The Small Voice

Sri and her boyfriend Gopal were spending the Saturday with Vini and Neil. The four college mates shared their common passion for movies and great food. Neil was an exchange student in their college from UAE, but fell in love & got married to the effervescent Vini and stayed back in India. During the last four years, he was an integral part of their gang and almost as well versed with India as the other three. After watching "The Dark Knight rises", which Sri thought was just average, they dug into the Chinese food they had ordered. But soon she was up to their limits of her patience, as the guys had been discussing the boring details (nuances for Neil & Gopal) of the movie for most of the dinner. Sensing Sri was getting bored, the ever alert Vini, deftly veered the discussion to another topic: the present difficult times, money and soon the mood got serious.  Sri glanced onto Vini and Neil who seemed so perfectly in tune with each other. They woul...

Its DIwali time, the festival of lights and this blog wishes all the world a very Happy Diwali. You know, even though this is a Hindu festival, I believe everybody from around the world can easily relate to it. The preparations begin weeks before, as the whole house is cleaned and decorated. On Diwali day, just light up your house, both inside and outside with diyas(earthen oil lamps) and lo and behold, you are celeberating the festival of lights. Rest all is mostly optional. BTW, lets spare a thought to the Soldiers at the border, on-duty policemen keeping our towns and cities safe, the truck/taxi/auto drivers, the RAILWAYS STAFF ensuring we reach our destinations, the nurses and doctors manning the hospitals and all those nameless many, who are away from their families just to make our life safer and better.  Here's wishing you a very Happy Diwali from all of us grateful citizens.

Sri was loafing around at the Inorbit Mall on a weekend all alone. Her mom had made her come as she wanted to shop for some exotic veggies. Now, normally Sri would have wiggled away, but her mom was a great cook and when you humor her, the rewards were generally delicious. So now she was killing time before the old lady was done with her stuff and Sri could drive her home.   Sri was bored, and as usual, hungry. That was when she saw Natraj (Nat as they called him) her long lost college pal. She hollered at him and once Nat realized who this chubby girl running towards him was, he grinned and waited for her to join him. Soon, they were talking and caching up like the old days over a glass of chilled cold coffee after Sri’s Gola. After the usual pleasantries, Sri plonked directly to the point. “Where is Vani? Are you guys married yet?” Sri asked mischievously. Nat and Vani were inseparable in college, and Sri, as well as the whole gang was sure there was something ...

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (TTSS) is one of the most ingenious and engaging movie we encountered in a long time. Leisurely crafted and nuancefully executed, the movie is based on the cold war era espionage book of the same name. Much acclaimed, at the 84th Academy Awards it received three nominations: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Score, and Best Actor (Gary Oldman).  Many others have done a great and better job of reviewing the movie, and paid glowing tributes to it. So I don’t think I can add any significant value by reviewing it again.    But I found the movie slow and perplexing at times, and discovered quite a few scenes which though are important but an average viewer like me may miss their purport at first. Below are some of those compilations and their explanation as per my understanding. Unexplained Scenes: Smiley getting new Glasses: George Smiley gets his new glasses. The scene is prima facie perplexingly trivial. But to o...

The best self-help book I have come across I have always maintained that if one has a choice of choosing only ONE self-help book in one's life, then they would have made a good choice if they read just this one book by Viktor Frankl , titled " Man's search for meaning " . Came across this book in Stephan Covey's seminal work,"7 Habits of highly effective people". Mr Covey's book will be the second best.    Why a book on this subject? Many friends express surprise for my liking of such a serious (even morbid, according to a few) book.  As it is, i have noticed that in India,the knowledge of the holocaust and understanding of its deep tragedy is often poor, especially with the common average person. Maybe, its because that our nation was busy in its own independence struggle at the time of the WW II and the events preceding it. Nevertheless, let me explain why this book is such a favorite of mine. The events of Auschwitz concentration camp ...

Mani was late today and had to run to catch his train. Stupid rains, he cursed, as he got into the First class compartment. All the seats were taken, but there was space to stand. Inside, he noticed a Maharashtrian family of four, husband-wife and two girls of aprox 3 & 5 yrs of age occupying one full seat. Experience told him the chance of getting a seat on their seat was higher and so he edged nearer to their seat, in the hope of grabbing it once the family got off. He got out his newspaper, folded it in one half and got busy in reading. A while later, when he looked up he noticed that the family had suddenly gotten very busy. The younger kid had vomited, and the poor father had his shirt & hands soiled badly. But he was silent & calm and said not one angry word nor stare at the already sheepish kid. The mother produced a newspaper to clean up the mess, then a bag of tissue papers, then four handkerchiefs, a water bottle and finally talcum powder and perfume. In...

Sri was not happy. In fact she was downright frustrated. And it wasn’t due to that dunderhead Mohan, her boyfriend. It was her job. She had always been a bright student and prided herself on her hard work and focus. Her teachers and friends always had expected great things of her. And she hadn’t disappointed them. After her MBA in Finance, she had bagged an attractive finance job with a boutique mid-size investment bank. Her paycheck was average, but her work profile was exciting. Most of her classmates had been jealous of her “luck” on landing a pure finance job right away, while most had to be satisfied with sales profiles. Anyway, that was a few years back. After a couple of job hops, Sri landed at a really good position with satisfactory money and a great culture place. The exposure was great and her boss was intelligent and well respected in the industry. Her Boss believed in giving only directional inputs to the team and then allowed them to run free. But of late, thi...