Just probability

I read a lot too. I have read all Sidney Sheldon books.

I am experiencing a strange phenomenon in Chandigarh. Here everyone has started to believe that they know more about everything than you do. You could be anyone, been anywhere but they still know more about it than you do. They don't bother to confirm with you, they just know. It happens everywhere and all the time, and now I have stopped reasoning with people here. I let them stroke their ego and lecture me, while I laugh at them in my head. The problem of course, is that you are the only one in on this joke, and it stops being funny after a while.

In the last few weeks, I have been given instructions on; how to do online trading (I have been trading for the last 5 years), how to work out in the gym (the trainer assumed I had never seen the inside of a gym and talked to me like a 5 year old), what jeans to wear for my body (after I had specifically asked for a certain Levi style which the sales person condescendingly told me is not right for me), use of a sunscreen (every time I visit a beautician) and many more. One time someone at the airport started telling me how airports at other countries were better than in India. It was not a discussion or a statement, but a education for me on what facilities are provided at international airports. The person didn't bother to check if I had ever been to one, before making a fool of himself. Another time a salesperson tried to sell me baby wipes when I was looking for a pack for tissues, convincing me that it was the same thing.

While I try to attribute most of it to the know-it-all attitude of the people here in general, but I have to wonder if I look particularly stupid that everyone feels the need to educate me. No amount of self-confidence can withstand this onslaught of unsolicited advice. So after being told everytime that my skin is a mess and so ugly, I do find myself booking an appointment for an expensive facial against my better judgement. Or take that stupid fitness test in the gym, that only made way for more lecturing on how I have let my body go to waste.

Now I mention specifically the people of Chandigarh for this behaviour based on my own experience. It might have spread to (or from) Punjab, but hey! what do I know?

Into the Wild

This was one book I did not want to read the end of. It was the end of Chris McCandless, in the book "Into the wild". I had seen the movie based on this book and was deeply affected by that too and today the book refreshed all those feelings and then some. For those who have not seen the movie or read the book, it is about Chris, a 24 year old guy from a Washington D.C. suburb who traveled around the US and then starved to death on his dream Alaskan adventure. The book talks about the flak Chris got from people about being reckless, arrogant and ill-prepared for his fatal trip. Some of the criticism was justified, and may be even necessary at the time to dissuade other young people from undertaking similar expeditions without thinking about death as a very possible outcome. His death however was not due to recklessness or arrogance, but due to a unfortunate mistake he made in eating a poisonous fungus on the food he picked from the forest.

What stuck me most about Chris in the movie and now with the book, was his selfishness. He did not think about his parents, siblings or friends before his own mission. And it was a selfish mission at that, meant to satisfy no one but himself. I admire that about him. Parental love is such that one owes it to one's parents to out-live them. No parent should see their child die. Besides his parents, he got emotionally attached to a lot of other people on the way, or rather people got attached to him, but he stuck to his resolve and moved away from everyone with no known remorse. Being the kind of person who gets attached to people rather quickly, I find this to be the hardest thing to do.

The book itself is not all about Chris. It talks about other travellers who perished while trying to achieve their dreams of conquering or at least surviving nature's extreme terrains. I am sure more people come out of these expeditions alive than dead, but this book is not about people who survived (except for the author himself). So I can only speculate what the survivors experience when all is done. Do they feel elated at having achieved what they set out to do, or feel underwhelmed that their challenge was not bigger than them? Can they ever stop unless they go far enough to some place that kills them?

Blur

With friends like these, who needs cats?

Here is an actual conversation with a friend. She is married and smug - enough said.

Friend: Chahal, I want you to get married. I want you to be happy.

Me: Clearly you have never met any of the millions of unhappily married people.

Friend: I worry that you might become one of those old women living in a tiny apartment with a bunch of cats.

Me: I am not a fan of cats. I might actually kill myself before I become a crazy cat lady.

Friend: Thank God. Promise?

Me: Oh I was joking. So you would rather see me dead than with a cat?

Friend: I think so. Yes.

Me: If I were a cat, I would be deeply offended.

Delhi High Court gets it right

I was too busy packing for my relocation to notice this landmark judgement on the day it came. I can't believe it took us this long to reach here but its totally a yay!! moment.

Now if the right wingers can keep their nose out of it and let people get on with their lives.

As she sat there in the golden glow of the sun looking at the summer foliage, small beads of sweat trickled down her flushed face

In the books that I have read from time to time, I have noticed that the summer is many a times written rather poetically. One word that has often been used to describe the weather is 'balming'. Reading books about the balming summer in the south would always bring images of sitting on the porch and drinking lemonades. This world might not seem completely comfortable but it was pretty and nostalgic nonetheless.

