Learning Curve. :)

I like to teach myself. It is a great way to live life.
I have taught myself a lot of things since I stopped growing vertically (and that was a very long time ago). First, with a little help from my mom, I taught myself cooking. It was around the time when I was twelve.Risking the big revelation about my age, fourteen years down the line, I am still learning. :)
Then I learnt to feel good about myself. That's true, I did!
It is not easy to feel good about yourself in a rational world. The moment you step out you are given a million magnified images of all the little things that are wrong with you. This is not because I am cynical. This is true. In different contexts, different people see what you don't have. Sometimes, they put it across by excessively praising what you have. At others, they mumble and fumble and kind of blurt it out. Some are really direct. So they wait all morning to meet you, picking the juiciest adjectives they could embellish it with. Then, when they see you, you can see the splendour of a thousand sunrises on their face. If you have to, you take it. If you can't, which is a rare situation, you just fume and leave the room.
But when you sit down later, with a mug of hot chocolate (forsaking the marshmallow as a sign of mourning for the self respect you have just killed) you know, somewhere inside, that you are good. :) I have come to love that feeling. Only because I taught myself how to feel that way. You see, that feeling should not come draped in anger, or as a stilt for a dwindling ego, or as an equal and opposite reaction. It should be there. Like the very last, unnoticed mango in a crate full of hay. It is not easy. Feeling (really) good about yourself is a very difficult thing.
As years pass by, "feeling good" changes so many faces.So many strong winds carve tiny lines on the faces that want to feel good. I hope that voice inside does not get tired. I have a funny feeling it won't either.
I also learnt to learn. Sometimes, all of a sudden, you start feeling like you are all cooked and ready to be served. Then if someone tries to check you with a fork, it hurts! Precisely because you are not cooked yet. There was a time when I wanted to be cooked right away and not being able to step out of the oven made me really angry. Now I see it. God really prefers slow cooking and we should let him do it his way. Even if we oppose, it is not like a chicken can really get up and march towards the plate with angry slogans. :)
So even though I feel good, I never really let myself think that I am the best I could be. This is hard too, especially when you have learnt to feel good. It takes a while to get that balance. Needless to say that you topple and trip over many situations you would rather not live again.
Plus every new situation has many small situations hidden in it. So you never really know where you are going to trip. It is best to have a past. It keeps on accumulating anyway. I guess miles and miles of trudging through present is wisdom after all. :)
One of the most difficult thing to teach myself was to wait. I don't think I have done it successfully even now. You know how when you are in a long line, right at the end and someone jumps the queue in the front. There is so much learning to do from the time you start swearing in that situation to the point where you just change the music to a happier track when that happens. You learn to wait for things that you cannot help. Also for things, that would get much better if you wait. To make words wait until anger has left. To wait for rain for weeks and still find things you could cheer yourself up with. To wait for friends to understand what you meant when they got upset. To wait for a lot of things that could be done right away if you want but you know they must wait for you too!
One of the most useful things I have learnt is to be regular. Do something everyday. It gives your life a pace.Then retarding forces can slow you down only a little. Even if it is just watering the chili or running by the river or even cleaning the stove before you go to bed. :) It often gives you certainty that is many times absent from larger things.
Most importantly though, I have learnt not to stop dancing. You never really stop dancing even if you try. You just lose the audience..and then it gets better than you ever thought it would!
For as long as the music is in your ears, you should dance. Does not matter if it's the kitchen, the bathroom, the walk-in freezer or a deserted bus stop. :)

The Little Prince

I just read this book, which was a present. It came with an assurance that I would love it because of the person that I am. :) It was completely true. It is widely known as a children's book but I think it is more an adults' book. It is about a little prince, who comes from an asteroid and shares his candid opinion about grown-ups with the writer.It is enthralling with all its fantastic ideas and innocent illustrations. Of little planets where there are one thousand, four hundred and forty sunsets in twenty four hours, big enough to be occupied only by a solitary, tired lamplighter!
For an adult, every line is a new hope. A new way of looking at ordinary life. To care for flowers, or even a single flower with full responsibility. To weep, to open your eyes wide and see what you have around you. To slow down and drink water. To see the stars just because they are pretty and not because they guide us to our destinations.To make every simple thing in your life a source of joy. To have friends and to think of them all the time!

We are all proud of our achievements as adults. The way we use the freedom we get as a consequence of being an adult, what we build for ourselves in whatever space that is "ours" in this world, and the constant urge to get somewhere that we yet have to get to! The pride we take in moving on and still being strong.
No one really pays attention to the huge sacrifice we make in order to turn into an adult. We lose our ability to believe in something just because it is true for us. We lose the ability of not comprehending failure and going for it as though it does not exist.
This is all brought back to life in this book by the prince and his flower. :)

You find yourself giggling like a kid in some parts and in some, your eyes well up even before you realize.
My flower is ephemeral, the little prince said to himself, and she has only four thorns with which to defend herself against the world! And I've left her alone where I live!

A must read, especially if you think you are a grown-up!

The side effects of globalization!

Just a few weeks before I came back to Australia this year, an Indian was stabbed to death in Melbourne. Since then, at every dinner party, I had to explain the "real situation" to everyone. Indian television media is extremely hyperactive. I have said this before and I would say it again. The government had to issue an order of restraint to the media following similar reports of Indians being attacked after the unfortunate incident. Although this causes a lot of anxiety to people who have sent their kids to Australia and also others who have family members living here, one good thing about the whole media coverage is that both Australian police and the Australian government have been put in the spotlight. We cannot deny that it has not helped in a certain way. In today's times, any country would be reluctant to admit that racism is even a small element of their culture. Moreover, labeling Australia as a racist country is unfair. Some Australians could be racist but that certainly does not imply that the whole country is racist.
Amidst this frenzy we had statements from various Australian authorities. The Victorian Police Chief admitted that Indians were being overrepresented in the robbery statistics. Here's a quote from his statement:
"I have said from day one undoubtedly some of these attacks have a racist motive or there is racist elements to these attacks. Regardless of who they are, what they are, what colour they are, what occupation they are, my job is to make the state as safe as I can for everyone."

