Infinite thoughts

The lockdown has become "मारुतीचे शेपूट". Week after week, it is getting extended for various reasons. Earlier there was second wave. Now, there are talks about "Delta Plus" variant or third wave. No one really knows when we will be starting with normal life. All the sincere folks are spending time indoors with minimum exposure outside. This has created a different problem. What should folks do staying at home? Initially, we consumed lot of online content. Several movies and serials. However, over a period of time, the appetite to consume more content has gone down. I am spending more time in searching what to watch than actually watching something.  Over last few months, I have deliberately developed some different habits or hobbies, which are helping in keeping the sanity in this lockdown.  Karaoke About a year back we bought Persang Karaoke set. Mrunmay was developing some interest in singing, so it was perceived to be an apt addition to the gadgets at home. How...

Since the lockdown got announced again yesterday, there is unrest and uncomfortable feeling amongst the people around. First of all, I sense utter distrust that this lockdown is not going to be useful. If the administration couldn't set up required health infrastructure in last 100 days, how would they improve it in next 10 days? On what basis, did the government announce "unlockdown 1" and all? Many people had just started with their business and again this lockdown.  One thing is clear to me. Lockdown or no lockdown. Social distancing is required. Wearing masks is a must. Do not let your guard down. And while taking care of your physical health, you also need to take care of your mental needs. Especially of the little ones in your house. Mrunmay has been waiting to meet his grandparents for over three months now and was anxious to meet them in next few days hoping there would be further relaxations. They are in same city, but still we couldn't meet him. The thought ...

First of all Happy Diwali to all of you. Albeit late, but intentional. I wanted you to read this mail :) Hope you have enjoyed your Diwali a lot and have come back in not-so-working mood. So, have some fun reading this mail. About 6 months back, we shut shop at mSauda and I was out looking for some interesting opportunities to work upon. In that process, I met few of you who offered some connects and contacts for me to explore. While looking for some work, I got to know few more folks who are out there to do something different!! I learnt how difficult it is to do freelancing, how difficult it is to sell your skills and most importantly, how to keep yourself busy when you don't have a set of tasks chalked out for you nor you know which direction you are heading to. I tried quite a few thing, but most of those things didn't work out as I was expecting, except for this one. I got introduced to a startup in gifting space -  http://www.giftease.com . After few meeting...

Are you living in the moment?  Do you think of taking out your mobile phone and click that beautiful scenery even before you spend enough time appreciating and enjoying it? You are not... Do you take out your camera and start clicking the photos when the birthday girl is cutting the cake? Are you paying attention to her happiness or focusing on focusing your camera? You are not living in the moment.. Do you get urge to check your facebook profile when someone is talking to you? You are not living in the moment... And yeah, this is the picture I should post on my instagram stream.. You just missed living in the moment... This is the feeling I always get when I walk around. Recent example is Ganesh Wisarjan (Idol immersion procession). More than 50% of the crowd were taking out their mobiles and cameras and shooting the procession. Most of them video recording it. This was happening at the cost of other view's sight. When you raise your mobile or camera to shoot/click somet...

After spending awesome 15 months at mSauda , I have decided to move on. The destination is not decided yet, but I think I have some idea about where I want to go.  It has been a roller-coaster ride and I enjoyed every bit of it. It wasn't easy to make up my mind to move on, but some personal constraints forced this decision.  To List two of the most important things that I learnt from this venture: If your basics are clear, you can get into any technology after any amount of time - This was an absolute surprise to myself. I wrote code after almost 3.5 to 4 years when I started with mSauda. But by refreshing the basics, I could get comfortable in a short time span. Once you have learnt something, it is very difficult to forget it - Yes, I logged in to Linux terminal almost after 4 years, but most of the commands started flowing as I typed and I actually wondered - oh *** where did I type this from... But it was very comforting too - I could even do a block copy/delete ...

Weekend time. I was playing with Mrunmay, one of his games - 3 letter words. Basically there are some paper strips having one letter printed on it and then there's a letter dispenser, which dispenses 2 letters at a time. The game is to make up a word with those two letters and one of the paper strips. It's too early for Mrunmay to know the spellings and obviously the job of finding out matching spellings was with me. After every round, I was telling him the meaning of the word formed, in the form of question / answers. Like "Do you know this word?", "Do you know it's meaning?" and wherever required giving him examples and/or translations. After few rounds, the dispenser gave us two letters: "B" and "A". The only possible combination left was the word "BAY". I started asking him the meaning... Me: "Do you know what is BAY?" Mrunmay: "Bay??" Me: "Yeah.. do you know what is the meaning of Bay?...

What would the life be, if you were removed from your comfort zone and put in a completely different environment? An environment which you were part of several years earlier but you never envisaged being part of it again? What if I you can't adjust yourself to the uncomfort zone you are in now? What would it be, not to have all those people around, with whom you have spent almost 1/3 of your life? How would it be, to work all alone, almost all the time, with occasional calls from the team? How would it be to work from home, be at home almost entire day? loads of questions... all "W"'s were haunting me. It all started with a casual discussion with one of the friends almost four months back. I was getting an opportunity to do something different, something that I had not done so far on the career side and that got me excited and interested. After much deliberation, lot of debates, going over the pros and cons, finally decided to take the plunge... Decided to move mys...

