Phew!

It is really clear to me now how consuming this new job posting has been. The last I wrote was right before my confirmation as an Area Manager. The heavy title comes with its own set of pros and cons. The last few months have been a roller coaster to say the least.

So what gives me all the time in the world now to write again, you'd ask. Well, life has its own ways of letting you take a break even when you don't want to. And what an ironic turn of events. I am out for a movie with friends after ages at Godforsaken Rajkot and our bike skids around a turn to evade a few nasty dogs who're at my heel - literally - I take a fall and break my back.

Result - I'm at home for 6 weeks - 2 weeks down already - 4 more to go. I can roam around but can't lift weights/bend/stretch, can't jump around and can't travel. So I've been working from home and trying to keep myself occupied with my books and my guitar (which I'm not supposed to play for long :(). I drink two glasses of milk everyday and sit in sunlight, and I have truckloads of Pain killers and Calcium supplements to my avail! But I'm not complaining. I get to spend time at home, which is more than I could ask for.

This also gives me time to put things in perspective - there are sooo many things on my list that can't be done with a troublesome spine - with this I know that I can't keep putting life off for work and I can't take my blessings for granted.

To all my friends whose weddings I missed because of this interesting turn of events - I'm sorry! Will get better and meet up ASAP!
To all my friends with whom my travel / party plans got dumped - I'll make it up to you!

The POA for now -> Get back in shape and then go skiing!! LOL!!

Kotra Diaries II

Random notes from across the trip:

Mango trees bowing low with dozens of fruit - entirely organic, unaltered, unsweetened

Jamun so abundant - you can't help squishing it under your feet as you walk - the ones you don't eat

Children lined up on the roads with tokras full of fruit - jamun and khajoor mostly - willing to sell their loot for a mere Rs. 5/- or Rs. 10/-

Cattle that refuses to budge from the road knowing that it is worth more to its master if a car runs over.

The elusive power supply - elusive being an understatement

The solitary kingfisher that feasts on the local produce in the rivulet - strutting across wires, branches and rocks

The fleeting storks

The kids oblivious of clothes - or a bath for that matter

The lone firefly that haunts the neem tree in the still night

The social bath the women attend in the afternoons once they're done with their chores for the day

The disarming smiles that radiate of innocence and sheer goodness. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Humbling. Overwhelming. Belittling.

Kotra Diaries I

I could look at it as a very unfair move on the part of my employer. I could even look at it as paid vacation – dunno yet how much of it is gonna be paid though – the rate at which I’m going, I’m partying every weekend and bingng like crazy.

For the uninitiated, I’m in Rajasthan right now. I’m typing this out while I’m in a cosy AC room of a decent hotel in Udaipur, but that’s not where I am for the rest of the week. I’m working in two remote tribal villages in the interiors of Rajasthan.

It’s not like I’ve never been in a village before, but this one month is letting me absorb the life I’ve seen glimpses of in movies and books and stories my grandma told me. Something like – “There wouldn’t be any electricity where we used to live” (and that is a tale of 50 years ago) was ingested but never comprehended until now.

I am getting to see new things – or the same things in a different light. For instance, I knew about the overloaded Aces and Taxis that run from village to village in these parts through something as superficial as a Fevicol TVC, but only now do I get to sit in such a vehicle. You may have a colleague sitting in your lap. You may have the driver craning over your leg to shift gears. You may even have a goat stepping on your feet. And this I’m talking of the luxurious ride – since I’m a “Madam” from the city. The regulars sit on the top of the Jeep, cling on to a beam or a bar and travel standing. Sometimes the width of this lumbering elephant is increased by a foot on both sides thanks to the 40 people aboard. I also get to hear gory stories of people falling off, losing limbs and lives, of accidents that are best left unexplained. But this doesn’t stop the villagers from waiting hours for that one car – no matter how crowded – boarding it and going to their destination for work or otherwise.

I get to see the disintegrating Aravali mountain range with hills becoming easier and easier to traverse, the rain water flowing out of the lands, failing to satiate the villages and their farms. I get to see lives – such different lives – sometimes an epitome of humanity, love and principles and at other times – utter ridiculousness. Certain customs – I cannot comprehend; the lifestyle that I look up to; the grit that I could never gather.

I see kids who want to study – who aspire to be a “Sir” or a “Madam” like me – who do not have a decent teacher to teach them right. I see these kids – happy with their lives – sent to other villages to work in Cotton Fields. I see a spark in some of them – a spark that could work wonders if given the right platform. I see a vicious circle that I cannot cut through – the motivation to study and the resources to provide for it need to be driven together.

I see men and women who possess surprising clarity about the life, problems of their village and solutions for upliftment – that makes me wonder about the efficacy of education in the first place – should we instill literacy or wisdom?

At the same time I see raw, earthy beauty in all forms. The contorted branches of weather beaten trees, the bugs that attack me and turn into stink bombs, the small rivulets that beckon be to get drenched in them, the lonely routes across the villages that I tread on, the beautiful people with beautiful smiles all around opening their hearts out to me even though I am the stranger, the alien, the newbie in their abode.

More on this later.

Breeding Perfection, eh?

Saw this TVC – a small boy is asking his mom is this pitiful voice when he would become taller and the Mom is told by this doctor that she should give her boy Complan so that he grows well, and lo and behold! The kid grows tall enough to pluck a fake mango from the tree and hand it over to a shorter kid.

It was almost like an advertisement for a fertilizer for plants or premium dog food or something – as if you’re breeding something – for extra green leaves and extra bright flowers or for smooth and glossy fur. I mean, he’s your child for crying out loud, he’s gonna get his height from you or from the alternate generation of your family and that’s it – the body is not an elastic band or clay dough! Yes, you can build a frame if you get into sport and of course, eat well, but your inherent structure stays with you. You can be fit or build muscle and get rid of fat – but it can’t go deeper than that.