Now, lets go back to Mumbai. In the good old days of Mahatma Gandhi, Indians learned to boycott. We still do that in our own fancy ways by boycotting something as peripheral and frivolous as a game of cricket. So Mr.Bal Thakrey promptly roared in his own secure forest- Samna that he would stop the Aussie cricket team from playing in Maharashtra. The direct Gandhian line has taken to "relay fastings" where one member of the group sits on the podium on a "hunger strike" to wait for someone who takes his place later. :)
The radical groups have taken to violent boycotting of everything that comes in the way of what they want. In fact, these days it is hard to tell if they really want the end that they are striving for. These kind of statements can be compared to a Rakhi Sawant arranging her own Swayamwar on "reality" television. The whole saga is not really to get a husband, it is for getting everything that she would on the way to her alleged destination. Do we ever have a Mumbai chief admitting that he is responsible for every person's safety? When a Sachin Tendulkar says, "I am an Indian first and then a Maharashtrain", all the hyenas in Mumbai start tearing him apart. When the statement he made is so relevant because he represents India, not Maharashtra everywhere he goes!
Around the same time as the Aussie attacks came to light two years ago, Mumbai witnessed a similar style of attacks. The Marathi-Bihari debate that is still giving votes to the Thakrey family. Mumbai is the most sought after city in India. Everyone wants to be in Mumbai. Naturally people who speak the same language as the rest of Maharashtra would want to assert their importance. The latest official reaction to this issue is seen in the headlines today. To be a cabbie in Mumbai now, you have to know Marathi well and you should present a proof of over fifteen years of residence in Mumbai!
The day I returned, I got into a cab driven by an Aussie gentleman. He shed some light on the "other side" of the whole racist debate. Indian cabbies are attacked in Australia mostly because
1. They do not know the streets at all. They jump into a cab the moment they land in Australia and sometimes even do not know how to use the GPS.
2. They misuse the meter by hitting buttons when the passenger is not looking. Unless you ask for your printed receipt, you will never know you were duped.
3. They play Punjabi (Indian Bollywood) songs in the taxi when they have passengers.
4. Some or all of this is done on Friday and Saturday nights when most cabs are used by Australians who go clubbing and can't drive because they are absolutely sloshed.
Imagine if this happens in Pune. If you get into a rickshaw and the driver has no clue where you want to go and you have no clue either! If he plays loud Ganesh festival music while you are trying to have a conversation with your friend sitting next to you. Worst still, if they charge you Rs.1oo for a journey you know for sure should not cost more than Rs.25! Even if you are absolutely sober, you would pick up a fight with him.
I accept that not all "Indian cabbies" have these ways just the way I say that all of Australia is not racist. But the ones who get attacked and the ones who attack them both fall into the same minority!

Whether in Mumbai, or in Brisbane, the problem should be "unprofessional taxi drivers" instead of "Bihari (non-marathi)" or "Indian taxi drivers".

We should all condemn the attacks, in India as well as Australia. But we should not close our eyes to the reasons that cause them.
All of us know that it is unfair to attack people just because they come from a different country or claim our jobs but hey! this is globalization for you. This has been happening and will happen until the world becomes one color from mixing. Until the time when every person in the world cannot correctly trace their origins to a single ethnicity. Just the way Indian media and politicians make a big hype about "Indians" in Australia, with all sincerity and gratefulness, I would request them to do something about the intra-country racism that exists blatantly within India itself. This is an underlying reality about every nation. Whether it is visa procedures made more "stringent" for only certain passports or cabbies being abused openly and attacked in a faraway land. Just like the fear of unpredictable terrorism, everyone who is not white lives under a subconscious fear of being pointed out at! It is a choice that people living outside their country make very consciously. The only precaution you can take is to abide by the laws of the land and make sure you are not found helpless at wrong times.
Above this murky, angry and sensational reality lies another one too! Where Australia, India, China, UK, Poland, Jamaica and Fiji meet for beer in a pub after work on a Friday night. :)

Sarpanch Sahib!

This is a new post in brand new year. Let me wish all my readers a very happy and more importantly peaceful new year. :)
I am in India for four weeks. So I have been very lazy with writing. I got my hands on some interesting books while I was out shopping. Sarpanch Sahib is one of them. This is a collection of seven biographies of female Sarpanchs (village heads) of seven different remote villages in India. What is more interesting is that each of these stories is written by a different female journalist who had to get out of her metropolitan existence to meet her subject in a far off village. Edited by Manjima Bhattacharjya, this book shows you a completely different and honest face of the Indian woman.
It starts off more or less to review the effects of the 73rd constitutional amendment that was done in 1993. It mandated elections to be held for membership to the panchayti Raj and reserved one-third of the seats for women. Since then over three million Indian women have become politically active and one million are elected to political office every five years.
However, the role of women in politics is still looked upon with doubts. This book travels through all the trials and triumphs associated with a woman leader and puts them across honestly, without even a hint of dramatic feminism.
There is Sunita, an Adivasi woman, Sarpanch of a Brahmin dominated Tighra village in Madhya Pradesh. I found her story inspiring. It took her about a year and nine months just to open her own account and access the funds granted to her for developmental work. She had to fight with men of power, men of higher castes and initially men (and women) of her own family. All of this just to start working as a Sarpanch after being elected by people. Journalist Manju Kapur narrates Sunita's journey from a ghunghat-clad skinny daughter-in-law to a fuller Sarpanch who looks into her opponent's eyes. She even jokes that all the fighting made her put on weight!
Or even the illiterate Chinapappa of Pachikanapalli, Tamil Nadu. She helped twenty one kids of the nomad Irular tribe with enrollment in a nearby school. She takes us through the struggles of being an illiterate Dalit woman. Each adjective adding a new constraint to her efficiency.
I am always stumped by the "images" that foreigners carry with them about India. Many times, their travel diaries are full of descriptions of the non-existence of women in India. I myself have been caught in never ending, heated debates about how Indian women are not as helpless as the West perceives. Reading this book opened my eyes to a new reality.
We should learn to measure success relatively. For me, Sunita who was married at ten, entered politics at twenty two years of age from a mute Adivasi background is much more emancipated than any metropolitan Indian or even Western woman. Not getting things done with bribes, getting out of her house to go to court because she has been accused on fake charges and silencing higher caste men are her achievements. They are probably bigger than any qualified politician (if there is a term as a "qualified politician"). If these struggles are delaying developmental work, it is like latent heat being absorbed to make something invisible happen- the empowerment of these women. Once they are powerful enough not to care, development will take place with a greater speed and honesty.
Over the past few years, I have learned to open my eyes to these realities that exist around me. It is easy to get wrapped up in your happiness (or sorrow) and not look around. But in every humble woman lies a great power. When you take a step back to look around you find that women who are on the so called lower rungs of the society pyramid are actually emotionally and professionally much more successful than you. Mostly because they have to deal with struggles that would never cross the path of an educated, modern woman. Their expectations are humble and their everyday life makes it impossible for them to dwell on their problems.
It is not so important to be better than everyone else. Sometimes that leads to loss of compassion. The true beauty of a life well lived is to be better than what you were yesterday and also to help others on your way, achieve that dream!

