Remember?

What do I write? I ask myself yet again! There simply seems nothing to be written in specific when you want to pen something! Ah! Like always, ideas come up to me when I least expect them to!!! The power-cut happened yet again!
 Well no, I am not  cribbing  about the power-cut but the apparent lack of concern about it! Most of us enjoying the gifts of modern technology have an inverter in place to make life so much easier for us. 
  No power the city moans! We have no care we say, we got inverter in place. While this is certainly a wonderful thing, specially when it comes to not spending the night in the humid/hot weather or tolerating those pesky blood sucking mosquitoes that somehow manage to sneak inside the house no matter what time of the evening you close the doors and windows and have all the mosquito repellant in place!
 But amidst all this I miss those days when inverters where unheard of! No, I was not born in the early 20th century, thank you so much. Inverters were practically unheard of in so recently as late 1990s. The only thing that saved you in terrible summers during a power cut were the generators! And those while on the bright side, did brighten up your home, surely gave a headache to the rest of the neighborhood with it deafening noise!
  While not all of us had the luxury of even owning a generator, we made do with what we could! Bring out those long thin candles and light them up, and if you were in the mood, start the shadow play! One pair of hands turns into a shadowy croc while the other enacts a dog and yet another a bird in flight! And to beat the heat, our faithful newspapers always doubled up as hand held fans! When was the last time any of us got to do that? I cannot really recall except for last week when our inverter conked out!
 This really was a time of the evening when the family got the real family time! No TVs, no radios, no noise, just chatter! And if you were lucky and the whole city was in a blackout you could just glimpse that wondrous night sky, in all it's glory, of course if the full moon was on a monthly vacation. And as we sat gazing, you could hear distant sounds of a hand held radio/transistor tuned to the local aakashwani station, playing those songs that you did not even know existed and made your parents/grandparents reminiscence fondly! And you always wondered, man...just how old are these guys! They listen to such deadbeat music! Of course those would not happen to be our exact words/thoughts, but then you get the idea.
 Are those days lost forever? Or are they just lying in wait for us to just sit up and take notice? That it's just a matter of knowing where to look for and just how simple it can be. Turn those lights off and start the bonfire..oops sorry I mean candle light. Wow for someone who just a few minutes ago did not know what to write, I have written an awful lot!!! No wonder it's the same when I get started about not having much to talk and end up talking more than those guys who actually have some stuff to say! Typical ME! :)

What is it with these guys?

Funny how I am writing this on International Women’s Day. I happened to be talking to a friend and invariably moved onto the topic of his latest passion. No, it’s not a girl, but photography. More aptly it would be his camera. He owns an absolutely Wow SLR camera (for all I know it could be just a regular camera for all those photography enthusiasts, but for one as uneducated as me in those matters, it sure seemed WOW) and seems to have been in love with it since first sight.
That intrigued me and I was reminded of having read in a Clive Cussler novel about how men have this uncanny ability to love inanimate things and how women can never understand that. And the woman in the conversation said something that somehow made sense. She says “We women can never really understand how men can love inanimate objects. Women can never really love things that don’t love them back”.
That line really made me think. Men and women certainly belong to the same genus-species but the similarity ends there. I have seen or heard about enthusiasts or collectors and needless to say a majority of that crowd is somehow male. So what is it with men and their gadget love? I mean it could be a musical instrument or car or gadget and yeah, let’s not forget bikes! These guys would willingly give up human company to spend time with their so called ‘Love’!
I have rarely seen a woman obsess this way unless of course it comes to shopping (and a hundred and one things that figure in our shopping list). But this is certainly not the kind of obsessive love that men display. A woman can only truly love only that which can express its love back. Selfish you say? I don’t really think so. She just loves being loved and appreciated. So maybe, even pets top her list but not always an object.
This seems to be quite an opposite behavior with men, who seem to have this amazing ability to be able to love things, that can’t love them back. A guy will chase his interest with a great fervor and as time passes, the obsession instead of waning, only grows by leaps and bounds.
Or is it like the new Honda BRIO ad claims, ‘Love your BRIO, it loves you back’? Men just love their toys and somehow feel loved but not bound to them by having to talk to them/ praise their good looks/ appreciate them. This probably must be the reason why they are more comfortable around the inanimate objects! Those objects simply don’t keep talking for no reason and never even stop or give them a chance to make their point! And it’s just the same reason that women can’t be in love with objects, that can’t talk back to them. Looks like we are all wired differently when it comes to these things, each person having his/her own quirks. It’s probably why, this world ceases to be monotonous and gives that much needed spice to the many aspects of everyone’s life.

