Gen Next

As we were standing outside cool joint in Jayanagar, Avilash and I exchanged a WOW as a female passed us. She was headed to a pub. Just a normal sight that I am trying to get used to - girls frequenting such places. As we entered the pub after a few minutes I saw something unusal. The girl that we saw was actually with her husband, another couple and their kid. As the two couples were enjoying their sip of alcohol and the music, their 6 year old kid was sitting at the bar. 6 year old kid, for god's sake!! And then people around me told me that there is a separate family section in most pubs. Family section!! Pub is just a fancier, more expensive version of a bar. They still serve alcohol. People do get drunk here. And this has a family section!!
Along with being conservative, I also border on hypocrisy. Although I go to such places, I would prefer not to see a girl in there. I cannot go out with my girl to a pub (thats in case I had one). Just that I would not feel comfortable. Since I cannot do much about females going to the pub, I had no choice but to come to terms with during the last few months. Of course, I had never thought that I would ever see a 6 year old in a place of this kind. No. Not in my wildest dreams! So there arises no question of acceptance or defiance.
During the bangalore habba (bangalore festival) KF had a counter to sell beer in the food court in palace grounds. They say beer is not alcohol. Its more like water. Excuse me?
I know a 6th std kid who surfs porn. He is one of the smatest kids that I have seen( of course not becasue he surfs porn!). He tells me that he goes to cyber center quite freuently. He was caught by one of my friends watching a 'movie' on his computer. Strictly not acceptable. Will the parents get to kow about it?I dont think so.. But may be they were linient enough for the kid to start exploring such stuff.
Another kid that I met the other day would not be more than 12 years. His tounge was surprisingly bad coming from a family that I know. I used my first swear word when I came to my 11th std. That would be 16. And had sworn to never use it again. Then in 12th that swearing became common. And this kid is 5 years smarter than I am.. :). We can either laugh about it, crib about it or blame some one.
The new year's eve when we were at 'the club', I saw a boy aged around 12 carrying a beer glass in his hand. I was just hoping that he was carrying it for his dad. Did not eventually find out who he was carrying it for. So I dont feel too bad about it. I dont know the truth there ..
Vice is a vice and has to be accepted as a vice. If selling beer in public, drinking beer in public or taking your kid to the bar is cool, then you need mentoring. Incidents like this get me thinking if the generation next would even consider listening to what elders have to say. Pay heed to their advice. Respect them. Then I find comfort in telling my self - its about how our generation brings up their kids. So its entirely upto us as to how they behave.

Who better than who?

The much talked about Benny Hinn recently visited bangalore to pray for India. It was all over the paper about BJP and the Hindu samaj opposing it and the Benny Hinn defending his stance. The hindus samaj (BJP, VHP and other utterly jobless facions) were scared that the much too preserved hindu community would get converted to christianity. Mr. Hinn said he was not here for conversion. You can only laugh about the statements made by both the groups.

Some people are obsessed with conversion, others have a problem with it. Why? To make it a political agenda? BJP says, hindus dont support or practice conversion. Sure, christianity does not say it does not support conversion. They are letting people know about their relegion. What is wrong? May be I am a hindu and tend to be more critical about my birth relegion. May be I want my birth relegion to be the perfect and all accomodating one. What ever be it, conversion is not wrong. But mass conversion is wrong. There is a difference, and you surely can see it. A crowd always thinks as crowd. Not as a million individuals. It is always upto the oratory and the sweet talking of the convener of the meeting to make the crowd support or oppose his thinking. The crowd does not have the ability to express its intelligence and discreetion. And the mass convertionists(if thats a word) take complete advantage of this. I hope and want to beleive that the BJP and the VHPs were scared of this event rather than conversion per se. A crowd acting out of ignorance is dangerous to the country. Specially in India, hinduism being the main relegiion (main in terms of population) it important to stop people from attending meeting of this kind. If I want to convert , I would go to the church and get myself converted. no one would stop me. Converion is a everyones birth right. Coaxing someone by their sweet talk to convert is a fraud and should be punishable by law. This does not even mean that I support the BJPs and the VHPs for their voilence, bus burning, stone pelting, window pane breaking etc. That was done to gain political mileage. But , in my opinion, it was upto the CM to allow or dis allow such an event or to keep it under strict vigilance and to lay the right ground rules of marketing and publicity.