Chopticks and I

I am often intrigued by the evolution of habits. Especially in cultures across the world. There are those questions that we often end up pondering over. I have a few recurring ones of my own. For example, "who would have declared jackfruit edible?". I mean the person must have been awfully hungry to open such an ugly looking fruit expecting it to be edible.
I also wonder almost after each of my encounters with Asian food over how noodles must have evolved. It is amazing how different cultures rely on different sources of carbohydrates and make them in their own way. Whether it is roti, bread, rice or noodles the basic purpose is same, to provide carbohydrates.
Or sometimes, much to my dislike, I see people happily opening oysters. Who would have first opened an oyster !! I secretly hope that there should have been a lag of a few centuries between the discovery of oysters being edible and people actually starting to relish them.
One of these persistent questions is also, "Which resident by the banks of Yangtze river would have invented chop sticks?!!". I mean, there must have been a point in the history of Asian food habits where one fine morning a plump little Chinese (or Japanese or Taiwanese) man (or woman or child) must have gone, "I am going to eat my food with these two sticks!".
Of all the things that I get tired from like explaining people what I do for a living and trying to preserve my long nails between my lab work, eating with chopsticks is one such utterly tiresome process.
What is more annoying is how Westerners follow the saying, "When in Rome do what Romans do". Most Aussies I know have a black belt in using chopsticks. I am usually the only one in the group who asks for a fork in a Chinese restaurant. But it is funny watching an Aussie insisting on using chopsticks while an Asian sometimes even completely bypassing the English language. :)
When words fail, they are comfortable pointing at pictures of coconuty Laksa soups. :)
I think this is the reason why most Asian women have perfect lean figures. You can only eat so much using chopsticks. After a while the painful effort of picking up your food with sticks must overpower hunger. That is what they should do to reduce obesity across the world. The day when an American eats a big mac with chopsticks there would be an answer to world obesity!
What also surprises me is that India with her formidable culinary arsenal of everything ranging from puran poli to kati kababs could not invent an innovative piece of cutlery! All we could think of was fingers! Although the way Indians eat using hands differs just as much as all the dialects in a single language, it is still a disappointment that the land that gave the world nothing (zero) could do nothing to revolutionize eating.
I must confess that I have fully inherited the Indian attitude. I look at food and decide how to eat it. If I can eat noodles with a fork and I already know how to use a fork, I find it taxing to try and learn a new way of eating noodles just to be a perfect Asian diner. When I see pizza for example, I automatically change over to using hands. And I must also confess that there is no greater joy in this life than eating cold fragrant curd rice with lemon pickle using nothing but your finger tips on a hot summer afternoon!!

Back to Square One

Divisive politics at its best in Maharashtra.
Politicians in India are very fortunate because when they can't get religion to work, they have languages. When politicians have a go at all the micro identities that they could manipulate, it is a sure sign of them losing their own!
Just felt like quoting Tagore on this one. I think we have to go back to square one again!

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic wars;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit; Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action - Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake!

Ten on Ten!!

I have never really been an ardent fan of cricket. The only cricket I watched with a lot of passion was with my dad. On days when India played Pakistan, specially in the World Cup series, our household would come to a standstill. There would be no going out. We would not by any stretch of imagination think of watching anything else on television except the match. It was a beautiful time in my life. On hot summer days, day-night matches would come with ice cream as accompaniment. My dad would rush to the nearby Vadilal (a brand of ice cream that became extinct with the opening of economy) store and get slabs of it!
The atrocity of that Indian summer was alleviated by the jasmine flowers in the balcony, the ice cream and cricket!
Dad and I would follow the match right from the toss. A lanky Azaruddin standing next to a puffy Inzamam! As the coin was tossed up, I found myself doing all the little girl spells on it. The rest of the day was spent in front of the television.
These matches were played in two parts. In the conventional sense, it was divided as Indian batting and Indian fielding. For us, however, it was before Sachin and after Sachin. Sachin Tendulkar was responsible for a lot of my mood changes in those days. He would not know it I know, but just because this is all out there I should clear my heart. :)
Every time after an opening batsman went out at a sad score the little master would walk in, fiddling with his gloves and helmet. I would fall on to my knees and pray to him. The game then usually transformed to another level with every other delivery being swept across the boundary line like the ball had it all written in its destiny. In one of his "trips" Sachin would sweep over after over at an average of sixteen runs per over and sweep everyone off their feet. We lived each of those with our hearts in our hands. It was not a game. It was more like dance for me for it came as close to art as an Amjad Ali Khan on Sarod or a Jasraj reciting the Shanti Mantra in his soul-soaking voice.
Being a girl, I am not able to throw in statistics in a conversation related to cricket. Nor would I get red in the face when someone would say Sachin is overrated sipping on a coffee that they haven't paid for in Roopali.
Over the years though I have observed something similar in people who have consistently stayed on top. Be it Sachin, A.R Rahman or Rodger Federer. They don't play for us, they do whatever they do because they have been sent with that one purpose. Everything that comes as a result of what they do gets dissolved in the overwhelming presence of their art.
Kudos to Sachin! There would never be another one of his kind. :)

