HOME SWEET HOME

At last something is happening towards buying a property in Bangalore.... :)

From years we brothers have been trying to buy a immovable property - site or house - in Bangalore. And now it has almost become true. It all started around 6-8 months back when we were at the heights of searching for a house to shift to Bangalore South. After almost 16 years we shifted back to Bangalore South from Bangalore North. This change was triggered because of my father's retirement and also due to other personal reasons. Before shifting actually happened, we were trying our best to buy a home or to buy a site and then build a home. But bad luck or whatever you call it (I call it good luck), we couldn't buy either of them. So ultimately we settled for a rented duplex house. The house is quite beautiful. But the quench for our own home didn't stop. Instead it increased 10 folds or even 20 folds. But our lives had become busy after moving to this new place. By being closer once again to our relatives my family and I had found our long lost joy. So we couldn't spend enough time in the search.

A couple of months back, my brother saw an advertisement in a daily and we rushed to see this new apartment that is being built near Kanakapura Road. The apartment is from HM group and is beautiful. When we approached the concerned people from the HM group, we were taken to a model apartment. And guess what, it was a first love to all of us - my brother, SIL, nephew and to me. On one side, we could oversee the swimming pool from the veranda and from the other side we could see the vast stretch of land covered with trees, smaller buildings and other things!! And as I said earlier the apartment was a first love to all of us, and we at once decided to buy it. Initially my brother and I were against buying an apartment. Our argument was- "Even if you own one, an apartment doesn't give you the satisfaction of actually owning something completely to yourself. Because you are actually sharing the same piece of land with 100 other people". Anyway,  we had softened over the last few months. Probably we had got desperate after searching for more than a year and not finding even a single home or site within our budget or satisfaction matching all our criteria. That evening we collected as much information as possible about the apartment from the manager and left for home. We were all kind of happy, kind of satisfied that at last we have actually decided to buy something.. something that we all kinda liked in the first look itself.

A couple of weeks later my brother and I decided to take a second look at the same apartment but at different time of the day - noon - and the Sun was burning like hell. In the last 2 weeks my brother had enquired about the possibility of loans from a few banks. We had also shortlisted 2 banks for the same. But we hadn't realized that this second look would actually make such an impact on us! It completely changed our perspective about buying the apartment. The model apartment which we had seen the last time was all fully furnished (model, you see, so it should look beautiful, even though the furniture was no good and we couldn't open or close any of the cabinets). We decided to see the same apartment once again. And this time we also decided to see another apartment without any furniture. So when we saw these for the second time and got the quotation for the apartment, we realized that it would cost us a whooping 60-65 lakh Indian rupees. That was too much of a price for us. We gave the manager some reasons and took leave of him and went back to our home. On the way home, I all of a sudden realized that instead of paying so much money to an apartment which cannot be extended or modified later in life, why not invest on a site and build our own home? Moreover ours is a joint-family. So there is every possibility of family growing bigger over the coming few years. And at the same time I remembered that we had discussed about a site in Bangalore nearer to our current home and according to our estimate at that time (6 to 8 months back), it would cost around 30 lakh Indian rupees to buy the site and then build a duplex 3 bed-room home which would cost us anywhere between 20 -25 lakh Indian rupees. Compared to the total cost of the apartment, we would have saved anywhere between 5 - 10 lakh Indian rupees. Moreover, we also can extend, modify our home in future. Not only that we could BUILD it the way we want. When I informed about my idea, my brother immediately called up the site owner and inquired if the site was already sold to somebody or if it was still available for sale. The owner said it is still available, and we told him that we are interested to buy it and this time we would go for it no matter how difficult we might feel to arrange the cost of the site.

I proposed this idea in front my family - my parents, brother, & SIL. The very initial question we all had was, which bank to approach and how much loan should we take? What is our repayment capacity... and even before we finished finding answers to all these questions, we had started dreaming about our new home. A home that would be planned in the dreams and shall be built for the future of our dreams. And today, I met 2 people - one from the bank and the other one a lawyer. After the initial verification, I was told by the lawyer that all the documents are correct and only one more document is missing which I/we have to get it asap. The bank guy seems to be a nice chap but kinda over enthusiastic. And I guess it is for our good (or may be even to meet the monthly target ;) or probably because of high respect for another person a relative of ours through whom we had approached this bank guy). The bank guy helped me fill up the application form.

