Which manager's line is it anyway

Everyone would have or had interesting managers in the line of our work who might appear so different for pure engineers like us. Words from them motivates us to do the job sometimes and their talent of making you believe the way they want you to amazes everyone all the time. And what is more interesting are the phrases that the managers use that you would remotely use to explain in a normal casual conversation. So listening closely to the managers conversations, I picked up few lines that made me interested and I have listed down for you. May be... I mean may be... if you have more to add, please do so.

• "There are many other constraints and pulls and pushes." on why we could not get the project.
  
• "The pie has shrunk already" on the budget limitations of the client.
  
• "I am trying to understand what I have and what is right for me" on why taking the project will be difficult.
  
• "The black eye we had is vanishing" on client appreciation.
  
• "We are on a bigger driving seat now" for we are working on more important projects.
  
• "We should be aware of the environment" on knowing about your peers' opinions on the project.
  
• "Not everything is Black & White" on you can not categorize things as just right and wrong.
  
• "It is raining here" on the abundance of the issues seen in the project.
  
• "Don't disturb the apple cart" on not changing the already tested code.
  

What kept me away

I am sure many would have been wondering why I was not active with any new posts for the past 25 days. And few might have the right guesses which I would explain to others in this post anyway. But to say I was not active only for the past 25 days would be wrong as the post before that is a good 21 days behind. Altogether, this year has not been so good so far with respect to my blogging habits. But I guess I got lot new visitors because of the same reason why the blog was dormant for more than a month. Ok ok. I think I am beating around the blogs here. So let me get to the point.
After 17 months of eating burgers in US, I went to India to eat some bajji as well. But what happened was that I was served with Sojji along with Bajji which quickly followed by the story as posted in my previous post as I got engaged to a sweet innocent calm girl who I am going to call as Chini here. Now as there is no one here to believe that I did not expect this to happen during this trip, I am not going to say anything on how it happened. So I was there in India tied up with not just enjoying the changes that happened in India during my absence in the last 1.5 years but was also surprised by the change in my own life. The three weeks of the holidays went like a breeze with very less time to meet many friends and no time to meet other few. With all the buzz around, I was unable to put some time into this blog though there were lot to discuss and report on the trip that includes the outgrowing cell phone shops that are more in number than juice stalls in our locality and the differences in driving an automatic car in US and a TVS Scooty on the busy roads of T.Nagar. Polar opposites were the experience between the two that my safe driving even brought one Tata Indica to park in the gap between my bike and the bus that was standing in front of me. I was learning to get into the world of committed gentlemen and started making regular deposits to Airtel prepaid mobile service. And whats more! I even got the chance to revive my texting skills from the good old college days. And if it was not for the 60 rupees RT plan, I would have redirected my salary to Airtel's bank account.
With the holidays coming to an end and a hard good-bye to Chini at the airport, I was back in the city that is called as "Queen City" also known as Charlotte. One must understand the strong pressures faced by a software engineer in this tight recession time working for a demanding client trying to balance the time between offshore calls and calls to offshore. With Chini managing part of my life and my managers trying to take part of my life away at work, it is always tough to find the right time to put all the above pointless talks in my blog. And finally on this day, I happened to find some time and even Chini was kind enough to grant me permission to put something here which I am sure she would be reading it now. After all, I had nothing to say to her on the day we first met as she had read all the posts much before deciding to meet me. And I am so happy that my blog is useful for someone more than just to pass time.

By the way, I am active twittering all along as much as possible in the last 2 months. So you can tune to www.twitter.com/injey for short and chirpy updates very often.

நம் முதல் சந்திப்பு

அய்யோ! தொலைந்தேனே.
என் வாழ்வைத் தேடுகையில் - உன்னிடம்
நிழலில் கண்ட உன்னை
நிஜத்தில் பார்க்க ஆசை.
விரைந்து வந்த என்னை
சிறு புன்னகையிலாலே கொன்றாய்.
நான்கு அடி நடந்திருப்போம்
முதல் கேள்வியில் தடுக்கிவிட்டாய்.
"சம்மதமா?" என்றாய்.
தேன் இனிக்குமா என்பதுபோல்.
இருவரும் ஆய்வதற்கு ஒரு மணி நேரம்,
முடிவெடுத்ததோ அதன்முதல் ஒரு நிமிடம்.
எதுவும் அறியாமல் நான் நிற்க,
முழுவதும் அறிந்திருந்தாய் என்னை பற்றி.
பெற்றோர்கள் அனைவரும் தவித்திருக்க
மறந்துவிட்டோம் அவர்களையும் காலத்தையும்.
தொலைபேசியும் அழுத்துப் போனது
நம்மை பல முறை அழைத்து.
மெல்லப்பேசி மெதுவாய் நடந்து
திரும்பிச்சென்றால் - பிடித்திருக்கிறதா என்றார்கள்.
புன்னகையுடன் நீ தலையசைக்க
சம்மதம் உரைத்தோம் புதுவாழ்வுணோக்கி.
ஆஹா! கண்டெடுத்தேன்.
என் தொலைந்த உயிரினை - உன்னிடம்!