United Nations of Australia

I went camping this weekend. We were a group of ten, from nine countries around the world. India, South Africa, Poland, Spain, Greece, Singapore, Germany, Iran and just to make the host country happy, Australia. :) We labeled the group as 'The UN'.
In my pre-Australia life, I never really thought of "meeting people" as a learning experience. It was always classified as "entertainment". Two years in Australia, I consider myself lucky to be in a country that is so disarmingly multicultural. Whoever thinks of Australia as a racist country should really be in Australia and find out for themselves. The climate and the culture attract a lot of people to this place, including people from European countries. So not every white person is really an Australian.
We were chatting over lunch and breakfast, cooking our own on an electric barbecue. There is a different kind of enlightenment in knowing history of a nation from the person who has been brought up in it. I had tried reading the biography of Nelson Mandela ( Long Walk to Freedom) when I was in India. However, listening to a native from Cape Town talk about his leader was a much more refreshing experience. When he talked about Mahatma Gandhi and how his principles changed the fate of South Africa, I ended up thanking the stars above our heads.
No one really teaches us proper history in schoolbooks. I found this out when I was talking to a Chinese friend and realized that he had a completely different version of the 1962 Indo-China war!
This is just politics and history. I think I should not even try to mention how much of a culinary vocabulary you can build doing these kind of excursions! Plus there is always a lot to talk about and to debate over. Usually, after the first few meetings the differences fall into their own place and the similarities emerge.
No matter where we grow up, what culture we are born in and where we stand in our accomplishments, the basic human feelings are always the same. This has been one of the biggest lessons of my life away from home and the conclusion is very simple- Friendship does not come with a passport!
We are all incomplete and so is the Universe. The things we do, our fates and the people we meet in the course of our journey complete us. In everything we do to complete ourselves we are unknowingly completing the Universe too. Although both these seem like a latent and futile aim, it does make the world a better place after all!

The Great Indian Novel

I actually ordered this book following the Twitter controversy of its author Shashi Tharoor and it made me realize that there is indeed a positive side to negative publicity. :)
The Great Indian Novel is an ingenious attempt at narrating the recent Mahabharta of the Indian Freedom Struggle. Tharoor has assigned all the key characters of the Indian independence movement a Mahabharata equivalent. Dictated by Ved Vyas to Ganpathi, this novel is both satirical and equally moving. The characters are named and described so well that within lines of introducing a new character you immediately get the real people behind the character. Tharoor's Vyas seems a like a pipe-smoking-toddy-drinking old English chap but that does not stick between your teeth like an annoying bit of corn. In fact, this modern Vyas gives the whole narrative a crisp humorous style.
In the beginning I was a little cross at this humorous opening, especially when he tried to describe Mahatma Gandhi. However, as the book progresses Tharoor unfolds a deep respect for the leader in a sincere and moving description. His respect is refreshing in ways that are completely different and human to the usual rhetoric dedicated to Gandhi in Indian politics. He presents Mahatma and his work as an experiment and very carefully defines the scope of Gandhian methods. He talks extensively about the psychological effect that the Gandhian methods had on the masses, essentially making them work. This insight keeps you glued to the book although it is sprinkled here and there with long poetic interludes, something I thought did not match up to the prose.
What is remarkable is the ease with which each of Tharoor's characters fits with it's counterpart in the epic Mahabharta. Tharoor has not just classified the characters according to the epic but he has been able to translate for his readers what each of these represent psychologically.
Another aspect that comes forward in this book mostly because it is a modern take on the epic is the role of women. Tharoor's Kunti and Madri make you wonder if any of the later victories would have been possible at all without the liberties given to these women. Women in India have always enjoyed a place of power which is still evident. However the Indian woman very rarely comes out in the open about the powers she holds and it requires a careful study of every great battle to know which unsung woman hero really controlled it with her bejeweled petite hand. Sometimes, in India this passive control takes an ugly form too and makes me wonder if manipulation should be renamed as "womanipulation" for India. :)
The one woman that later came out in the open with her good and bad powers has been popularly hated all over India still for her actions. It makes you wonder if the reaction would be different had she been a man!

I think this book is a must read for anyone following Indian politics. It gives you an idea of how Indian politics has evolved and decayed from the Gandhian"politics of the conscience" to the modern day "politics of blackmail". I don't know how effective Shashi Tharoor will be as a politician but for this book, he gets full marks. It also gives an explanation for his constant tweets. For someone who is full of so many ideas, not expressing them for a long time must be hard! :)

This world is cruel and funny!

Has anyone of you ever had those times that make you wonder how cruel yet how funny this world is? I had one of those today. I was supposed to be at a marking day. It is one of those university tutor sessions where all tutors are put in one room with all the assignments related to the units they teach. I was tutoring a course in Sustainability this semester and we were dealing with transport, housing and waste management solutions for a small lake town called Tonle Sap in Cambodia. So we were basically marking what "first year" students (the super enlightened ones) think should be done with this small town that lives off fishing.
Needless to say they came up with some amazing solutions. Like for example, building catamarans that cost $ 1 million each ( 5 of them mind you), spending about $5000 a month (each) on maintaining them, and charging all the commuters of Tonle Sap $2 everyday to use them. Then comes the clincher. They proposed that since the average Cambodian earns less than $2 a day, according to Cambodian standards, they should pay the drivers of these ships $75 a month!!
It stuck in my head because before I went for this marking job, I was reading 'The Great Indian Novel' on the train and I was bemused by Tharoor's description of how the British redefined "taxes" in various forms in India and how easily Indians accepted it then until someone else pointed it out to them!!