Like the saying goes "Fortune favors the brave", this month bank is giving loans at 8% interest rate (for the first year) and from next month onwards it might increase to 9%. So we all are trying our best to get the things done ASAP... so that we can become the legal owners of the site and can construct our HOME SWEET HOME.

Wish me good luck :)

Conversation - a real Saviour of life - continued...

The part 1 can be found here..

Most of the opinions mentioned over here are my personal ones and also some of them belong to my colleague.  Readers discretion is very much appreciated when reading this article... :) (Too early to mention this? No?)

At my office a new batch of young graduates (that is how we refer to all the people fresh out of their degree colleges) have joined. They joined in 2 groups - first batch consisted around 50 of them and then 2nd batch consisted around 25 of them. I was asked to train the first batch of students for over a period of 1 month in various MS technologies. I really wanted to take this up, but because of the project work and also strenuous preparation that was required for the training sessions, I decided against it. But I took a half-day session for the 2nd batch students in OOP and basic introduction to the MS .NET technology.

Everywhere fresh minds bring about a change that is always welcome by all even though many wouldn't admit. I like to interact with the fresh minds.. they have so many dreams.. to do this to do that... and to do everything... to get appreciated by their seniors to get good pay-cheque, and at last probably not the least is to buy whatever they ever wanted to buy but couldn't ask others to pay for... Moreover it is also a great relief to get a job as soon as you are out of college and especially during a situation when people from all over the world with lots of  years of experience are being given pink-slips (to say it on the face - being terminated or fired or thrown out of the company). These so called fresh minds have also brought in their own attitude, proud in to the company. Well, I know I am comparing them with the batch of people who had joined the same company along with me almost 5 years back. We were around 150 of us. Always cheering each other, enjoying our days together in the training sessions, participating in competitions etc. etc. But these fresh minds aren't like us at all in many ways... To start with they didn't join together.. the first batch of people consider themselves to be seniors when compared to the second batch even though both the group have passed out in the same academic year or so!

Coming to the point, when we joined the company, whenever we approached somebody who was familiar to us, we wished them good morning or good afternoon or good evening.. used to say 'Hi' when we reached office or used to say 'Bye' when leaving for home... And then we were considered friendly, adjusting type by the seniors.. and the new group of people.... forget about wishing us, they don't even care to look at us even though they know us... Of course the 'us' over here is actually 'me'... because this short story I narrated here is from my own experience. :D

My colleague says that he doesn't like this western culture for many reasons - the main reason being that you may refer your seniors (age-wise or position-wise) by their first names. He particularly explains about one such incident in which a fresh graduate called a very-soon-retiring senior manager of the company by his first name as if he was his class mate. I do accept with my colleague. We do call our seniors by their first names. Even though I didn't like doing it at first, I somehow got adjusted to it as the days passed... I still do call couple of my managers as 'Sir' but its only in front of them.. whenever I am talking about them somewhere else I just use their first names.

I am not really sure if this culture is good or bad. The idea of the western culture is to bring in equality among everybody. But our culture is to give respect to the elders. But should we really follow the western principles in our day-to-day life? This may be a food-for-thought... I wouldn't argue much about this... except to say that yeah.. we are all becoming like them (the westerners) and they are slowly becoming like us...

To be continued... More about Yoga, westerners and other things in the next post.. Until then 'see ya soon' :)

Conversation - a real Saviour of life

Only yesterday I was having a serious discussion with my colleague in the cab on the way to the office... My office is nearly 25 KMs away from my home and it takes 1 hour 30 minutes approx. on a bad day and almost all days are bad with some worst days giving a break for the bad days. With the ever increasing traffic, I wonder if a day would come in future when traveling the same distance would take even half a day!!! Anyway... my conversation or discussion with my colleague (a senior) was one of the best I had had in the recent times.

We discussed in length about people, children, parents and their way of upbringing their kids, the right and the wrong they do, etc. etc. I shared many of my experiences and he too did the same. At the end, when I reached office, I felt happy and relieved in a way to know that I am not alone in this world and there are others who too think like I do!!!

The conversation actually started with me teaching him some Kannada words. My colleague is not a Kannadiga (meaning to say, he doesn't know Kannada) and he is trying hard to learn it. Daily he learns a couple of words and at times he learns 3-4 sentences. And yesterday, the talk silently moved from learning to chatting to discussing about some of the serious stuffs like understanding children and helping them grow in this world.

