14444 and still going stong

If someone were to mention the first thing that makes India stand out from the rest of the world, it would have to be (no,not poverty, unemployment, population explosion, illiteracy, etc! Let's try to be positive!) the Indian Railways! How long has it been since you last traveled by train? If your answer is "never", kindly go shoot yourself! In my opinion, the train travel, whatever the duration of the journey may be, is an amazing, adventurous experience in itself.

What's so great about it? For starters, the train itself! I think (and I am quite sure) the Indian trains hold a record for being the longest in the world. That was the statistics part for the skeptics. Besides that, there's also the fact that in no other mode of travel, namely bus or plane, do you get to interact so closely with perfect strangers. Well that is scary in a way, but only if you carry yourself like Paris Hilton or dress in jewels like Bappi Lahiri. For the rest of us commoners(read normal people), its no big deal.

I agree that a flight maybe the quickest and most convenient way to reach somewhere, but come on! You have to admit, its boring! There is nothing more artificial and mechanical than the process of boarding a plane, right from the check in to the plastic smiles that adorn the faces of the flight attendants! Trains on the other hand, ahh, now that's a totally enriching experience.

My family has a problem. Ok I am lying, we have lots of problems but right now let's just focus on the relevant one. We can never, yes, never manage to safely board a train with time to spare. It always has involved, involves and will involve last minute rush, panic and pandemonium. We have had drills to try to overcome this problem, (I might be exaggerating just a little bit, sue me) but to no avail. Buses, private vehicles, flights, all these we make it in time but trains, now there's a nemesis who time and again mocks us by "almost" slipping out of our hands.

If we are in the station on time(which is 9 out of 10 cases), the train would mysteriously be on a secretive platform (9 3/4th? only Harry Potter fans will catch the significance), and most probably, we would have entered the station from the other end. May the soul of the man who designed Bangalore station rest in peace as the noble soul was kind enough to keep it small. Anyone been to the Delhi railway station? Correction- anyone almost missed a train/ got lost/ missed a family member at the Delhi railway station? The place is humongous! I am quite sure the coolies at one platform run into the coolies of another only after a year or so(yeah yeah, I am exaggerating, again!)!

But once the tough part is done with i.e. once you enter the train, huffing and puffing, dragging the luggage, counting the no. of articles to check if anything is missing, the sights and sounds inside inadvertently bring a smile to the (till now distorted out of exhaustion) face. To an ardent observer of human behavior, it is a treat! There aren't many things I wish for, but if there is one thing that I sorely miss at these occasions, it is the lack of talent for sketching in me. How I would love to soak in the sights in front of me and convert them to something worth remembering and cherishing in material form.

Did you suggest photos? It may be a fact that of late I might forget my mobile phone while traveling but not my camera, but to click photos of perfect strangers? Now that's just rude, weird and well, a tad bit shady! So I make do with just memories of significant incidents and/or people that surround me and my journey.

General compartment, second class, first class, A/C compartment and yes, even goods compartment(there is a long story behind it and my memory fails me as I was but a toddler back then) - been there, done it all. The games that we played as kids, running from one bogey to another, jumping over the parts which looked like they may separate any moment, walking though 3 bogeys just to purchase and consume soft drinks, hanging from the chains that are meant to support the middle berth, peeping into the adjacent berth while on the top most one, maybe its memories like these which make you want to travel once again in those rickety, noisy, yet one of a kind mode of transport.

I DONT want to know what you did last summer!

Why do people tell me things? Actually, it would be much more apt if I express it this way - WHY DO PEOPLE TELL ME THINGS???!!! What things? Things I don't want to know, things that concerns their personal lives, sometimes secrets, basically, things that do not concern me, in any manner.

Like every other characteristic, there are both upsides and downsides of being a good listener. I am in no "goody-goody" mood, so let's leave the upsides for some other time. Let's start with the downsides-
a.) Since everyone knows you for having a patient ear, they assume you like doing it. News flash- not always!
b.) People think you would rather listen than talk. Hello! I would talk if you would just let me!
c.) You end up doing something you never signed up for in the first place.

