For the love of......

For some very weird reason I have always had a knack of getting attracted towards old faded stuff. I cannot help myself but get drawn towards faded, old battered clothes, yellowed books, rusted jewellery, old men (George Clooney – Sexy!!) or anything else for that matter. I love the rustiness of it all and the urge to rescue them overpowers me. Each of them has a story. The slick lines on their body, the washed colours, and the broken edges, torn like scars on a soldier. So yeah that’s me probably being weird for the rest of the world but well, I hardly care!

On a recent shopping spree, I invariably got engaged in an endless haggling match with a second-hand book vendor. Unfortunately since I do not have a continuous stream of money flowing into my pocket and the vendor refused to budge from his quoted number, the effort went in futile. This left me in a rather sad and grumpy mood, to which effect my friend innocently asked, “Why do you need to go to desperate lengths to get a few torn dilapidated books?”

I looked at him, aghast and delved into a rather long and breathless speech; that for him must have been French.

“..Because those very torn, old books have something to say! Secrets to be unravelled! There’s a certain mystique about them and combined with the intoxicating aroma of those aged pages, they are a masterpiece. I do not simply buy them, it’s a rescue act! They are rehabilitated from dark, dingy, make-shift roadside shelves to the warm, cosy insides of polished teakwood cabinet, away from the prying hands of ignorant sellers, rough stinky fingers replaced by adoring, careful ones leafing through delicate pages. The feeling of abandonment replaced by the happiness of being loved and finally finding camaraderie amongst the neighbouring fiction or the-next-shelf romance novel. For me books are living breathing entities with souls of their own!!”

So that was more than enough to shut him up! Yes, I do agree that it would need a hell lot of imagination to believe in all of it but frankly I think we should have a Book Revolution, one that is aimed at garnering respect for books and understanding their worth.

Ode to my books:

Pretty books sitting quiet and prim

Neatly stacked piles of adventures, all for keeps

What they stand for is what most miss

But they’ll still be my dearest lovelies!!

LOVE J

Nerd glasses & Cute bookmarks

ADITI

The concept of I

So yes I am a postgrad student now. “Learnings”, “appreciate the process/theory/application”, “Optimisation” are a few terms/jargons/phrases out of an odd fifty that surface in every conversation at class, mess tables, normal chit chats, presentations, assignment write-ups etc. (I am sure you got the gist!) more often than not.

But what remains to be asked is, do we really understand these phrases? Aren’t we using the word “learnings” to cover up for things we haven’t learnt? Are we really appreciating the process/theory/application or are we just sitting like zombies in class looking vacantly at the screen and nodding? Have we “optimised” the resources at our disposal? Let’s see!!

So a few days back a friend said “why are we always taking examples of all the successful stories? Why aren’t we talking more of failures ‘cause those are the things we shouldn’t do? This got me thinking, food for thought: One guy out of a population of 700 (including staff and every living soul on campus) thought of this. Pretty astonishing! "Are we, even worse - our thoughts, caged by social stigma?

I thought about this at length and finally after several days of brain picking I stopped at “I”. It’s a single unsuspecting letter but very potent. With due respect to the ‘You-approach’, I say this: “Why are we learning the you-approach in the first place when people don’t even know how to do the I-approach justice?

The I-approach holds the power to bring out the best in everyone if done correctly (and here I am talking about a balance not extremities like narcissism and self-obsession). As it is nobody follows the you-approach nowadays, it’s only a theory, so the curriculum might as well teach students where to strike a balance with the I-approach.

Although we are taught to quit the I-approach. It is only I that would understand myself best, love me irrevocably, see my flaws, pride in my intensities, embrace my drawbacks, adore my goof-ups and learn from them, revel at my glories, wonder at my growth and worship my inner-being to the last cell. No one else would selflessly do the same for me because everything else is temporary! I could be my own source of joy… and it is very positive. It is only when I know myself best, can I be the best for others.

