The Infernal Diurnal Journal

  Today is Ma's birthday. Not the best birthday, as she has just concluded yesterday a knee-replacement surgery the previous day. I am on the phone with her and with my dad and sister, trying to find out how she is doing and so far she seems to be doing okay. While waiting for updates on her from home, my mind has been drifting to the previous month, wherein I had missed many a journal entry owing to health reasons ( and a bit of laziness, if I a totally honest). I promise everyone, this is one distinct initiative I am trying to progress on war-footing, which is almost entirely to deliver myself from the affliction of laziness which is such an inherent part of my fabric. I was in Morocco around a month ago. Unlike most of my business travels, I was somewhat excited by this one because I had never travelled to Morocco before. The only problem was that I was still under the curse of this mysterious fever that had been ailing me for weeks. I was somewhat functional with the input of s...

Today, finally I received a really thick envelope from HR. I already know what it was. It consisted of an envelope for each member of my overall organization ( all of 120 full-time people) detailing a merit-increase in their salary. I had to fight for this hard, and while I did not get everything I wanted for the team, I got something. Tomorrow onwards I shall get the chance to inform the team of this by handing them these letters. I don’t know if overall they will be pleased by it but am hoping that they will regard me as someone that has done his best. I have not visited my broader team in Abu Dhabi for almost 9 months- because every time I went there, all they complained about was their salary or the lack of promotion. I had promised myself that I would not visit them until I was able to do something for them. If they feel more positive after these increases, I will make a plan to visit them- maybe even late next week or right after eid break. I could not imagine the amount of back ...

Boy how I hate the month of March. One day it feels like summer is here and the next day I go for a walk and catch a chill. I think there has not been a March where I have not had a cold of some sort. You know, you might be thinking why I start most posts with state of the union speech on the union’s health. Because , this year, so far ot has been all it has been about. I hope I can pivot away from this topic sooner rather than later. Indian elections are in the air. And as usual there is debate around whether the government has done enough: it seems that it has but it is also clear that they are paining a far rosier picture of their achievements than is actually the case. But so did most of my bosses and colleagues at their year end appraisals. When the stakes are high, then you get these behaviours. There is some degree of consensus that the central government made an impact in digital payments, infrastructure and a few other more minor things. But most think that they failed spectac...

I am on the look out for pastel shaded trousers. Don’t ask me why- I think they look cool, summery and somehow very offbeat. I am not even sure if I will be able to carry them- skin tone does play a part in this. But I care not. However, these are almost impossible to find at your friendly neighborhood retailers. I cannot get myself to but something like this online. The closest I got was at a Ralph Lauren shop which had a pair of lemon coloured trousers. I was not finally sold on it- it was too close to white. I had a pair of white trousers that I ended up never wearing.  These days the mid-morning is a struggle. There is no nice coffee that was delivered to my office by the office-boy.  This counted as a real perk for me, believe it or not. Not that it costed the company anything ( well, those nespresso capsules aren’t all that cheap in Dubai)- but it just made me feel special. It was one of those moments where I learnt a bit more about myself. Given that in all my corporate...

The weekend in Delhi was nothing spectacular, just stuck to my hotel room and visited two sets of friends for an evening meal and drinks. However, there were some points of interest- atleast to me. I seemed to feel healthy-ish after a long time. I had a gargantuan hotel breakfast two days in a row, although was careful enough to limit intake of unfriendly food items- say a Jalebi or similar. I re-initiated an almost forgotten exercise regime and overall I felt good. However, this morning I am back in Dubai and somehow not at 100 percent again. I wonder if it is all in my mind. I feel tired and sleepy at work- and it could very well be that I slept late and not enough. However, I had not been sleeping any more than 4 or 5 hours for the past few days in India either. Maybe it sort of culminated in an actual physical manifestation which coincided with my return to home.  It was not the best day to feel sleepy because we had a somewhat difficult Price Squeeze meeting at 9 followed by a...

Ahmedabad might not have been a show stopper but I need to mention this heritage restaurant we went to for dinner one eveing. It is called the "Agashye"- an open terrace restaurant situated in a heritage building in the heart of the old city. I think -t is also now a hotel- known as MG hotel or the House of MG. I had originally imagined that it might be a reference to Mahatma Gandhi since we were in his town. But it was named after another eminent Ahmedabad family- Mangaldas Girdhardas. The open-air terrace seating in these Indian locales has always been very aesthetically appealing to me. If you sit yourself down at any of these tables and look around , you will be surrounded by a canopy of old buildings, the ambient noise of bustling traffic and in general be in the thick of a multi-timbral and multi-hued chaos that is so quintesentially Indian. And since you are seated at an altitude you are well positioned to take all this in without gettting your hands dirty. What more c...

It is as if I have to hit restart to a routine that I had established for more than a year. I havent excercised nor have I penned down anything for well over a month. My last entry was dated Feb 17th: I have been unwell fpr a very prolonged period. Needless to say this has taken a toll mentally as well. Which creates a negative spiral. I hadn't been regular at all in taking medications. I have been eating normally- which I should not have been doing. all in all some vitals went off- particularly blood sugar and my own view is that it had something to do with my seeming precipitous drop in immunity against viral infections. Today in a hotel room in delhi I am trying to get back to diarying- a goal for this year- and the reason I am doing so today is that I have some empty time to myself and feel somewhat unfettered. But more than this, I feel somewhat healthy. No fever, no sore throat, no coughing up mucus , no voice loss, no daytime lethargy or sleepiness. This is good enough - and...