Uptight. Very tight.

 

I look at her, trying to catch her eye. Her gaze is fixed firmly on her phone as she walks into the club and over to our table. How am I supposed to make friends with her if she's not ever going to look at me!! Then the second woman walks in and does the exact same thing!!! Then the third lady saunters in…there's a pattern : they're all doing the eyes on the phone, too bored to look at anyone, bitch mode ON drill. I'm either missing out on some really popular telephonic gossip or these women are way too obsessed with their virtual social networking lives!!x

Curiously, I peek into the phone of the chick standing right next to me…thank god for new large screen phones ;D it's in the idle screen…no new notifications…her thumb just swipes across the screen to move into the next. Nope, nothing new there either. Slowly it hits me, there's a third option as well and one that I think is the real reason : self conscious, these lovely ladies don't know what to do with their hands as they walk into a club and assume that all eyes are on them. Slightly counterproductive, I think to myself. How do you expect to "fit in" if you're planning on being your phone's date all night?! x

Pushing past the obvious invisible wall they put up, I strike up a conversation with closest large-screen-phone girl…and guess what, she's really nice!! Immediately the phone goes into the pretty clutch that matches her cute dress perfectly…and it stays there all night.x

How come men don't have this problem or complex or insecurity, if you will? Maybe they haven't been judged and belittled all their carefree lives. AH…gender discrimination still exists a little bit, even if it’s only in our own minds.

i-sea emotions.

Something compelled me to come to the sea today. I literally ran across all the zillion highways dividing my house and the cornish...I wanted to see the sea, and cry.

Which is weird because I had an amazing day! I woke up in a messy room because my room mate isn't around to keep me in check, I didn't eat breakfast and alternatively gouged on some delightful fast food, worked my ass off while listening to a Above&Beyond on loop since I'm going for a concert of theirs in a month, got home with a good amount of time to spare for my life-side of the balance...yet I wanted to see the sea, and cry.

I'm going to miss this place, Bahrain. It's given me so much...most of all, freedom. Not like I felt like a bird with clipped wings before, but along with my wings, Bahrain gave me three crucial things : independence, a family of friends and financial freedom. Home is home...it has my family and my heart. But when I have a home here too, it gets difficult to part.

And now I'm getting poetic...right.

As I sit by the sea and close my eyes, my mind is idyllic, thoughts flowing in tandem with the sound of the waves softly kissing the shore. There's some traffic but it's easy to shut that out. It takes me back to the first time I came to the cornish...I had no friends here, I was just hanging on to the hand that had extended itself from a guy named Arjun...:) dear chap! It's been 18 months, to the day.

I get attached to every place I've lived in...Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Udhampur, Kathmandu, everywhere.

Heck, I'm gonna miss my freedom. Just pick up and leave...no questions asked, no answers necessary.

But the flip side to being in Bahrain is that I don't get to be with my family and my husband! :) "My Husband" :D wow, when am I going to get used to that!!

Oh and I did meditate. And I did cry.

Blah, blah. Bah.

Communication is the first thing we learn when we leave our warm womb-home for the first time. We say it like we feel it, but somehow as we grow older, things around us mold our personalities and teach us that keeping what we feel locked inside is just an easier way to deal with things. Some people feel the less emotions they share, the tougher people they are. It's easier because we don't have to explain why we are feeling what we are feeling to others; and more importantly to ourselves. It truly is just easier to take that emotion and choke it down our throats, through our hearts and into our guts.

Haruki Murakami has written, "Being the kind of people they were, equally imbued with habitual solitude, neither took the initiative to open their hearts to the other."

Doing that is not dealing with it. We aren't addressing the problem, we're smothering it. Cowardice? Laziness? Confusion? Whatever the reason, not letting it out is definitely the wrong way of dealing with it.

I never could swallow it and let it slide...It has taken 27 years but I can finally see why people do it. I still don't think it's a good idea.

Democratic Immunity!

When you hear of a Aseem Trivedi, a cartoonist against corruption, being jailed for being unpatriotic, I cannot but wonder who are the authorities that approve this action? Who approves the arrest warrant? Don't they understand what 'freedom of speech' means?

Local goons who publicly molest a girl for walking outside a pub in a skirt and have been caught on camera walk scot free, but someone who has an opinion about something worthwhile is sent to jail.

Another example of such stupidity is the Governments' reaction to the Washington Post's article on Manmohan Singh...yes, it is insulting. But was any of it false? If the Prime Minister is an insult to the country, then the press (domestic or international) has a right to call a spade a spade!! Focus on the right things, oh mighty leaders!! Punish the corrupt, the liars, the murderers, the scamsters... leave the innocent to our speeches.

If we have chosen democracy, we need to enjoy the holistic advantages of such a government. Like Bill Clinton recently said, "Democracy doesn't have to be a blood sport. It can be an honorable enterprise that advances the public interest". A certain space-age invention called the Internet (yeah, this is a Step-Up 4 reference :D) has empowered us to be a part of the news. Now how about we be a part of the decision making? For the people, BY the people, right??!
Allow votes online to count for decisions made...Or if you argue that maybe the vast population might not have the technical knowledge and expertise to make decisions, at least let the people decide the priority of decisions being made...which bill to be passed first, which criminal case to be heard first. Votes, of course, can be manipulated because it is a numbers game, so have cyber petrol control points!! Things are possible if you want them to be...This is our country and I hate seeing the looting that goes on in guise of politics. I don't think I'd be this enraged if the looting was going on, but so was progress and justice. Two things our politicians opposee the most!

