breaking away from norms

hello! writing quite frequently, i am these days. can't believe its my third post in one month, when its not even over! hmm, that itself could be breaking away with the norm.. but the thinng i am going to write is not this! :)

                i am witnessing couple of  breaking aways lately. first is my friend. he is getting married very soon- in about a month's time. the dude is well educated, has a MBA(oh yeah, that's it!), intelligent and is going to married to a girl who soon will be awarded her Ph.D , though there is still some time for it. Now, what will you do? you will definitely work till 15 days before your wedding, come home in stylish haste, get all your shopping done, and then marry and resume work. after all you are married now! you need to earn. the moolah is necessary, dear! now what has this man done? he left the job! yeah..when he was about to get married, he has left the job! so when somebody in acquaintances asks him what does he do, he says nothing! and moreover, is not planning to do anything for next 2 months-even after the marriage! i know this sounds foolish, but yeah, that's what it is. he of course must be having his own reasons to do that, but i like the courage, and moreover, the clear sorted out thinking and the calm attitude :)
there are couple of more friends who recently left their jobs, without having anything in hand, and are quite happy. both of them left the jobs either coz they were getting really really bored of the mundane work, or they wanted to follow their passion.and i also have a close friend of mine who rejected his offer from a multinational, having a fat package, and settled for almost 1/3rd package, which gave him an opportunity to follow his passion. this all is really an example of breaking away from the norms. and i know hundreds of people would labels these as unwise decisions, but you have to take a call on following your passion/ listening to your mind or heart versus getting behind the moolah, ignoring your inner voice, and following the supposed 'normal way'!  you yourself decide what's wise and normal for you-ain't it?     

god of small things

 that's what i have recently become. It is weird, isn't it? going for dinner at some cool place, going for an outing, or probably partying somewhere, or buying nice trendy stuff, or say a super exotic vacation at around 15000 kms from your house seems to be an excellent idea of relaxation.More to add would be getting yourself pampered at the hottest spa in your city! these really seem to be the in things for my generation. supposedly these things give you a free time all by yourself, you are relaxed, your brain is refreshed and it starts working nicely throughout the next week. even i was taken by such ideas say half an year back. and I did want to experience most of these things.

cut to today, when i am 5 months old in my office, now a part of the ' gonna get bored soon' brigade, and really really wanna spend my weekends home, or want to avoid tiring trips to far off-as i travel quite much during the week- i have realized that being god of small things helps! see, you know that you just have one day at your disposal. you want to get up late, have lazy breakfast, lazier bath, laziest lunch, wanna hang out with friends, have to put your closet in the order, have to sort out junk in your room, have to call 3 friends whom you promised you would definitely call during the week, get some new stuff for the wedding season thats approaching, probably try your hands at cooking coz you have a whim, read the next part of the fat book, skype talk with loaaadss of people, and then finally sleep! NOW, where do you get time for such kinda high class relaxations? 

be the god of small things! find small things in your daily grind, and then, learn to relax with them! it took me a little long to trust that it helps. when i did these things, they worked wonders. catching up with pals over coffee at somebody's house and not outside so that at length conversations could be held. call up a long lost friend. go to a bhaji market to get bhaji. clean up your cycle/bike/car. watch finding nemo on DVD. going to tekdi. running a good distance of 4 km. writing a blog. oiling your hair and then having a good shampoo. eating kanda bhaji, batatewada, and chocolate without worrying about your weight! going to crossword or any other shop and checking out new books. and buying 5 earrings costing 10 Rs each :) these activities i have been doing and i must say that it does help me relax like no expensive dinner and exotic spa would ever do. 

nor did i ever believe that expensive things meant great happiness,in most cases, its other way round.  but i have been experiencing it now. and i am loving it! :) yay!

hello! ween- the introspection

the particular monday was no different than others. same hesitation in getting up and going to work-why wouldn't you hesitate if you have to get up at 6 and go to work at 7 everyday? :( but still.. i reached office. opened newspapers. glanced through the last page(please note: there is the addition of last page to the 'page 3' .) spotted Halloween parties pics there!
I mean this is the first time I am spotting Halloween parties happening in Pune. and actually the props, the scary dresses, the pumpkins or jack-o-lanterns whatever-  were seen in newspapers, on blogs, on facebook orkut, TV, everywhere. since when pune became so Americanized to celebrate Halloween on such a big scale? or are our media playing an important role in letting know common masses of  Halloween? or do they really want to shape us in an American way of life? dunno..confused!
i like new festivals :) time to celebrate is always nice! but all the same i find it hard to digest that celebrating dasra, and sankrant and nagpanchami with mehendi is not so cool when painting your faces in stupid way is. i don't like it :(
or celebrating everything through media is the norm of the day? confused! :(

I AM SORRY FOR CONFUSING THE WRITERS WITH FAULTY LINKING. SHOULD HAVE BEEN CLEARER IN LINKING! ANYWAYS, THE POST IS HERE DUDES!  