No its not about that..

Am I running away from something? Everytime I say this I feel miserable about myself. But contemplating, I think thats true. But what am I running from? Do I know for sure? may be not. I have a hazy picture.

Now if it is true that I am running away, there are two options. 1. I figure out what it is and do what I am scared of or am running away from. 2. Figure out what it is and abandon it completely.
Actually these are not even options when you think about it. For example, one thing that hants most of us is the peer pressure. How ever much you try to shield yourself from it, it gets to you. You do not want to be part of the race. So you are running away from it. You have figured out the problem. But can you actually be part of the rat race? Would that kill your fear/frusrtation? On the contrary it would worsen it. Can you abandon it completely? There is no way you can do that. You will get sucked into it, willingly or unwillingly. To cite another example, the good old, time tested example, love failure. Becasue you cannot cope with the fact that you are no more with the person you adore the most, you tend to run. (Till a couple of days back when I watched Forrest Gump on TV for the nth time, I did not know why Tom Hanks runs after his girl leaves him. Now I know. He is not just running. He is trying to run away from his memories that haunt him.). Lets take option 1. (I am solving a love problem in a practical way! What an irony!)
I can do nothing about it in this case. I cannot forget about the whole thing. Niether can I do something about it. Talking practically, you should let go of the feelings associated with this girl. But life cannot be led too practically. ('Be practical in life' - is the best advice that you can give any one. Try following it sometime..). So you tend to be stuck in the middle - Trishanku swarga.

I am still stuck on the peer pressure. 'I want to change my career line.' I told a friend. He said - then do an MBA. Then I think, MBA.. hmm.. So either I be happy with my job or work harder for a job that I might or might not like. So I start exploring my options. How about Army. I would love that for all the fitness involved. Would definitly try it. Law - NLS does not ofer part time courses. Doing a full time course, if possible, would make me out of the lot. Peer pressure!!!
MS. Suffering enough doing a BE in computer science. No more key-boards and screens. Business. Viable option. But need a partner for it. hard to find. Will wait till I find one. Go onsite. Good option. Have to ask my manager. Get married. Well.. excellent option. But get over the first girl first. Then find another one. Tough task. As I have swayed from peer pressure to exploring the options, I realize that its a break that I am looking for and not exactly satisfying my greed for acchievement (wow.. thts a big word for a not so ambitious person. acchievement!! ).

Finally I decide that I have to do something with my life. But why? Am I not happy the way I am? So what if my neighbour earns more than me? So what if my class mate gets promoted before me? So what if my friend stays at onsite and I am at offshore? Hardly matters. Its all in the head. If you are not too ambitions, dont try to force yourself. Work as much as you can. Enjoy life. Your life should be more than your work. Things will allign itself in life. Dont try too hard. Make yourself feel good. Peer pressure is in the head. Its not what your friend is. It is what you feel your friend is.
Be cool have fun. Wanted to write aboout something else...

Namma Bengaluru.

I was a kid when I came to Bangalore. It was called the pensioners paradise..(ofcourse I did not know about it then.). It was not too long ago that Bangalore lost this coveted title. Just about 5-7 years. Driving down from office to home at 7 in the evening, I am surprised by the change that this city has gone through. I recollect my childhood days in this city…

Bangaloreans would find this nostalgic. Getting up in the morning to see the air covered with mist. Blowing the mist out of your lungs and show off like you are smoking. Inflating your mouth to create the vapor in your mouth and then trying all tricks of smoke rings. The nights used to be so cold that anyone hardly switched their fans on. Those nights swarmed with mosquitoes. The nights would be sleepless without a mosquitonet (machardani). Come jan feb, the peel of the avare kaalu in front of every house. More people stamp on the peel, tastier the dish made out of avare kaalu would be! (No idea how they came up with that!). MG road was the place where all the rich used to shop. Cycling upto school. When Maruti 800 was the best car that was seen on road. It was a matter of pride to own that car. When a lot of people owned TVS XL and Bajaj scoters. (I remember, my dads friend owned a bajaj chetak. That was damn cool then!). There were hardly any roads. But the roads that were, were good. Known for its potholes and ups and downs, Bangalore was still the place that we loved to be in. But even from then, Bangalore has been known for its pubs. But they were generally located away from total residential localities ( I mean jayanagar, koramangala, banashankari). The small population where everyone knew everyone else in a particular colony. Friends used to meet up at the corner kaka angadi to have chikki or balehannu ( never used to smoke. I still don’t!). A lot of things.

