To Orkut or not to Orkut...

My Orkut profile is a strange beast. When it started off, it was a beehive of activity. Friends being added by the dozen, the his and hellos flying across like bullets in the trenches of war time Europe. I hardly got time to work on my "About me" section since I had first filled it in while joining Orkut. It remains that way to date, not because I was being too lazy (for a change) but because I fail to see how it matters! I don't add any person I don't know and for those that I know, the big picture of me up front should do the trick. Nevertheless in an aborted attempt to be 'kewl', I did spend some time over what I would want to put there and figured that it should stay as it is, considering the megalomaniacal alternatives that sprung to mind. You see it was very convenient for me too.


Then came the phase of a tremendous lull, when I, a regular offender in the time-wasted-at-cyber-cafes crime gallery invaded every friend's profile asking them soul searching questions like "Hey bro, what's up?" or "Where are you nowadays?". Politeness being the fault of a few of them, the equally dry answers came crawling back across the Internet. That is kept a little blood throbbing in the veins of my Orkut account. But this stage managed piece of gregariousness couldn't be sustained for long. How well and long could I act so interested in everybody else's lives? After all, they were just as boring as mine and they had realized the truth earlier therefore ceasing to discuss it at all. I guess that's what they call becoming old. When you lose interest in everything but your own complicated life and that interest is only a necessity born out of the need to survive.


Now there is the new spurt of life on the social networking horizon, even though it should be called old by the lightning fast timelines of the Internet. People are randomly slapping each other, 'crapping' on each other (210 kg proclaims a proud participant), linking to the madness of YouTube and a variety of other ways to keep themselves occupied after office. I am playing this game too with intense focus as if it is the only thing that'll make my life an explosion of delight. I get heart warming comments like "Great videos!", "Nice pics! Looks like you are really fat nowadays" and more on those lines. Do they make the sun shine brighter on a gloomy day? Does the gleaming set of teeth on display in the profile photos really convey the present sentiments of the owner? Who knows and why should I really lose my sleep over it? This is a game is played by everyone and has only one tangible and rhetorical rule. Play because you have to!

The road not taken

I was whiling away my time at Frankfurt airport, all 11 hours of it, waiting for my connecting flight to Boston. I started off in the usual fashion, meandering about in the glitzy boutiques that shopping crazed travellers flooded. All the big brands, at throwaway prices by their normal standards seemed to be source enough for all my fellow travellers to put the stopovers to good use. I got quickly bored of the commotion in the shops and tried my luck with the German police for a transit visa into Frankfurt. The heart of the automobile industry that Germany is, parent to Porsche, Audi, BMW, and Mercedes to name just a few, was always a dream destination for my car crazed mind. No progress was achieved in that department too as post 9/11, people seem to have lost a little bit of trust in the casual tourist. Dejected I wound my way back across the multiple level behemoth that is Frankfurt airport. I stood for a little while in front of a window which looked out onto the runway as a variety of planes took off or landed. Then I stumbled across a collection of display boards where amidst all the incessant motion of the crowds there was an involuntary pause as everyone took a second to peek at the status of their flights. In an ode to legendary Teutonic efficiency, every single one of them seemed to be on schedule!

I ran a quick compare of my destination to others listed up there. Boston to where I was headed versus the mystery of Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. The cab infested streets of New York shared space with the exotic Caracas. The Hollywood glitter of Los Angeles glowing alongside the endless meadows surrounding Ulan Bator. I couldn't help but sigh at the mundane nature of my life. Sure, it was my first trip overseas to the wonderful developed world of USA. But did I really want to go there at all? A galaxy of unfamiliar points on the world map, names that evoked a sense of the unknown versus the familiar names that had been already mapped out in my imagination through the done-to-death images force fed to my mind through Hollywood and cable TV. The unknown was dangerous, and the unfamiliar was scary but isn't that what I crave? I want to wake up to a new question and a new mystery everyday, not the same, old routine that ensures that I have a certain amount in my bank at the end of the month. The comfort of regularity seems such a poor invigorator, a whisky peg rendered impotent with too much water!