PUMBAI

hah..i dunno how to spell the name of my city. or..err i actually dunno how to spell maharshtra's capital. or..just that my English has gone for toss. but I have coined this new term. Pumbai is the combination of Pune and Mumbai. i know that might sound boring..gimmme a break or yikes. but that's the kind of feeling i have slowly started getting after analyzing the city more and more
let me make it very very clear in the beginning that I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO AFFECTION/SOFT CORNER for mumbai, let alone love.i kinda dislike or even loathe that city to certain extent. there is nothing, nothing in mumbai that i like except two things.
1. the excellent public transport. mumbai survives only coz of that. best and the locals!
2. and the extremes you get in Mumbai. you can find an arbit stall outside andheri station where you get ANYTHING in the world in 20 rs. and you find the places which are well beyond your reach, who don't talk less than some thousands. but yeah, there is variety! there really is.
but apart from that, i just don't like the city. i am not at all fashion-bothered, i hate the humid weather, i dislike the condition of beaches in mumbai, and i just loathe the no of people live there, and that too in pitiable conditions. And i see my beloved Pune getting more and more like mumbai everyday, and in all bad senses.
i would have loved to have an excellent public transport in pune. that solves half of pune's traffic problems. but sadly we are not lucky enuf to get it. and what do we have of mumbai?

1. the sheer No of people: i know pune is expanding hugely. and in saccharine terms, it is expanding, and growing etc , in bitter words its just being like this obese kid who just becomes rotund and looses the shape and the finer characteristics. there are around 40 lac people staying in pune. and i dun see any chance of stopping this growth coz pune has no geographical limitations. Mumbai ENDS at certain point. the sea starts. pune doesn't end like that. it will expand expand and expand more. morphing into a shapeless city. or probably being amorphous.  People are probably tired of going to mumbai, and think it is better to stay in pne, comparatively slightly cheaper cost of living, good std of living, good for education, will get good jobs, safe city, and good weather. what more do you want?
2. the mixed bag of ethnicity, race, languages and others: mumbai is a BHEL. or may be tossed salad. who owns Mumbai rightfully is a  extremely controversial question. but whatever it is, it is no more a  Marathi city. it has lost hat image since loooooooooooooong. everybody owns mumbai and mumbai belongs to all. Pune was not like that. Pune was still a very orthodox and nice little cozy type of city. jobs came, so came people.  IT boomed and so came many many more people. educational hub it was called. and under the pretext of education, may many others come here!  and of course, the human migration never happens in vacuum. Man moves with his language and all his other cultural belongings. i am a humanity student and i feel this is a very interesting subject. but on practical day o day basis, i still has that layman in me who feel lost in his own city when he sees this bhel happening. the language of classes was Marathi. it is no more like that. English and Hindi came in. The celebration of festivals was done in more of non maharashtrian ways. The flavor of the language changed. the typical behavioral traits that  a marathi manoos would have, changed. the sharp, on your face marathiness is lost and there is this all glossy, colorful and artificial world around you that is increasing.
3. The no of slums is increasing. and thanks to our careless government, which fails to take strong decisions, the no is gonna increase everyday. and just as Mumbai airport is like covered with slums around, pune's parvati will look covered with slums till its neck. And i know rift between the poor and the rich is increasing.

The consciousness about fashion increased. the tendency to flaunt your wealth increased. the flashing of your Ray bans, D&Gs, versaces and jimmy choos increased. The appearances of half-clad women on streets increased.the cases of rash driving increased.
the flavor of night life changed. the page 3 parties increased.
The crime rate increased. the loooong hours of wait in traffic jams increased.
slowly it is considered equal to a sin if you put your kids into a Marathi medium school. only the driver's and the maid servants kids go there you know.
just everything. things like these and many many many more.

i don't wanna put Mumbai is a bad light.but i see these things happening around me. and if Pune is going the Mumbai way, and mumbai the newyork way, Pune will soon be headed towards the new york way. we anyways have the IT guys here, and we soon will have enough no of broken family ties.

i know these things are inevitable. they are not really in anybody's hands. but yeah, the reason why it bothers me so much is that i hate it when cities lose their soul. Pune is slowly losing its soul. so did Berlin after the second world war, and so is Singapore without a soul. Mumbai has lost most of it. and so will pune in the nearer future. I hate it but i know i cant control it. i am helpless. :(  i just don't want to wake up one fine morning and discover that all the cities worldwide have lost their soul so much that i cant make out which city is which and then its really a 'global village'. . And hence i wont be surprised to find that its not just Pumbai, but probably Puneyork! wow!

