Bloom Where you are planted

Although I work in the IT industry, I am not an IT person – I am a non techie – someone with a humanities background stuck in an IT company –When I started learning the language (Japanese) I had visions of myself wearing ethnic clothes from Fab India, doing literary translations and discussing Indo- Japanese art and literature over coffee. The only thing that has come true is that I wear ethnic clothes. Instead of doing literary translations I translate technical specifications and instead of discussing literature over coffee I spent my time with so called techie nerds who think Yasunari Kawabata is not worth knowing because he didn’t write an...

The month that was

Sometimes recession has its benefits. One of the benefits I got was that I managed to get almost the whole of December off to spend with my brother and sister in law who were visiting from New Zealand. The month was spent in Chandigarh in the “new house” with its huge floor to ceiling windows and airy rooms. But the only problem was that Chandigarh can be really cold in winter and airy rooms and floor to ceiling windows that are so delightful in summer aren't that great in winter.Any how before Bhaiya and Bhabhi landed in India, there were frenzied discussions on the phone on how this holiday was supposd to be quality family time and mom shouldn't...

A story for Shaivalini

My brother and his family visited us from New Zealand in Decemeber and I spent a blissfull month with them in Chandigarh.More about that later, but here is a story I wrote for my 10 year old niece Shaivalini. Shaivalini loves to read and paint and she also writes stories. She is a very creative and imaginative child and I wanted to gift her a story written by myself because I know how much she appreciates creative writing.Bina and the BirdThere was a little girl called Bina, who lived high up in the mountains in a house with a red roof. She lived with her grandpa and her grandma and had a dog called buddy and a goat called Tinker Bell as pets....