mahesh left for bangalore early this morning. after he returns, things are going to be very different, because i’m going home too. i quit yesterday.

mahesh and i have been more than just colleagues or ‘best’ friends…we have had our great moments, and we have battled our cold wars too… we patched our differences often thinking that the other had come to make up first, and then we laughed our hearts out, crying, scolding and calling each other names.

at home during my engagement in june, we exchanged surprised glances when my mother introduced him to family members and friends saying “he’s so much like a brother to her. they know each other since three or four years now.” actually, we met just a year ago as colleagues at zdnet india. but that’s how well he knows me, my strengths, and my weaknesses…

one day, he said he’s going to change me. and that he’s decided to adopt larry ellison’s ‘drill-down’ “management-by-ridicule” method to teach me to grow up and be independent, and guess what, it worked (well, ok, at least 86.236 percent, right?).

he’s been a serious teacher and i, a willing but very difficult student. ummm, for my part, i put sincere effort into cooking (since three weeks ;-), and he’s been an obedient guinea pig…trusting me completely with what i cook, encouraging me with wishlists for paneer dishes and packs of ready-to-make caramel custard for dessert 🙂

it is not easy to define our “laurel-and-hardy” friendship. but, as our friend swapna puts it, “…it’s the ‘purest relationship’ i have ever known”.

hmm, i know things will be very different some months from now, even more some years from now. i also know, that people come, and people go. but mahesh, you’ll always remain the only best friend i grew mad at so often, and i think i am going to miss your classes for a long time to come.

thanks mattoo, for everything 🙂

i wish there was an option on tv that gives you a preview of all the channels on a single screen. how else would i know what i’m missing … there could be an excellent movie on HBO while i’m watching my favourite re-run of f.r.i.e.n.d.s (that’s right, they just play re-runs now) or a cartoon filler elsewhere.

i was channel-surfing again after haqueeqat and i landed on star movies. they were playing ardh-satya, or the half-truth. it was a movie i had wanted to see many years ago, but my parents did not let me watch it because they felt it was too violent for my system.

the movie was about this honest and quiet policeman who got into the police because his tyrant father forced him to — and then found oppression everywhere. unable to hold on to his idealistic principles for too long, he turns murderer and kills two people. the first victim is an innocent thief that he vents his frustration on, and the second is a corrupt underworld don who offers to ‘buy’ him in exchange of his job, and life. the irony here is that our policeman goes to the don for help in the first place because he sees no way out of his guilt and shame.
read a better review here.

just a few weeks ago, i encountered an irate policeman who no one, not even my father wanted to mess with, and wondered why we make beasts out of them.

i guess the half-truth attempted to give us a fair idea.

this brings me to another issue…

i realised that there was not much violence depicted in the movie. enough perhaps, to shake my ideals of “truth” in the age of blatant corruption. so, my question is:
are parents justified in not allowing their children to watch such movies?

by letting children grow in pseudo-concepts of satyamev jayate (truth alone triumphs), aren’t they shielding their face away from the real truth?

ps: here’s a confession that might help you look at this question in a different light — to this date, i cannot sit through a violent or noisy movie without squirming in my seat nervously, biting my nails or going white with fear.

my parents, as would anyone’s, meant well. but should i be grateful, or should i be sorry?

i watched the last 45 minutes of the classic hindi movie haqeeqat last evening. directed by chetan anand (dev anand’s brother).
the movie was based on the 1962 indo-china border war.

sometimes i wonder…for those of us who have not been subjected to any circumstance of war (yet), is there some lesson in life being denied to us?

ps: the internet never ceases to amaze me. while i searched for more details about the war and the movie, google threw up ugly news that the pretty actress in the movie, priya rajvansh was strangled to death in her bathroom in real life.

more of saturday to continue…

for the first time in many saturdays, i woke up at 7:30 am. and i had one nice long day….

9:15 am. LP bus stop.
Having waited for the thane bus for over 30 minutes, i decided to take the bus#512 to mulund, which is a slightly longer route. or at least i thought it was!

though the detour proved very time-consuming for me, i enjoyed the ride through the fresh rain-washed areas of sanpada, turbhe market, vashi, kopar khairane, the cidco flyover (at the end of which i discovered a beautiful three-storey architecture — the helen keller institute for the deaf and deaf-blind), ghansoli, airoli, mulund and finally the chek-naka where i had to get off.

as the passengers got off along the way, the ticket collector (or ‘conductor’, that’s what they’re still called) in the bus seemed to get restless about where i had to get off, and asked me at least thrice at intervals of 20 to 30 mins each (the entire journey lasted two hours). finally, at mulund, when the bus was almost empty of all passengers, he picked on the young gentleman sitting next to me.

after asking him to show his ticket, he took him aside and i could hear him uttering some stern words. the boy soon seated himself ahead on another seat. shaking off my curiosity, i got back to observing the busy streets of mulund when i heard the conductor call me again…

i almost told him that if he didnt want me on the bus, i could get off rightaway, when he leaned closer to me and said: “madam, if you feel uncomfortable with someone sitting next to you and doesn’t vacate the seat even when there’s place elsewhere, you must feel free to complain. we’ll see to it that he’s thrown out.”

i could see that there was no point in explaining to the smugly smiling conductor that i did not experience any such problem. he seemed to be stubbornly concerned about my safety.

obviously, my intincts warned me otherwise.