Don't get me wrong, this frustration isn't directed at everybody. Of course I love to listen to the ones I care about. I actually feel dejected if they don't come to me with their problems! This is directed at the strangers, the acquaintances who make me wish I had a gun. I may spit and spew venom here, but the fact of the matter is when it comes to such people, I am as meek as a poorly fed sacrificial lamb! I take liberties only with the ones whom I know won't take it the wrong way. With everyone else, its just the public face they would love to be familiar with - docile and all ears!

These kind of people range from a classmate who described in detail how he would woo his next target(the narrative included enlightening me with the sher he planned to use) to an ex-colleague who poured out his woes at work, all the petty politics encountered over the years and later on confessing that he liked me. I had known him for a month and apart from the aforementioned one sided conversation, all that had occurred between us was exchange of pleasantries in the morning and evening("Good Morning" and "Bye", to be precise).

What do you do in such situations? How long do you keep making excuses("I am on a call".."I don't drink coffee")? When polite rebuttals fail, what next? If I am going to be used as an agony aunt, I might as well charge them and make it worth the trouble!

Yeah right, as if..

Crack(er) it up!

DIWALI!!! Yeah, I know the original word is Deepawali or Deepavali, but as long as there are crackers, sweets and a holiday involved, does it really matter? I did come across a few people insisting that the greeting be addressed as Happy Deepawali and not Happy Diwali, which, if I must make it clear, irritated me. The good old bard Shakespeare must be turning in his grave, seeing how nobody in this day and age pays any heed to the a rose by any other name blah blah thought. I hope they don't go a far as to legalize or should I say illegalize the use of the same. As if spoiling the names of Bombay, Calcutta, Madras, Pondicherry, Bangalore and numerous others wasn't enough for them.

But let's not start off with negative thoughts (too late eh?)! Diwali to me is really very special. It is one of those few festivals that we celebrate in grandeur, Krishna Janamashtami being the other. Now that I look back, I can remember almost every Diwali that we have celebrated, from what I wore (*grin*) to a lot of other details. Or maybe that's just my brain malfunctioning, as usual, storing too many things than is necessary.

If there are two things that mark this festival, they are food and crackers (okay I admit, for me food is important in any case, festival or not). I am quite glad and proud of the fact that we celebrate Diwali the same way our elders used to, in the most traditional manner possible (minus the superstitions and unworldly restrictions- thank heavens for that!). So if you see food being prepared in containers made of leaves, don't be alarmed (for those not from my part of the country, this may strike as quite peculiar). As a kid, you laugh at these traditions, rituals and customs, wondering why anyone in their right sense of mind would continue with these archaic practices! But as age and maturity (ahem) greet you, you learn that the only thing that marks you as an individual and separates you from the crowd, are your traditions.

Mingling with people from each and every background, in a country like ours, is a day to day experience. You meet, you learn, you adapt - its a continuous cycle (only the degree varying from person to person). Yet while going through all of it, you wonder where you stand in the big scheme of things. I am not referring to the ever elusive "Who am I?" (philosophical gibberish) , but the more general "How am I different from every Sawyer, Tracy and Potter?"(my version of Tom, Dick and Harry, thank you very much). That's when the aforementioned traditions, rituals and customs come into play.

If there is one thing that I have observed keenly while interacting with all kinds of people, it is the fact that however may be the manner of your dressing, behaviour or attitude (rural/modern/urban), everyone takes great pride in their community. "We don't do it that way..", "in our functions..", "we celebrate it in a different way.." - statements like these are more often than not accompanied by the look of a sense of belonging. You need not even be a religious devout for it! I agree that most of these(if not all) customs originate from a religious line of thought. But nowadays, does anyone really know (or sometimes even care) about it? Coming from a caste and family where purohits/pandits are a dime a dozen, I can assure you that these customs are as irrelevant as P.T. Usha in cricket (sheesh!that was a disastrous simile)!

