The Public Diary

Around these days, 5 years ago, I was inducted into accounting as a professional. So, no matter how much love-hate relationship you share with your professional life, it deserves a toast. Adding one more piece to my collection of poems. You know you're an Accountant, When you log into the professional bank account more often than your personal bank account. When you've signed more official cheques than your own cheque leaves ever in your life. When you get messed up in a multitude of passwords and dig in for a rescuing little secret piece of paper that holds your credentials. When you maintain and keep track of business accounts more religiously than your  individual bargains. When your speed on the numeric side of the keyboard is more than the alphabetic side, And calculators are one of your allies. When you end up opening spreadsheets (preferably MS excel) even when you are supposed to write in (MS) words. When you keep reminding yourself of the deadlines for the statutory

I always try to make effort to acquire items of daily use on my own. But what if you are placed in a completely new place and you don't know the whereabouts of the store outlets offering those products? "E-commerce platforms come to the rescue," you may have responded in your head. No wonder it is a lucrative option, given the ease and convenience. (Supermarket also wins points in this situation.) Earlier I used to think that I'm the only one in this dilemma of finding the apt place for buying stuff. About a month or two ago, I came to know of some fellow companions. (Roughly around the time when I thought of writing a post on this subject and then started noticing other people. You know how our minds start making connections to some event once we know we are attached to such occurrence in one way or another.) Source: wheretobuy.biz So, my sibling needed a drink, particularly used for health benefits. She had seen my father consume it years ago, so she asked him to br

When life happens to you, you can't help but only change your ways. Hold your sympathies. I'm not talking about something tragic, but only the natural changes in your enthusiasm over a period of time.  You may feel so deeply about a thing, a trend or even a person; give it enough time, you will outgrow it.  Married people related to this one at the drop of a hat, didn't they? This craze of these days is unmissable. Earlier, when a daughter took birth, parents instinctively started to save money for her wedding day. Gone are those days. Now, even the parents of sons have to start collecting each penny as sending your son to Canada (or insert the name of any other foreign country) is as much a liability as marrying your daughter off.  Pardon me for the unintentional patriarchism if I didn't mention sending daughters to offshores. Then, there are people who are crazy about old songs. They call it the golden era and the only melodious songs to have ever been composed. Somet

I'm not much of a person who would like to be on phone calls for long. In light of my preference, a memoir of some notable on-call incidents is presented to you. Alphabets can be quite phonic over the call. Suppose, you are saying N but the receiver might hear M. A common practice is to give the other person a word starting with that particular letter.  There I was trying to keep the error to a minimum. "It is spelt as B-L-O-G. B for Bag, L for Lovely, O for Ox and G for... Uh... G for... Umm." Thankfully, she got that letter anyway. But how could've I let myself sneak out so gently? I made a fool of myself. I ended up speaking out aloud, "G for Grey. Yeah . Yeah. G for grey."  Unfortunately, my job is also of such nature that I have to take and make several calls during the day. So, I have devised pet lines to greet everyone and ask how they're, respond back to them and then start the business.  Source: Amazon Once it so happened that I was so occupied

Disclaimer: This is a (first) girlish post, so you may or may not relate to it.   I often find myself on the opposite side of girlish talks. I wonder how I came up with the idea of this post. Some sartorial choices can be difficult to carry in routine life.  When I did shopping lately, I had more checkpoints in my mind before finalising the purchase. A s they say, 'Difficulty is the mother of invention.'  I guess that is why I'm summing up my experience here in this post. Oh! Wait. Isn't it ' Necessity is the mother of invention '? Anyway, moulding according to the situation is the best alternative. Even if it is in quotes. In this age of fashion and following trends, it can be luring to buy some clothes purely out of the craze. Following these trends blindly can sometimes put you into a sort of mess.  So, if you are planning to buy any of the listed attires, make sure to consider associated points. 1. Frilled Sleeve tops Source: Flipkart These tops are in tren