We were reading pages after pages of description of the abject poverty in the region and every two hours the table at the end of the room was loaded with refreshments. So I had to actually mark work that required me to understand if my students understood the concept of subsistence living while I was munching on grapes, making myself cups of fragrant Earl Grey and enjoying them with scones! To make things even more ironical I was being paid for all the time I spent there.
It is really amusing how different kinds of people in the West (well in Australia, I should be geographically correct and call them people of the Western East) think of the East. Some of them give me a happy shock by knowing more about Ashtanga Yoga than I do ( to be honest I don't even really know what kind of Yoga I have been brought up on). Sometimes they make these emphatic statements that Hindus still burn their widows in India and change the subject before I can take full control of my fury!!
The Western woman is emancipated. It is a really cunning word. She is free to choose! She is free to do whatever she wants with her life. In the end though, they all want someone to go down on his knees and propose to them! In the end they all want to have children. They all seem to have the same motherly and feminine feelings that their not-so-free sisters in the East seem to have but unlike their sisters in the East, they cannot guarantee that their feelings would be fulfilled. Because they are all tied down by freedom that they have chosen with such dignity! Too much choice ties you down in strange ways! I feel the same when I see twenty year old kids with backpacks full of different sources of entertainment looking blank and bored.
Sitting there in that cool air conditioned room today, I felt guilty in a strange way and on my way back, getting back to the Civil Disobedience that Mahatma Gandhi launched so many years ago, I also felt strangely grateful to be reminded that there are still people in this world that live on under $2 a day!

Downloading Friends. :)

Raj's post inspired the post but this has been on my mind for a while.
Sometimes, when I am absolutely convinced I am living a loser's life, I cheer myself up using each of my places on the Internet. On a day, where all my reactions have failed and my supervisor has very candidly told me that my latest draft could be aptly described only in one word-horrible, I sit in a corner and read my own blogs.
It is a place to rejuvenate but sometimes I also become a bit schizophrenic and wonder who is the real me?
Fifty years ago, if someone said that fifty years from now people would be able to send their minds all over the earth without physically going anywhere it would have been sci-fi material. Today I have so many friends that I have never met and it does not matter one bit if I do not meet them ever! In the last few years, I have made friends at an alarming rate for the kind of person I am. There has been a steady increase in the people I actually meet and then make friends with but there has also been a rise in the number of people I have not met and I am good friends with. Fortunately for me, this is not through any of the popular social networking sites. It is through reading blogs and interacting with people who read my blogs. It has been an absolutely thrilling experience.
I am not really going to try and be humble by saying that I don't write to get noticed. I started writing as an experiment but when I realized that people like it, I was inspired to do it more often. I had been writing in the closet for a long time before I started writing publicly but I must accept that public opinion added a lot of depth, care and maturity to my writing. After the initial excitement of people liking what I write died down, I started following some blogs as well. I have met some of the most interesting people solely through their blogs. Gayatri is one of them. Now, she is almost like any of the best friends I grew up with but initially her writing inspired a lot of awe. The way her words do ballet in Marathi is truly inspiring. She has also been doing the proof reading for my Marathi blog for which I am very grateful to her. Alienknight (Dattatraya Gokhale) is another person who inspired me with poetry in the early days of my poetry blog. His art of expressing profound feeling in just a couple of lines has always made me challenge my own expression. Raj has made me laugh out loud with his Marathi blog. His style of writing always amazes me. I have grown extremely fond of his silly satire. His humor has a Puneri flavor to it and reading his posts sometimes makes you feel like you are having a goof-around time with a cutting chai on some Puneri Katta.
Mandar Gadre has been one such friend that I have not met as yet. His poetry and his photoblog are a collection of sincere and well crafted thoughts and images. Charu's photoblog has also inspired me. He is also one of those people I have met only once but know too well now. Shrirang Khandekar's photoblog is also one of the places that I respect on the Internet. I came to know of this because he was a regular in the comment box of my Marathi blog. One day I decided to track his page. I must say it was a humbling experience to realize a place like that exists!
Prasad has been one of the recent additions to this list too. His words are human and his writing never fails to move. Be it in anger or in innocence. His writings about Robindranath Tagore have revived the Banglamania in me during the last few months.
I have made friends with a lot of my followers too and I have reconnected with a few family members because they started reading my blog! My father has been my most consistent follower and this feeling always fills me up with a lot of happiness and pride. These days, my mom takes out time specially to follow my Marathi blog. So there has been a bit of family reunion in the space too.
People with families, living in their home countries might not realize how much of a solace this part of our identities gives us. Over these past two years I have known so many new people who have stepped out of their countries, their own comfort zones to try and make a place in the field of science. Most of my blog-friends are PhD students spread all over the world. Some of them are intrepid travelers. All of us are trying to come to terms with our own identities without following any prescribed ways to belong. Oddly enough, unknowingly we all want to belong somewhere. In my case, finding fellow writers and empathizing with their experiences is a way of finding my own closure. :)
Like the Bhagwad Geeta says in a somewhat weary tone, we have entered the age of hybrids. People traveling all over the world and expressing themselves from everywhere in their own language is one of the advantages of this cultural hybridization. In any case, I would really like to thank God for technology. Even though it is all man-made and designed, if you take a look at how humanity has evolved over the ages, it always makes me want to believe that it is a Divine intervention!

PurpleMoon Turns Three!

I am awfully superstitious but somehow without any premeditation, I started writing on the third of October. Something which I would have done if I was thinking about it. :)
I think anything that adds up to three is lucky for me. So, today on the 3rd of October, as my blog turns three, it has got to be a very special day. :)
Although poor PurpleMoon has been somewhat sidelined due to my Marathi blog, it is still a place of a lot of attachment for me.
So Happy Birthday PM! May you have a long life.Less opinion and more funny stories. And may your creator never lose her mind!

Godparents

I came across this new website, the brainchild of a close friend and his buddies. A selfless little place in a selfish world just to pool in money for young kids in need. It is a place where people who want to help can interact with institutions that can take them to the kids in need. More details can be found on the website.
Wishing them good luck and hoping that it really helps!

Ms.Idle Whiskers

I am fully aware that anyone who wakes up at 5 AM on a Sunday morning is not considered normal by human beings. However, desperate times call for desperate measures and I had to wake up at that ungodly hour today to finish a few reactions in the lab. I personally find that I start becoming more and more stupid after 4 in the afternoon. So I have to use all my time before that to work. Otherwise I make mistakes that are irreversible or just get me into a mortifying gloom for the rest of the day and I hate repenting.

