Touch Me Not

My wife got a job and she says that she is not excited. That’s what your second job could mean, particularly when your first job was flying. Supriya has been on a roller coaster career path. She wanted to do an MBA after her engineering in computer science and information technology, primarily because she never liked to get glued to computer screen writing software programs. And once she got in to her MBA, she landed up with an offer of job of air hostess with Indian Airlines. She had dreamt of flying as her career, not so much from a career or compensation perspective, but because flying seemed exciting. And her elder sister was already working with Alliance Air, which made the decision easier. After two years with Indian Airlines, the concerns of our marriage and my insistence on her doing rather a creative job, made her quit the job and go back to her business school. Another year or may be a little less of hard work and focus on developing a managerial perspective has finally fetched her a good offer. The company is one of the Big Five of Indian Software firms. I was with TCS, biggest of these Big Five for about a year and had been to their training center at Trivandrum for a two-and-a-half months training. Training was fun and so were the TCS people working at the learning center. They strive to input as much as possible and set the benchmark high. I hope the same holds for Supriya's firm too. Supriya will have to shoulder the responsibility of being the face of the firm's pursuit towards learning and development and hence, excellence. No mean task that is. But what else should one expect from her? She is a gem and gem shall She be always.

I looked into an old photo album and could get the picture in which we stood by the banks of Hussain Sagar Lake in Hyderabad. We were not married at that time and I had traveled from Mumbai to be with her on her flight to Hyderabad. We had requested a passer by to take a snap of ours. Supriya was shying and as you can see, her lips read 'touch me not', but I had no such qualms and was fairly comfortable with my wife to be. The other snap is from our visit to lotus pond on Christmas Day. We were married by then, as looks obvious from the way we clung to each other.