Greenfield love

(This piece is a serious article. Which basically means it was written after i was high)

I am faced with a problem. It is a problem confronting many of my generation and most of the people my age group. I don’t know what I want to do. It is this restless phase in life where I’m thinking of changing the world but simultaneously a voice in the back of my mind has slowly started turning cynical. And there are very few things more dangerous than ur own mind being cynical about you.
So, I weigh my options. I could be an i-banker, I seem to have the necessary qualifications for that. I could pursue music, I seem to have the passion for that. I could even be a writer, I have the stationery (looking at the quality of writers nowadays I am convinced that all that is required to be a writer is the proper stationery, in my case, MS Word). But, then again the voice at the back of my mind speaks out. It has its reservations on all of the above. You can’t be an i-banker it says, you don’t have ur fundas in order. You cant be a musician coz you’ll never be that good. You cant be a writer coz well, being a writer is nothing nowadays. In the midst of all this I try to concentrate. I lay in bed, not sleeping, thinking about the place I want to be and the things I want to do. Suddenly, a vision comes to my mind. Of someone, or rather something I fell in love with.
I have never been a particular fan of Kerala as I’ve always considered Ahmedabad as my adopted city. Considering that I spent 10 months of every year there, frankly I dint have much options. I used to actually dread going ‘home’, as my mom would call it, because I felt terribly out of place there. Nothing seemed to match. I didn’t like all this greenery, I missed the concrete. Most of all I missed the ice-cream parlours, the cricket-matches, the restaurants, the movie theaters that so dotted the Ahmedabad skyline and which were so obviously absent from kerala’s. I have always wondered how I would’ve turned out had my dad never left kerala and I’ve never liked the idea. It had become a part of my life’s plan to continue to hate kerala for as long as possible.
But this summer was something different for me. The minute my flight landed in the Cochin International airport I had a feeling that something was different. And sure enough, it was. Kerala had grown. From being this irritating girl that u try hard to avoid during childhood to a woman so beautiful that u wonder if this was the same stupid girl that used to bug u during childhood, the place had grown. Or maybe it was that my perspective, my vision had changed. Which again can be explained by the fact that, even I had grown. Grown tired of the concrete jungles, grown sad at the hustle of city life, grown disgusted at the selfish attitude of people. The coconut trees and the greenery didn’t seem as stupid as before.
In a few hours, I was home. The dream house that my father had built and which apparently I had shown no interest in (because I never wanted my parents to leave my adopted city ahmedabad) welcomed me. For someone who’s got somewhat used to living in a hostel, the thought of having a house about the size of the entire hostel is a surprisingly refreshing. Then began the routine of meeting relatives. Carriages of memories come rushing back drawn by the old familiar faces. The usual questions ‘How is studies, how are ur friends, are you eating well’ and the unusual ones ‘when are you planning to stop studying, did you find a (new) girlfriend, do they have gramophone records in delhi?’. I juggle through all of them. Suddenly my eyes dart past the eager, questioning faces to the scenery outside. How could I have missed all this beauty the entire time. I rush outside to my verandah and stand there with a sheepish grin on my face, waiting to be introduced to my once so-irritating-I-tried-to-avoid friend. Yes, god’s own country it is I guess.
I finally had some idea what Ms. Arundhati Roy saw in the country side while she was writing ‘The god of small things’. Kerala is melancholy. Like all beautiful things, it is mystifying. It seems to be hiding something within its painfully smiling visage. Or maybe it was me. But I totally fell in love with the sight. Specially during dusk and dawn. I could listen to the stories that it told me all day long. Stories of working mothers and drunken fathers, of brilliant children and performance pressures, of old spinsters and even older witch-fables,of buried treasures,of houses illuminated by oil lanterns in the evenings, domes of temples, of boats threatening the calm of still rivers, of all-night performances of kathakali. There are more but this suffices at this point and is enough to get me to cross over to the other side.
But what totally takes my breath away is the rains. I’ve never been one who admires rains unconditionally. I’ve realized this one thing about the monsoons as with other things. Whether you like them or hate them totally depends on the ambience that ur in. Just like what is atmosphere in a night-club is suffocating in a local train. Obviously, u would not like the rains when its flooded your house and your car and drowned your precious clothes. But the countryside is an altogether different affair. The rains stimulate the greens. It flirts with the plants and brushes against them coyly. The trees move in response to the gentle breeze. They wave. They complain. They love. Compare this to the concrete jungle, where all you can here is the consistent pitter-patter of the raindrops on rock-solid foundations. But here, the sights are different. And the sounds, absolutely so.

Pls get off-track!!