2:00 pm. lunch at chitti’s house
i had woken up with the realisation that this would be my last rakshabandhan here in bombay.

and it was also not going to be one of the happiest. but i guess this had to happen some day. we’re all growing up and (geographically) apart, and rakhi day will never be the same when all of us cousins used to get together at least once a year.

anyways, this year it meant a simple lunch at my chitti’s home and later in the evening, snacks at another aunty’s place. what made me blog this day is something i always observe when women get together in the kitchen. be it mothers, aunts or even you (perhaps in a few years), they just *have* to have a grudge against someone who did not turn up, or, if he or she or they did turn up, why it had to be the way they did.

surely, women must have better things to talk about, better things to share and teach. so do all of them have a gossip tongue that surfaces later in life? which reminds me…what language do men use to gossip?

late after lunch, i was back home browsing through an international magazine. i found it surprising that most non-working women are referred to as house-wives in india, while abroad they’re called home-makers. hmm, big difference.

more of saturday to continue…

indians are known for the family values they cherish, and perhaps learn to ‘maintain’ over generations.

children are taught to respect their elders by touching their feet every time they meet, women are ‘expected’ to wear a bindi and cover their head in their in-laws’ presence. apart from the mandatory visits to the temple or lighting of a diya at home in the morning and evening, women are also expected to pray to god for their husband’s long life and prosperity and maintain fasts for the same reason. more often than not (read, always) these traditions are based on blind superstitions.

i too was brought up with the same indian values. somewhere along the way however, i drifted apart, and i began to reason them. in spite of many instances when i have questioned these traditions, i never got a convincing reply. i should not be surprised, if i’m labelled (for want of a better word) a ‘rebel’ of sorts. why, just last week, my sister covered up for me when my chitti (aunt) asked me why i did not want to visit the temple. she told chitti that i was having my periods (the superstitious among indians consider women ‘impure’ during this time). she wasnt lying, but the real reason was that i don’t believe in worshipping idols, and i cannot pretend to be what i’m not.

however, as a human being, i hold due respect for every other. in people, i look for teachers who i can learn from, and i seek blessings of those who bring out that emotion inside me. since a little over a year, my grasping of religion made me realise that i do *not* need a god to fall back on. if god is being true and god is being sincere, i look for that god within me, not outside…

i think i am a fair human being. but in a few months from now, as i am an indian, and also a girl, many things are going to change for me. i’m getting married.

after november 25, 2001, i will belong to another family. i have been told that i will have to learn to abide by their customs and traditions. hopefully, one of us will learn soon enough. but i am afraid and i hope i don’t hurt them in this new role.

…like i might have this morning.

prasanth, my to-be brother-in-law brought in some gifts that praveen sent with his friend who was in india for a vacation. prasanth had left his home (badlapur) as early as 4 am and reached nerul after a detour at vikhroli and chembur, from where he had to collect the gift. unfortunately for him, i had been unwell all of yesterday… i also had had a very late night, so i was half-asleep and totally disoriented when i opened the door to him at 7 in the morning.

he gave me the packet. he left. i went back to sleep. after about 90 minutes of sleep i woke up with a start. i let him go without offering him even a glass of water!!

it has been the most embarrassing event of my life. had he informed me earlier, things would surely have been different, but what happened today cannot be undone either. (sorry prasanth!)

my family, quite understandably, is very concerned. and i am too, but for a different reason. they say i’ve been independent for too long, and i’ve been given a lot of ‘freedom’. perhaps they would be surprised to know, that i am only too grateful to them for having broadened my mind.

as for values and religious teachings…aren’t they just an attempt to bring out the good in a human being? so in my new family, if i fail their expectations of a very ‘homely’ daughter-in-law, will i be qualified as a bad person?

can’t i just ‘be’?

mahesh found it surprising that i had never come across this poem by rabindranath tagore before…

Where The Mind is Without Fear

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake

after i read it, i too was surprised for the same reason.

i have resigned from zdnet india. my last day here will be august 24, after which I will have two whole months to myself before my marriage.

funny, its just like vacation after school before being promoted to the next class. only here, school started a month after graduation (july 1995) to five years later (august 2001), with not a single more-than-four-day break between classes.

