A rollercoaster 2020

 While 2020 has been an eventful year for almost every person on this globe, and I am thankful for me and my family to be alive,  unscarred by Covid at the end of the year, this year has been a roller coaster ride.

😔 In Jan, travelled to parents' place at hometown unplanned a day before my daughter's eighth birthday, the first she would celebrate there after her first one. In the evening, my 90+ grandfather had a head injury and I spent the night at hospital.

😔 In Feb, on the day of Sivarathri (Shivratri), I woke up with the phone call bringing the news of expiry of my grandmother - attended her funeral at hometown.

😐 In the March weekend of Janata Curfew and the lockdown, I was supposed to travel to my hometown for my grandma's rituals, only held up due to WFH preparations and chaos on Friday night at my office. Thanks to that, I was not locked down at hometown, now in a different state thanks to bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh, away from my family in Hyderabad. Three of my father's brothers didn't have that luck - stuck for 3 months at my hometown.

😀 In the middle of Covid chaos, thanks to the unexpected time and rest gifted, I decided to make a career move and attended a series of interviews over a month for a small company - my first trail to shift organization after 16 years of honeymoon with my first company!

😐 Not sure how many would have braved to shift from a 250,000 big ship to a 700 boat in the current pandemic situation! 

😀 Only time will tell whether choosing the new company is a wise decision, at least, leaving the previous employer is a non-regrettable one on seeing my first full month salary credited to my bank account today.

😔 Woke up on my birthday this December with the call from my wife about the demise of my mother-in-law, took the car to highway only to realize it's the day of National Strike of farmers, evaded rallies at three junctions by requesting, only to be stuck at the fourth road-blockade on a bridge for 1.5 hours - Stuck alone in car in a roadblock (Rasta roko) on a National Highway without breakfast and lunch - the most unforgettable birthday. The worst part was not able to catch the funeral at right time.

😔 In September, for the first time in Covid, ventured with family out of town to visit a close family member's home. A person there caught the virus few days after we returned, causing tension for few days about his well-being, but finally relieved when he recovered safely. 

😐 In total, attended 3 weddings and 1 funeral, visited beach, a famous temple, with young kids post-Covid. Missed another wedding and a funeral of a close one during peak Covid times.

 😐Considering I would enter into 40s this December, I aimed at a weight loss of 6 kilos at the start of this year. Covid break again helped me in trying out yoga, all kinds of diets (tried GM, intermittent fasting, even Mantena's all raw vegetables diet) - reached the target of -6 at one point, but as of today, the delta is -1.5kg. I would take this, as not gaining weight while  staying at home for 9 months itself is an achievement. Check the graph.

😀 Thanks to WFH for 9 months (~180-200 working days), no need of driving ~140KM per day to/fro office means I saved a minimum 1600L of fuel and related emissions to the Earth; 27,000KM mileage and depreciation for my car - also conserving my time and my body as well.

😀 Started writing extensively in Telugu on a social media forum - posted 100+ answers for 100+ K views.

Thanks for reading till the end. Wish you all a happy new year 2021.

'Journey' - My Tryst with Accidents

I have recently watched a Telugu movie named, Journey (dubbed from Tamil: Engeyum Eppodum). The movie is about love stories of two couples and the impact of a major bus-bus accident on their lives. Excellence (subjective and of course as per Indian/Tamil standards) in various departments like story, screenplay, photography, music and direction has made the movie worth watching and the accident scenes needing a special mention. But, this post is not about the movie, but about what it wants to convey – road accidents.

The accident scene in the movie is shot in such a realistic and horrifying manner that it has started playing on my mind, which has never been the case.

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While I was in teens, whenever I read/watch an accident news, specially a major one – I used to think why not me; why I was not in that bus/train; I too travel often (every vacation – Dasara/Pongal/Summer); I used to dream that I was travelling in such a bus/train, but miraculously escape from the accident. But, sadly it never happened after I grew up. *Please, don’t assume me as a sadist/psycho/wicked.

While I was 7, a lorry (truck) hit our scooter on which Dad, Anna (brother), Mom and I were riding at Benz Circle, Vijayawada - everyone was jumped off the scooter – I rolled on the road for quite a distance and stopped dangerously close to the rear tyres of the truck. Though I escaped with minor injuries (scar disappeared in a few years), I don’t have a vivid memory of the complete scene.

Then, when I was around 11, I sat alone beside a right-side window at the back of the bus leaving mom and Anna sitting at the front. On a busy road, when the bus was stationary, the rear end of a truck coming from opposite side touched the bus and its rear-door chains stuck into the window exactly where I was sitting. Everyone including mom were scared, but I was watching it as a fun. I was sad too as it was not that thrilling with not even window getting smashed.

The itch (to come alive out of an accident) grew exponentially during my engineering, when I had to travel to a college on NH5 40kms away. I used to see damaged or over-turned vehicles on the road side almost every day. Why not one of them happens while I watch? Why not that happens to the bus I was going? During those journeys, I had seen some major accident scenes. Some happened few moments before we passed and some could have happened to our bus, but the chance went to the preceding. One of such accidents had one side of a private bus completely ripped off and some 30 bodies were moved into autos.

But, the wait was over one day. During third year, I and four other classmates got into an Express bus at college leaving another close friend MK who had a student pass. After 10 minutes, the driver tried an ambitious overtake around an overloaded (chili bags) tractor – the tractor fell half-way into a side-by ditch and a truck from opposite hit the bus on the right. Nobody was injured.  We were put into another bus. This time, I was standing beside the driver.  Twenty minutes into the journey, while trying to overtake an 18-wheeler truck-trailer the left-front side of the bus hit the trailer. That was a wow moment for me, to watch a live accident and had two incidents in a single journey; though, not fully satisfied as it was a minor hit. Again, none was injured. 

