It is after long long time that I pick up my pen to write. (Okay, not the pen and all that but you get the idea). There had been a lot of things happening, which I can pass of to claim that I was busy but the fact is that I have been lazy on this blog. So this post is going to be a rough sketch of what I have been doing and the experiences experienced during this time. This is going to be a long one.
It all started after I had just published my last blog somewhere in December last year. I was merrily about to post the next edition of the Indian Classical Music explanation, when at work I was called upon to look for a fresh project to work on. The catch of course being that I needed to travel for about "3 to 4 months". As I am experienced "Khiladi" I immediately placed my "deal". My kid being just 6 months old, I could not leave them back here. So I was allowed to take them along, of course the expenses borne by me. This was acceptable, as I was more interested having them with me than the costs associated.
Having "done that deal" I set out to cross the first hurdle of getting a passport issued for my 6 month old. I booked for a tatkal slot and was expecting the first hiccup at the passport centre at R K Puram. To our utter shock and disblieve, we were out of the office within 30 minutes! The passport got issued within 3 working days and delivered to our address on the 5th day!! Now we are not used to such ways of working. This was clearly unacceptable. Well, then what was left was applying for work permits and visiting the Swedish embassy at New Delhi gives a first glance of the "crowd and rush" that you expect when you visit that country. When I went to collect the permits on a February afternoon, I had only one another guy in front of me in the queue! Just near to the Swedish embassy is the embassy of the dreamland of many Indians, and you could see the size of the population of entire Karol Bagh flocking the area.
Next, my wife and I were worried about travelling such a long distance with the kid. We tried our best to get a bassinet seat booked on Austrian Airlines, but it never went through. After boarding the flight we were located in the middle row and with our son in our laps. It was being very tough. The air hostess tried to persuade the middle aged lady next to us to shift to a different seat so that we could have some more space, but she rebutted back saying something about being not comfortable. But the air hostess did not give up, she finally managed to persuade an old lady who needed more leg room to shift to our seat, whereas we moved to the bulk head seat with the bassinet free of charge!! We will always remain indebted to that kind and dutiful air-hostess.
Landing at Copenhagen airport was not new for me nor was the 3 hours train journey to our final destination at Karlskrona. But really after 15 hours of flight the last 3 hours on train just "kills you". Karlskrona is what you would expect of a small Scandinavian city. My wife and I will have lots of pleasant memories of our stay, especially watching our son grow up step-by-step in his development. Of course we were a little sad about not being able to share this with our parents, but nowadays with voice and video chats over the internet the effect of the separation is reduced.
My work was splendid too. I met a lot of people and colleagues and made very good friends. I was apprehensive at first, because the product I am working is a very famous one in the telecom billing area around the world. So naturally they were sort of "very good guys"of that domain out there. However I've seen and felt that it is more easy to work with people who have sorted out the complex equation of keeping their ego out of their work. I found more such people here and naturally got along nicely.
So after 5 months of stay and experiencing a fine Swedish summer we were back to India. Towards the end we were a little desperate to come back as we missed celebrating our son's first birthday with our folks back here. I have now this firm belief, that wherever in the world you may be, the pleasure of being with ones own is more precious than anything else in the world. There was a long standing visit of my wife pending to visit her parent's place that was executed in the last two months. I had to travel twice, back and forth Delhi and Durgapur in almost 3 weeks time.
It was a pleasure this time to file the income tax totally paperless. Even not that stupidity of enclosing a printed copy of ITR V and dispatching it to CPC Bangalore and then again sending it when you would not get a receipt even after 2 months. Also this time I got back my IT refund in 2-3 working days of filing the return. Bang comes a SMS that your bank account is credited with the refund! Impressed!
I have also embraced the digital route for reading. Powered by Kindle, this technology saves a lot of space and book shelf juggling and keeping track of which book is given to which person and its current status of return. It is an amazing way to read/borrow/buy books and much smarter in today's way of life.
Also on return, I found that though our water bill is now zero for the last two times (and that helped us save 400 bucks), we still have not got the free Wifi at our homes that we were promised. Neither the so called pathbreaking law called "Janlokpal" which was so important to have that we had to vote again for Delhi in 49 days time. It seems now it is not that important to have.
A new way Sherlock Holmes could detect your political alignment is the way how "Swach" you keep yourselves. And if you do yoga. Also people have become a bit jumpy about consuming the meat of a particular animal.
Some confusion has also risen in the literary world, suddenly, that they can no longer bear the present central government's atrocities and thus they no longer deem it fit to hold the award that they have been conferred. Some have declared that they are returning the award, some have gone to news channel studios to dump their trophies. No mention of the award money being returned though. Also I find it strange that only recipients of only one award are having the self realisation, no other "sukh anwars" are sharing the same feeling.
Anyways, that is what I had to say in this post. I skipped plenty, but will post in the coming ones. Promise!
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