It was Ragini's Birthday earlier last week and I was not in town, so Meghana and I decided to take her out on last Friday after I returned back. As a practice, we try to visit newer places when we go out and this time it was " Puran-da-dhaba " located at Pride Hotel, Shivajinagar.  Given that it was a Friday night, I thought there would be a rush and hence called them up and reserved the table for four. Fortunately, the place was not crowded at all. As we entered the place, the ambiance caught our eyes. The place was decorated to give the dhaba look and to a large extent it was successful. A "khaat", a bullock-cart, some posters. There were mehendiwali and chudiwalee and an astrologer too (this is something may not be part of actual dhaba.. but nonetheless it was there).  As we climbed up the stairs, a more Dhaba-like look appeared. Around 12-15 tables. Few were unoccupied. The captain pointed us to a table reserved for us. The curious eyes were looking all...

First of the experiences!! I was supposed to travel to Goa for office related work on early Wednesday morning. The traveldesk @office helped with all the arrangements. It turned out that I needed to take a 5 AM flight to Goa from Mumbai and not from Pune. The only option was to travel to Mumbai via road and the traveldesk happily facilitated the same. The driver called me up at 8/8:30 in the evening and confirmed that he would be reaching to pick me up by 12:30 AM. Given 3-3.5 hours of travel, the timing looked good. Also, it was pouring heavily in Pune, so the 30 mins of additional time was my buffer. Setting up the alarm for 12 midnight, I quitely went into the dreamland. No, I didn't miss the alarm. I woke up quite on time, and was ready to hop on to my cab at 12:15. The time started ticking past 12:30. I called the driver up, he said he would be reaching in 10 mins. Okay, I can wait for another 10 mins, although I would have loved to sleep for another 10 mins in the bed....

The busy schedule keeps me so much busy that I don't even get time to ponder over what would I do if I get some time free :) So far, my default answer was - reading, and I used to claim that I can read anything that is in front of me, may it be a magazine or may it be a news daily or may it be novel. However, my recent observation is that this is not entirely true. The newspaper, I hardly get to read it and whenever I get it I just skim through it instead of reading. There is a huge stack of novels (thanks to Meghana) but I hardly read any of them. And magazines, it has been a long while I have bought any magazine. I think I like the inspirational or thought provoking or educational (really?) books rather than novels (Case in point - some of my recent read books - The Greatness Guide , The Case of a Bonsai Manager , Romancing the Balance sheet , 7 Habits of highly effective people (current read)). I really don't remember the last novel that I read, probably it was " The L...

Yet another year is passed by. Yet another year has been awarded to me. It happens constantly year after year. But every year was way different than the earlier gift. And I am sure even this is going to be another amazing year in my life. Last year same timeframe, Meghana and I were anxiously waiting for our then-yet-to-be-born-kid. The Gynecologist had kept us on high alert and secretly, Meghana was hoping that the kid and I would share the birthday. But it didn't happen. After a long wait of another 15 days, she gave birth to our cute little son - Mrunmay. Next 3 weeks were completely devoted to Megh and Mrunmay before I resumed my duties. Then it all started ... spending extravaganza. March to June turned out to be most expensive months so far and I was kind of getting worried where it all is going. Firstly, my beloved Palio had to be admitted the hospital for nervous breakdown. And since such diseases are usually not covered by insurance, I had to shell out a huge buck to get h...

After yet another long break of two months. As you might have guessed it rightly, my kid - Mrunmay, kept me busy through out my non-work hours. And there was very little time to do anything else but to cater to the needs of the Prince. It is really a great thing to hold the new born in your hands, to see him smiling, to see him making sounds, to interpret those sounds - which you know doesn't really mean much literally, but still put you in seventh heaven... Whatever tiredness you might have got through the day, it just disappears the moment you see the face of your baby or the smile on his face. It's really a great experience. Now that the baby is a bit older, I am hoping to get some free time to start with the blogging again. Lot of things have happened in last few months and most likely I would be writing about those things in coming days. Let's see how much I can do.

After a long wait of 9 months, the little angel has arrived in our life. Mrunmay, that's how he would be known, made to this world on the evening of 24th of January, 2007. As you might have guessed, that is the main reason for this long gap on this blog. His arrival was marked by one of the coldest days in this winter season and hence the angel decided to keep quiet for a long time. Now that the mother Nature is turning a bit warmer, our prince has started showing the signs of activities and keeping us awake till late nights and throughout the days. Albeit, it's fun to have a baby in your life, taking all of your attention, forcing you to change all your priorities, forcing you to reconsider your schedules/tasks everything. Everything in the day is centered around this new person and all that is paid off when you see a cute smile on Mrunmay's face. Although this reward is quite rare as of now, it's worth a watch :) This blog may still see some not-so-unusual breaks, but...

To mark the occasion of my 30th birthday, I have started a new blog - " गोष्टी मनातल्या " - completely dedicated for articles, poems, thoughts, stories in marathi. Even though this blog witnessed many of the articles/poems in marathi, recently I started feeling that the blog is getting kind of cluttered because of the mix of the languages. And that called for an idea to start a blog dedicated for my marathi expressions. I hope to continue blogging at both places with equal or even with an increased frequency this year. Thanks for all those who visited my blog and encouraged me with their comments. Keep visiting!!