If we were having coffee – 1

I haven’t quite blogged in some time now and didn’t know what to talk about as well. So, I decided to do a ‘coffee blog’ where I am gonna tell you things if we were having coffee right now. Here we go:

If we were having coffee, the first thing that I would tell you is I like my coffee better when it is cold – that’s literally the best coffee for me. We get this amazing cold coffee in the office cafeteria for just Rs. 30. Most days when my lunch is too dry, I’ll get myself and my friend Pooja a cup of the chilling, cold coffee.

If we were having coffee, I must tell you about the change in timing that will be implemented starting June 1 in my company. We are moving to the time 1 PM to 10 PM IST. It is supposed to ensure couple of things:

1. Make sure everyone in the team starts and finishes together
2. More overlap with clients

Mu Sigma, until now, was a company where there was no in time or out time. You could literally walk in or leave whenever you wanted. As nice as it sounds, most of the time, people ended up spending many more hours in office than the scheduled 9 hours work. I have known people who literally went to office one day and did not return home until the next day. Hopefully, these new timings should ease things like that out now. There are multiple thoughts and emotions on the floor because of this time change. The fact that it takes away the entire evening time is not something a lot of us are looking forward to. But the fact that we can sleep a little late into the morning and have the mornings to ourselves is definitely cheering us up.

If we were having coffee, I’d definitely tell you about me thinking about switching flats. I might end up getting a single home about 7 km from my workplace by end of July. It’s a nice society and I am looking forward to starting my life all over again over there. Over the last couple of months, my life has sort of become static. I watch TV series on the loop during the weekends. On the weekdays, I am too busy to do anything else. As such, I have moved farther and farther from my goals and passions. I am rarely blogging/writing/reading. I have also been sleeping late and waking up late. I want to press the reset button in my life and bring back some good habits. I am hoping moving to the new flat will make that happen for me.

If we were having coffee, I would tell you that it is really important to have clear, defined goals in life. When I was in school, the goal was to get into a good college. When I went to college, it became about getting into a good workplace. Now that I am working, I do not have any short term or long term goals that I had initially visualized. Now, I am planning to change the same. Eventually, I want to go back to the field of electronics, so I have decided to buy a study table and get started. For now, I am just taking a couple of tests for my promotion at work – at least that is keeping me slightly on schedule.

As the days pass, I am also starting to having thoughts around settling down – marriage. As I have often talked about earlier, I had student loans and I do not plan to get married until and unless I have paid it off and made some savings. It’s becoming increasingly lonely to live among strangers and having no goal in life. Maybe, I’d be healthier if I were around people who would hold me accountable and who I’d be responsible for. Let’s see.

If you were having coffee with me right now, what would you tell me? What’s new in your life?

Until our next coffee date!

❤

 

This day last/this/next year

This day last year I boarded the train to Bangalore from Kolkata. Hours before we were to board the train, as we waited in the busy sidewalk of Dharmatala SBSTC bus stand, a fateful phone call informed us of my maternal grandfather’s demise. Minutes before that phone call, my brother and I were struggling to use our first free Ola ride.

That phone call changed things. My mother became fatherless. The first step towards my professional life was forever marked by a black day in the family. The instant thought that came to my mind was this: “What next?” Would we cancel going to Bangalore and head to my maternal uncle’s place? For a few selfish seconds, I wished we did not have to cancel going to Bangalore (even though I dreaded every moment of the forward journey), not thinking what it meant for my mother. The tickets to Bangalore were booked for me, my mother and father. My brother was to see us off to Howrah station and leave.

My mother solved our dilemma. Being the clear-thinking woman that she is, she prioritized her daughter’s future over her dead father. I think aside from giving birth to me, that was the greatest gift she ever gave to me.

October 4th, 2015 ushered in a lot of changes in my life. The next 33 odd hours in the train would put a lot of distance between my home and the life there to what lay ahead.

Days before that fateful train journey, as I prepared for life in Bangalore, I thought to myself, “How many days before life again becomes normal?” Even though I was about to move to a different state, different town, different culture, I knew in the end the novelty of the shift would rub off and life would be the everyday life again, as I would get used to the newness of it all. Bengal or Bangalore does not really matter as long as you go to sleep in a comfortable bed with a full stomach.

Lately, I have wanted to tear myself away from the mundane sameness of everyday life here in Bangalore. But today, I want to appreciate the things I have achieved since October 4th, 2015. I am grateful that I am healthy, that I had a good dinner, that I have a brand new day to look forward to. I am glad for the people around me, my parents, especially my mother, who keeps calling me at every opportunity she gets – which really goes a long way in removing homesickness. I am grateful for the good walk through ITPL to reach my office. I am grateful for the busy-ness that life at Mu Sigma has given me. Today, as I climbed down from the tenth to eighth floor in the morning, I could not but marvel looking at the sheer rapidity with which people were moving from one floor to another, swiping their IDs, getting to their work desk, ready to solve problems. I am grateful I am alive to see such movement. As long as their is motion, there is life.

Today, I  bought a pressure cooker off the money I had received courtesy the spot award in my previous project. Felt so good! This was the first kitchen purchase with my own money.

As I write this, I cannot but wonder, what will 4th October, 2017 show me? Will I be sitting in the same room as I am now, typing another blog post? Will I still have the people I love around me? Will I have been able to buy something really nice for my mother, my first true gift to her since I started working? As I dream of the things that I want to achieve, I can hear my mother saying not to let my dreams run loose – for they may never come true if I put them in words. As per her, there is probably someone who is listening on our dreams, ready to stop whatever we dream from happening the moment we dream it through. Having fed such thoughts since childhood, my heart hesitates.

Yet the mind wanders…

 

The Mu Sigma Times and Other News

I recently got plunged into a number of things at work. Japanese classes were already there, and they are drawing towards an end. We shall have the ‘graduation ceremony’ in two weeks’ time. Me and my teammate are planning to do a small skit for our graduation ceremony.

Besides that, I applied for the position of field writer in Mu Sigma Times.Mu Sigma Times is Mu Sigma’s live news channel – one stop where you can get to know what is happening across different accounts in the company. It also features other varieties of articles ranging from travelogues to lives of authors to different trends sweeping through the analytics industry.

The idea behind applying for the post was to keep in touch with writing. As it happens, due to the day job, I am not able to devote much time to writing. Being a ‘jouranlist’ for the MST shall be one way to keep myself close to my passion. That said, it is an added incentive that I get to don the hat of a journalist in a workplace which has nothing to do with media/journalism. It is so cool!

We had the first meeting with the editors today and they held a very engaging session as to what the goals were with respect to Mu Sigma Times. For the first time, being among people who actually enjoy writing, I felt at home. I felt as if they were my people.

I also met a very interesting person, Debdeep Basu. He is also a fellow blogger at The Pensieve. Post the meeting we had a very lively conversation about writing, books, and movies over coffee.

Don’t be surprised at all if keep bragging about Mu Sigma Times on the blog in the coming days.

Oh, also, I signed up for Camp NaNoWriMo  (July) today. I am planning to finish a non-fiction book this time, something that has been pending for about eight months now. Anyone amongst you doing NaNo this July? Let me know in the Comments.

Happy weekend, guys! Cheerio!