Speakin Out

Do you remember an era where tea parties were common? Retirements, births, new homes, transfers....all used to be celebrated with "tea parties". Tea/Coffee, plus a pack of snacks - carboard boxes with butter paper inside it, that contains one sweet snack, one salty snack and 2 biscuits - that used to be a standard for any party. Rather, that used to be THE TREAT. Haven't come across a "tea party" for years now, because we in IT world become a little extravagant - small celebrations are over juices & ice creams, while bigger ones are mostly over lunches and dinners! Once upon a time, I used to wait for my mother to return from office, because if I was lucky enough, someone would have celebrated something at her office, and I would have a share of that - a tea party box at least half the share. If am luckier, I would have the whole of it. It was always a surprise, and both me and my mother wanted that to be a surprise. For once she made it a regular practice, ...

This is a 2 year old post (dated end of november, 2007) Last week, I discussed about my product and its capacity to handle changes in a PNR when irregular operations occur. Irregular operations - for beginners - are changes that occur when a flight gets cancelled, re-routed , delayed etc. etc. Never in my dreams I thought I will be witnessing such a thing soon in my life. Yes. I did. My return from Chicago was with 2 connections - Chicago (ORD) to Washington Dulles (IAD) by United, IAD to Doha (DOH) by Qatar and again DOH to Trivandrum (TRV) by QR. Flight timing were 1545 (Saturday, Dec 01) from ORD reaching IAD on same day at 1830, leaving IAD same day on 2210, reaching DOH next day (Dec 02) by 1910, and leaving from there by 0015 on Dec 03 Monday, reaching TRV on 0715. So here goes the story of the first Irregular Operation experience in my life.Some of us might have gone through this situation. It is not as funny, but a very good experience I should say. I heard about a bad weather...

“Languages known” – I’m sure all of us would have put this as a section in our profiles. What do we gain out of knowing a new language? You tend to have an edge over others when you go to a place where this new language is appreciated, right? What if I tell you a story of a new language that I learnt during my childhood? As a beginner, there was just an urge to learn this new language. What to most of us do in such a situation – IMITATE! I used to imitate people speaking this special language. Thanks to my grandfather who noticed my efforts and recommended my parents to send me for a “beginner’s course”. It was a master at our neighborhood who was my first trainer. While I started, I never imagined that I would love this language so much! The very first statement from my statement was confusing! “You are not supposed to use your tongue to speak this language,” He said. “You must use your hands, legs, body and your face!” As I was still trying to make sense of it, he told me that this ...

There are 2 categories of people in this world. Category 1: We know them and they know us! Category 2: We don’t know them and still they know us! Let us call these category 2 people as strangers. Both these categories can be further divided on the basis on gender! Let us admit it, females of category 2 are real nuisances. How dare they come and handle us, hug and smooch us? Who gave them the authority to do all this? And believe us, these females are truly inconsequential! Those discussions will not take us anywhere and it is the same questions asked over and over again! We like to converse with male strangers, as they don’t “man”-handle us. One striking thing here is that, they have variety in the questions they ask. We love to shake hands with them, give a salute to them and tell our names. On the other hand, if the stranger is a female, we purposefully try to avoid them. Heeee……Once we used to wonder what makes us so famous among strangers. They say we look alike and thus they make...

I had my lowest 10th grade marks for Geography...and am pretty bad at it! It is tough for me to relate east, west, north and south. It is tough for me to connect routes. It is even tougher for me to read maps! It gets even tougher for me, when people say that geographies are connected to the goodness in people! People in "Gods Own Country" make a very generic statement, the moment you know that a person is from South Kerala - OH!!! He must be crooked, he will be bad, he will cheat you! Speak to a person from South Kerala - he says "Wow! The person is from the North - then he must be good". He neither admits the argument, but just becomes diplomatic! Somewhere, somehow, someone has carved it on stone. As you travel from Kasargod to Trivandrum, people get worse!!! Your character is decided by the way you are! Your character is decided by the way you are brought up, your character is decided by the group of people around you, by the quality of education you get - eithe...

I started this blog on a vijayadasami day. Vijayadasami is celebrated all across India in different ways, different reasons. While to the external world it is "Victory of Good over Evil" and the most common thing that happens in India is celebrations to commemorate the victory of Lord Rama over Ravana, Keralites celebrate it a a little differently. The durgapooja in North India converts to Saraswathi Pooja in Kerala. Here, many kids officially start their learning during this day. "Ezhuthiniruthal" or "Ezhuthinu veppu" or "Vidyarambham" as it is called, is supposed to happen between the 2nd and 3rd birthday of the child. This auspicious event generally used to happen inside temples. Now like many other rituals, it got blended more with culture than with spirituality and spread towards the outside world. Nowadays, many social, cultural institutions take this up as an activity in their calendar and offer it to invite many new kids to the world of w...