what does one want?

Thanks to my move to Dublin for my MBA. One of the first things I did as part of our orientation program is to go through Myers and Briggs and get to know my personality. I am an ESTJ.

An ESTJ is an extrovert with a dominant thinking function who works on data from external environment and judges the course of action. Basically, an ESTJ is a responsible person who loves new processes and procedures and outgoing. He is kind of supervisor and loves to be part of events. 

The downside, he sticks to his values and views. He opposes everything which is against his views. He expects the same from everyone what he expects from himself. But not a monarch. Under stress, his inferior feeling function takes over. He makes many frustrated comments when it happens. People around an ESTJ should understand this and comfort him.

Currently, I am under a kind of stress - not because of the course, but something personal. I write this to work out what is happening to me. Whenever I questioned myself about what I want. I always used to have a clear answer. But now, I do not.

What does one want?  A career-oriented life? A blissful personal life? A balanced life? a lazy life? A exotic life? A traveling life? - I want a balanced life but I was more of care oriented person. What did change me? 

Once I started working at Deloitte and started traveling, I enjoyed the initial few days. It was exciting. Most of the people I came across were more family oriented and less career oriented. I used to ask them 'Family will always be with us - but career does not - make hay when the sun shines'. During one such trip to China, my grandmother just left this world. I traveled miles to come and see her. Against the customs, I was the one who cremated her. That was the most touching point of my life. It made me think about life. Is life only work? is it more than that?

There was a person less in my life now. My mother, brother, grandmother and I used to be 4 pillars of family. A roof cannot stand on 3 pillars. It will be pillaged. This made me spend more time with my family. I took my grandmother's role. I started being 2 persons - one a workaholic and the other family loving. That helped me reached a balanced point in my life. But again, the question - 'What do I want?' still lingers. It is still. I do not know when I will find the answer to this question. Maybe, I have to search for the 4th pillar. Maybe not. 

Where are you hiding?

My Love line

For a guy, who does not believe in love, the headline is nothing but a play of words - My Love line!!

What is love? From juvenile answers ('Mother's love is the only love') to more mature responses('There is 'nothing' called love'), I have heard them all. Did I get an answer? An answer which shuts my mouth?

The questions I kept asking myself - Did I love? Do I love? Does anyone love me? I always asked wrong questions. Wrong questions give you wrong answers! The correct questions are - Is she the 'one'? Can I live with her for a 'lifetime'? Am I the 'one' for her?

Once I realized, I searched for her. I searched everywhere - Deloitte, College, Hyderabad, and a hell lot of places. I had interests in some and I liked some. Interests change as did my food tastes. Once I dislike someone, it is hard to like the person again. None of my likes or interests helped me find the one.

I believe 'Love is a cage if it is a happy cage you will be happy in it forever. If it is a sad cage, you will wait for the cage doors to open'. I took my steps cautiously. Just like the lyrics in 'What is love?', I was scared that my love would hurt me.

Should I really be scared? Given that I did not find her yet. Or did I find her? Why am I so scared? Why will she hurt me? Am I not mature enough to handle the pain? How do I know? Is there a test or an assessment? I used to believe a fight between heart and mind is poetic as it is the mind which does the job. or is it not?

I came to terms that there is no real love. love is just a word which is used to express your feelings of belonging to someone. Even friendship is. Is not friendship purer than love? As a friend, you will have your complete freedom to follow what you want to. Do we really have it in love relationship? As a friend, you can sacrifice for your friend without a second thought and you will never make your friend a reason for your failures. Don't we curse each every day in a love relationship? You never expect anything from a friend yet you will have your best moments with that friend. Don't we expect to love every day in a love relationship? It goes on.

This very reason led me to find the 'one' among my friends. I had the same 3 questions to answer - Is she the 'one'? Can I live with her for a 'lifetime'? Am I the 'one' for her? Three simple questions with difficult answers. Am I successful in my endeavor? Did I find her? Did she find me? Time tells.

One thing, I want you to digest - If your heart(read mind) knows the right person, you won't stop. If your mind knows how you will spend the rest of your life with that person, no one can stop you. Believe me, search for that friend, you won't be disappointed. Even if you fail, you will be happy because you did not let yourself down. I won't let myself down. And you don't.

My 26th Birthday!!!

