The Hidden Genes...

The world has become smaller, flights have become cheaper, far corners of the world have become connected, travel for everyone has become affordable. But there are some things that will never change. Even though a couple of years ago, scientists have uncovered the human gene map - there will have to conduct a similar investigative process to understand what makes your average Indian tick because lets admit it, they are some hidden DNAs there which have equipped us with a slightly altered skill set. Now you may think what has the first sentence got to do with the second sentence, and here is the missing link. 

We have all heard of the Chinese whisper phenomenon, whisper a story into the first person's ears and by the time the tenth person repeats this story, it has gained detail, facts and whole lot of masala. I am willing to bet money that even though a Chinese may have started the story, an Indian finished it because we have a natural talent for exaggeration. It comes so naturally that while we are saying it, we can hear voices in our head telling us "actually it was 2 people not 25!!" We are so good, that we know the exact spot where the exaggeration has taken place, because the listener (if an Indian) will also hear a voice in their head saying "actually it was 2 people not 25!!" But guess what, if the listener then became the narrator, the DNA will kick in and make him or her commit the same crime. I have to be honest there are some who will try to fight against it because as they narrate the story, the number will become 20-25 people so then it is left upon the listener to interpret as he or she wishes.

Ok, I know what you are thinking - I have yet again strayed from the first sentence. Right, take an airport, ANY airport, put non-Indians in a queue for the flight check-in counter and the check-in process flows though like clock work. Now remove the non-indians and put a chunk of indian travellers in their place, and what you have is a series of hiccups. Another well-hidden DNA is the art of bargaining - we love to bargain, and it can be for anything. Weight restrictions mentioned on a ticket is just detail, I mean what does 20 kgs mean because you can never pack it to exactly 20 kgs, if it is a bit over, surely it will be ok. 23 is fine, but then so should 25 kgs right?? Oh come on, if 25 kgs is ok, 30 should be no problem at all. If there were a sign on top of check-in counters which written in human blood said "any person or being who will argue with the check-in attendant regarding the weight restriction will be found in violation of airport ethics and will immediately be shot dead at point blank range with a single bullet to the head", the next indian who walks up to the check-in counter will argue "well ok what if you were to shoot me in the arm, would you then allow me to check-in 25 kgs and both arms for 30 kgs?" We cant help it, it just kicks in, we know its going to happen so we dont fight it. Its very common to go to a Indian restaurant, befriend the waiter with some light-hearted banter, get him to pay some extra attention to the table and when the bill comes, look him/her straight in the eye and say "Hahahaha you should give us a discount" as if the likelihood of his life and restaurant hinged on me and my family's eating habits. I have done it, I am not proud of it, it has not always worked but will I stop doing it? Its a rhetorical question...

Last but not least, we are a very opinionated lot, we have an opinion on everything. And the best part is, you will hear it whether you like it or not. Politics, movies, fashion, sports..pick a topic, any topic - we will talk about it with so much confidence as if we had spent several nights reading about it while the rest were busy partying and socialising after work. Any PhD student specialising in these areas in the immediate surroundings would immediately pop a cyanide pill because they wouldnt be able to handle the pressure of this river of knowledge that is streaming towards their earspace with the might of a 1001 galloping horses.

But GOD has been very cruel with Indians and I will tell you why. The qualities (as they are considered in this part of the world) are indirectly proportional to the amount of power or authority you have. If you are at the very (low) end of the food chain, the talent is so abundant that it might just rub off on people sitting next to you faster than you can spread the H1 virus you have been carrying around. As you move up, somehow the brain begins to take over the mouth - even though you are thinking it, and you want to say it, you cannot. A good example is the politics in India, while campaigning you will hear so much BS that if the Oscars had a category for handing out awards for the best BS, it might be easier to stand in a pit full of angry red ants while poking your eyes with a toothpick rather than picking a winner. Once they come to power, they become rather diginified atleast during public appearances although I think once they are within the confines of personal space, they have to start blurting out random facts & figures like torrets syndromes till the violent spasms stop.

Raise your hand if you see any amount of exaggeration in this blog - honestly, it required no effort. My brain uses more energy while trying to deciper whether that peculiar smell that has all the qualities of a well-oiled curry and a dash of sulfur has just wafted in through the open windows, or when I raised myself to adjust the cushions, I involuntarily relaxed some muscles.....

The Grass Aint Greener...

