The extra day

One of those rare occasions when I am home on 29th February. I am jet lagged from a recent trans-atlantic flight and needed a day off from office to regain my senses. I spent the morning watching the Oscars. I was not rooting for anyone particular but it warmed my heart to see spotlight, mad max fury road and Brie Larson and Leonardo Di Caprio win. Then a friend reminded be of this being an extra day in 4 years and I knew what I wanted to do.

I have been trying to write and gather my thoughts about a lot of things. For a while. But I have usual suspects of work and more work and travel and more travel keeping me off track. So I'll try to streamline my thoughts on this extra day, offered to calendar following humans every 4 years.

I'll start with spotlight. Movies based on journalism are always tricky. Not just from subject matter perspective but how journalism is viewed in society in its current form. We are in an era when reporting concepts and mediums have changed. So to be presented with a piece of investigative journalism done right, feels almost surreal. The journalists in the team do a very drudge job, of actually going through records and records of information, line by line; interviewing individuals one at a time; collecting and arranging all the facts and joining the dots; and making a legal, legitimate case aimed at attacking the institution while protecting the individuals. I think this is how un-glamorous most real jobs are. Nothing but individuals working hard and slogging. I found that very relevant and powerful in our times of sensationalism.

'To kill a mocking bird' is one of my most favorite books. It still shapes a lot of my world view. I love Atticus. I was so saddened by Harper Lee's death few weeks ago. I have a list of people (people I know but who don't know me) I would like to thank and she was on my list for creating the book. I cannot imagine I would not get to do this. So here I am trying to say thank you.
My favorite Atticus quote :

"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what."

I have not run a single mile since the marathon last month. I am trying to take a break and rest and recover. Until now I have succeeded. May be I can even write a separate post about how to take and enjoy down time. I have not woken up at ungodly hours just to complete a run. I am eating whatever I want, whenever I want i.e. without worrying about the run next day. I am also staying up late whenever I feel like especially if I want to get some reading done or watch a late night movie. Still, I miss waking up early and not having a routine. Alas. And I am glad for that because from tomorrow new running year kick starts! Yay!

I met my grad school roommate last week after 5 years. At first I was excited but as the lunch progressed I started to feel uncomfortable. I dint know what I had anticipated, but as it happens with me on most social interactions I ended up feeling confused. I mean it was great to catch up and all, but I realized we dint have much to talk about. We did end up talking about women in engineering though and lamenting on the fact that at most meetings, trainings and conferences, we are the 'only' or 'among the only few' women. Of course we both agreed this did not impact how we were treated. But we agreed there is also a large age gap and how at times it becomes very difficult to let go of the gender i.e. 'I am the only woman here, are they taking me seriously' doubt. Uh well, not all social interactions are weird. I'll end with saying that I am glad for this part of the conversation that we met.

For posterity's sake I am going to document this. I had a close shave with a tornado last week. We were driving from Richmond to Lynchburg in Virginia for a work meeting, when the weather app on my colleague's iPhone gave an alert of a tornado half an hour away. He checked the weather map and as a precaution we decided to wait in a parking lot in a town called Farmville. Yes, I am not making this up. So after 20 minutes of waiting we started driving again. On our way we witnessed snapped trees, shattered and broken roofs of houses. Thanking the weather app and the smart phone we made it to the hotel. The next day we got to know that the tornado had a 8 mile radius, disrupted electricity in the nearby area and had taken 4 lives. Wow! I am only thankful I did not decide to drive on my own that day, because I am pretty sure I would have driven into the tornado, without any weather app on my phone to warn me, in time.

The end of the tour

When I told a friend few years ago, that I was in love with David Foster Wallace, he chuckled and was amused by my choice of literary heroes, given Wallace's personal struggle. I had to convince him then, that I didn't do this choosing consciously, its something that happens. Organic is the correct word to the process, if there ever was one. It holds true for most things in my life. At least that's what I would like to believe. Like running happened to me naturally, without any external or internal imbalance. In a, 'it was meant to be' kind of way. Most of my friendships have been that way. The ones which were not, did not last long. (I used to be sad about it, because these were perfectly nice people to have friendship with. But I had to make peace with myself).

Anyway, I digressed! The moral of the story is, I am attracted to flawed and imperfect and broken people like Dave Wallace, naturally. And if you do too, then you should watch this new movie called 'the end of the tour'. The movie is nothing but conversations between DFW and the rolling stone journalist. But deep inside it reveals so much about what it means to be a certain kind of human being, through the words, eyes, experiences of one of the most brilliant writers.
As an afterthought, I would like to believe that the last scene kind of depicted Wallace to be free of his self-consciousness and finally out of his own head.

And if you are not familiar with DFW then do listen to this.

happy boxes

My work addled weekend found this -> http://www.purisubzi.in/post/50163457409/happybox

I stopped working after that. I started thinking about happy boxes.

An image came to my mind. Grandfather (nanaji/aajoba) giving me a book and an afternoon spent reading that or numerous other comic books/sherlock holmes books in his backyard. 

image courtesy - Pascal Campion

There is magic in going back to spaces you most loved during growing up. There is magic in re creating these all over again while growing up. Isn't that why one grows up ?

As the post linked above, I also have a physical box (a metal one in my case) and it stores all the trinkets of stuff too precious to be given away to forgetting. Do you have happy boxes ? What do you keep in them ?

Weekend in pictures! - II

Now that the ankle is fine I finally hit the road and ran a 5k loop, only to feel exhaustion and drugged slumber. Atonement the book (highly recommend) was completed with teary eyed thoughts about writing. Amorres perros (first in the bable triage) was seen and liked. Though the animal cruelty shown is disturbing. Dog lovers should avoid.
So here it is in pictures!!
* all images from google