Category: Relationships

Synchronicity 4.

It has been quite some time since I wrote about synchronicity in my life and before I could even think about it, it happened when I opened the Facebook app today a while ago.

The first image posted by a dear friend and colleague was this:
I responded in the comments column as “It happened to me as you well know.”

The background to that comment – After almost a quarter century of working with one employer, I decided to quit due to differences with the top. I quit and moved to Pune, where I have lived for the past thirty-two years and it has been the only place that I would want to stay all these years.

The next image that was posted by another friend in Facebook, was this:
Yes, the life here has had its ups and downs and it has most certainly made me stronger.

The last image that I came across that sums up everything is a post from a friend of twenty two years from the same city where I live, who too has seen a lot of ups and downs and has shared those experiences with me as, I have mine with her.

No More Conversations.


Cellphones were invented to increase personal contacts between people and increase access to many services. What it has now done is to reduce conversations between people.

I must confess that I am guilty too. When motor mouth callers drone on, I interrupt to say that the reception is poor and that I am unable to hear properly and request for text messages. I prefer sending text messages rather than call up such characters too.

I however find that increasingly, people would rather text  than call each other up. If at all they do call each other, it is only for long conversations which will take time to text manually.

Apart from that smart phones have also made people increasingly tied to their phones in all kinds of situations and it would appear that it is assuming alarming levels of psychological problems. Here is an article talking about this problem in some detail.

On reflection I too seem to be afflicted with regular checking up of the handset for messages and twitter posts. I have decided to reduce this compulsive behaviour and hope that I succeed.

How about you? Are you addicted too?

What’s In A Name? Post 3.

The phone has not stopped ringing since yesterday. People who had not been in touch with me for long suddenly remembered that there is someone called Ramana that they know who lives in Pune and have been calling me to check if I am alive or not. Quite natural to wonder at my age and also theirs!

This is because a Rock Star like figure, The Chief Justice of India Shri N V Ramana retired and has been in the news since the last few days. Here is an article which will give you some idea. I doubt very much that there could be a news paper anywhere in India which would not have covered this important event.

People reading this remembered that there is another Ramana in their lives and so the sudden burst of phone calls and WhatsApp messages.

One “collateral benefit” of sharing the name with a celebrity.

Has anything like this happened to you dear reader?

International Dogs Day.

My day started with a message from a friend greeting me for International Dogs Day with this image included.

Till then, I did not even know that there was something like this in existence despite having been a dog lover all my life.

My friend did not know about my recent loss and I had to send him a link to my post on Chutki.

I am yet to get over the loss and that message and a few more later only made me more maudlin. I miss her terribly.

Chutki Is No More.

Chutki came into our home nine years ago. I had written in detail about her in my post in December 2013 and you can read that post here.

She has been a cheerful part of our family all these years and was also popular among many visitors to our home as well as in our neighbours.

She has been ailing for the past few weeks and slowly deteriorating. She even had to be hospitalised for a few days but, was so unhappy there that we brought her home.

She started to moan and groan this morning and was taken to the vet who diagnosed liquid in her lungs and suggested that we let her go. We did.

She was cremated with due honours just over ah hour ago.

Satgathi Praaptirastu. Om Shanti.

Decision Making.


Yesterday I started reading a book which was gifted to me by a friend and a statement caught my eye. “A Professor in a School of Management who has written a book on Decision Making, was offered positions in four different organisations and consulted a friend on which one to choose. The friend smiled and said, “Why ask me? You have written a book on Decision Making.” The Professor responds, “But, this is real life!”.

As it happens so often in my life two things happened one after the other after having read that little vignette.

A class mate from Business School is visiting Pune and, my two classmates residing now in Pune and I met up with him over tea at my club last evening. During the conversations, we naturally talked about our two years at the school and some of the faculty members.

Some Alumni have collected funds for instituting an annual award and the visiting friend suggested to a local friend, an academic, that he should suggest a criteria to decide on awarding a gold medal to an alumnus. This led to some hilarious discussions on decision making and naturally no conclusion could be arrived at.

This morning I received a clip via WhatsApp which led me to an interview with Kevin O’Leary of Shark Tank fame, which too talks about decision making which I am sure will amuse as well as rile some readers.