A late reply

I am a troubled soul. You possibly can't tell that looking at me- all chirpy and vivacious every time we run into each other but deep down inside today I am a troubled soul. My soul, dear friends, is troubled.

Before you start wondering what is wrong and go through the entire drill of - "Is she okay? Do I call and check? How much does an STD cell to cell call cost? Maybe an sms is the right thing to do. No wait sms is Rs. 2 per national sms. Maybe I will just ping her next time I see her on Gtalk?" - I will just tell you what the matter is. Succinctly.

A friend of mine accused me yesterday of being a Congressi and a hypocrite. ‘You all are such HYPOcrites!’, he said. He stressed on the ‘hypo’ part for a little longer than necessary. Among the heated words exchanged which are now acknowledged as ‘deeply regretted’ were sprinklings of accusations that I have heard quite often –that I am apathetic, that it is because of people like me that the majority has to suffer and that how much longer was I willing to tolerate this unnecessary and uncalled for appeasement.

Now I didn't quite like that. I agree I am not the most active of political beings in the country. And if you are looking to give someone the ‘best citizen’ award I will not be on your list of nominations. You can also safely discount almost all I say about politics and politicians as clichéd yuppie responses. My knowledge about the Indian politic is abysmal and my inclination to changing this in near future is negligible.

But still this so called ‘Pilibhit brand of reasoning’ annoys me immensely. What is further infuriating is when people judge me for not sharing their prejudices. I mean, why should I share your prejudices when I have a truck load of my own! My friend said the C word (Congressi) as if it were a bad thing to be ; as if Congress was the genesis of all things bad happening to this country. I don’t buy that. For the record I am not a Congressi. I am not a clan obssessed follower of the party as most Congressis are made out to be. Nor am I enamoured with the Gandhi mystique. My appreciation of any political party is very limited. I am the person who in all political discussions comes out with the cliched "Chor hain sab" response and dismisses all politicians with a wave of hand. But yes, I do respect Sonia Gandhi for her grit, her ethical, standards and her resolve.

Generations of my family might probably swear by Congress party but I have not inherited their political enthusiasm. My views on politics reflect the same lackadaisical ambivalence that is characteristic of all my other views. But still if push comes to shove my leaning would be towards Congress than parties who favor communal polarization. What took a gentleman 16 years and Rs. 9 crores to prove was something I was already aware of. I had in fact visited Ayodhya many years back and had seen the make shift temple that exists there. I had then been proudly shown the preparations that were being undertaken for making the new temple.

But S. said his stuff with a lot of vehemence and a lot less sense. He gave me the usual - "toh tum kya Itlay jaa kar PM ban sakti thi. Hum log bahut tolerant hain." Now I never discuss politics with friends especially friends who don't share my political views. But if in a discussion, I would rather people stick with facts and rationality than mere rhetoric and unexplained bias.

But this isn’t the troublesome part. The issue troubling me since last night is that I did not have a befitting reply ready. All the things I wrote just now well I didn’t say any of that. I just let the other person speak his mind, made some feeble excuse and hung up. Somehow arguing then didn’t make much sense and escalating this discussion seemed a tad foolish. And this is troubling me. I wish I could go back and argue my facts. I cant now. Hence, this post. :)

Grilled chicken sandwich and 10 cents philosophy

I stood on the seventh floor balcony of a high rise today waiting for my grilled chicken sandwich (from here on acronymed as GCS) dinner. The city lights looked dazzling. There weren’t any high rises blocking my view and I could see numerous homes, small shops, busy roads all lit up bright. I stood facing the airport and I saw a plane land and another takeoff. Turning right at a distance, I had the Hussain Sagar with its necklace road and to my left was a good friend with misguided tastes in food. I mean watermelon juice with GCS! My stout refusal to drink that stuff didn't go down that well till I explained my eating mantra: always stick with stuff that fattens you up. Nothing that's healthy ever tastes nice. If you don’t believe me try sprouts, soya nuggets and goat milk. I have never tried the last one and I am quite positive it would be an enjoyable experience for you. Let me know how did it go.

Standing there looking at the city, I felt the standard cliched emotions that we feel sometimes while waiting for our GCS and wondering what drink our friends are ordering for us. I could spy a small section of a busy road and could see plethora of vehicles rushing through to wherever they were supposed to be. I focused on the same and wondered what the man on the scooter that just zipped by was thinking? Or why was that car in such a rush?

I wondered rather predictably - how each and every of the myriad lights in front of me denoted a human life as intricate and complex as mine. How each of those people would be so wrapped up in their daily struggle for survival that they would never take time to ponder on the irrelevance of it all. How maybe they had for a moment thought about the irrelevance but then chose to move on. How we carefully everyday nurture our illusion that we are in command of what happens to us. How we fret away the present for the future. How losing love is heart breaking because we simply assume that we will live forever and in that long life this person will be missed everyday. And how fooled are we by randomness. I contemplated my insignificance in the grand scheme of things and wondered how much more time will my GCS take to get ready?

Then fifteen minutes and half a GCS later I thought what makes all this brilliant is that I am experiencing it. It is the ‘I’ that makes it so. Maybe all my emotions are cliched and all my thoughts are trivial. But the fact that I experienced the world with them makes the world what it is. This is my story, my song and no matter how I chose to live it – the fact that I do makes all the difference.

Immediately following this thought was the realization that this is too cliched. I mean scare some one a little, make them face their mortality and everyone becomes a philosopher for 15 minutes. The transiency of these emotions made me decide to hold on to them for little longer. So then came the next round of expected affectations. “Lets be grateful for what we have”.

And this is what I want to blog about. :)

So please identify 10 things you are thankful for. I am tagging you. It is a tag so you gotta do it otherwise for/over the next 10 days - your land lord will evict you, you lover will dump you, you will be forced through sit for long boring meetings with no coffee or gtalk, you will never find an empty cab when you need one and whenever you switch on a music channel you will only catch music of Himesh bhai. And lets not make it standard stuff like mummy papa nana nani dada dadi bhaiya bhabhi pinky and phrens. Get creative, people!