Thats the way it is...

It was one of those days that come very often in my life. Blue and gloomy. It was my second week in the US and I still didn't have an on campus job. Petty problem in the larger scope of life. But for the ant in me, it was a mountain. I was finding it difficult to get a phone. My laptop was not exactly working like a supercomputer and to top it all, my dad's bank was going on an indefinite strike. Phew! The problems were mounting. I was left alone. In an alien country, where you are making your parents pay through their noses, these issues are termed as problems. So I had Problems.
I decided to quit. i decided to give in to sadness. I wanted to cry and that I did. I went to this park where I could be alone for all the time I had and no one could have cared less. And so, I went there with my burden and sat with my woes feeling like i have the worst troubles. I was so engrossed in self pity that it took me a little while to recognize a song being played in the distance.
it said, "i can read your mind and I know your story,
I see what you are going through,
its an uphill climb and I feel like sorry,
but I know it will come to you yeah,
So don't surrender coz you can win...."
Celine Dion. I thought to myself. I decided to explore the source of the music.
I started walking. It really was an uphill climb. I was huffing and puffing by the time I reached the top. But the view from the top was breathtaking. The panoramic view of the entire city lay in front of me. It was simply beautiful. It was worth the climb, I told myself. I never found out the source of the song. But it didn't matter so much. I had realized the importance of the uphill climb. The view from the top of the mountain was what I wanted to see. The climb was inevitable. I had to make it. Sometimes alone, sometimes with someone, but it had to be done.
In the distance I heard the church gong. I smiled to myself. After all I was being taken care of. I saw self pity slither away. In its place there was inspiration. Sprouting new leaves. Still a sapling, but nevertheless present.
I kept hearing the gong as I left for home.
It was the begining. Not the end.

People!

Well, my first week in America and am already learning to live. I always thought I was independent. I also always thought that the kind of people I met in my undergraduate years were the 'types' I am always going to meet henceforth. But I was absolutely, devastatingly wrong. Here in the US the greatest country in the world, I am meeting people who are nice and not so nice. Some are hypocrties while some others are plain irritating. Also, my so called independent streak has been dampened by life's travails, that too only in the first week. Sigh! I say so because, I realized that living alone anywhere is not an option for a sane person. Man is a social animal and he/she will remain so. Interaction, company or frienship, it can be called by multiple names, but living together and sharing is so very important.
When I was in India in my own house meaning I had a place to stay; I was always complaning. Sometimes it was about food, someimes about the furniture and sometimes about nothing. I took my family members for granted. But here in America, their absence makes me realize their importance. I dont know if it hppens to everyone who leaves their family. Maybe it is a universal feeling. So be it. Realizing such a big thing is an important benchmark for me.
As for the people here, I am discovering newer species everyday. People can go to any lenghts to impress others and I just hope I am not one of those. Other people are so nice to you that you wonder what good work you have done to deserve it. And here I seriously hope I am one of them.
My college hasn't even started and I am already step higher in internal learning. I hope to go much further and farther both internally and externally.
(Whew! Maybe I should learn to talk and write less!)

SplitsVilla

Get real girls..
I saw a few episodes of SplitsVilla today on MTV. Must say, it was terrible. Not because it had skin show, which it had, but because girls are so bloody stupid. Guys on the other hand, as always walk away after having lot of fun.

What I fail to understand is how do these 10-12 girls actually become ready to be a part of this show where they know they are going to be mocked at. Why put yourself through such unintelligent brainless rigmarole? I really hated what was happening. After all, women themselves want to degrade their clan by vying for the attention of two super idiotic, dimwitted so called males who are definitely male chauvinist pigs. Man! Those guys cannot even speak in English. Plus, it all boils down to one thing in the girls- Sex appeal and then some more. Is wearing skimpy clothes and dancing seductively the only way to grab a man's attention. These very girls consider themselves intelligent. Hah! My foot! The girls appearing on both Splits villa and Get Gorgeous (Channel V) are anything but intelligent. Yes they are sexy, (whatever), they maybe bold but totally dumb! Please don't tarnish other normal girls' image specially in front of guys. Its been only recently that some guys have started accepting that girls too are smart and intellectual.