Reality check

The first thing that I did when I got my laptop was to open up MS Paint. The evidence above strongly suggests that my drawing skills haven't progressed much since I was 5 years old! That however is beside the point. I was overcome with an insatiable wish to put the bright new LCD to an auspicious first use. So in was plugged an optical mouse and my favourite creature from the tales that I loved in my childhood found its way into my hard drive as the first file in my documents. I found that I was thrilled at the fact that once upon a time I was such an undemanding fool that doing a simple thing like this brought me unmitigated and unjustifiable happiness. To think that now I want money and fame and power and all that every man so fervently desires. I first laughed at my naivety, at this long lost ability to gain pleasure out of nothing more than a pen and a paper and the able support of my curiosity charged imagination. Then I thought deep and hard if I had really changed that much along the way. The answer to my utter relief turned out to be a resounding 'No'. There is no greater joy than the ability to do something that has no on-the-face value but is priceless in the way it gives vent to my whims. There is nothing that I enjoy more than to pick a random thought that goes trapezing through my mind and give it an expression however immature and raw it's final form it may be. My happiness lies in breathing life into my thoughts and I hope I can make it stay that way to the end of my days.

It is time...

18 blasts ripped through the city of Ahmedabad yesterday, killing 30 people (the last toll that I saw). I switch to a "Live WebCast" of the breaking news on NDTV.com and I have a reporter who is insistent that the terrorists have failed in their objectives. The city he says is completely at peace and the hopes of communal incitement by the terrorists a lost cause. We even get a shot of a few people on the street talking about a variety of things, everything except what the reporter rounds up the reports with. The reporter winds up saying something to the effect of the 'spirit' of the city (Oh! How I hate that word) being indomitable and the general feeling of 'bhaichaara' amongst the citizens of Ahmedabad of which his recent interviewees had given no trace of. So you see everything is just perfect. Tomorrow everyone will get back to their jobs and we'll get back to the great nation that India was, is and will continue to be. So darn perfect!

You've got to be kidding me! This is Gujarat, where I've spent 20 formative years of my life. I know that here the Hindu and Muslim communities here are about as well-mixed as oil and water. It's like sitting on a barrels of petrol and smoking. There's only time till the butt is stubbed. Incessant rumours and whispers fester and breed in the two different cocoons, and have of late assumed violent incarnations. There seems to a sort of glee in news channels all around reporting and re-reporting that it is BJP ruled states that this group called the Indian Mujahideen is targeting. Well, they were the party with a indirect but prominent anti-Muslim stand, so it's only fair that they should bear the brunt, right?

What I can't figure out for the life of me is that how does it matter. Why should people have to bear the brunt of having to choose between a communal and a corrupt government? Is there no one who has the courage to say that there is an urgent need to accept the existence of a problem and get together to work towards a solution. Where is all this hatred coming from? One half of our politicians is firmly engaged in rampant hate mongering while the other fattens itself on dedicated vote-banks too yellow livered to bring its support base to task. Who are these people anyway, the Indian Mujahideen? They create perfect conditions for "I told you so" and "We didn't start it but we're going to end it!" types of discussions in neighbourhood chat sessions feeding the slavering mad dogs of violent fundamentalism. They claim they are here to fight oppression, to wreak vengeance for past deeds and such gobbledegook while all they do is cause brutal and meaningless damage to the essence of India.

Which brings us to a more important question - What is the essence of India? It's not about singing Vande Mataram, shunning all foreign 'moral corruption' and hating Pakistan as the right would want us to believe. It's not about quoting every dialogue and scene from RDB and then coolly submitting that false medical bill to your company ("It's the only way of life here in India" is a much too easily offered excuse) and a few minutes later whining about the 'insane' levels of corruption in India!