So I woke up at the break of dawn today. I was pottering around the house trying to make breakfast (there hasn't been even a single time in my life when I have been able to make one whole omelet. Somehow on the frying pan I always work in fractions. In the end I have scrambled eggs), when I heard an almost human knock and scratch on the door. When I opened, I realized that it was Ms.Cat demanding to be let in. I had to obey.

She came in running on her overweight paws and stood right next to her bowl and looked at me with a face that seemed to say, "You are just as slow even first thing in the morning aren't you?".

So I dutifully fed her and began to pack my bags to leave.In the meanwhile she sprawled on the carpet and began observing me with her wise owl-like face.

Cat : Where are you going?
Me : Work. You are going to get out of this house in another three and a half minutes.
Cat : Jeez! It is Sunday. Why do you have to go to work on a Sunday and that too at 6?!!
Me : Well, my religious texts say that you are born a human after many births. I guess it is more like a consolation for having cats like you.
Cat : See, your problem is that you (all humans) really think of yourselves as important. Even cats could write a similar text if they want. Where a kind, forgiving and unselfish cat refuses to kill an army of rats in front of him. Then a wise and cat meows him the essence of cat life. Urges him to stop grieving and do his duty as a cat. We just don't bother!
Me : God! You are not just arrogant and lazy but also blasphemous! I don't want to listen to your philosophy. I have things to do.
Cat : Why do you think that the things you have to do are going to make so much of a difference? I mean how do you matter to the world. I would say you matter a lot to your parents and a few close friends. You matter to me, mostly when the other girl who's much nicer to me than you, is not around. But from a global, like you say holistic point of view, do you really matter that much?
Me : (Damn! She is right!) Yes I do. I matter to myself. What I do makes me happy. That is all I ask!
Cat : This is what all those texts fill you up with. These are all borrowed thoughts. You have been told to find happiness within yourself. You know that in theory but you think that pretending to be practicing it will one day make you get there. So you pretend that waking up at dawn and smelling through one nostril would make you like the one that your Man-god told you he likes.
Me : What?!! What smelling?
Cat : The thing you do every morning where you close one nostril and then the other and keep doing it. I have recommended that to the list of "Humans are stupid" videos that Cat Rock

channel telecasts every Monday morning.

Me : Have I ever asked you these kind of probing questions about your life? Why do you have to make my morning so difficult? You ate your food. Now bugger off!
Cat : Well eventually I will. But before that, since I eat your food and I cannot stoop down to the level of a Dog and lick your feet, wagging my tail, I would like to barter some knowledge with you. Just out of genuine goodwill for once. Tell me how you define life?

Me : Something that you don't have.
Cat : Well, I would like to ignore that sarcastic comment. It mostly springs out of jealousy. To me, life is the time between being born and being dead. Two things you do not have any control over. It is like a waiting room. So in my view one should spend it doing minimum and just waiting. Catching a mouse or two every now and again but returning back to being idle whenever possible. It will pass on its own. Without any turbulence.
Me: Yeah, why not! When you have an idiot like me to demand food from and give these pointless lectures your life will sure have no turbulence at all!
Cat: This anger is not at me. It is actually directed at yourself. You would like to sprawl on this mat like me and doze off until the rats in the walls invite you to sharpen your nails. You mask your jealousy in virtue. Everybody has a loafer inside them. Get it out for once!
Me: Yeah okay. I will do that next Sunday. Now please leave this place.
Cat: Certainly. After you!
Me: No. Get out NOW.

Drags her fat paws out and sprawls on the lawn.

I must admit that the little creature has definitely done some thinking. I wish I could exchange lives with her sometimes. So much for taking oneself seriously!

Setting the world a-twitter

Once again, one of those (boring) IMO (In My Opinion) blogs. Not that my opinion really matters, as I have said over and over again, but whenever I can I like to dispense my opinion just because I have it! Something that my city (Pune) taught me. :)
So the inspiration is this. I was actually really happy that Shashi Tharoor was a part of our fresh cabinet. I even started following him on Twitter but like most, I gave up Tweeting after an initial entusiasm of about three weeks.
In one of its own T-shirt quotes Twitter says that it is ' The messaging system we didn't know we needed until we had it'. At the end of my three weeks of tweeting I came to agree with it, and also ended up dwelling on it.
Why does a politician need to update people around the globe about who he is having dinner with? For that matter why does anyone have to update the whole world about what they are doing every single moment of the day?
They say that they do it for political transperancy but the amount of truly unnecessary information that they send out through tweeting does more harm than the amount of good their transperancy does. No one really needs updates from politicians all the time. At least not about how they feel in their daily meetings and what they think about the austerity drive.
I think healthy tweeting would really help resolve a lot of issues regarding politicians being absent from the common people but India is a little cosmos within herself. Although we are all hooked on to the net all the time, we still use tongue-twisters like austerity-drive to describe cost cuts in cabinet travels. When I first read that word in the Times Of India I could not help but laugh. It took me straight to the English translation of the Bhagwad Geeta, where a austerity is a wise man's lifestyle. :)
I don't think the technological evolution has really affected the Indian values to a great extent. We still respect a certain formality of conduct in leaders. So a Kevin Rudd can possibly get away with tweeting about his steak but a Shashi Tharoor still has to pay heavily for it.
I also think it dilutes rhetoric. Not that it is essential but the beauty of a well-designed and drafted speech is far beyond tweeting every hour from every corner of the world. There has to be a certain gap between thinking and expressing. IMO (again!!) it is one of the most important steps of expressing your thoughts in any form, whether written, verbal or even artistic. That time between thinking over something and then saying it is the most crucial time in the process of expression and I think Twitter (or Facebook for some) really robs you of that time. That is why speeches by the likes of Winston Churchill and Mahatma Gandhi are still compiled and sold in the printed form.
I am not technophobic but I am weary of all these information blasters that the world is coming up with!
I love the concept of an e-book although I personally prefer a nice paperback in my purse, but audio-books just depress me to the core. They rob you of the pleasure of reading words and converting them into pictures in your brain right there. If you come to think of it, it is a very complicated process and that is why book lovers would never part with that privilege.
These days every one spends a lot of time and money on getting entertained. Even then there are a lot of people who get bored very easily. The real reason behind this is that we spend lesser time processing information in our own (private and hard-copy) heads and more time assimilating and dispensing it. :)
Just like my opinions I guess. So the (pointless) conclusion of this post is that you are more than likely to ruffle some Indian peacock feathers if you plan to set the world a-twitter. No matter how suave, tech-savvy and bright you are. In India you do what Indians do. :)

Too Good To Be True

I am listing out all the Too-Good-To-Be-Trues (TGTBT) so that people can faithfully walk along their (self) prescribed paths without wanting to strangle their destinies.