Any way, one verdict: DUMB girls, DUMBER guys and an extremely DUMB show.
MTV.....yuck!

Can I be a child?

Ma, can I be your child again?

As I grapple with life everyday,
As I struggle to fit in.
Sometimes here, sometimes there
I remember the days ma,
when if i was alone, you played with me.
When my life revolved around dolls and dogs.
When I could come crying to you because Ramu did not talk.
When you brought me that lovely pink frock.

I remember those days now ma,
As I struggle to fit in.

I am an adult now.
I am responsible.
I have to work now,
earn something feasible

I remember those days now ma,
When if I was afraid, you hugged me.
When i was ill, to sleep you lulled me
When you told me stories of Alice in Wonderland,
When you told me of Peter Pan and Neverland

Today I am afraid ma,
I need your soft push to get me going.
I need you to help me face the storms.
I have to face the rain alone,
I am afraid I will falter.
Will you offer me your hand again?
So I can bear the pain.

Oh! Can I be a Child ma?
Can I be your child again?

There are times...

There are times when you are totally frustrated with whatever is going on around you. Sometimes there is no particular reason for it.

As such everything is going ok. But then suddenly everything seems to go wrong.
You get up late and reach late for work
Trains are more crowded than ever
You fight with your parents/Colleagues/ Friends/ Boy friend
You blame everything on PMS

And then the vicious cycle starts.

There are times when you fee like crying but you bite your lip and swallow your tears and all the other emotions that have swollen up become a lump in your throat.
There are times when the person you love the most tells you that you are not the most important person in their life.
There are times when your friends don't have time for you but for someone else.
you come to know about your friends lives through some random person

There are times when you laugh where you want to cry.
You talk to people even when you don't want to.
You smile and laugh when you would rather introspect and think
Jealousy is killing you but you keep going on.
The days seem to drag on and you seem to have lost purpose in life.

And then there are the days
When you feel like you own the world
You make someone smile
Your patients actually like you and look forward to meeting you.
You meet Toto Chan and your eyes fill up with tears of joy.
You wake up to find the Himalayas floating in front of you and you sigh with relief.
You thank God. You see God. You feel It.
You go on a picnic with people who care for you.
You find time to laugh over petty things.
You sleep peacefully after a hard day's work.
Your mom makes delicious food for you.

There are times when you feel like you will become something in life.
You seem to have a purpose.
Your aims are sky high.
You are motivated enough to move mountains.

There are times and then there are times.
Between these two, I live!

To All Men

Yet another story of assault on women. Another woman gang raped by some men. Still another raped by some other men. The list is endless. And that too on the third day of the New Year. What an auspicious start!

This is an appeal to all men. We are sorry. We thought we could equal a mighty, cruel and brutal beast. We had thought we could walk shoulder to shoulder with you. But little did we know that we were overestimating ourselves. We did not know it is your rights to molest us.To stare at us every time we walked on the road. To be mentally undressed by some pervert is commonplace. To be groped and touched against our wishes should not offend us. Still we have to continue walking. Not pay attention to what is happening. And suppose we muster up the courage to fight it, we are actually molested and raped. My question to all men is WHY? But of course women are to blamed. They dress provocatively. They titillate the senses. They are promiscuous. They don't cover their faces. What a crime! How dare women be so free? They are supposed to be mere sexual animals. Born to satisfy a male ego and a male body. To be defiled and degraded by their own fathers and uncles and husbands and husbands' friends. How dare they swear at a lecherous mob? Don't they understand, it is the men's right to gawk at them and pass lewd comments. Don't they understand that they are things and not humans? Don't they understand that they have no right to walk on the road unaided? Oh women! Your naivety is not going to be appreciated.

