The woes brought on by the quilt

Mumbai is the financial capital of India and its economic powerhouse. It is the headquarters of almost all industrial giants like Reliance, Tatas and ICICI to name a few. My research revealed that the city contributed 10% of factory employment, 40% of income tax collections, 60% of customs duty collections, 20% of central excise tax collections, 40% of foreign trade and rupees 40,000 crore in corporate taxes to the Indian economy a couple of years back.
Over the past decade, India has seen an IT boom with the establishment of high-technology firms here and Bangalore and Hyderabad have been the areas where the development has been concentrated in. Bangalore is also known as the Silicon Valley of India.

Travel up north. New Delhi- the capital of the country houses all major political leaders of the country. It is the government base; the place where all ministers, MPs and MLAs live. In the given lousy perception of politicians in our country, we can then say that Delhi houses some of the most grumpy, selfish and corrupt politicians in the country. And also some of the most grumpy, selfish and corrupt people in the country.If I were to try and find a common explanation that would link the above statements to one source, a quilt would be it. Your average, seemingly harmless and comfort-providing quilt. After much research and analysis, I have concluded that our country is the way it is because of the quilt. Here is how.

Mumbai and the other places down south are economic powerhouses because they don’t have to struggle with the idea of waking up at 7 in the morning on a cold, foggy day and an even more daunting task of leaving that warm, snugly quilt to walk barefoot on the cold floor and into the freezing bathroom and wash their faces and brush their teeth with chilled water. No sir. They wake up happy and warm, fans running at full speed, splash some cold water on their face, which they find refreshing, whistle as they fill a bucket with cold water for their bath and speed off to work. I am guessing they would be a tad bit more efficient that our shivering Northies.

Students could have been so much more brilliant had it not been for the inviting warmth of the quilts that beckons them to chuck the books away and sleep. There has been no research to establish this, but I can confidently vouch for the fact that come winters, the nutritional intake of families invariably dips since the mothers want to snuggle in the quilts- all decked with woollen caps and warm shawls- to knit sweaters, eat peanuts and watch the soaps on TV or read Rupayan.

I read over the Internet that sunlight helps the human body build vitamin D, which is very crucial in determining the mood of a person. It has been seen that in cold countries, the chances of people getting depressed is very high because they do not get enough sunlight for the cells to produce vitamin D. Delhi people get no sunlight during winters. It is mostly foggy. So they are depressed. Depressed people are grouchy people who do not trust anybody. So they become selfish. When one is selfish, one would do anything to get what one wants, without thinking how it would affect society and the country. Political leaders too, are humans. At least by anatomy if not by inherent characteristics. So I’d say the quilt plays a major part in killing the conscience of our leaders by not letting them get any sunlight and therefore positive, happy thoughts.

I do not suggest that by getting sufficient sunlight or by taking vitamin D supplements, our leaders will be straight, honest and responsible people. Or that Delhites would be a little less ill-tempered. But it is my belief that a little more sunshine and a little less of the unholy quilt would bring some change in the demeanour of the Northies.

Our lives in the aftermath

Mumbai strikes are in the final stages of clean up. The final rites of brave soldiers who gave up their lives have been done. Even in my mind, any words to describe the emotions being felt by people sound fake, deliberate. Things you would expect to hear at such a time. I won't write them. I am very angry. And I need this anger to consume my mind and body for a long time. I won't shout it out and forget about it. I will not give a vent to these feelings. Not this time.

Very important realizations have come out of these attacks. The realization that we are in the middle of a war now. The attacks are to be part of our lives now. There is no scope of denial left. Nobody is safe and there is no use pretending otherwise. If not today, then tomorrow. If not here, then somewhere else. I have had enough of scuttling around like frightened mice. I wrote in my previous post that the need is to come out of the bubble that we create around us. To quit guarding our precious selves so fiercely that we forget to care about the people we live with.

I was ashamed on watching news reports about the 31-yer old Major who died because he did not want to leave his injured colleague behind. I was ashamed when I saw his father on the news- calm and without a hint of tears in his eyes. Pride oozing from his broken heart.
I was ashamed because I had felt the same anger at several incidents in the past. I had been angry during Gujrat, during Mumbai train blasts, during 9/11 and during Delhi blasts. But then I forgot about them and went back to my work, to my life.

This time we won't forget. We will write about it and talk about it everyday so we don't forget. We will paste pictures, print posters, relate songs with this incidence and upload videos so that it is firmly embedded in our mind.