1. Being able to go to the gym five days a week and have complete control over your calorie intake at the same time. There hasn't been a single week in my life with that kind of statistics and I am pretty sure there will never be, unless ofcourse I am stranded on an island with orchards with only a gym on it for a week.

2. Having a day where you don't forget to do something. I have stopped worrying about this. There have been days when I have packed my bag the night before, put my clothes out for the next day on the couch, my lunch all packed in the fridge, my papers in the bag only to realize after stepping out on the bus-stop that I have forgotten my cellphone in my bed. Actually, today is one of those days. On such days instead of cursing myself, I feel happy that my all-pervading-all-encompassing supervisor would not be able to call me to ask, "Where are you??!! Haven't seen you today!!" when I am sitting and reading in the room next to his!

3. Not having a single coffee in a day. This is now beyond even my conscious control. I mechanically make myself coffee every morning without even realizing that I am doing it!

4. Not a single person in your life complains to you about something or someone else. I have tried to stop people from doing it in the past, quite unsuccessfully and I consciously stop myself from complaining about things but having a day where no one you talk to complains to you about something is just too good to be true.

5.Walking into your supervisor's office the morning after you have sent him your first-final draft and hearing the words, "Fantastic. Send it right away!". Anyone doing a PhD will know how many "final" drafts you have to write before anything even gets remotely close to the word final!

Feels nice to know that at least there is a list of things that is certain, if not the most pleasant!! :)

Dreaminsomnia

Recently I have been sleep deprived for two reasons. The first being my obsessive compulsive habit of getting up early and the second, my dreams. Sometimes I think when I sleep, my sleeping body is haunted by the ghost of some long dead script writer. I dream a perfect sequence of logical events. Moreover I remember it all in the morning and I am worried how much of a story it really is!!

In my latest dream, I dreamt that my grandparent's had installed an escalator in their house so that they don't have to climb a narrow flight of stairs. However, when I tried to operate it it got knotted up and turned into an electromagnet that went out of control. Soon, the neighbour's cars were all seen stuck to the escalator. While this was playing in my head one part of my mind was busy thinking whether an escalator could really turn into an electromagnet.

In another one of the recent ones, I dreamt that I wanted to get my nose pierced. I went into this really busy "Indian Market" nearby that had a piercing place run by Indian women that looked like witches. I asked how much they charged for a nose pierce. They said that they would pierce it and wait for two weeks for me to get a blood test. If I am infected, they would not charge me any money!! Very kind of them I presume. At least I would be happy about a free piercing job just before I die of AIDS!!

About two weeks ago, I dreamt that I was going to die in two days. It was a Friday in my dream and I was living with this old Aussie couple. They told me that the cemetery is closed over the weekend and because I would be dying on a Sunday, they did not want to keep me in the house till it opened again! So the good old chap insisted that they take me to the cemetery and bury me on the Friday itself to get it out of the way! Since I was going to die anyway, I might as well die in my own coffin! While all this was happening in my dream, I was constantly wondering if I should be buried or cremated. Finally I felt sad for the old couple and agreed to get myself buried before I die. When we reached the cemetery however, I got "checked" for the "symptoms of death" by a doctor who told me I was not going to die for a long time to come. The Aussie old man then refused to take me back in his car as he had not "prepared" himself  for the eventuality that I live. So I had to hitch-hike my way back to Brisbane. 

All of this could suggest that I am stressed. What amuses me however is the detail of thought that goes into it. How can a sleeping mind make up things like that? Although I often wake up tired from these kind of dreams, it is also very hard to control them especially when they have such macabre humor attached to them.

I slept like a log on Saturday night and woke up Sunday morning after thirteen hours of non-stop sleep. I must thank Hypnos and maybe pray that Morpheus takes over less often. :)

Rakhi Ka Swayamwar

If the committee that wrote the Indian scriptures had a better foresight, they would have included "Rakhi ka Swayamwar" as a confirmatory test for Kali Yuga. In Satya Yuga, we had the beautiful, innocent and extremely cultured daughter of Janaka being married off to the brave Lord Rama. In the age of the male demon (as Wiki puts it) we see an item girl organizing her own Swayamwar with a popularity seeking T.V channel. What more, we see all of us following it with gusto.
Let me confess with a little bit of shame and a little bit of pride that I actually enjoy watching Rakhi ka Swayamwar. I say shame, because if I wasn't watching it and somebody described it to me, I would be revolted to the core of my conscience. I say pride because I have been able to analyze well why I like watching it and put it behind me.
I envy people who lap up popularity. I use that word because that is exactly how I feel. Not that I cannot do it but I am too scared of the consequences. I heard people saying, "WHO will pass through trials and tribulations to marry someone like RAKHI SAWANT?" There were a lot of eager candidates though!
Most of us started watching it as a freak show. Something below average morals (if there is such an average) and dignity. Each episode presents yesterday's skimpily clad item girl in exceedingly beautiful clothes. With all my honesty, for the first time in all these days I gave Rakhi's looks a serious thought. Apart from certain inherent features that she probably cannot help (or does not want to redesign) she is a very beautiful woman.
The way she puts her point across comes as heartfelt and honest expression. Although hilarious sometimes it does have a shred of soul-searching hidden in it.
I think we like watching it because we like watching loudmouths. We are unconsciously living their lives because we cannot live them ourselves. However, in doing that we also expect them to fail just the way they rose up publicly, so that we can make peace with the inner voices that seem to remind us of our morals.
This is just a stream of thought that I caught in my head. Does not mean that if there are no consequences, I would go ahead and do it!
I would not say that this is Kali Yuga though. I think this is the age of absolute personal freedom. In a land like India that was eclipsed with the caste system for hundreds of years we suddenly have some serious turmoil. The recent ruling about homosexuality is one of the positive outcomes of this expression of freedom. It has also lifted off the stigma associated with the fear to act against immoral behaviour. It is a little bit ironic that to be comfortable as a victim in a society, sometimes you need to wait for the morality of the society itself to weaken! The age of absolute personal freedom has somehow also given us the ability to overrule the morals that have been laid down upon us. However, for some the journey ends at that point itself. Ideally it should go on. When we reject something that has been mass-dictated to us, we should also evolve to make our own personal morals. That would really make this age come of age.
For me, Rakhi ka Swayamwar is the negative extreme of this expression of personal freedom. The funny side of it is though that if you have not made enough time to tell your kids stories from the Ramayana, they are going to associate the word "Swayamwar" with Ms.Sawant before they do it with good old Seeta. :)
So I guess it is time for toddler parents to bring out those epics and turn them into bed-time stories again. :)

