Shilpa Roy Kota

We call our mom “Matrix”. Don’t know when and why we started calling her this, but it seems like forever. People ask us – what does Matrix mean? To me “Matrix” means a complex structure made up of many layers. It is impossible to understand the whole structure unless you understand each layer at a time. 

Out of curiosity, I also decided to search the meaning of Matrix. To my surprise I found a completely new meaning. As per dictionary.com, Matrix is something that constitutes the place or point from which something else originates, takes form, or develops. I thought this makes complete sense because Mom is the place where we all start from – physically, emotionally and spiritually. My Matrix to me is the pillar on which I stand, the net which will catch me when I fall, the silver lining behind each dark cloud, and the smile I look up to whenever I have tears in my eyes. 

Matrix is the source which has always provided, but never taken anything from anyone. Strong, dependable, bluntly honest, beautiful, graceful, loving are just some of the adjectives that come to my mind when I think of her. When we were children, she shielded us from the harshest storms. Yet, when the time came, she left us alone to fight our battles. She laughed with us and cried with us. I know many times when we were scared, she was equally or perhaps even more scared than us. After all, we were only scared for ourselves, but she was scared for all of us combined. 

Looking back, I wish I was bigger, more sensible, more stronger so that I could have helped her and talked to her and provided for her. I guess my wish was finally granted and as she grows older, I grow bigger, stronger, and hopefully more sensible. 

Love you Matrix, beyond what words can tell! Wish you a very happy birthday!! We will always be there for you!

Bought a pair of ultra jazzy junk bangles at a store recently. When buying I thought my daughter will love these. Today morning, while I was searching for something to make me feel special, I found them, lying neatly in my drawer, twinkling, calling me, teasing me and daring me to wear them. And yes you guessed it, I ended them wearing them myself. And yeah, I feel 20 years younger myself.

All day long, I have been thinking – what fun it is to be a girl. There is so much we can do, some of it sane and quite a lot of it completely insane. That’s how this blog started shaping up in my mind. Here’s a list of things, mostly insane, I think only girls (aunties included) can get away with:

• Use tears to get around difficult negotiations
• (Derivative of the above) Talk more with our eyes than with our mouth
• Call friends for hours to discuss recipes, outfits, discount sales, books, movies, FB status and anything under the sun which we might fancy
• Look intelligent and innocent, naughty and graceful, strong and vulnerable; both at the same time
• Go shopping when there is nothing to buy and still end up spending hours and thousands on stuff we never thought we needed
• Ask for help when we are genuinely stuck (or even otherwise)
• Cry when we see an ultra romantic or happy or sad or violent or boring movie. In essence, we are entitled to cry in any movie.
• Know we are fat, but expect everyone else to say “wow, you have lost weight!”

A dear friend asked me – what if the girl he loves doesn’t love him back. My response:

We love someone because we love them.

We don’t love someone because they will love us back. 

Then why do we question our love, if our love is not reciprocated.

I have quoted this from the Geeta a lot many times before, and I quote it again now “Karma kar phal ki chinta mat kar” (Do your deed without worrying about the reward). The reward for a good deed is the deed itself. When we truly love someone, the reward for our love is the love that we have within us. It is beautiful, timeless and quintessentially pure. Even if we don’t get anything in return for our love, we still have our love and no one and nothing can change that.

And then I ask – Would you rather have loved and lost, than not to have loved at all?

We are fortunate that we have experienced love, experienced the exhilaration, the freedom, the depth of love. There are so many out there who will never experience it in its true form. We have been given a gift; we should cherish it and use it as a strength.

When we are talking about love, here is my all time favorite dialog from the movie City on Angels –

“I would rather have had one breath of her hair, one kiss from her mouth, one touch of her hand, than eternity without it!”

I seem to be down with some kind of viral infection. Don’t know which one it is yet, and honestly doesn’t matter, as long as I know it can cure itself in a day or two. 

Top 5 reasons why I am thrilled that I am sick –

1. I can prop up my feet onto bed and just sleep for hours together
2. My mind which seems to be on a constant race nowadays, has completely shut down. 
3. I am floating mid air, atleast two feet above ground level; my mind drifting between clouds and stars
4. All family and friends calling and checking on me, pampering me and asking to take care
5. My daughter seems to be following my directions (for a big change), thinking mom is sick and needs help

It surely is so much fun to be sick! I am thinking I can actually do it more often. The only negative side effect –

1. I had to make a great amount of effort to lift myself up and write this blog. Wish there was a mind reader, who could read my thoughts of  a blog and publish it for me. 

