PERSONALITIES FROM THE CONVEYOR BELT

In my last few travels, I have started doing a very interesting thing. I look at the luggage that is coming on the conveyor belt and try to place who it will belong to by trying to match the kind/style of luggage with a similar kind of person standing and waiting for it.

You might think what a crazy thing to do but it a very interesting test of your observation and analysis. Obviously I don’t end up guessing right always but you feel really happy and excited when the luggage gets picked up by exactly the same person you have guessed it belongs to.

The approach in doing this exercise is to identify a particular piece of luggage and then start looking for a person to whom such a luggage would belong to. Let me try and put down how I go about matching the two:

1) If there is a funky and colourful looking bag coming on the conveyor belt, I will try to look for a young, trendy college-going girl to whom the luggage would possibly belong.

2) If there is a huge and bulky Samsonite kind of a suitcase on the belt, I would look for two different type of people – One would be a very stylish, high fashion girl who likes to travel heavy or it would be a NRI family who is travelling within the cities of India

3) If there is a very small, thin and black but smart stroller coming along, I would try to look for a person in his 30s, who is wearing a suit and is either reading mails on his blackberry or using his stylus to do something on his phone

4) If the suitcase is a regular size suitcase with a cover on top of it (usually army colour), I would look for a couple, who are in their mid 50s, used to travelling in trains over the years, dressed very simply and possibly visiting their son or their relatives.

5) If there is a big rugsack coming on the belt, I will look for a foreigner who is dressed in loose jeans and a T-shirt, possibly with an Ipod.

6) If there is a big silver trunk or rather a few of them on the conveyor belt, I will look for a hip looking guy wearing a funky T-shirt with possibly an earring or a ear stud and maybe a tattoo, which adds to his personality of being a DJ.

7) If there is a guitar that is moving on the belt, I will either look for a girl with a possible nose ring or a guy who has long hair and possibly a beard, wearing a T-shirt of any one of the cult rock groups.

8) If there is an old hardback suitcase (seen in films to give ransom money) that can be locked, I will look for someone who is wearing a Safari Suit and glasses or someone who looks like he works in the Govt. Dept. of the state.

Like I mentioned above, my analysis and matching of the luggage and the person who claims it is not always true. In fact, often I am surprised to see that the person who is picking a particular piece of luggage is completely different in terms of his/her personality than expected from the luggage.

In fact, if someone were to do the same exercise and try to match my luggage with me, it would be very difficult as depending on the place and duration of my travel, my luggage keeps changing and there is no particular pattern to my luggage as I travel with big suitcases also as well as small bags as well as just a laptop bag.

I guess it is interesting to do this exercise as just a fun exercise without putting too much seriousness or emphasis to it.

Farewells

In the last three years with my current organisation, I have seen a number of farewells – Farewell of close friends, farewell of not so close friends, farewell of seniors, farewell of peers.

Some leave as they are moving for better career opportunities, some others leave as they are moving to a new phase in their personal lives and some others leave not the organisation but their current roles to move to a different role in a different city. Each one has his own reason for moving on.

While each farewell ends with a speech of the person leaving and a few others who have worked closely with the concerned person, what each and every farewell has been telling me is that there is more to a person than his professional role in the organisation.

Every farewell makes me realise that I don’t know a large part of that person – his personal life, his goals and ambitions, things he is passionate about, causes he supports or would like to support, his knowledge and experience from his past jobs, etc.

Every time a person I leaving, it hits me that here was a person from whom I could have learnt so many things outside our current roles, could have connected with him better and got more closer, could have understood him more and better. But……one gets so involved and wrapped in the time warp of work that getting ten minutes out even once a week with the idea of knowing a person better seems an energy sapping and time wasting effort. Then there are inhibitions of the mind that how the other person will take it, will he be comfortable in opening up and sharing beyond the professional part or the regular and mundane part, which are the hygiene factors which everyone knows about everyone.

Well, the truth is that the other person does not feel uncomfortable… in fact it is oneself who is uncomfortable. The other person is more than willing to impart and share his knowledge and experiences if there is a genuine seeker for it. Who would not want to have someone within the organisation who doesn’t talk to him or come to him to only discuss work and its periphery.

Knowing this and being fully aware of it and now even blogging about it, I shall take sincere efforts to know people around me better and beyond the professional domain so that when I am a part of the next farewell, I can proudly say to myself that I have known this person well enough and even taken a few lessons of life from him.

Twenty Ten

Twenty ten. Wishing all you readers a Happy Twenty Ten. The year itself sounds like a sort of countdown moving in differences of ten. Twenty... ten....zero? The sound of this is not good so maybe 2010 is better... so will stick to that.

With the start of 2010 has started another big discussion. What do we call this decade or rather what do we call the years from 2010 to 2019. This is a dilemma that the world faces after every 100 years, but till now we have not been able to solve for it as there is no term for the decade of 10-19, whereas we have terms for all other decades, starting from the twenties and going up to the nineties. In fact, even the decade of 2000 to 2009 was coined a term called noughties.

Media houses, publications, social networking sites are all discussing and trying to solve for this dilemma. TOI even came up with a few options like calling this decade as tennies (sounds like a sport to me) or oughties and asked for the popular choice through a poll. People, of course, have different views and each one has his or her own preferences. Some even feel that we should call it the tweenies or some other such name. Someone even suggested that we need not bother as everything will come to an end by 2012 (Talk about movies influencing minds of people)

While people are bothering about what to call this decade I am thinking to go to the root cause of this problem. How did this problem get created in the first place? My mind goes back to the people who gave us all the numbers and who gave names to these numbers. It all started from there.

Whoever gave names to these numbers did not utilise his creativity to the fullest as he/she was very creative in giving names to numbers between 0 -20, but after that all the creativity fizzled out and laziness set in as all the numbers were given a common name for the entire stretch of ten numbers. Therefore numbers between 20 – 29 were all called twenty something and the same holds good for the number series after that.

It would have been much better if this creativity had fizzled out as soon as the number ten was reached because then in that case, the numbers between 10 – 19 would have been like:
Tenty One, Tenty Two, Tenty Three, Tenty Four, Tenty Five, Tenty Six, Tenty Seven, Tenty Eight and Tenty Nine

But since this would have sounded similar to Twenty series, the other option would have been to call it:
Ten One, TenTwo, Ten Three, Ten Four, Ten Five, Ten Six, Ten Seven, Ten Eight and Ten Nine.

So the question that comes to my mind is that should we solve for the smaller problem of what to call this decade or is there a bigger problem in the naming of the numbers and is there a possibility of changing that. I would like to end this blog with this thought in your minds….so that you can come back and comment on how you see the issue and what are the possible solutions.

End of a Relationship

When the phone stops ringing,
And the SMS stops beeping
Is It the end of a relationship?

When the heart does not feel like doing anything
And the mind cannot concentrate
Is it the end of a relationship?

When the eyes show lot of pain
And the smile dissappears from your face
Is it the end of a relationship?

When the world looks like a horrid place
And you don’t feel like talking to anyone
Is it the end of a relationship?

When anything romantic looks like completely fake
And mountains and seas look like the worst place to be
Is it the end of a relationship?

When jokes do not make you laugh
And songs with pathos is what you want to hear
Is it the end of a relationship?

If only people knew
And they could see the signals before
The world would be a less painful place..

But no-one knows when or where…
it will be the end of the relationship for him/her.

(Dedicated to a few friends who have gone through a break-up recently)