I was in Sarnath a few months ago and happened to go to the museum (You know the old dusty places where they keep boring bits of history) there. The central exhibit quite naturally was that of the Sarnath lion capital emblem. I initially thought that it was a replica of the original, in such a good state of polish the tremendously old stone carving was! When I walked around it to see the effects of time on the other side of the emblem only then could I believe it was the real thing. What seemed even more apt in it surviving the ravages of time was that the values that the symbol represented (though much denigrated by its current owners) are as eternal as the man who had created it. There is no alternative to truth and peace and that is what we as Indians knew well enough as far as 200 odd B.C to be able to create an edict out of it. There were wise men before that too and have continued in an incessant stream who have continued to preach these values of truth, assimilation and acceptance. That is what I believe to be the soul of our country.

The last embodiment of that spirit that has survived through the ages was in the form of a simple but highly intelligent man from Porbandar. He knew that all revolutions of the past had eventually became nothing more than sorry sagas of blood lust, rape and revenge. So he forged this nation out of a million regionalities using the searing light of non-violence and awakening the guilt in his oppressors. Some fools persist in calling him a coward but what he had done was to show us an evolution, a revolution where the wheel does not end up back in the same dark place. He had shown how beautiful the future might be if we realized the fact that honesty and tolerance are not optional, they are the only absolutes.

India was supposed to the bright new future of humanity from then on. A nation that has consistently defied its' critics who predicted its' inevitable collapse yet never maximised on its' potential. But then, that is the secret of our history. Conquerors came but were conquered themselves being unable to turn their back to her delectable variety of lifestyles and chose to call her home. We will never burn out because we have always believed in the principles of a slow flame and constant stirring of whichever new flavour was added to our cooking pots. The sun did eventually set on the supposedly perfect British Empire and China can build a million snazzy flyovers and host 10,000 Olympics before it has what India was born with. The power to assimilate and to move forward ever so gracefully, like a wise old elephant. The basic understanding that people need not be carbon copies of each other to be able to live together and that too without the fear of an omnipresent iron hand above them.

Incidents like the Babri Masjid demolition, the Godhra train incident and yesterday's events eat away like cancer into that magnificent vision of India. Isn't it time that someone stepped up to the mantle and reminded everybody of what being an Indian means? We may have forgotten and as is most likely may not have known at all how to define a voluminous concept as India. Maybe we should stop trying to encapsulate India into a phrase and appreciate its randomness. It is important to understand that being an Indian is more about subscribing to a philosophy than to a nationality. India is a unfulfilled hope, an incomplete promise, a vision of how all human beings will eventually live. Can we just watch it passively being ripped into shreds by economic, social or religious strife? Isn't it high time that we squared up for this incredible adventure?

Tough as nails

My maternal grandfather - "Dadubhai" as we grandchildren used to call him and as he used to call us grandsons had a certain aura about him. Images pulled from as far as my conscious memory goes always seem to project that one single image of him. He was not a very large man, no, not at all. In fact, if I can retain such a lithe figure when I reach his age, I would consider it to be a major achievement. But in his diminutive figure, he seemed to carry so much weight, every pound of his worth 5 of ordinary men. The fact that he spoke so little added to the intensity of his eyes which would register a spark of surprise only when a goal was scored in any football match he would be watching on TV. Even his final days when he had become old and infirm could not snatch the power he could exercise merely through his eyes!

His legend was built even more around the stories we had heard of his younger days, none of which - in a most self-effacing manner came from him. Stories about how he had to leave his home village in Bangladesh for Kolkata on an extremely short notice with the local police looking to arrest him for being an active revolutionary for India's freedom. Stories about his genius at playing bridge and mathematics, about how he was a magical football player didn't do him harm either. You'd need just one look at the man, and then you wouldn't doubt the truth in any of these stories. The clinching proof if any was required is the fact that my dad, like most married men not the greatest fan of his in-laws still has that awe in his voice when he speaks of Dadubhai's carrom and mathematical skills.