Yet we continue to follow them, not because we are forced to, or because we are afraid of committing a "sin", but because that is what we have been taught, that is what our parents do and that is what our forefathers did. It is our comfort zone. It defines us, it defines where we come from. We may not know who will head the government after the next elections, but we can count on the fact that there will be Durga Pooja on Dussera, Lakshmi Pooja on Diwali and our favourite sweet vanishing as fast as democracy from Pakistan(I really need to end this simile massacre!).

We are, after all, slaves to our routines.

Six feet under

Death- the one thing that fascinates me, the one thing that scares me. You can find an answer to anything else, you can experience and explain any other phenomenon, but not death. This isn't some philosophical gibberish or even an attempt at seeking spiritual answers for questions. Actually, it just might be.

If there is anything I firmly believe in, it is most definitely the finality of death. No priest, leader or institution can convince me otherwise. I whole heartedly believe that there is nothing 'beyond'. That there is no "light at the end of the tunnel, calling out to you". It is just silence, silence from the noise we claim to hate, and yet that which we crave. A blankness, a stillness which has absolutely no end. It would be like falling asleep, the only difference being, here you never wake up.

When your physical presence ceases to exist, so do you. That is exactly what scares me the most. In life we take each day as it comes, wondering, dreaming, planning for the days to come. But what if, what if one 'fine' day you were told exactly how many more days you had for the curtains to draw one last time. Worse, what if you were told the time limit that a loved one has remaining? How in the world does anyone find the strength to go on? It is not a mere object that is being snatched away from you, but a living, thriving entity, someone who has been a part of your life, someone who has been your life! How do you rise from such a low?

Letting go..

More than a year since I started working, and the changes are quite apparent. It is one thing to be a student and another to be financially independent - a working woman. Although I must admit that staying at home, with your parents, superficially, both seem to be the same. Especially if you aren't a guy. The same deadlines (ok maybe a little extended now), the same barrage of questions - who, when, why, the same ensuing arguments and the same restrictions.

But dig deeper and you can see the differences. The questions, now, need not be answered. Well I don't mean to be rude, but there are times when you get fed up. Moreover it can frustrate anyone to return from work, traveling through irritatingly slow traffic, back home, to a quizmaster. As if controlling your rage in office wasn't bad enough. Call it escapism or running away or whatever you like, but the plain truth is it is easier to avoid conflicts if you just stay silent. I have learned this from experience and many a times it takes great will on my part to not explode. Though at the end of the day it really is worth it.

Family is the easiest and softest target you can find to relieve your frustrations. Friends can just end it and move away, colleagues can actually end up putting you in a lot of trouble and unless you are psychotic, acquaintances obviously do not figure on the list. But family, now they can't run anywhere. They have been tolerating you (and vice versa) for years now. Sometimes I wonder whether it is actually love or just adjustment. You get so used to these people in your life that any other way of life just doesn't seem plausible.

Yet it isn't right or fair that they have to bear the brunt of your boss being an incompetent jack ass, you slogging your ass off and not being even a little appreciated or some trouble or mess in your personal life. It just isn't fair. Oh well, 'life is fairly unfair' or something on these lines seem to play on my mind right now. But quotes are good only to quote, not when applied to reality. So the simple solution to it - grin and bear it. The monosyllables that you mouth makes for terrible conversation but at least it saves you the misery of spoiling your mood further.

Their point of view is quite understandable actually. They know that it is just a matter of time before the "bird leaves the nest" (what a crappy metaphor). Till then, they try to make the most of it, trying to be as involved as can be, not realising they are intruding upon your personal space and privacy. Growing up isn't about being an adult, aging more than 18. It is when you don't need them anymore, at least materialistically , sometimes even emotionally. That is what scares them the most. They are trying so hard to hold on to what is left of what used to be their life, little do they realise the frictions that are occurring as a cause of it.

It's easy to let go, holding on is the tough part.