The terrorists in the Mumbai attacks were between ages 21-25. Maybe I shouldn't say this but I am impressed. However barbaric, however insanely devastating their plot was, they showed the sheer power of and havoc that can be caused by an inspired young mind. Learn from this- not to go around bombing the world and killing people. But learn the essence: the sheer power of an inspired young mind. The kind of havoc we can wreak on those who have unwittingly shown us our strengths in trying to break us.

Don't forget. Don't forgive. And most importantly, don't live with it. I won't.

Extreme ways

We have been hit. Again. With every attack, the feeling of helplessness grows stronger among us. We were supposedly the next super power. We were doing extremely well financially and were developing. Yet, as of 7:26 pm on Nov. 27, 2008 a country on its way to being a super power has been smashed, tattered and raped.

Ratan Tata said today that while this was no time to point fingers it was clear that the govt. had not learnt its lesson the last time. Had it done so, it would have put up a security infrastructure in place. He wished we would all learn the lesson now.

And he is not wrong. We may have always been a peace-loving country but it was in a time when the world still relatively played by the rules. Desperate times call for extreme measures. We have lived safe, almost self-centred lives for too long now. If we have to live in an environment such as this, which threatens to catch us off our guard, we have to learn to be on our guard.

We need a compulsory 1 year army training for every person after class 12 to enable each to defend himself and fight. More importantly, a training that will make each one of us understand that our country comes before us. It is not enough to talk about it, harp on the sentiment, send SMSs to news channels and then forget about it. It means understanding that my life is far less worthy than that of 50 others who may be with me when disaster strikes. That I will not run for cover when someone comes charging at me but I will stand and fight, and by God if I die even without so much as making the other person flinch, I will die a happy person. That I will not be bullied into looking the other way if I am not the one who is being hurt.

There has been too much of blame-putting. Too many questions, too much expectations for a hero to save the day. Each person needs to realize the hero in himself. To quit being scared. Heck, if we continue living like this, we will all eventually die in one bomb blast or the other. We might as well fight it.

Can do versus Want to do

In my previous post I ranted and raved against the brainwashing of young minds. While it is not easy for those who shuffle with the crowd, it is an equally rough deal for those who attempt to live on their own terms.

Each person has his own dreams and aspirations. They tend to evolve and change with time. The more creative and imaginative a mind, the more distracted and confused it is about the things it could do.

We have placed so much importance on career and jobs that we often mistake it as being synonymous with life. I don't know what I want to do career-wise but I do know that I want a quiet life, just about enough money to pay my bills with some time for myself. I do not want a mobile phone and I prefer desktops over laptops. I don't want a swanky car but a rugged and tattered open jeep. I want a small house on a hill and a little way from habitat and I want it near a town, not a city. I want to be part of a well-knit community where everyone knows everyone. And I don't want to change the world. Every career-choice I decide on has one underlying principle: to lead me to my life's goal.

Sometimes, it may be worth your while to consider what a person wants to do, as opposed to what he can do. Everybody has the right to work hard for his own fairytale life. The fairytale may be set in a grand castle or in a hut atop a hill- if it special to an individual, it should be worthy of the respect of those around him.

The big brainwash

I had the chance to cover a career councelling session at a popular school in Dehradun for my paper a few days back. This was the first time I was going to a school since I left for Delhi 4 years back and got back from there. I was appalled to see the kind of things that were being talked about during the panel discussion on various career avenues for the kids.

The panel in the said discussion comprised professionals from the "popular" careers- there was a doctor, a CA, an engineer, an IT professional and so on. The first speaker came forth to talk about where to begin. His first statements were as follows:

"Be sincere. Don't think I can do this and I can do that also. Be focussed on one thing. Choose now and do it. Then you will be able to do something good in life. Otherwise you will only do simple graduation."

It took supreme effort on my part to not jump on the dias and strangle the piece of lard blabbering before me. How can a school student here be expected to know for a fact what he wants to do in his life? There is the make-slips-and-pick-one or go-along-with-your-friend or dad-knows-best ways of deciding. But seeing as this may be considered a life-changing choice, the least one would want was to know each career avenue entailed.

But the school auhtorities are smart. This was why they had called professionals to talk about their respective careers. Here is what the CA said:

"If you become CA, you have to do many things. You have to maintain records, do audits and compile books and compund interests and taxes. So CA is for the students who have a flair for finance or legal matters because CA has to take care of many legal matters."