now that i have two months to myself, there are many things i plan to do. i’m going to list them here, bookmark this page…and perhaps november 24 (if i can smuggle some time for my journal on the eve of my wedding) i’ll do a check on how far i could fulfil these…
(these are not necessarily in the same order)

• update my journal *regularly*
• learn to drive
• read a LOT…comics, magazines, novels, more! (dont want to lose touch with technology trends either)
• cooking
• catch up with my friends – sanjeev, jayashree, prakash, gulnar, gourav, malini, deepak, siy, satya and many others
• catch up with my dear dear granny and all my cousins and uncles and aunts
• brush up my hand pottery and paint
• freelance
• watch lots of f.r.i.e.n.d.s 🙂
• shoot pictures
• plan for life after marriage (ok ok, WIPE that grin off your face X-(

at the police station one afternoon…

police: WHAT SORT OF AN ADDRESS IS THIS? WHO FILLED THIS FORM?
me: excuse me! just because you’re the police doesnt mean you can raise your voice and talk so rudely. besides you aren’t even in your uniform!!
police: well, who filled this form anyway! it’s the wrong address. do you expect the police to waste time hunting down your house??
me: hmm, ok, sorry about the address. it was the passport agent who filled the form. BUT you have no right to treat us like this. you aren’t doing me a favour by verifying my passport.
and just by the way, didnt you notice the telephone number also mentioned in the address? you could have saved your three days of hunting by simply calling that number you know…
police: i detest these passport agents. they just loot money from suckers like you. why couldnt you get it done from the passport office yourself?
me: yeah right. i just saw how you extracted rs 50 from the man who was just here…you just show a yellow piece of paper and say its for police “savings”. you dint even allow him to talk…had he refused, his passport would be lost in one of your files…
police: hmmm, anyway, what are you going abroad for?
me: i’m getting married
police: have you ever been in jail?
me: what?
police: arre baba, have you ever been in jail? do you have a case on your head?
me: well, (seething now) not yet…
police: (pointing to the picture in *my* form…) is this you?
me: of course it is me, who does it look like to you!?

20 minutes of unwarranted mental torture. but of course, this conversion is just how i would have liked it to be. The dialogues by the policeman however, have not been edited by me.

i have always hated two kinds of professionals: doctors, and the police. today i had to go to the police station for my passport verification. i was unwell and the fever, since two days, was steady at 102. it was raining and i was feeling drowsy and irritable with the medicines i was asked to take.

all the way my father lectured about how i should shed away my hatred for the police, and that the last thing my family wanted was trouble because of me…i have this uncanny habit of speaking the right thing to the right person at the right time. only, that’s what i think it is.

so, it was a deal then. i promised a complete bias-free approach, and we were in the police station soon enough. the real conversation that took place between us was something like this…

police: WHAT SORT OF AN ADDRESS IS THIS? WHO FILLED THIS FORM?
me: huh! (how can they be so predicatble!)
achchan: (interrupting me) uh oh…i did tell the passport agent to fill in the correct address…i’m sorry about the trouble you’d to take.
police: i detest these passport agents. they just loot money from suckers like you. why couldnt you get it done from the passport office yourself?
achchan: (not allowing me to answer) well, it takes a whole day…we can’t really afford that much time you know…
police: hmmm, anyway, what are you going abroad for?
achchan: (again nudging me to shut up…) she’s going for a vacation to europe, that’s all. she’ll be back soon…
(i was angry with my father for the lie he told…it wasn’t necessary!! i was beginning to get up, anyway it was he who was doing all the answering. but he forced me back on my seat, gesturing that it was alright.)
police: have you ever been in jail?
me: what?
police: arre baba, have you ever been in jail? do you have a case on your head?
me: no, not yet
police: (pointing to my picture…) is this you?
me: yes.

the 20 minute ordeal was finally over. my father had a lot of explaining to do. according to him (and a few other ‘elders’ in the family), it is best not to meddle with the police. hmm, so is telling them the truth called ‘meddling’? no, he said. but the common opinion is that the lesser the time spent at a police station, the more hassle-free your life will be.

sorry, but i don’t get it yet.

first we make beasts out of the policemen, then we make liars out of ourselves. there seems to be a big mistake hidden in this picture. where is it?

some days ago swapna opened up to me. she’d read a post on my journal, and as she went on to read a few more other blogs, she was surprised to see how the web can just open up a person’s secrets for everyone to see….
so she came and talked to me…shared with me something that was on her mind for some time.

as she talked, i realised how much i’d been missing quality time with a (girl)friend. i’ve had a few very close friends since school…surprisingly, it’s always been one-person-at-a-time…

NEVER believe commercials that say ‘apple juice’, especially when they mix it with aerated water.

yechchch!!

rumour is that they’re also going to introduce mirinda watermelon soon!
no thank you, i like my fruit juice plain.