So no, we are not optimizing. Why you ask? Simply because we are not so much as challenging the theories as gulping whatever is offered. We are not applying reverse psychology to these theories, we are not asking why!! We are simply covering things we haven’t learnt with unsuspecting words like “learnings”

LoveJ

Cheers to finding ourselves

ADITI

The myth about pretty people

I am starting to feel that May is a rather long month! Although I have been caught up with so many of my other passions yet time does not seem to fly by and hence I feel obligated to write another piece on this space because I’m trying to avoid too many dry spells here!

I did not have the slightest clue as to what I should write about. “What do I feel strongly for?” I asked myself and the answers were many “women’s rights, gender discrimination, corruption, jugad, female foeticide, the ironies of life, consensual sex, the Third gender, education, freedom of speech, practising any religion etc. etc.” however I chose this topic today to talk about because I wanted to share how I feel when most of my peers and colleagues have this notion in their mind that pretty people have it all perfectly in place just because of the way they look.

Right from the very start, from the time my memory empowers me, I remember to have been blessed (or should I say otherwise) to be perceived as beautiful.

Now before I can embark upon my premises leading to the conclusion, I want to clear out that this piece is not directed at drowning pretty people in self-pity. As for me, I do not have any qualms about the way I look or am treated but this is just a humble effort to break the myths that associate beautiful people. I will enlist the myths as follows:

v  Beauty is power redefined:

  Well I do not think so. Opinions may differ. But belonging to a society where everything rests upon your looks and people judge you based on your external appearances can only spell disaster especially for females. Your worth is weighed by the complexion of your skin, length and texture of your hair, presence of dimples and other ridiculous things. No woman, beautiful or otherwise can win in this subject. This cripples intellect. Sometimes you do get the perks of having a pretty face but not always.

v  Beautiful people have it easy: 

 In this age of cut-throat competition, how can any sane person think that being pretty will get you everything easily. I remember most of my friends claiming “Oh don’t you worry you will get a job, one look at your face and the interviewer will hire you” well NEWSFLASH!!!! The very perception is demeaning!

v  Pretty people are so popular: 

  For those of you who do not know, popularity comes at a cost. Beauty often has to survive the backlash of haters. My bet is that almost everybody harvests a secret hate for any popular person in the nearest vicinity. While it may seem that popularity breeds friendships but mostly it breeds jealousy and contempt. Now who would want to be on the receiving end of those? Sometimes in reality beautiful people are the loneliest of all. Think about that if you can.

v  Beauty puts you constantly under the microscope: 

  Thusly you cannot pick your nose or have a bad hair day or sneeze in public or put on a few Kgs. Simply put you cannot be yourself in any way for fear of being caught and then interrogated and embarrassed about it. What the hell I say!

v  Pretty people have it rough too:

   A friend of mine said “I used to be one of those kids whom nobody would pick on their team because they thought I was ugly”, I said, “Well that makes two of us” to which she contorted her face and blurted “but you are so beautiful!” exasperated I say “simply because I am not athletic and I always made my team lose. I was a liability”. My point in sharing this is to show how this stupid myth about beauty blocks people’s common perspectives.

v  Beauty is equal to dumb:

  This is the worst of all. People judging the content of your intellect by the colour of your skin. Does that make sense at all? We often dismiss the opinions of beautiful people on the basis that he/she must spend all their time in self-grooming, what would they know about the world economy, politics or history!?!

v  Beauty begets love or at least a good marriage:

 Oh really? I feel ridiculous when mothers say “Thank god my girl is beautiful otherwise I would have paid through the nose (dowry) to get her a good “well-matched” boy!” wtf! Seriously? <Also taking beauty and fairness cream ads into the context> I know lots of beautiful women and even you can think of tons of famous personalities who went through messy divorces and break-ups. Those facts alone are enough to break this myth that beauty gets you love or marriage.

I would not delve more into the realms of the stereotyping that beautiful people suffer from. Taylor Swift’s beautiful composition “The lucky one” perfectly sums up the consequences of beauty. Somehow and sadly if I may, it reminds me of Marilyn Monroe in more ways than one. "Everybody loves pretty... everybody loves cool!!"