Sure. Couldn't be clearer. After all, if a 17-year old doesn't know if he has a flair for legal or financial matters, he has no right to attend a career-councelling session.

School students, especially those who are taking boards have to attend school and study. Period. They spend their "free" time over the phone or on orkut. None of them have worked a single hour in their lives and the only people they talk to are their close-knit gang at school or in tuitions. Analyse the situation- they see nothing, they know nothing- especially where their interests lie- and they have to decide what they want to do right after school and in many cases, during school.

This is the reason why most professionals are disillusioned in the first year of their high-paying jobs. It is a fact that simple graduation is not such a bad option when you don't know what you have to do. Parents would come after me with forks and torches to burn me alive for this blasphemy but another fact is that it is OK to NOT know what you want to do. If you are in standard 12 and your life is remotely similar to what I have mentioned above and you think you know what you want to do in your life, then you probably don't.

I am all for taking as long as it takes to figure out what. Because it is important. Because it is something I have to do- not my dad; not my best friend; not my teachers and not the damned career councellor. Me. I think it should be made mandatory for all 11th standard students to travel for 6 months- backpack through the country, meet people, volunteer at hospitals, schools and theatre groups. Do an intership with MNCs or media houses or under lawyers and CAs. See everything, interact with people, ask questions and then decide where they want to go.

But this education system that takes in individuals and churns out a standard, study-work-marry-die human force has gripped entire generations of adults and children.
The top 2 questions that a child who has recently learnt to talk knows the answer to are-

1. What is your name?
2. What will you be when you grow up?

The big brainwash.

Analyzing the importance of company in one’s life

A day off alone in Juhu has made me realize the importance of company in a person’s life. At PVR Juhu around 1p.m. for the 4:30 movie show, I figured roaming around the fancy Shoppers’ Stop with a basement Crossword store will help kill time easily. Who needed anybody, I thought to myself as I walked through rows of fiction, while ignoring the bitch of a “Like you have a choice” reverberating in my head.
It was a battle between my inner voice and me. The Crossword-browse was stretched for about an hour and a half and when I couldn’t take it anymore; I thought I’ll get lunch. There was a place called Brio in the same complex and I happily walked in, determined to eat like the ladies to stretch it up to an hour at least. I ordered chicken spaghetti and peach-flavoured iced-tea. I sat myself out in the open with the intention of looking out to a nice view. Sadly, all I got was a table at the end of the café overlooking a bunch of valets standing outside the car-park. Without my bag and the book in it, I took to browsing through 5 measly SMSs in my phone and a couple of photographs there. It was pathetic. The peach iced-tea was, too.
I hence learnt the following things about life:
1. When you need your friends the most that is precisely when they will be unavailable.
2. Ditto for your mobile service provider.
3. When people say they like to spend time alone, they are bull-shitting. Try eating lunch alone with no books, no music, no company and no phone.
So armed with no dignity whatsoever and this new found gyaan, I strode back into Crossword, picked an over-priced writing pad, which are stacked for desperate company-seekers like me and on which the gloating idiots probably made a 100 per cent profit, bought a PG Woodhouse book and went back to the café I had lunch at.
Daring the waiter to ask for my order, I am now sitting at the exact same table, scribbling away, unaware of time. I don’t like hanging around with people meaninglessly but I now know that I am not a loner. Nobody is. You can’t spend an hour without your writing-pad or your books or your music or paints or dvds or whatever it is that keeps you company.

The day Syapa Singh and I ALMOST went to Mussoorie

I got up this morning feeling old and eroded. Like there is nothing left on this planet anymore. So the rebel bit inside then squirted out the adventurous hormones, if there is such a thing and I dropped in, on Syapa Singh [my school buddy, in case u haven't heard the name earlier] when I was supposed to go to office to decorate it for the 2nd Happy Badday of the newspaper.

You must know that every time I call Syapa Singh and announce my arrival, she waits until she hears the screech of tyres outside and then locks herself inside the bathroom the moment I enter her house. Then we have a screaming match from each side of the bathroom door until she finally comes out. Bitch! But today I didn't let that happen, and poor Syapa Singh had to wash her face, pull on a pair of jeans and a tee and tell her mom that she is accompanying me to enquire about a course and we rushed out before we could be hammered with questions. The pathetic lie called for a whack on Syapa's head. Me taking up a course? Going to the temple would have been a more believable, though it would guaranteed Syapa's mom fainting.

