Yeh Log kaise hai!

Happen to be writing after a really really long time.

This was some time last week and I was in a mall walking around with a friend when we watching people and my friend  said " Kaise hai hai log?" (Look at these people!) What she was referring to was the new breed of pseudo confused Indian's - a generation that is "in between". A generation that does grew up with roti's for breakfast to be replaced by "pan " or "croissants". A generation that went to English medium iskool and wants their kids to go "Yadder yadder play school". What has changed ? "Wannabeness" or self awareness . My personal thoughts - a generation that does not know what they want ! And I refer to the 80's.

Simple observations of the day!

We don't travel because we want to experience the richness of travel but we want to travel because we want say to someone "Oh my god! you know the last time - I went  to Thailand and Dubai and Bali" So that everyone knows you hit one international destination once a year!

Even today our society is one that is highly judgmental and opinionated about so many things! Even today we do not hesitate to ask personal questions to strangers "how much do you make" "Oh you must be married?" "Are you not planning to have a baby". 

We work because we have to - what are the other choices - very few in this great country of ours would dare to backpack - leave their cushioned jobs ! SO lets say we are sort of stuck! Stuck and we cannot be pulled out of that mess! We were born to be educated and get great corporate jobs - study in the best of institutions. All our lives the only probable ambition was money. And so we never got perspective - we could never learn what the word "experience" meant!

Lets take for example - typical conversation when we are looking for a match!

"What does the boy do for a living" - He is bartender/social worker ! - well great - but what is he going to feed you.

"What do his parents do" - Well they do nothing - they come from another social class/caste/sub caste!

This proposed alliance therefore stands annulled!

Tell me if this happens in other cultures too or is it typical to India/Asia! Correct me if I am wrong !

So there I am engineer because my brand value at the age of 26/27/30 is going to be X amount of rupees! And if I am UPenn post grad - then well there is no looking back!So basically its all about the "jhing - thing" - the sound of money at the end of the day.

I happen to have a lot of interest in languages my self - so I go to language class on weekends - now my personal ambition when people ask me - why - I say well i like learning about the new cultures - vis a vis the rest of the class(barring a few) - This is the fastest way to make money - Its great to be ambitious and there is nothing wrong in doing that - but people take a step back - love what your doing - learn because you want to know - travel because you want to learn - marry because you want to love ! Not because our social conditioning has driven us to !

:P

Men have this inane ability to disconnect themselves from the ways of the world its amazing how they do it so matter of factly. Rest assured there could be a percentage like a 1% who aren't like how we choose to describe them. Unlike women who mope and wait and want . Men simply don't. While you are staring at the phone leaving your most critical KRA at work behind now thats not what a boy would do. THey are just manufactured that way and i would think its a reversed six sigma - (3.4 defects per million) 9.36 defects per million. They are just wired that way. We are not feminists - oh yes we love the opposite sex . But they things they are capable of doing are unimaginable some times. Now they can get their wives pregnant while going to a truly painstaking divorce promising to be with you and thats what their definition of love is. May be they went to the wrong school and some teacher skewed their basics. Is this universal - we do not know. Is this just an authors perspective. We don't think so . We have enough and many women to vouch for this fact.
We spent years understanding and they still remain to be an object of our desire.:P

De ghumake :D

I dont think I have ever witnessed an event like this and hence I must to document it ... this day will down in history ... 2nd April 2011... the day "We" conquered the world... and emerged as Winners after 28 long years.
Not a great fan of cricket ... but this was one world cup followed very closely over by over.
Today the emotion is ecstatic and no Indian  could ask for more.
The MEN IN BLUE proved their mettle - we did not win a battle, neither was it independence day - But it was the day that the greatest man in Indian history walked the mile for his last ever world cup and made it .
Every Indian was on the street - in every city - celebrating the sweet taste of victory ... everything else took a back seat.
It was a historic moment and I feel lucky to have witnessed it. I am PROUD to be an Indian. <3

As the sun goes down...

Well.. some have easy and pretty cut out in terms of relationships and people! So its simple - Boy meets girl - Girl meets boy - Boy likes Girl and vice versa - 10 years of going out - fights arguments - feeling of being stuck in a space - comfort zones - college sweethearts , childhood sweethearts, met on the net , etc etc. and they are together - finally its D day and they get married and may or may not live happily ever after...