These misconceptions about beauty have put barriers between people. They need to be pulled down, for us to really connect.

"Sometimes people are beautiful

Not in looks

Not in what they say.

Just in what they are" - Markus Zusak

LOVE :)

To no more judging. Cheers!

ADITI

TO BE OR NOT TO BE

"It's hard to be taken seriously when you don't have connections. And unfortunately, when you don't have connections, it seems like the only people you can connect with are other people who don't have connections.” said a random man in New York. He seemed normal and good looking and I bet even handsome if he smiled.

There is a very inspiring page in Facebook- the social networking giant called “The Humans of New York” which today I explored on the recommendation of a good friend of mine. I was glued to the testimonials of the various ordinary people and how they fought losses, tragedy, abuse, fear, pressure, confusion and the various other vices of the societies of this world with love, tongue-in-cheek humour, beyond-the-years smartness and most of all smiles and courage. They were remarkable in more ways than one.

I mean I have some pretty dark corners in my life too and I am sure we all have. We live in an age where we live dual lives even before knowing that we do. There’s one life where we are pristine characters with respect to everything, where we bow and smile and greet and are the so-called good kids of our parents. And there is the other that contains all the complicated gross stuff that we won’t even dare to discuss with anyone.

It is quite an unforgiving world that we live in, where the lights are blinding outside but inside the blackness is sickening. “Nobody cares”, we often complain but forget to ask ourselves “Do we?” Everyone is juggling trying to really live instead of just blatantly existing (as those who believe in “live, don’t just survive” are supposed to be cool!) with keep oneself from drowning in his own sea of demons.

Sure, a lot of things around us are impersonal but boundaries don’t divide us. Much like the people of New York, there are tons of inspiring people here in India too and all over the world. We are united in our difficulties, sadness, courage, and quest for survival, journey to fulfil our dreams and want to leave a mark. It’s a fine line between despair and hope and though self-pity is an easy way out and we often see the negativities around us and people plagued by it, that’s only half the truth. A good number dwell on the other side too and that’s heartening to see.

It’s the journey that matters not the results! We spend too much time on just one question “to be or not to be?” and lose out on so many thing. Time slips by and we forget to be happy, crazy, inspired and a million other things just worrying about millions of other stupid things.

LOVE J

We never lose to love, we lose by holding back.

ADITI

Alive

See how the city lights dance

Full of promises of opportunities and chance

People moving fast

Cars zooming past

We are alive

Full of hope and life

Armed with a thousand dreams

Brushing off dust of what-could-have-beens

Crisp shirts and ironed ties

We are making our way through to the dais

We are alive

Full of struggle and strife

From the streets to fine living

Assisted by humble high thinking

No magic mantra, no shortcuts

We learn to crawl, walk and then run

We are alive

And doing just fine

Fighting our own battles

Not shying away from the hassles

Surviving wounds and many stitches

On our way from rags to riches

We are more than alive

And proud of our kind

We have fallen and gotten back up

Unflinching and unwavering on the path

Wills of steel and titanium resolve

Life has come full circle

We are alive

Children of the night

Sweaty days and sleepless years

Open eyes blinking away fear

Little joys that light the way

Actions that are louder than the words we say

We are alive

Bidding our time

Pushed, pulled stretched and burned

Stoked with hardships and purged

Redemption is served, good and neat

The fruits of patience and toil are sweet

We are alive

Nurtured on cold ice

The spotlights sing

Dark days on the retreat

The centre-stage is claimed

Finally the name shines on silver, engraved

Yes we are alive

Polished and shined

Praises sung in our honour

Peace prevail in our corner

Reminiscing in silent recluse

Of a journey painted in beautiful hues

Never still, never quiet

Never passive, never trite

Filled with joy and with light

We are souls ever alive

Being Single is Fine

Summer is here as we all know and feel but unlike other summers, this time around; the weather in my city has been unexpectedly pleasant. It has rained almost every day since last week or at least a cool breeze has graced us with its presence. In such a time my mind wanders to unchartered emotions.

