Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Reminiscence

आज मी आख्खी दुपार पक्ष्यांची चित्रे बघण्यात घालवली. मला आत्ता उठुन बर्ड वॉचिंगला जावस वाटतय. ऑफिस मधे काम करत असताना अनेकदा माझ्या मनात विचार येतात की मी कितीतरी गोष्टी अनेक दिवसात केल्या नाहियेत. मला माझ्या मैत्रिणींबरोबर मनसोक्त भटकायच आहे. अचानक मैत्रिणीचा फोन यावा आणि गाडी काढून निघाव अशी एक ट्रिप करायची आहे. ट्रेकिंग करायच आहे. माझ्या कायनेटिक वरुन लांबच लांब चक्कर मारताना गार वारा श्वासात भरुन घ्यायचा आहे. आईबरोबर बाल गंधर्व च्या कट्ट्यावर बसून गप्पा मारायच्या आहेत. नाटक बघायच आहे. पावसाळ्यात सह्याद्रिच्या रांगामधून फिरायच आहे. लहान लहान ओहोळात पाय बुडवून चालण्याच सुख परत एकदा अनुभवायच आहे. एकाच गाडीत कोंबून माझ्या बहिण-भावांबरोबर प्रवास करायचा आहे. मनाचा वेग चकित करणारा आहे. मी गेल्या ५ मिनिटांत US to India back and forth असंख्य ट्रिप्स मारुन आलेय.

Friday, November 03, 2006

A Beautiful Day

I like to write when I have an exceptional day. Yesterday was one of those eventful days. I got up in the morning. Pankaj was ready to leave for office. I started with my daily errands. At around 8:30 am, I was all set to step out of the house when I realized that I do not have the keys. I started looking at every possible place in my house but no luck. Did I throw the whole bunch of keys in the trashcan? I started imagining myself searching for the keys in that Waste Management box down in the parking lot. Yuuk!
When did I use it the last time? I was trying to trace back but as usual my memory dumped me at the time of crisis. I gave up and called Pankaj. I was damn right. He went to the office with both the set of keys. That includes my home key, car key, office key and other, not so frequently needed, keys. Thank god. At least the keys were not in the trash. Pankaj was too busy to come home at that time. I decided to call up my boss. Waw! What a reason to take leave. "Boss, I cannot lock my house so I cannot come to the office today" :) But my schedule at the office was pretty much packed. I realized that I could not afford to take even a half day off. Pankaj and I decided that we will leave the home unlocked and I will use the duplicate car key. He will come and lock the home in his lunch break. I left for the office. I was late at work and there were a lots of emails and calls waiting for my attention. At around 11:30am Pankaj called me. He had gone home and had locked the door and everything was fine. Hushh…I was relieved. I replaced the receiver on the phone and saw my boss walking towards my desk. He had a document in his hand. Great! I was expecting a very important document from him.I am going to India in December. Being an alien in USA I have to go through the ordeal of the visa processing in my home country. I need an original copy of my visa document (I-797) from my employer for the visa interview. And there he was..with the document..no..wait a minute..with the ‘colored’ Xerox copy of the document? Shoot…He very sweetly explained that this is what he can give me. His attorney has advised him to keep the upper portion of original copy with himself. He can give me the bottom portion and a color copy of the whole. I tried to explain him that it will not work. The visa officers in my country have their own rules and moods. But my boss had nothing to do with them. He was happy going by his attorney’s advice, the same attorney who once had given me a green-card application form instead of H1-B visa application form. I was patiently explaining him that he does NOT need the original copy but I do. The document I-797 clearly says that the upper portion has to be kept with the employer. And my boss was doing right. At the same time most of the people from their own experience say that the visa officer needs to see the whole document. My task was to make my boss believe on something that is not written anywhere on any official document. Moreover I myself was convinced that what he is saying is right. I decided to send an email to the US Consulate at Mumbai to confirm the requirements of the document. As per my thoughts (this is very important because Pankaj’s thoughts on the same matter can differ by 180 degrees) I found a pretty good way to handle the tricky problem. I badly needed a break and it was already past noon so I left for the lunch. The immigration matter always makes me feel edgy and that day was no exception. I was driving away my negative thoughts while driving to the lunch place and BANG! A big, white Ford Ranger encroached my lane and hit me from left. I reduced my speed honking furiously knowing I could not go any more right since I was in the right most lane and there was a wall next to me. My front tire rim had hit the curb hard. When I regained my balance I realized that the truck did not even slow down after that reckless bang. I also realized that my car could still run. So I decided to go behind that moron. I caught him at the next light and shouted at him, asking him to pull his car in a nearby parking lot. I was down there in my civic and he was way up in his big truck. He conveniently ignored me and ran away as soon as the light went green. I was left with his license plate number and the description of his car. I stopped in a parking lot and checked my car. Thankfully there was not much damage. I called 911 and filed a case of ‘Hit and run’ giving them all the possible details. The police officer on the other end did not sound hopeful.
It was more than an hour since I had left office. I hurriedly packed some veggi-puffs from a nearby bakery and went back to the office. The afternoon was relatively uneventful. I decided to leave for home at 5. But it was not my day. The phone rang. It was Suzanna, one of our clients. She had some problems in the production process. I pushed my purse in the drawer again took a deep breath and started working on that issue. At 6:30 I disconnected the phone with a happy ‘Thank you’ note from Suzanna.
When I reached home I discovered that Pankaj was not at home and I did not have the keys. I called him and discovered that he is playing racquet ball with Sumeet and the game was at such a point that he could not leave it. I went to the court and got the keys from him. Finally I entered my house. I felt better when I realized that Pankaj had promised me to cook the dinner that day. I relaxed on the couch watching ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’. Pankaj came home. He was talking to me normally. But I could sense that something was wrong with him. I asked him a couple of times and he started off. He was very angry on my boss for not giving me the document. He was also angry on me for not pushing my boss enough for getting that document. At that point I lost my patience. And then whatever happened was the worst part of that day. We fought like cats and dogs. It went on for almost 3 hours. I slept tired of crying somewhere around midnight. The long day was finally over. When I woke up in the cold winter morning I had forgotten about our fight. I cuddled up in Pankaj’s arms for the warmth. The problems were still unresolved, the tasks were still incomplete but should that stop you from being happy? The sunshine got a brand new day with new hopes in our life. We decided to make it a beautiful day.