Differences aren’t so bad, you know!

“I do not, for the moment atleast, ask you to understand me. That will come only when you are willing to give up changing me into a copy of you.” ~David Keirsey

    It’s sometimes so frustrating when people expect me to react the way they would or like what they like all the time. I know what you are thinking but no, I’m not this headstrong person always wanting to have my way. I can be docile to some extent, in fact, to a great extent but if you want to see yourself in me, well, for God’s sake get yourself a mirror and leave me alone!

    I think relationships would be a lot easier if only we could understand that people are different from each other in their thoughts, perspective, likes, dislikes…whatever. Just ‘cos someone doesn’t see things the way you do doesn’t mean the person doesn’t belong to your league.

    While we expect variety in everything - from the things we see to the things we do - why is it so difficult to take, in stride, some variety in people’s attitude and opinions? The way we homo sapiens are biologically wired (No, I don’t know about the other species. I’m not from the Discovery Channel) it’s almost impossible that someone would act and react just the way you do. If you find someone reacting ‘your‘ way all the time, trust me, either that person is lying to you big time or watch out, you’ve been cloned!

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The road I took…

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I took the one less traveled by,
And that has lead me back to square one!

It’s not working, Mr. Frost!

 

Paying bills online? No thanks!

    The airtel.in site - that looks impeccably professional at first sight - can seriously get on your nerves sometimes. Ok, I understand for a person with a flash memory (meaning, I forget everything in a flash), changing passwords every month is not a security option but a dumb idea. But just because I changed my airtel.in password sometime back and forgot the new password doesn’t mean Airtel can subject me to a mental torment, right? I need to pay my mobile bill, which is already a week overdue and the site is doing everything possible to stop me from paying it. Now, don’t ask me why I didn’t walk into an Airtel office to pay it. That’s a physical torment!

    So, for the record, here’s what happened. I went to the airtel.in site and entered my username (which, thankfully being my mobile number, is easy to remember) and password. It opened a pop-up asking me to enter my username/password again…yes, again! Now, this is not because I entered the wrong password the first time. It just happens to be Airtel’s standard login procedure - enter your username/password twice to prove that you aren’t lazy. So, I took up the challenge of proving that I’m not lazy and entered my username/password again…only to get a blank white screen staring blankly at me. Now, that’s not a very polite way of saying I failed the challenge right? I closed the window and logged in again. Now, it said, “Please open a new browser for new session“. Security reasons huh? Feeling glad that someone is taking my security seriously, I opened a new browser window and logged in again. It said again, “Please open a new browser for new session” and I said, “what the hell!”. It was a new browser window, after all. It took me a moment to understand that when they say ‘open a new browser’, they mean, ‘close all your existing browser windows and open a brand new browser window’. Now, don’t you think that’s a bit too haughty of Airtel? to make me close all my important browser windows - orkut, gmail, yahoomail and a couple of blogs (from where I was trying to steal ideas) - just to relogin to their site? Thankfully, they didn’t ask me to reinstall my browser or much worse, reinstall Windows or much much worse, buy a new PC each time I have to login to their site. Probably their security team is thinking of that right now.

    Anyway, I did what I was told - closed all my browser windows, opened a fresh browser and logged in again. To appreciate all my efforts, this time the blank screen was replaced by a rather polite ‘Authentication failed‘ screen. I closed the pop-up and logged in again. “Please open a new browser for new session“. Shucks! I forgot that!

    After repeating the above cycle for ‘n’ number of times (where n is a multiple of infinity), I finally got my password right. I heaved a sigh of relief (that almost startled the person sleeping..er sitting next to me) and proceeded to pay my bill. Did I succeed? No! This time it was “Payment not processed. Please try again later“. With a string of expletives - which, had I said louder would’ve gotten me out of my job without even a severance package - I was about to give up. However, the fact that I got so close to paying my bill encouraged me for a few more cycles. The result of my “try, try and try until you are tired” determination: the same blank screen that stared blankly at me during my first attempt. Back to screen one…er square one. I gave up there! I still haven’t paid my bill and hence, my mobile connection could get disconnected any moment (I can see my friends heaving a sigh of relief here…wonder why?).

    The infamous ‘Communication Error’ on the irctc.co.in had, long back, made me realise that having a PC and an Internet connection doesn’t make life any easier. Airtel only reaffirms that now. I can now see why my dad grinned when I told him I’ve started paying bills online. So much for me trying to appear internet-sauvy to him! :(

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A serenity prayer

“Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.“

    I say this little prayer every time I feel down, upset or frustrated. Though not a charm to lift my spirits up instantaneously, it does keep me from hitting rock bottom.