Every single day the newspapers are full of crimes, and rimes against women takes a major chunk of space. Every time I read about a woman being hurt, I feel like I have suffered the injustice. Is it ever going to stop? Whether it is the workplace or a slum or a bus or even a brothel, it is the woman who suffers. Why? Because the man cannot take control of his urges. I am filled with so much fury at this lame fact that I feel all men who dare to even touch a woman without her permission should be castrated. Straight. Deprived of the one thing that they are proud of. Maybe I am taking it too far. But seven years of imprisonment is just not enough for a crime as heinous as rape. Whenever I read about such thing or sometimes see them happening around me, I feel pathetic, cheated. I feel like I have been lured into believing that I can dream too. That it is alright to think that I can roam freely on roads. Bullshit I say.

They say "heaven hath seen no fury, as a woman scorned" Scorned? It has become more than that. But where is the fury? Where is the agitation, the revolution? Where are women's groups? And I don't mean the political ones. Women are known to be emotionally stronger than men. Is it to bear these atrocities that we are stronger? Is it to keep quite and take it all in the stride? Hell no! We have to become physically stronger. Fight it out. It has been proved that continued resistance to a rapist's advances tends to put him down. Why should women be weaklings? Stand up for your rights women. We have been brought on this earth for a specific purpose, not to warm someone's beds. Why do we always need a Mahatma Phule for our own emancipation? Why can't we fight our own battles? Start today. Make your little girls as strong as your boys. Make your boys respect women. Don't put them on a higher pedestal. But on a similar one. Don't worship them but just treat them like fellow human beings.

To all men I plead to please, please stop being so cruel. Please just let us be. Change your outlook towards us. Don't try to look inside our clothes. Rather look inside our hearts. You will find that our heart also beats at 72 beats/minute. We too have blood flowing through our veins. We too have eyes and a nose and hands and feet just like you. We are in essence just like you. Then why should we face these acts of violence alone? Oh! Please, please be kind to us. We are human beings too just like you are. We are neither Freya nor Durga. All we ask for is peace. Oh but isn’t that the costliest thing on earth?

The Addict

I see him everyday.

He just sits and sways.

He had a stomach to feed.

And yes a mind, so what if full of greed?

He had no money to spare.

But he had his own share.

Of?

Things unknown to you and me.

Things we don’t everyday see.

Pangs of hunger.

Lack of slumber.

Yet he dared to dream.

One day to be society’s cream.

He wanted a house a son and a wife.

Who was he?

He was the addict.

Addicted to LIFE.

What shall I write about??

“What shall I write about?” thought the poet.

Cried the beggar, “cant you see me and my crippled limbs,

Write about me o’poet and my fight for bread crumbs.”

Cried the mother, “write about me oh poet,

I have a son on the borders to be sent.”

“where’s your attention dear poet?” roared the king of the jungle.

“ you have killed me and left my skin with flies to mingle.”

“ o my see what you have done to me.” sobbed the oak.

“I have been stabbed and cut and my branches all broke.”

“ stop it, stop it!” pleaded the poet.

“ I shall write about all of you dears.” He said.

Eyes stinging with tears.

SHASHI ON SUNDAY:Save the sari from a sorry fate

SHASHI ON SUNDAY: Save the sari from a sorry fate (the times of india, sunday 25th march)
Shashi Tharoor

For centuries, if not millennia, the alluring garment, all five or six or nine yards of it, has been the defining drape of Indian womanhood. Cotton or silk, BanarasIor Pochampalli, shimmering Kanjeevaram or multi-coloured bandhani, with the pallav draped front-to-back over the left shoulder or in the GujaratIstyle back-to-front over the right, the sari has stood the test of time, climate and body shape. Of all the garments yet invented by man (or, not to be too sexist about it, mankind) the sari did most to flatter the wearer.