We both are of the opinion that we as parents (of course I am not married and do not have a kid yet but have a nephew who is nearing 3 years. So I am taking the position of a guardian :D) is the main reason for the downfall of a child. These days just to keep up with the competition (to buy the latest and the costliest things as possible and also to have a ultra luxury life), both husband and wife start earning. So they end up taking lot of loans may be to make a home or buy a car or even to travel across the world. When the wife gives birth to a kid, the husband will be in a lot of pressure to perform better than the best so that the new addition in the family doesn't reduce his performance and hence doesn't affect his total income. If it does happen then the baby is directly blamed and also the family will be put into a lot of pressure.

Well one might take different actions in these kind of scenarios, but the matter of discussion was how do these both-the-parents-earning family deal with the child's growth! The child will be spoilt with money and loads of stuff he doesn't need but wants just to show off to his friends who are also in the same position. Since weekends are the only days parents actually get to spend time with the children, they pamper them with blind love and may be also by buying them costly unwanted things, taking them to restaurants, malls, movies, etc. What we are actually doing is teaching the child that with money we can do all these things. But what the child misses is that he doesn't understand the pain that has gone through in earning that money and also he will never understand what caring and loving is all about.

.... To be continued... Loads of things to come up.

Friends... Are they really friends??

I get teased with this girl I am in love with... Of-course no body knows that I am in love... but since we all know each other in the group, I get teased more than the girl.

Last Sunday we both (the girl and I) had been to a movie and we both had decided not to inform anybody only because we were afraid that I will get teased even more than before. The choice of the movie and the reason why only we both went was simple... others weren't ready to come. :p Anyway, yesterday I had told them all that I had been to school to teach and didn't even talk about the girl. But today one of the friends suddenly asked how was the movie and to which theater did I go with the girl... I declined and said with an irritated tone that I didn't go out with anybody to any movie on that day... (I wasn't lying... I had been to the movie in the noon ;)) After I told this, he gave me his in-famous wicked smile understood only by me. Guess he had suspected something to happen last week. Don't know what it was... but then I was also afraid if the girl had told him about the movie... and after I was alone and at a safe distance from these devilish friends, I called up my girl and asked her if she had told anybody about the movie.. and she said no... Grrrrrrrrr.. I was angry on the friend who had teased me... Anyway... lucky girl and lucky me... got escaped this time... :D

But like I said in my previous post.. Life in fact is very difficult when you are in Love...

If this was to be shown in a Ripley's Believe it or not episode then you would surely hear "Can't believe it?? Believe me!"

Intelligent quotes from around the world...

I love collecting quotes from around the world... And here are some of my most favorite ones... :)

A few observation and much reasoning lead to error; many observations and a little reasoning to truth. Alexis Carrel

Don't say you love me unless you really mean it, because I might do something crazy like believe it. Anonymous

It is better to be in chains with friends , than to be in a garden with strangers. - Persian Proverb

Every worthwhile accomplishment, big or little, has its stages of drudgery and triumph; a beginning, a struggle and a victory. - Gandhi

Count your smiles instead of your tears; Count your courage instead of your fears.

When preparing to travel, lay out all your clothes and all your money. Then take half the clothes and twice the money. - Susan Heller

If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions, I should point to India - Max Mueller

It was somewhere between the interview with the Indian entrepreneur who wanted to do my taxes from Bangalore and the one who wanted to write my software from Bangalore, and the one who wanted to read my x-rays from Bangalore, and the one who wanted to trace my lost luggage from Bangalore...I was realizing that, while I had been sleeping, while I had been off covering the 9/11 wars, I had missed something really fundamental in this globalization story. I had lost the thread, and I found it in Bangalore - Thomas Friedman, "The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century".

How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within oneself? - Barry Lopez

The fundamental rights of [humanity] are, first: the right of habitation; second, the right to move freely; third, the right to the soil and subsoil, and to the use of it; fourth, the right of freedom of labor and of exchange; fifth, the right to justice; sixth, the right to live within a natural national organization; and seventh, the right to education. Albert Schweitzer

Los Angeles County officials have asked that manufacturers, suppliers and contractors stop using the terms 'master' and 'slave' regarding computer hard drives, saying such terms are unacceptable and offensive. Additionally, the term 'e-mail' will now be called 'e-person letter', 'dumb terminals' will now be 'CPU-challenged monitors' and 'Unix' will be referred to as 'sexually dysfunctional operating system'. Obviously, 'fingering' is now banned entirely. - Kevin Fizz

- It ain't as bad as you think. It will look better in the morning.
- Get mad, then get over it.
- Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.
- It can be done!
- Be careful what you choose. You may get it.
- Don't let adverse facts stand in the way of a good decision.
- You can't make someone else's choices. You shouldn't let someone else make yours.
- Check small things.
- Share credit.
- Remain calm. Be kind.
- Have a vision. Be demanding.
- Don't take counsel of your fears or naysayers.
- Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.

