Enough Said But Not Enough Done

Time is really a strange term. It flies when you don’t notice it and when you do, its inching away at terribly slow speed. It’s been a month since television channels started airing undisclosed footages and paying tributes to those who went away to never return back. Some even reviewed the security post 26/11 at sensitive spots to expose the apathy of a Government who hasn’t yet learnt its lesson. A year down the line, nothing has changed really. Mr. R.R. Patil whose famous quotes still make my blood boil is back as a Minister. So are many other politicians who went on terror tours.

No matter how much is being said about the fortification of the city by the Mumbai Police and other assorted forces, we all know the truth. It is this truth or rather the realization of it is reflected in the eyes of the average Mumbaikar. People talk endlessly about the ‘spirit’ of Mumbai and how the city has a habit of bouncing back from every calamity that continues to mar its beauty. I have a question- Do we have any other option? The wealthy guys will stop going for work for a month and quit travelling by first class in locals and opt for private transportation instead, the middle class will take a leave of two days and then resume going back to the old grind but what about those whose salary is on a per day basis. Can this guy afford to stay back at home citing fear of a terror attack? Everyone tries to put up a brave front and act tough and at the end of the day, the fear of losing your livelihood overrules the fear of losing your life. This is the spirit we all talk about.

Shabana Azmi rightly said “We are a society looking for short-term solutions to long-term problems.” So many citizen groups were formed after the attacks stressing the need for a secure neighborhood. Facebook and Orkut had hundreds of communities and groups coming up to which people swarmed to express their solidarity. How many of them are active right now? These people aren’t even close to what they are trying to be- heroes. My hero is the victim who has the guts to visit the same place where he escaped death and speak about it. My hero is the widow who continues to run from pillar to post trying to get compensation instead of indifference from the Government. My hero is the policemen who patrol the streets assuring people of their safety when they know that their pistol won’t come close to killing the terrorist and the only weapon they have is their courage. My hero is Karambir Kang and many others like him who chose to respond to the call of duty even when their own safety was at peril. My hero is Ratan Tata who re-opened the Taj in a matter of few months to show that the there a few cracks in the building is not enough to break his courage. This is the spirit we should be talking about and not the spirit to travel again in local trains after the attacks.

After a year, all I wish to do is to pray for the victims and their family because it is not easy to draw strength knowing that your loved ones could have been saved. It requires immense resilience to accept the fact Kasab alive and that your money is spent on keeping him alive. I just hope this is the last time I express my anguish over our own apathy and helplessness. Let this be the last time please.

Runaway Techies

Recently I had the fortune of visiting the I.I.T. Bombay campus and that has left me with a slight pain in the jaw. The reason being, I was gaping at the sheer enormity of the campus. I am yet to see the whole campus because whenever I assumed that the road was coming to an end, it took a new turn only to end at infinity. The greenery was such a beautiful sight to behold and it was hard to believe that there was a crazy traffic waiting for you outside the entrance if you just bothered to turn your back.

When I checked out the fees, I was pleasantly surprised to see the figures below 20K. While it is not really a meager amount, but if you look at the facilities they provide, it’s actually a bargain. But right now I am feeling contemptuous at the I.I.T. graduates who pack up their things and just zip off to some ‘foreign’ country to earn big bucks. How mean and selfish I say. The Government doesn’t spend an obscene amount on your training and education just to see you off at the airport. It does so with the hope and expectation that the best brains don’t turn their backs on their homeland and work their bums off at some other country. Sure every guy has the right to decide about his career. The temptation of a lucrative job at the outset of your career is too hard to resist and that is a fact I am completely aware of. But can you guys please think of coming back to India after a few years and do your nation a service?
I am a bit sympathetic to those graduates from private institutes. I am well aware of the fleecing at such institutes and most of the authorities are at mortal danger of choking since they are sucking money at alarming speed. If they decide to work abroad and try to recover back their investment, it seems acceptable. The certificates from such obscure institutes aren’t going to make them shine in the job scenario in India. But I can’t help going Grrr…. when I see an IITian snub job offers from India saying that they can’t adjust in their birthplace now that they are so well settled in the country of their choice. Sure Mr. Geek, you are so well ‘adjusted’ to the random curry-bashing and snide racist remarks you face in your adopted country. You have now ‘adjusted’ and accepted your colleagues perception of India as ‘Land of snake charmers’ and have not bothered to correct him. We Indians are so amazing, we adapt so well in a new environment without a complaint. Except the environment where they grew up in.
I just hope our beloved and very valuable techies realize this one important fact- India needs you and very badly. Don’t make me believe this commonly held perception that IITians have brains but not a heart.