I was looking for more. A few months later, I and a friend LM (can compete with Kumbhakarna for his sleep in buses) got into a bus on return journey leaving MK on that instance too – I took the last seat and he was one row ahead. LM started sleeping; I tried to sleep on the last row lying horizontally, but could not. So, I got up and started gazing through the left window; Suddenly a BANG! And another BANG! A truck in the front applied sudden brake; our bus driver tried his best, but couldn’t avoid hitting; the front windows got smashed. At the same time, another truck hit our bus from rear; it was an old truck that had engine coming out (like cars). The engine protruded into the bus damaging the right side of the last row. And, there I was, on the left side on the same last row seeing this collision.

No, I was not shocked. I was not injured. Many in the bus got injured, mainly with foreheads hitting the front seats due to sudden brake. I woke up LM (yeah, still sleeping) and he asked rubbing his eyes, “What! Guntur came up so quickly?” I need not tell how much I pulled his leg in the college later. I can write a full post on his sleeping in the buses. Yeah! We had never left MK behind while taking bus.

Then, we were put into a different bus and there it was – my moment – my dream – everyone in that bus asking for the details and me telling the story – a live accident that I had live through.

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Now, for the last 7 years (excepting the US stints), I have been travelling regularly (once or twice a month) from Hyderabad to my home-town Guntur – most often by bus (private/APSRTC) - start on Friday night and return on Monday morning . The journey includes NH9, one of the most accident-prone highways in the country, taking away hundreds of lives every year.

On every such journey, I see at least one accident and many ‘just-miss’ incidents. Two minor accidents happened to the bus I was in. Many times, I would be sitting in the left side window of the last rows, running parallel to a truck driver, only for the truck driver to put brake at the last moment to allow our bus to slide in. Still, I never had a ‘heart in the mouth’ kind of feeling because I have seen many before during college. However, since the day I watched this Journey movie, I have become philosophical about life as well as little worried about journeys. Wish, I come back to myself quickly as now I dream of driving car to Guntur one day in near future.

Hope at least 1% of these horrendous drivers that watch this movie think twice when they come on the road.

In those days...

“In those days…”
“In my days…”
“Those days are golden. They would never come…”
Are you one of those who often use any of these expressions? Or are you one of those feeling cursed to be there whenever you are on the receiving end of such sentences?
I am from the first group. I am nostalgic. I accept that I live in past memories and I love to do it. Every now and then, I think how I was at a certain period of my life and how I enjoyed during some incidents.

I have this tendency from my childhood. I was constantly remembering my school days during +2, +2 days during engineering, engineering days when I started working; training period is on the extreme end – I have never stopped recollecting them.

Although I enjoy this, sometimes I have felt whether I have been doing this a bit more. I might be living in the past to such extreme that I neglect the present and the future. Once, I felt the wrath of one of my friends for sending a mail with some nostalgic photos and a funny old chain mail.

But I am a bit happy after going through various sites like YouTube, Orkut communities and blogs; that I am not alone and there are many people who like to do so and who miss those days. They feel happy if there is someone else who think the same and share similar feelings and experiences.

It is good to reminisce those days… once in a while; it helps us to refresh ourselves and helps us to get back to the journey revitalized.

Saying this, precaution should be taken that we think about others while being nostalgic; it should not be a routine activity boring the people around us.

It does no harm as long as we do not live in the past forgetting we have a long journey ahead.

True Friendship

I have had an interesting conversation recently with two of my friends-cum-engineering classmates recently. Since coming to the US, I have been spending on average of 1-2 hours per week on phone with one of them, with whom I could be only in contact through email generally once in a month or two.
We were discussing on the same thing in that call and questions came up on the friendship; and as usual I have started thinking a lot on this.

What is a true friendship? If I do not spend at least an hour with a person, share feelings, thoughts and occasions – would that make the person no longer a friend of mine?

As the journey of life goes, we meet many people. We simply forget some, while some become just acquaintances whereas a few become our close friends; And only those who have something in common with us would come closer to us and we respond with the same intensity. But, as the journey continues, the paths may split due to interests, goals and other reasons – our priorities might change; our life styles might alter; our way of thinking would definitely change; so, those two persons now living different kinds of life, could they still hold the bond of friendship with same intensity? If they can’t share things as they used to, would that make just acquaintances and not friends?

What has made me ponder over these thoughts is not solely due to the conversation with my engineering friend; I have started thinking on this long time back –
I have a childhood friend – our relationship started in school when we were 10; we went on to study together till +2 – our friendship extended then to our elder brothers and then to two families to such an extent that people think our moms are friends because of which we have become close. Now, once I joined engineering and he joined science graduation – although we met every day, I had started spending more time with my engineering friends, giving more priority to them during academic year. Initially, this turned into a gap between us and some conflicts appeared, but we have sorted them out.

The gap was due to the fact that I couldn’t share all my things in the engineering college with him and that engineering requires more time and effort compared to a normal B.Sc.

When I joined IT industry and moved from my native city, the gap started appearing again – even though I talk with him on phone quite regularly, my priorities have changed. Our friendship still continues – however, I don’t communicate with him so often as I do with some friends of relatively less priority and even some distant acquaintances; This is because, he rarely comes online.
Some of things I can’t share with him because he wouldn’t be able to understand the context.

So, I started thinking has our friendship got diluted? Are we just pretending to be
friends – as we no longer share thoughts and feelings?

I want to say the answer is “No” and I believe that is the answer. But, that doesn’t stop me thinking on what true friendship is; will it require being physically in the same geographical area – seeing each other often;

Still thinking…