I have spent most of my life in the part of the world where at the hint of a few rays of sun straying through the clouds on the unsuspecting few below, clothes start peeling off as pale people stream out in their hundreds, pack their families into cars for a 2-hour drive to closest beach side through road-rage traffic. The beach is packed to the brim, every free spot is used to park some part of anatomy, and by evening these people start the trip back home, what now looks like a bunch of red lobsters edging forward. 

I come from the part of the world where the sun is taken for granted, people will wait in their houses till the sunshine dies down. If they have to be outside for one reason or the other, they will skip from air-conditioned malls, into air-conditioned cars and then back to their air-conditioned houses. Every effort is made to ensure not even one ray of sun accidentally falls on them.

Enormous amounts of money will be spent on sun tan lotions and warm sunny holidays to ensure a nice even tan, because anything is better than looking pale. Its cool to look brown, in fact, some people have pushed it so far that they start to look the orange, they have surpassed the subtle border between looking cool and looking cooked & ready to eat.

Enormous amounts of money are spent on fairness creams to lighten the colour of the skin, the creams are called Fair & Lovely. Funnily enough they had only this brand and some men found it quite embarrassing to pick this up for themselves, the company picked up on this and came out with Fair & Handsome - how is that for responding to the customer's needs. In Bollywood movies, the hero or the good guy always gets the good looking 'fair' woman, and similarly all the main actors are fair in colour. Ads automatically equate dark-looking women as tired working women whose complexion has been darkened by exposure to everyday hustle & bustle, and of course, these women need help to get rid of their tiredness and also become fairer which also helps restoring their self-confidence.

One issue, two parts of the world, two perspectives....there is only one side to be on, the side of the companies who are making money no matter what the situation is - if you are dark, we can make you whiter, and if you are too white, we can help you with that too!!!

Welcome to India..

..and I dont mean that in a sarcastic way at all. What really gets my balls in a twist are the Indians who are living abroad, especially the ones from the good old US of A, come to India on a vacation and have a look of awe and amazement when they order a coffee and two samosas at the airport and are charged around 80 Rupees, thats about 1.20 euros to you and me. They will then roll their eyes and mutter something like "Oh welcome to India!!"...just because when their parents left India, a coffee and two samosas was probably 20 euro cents, a wink, a flash of the yellow cavities and a how do you do. Well guess what folks, development comes with a price. I admit I am the first one to moan about the various problems in India, like I suppose, any person would about their own country but I also appreciate the fact that despite a population of over a billion, the British having raped us of the wealth we had once owned - we are coming into our own. They had the might but we have the brains, it is only a matter of time now. Investments have been pouring into India, the job market is fertile, salaries are shooting up, people can afford more and of course, as a result of this, the cost of living will go up. But these Indians who live abroad, there is a difference between them and the Indians back home. The ones abroad are a tight lot, I mean financially, and somehow they tend to be more traditional. While people back home are moving with the times, becoming more broad-minded, changing attitudes, earning more money, chasing the bigger car, the bigger apartment and the skinnier women, the ones abroad are stuck in a time warp. They want to come back home to the same traditional India where the price never changes, attitudes never change so that they can then escape to the 'better life' when they have had their fill of 4 weeks of vacation time. Now when they come back, I bet they feel cheated, because if they had stayed back they could have been doing just as well here but now they are abroad, settled there, their kids dont want to come back, and you cant super-size your meals here to an earlier deathbed.

On the flip side, on my bus while transferring airports was an American kid on a exchange programme from a small town somewhere in the south of Yahoomerica. An elderly uncleji with the best American accent after living abroad for so many years (every now and then the Indian tongue would slip in a googly) engaged this young man in conversation, I overheard him saying that he has never travelled before, his biggest worry was changing airports in New York and that he was in India to live in a small town with a host family and attend school for the next 11 months. I cant remember the sequence of events, but I let out a huge giggle and prayed for the young man..it aint going to be easy. A family sitting in the front of the bus also overheard this conversation, turned around and asked him which family he is staying with and it turns out that they are from the same town and are family friends. They told him how to get there, what to expect, exchanged contact details in case he needed any help because they were heading elsewhere for a short vacation. 1 billion people in India, what are the odds that you are new in a country, sitting in a bus changing airports, heading to a small town most Indians have not heard of, to live for 11 months and then you meet people who will help you out along the way.

Two people, both apprehensive - one will experience new things, find it very difficult but in the end will add a new dimension to his life and perspective, while the other finds it easy but is not willing to let go of what he knows and accept what is real....guess the winner!!

6 interesting facts..