That makes me think, there is another reason to be thrilled when you are sick. You sometimes get these craziest ideas when you have nothing better to think about. 🙂 

1. Never close your Inbox. The world will stop if you don’t respond to emails within 5 seconds.
2. Keep your phone always busy or switched off. The longer someone has to wait to reach you, the more important you are.
3. When you are exhausted and the most important thing you need is sleep, you call friends over for drinks.
4. When you are busy checking Facebook and your boss walks behind, tell them you are searching for prospective clients
5. When you are travelling non stop, never forget that you have Sulabh Toilets
6. When you feel like throwing someone out of the window, think how in the hell will you be able to pick them up in the first place.
7. When parents complain you don’t have time to talk to them, make a call and just keep saying hmm.. I’m taking care.. mmm.. I know.. hmm… I’m taking care.. mmm.. I know.. and so on.
8. Never say anyone (especially the customer) is wrong. If you disagree it is just a difference of perspectives.

Dear fellow bloggers, why so sad?

Why are all the posts about anger, injustice and bad?

Life is what we make of it, life is what we choose to remember and spread

By blogging about negatives, we are not moving ahead

You have followers, therefore you have power

Use it responsibly to make a positive impact

What we consider as a bane, could be an opportunity in disguise

Not all are blessed with minds like yours; please help others in the find

We don’t need reminders on how tough life is

We need passion and belief that can spread hope and happiness

A lot of times at work, we give honest, blunt and harsh feedback. I am sure we look like the bad boss who never ever understands. 

Lately, I have been there much more than I like. As business grows, we are all under immense pressure to grow with it. Sometimes we know what we need to do in order to grow, but sometimes we all need to be guided. Feedback is just another way of guiding. I keep telling my team, it is just feedback to help them improve and in return help the organization improve. They should not for a minute think there is anything personal about it. It is all about work and making it work together better, faster, cheaper. 

After a hard day of critical reviews and tough feedback, I would still like to unwind with the same team and laugh over silly PJs and imitations of each other. When it comes to work, it ends within the confines of work boundaries . But when it comes to personal relationships, there is no defining boundaries. 

We might chose to part ways within the work boundaries, but personal relationships will last forever.

While we the nation celebrate the victory of few excellent sports personalities, we at the same time make louder hue and cry about the poor state of our sports in our country. Just 4 medals compared what China has won. Shame on us!

It is so easy to sit in our cute little offices, warm beds and hot baths and complain about our country. Our sports minister didn’t do this, our coaches don’t know better, our athletes lack talent; the list of complaints is endless. 

I ask, how many of us have done anything better than those out there in the field. How many of us gave up our dreams of becoming sportsmen just because the dream seemed too tough to achieve? How many of us knowing we had talented children pulled them out of sports as soon as they reached the 9th standard? How many of us recognized good talent but never came forward to support it? I know a lot of us who fall in all the above categories.

When we the individuals don’t have the power to believe in our dreams, what right do we have to complain against the government and the system. We forget that our nation is not an independent entity but is made up of each one of us put together. Our government is not run by Kings and autocrats, it is selected and appointed by us.

Until such time that we are willing to take a stand for change ourselves, it is my humble request that we please sit down and stop complaining. Enjoy the show and let others enjoy it too! 

Where do ideas come from? Is there somewhere a factory in the mind which manufactures these? What inputs does it take and what kind of process would it follow?

I have tried to analyze it, and have often wondered that the inputs are events from our daily life. But honestly, some of my best and worst ideas have come from absolutely nowhere. I can find no corelation of their existence from any where around me. That makes me sad. Because, if I could find the inputs and the process, probably I could make the process repeatable and share it with others so everyone could get wonderful ideas and avoid bad ideas.

Richard Bach, my current favorite author mentions the idea factory in his book
“One”. I am inclined to believe that it exists somewhere, if not physically then surely virtually, in all of us. We just need to find what keeps it going. 

My blog is definitely one of the inputs that keeps my idea factory running. Or perhaps the blog is the process. Doesn’t really matter as long as the ideas keep coming.