Slideworld Powerpoint templates

Thursday, June 30, 2005

A Working Woman

I enjoy being a "working woman" as named by the society. There are so many aspects of life I get exposed to & my education and hardwork get its due. There is a kind of confidence when I face the world but there were some "not so pleasant" experiences I have gone through. When I look back I am quite amused, as now I know how to cope to a certain extent.


  • I had just got married and the only thing men would ask is if I knew how to cook. Their only way to believe it was to be invited home which I was never comfortable as they were just colleagues and not friends. According to me, to like cooking is more of a personal interest rather than being a working/non-working woman. I actually enjoy cooking but I did not want to relent to these males just to prove my cooking skills.
  • There were some colleagues who would have a standard joke if they ever saw me eating of my lunch box. The joke would be 'Did your husband cook it for you?' and my standard response would be 'I am looking out for a cook, would you like to apply for the post'.
  • There was one guy who out of the blue asks me 'How does your husband manage?'
  • Recently one incident was a bit too much. I was leading a team which required the team members to put in stretched hours. My daughter was around 6 months old when I joined the project. Since my Mother is baby sitting her I had no worries at all and I worked as late as the job required. Once while having breakfast with 2 other team mates, I was stressing the point of staying late as we needed to cover lot of work. One of the guys tells me "I don't know why you stay so late. You should think about your daughter. Looks like you are really cruel and don't have a heart of a mother". I was taken aback. Without getting flustered or letting my emotions out I gave him the explanations and reasons.

I sometimes wondered what could be the basis of these questions. Then I came up with this theory. These questions usually come from men(my context here is the workplace) who haven't seen their mother working or is married to a house wife or is a bachelor who is just a 'baccha' in the world!!!

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Yoga Addicts

Yoga is such an Indian thing. I have practiced Yoga & Pranayama as a child to my teens. As we grow older we have other modern areas to explore. Yoga then becomes a forgotten world. We then learn it through the westerners and get inspired.

My husband - Sridhar & I are not the western inspired kind. So it didn't help at all. Then came Ramdevji on Aastha Channel. We heard a lot about him here and there. Sridhar started practicing watching TV early in the morning. I was too lazy for that.

Few months later we saw ads on TV & newspapers about an Yoga camp by Ramdevji in Bangalore. We jumped at this opportunity and got the tickets.

It was a week long session. We used to get up around 3:30 am every morning to reach in time for the camp. I had cold and a running nose but nothing deterred us. Ramdevji taught us Pranayama & Yoga. He concentrated on Pranayama more and further stressed a lot on a Pranayama technique called 'Kapalbhaati'.

To lead an healthy life he suggested a 15 mins Pranayama package everyday (possibly twice a day). This Pranayama package included 7 basic exercises:


  1. Bhastrika
  2. Kapalbhaati
  3. Agnisaar
  4. Baghai
  5. Anulom Vilom
  6. Brahmhari
  7. Uthgeedh

Every morning we try catching up on these exercises. If there isn't time for all, I don't forget the "Kapalbhaati" :-)

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

My nephew Ananth

One of my colleagues who is just 2 years younger to me feels so young that he calls me Aunty. I shared the 'Mediation' post with him and this is what he says:

"u write ur self as being a fun loving person etc ..
then why these serious topics ... "

I reply to this:

"Meditation? serious? you got it all wrong boy :-)"

And Ananth gets at his creative best and here is what we got:

gyaan do ... aunty ji ...
is bacche ko gyaan do ...
chota hoon ...
naadaan hoon
akal ka kaccha hoon
gyaan do
gyaan do ... aunty ji ...
is bacche ko gyaan do ...

Meditation Group

My friend 'Tim' as I call him wanted to start a Meditation club. The plan was to spend 20-30 mins everyday on meditation. So that this doesn't hog our work time we decided to have it during the office lunch hours.

So initially Tim, Vilas, Siddarth & I met up for a discussion. Tim told us what meditation was about. Meditation is bringing about awareness to oneself. We forget we are such powerful sources and if there is this self realization we can do wonders. We discussed for sometime and we decided to meet.

I couldn't attend the initial sessions as I was caught up at work. Then finally I made it and there we were, around 5-6 of us. Tim was leading the meditation. He told us the steps to do it.

Quite simple: Take 5-6 long deep breaths, this relaxes the body. Then let the breathing be normal and focus on the breath. Initially there were so many thoughts. They were crazy running around like mad. Slowly the mind quietened and there was peace. End of the session I looked around and it felt so good. This lasted for 20 mins.

We repeated the sessions for 21 days so as to see that this becomes a part of our system. We continued and we enjoyed each and every session. It got better everytime.

To me I value each and every person in the meditation group. There is a feeling that we share so much with each other. Amit, Sidharth, Tim, Vilas, Arushi are like the best friends I ever had.

We had some get togethers in Coffee Day and then b'day get togethers and I must say it was always fun time.

Now I have moved to a different office location and miss the meditation sessions. Vilas was here for a short period and we had 3-4 sessions but now he isn't at this location so back to no-meditation days. I hope I find a group here soon so that we can start a meditation group here too...