....that will change your life forever!!!
a. At the nearest point, Russia & America are less than 4 kms apart
b. 5 piranha fish can chew up a horse and its rider in 7 minutes
c. The syllable OUGH can be pronounced in 9 different ways:A rough , dough-faced thoughtful ploughman emerged from a slough to walkthrough the streets of Scarborough, coughing and hiccoughing.
d. A newborn Kangaroo is small enough to fit in a teaspoon
e. Hot water freezes quicker than cold water
f. Half the world's population has seen at least one James Bond movie

FYI: these were written on a plastic bag, shop & learn at the same time...

Understanding the opposite sex..

In the age of emails, among the forwards, spam, and jokes I receive on a daily basis, something caught my attention as my brain was engaged in the arduous task, an automatic in-built mechanism which starts where gmail anti-spam filter stops, of filtering rubbish from something worth reading. These were pearls of wisdom, the man who put this list together, has managed to document a language which men have been trying to understand for years. So..if you are man, and if you have messed up in the past by just believing what she says, and by believing I mean just taking her 'word' for it, help is at hand. I share this list with you..some I knew and rest I shall make every effort to memorise..

NINE WORDS WOMEN USE

(1) Fine: This is the word women use to end an argument when they are right and you need to shut up.

(2) Five Minutes: If she is getting dressed, this means a half an hour. Five minutes is only five minutes if you have just been given five more minutes to watch the game before helping around the house.

(3) Nothing: This is the calm before the storm. This means something, and you should be on your toes. Arguments that begin with nothing usually end in fine.

(4) Go Ahead: This is a dare, not permission. Don't Do It!

(5) Loud Sigh: This is actually a word, but is a non-verbal statement often misunderstood by men. A loud sigh means she thinks you are an idiot and wonders why she is wasting her time standing here and arguing with you about nothing. (Refer back to # 3 for the meaning of nothing.)

(6) That's Okay: This is one of the most dangerous statements a women can make to a man. That's okay means she wants to think long and hard before deciding how and when you will pay for your mistake.

(7) Thanks: A woman is thanking you, do not question, or faint. Just say you're welcome. (I want to add in a clause here - This is true, unless she says 'Thanks a lot' - that is PURE sarcasm and she is not thanking you at all. DO NOT say 'you're welcome' . that will bring on a 'whatever').

(8) Whatever: Is a woman's way of saying F-- YOU!

(9) Don't worry about it, I got it: Another dangerous statement, meaning this is something that a woman has told a man to do several times, but is now doing it herself. This will later result in a man asking 'What's wrong?' For the woman's response refer to # 3.


Good luck...go forth and leave a slightly more peaceful life....

The state of being happy..

Very often in life, someone will ask you "are you happy?" - I never know what the ideal answer to this question is. Is it possible to be happy all the time without being on excessive amounts of drugs or alcohol? Even when you are in a relationship, you have your good moments, you have your ok moments and then you have your bad moments but its usually a mixture of those that is a necessity in life to keep things from getting mundane.

Going back to the question, it all depends on when you get asked. I decided to find out what the more intellectual crowd had to say about being happy:

"Independence is happiness" - Susan B. Anthony
Its pretty obvious that Susan died alone in an apartment with a cat who kept meowing because the dead woman on the floor wouldnt feed it.

"The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family." - Thomas Jefferson
I think Thomas had very good intentions when he wrote this, but of course the key word was missing from this sentence: "not", i.e. "The happiest moments of my life have not been the few which I...". Its alway sad when a ex-Presidents words are misinterpreted.

"Happiness is a Swedish sunset -- it is there for all, but most of us look the other way and lose it." - Mark Twain
I think Mr Twain has hit the nail on the head with this quote, its so easy to overlook the moments of hapiness we have because it is usually the simple things that make us happy but the simple things never register, because the natural course of human emotions is to constantly yearn for more.

I still dont know the answer to the question, so the next time someone asks me, I will tell them how I feel at that very precise moment, the answer could be very different if they ask me again five minutes later. An apt ending to this blog:

"Happiness is the interval between periods of unhappiness." - Don Marquis

Blogger's block..

Its been quite some time since my last blog, I have a book full of excuses that I could use, but the truth is that there has been a serious lack of inspiration along with a deadly dose of laziness. During the week, often while stuck in traffic, topics appear in a flash of brilliance, but a bout of an alcohol-filled friday can reset the thought process back to ground zero. To counter this, I shall carry a notepad in order to record all these topics - the saturday (with a hangover) will mostly likely be reminiscent of a scene from Memento where I re-trace my life in reverse chronological order to try and understand what the words on the notepad mean..what was I thinking..where was I...what does it all mean?!?! Could be fun...