Sleepwalk Through Life

It is often seen that once we reach a certain age group, our dreams and glorious plans get lost in our quest to fulfill our ‘Priorities’ in our life.
In retrospect of the last two years (exactly 2yrs ago was when I joined this industry, our Corporate world as we call it) I see that I have been no different. Plans of being an Astrophysicist and studying the night sky in all its glory suddenly seemed like a dream I had suddenly woken up from. Just as we brush off the dreams of the night in the quest to live out our lives every day, I just pushed the thought of wanting to be an astrophysicist out of my head for reasons unknown. I joined the brigade of the umpteen engineers being churned out of universities every year who began the race to land a job in the corporate world with a 5-digit monthly pay package.
The degree of confusion then (when I had just entered the corporate sector) and now seems to be the same regarding where I want ‘To Go’ from where I am ‘Right now’. Where would you like to see yourself in the next 5 yrs asks my manager and I just manage to give some inconsequential answer. See myself as a lead or a manager?!! What then!? An even bigger pay package and the same confusion!? Knowing not where I want to go…Don’t get me wrong here, I am not complaining about my unhappiness at work or criticizing people who are in the same areas of work as I am. I like the kind of work I do, enjoy the atmosphere at work but yet, there is that nagging question at the back of my mind, ‘Where am I going?’
I talk here of my life in its entirety and not just the work aspect of it. Is there not a lot more to life than just being stuck in that regular rut? Is my focus in life and my priorities set right? Or am I like millions, like my dad says, ‘Just Sleepwalking through life’? Not knowing where I am heading, but heading there nevertheless for maybe a few materialistic gains? What would actually define my life? A few hundred thousand in my account, a better job, a job which I dreamt of taking up as a kid or a teenager, happy and contented parents-happy that their daughter is making something of her life, finding someone who would accompany you on this journey called life!? Why then, despite having all that stated above do I wonder what am I doing after all? What is it that I really want from my life? What is that one thing or things that will make me exclaim ‘Yes, this is what I want from life’!
This is probably a question no one can answer for me. It’s my quest and my journey to make, to find the answer if it’s possible. There is no way of knowing if the answer to the question would really have been the ‘Dream jobs’ or if it is the kind of work am doing right now or the kind of life that I have right now. I am a firm believer in the old saying that ‘Life always gives you only the best things’, be it good or not so good experiences that make you the person that you are today. But one thing, despite my belief is certain- I do not want to Sleepwalk through my life.

No one's innocent, there are only different degrees of responsibility

Recently, I happened to start reading the Millennium trilogy by Stieg Larsson. The second part called 'The Girl who played with Fire' had an interesting caption. Well not so much a caption, as an extract from the book. It said- 'No one is innocent, there are only different degrees of responsibility'.
At first look it sounded as though the writer was making a claim that there really are no innocents in this world & almost everyone at one point or the other has committed a crime. That really did not seem appealing.
But as I thought over the statement, it did strike me as being true. Not in the sense that I had understood it before but in a totally different light. Yes, the writer was correct to an extent in making that claim. When it actually comes down to analyse actions committed by various individuals, then it becomes difficult to measure them all using a single yard stick.
When, for an instance we consider a civilian v/s a person in armed forces, we cannot and do not condemn an armed force officer when he shoots some one down acting according to his role i.e. to protect the society, but when the same civilian takes up arms, its a different story altogether. This all comes down to the fact that both these groups of people have different responsibilities. It is just that an ordinary man i.e our aam aadmi, does not take up the responsibility that he's not accountable for those actions. So in other words, he only seems innocent because he does not hold that responsibility.
How then can we justify this statement when we talk bout the violence in the society? The miscreants who take up arms, take law into their hands and to what end? To start a vicious circle of violence to which there seems to be no end. This is in no way, taking up responsibility but defying the rules of society and misuse of what could have been responsibility to do something good for the society.

