Ms.Universe

I think the "Miss Universe" pageant is the limit of  lack of hope and imagination for human kind.

What is the difference between "Miss World" and "Miss Universe"? 

By crowning someone "Miss Universe" every single year we are potentially making the following absurd assumptions

1. That there is a lack of hot aliens in our and the neighboring galaxies. I mean I am sure that if they are more advanced than us, the alien women might be watching these competitions every year and going, "Yeah right. This is the new Ms.Universe. How can you even qualify in the preliminaries with two eyes!!"

2. That beauty is more of a seasonal, annual phenomenon usually enhanced with fake eye-lashes and fake attitude. 

3.That the difference between being the most beautiful woman in the whole world or the Universe is an "answer" that seems to please everyone in the room but not make much sense. 

4. Beauty is as profound and as deep as the Pacific but nonetheless there is a cut-off limit for weight and height.

Think about how much limits these pageants put on our imagination! How depressing it is for all those men out there to know that the Earth is all they have got. If they have to choose the most beautiful woman in the entire Universe seven continents is all they have. I mean what about Venus? Maybe somewhere far away in the frigid cold on Pluto there could be a bunch of astonishingly beautiful women! 

Then again, how do you compare a beautiful curvaceous beauty from Africa to a lanky American? Beauty is as relative as the word itself gets. I walk down the streets of Brisbane and I am bamboozled everyday at how hard it must be for God to keep female beauty so unique and fresh over all these billion years! There is no face on the street or no body in a train that is similar to other, each with her own aura and the little cloud of thoughts that rest on top of her head like her own tiara. Little bejeweled fingers that go in and out of bags to find cellphones and long eyelashes that stare out of the train windows in anticipation!

I recently read a report about the controversy over the Miss USA pageant this year. An openly homosexual judge asked one of the finalists if her state should legalize gay marriage. She answered that she believes that marriage should only happen between a man and a woman. She was given the runner up position and criticized for speaking out against gay marriage. The judge then went out and used explicit language against her! 

I agree that the world is progressing in attitude and I am one of those too. However that should not make us give up respect for the conservative. Letting others believe what they want to is I guess the first sign of being open-minded! 

If a beauty is finally being honest enough to say what she really thinks (instead of the usual 'world peace') should she be publicly humiliated for expressing her personal opinion? 

I don't know about Ms.Universe or Ms.World, I personally think that every human being is beautiful in their own unique way and I totally stand up for Alien Rights. :)

India Polling!

Has anyone been following the election campaigns back home?

Apart from the usual mud slinging and a bit of Gandhi Vs Gandhi, there are two really positive things that I noticed.

The first one is the candidacy of Ms. Meera Sanyal from South Mumbai. It is very heartening to see a banker give up her secure job and jump into politics. What is more reassuring is the fact that she knows she is the odd one out in a jungle of corruption yet is confident that she will win!

Another is Shashi Tharoor contesting from Kerala. He could have easily got into the Upper House (Rajya Sabha) through the Congress. However he chooses to be chosen by the people. Kudos!!

Politics everywhere is just as dirty but when explorers and travelers choose to turn to politics, it helps clear the detachment towards politics that people seem to be engulfed with! India is one of her kind when it comes to choosing leaders.

With 714 million registered voters, a total of 35 states and union territories, each having its own language, and 543 constituencies all over the nation it looks like a big elephant getting ready to salute his new king! There are 1055 political parties in India. I was trying to count just the communist parties the other day off the top of my head and I was surprised at how many communist flavors we have back home![1]

It is not just about numbers. The median age of my motherland is 25.1 years! That is just as old as me (actually a bit younger to be honest).[2]

So it is not just the world's largest democracy it is also one of the young countries of the world! All the dramas included, it is not such a bad place to be in! When the world's biggest (and working) democracy goes to polls, we must not forget that it is also the place for the world's biggest film industry! =)

Good Luck India!

1. Election in Numbers (BBC)

2.Demographics of India (Wikipedia,the free encyclopedia)

PS: Thanks Gaya for this!

Sleepless Note

Before I get really busy again I have to make a note.

I met Viju Kaka again when I was in India this time. 

On the day I was scheduled to fly back to Brisbane, he came to see me with a big chocolate and his digi-digi. :) We went for a short ride before I got into the car! 

Just like my childhood memories, the pragmatic firing of his Enfield is still the same. The feeling you get even when you are a passenger is just as refreshing. So to all the guys who are (unnecessarily) passionate about bikes, I understand you! 

Another someone interesting I met was Vrinda Moushi, my mother's childhood friend. I had been in touch with her for a long time before I met her. It was funny looking at aai turn into a schoolgirl again with her!

Awareness and Knowledge

Today, I was on the bus with a couple of friends from Uni. They were talking about the word "aware". It got me thinking. Almost every language I have been exposed to uses the phrases "to know" and "to be aware" differently. There is a very beautiful difference. 

Knowledge wears a grey suit. 

Awareness has wings. :)

You can easily replace one with the other. Like you can say "I am aware of that" instead of "I know". However, when you are really aware, you know but you cannot explain how it makes you feel. When you are aware you know that knowledge is not everything. That there is a certain degree of levitation associated even with ordinary life. 

Like knowing that water droplets run over a lotus leaf like mercury but then taking one on off on the tip of your index finger and feeling it!