    There’s a fine line between what we can change and what we can’t; and a finer line between what we can change and what isn’t worth changing. Knowing where to draw these two lines is, what I think, the key to staying sane. Most of the time we put in so much effort (physically and emotionally) in trying to change the things that aren’t just worth it and in the process, tend to neglect ones that actually need amending; and at the end of the day, we regret both - what we have done and what we have NOT done.

    I think life would be much simpler if only there was a guidebook (technically, an instruction manual), complete with an index, listing down every can-be-changed, cannot-be-changed, need-to-be-changed, need-not-be-changed, should-be-changed and should-not-be-changed aspect of life. Place your situation in one of the six categories and you’ll know what has to be done. hmmm…sadly, life is never meant to be that simple and hence, one such book never gets published. So, at those times when you don’t know whether to ‘do something about it’ or ‘just shut up, put up and move on’; and the very thought of deciding between the two intimidates you, it helps to say, “Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.”

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Unnale Unnale

    If you are wondering why I’m writing a review on this movie almost two months after it was released, well, this isn’t really a review on the movie. Being a person who watches movies at the rate of one per month, I know my blog doesn’t qualify for movie reviews

    This post is just my thoughts on the concept that the movie is based on. Anytime I have a serious discussion on the movie with any guy, it almost often starts a He-She argument between us. The reason for the argument: the claim from the guy that all women are fighter-cocks (or should I say fighter-hens?) like the character Jhansi in the movie and this overly generalized claim gets on my nerves.

    The movie starts off - the exact sequence of events, I don’t remember - with the female lead character, Jhansi, getting mad at her boyfriend for living his life the way he wants - flirting with other women. The guy, Kathick is westernized (I say western here cos someone recently told me that in the west you are allowed to kiss a bride in front of your girl, while the bridegroom is standing right there looking like an idiot..and you are also allowed to eat pizzas like a pig disgustingly) while Jhansi is traditional and old-fashioned in her views (the same someone told me this too).

    Jhansi strongly disapproves her guy’s playboy attitude and says so to him, which is interpreted by the guy (and the guys* watching the movie) as fighting over silly things. So, what does she do? She thinks over the matter seriously, realizes the relationship is not working because of their differences in opinions and takes a decision that she feels is best for both of them (all the while, remember, the guy is having the time of his life with other women) and breaks up with him. This is interpreted by the guy (and the guys watching the movie) as being ditched by her.

    Later in the movie, Jhansi meets Karthik in Australia coincidently and tries to act aloof just to avoid further trouble between the two. This is interpreted by the guy (and, again, by the guys watching the movie) as being rude. After a series of expected and unexpected turn of events, songs, whatever…Jhansi finally gives her guy up to the gorgeous girl who comes out of nowhere and supposedly understands him perfectly well. This is interpreted by the guy (but NOT by the guys watching the movie) as a sane decision; he grabs the opportunity and marries the pretty girl. End of story!

    Now, while the guy in the movie, right from the beginning to the end, is incapable of coming to any decent conclusion on the relationship, the guys watching the movie come to a conclusion that all women are arrogant, stubborn and rude just cos the role was projected that way in the movie and was enacted by an actress (Sadha) who was, incidentally, born with smug look on her face that even plastic surgeons couldn’t erase. So, for you guys who watched the movie and came to the same conclusion, let me tell you, you got the concept of the movie entirely wrong.

    I actually liked the movie a lot (except for those scenes lifted straight from hindi movies…and the hero, Vinay, who sports a permanent ginger-eating-monkey** expression!) for the very reason that I liked the book “Men are from mars, women are from venus”. What the movie tries to bring out is that men and women are basically wired differently and that is something one has to keep in mind when trying to work out relationships issues. Instead, if you’re gonna keep cribbing all the time about your partner not understanding you and keep trying to shift the blame of every friction in the relationship over to the other side…well, what can I say, you are better off living with someone from your own planet.

    The movie also sends another message to the women, a very required one: never take men seriously!

* When I say ‘guys’ I mean ‘most guys’, ’some guys’ or ‘few guys’ depending on how strongly you disagree with me

** If you are from Tamil Nadu, you must be familiar with the phrase, ginger-eating-monkey. If you aren’t, next time you see a monkey, try feeding it a piece of ginger, watch it’s expression and then, see the movie and let me know if you found a match!