As Per Plan (APP)

I thought I had the perfect plan.. I came up with it in all of 5 minutes while travelling in a local cab from a client’s office back to work. Amidst the traffic, hunger pangs and lack of conversation, it came to me like an amazing scientific discovery. (Some of you who will read this know of that plan.. the others don’t need to know just yet) So while i thought that the perfect life plan (though may be a bit too optimistic for someone like me) might work out some day, as time went by, it seemed more of a long shot and is now nothing more than entertainment value.

All of my life plans have met a similar fate, gone with the wind before they could see the light of day. Now I’m an analyst at heart and anything you do or say around me, I will analyse. I will not judge but I will scrutinise in my head and how...Some of my closet friends suffer from similar disorders, but we all believe we are better off this way.
They say 'Great Things Come In Simple Packages'. I say “Great Learning comes through Simple Conversation. “
This evening I had one such simple conversation.. one of the longest and nicest in a longgg time,... (Different time zone does make it a little difficult to keep in touch) during which, it dawned on me that my life has not gone APP...EVER

I don’t know how much this is true for everyone but speaking from personal experience, I’ve spent half my life planning what my life should be and am spending the other half wondering why This Life hasn’t turned out quite the way I wanted it to be RT@ Nickelback.

What if life had gone As Per Plan? (Err.. first of all, which plan ) May be I would’ve been a shrink today minting money somewhere counselling freaks in some foreign land.. or may be I would’ve been a happily married mother of one or may be... well.. I’ll never know..This APP funda is more like a myth to me.

Why do we indulge so much in planning our life that at some level we forget to live it?
Are we that afraid of what’s out there or is it just a way of consoling ourselves saying.. "May be All is not so Well now but All shall be Well eventually". & when these life altering plans fall flat right in front of our eyes, we make e a bigger, more unrealistic one.
The smarter ones among us make more foolproof life plans, those that involve a backup or what we call Plan B (you know who you are..... :) )

Such is life & such is hope..As long as there’s hope, there will always be a plan and as long as there is a plan, there will always be hope that it works. It’s a vicious cycle I tell you, you just cannot get out of it.

When i planned in real time, at 17 I wanted to be a psychologist, at 19 ,an Economics major, at 20 I wanted to study at TISS & at 22 I wanted to service Cartoon Network. At 24 I wanted to pursue an MBA and at 25 I wanted to be anything other than a PR professional...If life had gone as per plan, it just wouldn’t have been my life.
At almost 27... I need a new plan.

P.S : This one’s to all those simple, fabulous phone conversations I wish I had more often

FRIENDS NOverdose

It’s a hot Sunday afternoon and you are chilling at home after a nice lunch...As you switch on the television, 9 times out of 10, you’ll end up watching the 100th re-run of FRIENDS (mostly for lack of a better option).. and you will find yourself laughing your heart out. still...
FRIENDS is almost everyone’s favourite. Everyone has watched it and everyone continues to watch it.
As I sat aimlessly this Sunday afternoon and watched the episode where everyone shows up late for Pheobie’s birthday dinner, I wondered what is it about this show that keeps us coming back for more??
Is it just the humour or the characters?? Or is it the setting or just the concept??? It is one of the very few cult shows everyone can relate to in some way or the other.
Just like all of us who have a group of girls (This holds true for all my girls) always imagine ourselves as the Sex and the City girls with our long lunches and cocktail dinners, all of us, somewhere, somehow know a Ross ( i sure know one ). While some of us might relate to Daddy’s girl turning independent Rachel, all of us have definitely met a Chandler and a Joey..Most of us indentify with at least one of their traits.. be it the sarcasm ,the commitment phobia, casual flirting or love for food
We have all at least once in our life said ‘Ohhh My Godd” ..
We have definitely wanted to sit on the couch in a coffee shop (Coffee shops have couches now thanks to FRIENDS)..
We even nickname people as adjectives ala Ugly Naked Guy.( I & the girls had nicknamed people Creepy Crawly and Jack in the Box in our bitchy days)
We would’nt think before telling someone, “God, Could you be anymore like Chandler” and expect him to understand what we are talking about.
Episodes, incidents and dialogues are top of mind recall for us
We all say we've had enough of FRIENDS but we still do watch it if it's on.. whatever the reason might be and crib about movies like Jab We Met which are on TV almost every week.
If that weren’t the case, we wouldn’t have both our English programming channels run FRIENDS for us day in and day out including weekends.
We quote FRIENDS like we would quote Shakespeare..
We even take quizzes on FB to test our FRIENDS IQ and anything less than a perfect score is a shame.
FRIENDS , a show that has captured the imagination of generations and continues to do so with its marathon re-runs.. A show that has become part of our lives, kind of like a real life Friend.
A show we might never ever get enough of.
My guess is, sometimes, it is all in a name.

P.S : This one’s to everyone who still loves FRIENDS like me.

Why grow up ??

As I listen to Nickelback sing, “Time is going by so much faster than I...”.. I cannot help but wonder.. When exactly did it just pass me by?

When did the innocence of a school kid get lost somewhere in the search of a street smart teenager, when his curiosity got lost in the fear of sounding ignorant? All the toys and games lost to the charm of television & telephone...This was the coming of age..

A time when working on projects all through the night was fun...

When you did not know friends could be categorised...
When mass bunking was in the league of a dream come true...
When petty fights started and ended on the campus...
When what you understood of politics was a class of 100 students trying to mug up Articles...
When anything that cost under 20 bucks was a delicious wholesome meal...
When there was a term called ‘healthy competition’...
When people broke bottles in the canteen foyer only to be applauded by the rest of us...
When the worst thing that could happen to you was a pimple on your face...
When the Xerox guy was the ultimate life saver...
When you could stand in the sun for hours to cheer your team on without cribbing about the heat...
When Xavier’s not winning Malhar was the biggest crisis on the planet whether you were part of it or not...
When stress meant not having enough attendance in a particular class...& a bad day was when someone could not give your proxy...
When you did not mind getting up early on Saturday if you had to go to college...
When you were sure your Prince charming was out there... maybe even on campus...
When the stock market was just a bunch of numbers and the newspaper was where the crossword was...
When you only needed to know the answers to only 6 of the 10 questions..
When coming back home was the last thing that you ever wanted to do...

From the thrill of sneaking out of the house to go for a drink to planning a house party when your parents are not in town, I have lost a huge part of who I was to become what I think I want to be

P.S - This one's come after a long time for all those who can relate to the nostalgia