The wind blows, a sudden cool touches the skin, the mind is rejuvenated and you want to do newer exciting activities. You fancy so many things like maybe a movie, or a walk or a dance but amid all these fanciful thoughts you wonder if you are lonely? Happens with me all the time. So I ventured out into the windy evening with my earphones plugged, in search of answers, to settle it once and for all.

Speaking for myself, I have always known that being single is not so dreadful. Sure you have your down moments but don’t you have them even when you are with someone? It’s mind-blowingly simple actually and we don’t see it. A lot of my single friends think and also act as if being single was a disease, but is it really?

You can rent any movie you want without having an argument, you do not have to feel let down when you find out the differences between you and your partner, and you can do whatever you want whenever you want without having to worry about a second person critically appraising your every action. The freedom is addictive.

And anyway relationships today are more like a voice on the phone or a text on a screen. It’s not the real thing anymore and it gnaws at your mind. Being single lets you talk to anyone you want, meet random people over kebabs and converse, and I mean really talk without having to feel guilty. You can let your hair down at a rave party and dance like a maniac without having to worry how your non-dancer partner will get through the night!

I am not saying being in a relationship is bad at all, but not being in it is not the end of the world. We have all read and understand the age old gospel of “sharing is joy” but not all the time. Sometimes you just want to lay back in your baggy-T, put on a sitcom and gorge on your French fries and beer alone.

So yes this time around when that little voice in my head asked, “Do you wish you had someone to hold your hand and share this moment?”

I said, “yes why not but no regrets, there will be tons of windy days with James blunt singing in the background, maybe then but this moment now is only mine” and so it was settled.

The magnanimity of little things happening around us escapes us when we are consumed in a relationship (positively or negatively) however if we are not we get to bask in the glory of the joy received.

LOVE J

The grass is always greener on the other side.

ADITI

Humans, Edited

Today was a different day in all respect, unlike other days I did not have much to do. There were no kids sneezing unannounced or talking incomprehensible things, then there was no mother shouting at the top of her lungs in full volume to do chores, there were no art attacks inside my head that needed me to scribble, stitch or draw.

In fact it was out of ordinary and I enjoyed the tranquillity. In an otherwise hot day, I sat in my parents’ air-conditioned room like a cosmopolitan queen sipping on my green tea and reading the paper. ‘Genome Editing’- the phrase caught my eye and piqued my curiosity. Science has taken such huge leaps that now there are techniques available to mankind that can make the smallest changes in the DNA composition of a living being with pinpoint accuracy.

It took me awhile to understand the full meaning of this beyond just the definition, I mean the effects and implications it will have. It could change a way of life; in fact it could change almost everything. In our quest to be PERFECT, we will lose all sensibility of beauty and ugly or right and wrong!!

Of course it will help cure diseases but how about this, if no one falls sick there will be no one taking care of no one!! No one would be empathetic; hence the sentiment will be extinct. Who would have thought that was possible? A sentiment could be extinct? There might not be boys with cleft-ed chins and girls with cute freckles. The little joys of finding something adorable in someone will be lost. Everyone might have dimples since that’s something everybody finds cute!! But maybe it will lose its innate value once it’s reproduced mindlessly. The glitches in humans will vanish and with it so will the senses of finding something beautiful or pitiful or lovely or ugly.

Humans will eventually emerge as a super-perfect race with superior quality flawless genes (like Hitler always dreamed of). Get this, as of now we crave for designer clothes, houses, cars, almost everything right down to our underwear but a day will come when we’d brag about having designer kids! Crazy right!?! We could edit our partners and make all the irritating habits go away (you must be thinking: what a dream come true!!) but is that what we’d want? A perfect life that is so perfect that it is almost scary!! PHEW!

LOVE J

With great power comes great responsibility

ADITI

Those Were The Days!!

It’s that time of the year again, when you cannot help but feel good. It’s neither too hot nor too cold. Fall has almost come to an end and new leaves are already on their way. All around, there are fresh happy colours of flowers, trees, fruits and what not. In the daytime the sun is warm and bright while the evenings are cool and breezy.