White Tiger

I bought this book on Saturday morning and I finished it Monday afternoon. Last year's Booker winner "White Tiger" by Arvinda Adiga is just as riveting as Shantaram or  A Fine Balance. It is the story of a driver who works for the son of a rich landlord in the corrupt regions of India around the river Ganga. What struck me is the beautiful narrative of the usually overlooked species on the streets of India- the Driver. It is an enriching account of all the little things these people are in the habit of doing. The way they observe and sometimes even emulate their masters. The way they use all the time they have to spend waiting for their masters to come back from their meetings, shopping sprees or romantic interludes. These little character details make the depressing story a lot more real and even funny. There is also an "Rushdiesh" influence which only ends up complimenting the style.

The story is not anything new. It is the story of a country bumpkin who does everything it takes morally, immorally to make his own space in a country full of people. It is the way it is written that deserves all the praise. Really depressing truths about India and Indian politics have been presented from the eyes of a pragmatic little driver who just wants to make his own life. He never gets shaken from the corruption and the recklessness. He gets used to it and moves ahead. In the end, however turns around and surprises everyone by expressing his own sensitive side that seems never to reflect in his early life.

Adiga's  use of metaphors as well as his plots sometimes melting into poetry reminds you of Rushdie. 

When I finished reading it, I felt the vast difference between the way two people might think of India. How the rich landlord's son, being driven in a Honda City looks at his own life and his country and how the driver who takes him around looks at his own is poles apart! Although they spend all their waking moments being together in the same car. It gradually dawns on you that "class" is the new "caste" in India. The rift between the corrupt rich, the rich and the vast poor is getting bigger everyday. However even in this depressing jungle insignificant drivers are being turned into entrepreneurs every day. At what costs is known best only to those who do it!

Conversations with the Cat

My neighbour's cat is now "our" cat. My flatmate and I have a joint account in loving the fluffy, grey cat that lives with us now. I am a complete cat person.

A man-dog relationship has moments where the dog could say, " What! You come home, I wag my tail and you don't even care! You are always worried about your boss or your wife. When are you going to stop treating me like a doormat!!"

In a man-cat relationship however the basis of any interaction is where the cat says, "Listen up smart guy. If you don't care I don't care either. In fact you should not expect me to care even when you care, okay? I care when I want to care."

This cat is extremely selfish. She has an open order of preference for the two of us. So when Danielle is at home, Ms.Cat would walk all over me and not notice me. When Danielle is at work and I am home she has to get along. So sometimes we have the following conversation.

Cat: Meow!

I open the fridge and pour out a whole mug of milk just for myself.

Cat: (Rubbing herself all over the couch and my legs) Meeeeow! *batting eyelashes*

Me: I get it! What do you want? Food?

As I walk towards her bowl she gurgles a meow in her throat that sounds like a cat relief from a sore throat. She puts her entire head into the bowl before I can put any food in it. So I have to wait for common sense to dawn on her before I let her eat anything.

After eating she comes back to the couch and stares at me with a face that seems to say,

Cat: Can I cuddle with you now for a bit?

Me: Now that you don't have Danielle you are just using me aren't you?

Cat: Yes. Is that wrong? Never mind. Can I jump on now and sit in your lap?

Me: Ah well. I don't have much of a choice do I?

Cat: (Jumps on) No.

Then she starts purring and it seems to resonate with my heartbeats. When she is sitting on your lap you cannot even go to the bathroom without upsetting her and getting an ungrateful hiss when you try to pick her up.

Some nights she sneaks into my room if I have left the door ajar and sits on my stomach as I sleep, directly looking at my face. It takes me a while to realize that there is about four or five kilos extra weight on the quilt. Then I pull my conscience out of the dream (in which I am usually extinguishing fires I made in the lab or dying) and when I open my eyes, I look straight into the two green gooseberries that seem to shine in the dark. This is what is really unfortunate about being me. You wake up from a nightmare to get the scare of your life with a fat cat sitting on your stomach staring at you!

She can take all the liberties she wants but if you turn excessively cuddly and try to give her a tummy rub, she would not hesitate to bite you. Even if you were the one who fed her about twenty seconds ago. Most of the times, they do not love you. They are just using you. However on those rare occasions when they elevate you to the next level and express their love by licking you with their sandpapery tongue, the feeling is priceless. It is like finding true love in a real world.

Some days she brings a dead rat and leaves it right outside the door as a "present" for us. Some days she just lies with her belly up surrendering herself to me. Some days she sits in the sun curled up into a grey ball while I am rushing out of the house, making me realize the futility of all my efforts.

There is no loyalty. There is no guarantee that you will be together for as long as the creature lives. There is also a fear that just the way she migrated from next door and moved in with you, she would find someone better again. However, every day as I get down from the bus thinking about a whole heap of other thoughts and find her waiting outside to be let in, I secretly thank God that we are still together!

I guess that is why I am a cat person. :)