Bat Woes!

I was lost in the glorious plans for the upcoming weekend and I suddenly heard a piercing shriek followed by maniacal laughter! It took me not more than a moment to realize what had transpired out in the hall in my absence. Our infamous, unwanted, uninvited, undesirable guest was back to spoil another beautiful evening!
Before you become judgmental and wonder against whom I was harboring such strong feelings let me tell you about this "Visitor" that we have been receiving. Its a black, scaly, ugly & smelly BAT (the last adjective is a matter of fact and not my deduction by having smelt it. Yes, you read that right, a tiny but a punctual bat, swooping inside the house at around 6:30 pm every evening and has us running helter-skelter in whichever non-bat direction we can find.
All those Batman fans out there, dont get me wrong.Batman sure is hot but bats are soooo not! When the bat is around, its a very funny and crazy sight that an outsider gets to see. The three of us (me & my cousins) are crouching with hands over our heads on the sofa more like we are stuck on a battlefield or are watching a scary movie than actually trying to ward off the bat.
The entertaining part of this comes when the bat swoops low over our head and that sets off Shru like we set off a live bomb over her head, she shrieks loudly enough to cross the thresholds of human hearing and enter the ones of dogs and BATS!This is funny and terrifying at the same time, Shru's antics being the funny side of it.I and Amri wud laugh our head off at that till that caused the bat to swoop back again in the room.
As if all this wasnt enough, Amri came up with the stupid idea to run around the house screaming 'Bat' at the top of her voice and you guessed right! Cause Shru to yell again! But there's more to it as this caused another bat to come swooping in! Like one bat was not enough, we had two on our hands now! More precisely over our heads!! I had to use an umbrella one late night, as a shield to duck behind, when I had to go out alone to turn off the lights(in the hall and run quickly back to the room and shut the door close) as our visitor had decided to come in late that evening.
Things did not improve over 3 days and one evening we '3 cowards'decided to ask our maid to rid us of this peril! Up she came to our home(probably laughing silently at our cowardice) and armed herself to face the enemy! Her weapon of choice was of course the most favoured weapon of all Indian women! The jhadoo/broomstick. The poor bat stood no chance against that. One swipe and we thot she had it! But she had missed, and after some running around the house she chased one out. The other flew to the room upstairs(which we found had been their roosting spot as some one had forgotten to close the open window above) and she chased that out too.
The excitement now mellowed we resumed our work, I all the time wondering if we would see a second of that visit. Which we did and it was a repeat of all the shrieking and laughing till the visits finally stopped thanks to the closed window!