So we left for Rajpur Road, intending to drive up a little way till our pet Maggi point. We bought a can of diet-coke each, which Syapa pretended was beer and took swigs from, with all the tashan that the thought of alcohol induces. We started talking about the various trips that we have discussed a thousand times before. We start from Mumbai-Goa, then change our minds and turn midway to go to Dharamshala mid-way, with Syapa telling me about her friend's boyfriend who owns a place in Dharamshala, then we come nearer home and consider an overnight Mussoorie stay and finally promise to chalk out a plan after settling on a dawn-to-dusk trek. Which, of course will NEVER happen.

BUT TODAY my adventure hormones were in full swing and Syapa's are usually in top-gear so we were destined to do something wild. We drove past the Maggi point and before we knew it, we had crossed Shiv Mandir and Kuthal Gate too. Syapa Singh knew it. I knew it. But didn't say it lest we realize it. We drove on. The music was nice, Syapa's imaginary drink was making her imagine she was dazed and happy, and she was giggling about everything.
You must know another thing. Syapa Singh likes to, what we usually call reminiscence, while she is living the moment. So there we are, driving up on the mountains we know are forbidden but which have been calling out to us everyday since we got here, and suddenly Syapa says, "In retrospect, this could only have happened impromptu."



The panic hormones started flooding in as the emergency sirens began wailing in my head. Syapa was oblivious to the damage she had done and mumbled something about the fact that she had said she'd be home in half an hour and that I was supposed to be at work, in between fits of crazy laughter. It was not quite so peaceful on the beautiful mountains with Syapa cackling on one side, a cheesy "Botalan sharab diyan akhiyaan teriyaan" screaming in the music player in front, and a hysterical me shouting "Bhen**** I am driving to f***ing Mussoorie."

But we calmed down and I put on the "sanely happy" folder from my MP3 to help us set the mood and we continued driving up as I am sure the blurred and painted-on kilometres to Mussoorie on milestones reduced. We even managed to stop at a few places to click stupid pictures that determined for once that neither of us possesses what it takes to be a good photographer- especially a good camera.








It was pretty cool. The view was great, the weather was incredible and Syapa's unintended jolts of shock did not do too much damage then. Even when she observed on coming across a broken down car during a particularly mean turn- "You know, the engine often heats up and the car stops during such drives."
We intended to drive up till at least Mussoorie lake, which Syapa guessed would be either 3-4 kms or 7-8 kms from Mussoorie. A disturbing point was that Syapa was carrying no money today and I spent the money I had on our diet cokes.

Then my editor called me to ask if I intended to come to office today (he wasn't so mean but what's the fun of writing about someone who doesn't EVER not co-operate with what you are doing?)

So Syapa Singh and I looked at each-other, sighed, smiled, hi-fived, turned the car around and drove back, wondering aloud if Dharamshala is actually that impossible to happen?

The Cell phone: then and now

During our school and college days, the cell phone was something we MUST have with us at all times, including the shit time (literally).
The basic, gareeb models we then had, the most attractive feature of which was probably its built-in torch was invaluable to us. SMS tone ringing 24X7. Phone calls were rare and if the phone wouldn't shut up after a couple of rings, know that it is from home.
Now, when the cell phone is a super sleek, PDA gadget, it has become something you HAVE to carry with yourself at all times- including (you grudgingly tell people) the shit time.
Real responsibilities, which would flutter around at a vaguely visible distance have suddenly begun to settle down rather heavily on our shoulders, and put forth a hundred reasons why we can't just get up and leave like earlier times, on our whims and fancies. There are chains binding the hands and feet- imaginary ones no doubt, but stronger the iron ones so you really can't break them.

Among the clasps of deadlines, appointments, and commitments, there is another one- seemingly inconsequential but when you come to think of it, more binding than the others. For when you take the day off, the cell phone is what will keep you bound to your desk in your cubicle at work.

In those days, the only you wanted was for someone to call, text or even buzz once. Now, all you want is for the phone to shut up so you can enjoy your precious holiday in peace.

Then, you would never dream of switching off your cell phone. Now, it is what you dream of most of the time.

Then, you thought you had all the freedom only because you could talk to your friends (including boys) at any time of the day or night.
Now, you feel you are free when you switch off your cell phone and toss it god-knows-where while you take a break from work.