This composition was for a contest at my University. I am not bragging but I secured a position for it. Of course, it was an e-contest, which means less competition. Multiple winners for one position also paved the way for an easy victory. Enough of bragging-cum-bashing. Let's proceed.  Have a good read. HUMANITY God placed humans highest in the evolution chain because of the characteristic Humanity, However, these days it gushes through our blood in rarety.  Alas! All of us are lost in the race for vanity. From running away from moral and social responsibilities, To grabbing all possible benefits selfishly. Everyone is trying to seek some sort of parity,  But our actions reflect complete disparity. Hence, we need to take a pause for much-needed clarity. We must dig within ourselves to fetch our mind's sanity, And craft the humane deeds with all of our heart's purity. By bringing our efforts and actions in utter harmony. Amidst these testing times, we need to follow our con

We all know how hard it is to concentrate these days. Be it in life, in meditation or in studies. Focus is ever lost amidst all the distractions.  This post is going to revolve about the effort that goes in if you decide to take up studies after a gap of a few years. Especially, when there is no environment at your place to accommodate you for the same. Closure of public places, specifically libraries, in this hovering pandemic situation is only adding salt to the wounds. (That's a separate thing that I never went there for studies even when they were open). So, the other day I was finding a corner in my house where the sounds of Youtube videos or the conversations of any of the family members would not disturb me. But I guess I forgot to figure in the biggest challenge to silence. My nephew. A seven year old. When I opened my books half-heartedly, my nephew bang opened the room door. He asked me using his standard dialogue, "Can you play with me?" I denied outright.  

Confession: Trust me, when I came up with this edgy, or say, eye-catching title, I felt like it is clickbait . Just like those videos on Youtube wherein the content has no connection with the caption. It is there merely to attract the masses. By bullet, I related it to the 'Bullet train' concept. As in, speaking at the speed of a bullet. We siblings are told from childhood that we speak fast. They call it is in our heredity. That our father also speaks at a faster pace. However, I never really found his speed more than usual. In fact, I find him a little bit on the slower side. But his next-generation sure speaks faster. I know it is a trait to be worked upon. People who process slowly find it difficult to understand the fast stream of words. They would request to repeat the sentence or simply ask to speak slowly.  I remember I participated in a reading contest  8th or 9th standard. On my turn, I went and read out a whole piece of paper just within a few minutes. The supervisi

My nephew was taught to conserve the environment through plastic by his school teacher. Howsoever strange it may sound, I thought of giving it a shot. That you can help Mother Nature by putting used plastic to some more use. The idea didn't attract me initially, but I have this habit of reading everything printed on wrappers - from catchy slogans, ingredients to manufacturing addresses. On one such e-commerce company's wrapper was written a statement about buyback price of that wrapper being Rs. 15 per kg, if returned in a clean and dry state. (By virtue of experience in this field, I now know that it is mostly on 4 LDPE plastics.) The monetary reward led to the idea catching my fancy. I believe creative ways of making money give me a kick.  I was pumped by my sibling who enlightened me with the concept of eco-bricks. I was as naive as you at that time. So, I heard patiently. "You take an empty plastic bottle, stuff it with unrecyclable plastic wrappers. Keep on filling it

I always stand firm with the quote that your surroundings and your company have a grave impact on you and your thought process.  Call it my flexibility or having an easily influenced mind but I get affected by the circumstances. For instance, I am a kid who has learnt numbers in English. I don't have a clear memory if I ever learnt them in other languages in written form. Somehow I knew how to say them in Hindi/Punjabi but only up to 38. If anyone passed on the contact number to me in Punjabi I would request them to say it in English.  The story started changing when one day I saw some random person telling out his number in Punjabi in one go to the other person who was at some distance. I was surprised that the other person was able to jot it down immediately without having to ask for repetition or confirmation, as is the case in English. Had it been said in English, it would have certainly taken him a bit longer to get the other person to feed it correctly. Then I entered office

It's the second wave of COVID-19. And it's worse than the last year. Earlier we used to hear about cases at faraway places, in faraway people. Limited to news and statistics only. Hence, giving rise to the suspicion of the existence of the disease.  But this time, almost everyone is getting it. People in your family, people who you are in immediate contact with and the air is getting affected, increasing the odds of your exposure to the pandemic. One prominent symptom in patients is loss of smell and taste. So, let me divert from this sickening vibe and move towards the impact of sensory organs on each other. (What a smooth transition it was, no?) Has it ever happened to you that your sensing ability through one organ is affected due to the sensations being received by the other sensory organ?    Didn't get it?  I'll elaborate.  Once, I was watching a video recommended by my sibling. The video shot the occurrence of the Tornado. It was a good 10-15 minute video. Such a

