Life - or something like it

Do you remember Po, the cuddly panda from the movie Kung Fu Panda? Let's recap a bit about the movie. In the movie, Po, a bumbling panda is chosen as the dragon warrior to fight an evil warrior, Tai Lung. His guru, Master Oogway trains him and even after being defeated by Tai Lung, Master Oogway gives Po the dragon scroll - which is sacred and full of wisdom. Upon receiving the scroll, Po finds out that its reflective surface has nothing on it. Po is disappointed that the scroll did not have the knowledge to make him a great warrior. He goes to his adoptive father and to console his son, he reveals to PO the secret ingredient for his noodle soup. He says, " The secret ingredient is nothing". He adds, " To make something special you have to believe it is special". Such simple lines, but one can have profound learning from it. Aren't we all looking for that special ingredient to make us happy? You won't be reading this article if y

Let me tell you companies don't know s*** about hiring. They don't know how to treat job seekers as human beings, let alone with respect. The entire process is so screwed up and skewed in favor of companies that a job seeker has no bargaining position. It is time that companies stopped treating job seekers like beggars. Right from applying for a job, filling out mind-numbing applications on their websites (which can never represent who you truly are), to giving out personal information, past earnings, and gaps in jobs. Everything is designed to keep control in the hands of a company. So here are some real situations I faced in the recent past when trying to look for a job. All these interviews are at so-called "professional companies" and have pretty websites and great LinkedIn pages describing their successes and how good they are at helping their customers. Interview 1 I get called for an interview with a leading IT company. I used my networking skil

"I want to write, but I don't know what I should write about" "I don't know from where you get the ideas to write about, I am not that creative" "Writing is hard, I don't know where to start" These are some of the typical statements I get to hear from people who don't know what content to put up on social media. When I had started my writing journey, I was writing stories about my everyday experiences. It took me a while to get confident about my writing. Some days, it did get difficult to write but I did not give up. Even now, I do have the so-called "writer's block" but I don't give up and keep thinking about content ideas. Why it is important to write your ideas and share with the world? If people stopped posting content that they truly believe in, then here's what's going to happen We will lose out on a lot of great content such as knowledge and narratives that can make a difference. The world

I heard this word midlife crisis in my early thirties and thought of it with just mild interest. It sounded more like a phase where people turned a bit nutty. Rumour had it that it affected men more than women and made them leave families and chase women younger than them. I was flummoxed by it in the beginning but later forgot about it till the time it hit me squarely in my face. The unraveling of my life was not quick nor painstakingly slow. It was at a medium pace in the beginning and then the pace took my breath away. I had officially become a victim of the midlife crisis. I saw friends around me disgruntled by the way their life had turned out. It was as if suddenly everyone around me was just unhappy, crabby and feeling bitter. My own midlife crisis was like peeling away old skin and donning a garb that was so much more comfortable. This process of catharsis was none too easy and involved embracing thoughts and processes that I would have never dreamt of in my twenties an

Recently, someone asked me, whether my life has gone the way I had planned it. I was at a loss for words. Hell of an irony, right? Considering as a writer, words are my bread and butter.  That got me to thinking about my life, and especially the past few years, where I was able to amass a lifetime of lessons that I had not learned in the previous 40 years of my life. Life has definitely not gone the way, I had planned it that much is true. As a young girl, my head was full of dreams of a house, with a white picket fence, kids running around, and a loving partner (you get the picture, I hope). These dreams were mostly fuelled by the numerous books and movies, I had read and seen. Of a rosy life, where things are just as they should be. Even after a painful breakup with my first boyfriend in college, I still carried those dreams in my head. Call me naive, call me dumb..but that was who I was.  A few years later, I got married to someone I loved and thought finally those things wi

As she clicked one selfie after another, to get the right picture, Sudha realized that the smile that she had bravely plastered in front of the camera was not reaching her eyes. Her eyes still looked sad and forlorn. The lipstick and the jewelry added a bit of color, but her eyes betrayed her sadness. Last week, she had stood stoically in the courtroom, with her soon to be ex- husband standing next her. As the clerk shuffled the divorce papers, there was a pit in her stomach and her heart was beating erratically. Sudha's hands were numb and the conversation between them was stilted.  Sudha's gaze moved to the bindi on her forehead as she looked in the cellphone and it took her back to her wedding day. Arun and Sudha had met in Bangalore through common friends. Though they did not know each other earlier, the chance introduction turned into friendship and both were drawn to each other. Their friendship turned to attraction and both soon realized that they were in love.