Unlike every other female dress on the planet, the sarIcould be worn with elegance by women of any age, size or shape: you could never be too fat, too short or too ungainly to look good in a sari. Indeed, if you were stout, or bowlegged, or thick-waisted, nothing concealed those handicaps of nature better than the sari. Women looked good in a sari who could never have got away with appearing in public in a skirt.

So why has this masterpiece of feminine attire begun fading from our streets? On recent visits home to India I have begun to notice fewer and fewer saris in our public places, and practically none in the workplace. The salwar kameez, the trouser and even the Western dress-suit have begun to supplant it everywhere. And this is not just a northern phenomenon, the result of the increasing dominance of our culture by Punjabi-ised folk who think nothing of giving masculine names to their daughters.

At a recent press conference I addressed in Thiruvan-athapuram, there were perhaps a dozen women journalists present. Only one was wearing a sari: the rest, all Keralites without exception, were in salwar-kameezes. And when I was crass enough to ask why none of the "young ladies" present wore saris, the one who did modestly suggested that she was no longer very young.

Youth clearly has something to do with it; very few of today's under-30 women seem to have the patience for draping a sari, and few of them seem to think it suitable for the speed with which they scurry through their lives. ("Try rushing to catch a bus in a sari," one young lady pointedly remarked, "and you'll switch to jeans the next day.") But there's also something less utilitarian about their rejection of the sari for daily wear.

Today's younger generation of Indian women seem to associate the garment with an earlier era, a more traditional time when women did not compete on equal terms in a man's world. Putting on pants, or a Western woman's suit, or even desi leggings in the former of a salwar, strikes them as more modern. Freeing their legs to move more briskly than the sari permits is, it seems, a form of liberation; it removes a self-imposed handicap, releasing the wearer from all the cultural assumptions associated with the traditional attire.

I think this is actually a great pity. One of the remarkable aspects of Indian modernity has always been its unwillingness to disown the past; from our nationalists and reformers onwards, we have always asserted that Indians can be modern in ancient garb. Political ideas derived from nineteenth and twentieth-century thinkers have been articulated by men in mundus and dhotis that have not essentially changed since they were first worn 2,000 or 3,000 years ago. (Statuary from the days of the Indus Valley Civilisation more than 4,000 years ago show men draped in waistcloths that Mr KarunanidhIwould still be happy to don.)

Gandhiji demonstrated that one did not have to put on a Western suit to challenge the British empire; when criticised by the British press for calling upon the King in his simple loincloth, the Mahatma mildly observed, "His Majesty was wearing enough clothes for the two of us". Where a Kemal Ataturk in Turkey banned his menfolk's traditional fez as a symbol of backwardness and insisted that his compatriots don Western hats, India's nationalist leaders not only retained their customary headgear, they added the defiantly desi 'GandhIcap' (oddly named, since Gandhiji himself never wore one). Our clothing has always been part of our sense of authenticity.

I remember being struck, on my first visit to Japan some 15 years ago, by the iniquitousness of Western clothing in that Asian country. Every Japanese man and woman in the street, on the subway or in the offices I visited wore suits and skirts and dresses; the kimono and its male equivalent were preserved at home, and brought out only for ceremonial occasions. An Asian ambassador told me that envoys were expected to present their credentials to the Emperor in a top hat and tails.

This thoroughgoing Westernisation was the result of a conscious choice by the modernising Meiji Emperor in 1868. One sees something similar in China today: though the transformation is not nearly as complete as in Japan, the streets of Beijing and Shanghai are more and more thronged with Chinese people in Western clothes. In both Japan and China, I allowed myself to feel a perverse pride that we in India were different: we had entered the 21st century in clothes that our ancestors had sported for much of the preceding 20.

Today, I wonder if I’ve been too complacent. What will happen once the generation of women who grew up routinely wearing a sari every day dies out? The warning signs are all around us now. It would be sad indeed if, like the Japanese kimono, the sari becomes a rare and exotic garment in its own land, worn only to temples and weddings. Perhaps it's time to appeal to the women of India to save the sari from a sorry fate.