I've second thoughts if I should write a post surrounding the theme again. I've realised that about half a dozen posts have already been published on this blog about how kids behave, what we used to be like as kids, how my nephew has been and what-not. Anyway, setting the inhibitions aside and letting the thoughts flow. One thing is certain that young minds are very impressionable. Rarely do they have very strong feelings of their own and hence, we, as kids, are always looking for some inspiration to draw from.  So, as a kid, I didn't know what I wanted to do in my life or what my aim was? (Well, I took pretty long to figure it out; I was clueless even as a teenager.) Upon being asked, "What do you want to do? I once told, "I wanna go abroad." Because I had heard my sibling saying that she wanted to go abroad.  "Where exactly in abroad?"  "Abroad."  It was the only word that I knew; being as careless as kids are I never tried to look out

I know I'm in a big, big illusion. And I'm dead sure that 90% of you would be completely taken aback if I tell you that sometimes I feel that I'm very funny. That I'm my own little version of a comedian. I often plan a sequence of events in my mind that may happen in future and how I'll ha ve a witty remark to counter the situation, which leads to a smile on my face. *Hopefully, they don't sound funny in only my mind.* But one thing that I'm fully aware of is that I can't be funny with all the people or in all the situations or at all times. I have so many criteria that should be in place to provide for my comic side to come out. For instance, people should be open-minded and not judgemental, they should be light-hearted and not take things seriously (but they should respect me and not make fun of me, otherwise they are out of my circle) , they should match my IQ level (for there are some who can't understand my one-liners sometimes) and

I literally had to pause the ongoing video to put this thought into writing. Such was the intensity of flow. Are we having access to too much data? That we don't even know how to let the information seep in, to let the mind absorb it. How many of us have ever felt that even after using the internet for hours and hours, we haven't done really anything? In a flashback, it seems like our time has been wasted.   Recently, I was scrolling down whilst streaming online. Suddenly, I felt the need to keep a pen and paper by my side so that I could note down what all content is in the pipeline that I would play after the present one ends. That's what we are directed towards. We don't enjoy the journey but are only oriented towards the end result. We don't focus on the thing at hand. We are just rushing mindlessly.   Do you remember the answer to the last question that you had searched on google a few days back? I can spot the same searches being made more than once in my br

Of late my mind has started telling me to stop being nice and kind, unfortunately. People start taking you lightly. Or worse, some even try to overpower you. Like they say: It's the age of kal-yuga .  On an almost daily basis, I come across people who have become so used to the idea of being dependent on others that they don't feel any shame in asking out for help each time they need a specific thing to be done.  I find it a bit absurd as I am the kind of person who would put in her best effort to get the thing done. Only when I'm at my wit's end and fail to find solution that I ask someone else for help.  But I guess, either other people are too social that they find a reason to converse through this way or they are too unapologetic in asking for things as soon as they hear of them. Irritated, once I deliberately didn't help a person seeing their shamelessly-laid-back attitude. I knew what was the required document but I acted as if I've never heard about it e

I know I'm two and a half decades late for a post like this. ( For the uninitiated : F.R.I.E.N.D.S is a TV-show which started a iring way back in 1994 when I was not even in this body.) My social circle is not of people who watch such TV shows (or at least they don't talk about shows with me at all because of my lack of interest/time) so I had not heard much about this show earlier. Not that, I was completely unaware of its existence. But somehow it didn't catch my fancy.  Earlier, I was too young to watch it given the boldness that foreign content offers. Neither could I understand such fluent and accented English, nor were there any channels on our cable network that would have provided access to it. Just a few months ago, a much-talking colleague at my office had even recommended watching it, but her talkativeness must have spoiled the review I guess. I tried watching its bloopers to develop some liking (thanks to Youtube suggestions) but didn't find them much worthy