Dear Diary….

7:15 am – Alarm goes off...No matter how many times I shuffle the tunes, every sound seems sharp and intrusive early in the morning

7:30 – Stumble out of bed and eat my thyroid medicine….God I do hope that I get a breakthrough end of this month…I cannot imagine waking up to a bottle of Thyronorm on my bedside table every single morning

8:00 – Running late for work and hence I need to stuff my face with breakfast soonish…Non-descript cheela for brekker….Didn’t the hen lay any eggs today?

9:30 – Drift into office at 9:30 wondering the amount of time I waste on the streets of Bangalore, weaving past traffic and hurling abuses at errant drivers (as K would say – son of a b****)

10:30 – Sneak into my J’s shared calendar and block an hour of one-on-one meeting time for my mid-year review. Chuckle to myself at my little victory. I hope J knows that he has unwittingly given me access to his calendar…! My emails are always followed by a little trip down that hallway to “follow-up” if he has read my emails. He usually gives me a warm look of skepticism (almost to say – what does this girl want now!)...Today he tries to mock-wrestle with his door, pushing up against it so that he can block my way! Needless to say the staff is really amused by his little act!

1:00 – Lunch is always a highlight of my day – busy or not. Meals and food according to me are to be celebrated – It’s never a chore (and I guess it shows). Today the caterer has got some delightful rajma-chawal and a cabbage salad…ummm didn’t the doctor tell me to steer clear of that? I brush that thought aside, so that later I can revisit it and blame it on an innocent case of oversight J I enjoy the lunch conversations with my colleagues, at least the bits that don’t get drowned by the rumbling sounds in my stomach…!

3:30 – Finally have a meeting with J regarding my goals and the conversation veers towards the Bollywood starlets flocking him at the Art of Chilling Party in Mumbai (I hope he is going with this somewhere…!) He blames it on his devastating good looks, and I feel that I am certainly not his beholder ;-) Goals get discussed and thrashed out; for the lack of any suitable yardsticks to measure my performance, we decide not to measure it altogether! I have a strong feeling that J has mentally check-marked the box next to a rating of 6 (a superlative performer, who far outperforms expectations)….I blame it on a combination of my devastating good looks and intellect J

4:30 – Set the new goals, and bounce off the email to J, hoping for a revert soon so that I can work towards an untainted rating of 6 ;-) Walking down the hallway, he darts a quick look in my direction and I catch his eye; I am certain he curses himself for making eye-contact, which means more persistent pestering (I am certain he wishes he walked with blinkers on!)

5:30 – It’s time to head to the gym. The first 10 minutes are a punishment, and I really need to drag my heals…However, once I am in the flow it seems all lovely and rhythmic

A letter buried in my inbox.....

Was just talking about Bombay to my friends, chattering away about places and food and people and experiences, when I suddenly realized that there was one common element to my experiences - my lens, that was you. You romanticized everything - the traffic snares, the local trains, the Bombay rains, the street food, the soaring rents, the house help woes, the lack of space just to name a few. I loved my borrowed lens - every color seemed brighter and sharper than before. For the first time, I felt tempted to discard my 'so what' attitude. You made me believe that life is worth embracing in all its glory - the good, the bad and the ugly.