Dear Mr. Shashi Tharoor!!!!!

(my reply to the article by shashi tharoor mentioned above)

Lets us get to the point. The sari indeed faces a sorry fate, here in India. But since I belong to the much criticized younger generation which does not believe in wearing saris, I thought I must provide you with this side of the story.

Like many a young women must have told you, the sari is in reality cumbersome. As we compete on equal terms today, we would like to be more comfortable in what we wear. We would like to think more clearly about other issues rather than worry about whether our pallav is in place. Also the fact that we really have to run a marathon race every single day of our life- in buses and trains- makes the sari slightly obsolete. I remember, when I wore a sari for ‘traditional day’ in college, it was very difficult to carry the entire ensemble with billowing pallavs for an entire day. Let alone throughout my life.

You are right when you say that there is something less utilitarian about rejection of sari as a daily wear. I feel empowered when I wear salwar kameez and go to work because I can stop thinking that I am a woman. I forget that I have a gender. I am at ease and I am just ‘me.’ It also helps to increase secularism. When me and my colleagues, all wear similar kind of clothes whether trousers, skirts or salwar kameez, we all forget about our religions and castes and work productively in a conducive environment.

As you have said, you do not want to be sexist. But alas! You have ended up being one! (Perhaps unknowingly) I find it amusing that you should notice the change in attire of Indian women only. Indian men, I am sure, also have stopped wearing the traditional attire- the ‘Dhoti.’ In fact the dhoti has become outdated even before the sari. At least the remnants of a sari are visible. The dhoti has performed the invisibility act a long time ago. How many times have you seen men decked up in dhotis, jackets and a Gandhi cap going to work? The inspirational leaders you talk about were all from the early 20th century. My mother who belongs to the previous generation still wears a sari. My father on the other hand, has never even seen a dhoti, let alone wear it. Why don’t we do justice to both sexes then and criticize them equally? Why single out women and blame them for deciding to decrease donning the sari? Isn’t that sexist Mr.Tharoor?

You have cited the example of Gandhiji who attended the round table conference draped in a dhoti. Inspiring indeed! But as a representative of Indian culture on a platform as great a s the UN, why haven’t you considered wearing the dhoti or even Kurta Pajamas? I know you respect our culture then why not show it in your attire as well, since charity begins at home.

Worth a thought would you say?

Altruism- illusion or reality?

According to the oxford dictionary, altruism is defined as an act of unselfishness. But does altruism really exist?

According to the author of “The Fountain Head” , Ayn Rand, it doesn’t. What exists is only the Creator. The altruist is the most selfish man, although he calls himself selfless. Altruism is slavery. The altruist is a parasite and a secondhander. Through Howard Roark she puts forth the idea of the ultimate egotist- the creator. The altruist is a person who wants to serve humanity, but by doing so wants to see mankind suffer. He sacrifices other people and in the process ends up in a sea of blood. The creator creates for himself and the altruist destroys what the creator creates in the name of humanity.

If what Ayn Rand says is considered true then Adolf Hitler becomes an altruist. But is he? And what do Mother Teresa and Nelson Mandela become? Selfish? Sacrificial? Humanitarian? Were Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King selfish because they tried to unify people and lead them onto a new path? It takes courage to face the flak of the system and go against it. To bear lathis on your body without uttering a word. To leave one’s homeland to serve people from another country. To be jailed for 27 years to save people from racism. Yes they were selfish because they tried to gain satisfaction of doing something for others benefit, happiness of helping mankind and get a good nights sleep. They are not unselfish because they have a hidden motive- that of seeing other people happy and contented in life, people without the extra baggage of suffering, without diseases, racism and communalism to bother them. Yes Altruism is an illusion because it does not exist in its true sense. Even if the act is for the betterment of the people. Even if it’s not materialistic. Even if it’s the noblest one.

