Category: NaBloPoMo Jan2010
Taken during my 8th month pregnancy…
Today I received this email in my inbox. It was from a sender I do not know with the subject ‘meeting request’. I was just about to delete when the words “inconvenience” and “meeting” caught my attention. I continued to read.
It started like this.
Hi,
Greetings from ABC, erstwhile PQR.
First of all, I know neither ABC nor PQR but I didn’t give it much thought because the second line was more interesting.
Regret the inconvenience caused to you by this unsolicited mail and would like to apologize for the same.
Oh so Mr. X who sent this mail confirms that his mail is “unsolicited” and goes on to the extent of apologizing for sending the same. And then he expects me to read on!
Seriously, I thought this was darn funny, and I continued reading because I really wanted to find out what Mr. X was up to. The mail went on like this.
We presently offer the following solutions which are exclusive in our service offering.
Yeah so they are offering exclusive “solutions” to problems I don’t have.
We also offer the following on a financial planning basis in case you feel there is a need to explore these options as well.
And then the “following” talks about everything on the face of the earth that I might possibly ‘need to explore’. More interestingly, the mail ended like this.
It would be great to meet you at a time convenient to you and explore how we may be able to add value to your portfolio.
Looking forward to meeting you.
Warm regards,
Mr. X
ABC
My reply should be this:
That’s a great positive business-like ending, Mr. X. Adding value to my portfolio and your confidence in looking forward to meet me are great. But do you really think I would have come this far in your mail after reading the second line unless I wanted to write an interesting blog post?
People are busy and they want to make best use of their time. Amidst all the work and personal mails and hundreds of forwarded mails (forwarded mails may not be important but we do prioritize them as ‘urgent’ and even mid day at work, we read them and keep forwarding, don’t we?), do you think we will have the time to read and respond to a ‘meeting request’ that is unsolicited and apologetic?
Come on Mr. X. I’m sure you don’t receive a favorable reply often and unsolicited mails easily hit the ‘junk mail’ folder unless the reader is either jobless or is intending to make a funny blog post about it.
Leave your apologetic mask behind and meet people with confidence. Or try picking up the phone and say hello with a smile.
I tell you, I bought most of my credit cards and insurances from sales people who were nice (and who came with a good free gift) even when I didn’t need them.
I have always been a big dreamer. As a child, I would sit and dream big things for hours together. Most of those hours, I used to hold a book in front of me so that people will think that I’m studying. But my mother was smart. She always found out but I tried to reason ‘most geniuses were high school drop-outs’. I didn’t have a statistic but I knew that many were.
I was called a day dreamer. They said that day dreams never came true (not that night dreams do either). As in any household from a developing community, I had pressures too, pressures of coming first, of winning and of doing better than the child next door. I took it all lightly so I gave in to what the community expected of me and became an engineer.
I don’t put education down, it’s during my engineering college days that I changed a lot positively and it’s only because I had this 2 letter degree that I’m married to this man whom I love. Seriously, we give lots of value to education even when it comes to arranged marriage.
I worked and managed to earn for a decent living in bangalore but my dream was different. I wasn’t so clear about what I wanted but I was so sure that I wasn’t doing what I wanted. I didn’t want to work hard and be a mediocre engineer while I can dream hard and become a genius in something I like. That kept bothering me day and night.
It was not until many years from then, that I realised that dreams do come true, but we need to make it solid. It’s important to set a date to the dream, this makes it a goal. And it’s even more important to write it down. It’s okay to have too many dreams like I used to have but writing them down helped me to prioritize them, and tackle them one at a time.
I don’t understand why dreams are so underrated in many communities. Shouldn’t children be taught to dream the right way to make sure that they don’t end up doing the wrong thing in their future?
One might argue that mere dreaming with no action is not going to work. But when the dream is strong, and when there is a burning desire to be, then action is inspired and inspired action is not work. It’ll give as much pleasure as doing a hobby only with greater results.