Clean it up, folks. Don't be immune to democracy.

Kyon paisa paisa karti hai?

As idealistic as this might sound, I have always viewed money as a means to an end and never the end in itself. It is the reason why I didn't mind taking my first job that paid me peanuts but gave me a learning that I knew would equip me for the rest of my career; or leaving my first job without another job in hand when it became nothing more than a mere political game that started to feel like I was working for Sonia Gandhi; or starting my own company that gave me the job satisfaction I now envy, even though I counted money for the roadside chai!
Money doesn't satisfy my hunger for living the one (and only) life that has been given to me to make a difference to myself, the people I love and those who are lesser privileged than me.
I also hate the stigma that comes with following your dream if it means giving up a stable, corporate job. Why does that have to be? Does dignity of labour mean nothing? If I choose to give up consulting because I enjoy giving people haircuts more, why is that blasphemous? Or to be a mechanic? Or to design shoes?
I want you to look back at the whole reason why money came into being. It was primarily a replacement for the barter system - it was a mere medium of exchange. If I gave you financial advice and you cooked for me in return, we'd be even. Alternatively, if I gave you financial advice OR you cooked for me and in return we gave the other $100, we'd be even. Because financial advice AND a meal would measure equally in value depending on need! In an ideal economy, that's how it was supposed to work!! But like the concept of god and religion, this too got grossly misinterpreted with time and evolution (!). One profession began to be considered more valuable than the other. Soon people were being engineered to run the rat race and follow the 'more valuable' proposition than follow what they were good at! Of course that began to mean that the fish that were trying to climb trees instead of swim the oceans were getting stressed out and under-performing; and people started working for the jobs that paid better even though they might not actually be "better". How twisted. How unfair. And how stupid.

Cut to Australia : a place where dignity of labour exists. A plumber earns as much as an equity analyst...meaning they are in those respective professions solely because they enjoy being there! No false sense of ambition or need to fill our pockets with as much cash as can be.

I hope I never let go of these ideals... because, honey, I don't care too much for money coz money can't buy me love :D

Amen.

Sab kuch chalta hai...

When our parents said that our generation was the "sab kuch chalta hai" generation, I fought back with the fervour only a teenage-in-denial could have. But now that I have 'seen the big bad world' out there, I completely agree!

It's extremely idealistic to assume that our minds are limitless and we have no restrictions. Wrong. There are some boundaries that exist and that need to be adhered to! Call them what you may - boundaries/ rules/ ethics/ code of conduct/ the-fine-line-between-right-and-wrong...they exist! They are applicable to every aspect of our lives.

We cannot slap our elders.
We will not lie to our diaries.
We shall not tell our best friends' secrets on facebook.
We cannot throw shoes at the president.

We will not sleep with someone while committed to someone else.
Generation-gap issue : sleeping with someone before marriage is now acceptable, but the "affair" is still not!

When "committed", give it your fighting best. Yes, that's a rule!! If you feel you're losing the fight, fight harder.

If you still lose, then move on.
What I hate is that people fail to see this!

I'm not saying be a stage horse when committed (I mean, with the blinders and all!), but don't be a horny mule on heat either. Have the strength of character to make sane decisions.

Don't hurt the people who have given you everything they've got. For courtesy's sake (ummm, for the record, I don't know anyone called Courtesy :P) as well, there is a code of approximately how much time after a break-up can someone get with another person. It's only to ensure that the other half is given enough time to deal with it. For courtesy's sake :).

Really, Sab kuch, nahi chalta hai.




Sent on my BlackBerry® from Vodafone

WOAH!!!

so i just looked at all my previous blog posts from July onwards and they are MOROSE!! A breakup can really mess with the mind, I guess...

So here's a more fun post...

Sean Kingston!

When I heard Sean Kingston was coming to Bangalore on Oct 3rd to perform LIVE in Hard Rock Cafe, I nearly flipped!
1) Coz it was at HRC...I love that place coz of my girls! But also the question of "HOW ON EARTH WILL THEY HOST A CONCERT IN THAT LITTLE SPACE??" needed to be answered!
2) Sean Kingston! ok, i didn't LOVE him...but his all-of-six-songs I'd heard were nice dance-able tunes.
3) A cute boy asked me to go with him :)
4) The ticket was only Rs. 1,500/-...out of which Rs.750 was cover!!

It's safe to assume that I made a wise decision to go...but, as every promise has proven to be - this one too, was a let down! Not the concert...just Sean Kingston!
He was an hour late (its not fashionable anymore to say 'fashionably'), he barely sang anything! There were two of his other homies on stage who kept the show alive..and VERY well, I add. He's just a fat, overgrown 20year old black man who got discovered on MySpace and suddenly shot to fame because of a youtube video that became viral! There is NOTHING legendary about him! The night, on the other hand, was! :)
I made good use of my 750buck cover charge and gulped down 3 "Fire Burning" cocktails. Once plastered, I jumped up on cute boy's shoulders and bounced about for 2 whole songs, he let me down when I threatened to take my top off and flash Sean...he didn't think it was a good idea! :P I acted as wing man (wing woman?) for the boys and helped them get a few facebook id's (yeah, that's the new phone number!) and then went off speeding on a 250cc bike! I rode ;D...was SO much fun zipping past all the cars and cops on a superbike (fine, it was no superbike but what the hell, i felt like superwoman!)

Life's as good as you make it.