The people who want to see others happy are selfish because they cannot be happy if others are sad. That means that their ultimate aim is happiness for themselves. So does it make a huge difference? If we stop feeling for others and live only for ourselves, won’t we become stone hearted, soulless bodies? It is this empathy and sometimes sympathy that we feel for others that makes us human beings. And it is this very feeling that gave India its independence and the Negroes equal rights in USA It is also the lack of this feeling that gave us two world wars and has brought us on the threshold of another one.

So I think is thanks to these altruists who laid the foundations of service to others that gives us a world that’s somewhat a better place to live in. Think about it.

Being Aishwarya....

This year she was christened as Aishwarya Rai. Before that she was Madhuri Dixit and before that she was Sri Devi. But she was oblivious to all the names that people called her. No one knew her real name. She was one of those unsolved mysteries that every professional college possesses. And this very old and reputed college of medicine, right in the heart of Mumbai, where people from all classes came together to become doctors, had its very own living legend.
Aishwarya (as she was called) was not really soothing to the eye. High cheek bones, an equally high forehead that became a tightly bound, oily plait, a crooked nose and the most striking feature of all- loads of Melanin, made her look like a real misfit in the elite crowd. One entire table in the library was reserved for her. She was at it at 9.00a.m sharp and left it only in the evening when the library closed. Nobody ever saw her in the canteen to grab a bite or even in the bathroom. All she did was scribble something illegible on a piece of paper with a pencil. She never referred any books. Never talked to anybody. Nobody knew what her age was-25 or maybe 30 maybe 35- and nobody really cared. Batches came and went, but Aishwarya remained behind-unshakable, unfathomable…
Of course there were the stories. One vague story said that Aishwarya was a student of that institution, aspiring to become a doctor, but failed her last year more than once and lost her sanity. All she did after that was scribble. Another one, more vague than the first one says that she never belonged to this institution. She was a patient in the hospital attached to the college and was so awestruck by its size and enormity that she decided to stay back-forever, acting like a student doctor. But since she never created any problems for anybody, she was allowed to stay-forever.
In the meantime Aishwarya continues to be the laughing stock for these gifted students who have come here to learn to ease pain and suffering but fail to understand the silent, unknown agony that this Aishwarya is suffering. Waiting to be named something else by some other batch….

TRAIN SPECIES

The ladies first class compartment like any other public place is packed with multiple personalities. Eminent scientists to identify certain species found in train have done a great deal of research. Here’s a sneak peek into the report about the I class ladies compartment during peak hours about to be presented to our honourable railway minister.---

The Amma type: This species usually resembles a sack of potatoes. They occupy three quarters of the entire seat and keep on giving motherly looks to standing passengers. College students especially get a large share of their affection.

The Sleeping beauty type: This type gets in at the starting point and gets off at the last station. Throughout the journey they doze off at the window with occasional rhythmic movements of their neck. These are solitary creatures and do not care a damn about anyone else.

The Terminator type: A very dangerous species. Comes in groups of threes and fours. They initiate the “claim game.” They reserve seats for their clan and if some simple soul dares to sit on “their” seat, a barricade of expletives results. A good source of general knowledge.

The “I am Aishwarya” type: The legendry femme fatale. It is an extremely rare and attractive species. They are one of the main topics of gossip in the compartment. They never sleep and never talk to anyone else except their cell phones (which is usually a colour display with FM with camera- another hot topic of discussion)

The Chatterbox type: This is the commonest of the train species. They come in groups of twos and threes. Their topic of discussion is- “umes” and “deepes.” They keep on glancing at the “I am Aishwarya type” and burst into loud peals of laughter. They are the main source of noise pollution in the compartment.

The Great Samaritan type: Quite an affable species. They find seats for standing passengers without compromising their area.

But the research is not yet complete. They are discovering new species in which to place me, myself and Mansi. Till then ciao.

Mansi Bhagwate

hi there...

i have just created my own blog for a very simple reason. i am very lazy. i want to write.but i end up being lethargic.through this blog i wish to write more. about everything that comes to my mind.