Life is difficult when you are in Love!!!

I always had heard that life is difficult when you are in Love… but had only realized it recently when I actually fell for one of the girls!

Well I haven’t proposed this girl, I haven’t told anybody about it and that makes this Love even more difficult… do not know how to tell her… don’t even know how to share about my love with my closest friends… I miss her every moment… but I am enjoying every moment of it in a completely different way… I have lost my sleep… I see her everywhere… I see her even when my eyes shut and when she isn’t there in front of me and my eyes are wide open… I hear her voice all the time… I think about her… I dream about her… I talk about her all the time… I just can’t believe that I love her…

I had never expected myself to fall in love… at least not until a couple of years back… but today… I consider myself to be a fool to have thought that way… Didn’t even know that love is such a strange thing… when you are with her.. you feel safe.. you feel that the whole world is with you… you know that the whole world can’t stop you from loving her… but the moment she leaves you and goes out (even for a cup of coffee or to answer a phone call), you realize how dumb you are… you pray that the phone may not be from any other guy trying to woo her… Shit… life is difficult esp. when you are in love…

I don’t want to stalk my friend… my girl… may be my would-be wife… my soul-mate… my future and what not… But now I can’t imagine me being without her… She has become a part of me…

What do I do??? Where do I go??? Whom do I tell about this???

Had decided a lot of times to tell her all about my love to her… but when she is in front of me… I feel brave.. I feel confident that she will be mine… and the words automatically stop coming out of my mouth… then when she is there with me.. I mostly listen to her… not wanting to miss anything she says… but mostly I am lost.. thinking about her… the moment she comes to know about me and the way she might feel about me…

Will I lose her? NOOOOOOOOO… I can’t answer that question myself… I am too scared.. I am a chicken… when I ask this question myself… But I am also afraid not to answer the question….

I love her… but I don’t want to hurt her in anyway…. I want to tell her all about my love.. at the same time.. I want to enjoy the sweetest pain I am undergoing now…. There is this other me.. which is more dominant and is not allowing me to tell her or anybody about my love… The reason is simple.. I am growing bald… not handsome not even well built… at times crazy… and have done a lot of things claiming to the world that I haven’t done them at all… this is more painful… I want to cry… but tears just don’t come out… I want to laugh… but I just can’t open my mouth large enough to even smile… I sigh! I give up! I feel depressed… but after a few minutes.. I am back on my foot… talking dreaming listening to her… she is such a sweety… loved by all… but probably none more than me…

I love you my Love.. and would like to do it for ages to come… Please help me tell you what I really feel… please help me make you accept me without asking for anything more than mere love…. I really love you my Love!

Oh boy!!! I can’t believe thyself.. that I am in love…

I never knew.. Life is difficult when in Love

Accidentally I was listening to this song from Bryan Adams on the way home…. Here is the lyrics for the same…

When you love someone you’ll do anything

You’ll do all the crazy things that you can’t explain

You’ll shoot the moon

Put out the sun

When you love someone

You’ll deny the truth believe a lie

There’ll be times that you’ll believe

you can really fly

But your lonely nights have just begun

When you love someone

When you love someone

you’ll feel it deep inside

And nothin’ else can ever change your mind

When you want someone - when you need someone

When you love someone

When you love someone - you’ll sacrifice

You’d give it everything you got and

you won’t think twice

You’d risk it all - no matter what may come

When you love someone

You’ll shoot the moon - put out the sun

When you love someone

Till now I have listened to this song around 10-15 times… and have memorized almost the entire song.
I shall dedicate this song to all the silent lovers like me… and also to my girl hoping that she would be and remain mine forever…

Many more love posts to follow…

I still can’t imagine myself writing about love when I’d despised Love all my life until now!!

Life is really difficult when you are in Love…