Being positive

As the blog title suggests I am going to mention all the things which make my life fruitful, people who enrich my life and the silly things which I love doing. I am listing out these things because whenever I will be down and out, I will glance at this list and be thankful for all the things I have been blessed with.
1. I love to wake up to the sound of chirping birds- I still enjoy that luxury of seeing sparrows near my window every day.
2. I love it when my parents fuss over my food and get me all sort of junk food so that I can gain some weight.
3. I love to stroll and not run to the railway station to catch the train.
4. I can catch up with my friends at the station and happily chatter till we reach college.
5. I love the lunch time when everyone gathers around and pounce on each other’s dabba. If it’s paranthas for lunch, it will disappear even before you say ‘mujhe bhi chahiye’.
6. I enjoy the feeling that I can doze off during a boring lecture because my bench mate will wake me up when the professor stares.
7. I love the idle talk on the way to the railway station and missing trains just because you want to catch up on all the college news.
8. I love to snuggle under a warm blanket on a cool night and sleep pleasantly.
9. I love to stick to my cell phone 24/7. Although the recent reports of cancer causing radiations from them do give me enough reasons to stay away from it , but then it’s back to normal within a week.
10. I love the mixing of colours when I make a rangoli. The way one colour blends in with the other is a visual treat.
11. I love it when I make a little candle to gift someone and se their faces brighten up.
12. I love to see the arrays of earrings and bangles on display in the train. I wonder if anyone notices the way these shiny things catch the sunlight and reflect back beautiful rays.
13. I love it when my house is filled with little kids making a ruckus and when they finally manage with some efforts to call me ‘Sweee taa’
14. I love it when I dance like no one is watching during ganpati viserjan.
15. I love to close my umbrella and walk in the rain while at the same time jumping on poodles of water, never mind the curses showered by friends on me.
16. I love it when I can just go on sleeping and sleeping and sleeping and not worry about a thing in the world.
17. I love being around Pagu, Alias and Unpronounceable, who can sense it when I am feeling low and then cheer me up.
18. I love it when someone comments on the blog because I know somewhere they have taken the effort to read it.
19. I still love to sit on the swing in gardens until a child politely points it out to me that it is his turn.
20. And last but not the least, I love being myself :)

Priorities and options

Diwali is a great time really. Apart from the obvious joy of lighting up your homes, splurging on new clothes and gorging on sweets, I think it’s a great time to clean up the mess from our lives. I haven’t been really active on the clean-up scene at home but this time it was different. I took up the mantle of organizing the cupboard and my book shelf. Herein the problem lies. I am a clothes freak; I consider it to be a major disaster if I repeat my clothes more than once a week. It was quite a task to clean up the clothes section and I finally managed to sort them into the following – clothes which won’t ever fit, clothes which will fit if I gain a few pounds and clothes which I am using presently but won’t fit if I gain a few pounds. The section of ‘old clothes’ is avoided for the simple reason that my wardrobe gets updated with alarming regularity.

But I think cleaning up your things is therapeutic. Seeing things sorted urged me to take hold of my own life and fix it up. You see, my life has been quite eventful especially after I took up engineering. During the course of time I got rid of a ‘friend’ with a perverted bend of mind, struggled with studies and dealt (or rather still dealing) with nasty politics All of these experiences required immense emotional strength on my part and sometimes I couldn’t even sum up enough courage to narrate them to my close friends.

The reason why I was apprehensive to confide is that somewhere I am partly to be blamed for the circumstances that befell upon me. Being a complete emotional fool, I ended up trusting the wrong kind of people who, at the very behest, had listed out the advantages of being my friend. When you trust someone, it is a natural tendency to turn a blind eye to their flaws while going out of the way to help your ‘friends’. You end up supporting them during every situation even when you know that this will create enemies for yourself.

All is rosy, you are having the time of your life and after so many years you start feeling you have got a friend for life. Now comes the reality part. It hits you hard when you get to know what’s going on in their lives from someone else just because your ‘friend’ didn’t trust you enough. If that was not enough, lies, deception and back-stabbing come to the fore and this is when it hurts you badly. Then your mind goes back to all those words of advice from your close ones who had asked you to stay away from this person and you chose to ignore it…. Thankfully they have forgiven me and continue to hold my hand every time I stumble.

So now I know I have no right to blame someone else for this condition of mine. It was my decision to trust and believe the wrong kind of people. Even after all the misgivings, it is still painful because shunning them is like bypass surgery. You don’t want to cut open your heart, but it is essential to do so if you don’t want it clogged with greasy traces of someone who doesn’t give a damn about you.
‘Never make someone your priority when they consider you as just an option’……. I realized the meaning of this quote for the first time. Meanwhile, I am bracing myself for another round of bypass, but not before a promise to self that this will be my last one. I need to guard my heart a bit strongly to make sure that any Tom, Dick, Harry or Sally doesn’t grease my arteries. Say NO to junk food. Woohoo!