Now I am in Chandigarh and it is hot here, hotter than I remember from my earlier years. There is a porch, there is lemonade and it is what they might call balming, but there is nothing fucking poetic about it. So to all the writers who want to write about summer but have clearly never lived through one, here is my tip. If you want your readers to really feel what your characters are supposed to be feeling, next time you write about summer, mention phrases like sweaty clothes, smelly bodies, blotchy skin and never ending wait for the rain (Yes - we wait and hope even if there is not a single cloud in the sky).

And refrain from making your characters touch each other, unless you want it to lead to melting flesh and emergence of zombies. Ok? Ok.

Look who just showed up

Hey God. Can I have word with you?

OhMyGoditsGod: I figured you would want to.

When I moved to Boston, I thought it was going to be a great time of my life. If my plans had come through all the good stories of my life would have started with "when I moved to Boston in 2008...".

OhMyGoditsGod: You kids and your little plans. If I let you run your life, then what the fuck do you think I am doing up here?

But you are God. Aren't you supposed to be bigger than this? You can't be upset with someone like me just because I made plans without consulting with you.

OhMyGoditsGod: I am not upset. I mess with you just for fun. You are my diversion from the world's real problems, you self-indulgent idiot.

But did you have to screw everything up for me? I am now without a boyfriend, soon without a job, no savings and I am going back to live with my parents for a while. It couldn't get any worse, could it?

OhMyGoditsGod: Of course, it could.

How?

OhMyGoditsGod: Well, you could die or something.

I thought you said worse.

OhMyGoditsGod: Do you have any more plans you want me to go over? **Wicked grin**

No Sir. I give up. You kicked my ass. Now could you go focus on someone else for a while?

OhMyGoditsGod: So long kid. Till we meet again.

Take your time. Please.

I hope we also get to pick our powers

Small talk with you better be worth something

Is action any good without the right intention? If I help someone out of obligation and resent doing it, do I still get my karmic credit? I have realized that the only time I help people with stuff is when I can’t get out of it. I wish everyone was well settled so no one would ever need me.

Ironically, I find helping others terribly self-indulgent.

p.s. I should add that by help here I don't mean helping kids in wars or famine; I just mean doing daily favors for people who should have managed on their own in the first place. For kids in war or famine, I don't have the balls. Although I find those people self-indulgent too. But when even God wants people to go to temples and sing his praises everyday, how can we be any better?

Two bright bulbs

Christmas comes early

Q. If you hate your job, when is the best time on it?

A. The month leading up to your last working day.

I finally got the dates for my transition. One more month and then the time to back my words with action. My current assignment in Boston ends July first week, and I move back to India. And then I resign as soon as I get there. I get paid a lot of money for what I do so its fucking insane that I can't wait to give it all up and do nothing for a few months.

And to all my "well-wishers" who keep trying to talk me out of it, back off! You are not me so don't tell me what you would have done if you were me. Just wait for me to regret it all in a couple of months, and then you can gloat secretly but right now, just be envious. That is all I ask of you.

Just wondering

Would Kurt Cobain be the legend he is if he hadn't killed himself? If he had lived, who knows he might have been on "I am a celebrity, get me out of here". Alright may be not that low, but he married Courtney Love.

Death is like the end of a movie; we know what happens till the happy ending but we don't stick around long enough to see the passionately kissing couple at each other's throats in a matter of days. Girl would find out that the guy opposes gay marriage and guy would realize he can't afford the girl's shoes.

From the deep end of the ocean

Everyone has heard about the Air France flight that went missing over Atlantic. I have been following this news, looking at pictures of relatives waiting at the airport for the news about their loved ones. "Loved ones", that is how it is always written. May be they are not looking for their loved ones, but just for people they are responsible for and are actually annoyed at the additional responsibility of filling the forms and showing up at the airport.

For some this event might make them feel a little important; being a part of an international news. Being one of the 228 (or less) families that are directly affected by this. This would be a story they would tell for years. There would be some small details that would get magnified in their memories and would keep getting added to the story. He almost missed his flight. She told me that she was feeling uneasybefore this flight for some reason. He always joked about plane crashes and told me how it was statistically safer than road travel.

Then there are those for whom their world disappeared along with that plane. And no amount of logical explanation will convince them that no one is coming back.

(a part of me wishes I was on that plane - lost never to be found)

It would have been better if I could hear more clearly

This Memorial Day weekend, I went to SFO. I live in Boston so it was a very long flight. Now we all know the bad things about a long flight; strange smells, feeling hungry when there is no food around, need to pee when you have a window seat and both the aisle and centre seat guys are sleeping. My worst experience was when I had the centre seat on a flight from Paris to Dallas and both window and aisle seat guys were sleeping and snoring into my ears. I swear I wanted to die that day (or night, my time zones were screwed up).