As one ages, one gets closer to Death. As one gets closer to death, one tends to enjoy every birthday to forget about death. Or may be, One wants to make birthday a festive one. Or may be, celebrating birthday is a way to catch with the BFFs. Or may be, it's a way to ask everyone for blessings.

I don't know why one celebrates birthday. And I did not find a reason to celebrate my birthday. And I did not.

Out of the previous 25 birthdays, I vividly remember some birthdays. One in 1st Class and another in 3rd class when my father was alive. He bought me coffee bites once and another time Maha Lacto. Yeah, these chocolates are now extinct. Celebrated my birthday in 6th class and 10th class. And then in the first year of my engineering and my first year at Deloitte and for subsequent years. I have had some of good birthdays. I still remember 2013's birthday party, it was a crazy one.

I don't know why but I decided to not to celebrate my 26th birthday and I did not. And I do not think I will celebrate the future birthdays.

Call me crazy, the below is what happened on my birthday...
1) I did not bath or brush my teeth on this day.
2) Well, I am an atheist. Expecting a temple visit is out of reach but accidentally I visited Delaware Temple on Mount Abu. Don't worry, I did not seek blessings. Will not God get a heartache if I do? LOL.
3) I told my friends not to treat me special :). You are special only if you achieve success.
4) I turned off my facebook birthday notification to check who will wish!!! Well, as expected I got only 3 birthday wishes on my facebook account!!! :)
5) But the surprising fact was many wished me on whatsapp and over calls. Well, this makes me think, I am in a way a important person in their lives.
6) Awesome part of the day is, it made me think about myself. You rarely get time to think about yourself!! :)
7) Worst part of the day was the food sucked big time :P

Enjoy your everyday!!

My Village Story in Farmer's words

How do u sell your produce at a price you want?

As soon as we get the harvest, the brokers swarm around us. Each of them wants a major share of the produce. But they want to pay us less. They try to fix a price. We generally don't like that price. We do our calculations and we can not come down to a price which is less than the (invested+investment needed). We bargain and get closer to what we want. We sell it off. Some of us keep a portion of produce which will be sold after another season. The older rice fetches more price. Rich farmers do use facilities of Warehouses because they can afford it.

Why do not you go to the market yard?

We can sell only at government fixed rates in the market yards. The quality of rice produced does not matter in the pricing. Over that, we need to take the produce to the market yard and wait till it is sold. We also need to pay bills on each bag sold. Why go to the market yard when we can make a deal with the broker. After hard work on the farm, we do not have the energy to transport and sell our produce.

Don't brokers trouble you?

Why will not they trouble us? They take our produce first. Then they pay us after making us wait. And you know that we prepare for our next crop. We need money for seeds and pesticides. So we take a loan from money lender. The interest rate is around 18% to 40%. After fighting for a better price, we lose the money in the form of interest. It is a double loss for us. This is the big problem with brokers.

I buy from you. Why don't you sell it to the other customers?

You buy because it is from your farm and you know us. Why will some other guy take the pain of coming to our village and buy? There is no platform for us to sell. Most of the customers buy retail rather than wholesale.

If you have a better platform, a better price, will you sell it?

Why not! You are educated. You should help us. These days many things are sold online. Can we do that?

Ended there!

The success of 10000 views in my blog!

                   My blog 'Tomorrow is just another day'  has crossed 10k views. Though it may not have 10k unique readers but I am sure that a pretty good number of people from across the globe are following my blog. 

                    Initially, I never shared my articles on any other social media platform. The reason was I had the fear of rejection. Later, I changed my mind. We see so much trash material going viral - all misconstrued data. Why not, I can share my thoughts too right!

                Once I started sharing, people shared some good thoughts and encouraged me to write more. Some people personal reached out to me and provided their suggestions. I thank every one of them. 

            I thank my friends from Poland, Russia,  Ukraine and Turkey for being among the large portion of readers. I will keep writing and will put each step towards realizing the dream of writing a book on Rayalaseema. 

Seeing Faces

"You see the same face every day but you may never know the name of the face"  said one anonymous guy!

I was riding my motorbike at 9 AM on the road to my school today. I saw a couple of faces and remember them distinctly from my bicycle rides 10 years ago. 10 years was a long time. And 10 years ago, I was studying my tenth standard.

