"Sure I will ask her," dad was on phone speaking with someone while entering the room.
"When will you log off?" Dad asked me. I knew there was something out of ordinary in the store for me.
" 7:30 maybe, I am not sure," I responded and awaited what is going to happen next.
"Mr Gokhale wants to meet you," dad informed me that his friend from our complex will visit.
" Why would that be?" I could not see a reason why Mr Gokhale would want to meet me.
"He had some problem with his laptop and he wants to show it to you," dad revealing the reason for this visit.
"Why does he want to show his laptop to me? Does he know that I am a pharmacist and not an engineer? I work with an IT company, but does not make me an IT professional," I was explaining my position.
"Have a look at it once, he would feā¦
It Still Looks the Same
I went back to a place I hadn't visited in a long time recently, and the strangest part was that almost nothing had changed.
The same buildings were there. The same road was still crowded. Even some of the small details I remembered were exactly where I'd left them. For a moment, I expected to feel like I had somehow travelled backward in time.
But I didn't.
The place was familiar, yet it didn't feel like home anymore.
That confused me more than I expected.
Maybe Places Don't Change
I've always thought nostalgia was connected to places. We say things like, "I miss that place," as if the location itself is what we're longing for.
But maybe that's not really true.
Maybe we miss who we were when we were there.
A place can stay almost exactly the same while we completelā¦
The Familiar Things
I've been thinking lately about how strange it is that we usually don't appreciate things while they're still part of our everyday life. A room we've lived in for years, a person we talk to every day, a particular road we take without thinking about it. Because they're always there, they almost become invisible.
Maybe that's what familiarity does. It makes things feel permanent when they're actually temporary.
I don't think we consciously believe that everything will stay forever. We know people move away, places change, routines disappear. But knowing something intellectually is very different from actually feeling it. Somewhere in our minds, we keep assuming tomorrow will look mostly like today.
And then one day, it doesn't.
When Something Becomes a Memory
I find it wā¦
It's july 24 , and I don't know what I'm doing with my life. It feels like a stabbing pain coming through my heart, teasing my eyes, wrinkling my head. I can't straightify my issues.
Nowadays it just feels too much. I'm not sure I can handle it. My smile is more forced than it has ever been.
Every little headache is overpowering my days and nights, the sleepless nights were never so heavy .
Every nook and cranny of my very being seeks a motive, inner peace which seems like I have never had.
Yes , it can be named as existential crises. Rightnow I'm powerless and I don't know how to separate myself from this constant agony.
When I was ten years old I had a clear idea of of who I would become.
It was never someone sitting behind a desk and staring at spreadsheets, answering emails or rushing between meeting. I didn't understand corporate life then. I didn't know what deadlines were, what office politics felt like kr how exhausting ut could be to spend an entire day pretending to have more energy than you actually did.
When I was ten I wanted to be someone completely different. May be an astronaut. May be an explorer who travelled to places that nobody has ever seen.
My dreams changed every few weeks. Sometimes it depends on the last movie I watched. But the common thing I had in all that is that everything was full of adventures.
Now years later I sit in an office surrounded by glass walls and artificiā¦
I participate in a lot of market research activities. As a result of these activities I received a lot of gift cards. These gift cards are use to purchase groceries as well as for shopping. I never had any problem with the gift cards that I had received and I was able to redeem them without any hassle. Until yesterday.
Last morning I received a gift card for Flipkart for rupees 300. I proced date to redeem that gift card. I visited the site of Flipkart and ended the details of the gift card there. It showed me the error that the gift card is invalid. I tried entering the details again but received the same error. I did what ideally should have been done. Iot hell with the virtual chatbot that has been made available on Flipkart.
I explain the issue to the chatbot in very simple languagā¦
Maybe We're Always Becoming Someone ElseThe Person I Used to Be
Every once in a while, I find myself thinking about the person I was a few years ago. Not because I miss that version of myself, but because they feel like a stranger I somehow remember very well. I know what they dreamed about, what they feared, and the things they believed would never change. Yet if I met that person today, I wonder if we'd even recognize each other.
It's strange to think that we're constantly leaving old versions of ourselves behind without ever saying goodbye. There's no ceremony, no final conversation, no moment where we officially stop being one person and become another. It simply happens while we're busy living our lives.
Change Rarely Announces Itself
When I was younger, I imagined change as somethingā¦
I work as a freelance educator with an online platform. With this online platform I had student called Pooja (pseudonym). She had signed up for classes with me for approximately 4 months. Now her classes are coming to the end. Pooja died had expressed that he wishes to continue however he hadn't mention to me for how long they wished to continue. As they haven't yet renewed their course there was a ceremony held for Pooja.
When I received the instructions towards the ceremony to be held for Pooja, I understood that it is not for celebration but an attempt to make Pooja's parents renew the course. It actually did not fit into my principal's have ever I am bound by the rules and policies of the platform. I made the arrangement for the virtual ceremony. A lot of things happened at the ceremā¦
The difference between missing someone and missing a time in my life.
There was a time when I thought i missed certain people very deely. Where i looked at old photos or read old chats, i felt emotional. I believed that what i wanted was for those people to come back into my life. But as i have grown, i have started to understand something different. Maybe i do not pnly missed the people, maybe i miss the time when they were part of my life. Some chapters of life have a feeling that is difficult to describe. My first year of college is one of them. Everything was new. Every day felt like a new experience. I was meeting new people, learning, new things, and slowly becoming more independent. There was excitement, nervousness, happiness, and even confusion. Looking back now I realise I miss that phase more than anything else.
Of course, the people from the timā¦
Today I visited my favourite place to relax. For me, it is the small temple of Lord Krishna and Radha near my home. Whenever I feel tired stress on my mind is too busy with thoughts. I like to go there for quite time. The temple is simple and peaceful. There are beautiful idol of Krishna playing the flute and Radha standing beside him. They are dressed in bright colourful clothes with fresh flowers around them. The soft smell of fresh flowers always makes me feel calm the moment I step inside the gate.
I like to sit there on the cool marble floor for a while sometime. I close my eyes and just breathe slowly and deeply. The gentle chanting or quite sound of bells in the background feels very smooth to my ears. No one disturb me there. It is a place where I can leave all my worries and problā¦
Today I realise my favourite time of the day is the evening when I talk to my mom and then watch Netflix. These two things together make me feel truly happy and relaxed about a long and tiring day. First, I talk to my mom. Hearing her familiar and lovely voice always feels warm and comforting. We talked about simple everyday things what we ate today, How work or studies went and small family news or just a funny thoughts or gossiping about the relatives haha. She listened very patiently and gives me good advice or makes me laugh with her own stories. Even if we talk for only 10 to 15 minutes, that conversation filled my heart with love and peace, but my mom is a chatterbox, so she talk to me all the day when Iām busy or Iām studying or Iām doing whatever, but she talks a lot, and I love heā¦
