. Which gave me time to sort out chores at home and take care of the little birdie. I have no idea how a full working day is going to feel like. It is going to be 7 hours everyday which  is a mere addition of 2 hours, but then, I have no idea whether they will feel like 2 never ending hours, or nothing at all. Only time will tell.

The kid also has to stay extra.I have been acclimatising her to this imminent change by keeping her a bit longer every day. But  some days I make the surprise visit and pick her up sooner too. If nothing else, it is the 'option' that I felt I had of picking her anytime I wanted after 1430 depending on what I intended to get done. Now that option is going away. I hope that she adjusts fine and likes her slightly longish stays.

I hope all goes well and settles in a jiffy. It will take quite  a bit of time am sure, it is going to be a run for sanity as we scramble through home and work. It will definitely be interesting! 

What has been up

In fact a lot. Things have been moving at a slow and steady pace but there have been so many things, that I feel like a silt bearing river. Ready to dump everything :)

My work place moved to a different location. I had spent close to 2 years in the building (as had lots of colleagues). It was a very central location with shopping places and restaurants close by. It was a quaint little building too, with nothing funky or state of the art. But I liked the place a lot. Most importantly, it was walking distance from our home which gave me the daily dose of cardio on the way to and from work. Well... now with the move, I ended up taking a bus. Gone were the days of inhaling fresh air while listening to music at deafening volume and having the most relaxing 'me' time at the beginning of the day. I had to take a bus and seeing a lot of strange faces on my way to work. Don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with people. People don't work too well for me. Again I think that last sentence did not come across correctly. How to put it better .... I am a bit unsocial. Not in a very extreme way. I prefer being alone, I prefer no one talking to me... just like I prefer writing to talking about my thoughts. I am not sure if any of this is projecting me in the correct light *worries*.

Getting back to my original rouse, I have to deal with the bus driver, maneuver through the different charts and fare rates and specify mine (mind you all this in my Indian accent which gets a bit troublesome to the man behind the plexi glass). I have to get a seat and adjust with another person for the duration of the ride. (Yea maybe the other person also has to adjust with me :P) What do I mean by adjust you ask? Well.. just the human proximity at the minimum and body odour at the maximum :P 

Not to forget bus constitutes a dependency on an external entity. As a seasoned software professional dependency is something we are advised to avoid like a plague. And this dependency is a heavy one which makes us a tightly coupled system. Again a no no for a programming person. 

Now to take care of some of this, we decided to move closer to the bus station. An added advantage was the kid's day care was close to the coach station. So drop the kid, board the bus and we are all singing and dancing :) Moving houses is much more painful than the above mentioned lines.  It involved surfing for homes. Luckily I was recommended an apartment by a colleague. It was the first and only apartment we visited and we gladly liked it. We had kept the day care and the bus station as our light houses, and since the apartment was a stone's throw away from them, our decision was easy. K would have to forgo the luxury of just crossing a street to get to his work. In fact it was going to be 20 mins walk for him. How the tables were getting turned. The 'walker' sits in the bus and the 'non-walker' gets it.(So much now he is loving  it! Even though there is a shuttle drop,he prefers to walk!!!)   Finalising the house was just the tip of the ice berg. There was the whole lot of sorting, packing, booking a mover, moving, unpacking, arranging. Finally trying to settle in. The old house had seen the milestone of having our first child and all the preparation around it. She had spent her 2 gorgeous years there. We moved on to a new home to create new memories and experiences. 

As all of this was happening or about to happen, I was getting a bit bored at work. I was feeling un-challenged and felt my potential being under mined. That is when I started to look outside. I managed to secure a new offer. Well secure a new conditional offer subject to a whole lot of verification. The whole journey was a nightmare - we were changing homes, our work permits were up for renewal, I had a 12 week notice to serve, which I was 'persuaded' to kick start as soon as possible to make my joining in the new firm quicker. One box ticked, another was a question mark, one seemed close to a check while yet another seemed not OK. It was a veritable see-saw. I had the phenomenal support of K and the recruitment consultant with whom I was dealing. Without getting into too much details, the gravity of the situation could be summarized as being close to 'me ending up jobless'. Those were anxious days. Finally there was a glimmer of light at the end  of the tunnel. Things started falling into place with me being merely 2 weeks away from finishing my term in current office. Today was my last working day at the first company in the UK that hired me! It seems like the end of a monumental chapter. I was so new to the whole set up, I started at a very small firm at a role way below my qualification and experience. The company grew by leaps and bounds and is now a mid-size firm and in fact one of the top 3 companies of its domain in Europe and the biggest in the UK. I grew in roles and responsibilities and even secured a promotion! I was supported through my maternity leave and after with change of my working hours to part time. I had a chance to work with some great technical brains and awesome people from whom I learned a lot. I would have loved to continue but its better that some things are brought to an end before the bad parts start. So brimming with nostalgia today I bid adieu to the big flashy building that houses the growing firm.

