Where Have i Displaced my key ??

Nobody seems to be in a good mood – Be it Lehman or me ! ;). These days, my mornings start with the daunting newspaper and “(heart) BREAKING” news on the television.
Today was no different, after a “messy” mess breakfast – my soul was craving some “bad” news- Cant blame it , you see its now habituated ! So there I was in the TV room of my hostel…
“Bloodbath at the sensex, job cuts across global cos, political drama over the new “softer” POTA , and so on…”
The turbulence in market has a direct impact on our futures.As the placements season starts - the anxiety here on campus is both visible and natural. The brighter ones can’t stop talk about the correct “strategies” and RCAs of the global crisis (SHOW OFF) , while the not so “bright” ones like me wait in apprehension , keeping our fingers crossed.
As I was watching the news this morning, something else caught my eye. Through the vertical blinds of the French window next to the TV , I could see skinny , mud-spattered children ( of the construction workers) – playing in a mini puddle of greenish stagnant water .

My first reaction was off course – how filthy! But a second look and I saw something we all here on campus were missing – Happiness and contentment. Unaware of the world, and immersed in ignorance , they seemed to be carefree birds .Tanned skin , torn shirts , uncombed hair ..but all with a priceless smile , they made me a little envious .

I am on the verge of becoming an “MBA” and can make some dazzling presentations, talk in a party with finesse and do know all the right etiquettes with fork and knives .BUT….
As I came back to my room , I wondered why do we have to go through all the complexities in life to gain contentment , which could have been achieved otherwise, simply , in that puddle .

The Imbalanced Theory of Balancing!

There’s no better way to put me off, for a man or a woman both, than to display a male chauvinistic attitude.
I usually do not get into arguments with MCPs (M=male , C=chauvinist ,P=pig) –the reason being – If I do , I end up giving them a flavor of my feminist thoughts – and most often than not , it hasn’t worked wonders to alter their shallow psyche.
However, the world seems to be so overcrowded with these species, that the probability of encountering them is unfortunately quite high!
In one such recent encounter, a so- called friend commented over the dinner table that why taking up Human Resources as a career choice is such a good decision for me. I was flattered initially - as I thought he is referring to how my KSA s (knowledge, skills and abilities) are apt for this career path ,only to realize later that it wasn’t what he meant. His theory states that women must land up in jobs where they can be home by 6 and thus establish

“ balance” ( perceptual error that HR jobs are “wella”) .Another Mr. Know it all had a even more radical theory – that to have a good “quality of life” … the woman of the house shouldn’t be working at all !!!!!!
I will not waste even a word on the second loser here, though the “balance” theory is not bad. As a person I believe in all the “balancing “stuff.
But the question remains -Why is it so ,that the measure for balance is permanently skewed and hence screwed in our society? Isn’t the art of balancing life meant to be practiced by both sexes equally? And if it is not an equal responsibility – why call it “BALANCE” at all!!!
I have grown up in a household where my dad loves cooking ,he beautifully manages all the household errands and my mom is still working !(dad opted for a early retirement ). I adore my dad for all the delicacies he cooks and my mom for the way she handles finances and investments…It was always like that and I haven’t seen any personal disasters and have grown up to be a “normal” person, just for the records! May be that’s the reason that my mind is not conditioned to accept what most people adopt either out of circumstances or otherwise.
Coming back to the dinner table, as I mentioned I choose not to react to my dear MCPs. However many thoughts were provoked in my mind…
The next day our professor asked us to crack a case-study in the class .Ironically , about “women at workplace”. It was based on gender discrimination at certain organizations. The same set of people now talked about thinking “out-of –the –box” , breaking paradigms and cracked the case, quoting Indira Nooyi and Kiran Majumdar Shaw .The most striking phrase used was “ the time has come to break the glass-ceiling” . I couldn’t help but laugh and pity them and their future “balancing partners”.

A Healthy delusion

I can safely term myself as a “very” rational person…won all my arguments with life with logic and logic alone. Calculative….even “mechanical” as some friends call me.
But there are times when logic fails or we intentionally show it the door. Something similar happened to me lately. The last month wasn’t the best of the times. I believe someone up there planned to shower all the awful things on me at once. Nothing major though but the minor ones were enough to dismantle my life….
As I mentioned earlier -I am far from having any sorts of beliefs in words like “destiny”, and the sciences which forecast or determine them in any way. However , ironically I believe it was my "destiny" that I happened to meet a distant cousin of mine who is incidentally an expert in this numerology (or some astrology , I don’t remember) business.
Just for some free of charge entertainment I asked him to give me some gyaan on the subject …. He instead as a businessman would do….hit right on the nail!!! “As you must be experiencing, your stars are not in the best of their moods”! BINGO! I wanted more ..He went on…. It seemed as if the chap has read my personal diary and this was enough to let my logic and rationality go down the drain.
The option to survive was only one- actually two- expensive stones on my fingers. Each of them with specific weight, colour, clarity quotient..the list goes on.
I spent some few thousands and lots of time and energy searching for my precious life-savers as per the specifications laid down..and finally landed with awkward looking , big stones which effortlessly manage to spoil the look of my manicured, delicate fingers ..
But to tell you the truth …I guess they are doing their work just fine… .(Though I know it’s my figment of imagination which is working..but never mind!). My intellect reprimands me for being unreasonable and my mind wants to believe in this entire drama…I want to consider the latter as of now.