(This piece is a satire. To be taken with a pinch of salt.. and lemon.. and tequila..Repeat till u hit the floor.)
I was quite happy. The day had gone off quite well, infact much better than I’d ever expected it to be. Re-entered a class I was thrown out of, got my first attendance in that particular subject for the semester. Somebody even had a spare homework assignment that I passed off as my own. And, the icing on the cake – I was re-admitted to a dissertation that I’d been so generously thrown out of. In fact, if I’d stood against Nitish Kumar in the elections for bihar, chances are I’d have probably won thereby showing a huge electoral middle finger to the exit polls. So, the natural tendency would be to book a ticket and enjoy the holiday season with my near and dear ones. But sadly, only to hear that the trains are all blocked/running hours late. The reason: people sitting on the tracks.
My first reaction was, its ok, they’ll do their stuff that they usually do and go away. After all, the railways tracks are quite famous for that. Maybe the Constipated people of India got together in the traditionally-inviting environs of the railway tracks in a bid to overcome their bowel wars. But more than 24 hours down the line, these people are still sitting there. Surely, the bowel wars cant last that long. Then I came to know of the real reason for the wars. A community called Gujjars fighting for reservation.
Now, I’ve never followed politics keenly. So I still don’t know who these people are and what they are fighting for. I thought as long as we’re in an independent country and people are not killing themselves over Rakhi Sawant’s show on TV, everything ought to be cool. No? Well, apparently not. This made me shake off some virtual dust off the google news website and look up gujjars. I found some articles like this
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/N-Railway-lost-Rs-16cr-due-to-protests-this-year/articleshow/7142657.cms
That has got me thinking (and its pretty hard for me). The railway lost 16 cr due to this entire thing?? N it’s the 3rd round of this?? What do people think it is? Some sort of a competition? Or is it like
Guy 1: ‘Hey dude, do u remember how we sat on the tracks for 2 whole days?’
Guy 2: ‘ya man my bum hurt so bad but it was so adventurous though we got nothing out of it.’
Guy 3: ‘We were sitting for a reason??
Guy 4: ‘Who’s up for round 3?’
And everyone goes ‘Hell, yeah’, including guy 3 who has no freakin clue why he’s there in the first place.
I mean it in the nicest and politest of ways, but gujjar guys, can u get off the freaking tracks? I’ve got friends I wanna meet and I just cant spend my time in the train listening to super-sonic babies wreak havoc or old couples complain about their arthritis any more than is usually required. Please get some less-obtrusive (n infinitely less irritating yet effective) mode of getting attention like maybe undergoing mass sex-change operations, leaking nationally sensitive material, dropping a kid into a man-hole tunnel or entering in Big Boss/Roadies. But this track-capturing, my friends, is simply irritating. No wonder, the British were more pissed off with civil disobedience than people blowing up courthouses and stuff.
Now we come to the possible solutions. How can we ensure that these people don’t end up as natural extensions of our railway tracks? As of now I can think up of only these.
1) Pay other people to use the railway tracks for what their more efficient alternative use as open-air toilets. In fact, Mr. Pranab Mukherjee could think up of some NREGA plan along these lines which will also ensure full employment. (Also, this is one thing in which the women wont demand 33% reservation). Basically, you pay people to produce crap. Its not that radical an idea if you think about it. Companies like GM have been doing this. TATA recently did this with its employees coming up with India’s answer to the zippo lighter, named Nano.
2) Give them non-operational tracks to sit on. (although, how the government will manage to do this, m still not sure)
3) Spread them all-over India so that the progress of one particular state is not affected. This will help in two ways. Firstly, it will cause small stoppages in the trains all over india causing the people everywhere to take notice, thereby giving more teeth to the gujjar agitation. Secondly, there will not be complete blockage in any particular regions.
4) Considering their expertise, they could be employed to block trains world wide..This is in MBA parlance referred to as ‘leveraging on ur core competence’. Track-blocking could be encouraged as a fledgling industry with 26% FDI and tax deductions. (If you cant beat them, join them on the tracks)
So, while I wait for the trains to start moving again, I can only express my anguish at the system which has gone off-track. The east has the Maoists, the north has kashmiri extremists, the west has the newly created gujjars and the south have rajnikanth fanatics and a.raja to handle. And meanwhile, I also realize that I have missed out on yet another deadline of my dissertation. But now I don’t fear any more. The next time I am thrown out of dissertation, all I gotta do is go and sit on those tracks.. :D

Of slumdogs and millionaires

I’ve been following blogs for quite a while n even thought of starting my own blog... its taken quite a while but m getting there (whew).. As anyone is entitled to his or her opinion (including whether 2 express an opinion or not) here I’ll be giving my take on the issues that are prevalent nowadays..

Well to start things off, I think we Indians are very expert at crying ourselves hoarse over all the wrong reasons. Take for instance the movie ‘Slumdog Millionaire’. The movie’s popularity is almost drowned by the number of protests raised against it. But u gotta hand it over to all the protesting people (they’ve got a gr8 sense of imagination).. Even the formidable Big B(who by the way, is being paid big bucks for his blogs which he conveniently disowns at any early signs of resentment. N u thought the guy wanted to connect with the masses. Yeah rite) has found favor with a certain person who advises everyone to count chickens n cocks n wot not, Mr Arindam Chaudhari (yeah, he dares you to think beyond the IIMs. With the kind of statement he makes, he dare not even think about them). If I get it rite, the hullabaloo was raised over the use of the word ‘slumdog’ in the film. I personally believe that the whole thing is a non-issue. I mean, for Pete’s sake, it’s a movie. So why can’t u treat it like one? N whatever happened to the expression of freedom(or was it freedom of expression)?With their ‘dogged’ determination, slumdwellers have revolted against the use of the name ‘dog’ with slum, with all explanations that it is a usage expression falling on deaf ears. So wot’s next, maybe India should no longer be considered an ‘underdog’, is that demeaning too?? Y cant we get rid of the dogma?(oops, here I go again).. Another issue is about poverty peddling to the rest of the world, why the hell r v ashamed of all the poverty? It’s a fact of life in India much like Himesh, Mayawati and Raj Thakeray… Get used to it or get it out of the system(I was referring to the poverty, of course).. N it’s not about a foreign director resorting to poverty pornography to sell his film. The novel itself has been written by an Indian diplomat. So I would rather advise the detractors to not worry about these aspects but sit back n enjoy one of the most riveting cinema made in recent times….n if u still feel u wanna do something, how ‘bout sweeping the neighbourhood slum this Sunday??