In the midst of all this flux and  a couple of other happenings at both home, things were a bit too aberrant. I hope for some sort of consistency to return :)

The unlikely pilgrimage of Harold Fry

Thankfully I have finished the book and have some content for my post. Not that I did not have anything to write about . There were too many balls in the air and juggling them was getting a bit tough. I had so many thoughts to pen down but then laziness and lack of clarity held me back. 

Anyways now with the book review I intend to get my momentum  back. 

The book as the title suggests is about the journey of Harold . The synopsis states' When Harold Fry leaves home one morning to post a letter, with his wife hoovering upstairs, he has no idea rage he is about to walk from one end of the country to the other. He has no hiking boots or map, let alone a compass, waterproof or mobile phone . All he knows is he must keep walking . To save someone else's life '. 

In a nutshell it was just the kind of book I love. Of surmounting all odds and achieving.  It is the tale of the journey of an old man who has not got much to show as remarkable. It is the tale of the journey of someone who has never evoked any confidence from anyone else either. This would be his only chance to attain something . 

As he walks he gathers discouragement and doubt . But as the miles keep piling behind him, it changed to attention and even a fan following as one walks. The flashes of Harold 'a life are projected in a very interesting way. They do not have anything ground breaking but they are the stuff ordinary lives are made up of. The characters of Harold 's wife Maureen , his neighbour Rex , his don David are very well inter twined. We also catch glimpses of the personality of Queenie- the collegue Harold sets out to meet. Once he starts gathering interest is the point in the book where I started loosing interest . I wish the author had contained the characters. It could have continued in its non descript pace. Many a times less means more and the writer should have remembered that. 

The other thing that slightly annoyed me was the reference to walking as 'putting one  step in front of the other' It sounded nice once, maybe twice but after the third time seemed repetitive and unimaginative. 

The book is not remarkable but the idea is. It is not an amazing work but worth a read. The climax is very poignant. It is worth a read for sure if you happen to bump into it, but would not ask you to go searching for it :). 

As usual some quotable quotes :-

It's the job that's never started that tales longest to finish .

It surprised Harold how fast and angry cars seemed when you are not in one .

Life was very different when you walked through it.

'You'd think walking should be the simplest thing.' she said at last. 'Just a question of putting one foot in front of the other. But it never ceases to amaze me how difficult the things that are supposed to be instinctive really are. ' She wet her lower lip with her tongue waiting for more words. 'Eating.' she said at last. 'That's another one. Some people have real difficulties with that. Talking too. Even loving. They can all be difficult. She watched her garden, not Harold. 'Sleeping', he said. 

He understood that in walking to atone for the mistakes he had made, it was also his journey to accept the strangeness of others. As a passer-by, he was in a place where everything not only the land was open. People would feel free to talk, and he was free to listen. 

In walking, he unleashes the past that he had spent twenty years seeking to avoid, and now it chattered and played through his head with a wild energy that was its own. he no longer saw distance in terms of miles. He measured it with his remembering.

He fell silent, and so did Martina. He felt safe with what he had confided. It had been the same with Queenie. You could say things in the car and know she had tucked them somewhere safe among her thoughts, and that she would not judge him for them, or hold it against him in years to come. he supposed that was what friendship was, and regretted all the years he had spent without it.

Beginnings could happen more than once, or in different ways. You could think you were starting something afresh, when actually what you were doing was carrying on as before. He had faced his shortcomings and overcome them, and so the real business of walking was happening only now.

He had been alone for so long he found it tiring to be constantly in the company of others. Their questions and their enthusiasm both moved and slowed him.

If we cant be open, Maureen thought, if we cant accept what we dont know, there really is no hope.