Blog@GraceJunction

Hey Freddy,

I reached Mumbai a week back in search of a better job and opportunities. But I have been missing those beaches and the time that we used to spend watching those beautiful waves, sipping lemonade, our hangouts near D’Souza restaurant and those football fields.

Here you get the real taste of city life. The huge population, the busy streets and stations, rush hour, the confluence of the rich and poor, skyscrapers overlooking hutments and slums, brightly lit buildings hosting glitzy and glamorous events and the hungry man who begs on the roads and sleeps on the streets. (more…)

Last week I happened to visit a nationalized bank after a long time. Frankly speaking I expected to see some changes in the office premises and the attitude of the employees. Not that all of them were the same always, but there were some branches whose employees were extremely helpful and courteous but I was talking about the approach adopted in these competitive times.

When I went to the counter to enquire, the officer just pointed me to another desk without even looking up at me. When I confirmed the direction, he just nodded and seemed to not care. The next experience was not too good either, a middle aged lady was handling some customers and wore a frustrated look, probably because of handling a continuous flow of customers from the morning. My problem seemed to evoke some interest on her face when she realized that she can get some easy deposits but that too disappeared when she came to know that I wanted to continue it at another branch of theirs. What followed were the same old pointers with fingers without much human touch. (more…)

The credit cards and easily available loans made almost everything available to the common man. When the generation of the 50s-70s worked a good 25 plus years to buy a decent house with minimum facilties and bought a car after the age of 40, the new generation is buying a much costlier and better equipped (loaded) or rather luxurious house at a much earlier age (early 30s) and this generation is also buying a car much earlier too. Of course the myriad professional options have resulted in greater opportunities for earning, but the thrust has mainly come in from easier funding - credit. However, there are still things out there that even credit will not allow many of the big dreamers to acquire.

Satiated at a much earlier age, it takes much more to now challenge and satisfy these young turks. High ticket paraphrenalia, available at the malls and exclusive shops, or even in the high-end shops don’t catch their attention at all. They are aiming much higher, at things not even in the luxury list of the average citizen (muggles!). The boundaries have been pushed much higher (monetarily). Now, what’s enabling these proponents of “dare-to-dream” to fulfil their dreams and desires has nothing to do with wizarding, but its the age old business of ‘Hiring’ and ‘Renting’! (more…)

Dear Sarita,

I am writing this letter which I am sure has come as a surprise to you. But it definitely would have brought back memories of our college days when we would exchange letters, I wish I had some of them with me today to read. But those carefree days when we would hold our hands and walk through the park, those tasty kulfis which we would relish and long nights where I would keep reading those letters and keep dreaming well in to the night.

Another reason I am writing is that I could not bear to listen to your voice on the phone, it is too painful for me, I still remember when you would keep calling just to persuade me to give our marriage another chance, but I believe I was blinded by the beauty of my colleague then to reconsider my decision to go through a divorce. But I guess it is now too late to think on those issues. (more…)

A friend of mine once took his dad for finishing some errands and to visit some friends. His dad never knew riding I suppose, but from the time he sat behind my friend’s two-wheeler, he kept on giving directions about what to do, when to change gears, when to apply brakes, whether to speed up or slow down, which road to take etc. Since it was his dad, my friend obliged and his dad’s assertions just grew stronger and stronger! At one particular point during their adventurous journey, his dad literally tore him apart for his allegedly irresponsible riding! That was it. The last straw. My friend stopped his vehicle. He asked his dad to get down. When he did, my friend quietly rode off asking him to reach home on a rickshaw!

We have had many a laughs about that incident, and poor uncle learnt a hard lesson that day. Now, by no means have I cited this incident to celebrate my friend’s decision making skills. It was not a good thing by any (Indian) standards. But I have highlighted the incident just to bring to your notice what happens when someone is victimised by back seat driving. Its really bugging when there is someone with you who gives you directions all the time. It’s as if they don’t trust your skills at all and also that they are judging distances and anticipating objects and vehicles better than you! It can be annoying. (more…)

The train chugged powerfully thru the drizzle as I kept waiving. This was the beginning of a journey; a journey which just like the train was powerfully pulling the load attached, moving against all odds, piercing thru darkness, thru the cold wind and the rain – unstoppable.

It was not the pull of the train that powered the journey, rather it was something else more powerful, that was moving forward – It was the journey of Truth. My mind couldn’t forget the young child’s smiling face, less than a year old. The journey reflected innocence, trust and childlike faith. This friend of mine was traveling out to a very remote jungle to meet an unknown tribe, a tribe which still is centuries behind the normal world, cutoff from the rest of the world this tribe still lives in prehistoric stone age era. (more…)

Three weeks before Christmas 1993, Wolfgang Dircks died while watching television. Neighbors in his Berlin apartment complex hardly noticed the absence of the 43-year-old. His rent continued to be paid automatically out of his bank account.

Five years later, 1998 the money ran out, and the landlord entered Dircks’ apartment to inquire. He found Dircks’s remains still in front of the tube. The TV guide on his lap was open to December 3, the presumed day of his death. Although the television set had burned out, the lights on Dircks’s Christmas tree were still twinkling away.

It’s a bizarre story, but it shouldn’t surprise us. Each year thousands of people are found accidentally days or weeks after their solitary deaths in the affluent cities and suburbs of the world. If a person can die in such isolation that his neighbors never notice, how lonely was he when alive? (more…)

It was 7pm and I was fuming.  Nothing had gone right for me.  The ideas that I had painstakingly worked on all week were dismissed by my boss in less than three seconds. 

A colleague had promised to help me get through my deadline but conveniently forgot.  My cellphone service provider threatened to block my outgoing calls if I did not pay the bill till the end of the day and worst of them all….my paycheck arrived…and the young upstart who joined the company yesterday was suddenly earning more than me! (yes…I sneaked into his payslip…come on, my suspicion wasnt without reason!!) (more…)

Come first week of April and you’ll find it very difficult to get a hotel booking in all the best locations in the country. Reason being almost all sales driven organization will be having their strategy meet or plan for the year 08-09.

They will be planning the entire strategy and targets for the year. The targets is then distributed according to the zone, region and location. Every employee gets their share of target. The meeting goes for two days and at the end of the day there’s a huge party where everybody has a target of how many pegs they’ll gulp down!! (more…)

‘Workaholic’, ‘Stressed Out’ these have been western phenomenon’s for our forefathers who used to work in the dusty and worn out offices of the government and PSU’s for the first 50 odd years from our independence until it one day quite surprisingly had sprung its neck in our families which for us existed only in Manhattan! And may be by a stretch of our imagination in Bombay too! Most of the Indian middle class was brought up in this atmosphere where being late in office was unacceptable to the elders and a taboo when it came to working women! (more…)