Bangalore seems to have irreversibly changed. Attribute this to IT or to the govt policies, or what ever. But all that a normal bangalorean knows is that he has lost all that for just a few rupees more. Floyd said :

“Did they get you to trade, your heroes for ghosts
Dark ashes for trees
Did you exchange, a walk on the part of the world to a dream role in the cage? Do you think you can tell?”

I feel sad. I cough the smoke out of my lungs as the truck passed me.

2004 and I

2004 would be counted as one of those satisfying years in my life. Satisfying in all respects. Emotionally, Socially, Financially and work wise. And these are in the order of priority that I rate these values/necessities and not in the order of how successfully I have achieved each. Frustration is contagious. If I am left in a world where nobody cribs, then I would be happy. And if I am stuck with a bunch of dissatisfied people, I would be no different from any of those. The point is, I am very easily influenced and convinced by people. Considering this, I was pretty unhappy in 2003. The salary hike issues, promotion issues, TCC issues, onsite etc etc. When you find one reason to be unhappy, then the rest of the reasons follow very easily. I did not have any scarcity of reasons for not being happy. Coming back to what I intend to write about.. (I have this really bad habit of swaying away from the topic).

So, Emotionally…I would not say that it was emotionally blissful. But there are quite a few things that made me realize what was right and what was not. For instance, my love life. All through my life I never asked myself, ‘why?’ Why do I do the things that I do? Why do I screw up things? Why don’t I listen to people? I avoided these topics. But certain circumstances forced me to answer these questions to myself. And I had answers as to why I do it. (That would be a separate blog by itself, so I would prefer to move on.). I realized that what I have been doing all this time was wrong. I am not embarrassed, guilty or sorry about anything that I have done. I just say it was wrong. I don’t want to sound too egoistic, but the point is , Accept things as they are. Love unconditionally. If someone cannot understand you or you could not understand someone, your love cannot materialize into a relationship. So what? She is still the best person you have met. You are still the best guy you have met.

One emotionally happiest moments was that I got to spend 10 months with my bother. I would cherish this all my life. I have certain things that I do not like about him. His acceptance of American culture, the change in his thinking and a few other things. I still enjoy going to him during weekends.

Socially… In the last one year I saw a completely different culture. The culture that has its own goods and bads, plusses and minuses. All said, in my opinion, the best part about the US culture is their socializing (closely follow is their entrepreneurial capability) . Socializing is a very scary word to be used when you are with a generation older than you. By socializing I do not mean one night stands and dance clubs. I mean talking to people in general. Its about talking in general. I needed US to teach me that I need to talk more. I need to be more open and express myself. This makes the life simpler. Introvertism makes you secluded from the group. I don’t say that everyone needs to go to US to know it. It happened that I realized it in the US. One noticeable thing in India – when you meet strangers you do not exchange smiles. Instead you exchange stares. Ever thought why? Are we not a cynical lot? Yes we are. In Milwaukee, when you see anyone on the streets, you first smile. That breaks the awkwardness. That’s my personal opinion. After all it is my personal blog!!

Financially, oh yeah. I made enough money in the last one year. But also realized that its not money that I long for. May be I was looking for that first couple of lakhs to start of with all the investment plans that I had. Never the less, the M factor brought in a lot of stability in my thoughts and in my approach. As I said , I get influenced by people easily. I wanted money because others wanted money. But now I don’t care about money as much as I care about what I want to do with it. Investments, tax savings, stocks. My financial stability gave me opportunity to give a shape to these.

Work wise... Work comes last in priority of these four. But what US taught me was, be happy with your work. You are a part of a system. And the purpose of the system is to make your life and others life simpler and more comfortable. The limit of money you want in life is in your head. But I have to mention that the work during my stay in the US was good. There was a lot of interaction with the clients and was interesting to pick their mannerisms, to know how they think and to know what they think about you. So that was very satisfying.

Having said all this, now I am confused. Did these things that I mentioned made me happy or was I happy and so the things worked out the way they did. I am not sure. But yes, at the end of it all I would like to repeat this performance in 2005. I have started with a good note. Hope things take a good shape.