And whatever happened to healthy food in the first place? Why are the super moms today going for ‘healthy’ alternatives instead of sticking to good ol’ fruits and green leafy vegetables. I agree that we have polluted our own food chain to the extent of ingesting more pesticides than nutrients – but atleast the primary goal could be the natural way out, or shouldn’t it?!

We are buying good health in tetra packs at hyper marts at a huge premium today, but fail to hand over a real apple to the family. The air miles (read carbon print) that we add to our sins can go in another post of mine..

Anyway, parents today could do without engineering their kids to be the smartest, tallest, brightest children thanks to the RDA, DHA and what not – let the kid be and feed him right – correct the food fads and ensure that he spends more time playing a real game with real kids instead of PS3 or Wii or the new and exceedingly ridiculous Kinect (I mean seriously, jumping around awkwardly in front of a screen!!??)

Go for the good life and let the kids be! Please don't try to breed perfection.

From the Plop to all that Pondering

Every kid curses him for noticing the apple fall – thanks to him we have to go through the ordeal of learning all the Mechanical Physics there is around us. He has been praised, honoured, paid homage to and ridiculed. But he was a mere mortal at the end of the day. Seriously, had no one noticed anything else FALL before???? I mean, seriously! The moral of the story here is not gravity – it is something else. So Isaac Uncle was lolling around under the shade of the apple tree on a fairly pleasant day I am assuming. He was clearly doing nothing at all, except perhaps, taking one of his innumerable naps, dozing in and out of his daydreams – probably pining over the neighbourhood damsel. Had the apple fallen next to him, he would’ve just eaten it up. But no, the fateful apple decided to plonk itself on our Genius’s curly haired head. The apple bothered our man, hence he paused and pondered and brooded and fretted over that poor apple. He had to blame someone for this misfortune – and enter – Gravity. Which brings us to the question – why do things ‘get’ to us? Why do people fight for a cause? Is it just an itch? Why do they go all the way to find out about something? Is it mere curiosity? I don’t think so. It’s only when YOU are affected, do you want to move out of your comfort zone and bring things back to normalcy – relative normalcy at that. On the other hand, I feel it’s okay to be this self involved. If we go by the butterfly effect, what affects you is probably affecting the solitary glow worm that has been boycotted by the other glow worms for glowing a little too brightly in the quaint tropical forests of Balukpong. So at the end of the day, whatever you do is probably good for people around too. As long as you keep that in check, you’re good to go :D Unlike Newton, who, to satiate his urge to ‘find out’ screwed up tons of millions of happy teenage lives to follow!

Of Mice and Dolphins

So I am reading Douglas Adams.. yet again.. I can't seem to get enough of the bizarre, intelligent, witty world of his that doesn't quite fit into any genre at all - science fiction? humour? fantasy? not really - everything is very real and very improbable. But it's consuming nonetheless.

You love to see Arthur Dent in his innate misery - the quintessential common man- not so lucky with the ladies, not so lucky with anything for that matter. Zaphod Beeblebrox is irritatingly hard to resist - clueless, vain and patronising - yet very essential.

As you read the book you are only wondering how Adams conjured all that up. One quality that stands out in his style of writing is that the reason you can't keep the book down is because there's a bombardment of pictures in your head as you read. Adams will be talking about something as abstract as the enormity of the Universe projected in a vortex and come up with a piece of fairy cake. So the reader is looking at a fairy cake and something tells him that he is able to grasp the concept since he can visualise the idea - even though it is just the hungry thought of a stupid fairy cake.

Douglas Adams has been quoted to the point of belonging to a list of hackneyed phrases. And I'm sure you've quoted him without even knowing it.

To all who've read Adams you already know what I mean. To those who haven't, you're missing something!

Sing the Saga of Victory

So I just read on one of my friend’s facebook profiles that UNESCO has declared our National Anthem to be the best in the world. Well, I wasn’t really surprised. I’ve heard anthems of many countries – sometimes through the Encarta CD Ma got for us and Anant and I used to spend hours exploring it; And other times at the Olympics or an international game when the players would stand with their heads held high voicing the words as their country’s anthem would play, sending a chill through my spine every time. To be honest, I always found our anthem much more melodious and touching than the others, not because I’m an Indian but as an entirely neutral judge basing my opinion purely on the basics of music and rhythm I’ve grown up with. Jana Gana Mana rings through your senses as it plays in the short 52 seconds and makes you feel a part of the humungous piece of land – pluralist in the truest sense of the word – in every aspect – language, religion, race, cuisine, culture and beliefs. It scales almost two octaves making it not very easy to sing, but it transcends the listener into a sonic roller coaster of sorts, scaling up the tempo and giving that racy feeling in your tummy. I’m sure anthems throughout the world give this feeling to all the people who sing them. And there’s never a fair way to judge ‘the best’ among the lot – it’s like a baby pageant – I mean come on! Every child is the most beautiful thing in the world for her parents.

So anyway, I thank UNESCO for giving us this tag – Kudos to Gurudev for writing such a beautiful song with such deep lyrics. I have sung this one song for fourteen years of my life everyday. And even today when I hear the anthem playing anywhere at all, I stand up – Regardless of what my friends say or people think. It’s just that this one song that we sing with our heads high up in the air also will, for generation to come, remind us of the slavery and oppression our people have withstood – for centuries together and still sustain – in other, less blatant forms. This song was written as an ode to the very Empire that enslaved us and tried to make us “The White Man’s Burden”. Nonetheless, it’s OUR anthem, and will always remain so. And every time we sing it, hum it or stand up to it with due respect, we will feel Indian.