Anyway, this weekend none of these terrible things happened to me. On my flight, 31A and 31B was occupied by an unkempt young man and very pretty girl in red sweatshirt. As soon as we boarded the flight, they started talking. I could hear only the sweatshirt talk, but not clearly enough to make sense of what they were talking about. As irritating as it was, it reminded me of my days of college in India.

I studied at a place about 2 hour away from home and used to come home every weekend. We used to travel by bus and while most of my friends dozed off, I and gags would spend almost entire time talking. We weren’t loud or animated, just incessant. We never thought we were disturbing anyone, until one day a passenger decided it was enough. He waited till gags was off the bus and round me up telling me how stupid we and our debates were and how we knew nothing about life. Never the one with quick comebacks, I just let him lecture me. It was humiliating. Although it didn’t fix me for too long, I always looked around in the bus for him before I took my seat.

Watching unkempt and sweatshirt talk continuously brought back memories of my days and as irritated as I was, I was jealous that she was traveling with a good friend, while I almost always travel alone these days. When we landed, I took another look at them and I heard unkempt say to sweatshirt, “It was nice meeting you”.

What?? They had just met in the plane!

As I stepped out of the plane, unkempt caught up with one of his friends who was also in the same plane. Friend asked him, “Dude who was that girl. We could hear her all the way.” Unkempt said, “I don’t know man, she is gone so its not like I am going to get to fuck her. Why did I have to listen to her!”

While I walked away, I wanted to tell unkempt that while he was listening hoping to get laid, women rarely pour their hearts out to men we wish would see us naked. From where I stand, sweatshirt had it all planned out.

It aint no MacBook

but it is a salmon pink Dell and it is so pretty I want to wear it around my neck and take it to bed with me. This is my first personal laptop ever. I never thought I would need my own laptop because I have always got it from work and who needs 2 laptops (I know some people own even more than 2, but I think they are just pretentious assholes adding to the global electronic waste and we will pretend they don’t exist for today because I am happy and in love). I work in IT so giving us a laptop is like providing a pen to an accountant (or may be its calculators, I don’t know. My image of accountants is a bunch of balding men with big notebooks and pens). So now that I am going to leave my company, my employers would want their laptop back. Then this old, slow and perpetually infected laptop would be given to some rookie who would curse the living hell out of me for not leaving a week sooner or later, so he had a chance at a brand new laptop. Anyway, today I can’t worry about anyone.

For me this old man of a laptop would now be replaced by this suave young man who knows how to wear pink. Now if we can just get the initial few days of awkwardness out of our way and get down and dirty, we can start planning our long future together. 

Real life is ending

No I am not dying. Although let’s face it, even with all the joys of life, death can be infinitely more fascinating to write about, but that is a topic for another day. I am reading “Rubai’yat of Omar Khayyam”, and he blows the shit about life, death, heaven, and hell wide open. And he does it while he is drunk. He is my hero, at least for now, but I digress.

My real life is ending. This is the life with job, money, self respect, distance from parents and expensive stuff. And most importantly the satisfaction that your well-married cousins and increasingly anxious parents think that even though you are single, you do have your shit together.

But that is about to change. I am on my way to unemployment, in about 2 months, if I hold my head high and resist the temptation to beg for forgiveness from the powers that are my managers. In two months, I would be free. Free from deadlines, late night work calls, initiatives (how I hate that word) and over-worked, complaining co-workers (they will have one less complaining co-worker as well, so win-win!). I have kept this job for 9 years and I have liked it for about 2 and been good at it for about 6. Those initial 2 years, I was a naïve, stupid girl with a crush on my colleague and all I wanted to do was to impress him. Yes, impress him with work –talk about bad opening moves. What did I think he was going to say, I want to kiss the hands that wrote that piece of code? Although if he had; I would have been messed up at a whole new level. Anyhow, I never dated that guy but I got really good at my job and that initial push helped me ride along for the next few years. But last three years, I have just been waiting for things to get bad enough to quit. And now things just did get bad enough.

Anyway, I suspect that I would get some time on my hands since the job that occupies me for over 15 hours everyday is about to go away, I can finally create a sustainable blog – so here it is. Real life is ending and the dream life begins… in a few months.

(… if I chicken out and go back to my job, you would hear about that as well. So in my first post, I have admitted to being naïve, stupid, coward, incompetent and complaining.

At the least, I am honest.)