Knowing that you breathe all the time in order to survive but closing your eyes and trying to follow your breath in and out of your lungs. 

It could be knowledge and sensitivity together. It could be knowing with a flexible mind. More so a flexible ego. Better still, a flexible, knowing mind full of compassion. Is that awareness? 

It is an evasive, ethereal word. 

How would a Westerner react to "अहम् ब्रम्हास्मि।"?

If you translate it literally, it would be considered an expression of an inflated ego but I think it is closest to how we can explain awareness. 

That is what separates scholars from enlightened ones. The fact that they are aware of the God within them!

Opinion!

I guess having an opinion on everything is the first sign of getting old. :(
Ten years ago I hardly had an opinion on anything and I had a constant feeling of being empty.
Ten years since then I struggled hard to have an opinion. I still feel empty and I make much more noise!
Opinions are overrated. They have a range of validity and when someone gets too stiff on their own, life turns around and pokes them in the eyeball. It is one thing having an opinion and another being taken seriously. As a twenty five year old, I try to make as much sense with my own life as possible but I also feel like attaching a disclaimer with my opinions. Most of my thoughts about various situations have changed drastically over the past two or three years. So if my own life goes at the same pace, I may not agree with my twenty five year old thoughts when say, I am twenty seven.
So is it really worth asking for my opinion and then getting into a fight with me?
Another annoying thing about opinions is that they make a fluid medium to get into a pointless debate and when confronted to express your opinion it is really difficult to refuse to express it or lie. This makes it increasingly difficult to look forward to a chilled out beer with no heated conversation about religion!
They are very good if they are free of emotions. However on certain occasions, people just want to strangle you for having an opinion that does not match with their own.
The most beautiful aspect of opinions is that everyone else can be wrong! =)

खिचडी

मी मराठीत लिहू शकते! 

मॅक (अाणी मंदार गद्रे) यांचे अाभार! 

चालक शिकत अाहे. तरी  चू.भू.द्या.घ्या.

Intrepid Worrier. :)

I thought of having lunch with my flatmate Riju today. She was supposed to be in the university all day. I called her to ask her if we could meet but she did not answer. I called her back in half an hour and still no answer. Then the obsessive-compulsive-neurotic hormone was activated inside me and I kept calling her every fifteen minutes. With every unanswered call, I made up a better scenario in my head. Initially I assumed that she left her cellphone at home. It was a good assumption. However then it seemed really impossible that someone like Riju would ever forget something like her phone at home. Then my creativity kicked in as well and by the end of hour three I was sure that our house had been broken into and she had been tied to the chair while they swept through the house.

My miserable thoughts were interrupted by a loud ring. She was absolutely fine but had forgotten to get her phone off the silent mode.

I don't like to worry. No one does I guess but every time I am in a situation where a very simple reason makes perfect sense, I end up refusing to accept it and waste a lot of my time worrying about multiple impossible outcomes.

It runs in my family though. So sometimes when I worry a lot about why I worry, I blame it on my mother's side. My grandfather used to be a freedom fighter in the struggle for Mother India's independence. However he is a better "worrier" than a "warrior"!

I went to the U.S when I was fifteen years old, all by myself. My parents and my grandfather put me on a plane in Mumbai and returned to Pune. However my mom and my grandfather turned into a mixed doubles team on their way back. They used to throw these "worry balls" at my dad and he tried to play them both all alone. My mom thought instead of getting down at the Hong Kong airport, I would mistake Bangkok for Hong Kong and get down there instead while the plane waits for an hour (although my ticket screamed aloud of my next destination). She made baba call up the Hong Kong airport to make sure I had reached.

My dad was taking his momentary shaving solace in the bathroom (because that is the only activity my mom could not join him with and annoy him) when my grandfather entered the bathroom and locked the door from inside. My dad was prepared to get hit in the head but my grandfather bowled him over with his question and left him speechless for a while. "What if Saee's aunt does not come to get her at San Francisco at all?". To which my dad calmly replied,

"She has a return ticket. The Cathay Pacific staff would promptly put her back on to the next flight to Mumbai". When I (finally) reached and called them, my dad was almost in tears from being free of two worry maniacs.

I am the third generation of victims of unreasonable fears in my family. If you look at it from your ground state, the worries that take up most of your healthy, productive work-time are extremely ridiculous. When I am not in it, I can give a three hour sermon on peace of mind. When I am in it, I jut turn into this scary psychopath. Sometimes, the things that I imagine about my close ones are right out of a crime scene. Even as a child, if my mom did not come back home at a certain time, I used to think that the Sikh terrorists kidnapped her (yeah, they were really big in the eighties when Indira Gandhi was assassinated). Once I even told my neighbor that I am scared that Longawal kidnapped my mom and he almost had an attack of asthma laughing!

My dad's genes might have made me a little bit less of a neurotic though. He always told my mom, "Worry is intrest paid on trouble before it is due". Even as a five year old I knew that my dad would say that line at least thrice a week to her but as a twenty-five year old, I still find it hard to apply it to my thoughts when I get worried about silly things.

Every now and then though, there comes a cool summer evening where you stroll by the river and think to yourself, "Right now, there is nothing in this world that I should be worried about. It will all fall into place".

I wish my life had a little more of those evenings though!