K-PAX : The mind game

If you are wondering that it must be a write up or review of the movie K-PAX, relax! I am not going to bore you with the details. Its the thought process that the movie triggered that I am going to talk about now. For those of you, who have not seen the movie, the storyline is about an inmate(Kevin Spacey playing the role of Prote) of a lunatic asylum, who believes he is an alien of planet K-PAX and has come down to earth for a short duration. His psychiatrist's(Jeff Bridges plays Dr.Mark Powell) quest is to get Prote out of the illusion that he a resident of planet K-PAX. As Dr.Powell delves deep into the mystery of this man Prote, he comes face to face with the horrific past of his patient.
Turns out, a parolee out of the prison gets into Kevin Spacey's house and what starts out as a robbery, ends with Spacey's wife and daughter getting killed in the process. Spacey reaches home to see not only the bodies but the killer too present. Like a crazed man he ends up killing the murderer and tries to drown himself in the river, not being able to stand the agony of the deaths of two people he loved the most.
But, is instead, washed down the river with no memory of his former life. His claim now, is that he is an alien from the planet K-PAX in a distant constellation and has come down only to help his friend Robert(Spacey's original personality), who calls out to him in times of crisis. Now, as is obvious we can predict that Spacey suffers from a case similar to MPD or split personality.But the curious case is that we do not see the original personality of Robert emerge anywhere. There is only the new personality of Prote we get to see.
Now, what set me thinking was how the human mind works. The various intricacies of its working are way beyond me, but it sure does astound me. Its amazing, yet horrifying how it finds a work around for the trauma it encounters which are beyond the endurance of the body. We have all, at some time or the other experienced the deep shock of some unfortunate event in life where we are numbed by the situation. In case of physical incidents/accidents, its the body that numbs, leading to a weird calm that helps cope with the situation at hand, ensuring we don't get hysterical or lose our insanity. But when its an emotional trauma that is getting us bogged down, the mind tends to go into a limbo(not the actual limbo state, that would make us comatose), helping us to deal with the crisis when it gets beyond the body's limit to deal with the same. Its an amazing mechanism that lets the mind take over the body and deal with the situation at hand, with or without us realizing that.
But what happens when the trauma is so intense that the person is unable to identify with his real self and ends up identifying with another temporary personality that has been created by the mind/brain to ensure the person's sanity while dealing with the issue? Is there any way by which we can get the real personality back or in the least help the person realize about the problem without endangering their situation any further? Thats a question that will need some reading/research on my part, probably years of understanding too. But it does make for a good hobby to indulge in. There's a lot more to the layers of the mind than meets the eye.

The Terrace Monster

This happened a few years ago when I was in school. We were getting the first floor of our house constructed and it was half way completed, with only the basic framework of the walls and roof done.
One windy evening, our neighbor Manjula akka came up to our house looking a little scared. On asking her the reason, she exclaimed that she had apparently seen a monster (dyavva, in our local gul lingo) up on our terrace. We scoffed at the silly idea and told her she must have seen some laborer walking on the terrace and let her imagination run wild. She was adamant that she really had seen something huge and moving about on the terrace. She insisted that we come up to her place and take a look as it was clearly visible from her front door. Try as we might we could not convince her that it might be some worker. But then we remembered that all the workers had left for the day as it was quite late in the evening for them to continue their work in the dark. We assumed it might be somebody else taking a stroll on the terrace for there was a cool breeze in the evening. She mentioned that she initially had the same idea and had called out to that person on the terrace (thinking it might have been either my Dad or me) but there was no response from the person on the terrace and she suddenly had seen the thing/ person roll about very close to the edge of the terrace.
Now me and my aunt were really curious as to who would be wandering (or more precisely rolling about) up on the terrace. We decided to take a look and see what or who really was up there. My active imagination took over me and I decided that it would be a thief up there waiting for everyone to go to sleep, so that he could break into the house and make off with all the valuables. Well, I wasn’t going to let that happen, was I? I, who read the mystery stories and adventures of Famous Five, Hardy boys, Nancy Drew would catch this thief (if there was a thief).
So brimming with this self confidence we all went to her place to take a look at her so called monster. It was pretty dark on our terrace and we being in the light of her house could not really see anything at first. Then a little while later, we could see something huge move about on the terrace. It was a little too big to be anything human and rolled strangely, almost inhumanly. I felt really queasy, it was not the thief as I had imagined or even remotely human. As we kept staring at it, I transfixed at the strange sight and my aunt curiously, there was a gust of wind which set the monster rolling and we see our culprit clearly. We burst out laughing, because what we had presumed to be an inhuman thing was in fact inhuman and non-living too. It was a huge plastic bucket which had somehow gotten entangled with a big cement bag and ended up looking like a huge bulky person (or dyavva) as my neighbor had claimed.
I have a good laugh every time I remember this incident and my over active imagination running wild and conjuring up non-existent thief and monster. So much for reading the various mysteries and thinking I could be like one of those characters!!!