Pumbai

my post called pumbai over here. please go thru it and let me know the comments.

The man of words

I guess this is a kind of relevant post to the title of this blog- its only words. coz a post on somebody for whom 'its only words'! Gulzaar saab turned 75 recently..(or 73 whatever.. there is still a doubt!) and i just thought i would scribble how big fan am i of him..
i was zapped when i got to learn that Sampurnasingh kalra is the name the genius was born as. and well.. the image crops up in your mind after hearing that 'powerful' lamba chauda punjaabi name is definitely not of someone like Gulzaar. His looks suit a typical Bengali babu more, say I. and no offence, but his sensibilities and sensitivities make you think whether he is a bengali morphed into a punjabi name ( the opinion is purely based on the positive biases i have!) May be thats the result of being a contemporary of strong bengali directors.. Bimal Roy, Hrishikesh Mukerjee and so on ..well you never know.
i can't imagine a man who writes dhan tana...tana tana.. and beedi jalaile looks like this! To my imagination, this man is a 35 year old semi urban man, and wears horrible pink shirts :P and yes, the one who writes goli maar bheje meinnnn... yeah definitely the pink shirt, coupled with a bright yellow scarf! and for me a man who writes paani paani re..and iss mode se jaate hain.. is a man who actually looks like gulzaar with white outfit, and those glasses.
the man who writes chaddi pehenke ful khila hai and lakdi ki kaathi-kaathi pe ghoda can not be the same man who writes hum ko man ki shakti dena and tujhse naraaz nahi jindagi. :)
Gulzaar is really absurd. is akhon se jab tune chhua..halka halka uns huan his writing. he writes hum ne dekhi hai in akhon ki mehekti khushboo. how can you see khushboo? he writes halka halka uns hua...err..what does uns mean? He confuses you with this stuff. he brings that melancholic longing with jiya jale.. and o saathi re din dube na.. he zapps you with his command over words in every single lyric.
well, its not just the lyrics. it is reflected well within his scripts, his dialogues, his screenplays, his films. Be it izazat or maachis. they are as sensitive, sensible, and powerful at the same time as his soongs. and after this, my words go away coz i just feel like just writing his brilliant songs :) I may write a part two on the sensitivities and sensibilities shocased in his songs. ahan!

Gulzaar actually is the epitome or personification of this saying it's only words! a BIG BIG APPLAUSE and a salute to him :)

That freaking swine

I am not at all against/for vegetarianism/ non vegetarianism. i never like or dislike any animal on the earth ( man is a social animal, and is an exception!) the whole breed of pigs was never into my consideration except their sporadic appearances on the street once in a while. and still, couple of days back, i was forced to curse the poor animal(the swine) and justly curse the overly paranoid human animals in Mumbai.
we had been to Mumbai. the moment the news was announced that we are from Pune, one should have seen how the manners and behavior changed. we were not allowed inside the office, we were quarantined in a room which was well outside the office, and then put into Mc'donalds party hall, which was well a kilometer away from the office. what a wonderful and chivalrous treatment.
can't the virus find it's way to enter the office through the people who were with us? or is it that each and every person who comes from Pune carries a bunch of virus all over the body? are we some kind of jaleel log who are just sadistically planning to infect all of Mumbai with Swine flu? are we untouchables?? in fact, how can one have the entry denied on the basis of assumption that one ia a carrier of virus..considering that viruses cant even be seen??
my point here is not to criticize the organization. my point is to criticize the paranoia that people have in their minds. Swine flu is not fatal. it is curable, and it is being cured. the gaudy and exaggerated picture media is putting across is also to be blamed to large extent. people outside pune are unnecessarily and obsessively being scared of the supposed out of control situation in pune. i was never so damn frustrated about the performance of media!!!! huh!
p.s. this is a couple of week older post, publishing now the situation has seen many new turns since then!