Here’s something I heard about dreams:
‘Dogs don’t do tricks so that they save up for their puppy’s education in the future. Only we, humans can dream. And if only we have the ability to dream then DREAM WE MUST!’
I find cats not that scary anymore 
I had a tummy bug last week when hubby was working late. Incidently I hadn’t taken Pappu out for the whole day, so he had started behaving differently when my bug was at it’s peak. Well, it’s not fun when you are sitting in the toilet bowl and trying to catch your vomit in a plastic bag when your 1.5 year old son stands next to you and tries to imitate your vomiting inside the same bag. So I just let him loose and allowed him to have a liberal day. As I was sitting and watching him do things, I realized how different he was, when he is not under my authority.
Some time in between, he digged his favourite shirt from the dirty laundry basket and insisted that he wear it. Guess what I did? I let him wear it.
And then he wanted to wear the pants that are rather loose for him and keeps coming below his diaper. I let him do that too.
This was followed by several activities that were performed while I just watched. Then he hanged my camcorder bag around his neck and wanted to go out. By this time I was already fed up and wanted fresh air too. So I took him out for a walk. As soon as we were near the next block, he returned the bag to me and didn’t want to carry it any more.
I called my friend to the play ground so that I can sit in the play ground bench for a while. She was running behind Pappu and advising him what to do when he was playing football with other kids’ balls without their consent and climbing on their big cycles. I wanted peace so I just pretended that I didn’t see anything.
Not that these are big things but everytime he did these things before, the outcome was different. I never told him ‘no’ but I made up my own custom ways of telling him what he should rather do. And he would listen to whatever I say and follow my advice.
That day was different for both of us…
A few weeks back, I bought 5 books with the title Baby’s Big Book.
When I got back home, I put it away and totally forgot about it. The books later came out one at a time and soon got Pappu’s full attention. I noticed that he loved the series of books, even his father and I did. It’s bright, colorful illustrations are large and simple enough for a child of Pappu’s age can understand easily. Pappu was reading them everyday and insisted we repeat every word again and again. Soon, he learnt almost all the words from the pages.
Another reason I love this book is it’s not a chunky board book. Of course, until Pappu was an year old I was always looking for board books for my son but when Pappu got his first couple of teeth, I decided that he was not in the ‘baby book’ stage anymore. This book is flexible non-board books, but is robust enough to handle a toddler’s use. I didn’t find the rest of the books anywhere and actually did go through a lots of pains to get hold of them. Now, it is in Pappu’s daily study schedule. He seats himself in his little baby chir in front of the table and calls for me to sit and read with him. He finishes all the 11 books in one sitting and after that he starts with his other books, including his all time favourite, ‘my first book of the world’. This is something all of us look forward to, everyday!
An year back……
Sometimes it’s hard to accept the amount of change that happens in one short year.
Today I had a remarkable amount of stories to tell hubby about my day with son. I have stories to tell him everyday but today’s was a bit of the “surprised to shocked” variety rather than the “surprised to happy” type. A friend of mine was having health challenge so I went over to help her with her 10 month old son. Pappu seemed to be very happy and after some time, he told me that he made potty. I didn’t smell anything but still I tried to check his diaper but he didn’t let me touch his pants. He wanted to go to my friend’s room to change his diaper. I finally gave in and took him in to change his diaper even though I knew it was clean (because I was engaged in an interesting conversation and I didn’t want to be disturbed). As soon as I removed his diaper, he ran to the shelf and pointed to my friend’s son’s diaper pack, insisting that I put it on him. I didn’t want to, but guess who won?
Whenever I tried to carry the said baby to give my friend some rest, Pappu started throwing some of his worst fits ever insisting that I carry him and return the baby to his aunty. He caught me trying to put the baby to bed by singing a lullaby and this time I really did return the baby to his mom to give my son some peace. Pappu laid on my shoulder and started pleasing me that I sing the lullaby to ‘kaka’ (himself). It was then that I had a second thought on what I had decided a minute ago. I thought the innocence he had an year back is totally gone. May be it is not.
Soar the clouds: Eagle
Oil Pastels on paper