One of those faces was that of Rickshaw puller. Neither I asked his name nor did I talk to him! Because I never did. He was pulling the same rickshaw though it was down and dusted but engaged him. He did all kind of menial jobs - pulling the stones to furniture - everything! He did the job with the same kind of passion. There was no dearth of it. Suddenly, he looked at me. I hoped he recognized me. Alas! No. I questioned myself - why did he not smile at least? I was over beaming my smile to let him know that I recognized him but he did not.

The other face was that of a Shopkeeper. I, along with my friends, used to come to taste mouth watering Mirchi Bajjis and Mysore Bajjis! Even the thought of it is savoring! I stopped by and asked her to serve me a plate of each! As soon as I got the food in my hands I became indulgent!! Suddenly someone yelled my name as if he was going to hit me. That's part of our culture! It was my friend and we talked at length. We talked about how we used to come over here and fight over the payment. But the sad part was that the shopkeeper did not recognize us.

This threw me back. How can someone forget their favorite customers? How can they forget our faces who constantly traveled on the same route as theirs? Then it stuck me that I was not part of their lives and they were. One classic example was that I remember the rest room supervisor in the Qatar airways lounge at the airport. When I say hello to him, he never responded back with the same emotion. I remember because of my frequent Flys through the same route. But for him,  there are many other frequent flyers. He is part of my life and my observation but I am not his because for him it does not matter. Then why should it matter for me?

I can still avoid recognizing people but I can not. Some people remember everything and some people forget names of the people they frequently work with. It happens but again the warm hello to an unknown stranger is always a good habit. 

"What set us apart from other animals is we got a brain which sees, hears, thinks, feels, remembers, dances.... What not!"

Success - Part 6 of the short Story Series 'Missing'

                  "The secrets to success are hard work and luck". My luck is all time low. I will have to work hard to escape this time. How do I?

                    I did not want to run again. I did not want to leave the uncle and get into trouble. I felt that asking for help is the best solution. I talked to uncle and showed him those three guys. I told him my entire story without leaving any of the incidents. The people in the bogie listened to us. People are hurt deeply hearing the atrocities committed by them. Many narrated the stories they here but they never came across the victim. They suggested helping us catch him and hand over him to police. Every one of us hatched a plan. We wanted to teach them a lesson and help the other kids who are captured by them.

                  We knew that the mafia guys would attempt to kidnap only when everyone is asleep. Around 10 PM, we slept off but we did not actually sleep. Around 01:30 AM, after we crossed Dhone Railway Station, all the three guys came to our seat. One of the big guys slowly came towards me. I was sitting beside the uncle but not with the uncle, so the mafia thought it would be an easy job with everyone sleeping and snoring. But what they did not know was some of the guys were capturing those movements in their mobile cameras and some were ready to catch them. We stationed some more on both sides of our seats. The plan was to capture them all and not to let any of those buggers run away.

               As soon as the big guy held me, all the passengers rushed towards us and caught hold of all the three guys. They tried to hit the passengers but passengers were able to capture them all. The guy in whites tried to pull off the trigger off his gun, but the railway police came to our timely help. It was very dramatic and I never saw such an incident in my life. When my teacher taught us "unity is strength", I laughed off but this incident was the perfect example of 'Unity is Strength'.

            We reached Kurnool at 02:15. By then, all the news channels were already in Kurnool railway station. Uncle and I continued our journey to Kachiguda. The police case was filed by the passengers who got down at Kurnool station. I reached Kachiguda station where my parents were waiting for me with garlands. As soon as I got down at the railway station, I ran to my mother and hugged her tightly.

            My Parents appreciated the uncle and expressed their gratitude by promising him to call them if he was ever in need of money to educate his child. My Gundu Boss was all smiles. My happiness just got multiplied. After all those days of torture and depression, I was finally in the warm hands.

           Right now, I am laying on my couch watching the news.  The news was about the Balaji, the mafia leader and the release of abducted children. Some Tirupati policemen involved in child trafficking and child abuse are arrested. My story is on rewind. Passengers in train talked about how courageous I am and how we captured the mafia. NGOs have come forward to support the abused orphans. Some kids are reunited with their families. All good things said about good people by good people. The news channels dubbed my escape from the treacherous mafia gang as 'The great escape of the century' and 'The most courageous step by a small kid'.

I smirked!!! I put forward my first step to change the world! My father hugged me and said 'Get ready for the next'!!!