What happens when this happens - boy meets girl , girl meets another boy, boy meets girl after girl , girl dumps boy, boy dumps girl... and the works..

so here we have a story... boy is unusually intense .. girl is intrigued by the the boy ... lets call the boy Z - thats what girl wants it to be she wants him to be the "Z" on her list of people..

They spend hours of chatty conversations ... they have met just twice.This is the second meeting since they've know each other. There are no spoken words there is only silence and calm. Both have had their share of stormy weather and both want the quiet and the peace.Z is unexpectedly warm and he is thinking . The room is dark and these two people are sitting across each silent .. Both dont know what it is both dont know what they want. It just turns out they want two different things and are two different people. Z is focussed and knows what he wants out of life otherwise. He has got it all chalked out . She on the other is lost ..in translation of thought.She knows not what she is doing there staring into an empty space . They both know they want ..

She watches him , Z knows he's being looked at ...trying to read his mind wishing it was all so easy. There is something Z - something very different . But she is thinking if she has felt the same before .. The evening fades into darkness ... the questions remain... Will she ?

Spaces

Every time she tries to flip pages of her book she cannot focus and she is reading "Atlas Shrugged" .Ayn Rand is one of her favorite writers and she just picked up a copy of the book. Usually she is so taken by a book - that she is so totally engrossed. But the past few days she has been on the same piece back and forth trying to concentrate on the characters, she just cannot. Her thoughts go farther than the realm of her imagination. It takes her to people and places known.Sometimes its unbelievable how she chanced out, others called it lucky - she called it Chance. She was like a free spirit breathing for once.

She looks of out of the window of the plane - all she can see is nothing but a black space with a red light blinking on the wing of the aircraft - She is far far away from her real world. This was her moment. The other moments were all the little and beautiful people she met along the way.

She...

The weather is beautiful but something is amiss. There is a cloud of emptiness and disappointment hovering around her. She wishes for better. She wants it back just like she lost. She walks in the rain - she is trying to feel the raindrops - she can't they are just so far away.... she realises she cant feel anymore. Something within her just disappeared like whoooosh! She tries to get herself back to life - but its not her zone anymore. What must she do then? She picks up a book - stares at it wants to read but the words refuse to make sense. There is a lot on her mind ... like what she doesn't know. She tries to put it behind but cant.. She is waiting for time. Time played around yet again and how many more time. She decides to take another walk this time to familiar places. She wears her favorite red tee , her denims hanging low. She realises something has changed about the way she looks . She stands in front of the mirror and looks at her face - she doesn't seem to recognize the person - her being. Did she just see a ghost? She rummages through her bag and pulls out her Kohl - darkens her eyes - Her eyes look beautiful again. Perfect she says! She steps out ..there are people all over... and she is lost in the crowd ... she sees faces. Faces - unfamiliar faces - they scare her...

She will return !

Back to school

Today was strange... i went to staples .. and its strange that we now have staples to go to .. and it is the back to school time. So you see these little kids with their mommies and daddies all over the place. I was staring at a lot of stationery at every shelf and look at the notebooks and pencils . We didn't have so many options when we were little sounds like ages ago. So I picked up a note book priced at INR 100.. :) it took me back to the time .. if you are from my home you would remember - Poonam Stores was the name of the little dingy store on the centre street of our little town. June would be back to school and never as late as August. Red and blue line books to start with your first alphabets - aimed at perfection. Single line for the other stuff and square line for math. Cost of the book if i remember correctly anywhere between 5 to 10 depending on the number of pages. Once you bought the books you had to cover them. That covering was an art perfected by parents or an elder sibling in one of the higher classes. So you first used newspaper if you couldn't afford the brown paper. It rained and it poured and the rain water would drip through your school bag if it wasn't waterproof. So you had to use a plastic bag to save your books and to save your grades. Then came the brown paper plastic coated covers - they were there to save you the embarrassment.Those little little things. Your stationery never went beyond a Camlin box with a geometry set. Natraj pencils and hero pens were the way to go!

I am glad I remember all of this!