Dadubhai was never the most emotionally expressive person around. His affection for his grandchildren would at its most extreme assume the form of his knobbly, tough hands stroking our tiny palms. But his presence in the room was like a giant umbrella under which we would play unfettered. A sporadic guffaw would bring to our attention that he was indeed keeping an observant eye on all our activities. I remember being especially fascinated by the little box of smooth wax matchsticks and the packet of Navy Cuts that were always by his bedside. He was a regular smoker and when he was not in the room I would pick up the packet of cigarettes and revel in the strange odour of unburnt tobacco that I love to this day. I frequently wondered to myself whether this was the secret to his iron-clad mystique.

It's been years since Dadubhai and a few years later Dimma passed away but we've still got some furniture from my grandparents' Salt Lake flat. The chief attraction for me among these is the folding camp bed which would be opened out in our honour whenever we stayed at the Salt Lake flat. Mom and grandmother would tell us exciting instantly made-up stories about being in a jungle as we lay in darkness on the squeaking 'folding khaat' as we kids called it. But now when I see the bed gather dust in the corner, the first image that it brings up is of this simply dressed man who would without a word open it out for us, smile a sly smile and go on with his routine ways. If there was ever a man whose idealistic, dependable character spoke through his behaviour, words being superfluous, that was my Dadubhai.

New York

No, I haven't been there yet. 4 long weeks of inhabiting the US of A, and I still haven't found the willpower to propel me there. But I am so tired of incessantly writing about my apartment that I've decided to stop doing it. All I've managed to do is one measly trip of about half an hour to Boston and that's about it. Cape Cod for three continuous weekends was beautiful but Sandy Neck beach is hardly the place to feel the pulse of urban America.
The fragment that I've seen of Boston is alluring. Sitting outside the Walmart superstore of our one-horse town Taunton waiting for our cab to show up, I was beginning to form the opinion that the USA has only obese, ugly ladies. But a subway ride through Boston caused a rapid and most welcome change of opinion!
I am curious about what New York will be like. Images of Times Square, Brooklyn Bridge and the windy tunnels in between the squabbling skyscrapers of Manhattan spring to mind. And also a very unlikely image of its sewers because of the memories of my favourite cartoon show. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon show was probably only as intelligent as it sounds, but I absolutely loved the show as a kid. It was a weird mix of American cool with pizzas, skateboards and teenagers and Japanese style complete with senseis, ninjas and pop philosophy to boot. These 4 fellows (the Turtles) were the quintessential urban New Yorkers and it's not hard to imagine them coolly saunter the mean streets of the Big Apple, with special Ninja skills at their disposal. Thanks to their adventures, New York has an active, bustling presence in my imagination even before I set foot there. I don't expect meet Leo, Mike, Don and Raph (That's them, the 4 Turtles) on arrival but if their pretty reporter friend April'O'Neil wants to interview me, I'm all game. It is time for me to stop daydreaming and get back to real life planning, you think? Well, I am on my way albeit slowly. At least it's been an consistent effort for all of my 23 years. I am still trying...

Freaky as they come

This is really freaking me out. Just a couple of days after my own bucket list post, I watch the movie "The Bucket List". For the uninitiated, a bucket list is a condemned man's last wishes, the things you wanna do before you figuratively kick the bucket! I watch the movie to find my list creepily similar to Morgan Freeman's character. Ride a fast car! Check! Do an African Safari on a Land Rover! Check! Spend a day at the Taj Mahal! Check! Gaze at the Pyramids from the Sahara! Check! Sky dive! Check!

It's even more ominous when I consider that I wrote that list casually, without even wondering whether I really wanted them to come true. These thoughts were like flotsam on the sewage canal of my thoughts that I picked up and I find them in resonance with a Hollywood scriptwriter's. Coincidences like these that are too shady to considered co-incidences tend to give me the goosebumps, and not exactly of the pleasant kind. It is not a perfect method by any means, but it does keep the suspense in my life alive.