Twilight review

I have now begun to sympathize with all the office going women who are my fellow train commuters. I often see them peeling off or cutting veggies in train and I often used to wonder how someone can find twenty four hours as inadequate. This was until I arrived in my last year of engineering. From what I know, those in B.E. rarely meet the requisite attendance of 75% and it is not without a valid reason. Juggling between company interviews and preparing for numerous entrance tests while at the same time completing innumerable assignments is a mean feat to achieve. But then I realized it is not that easy to bunk lectures without risking a trip to H.O.D. Sir or Principal Sir’s office and listen to an hour-long battering. So better sense prevailed and I decided not to get onto the wrong side of college rules and the outcome is that I have little time for myself. It is a real struggle as I try hard not to resemble an undernourished kid with sunken cheeks and a constant expression of listlessness pasted on my face.
In all this, my reading habits have gone for a toss. I was lucky enough to read Twilight by Stephanie Mayer. After the Harry Potter series concluded, Twilight was expected to replicate the success of the book on The Boy Who Lived. Though it did not produce the expected frenzy, but still the book is good enough to be recommended. I got to admit it now that I am sucker for love stories. I was under criticism for praising Love Aaj Kal movie, but what the hell! I loved the love story in it. So I can be a bit biased towards Twilight because of the romantic angle but the story is much more than that.
I won’t give away spoilers but my friend described the story with a really interesting example ‘It’s like you have got a pani-puri in your hand and can’t eat it’. I mean nothing else could describe the situation this well yaar. The guy is a vampire who drinks human blood and the girl is a human being. Worst of all, the girl is crazy about him. Having a pani-puri in your hand and not eating it is bad enough, but the situation gets worse when the sumptuous meal is chasing you… So all you got to do is open your mouth and yum….. Poor guy. Must be possessing a lot of willpower to resist her.
All in all, Twilight is a must read. With the relative lull in the literary scene, this book makes for some good reading.

Quarter Life Crisis

Ok, so I haven't been really regular on the blogging scene, but I guess you all might have got used to this phase of mine where there is absolutely no sign of life on this blog.

I have heard people going through a mid-life crisis, but I am going what I call a quarter life crisis. So all thoughts have a trigger, so this is what triggered my chain of thoughts. You see my friends had bought their guitars to college. They are guys who are really passionate about it and I have seen the struggle they have gone to play that guitar in their hands. When they were strumming the masterpiece, I could feel the soul in the music... It was just so passionate. This is exactly what plunged me into a mini-depression. I realized that I didn’t have anything which I could be crazy about. I did love dancing but couldn’t continue because of parental pressure.

I strongly believe every individual must have some means to de-stress. For my friends, it was the guitar. The strings help you to entangle your complicated life. But what about me? I have been desperately searching for an outlet to vent out all my negativity and frustration, but unfortunately reach a dead end.

So now I will try to search up a good hobby to pull me out of my depression- like state. As of now, I can't just stop getting jealous of my string-happy friends!

Festival time = License for hooliganism

I have always loved festivals. Apart from the obvious reason of a holiday, I love the preparations that go behind making any festive celebration a grand success. And this goes without mentioning that I Have always been rather active on this scene.

So it was Janmashtami on Thursday and due to unavoidable circumstances, I had to step out of my house and leave for Ghatkopar. In the train, I took necessary precautions to maintain a safe distance from the train windows, lest some moron hurl a water balloon filled with slime and dirt and what not. But nothing prepared me for the truckful of guys out on the streets. Then I realised that some people will never learn to mind their own buisness. I mean I am fine with the fact that they are all charged up because they are going to break the handi, but can't they just SHUT UP and reach the venue? Why the hell do they have to throw water and pass lewd comments on unsuspecting young woman on the streets? That was exactly the scene that occured with me. Not once, but thrice. I was just hoping one of them would fall out of the truck..... that ought to teach them a lesson.

If that was not enough, I had to listen to countless comments on the mask I was wearing to avoid swine flu. There was a row of bikes, with three baboons on each, and every single guy yelling at us from across the street. I just hoped they all would come under some truck ahead. Really now, I am not an evil person but such people bring out the worst in me.

If that was not enough, I saw these same people on television breaking the handi at Ghatkopar. And I felt nothing but disgust. Disgust at the thought that there were thousands of people to cheer such cheap guys.... disgust that all this was done in the name of Lord Krishna, who incidently saved Draupadi from similarly cheap people in that era. You know in biology I had learnt that sometimes nature skips the gentically bad traits so that it would not be passed to the future generation. What went wrong with us? Why do we have to put up with such people when we know they have no right to inhabit the earth? Any answers?