This time of the year always reminds me of my childhood years with my little brother. As kids, I and my brother would be beyond elation and excitement when spring set in. This was that time of the year when we had tons of stuff to keep us busy. Gorging on cornflakes, dancing to Scooby-Doo tunes, taking rounds on our sparkly purple Hero Cadet (our beloved bicycle), playing gully cricket with the neighbourhood boys, watching WWE, Pokémon, Aladdin and what not! Downing glasses of milk, fighting over bigger omelettes or fluffier pillows, bickering over who cheated and who actually won bouts of Carom or Chinese checkers!!

It’s actually sad that as time is passing by sibling relationships are becoming more and more impersonal. Talk about generation gaps, everything from technology to trends to youth slangs is changing so fast that kids born even three years apart do not feel the warmth of being siblings. I’ve seen friends that have certain professionalism around their kid brothers and sister. They greet each other as if greeting a minion in office. There is just the emotionless acknowledgement that goes like; “Raj” (with a cursory head nod) and “Nikhil” (with a similar bob of the head). There’s no friendly punch or a heart-warming bear hug or sly name-calling. I mean the fun, warmth, love, possessive-ness, protective-ness, mock rivalry is somehow lost!

There’s no sharing or inside jokes to make memories and look back on when you are all grown up. I don’t know what the world is coming to but all this seems very robotic. Maybe the camaraderie is the sacrifice you make while you are trying to win the rat-race and your own brother/sister is just another competitor.

The next generation will never care about the joys of sipping on Pepsi cola or fighting over the remote control of the TV or sharing school gossip. What a sad sad notion!!

The days of hide n seek, scrabble and crazy fun playing outdoor games on summer holidays are really over with the advent of Play stations, Tabs and Smartphones but man those were the days!

LOVE J

Making faces and blackmailing on secrets.

ADITI

Of characters in the Idiot Box

Very recently the popular TV series of the West but I daresay more so of the East (seeing its fan following in the country) How I Met Your Mother came to an end. Ouch it hurts! It sounded like the sad demise of a beloved pet. Yes it hurt that much. Amid tears of joy and sorrow it took me a while to take in the fact that there will be no more new Canada jokes or have-you-met-ted games and totally off the rocker bonk-a-doodle from Barney.

Oh well what can I say? I see everyone around me and see how people have invited these characters into their homes, let them make space in their hearts. They have cried when Ted was turned down by Robin or when Ross and Rachel broke up. We live in an age where these characters are more loved, adored and cared for by us than we do our family and friends. Oh speaking of F.R.I.E.N.D.S. boy was it an international phenomena? It went on for ten whole years and one day BAM! Season Finale is knocking at your door. That’s the day you realise how much of a part it was of your lives.

Back when I was 10 I used to read this column in the supplement of a popular newspaper where celebrities were interviewed. Every single one of them was glued to F.R.I.E.N.D.S. choosing it as their favourite TV series. I couldn’t understand what the fuss was all about but now I know why. It’s because you cannot help but fall in love with Phoebe even when she is barking mad and Rachel even though she is obnoxious and materialistic and Joey for being unbelievably dumb and Monica for being so controlling and sometimes Chandler goes so far out of the limit that you wanna say “Dude take a break!” but you don’t. ‘Cause the fact of the matter is in real life these kinds of people would probably be hated and bullied! But for a decade and even now they help us recuperate from a bad fever or heartbreak or simply a bad day when nothing’s working to lift our mood and we are wrapped up cosily in a blanket sipping on hot chocolate or cocoa (if you are anything like Sheldon) and staring at the idiot box or the screen of our laptop and laughing along with them innocently forgetting our pains.

These characters are people we’d like to have in our lives but don’t or they are probably there but we don’t realise. We all have a Marshal and Lily (the perfect couple) in our friends circle, or a Joey or Barney. Over the years they have just helped us realise the happiness that comes from having similar people in our lives, from sharing a joke to a whole wardrobe or apartment. They have taught us to embrace all kinds of people and be tolerant and that faith finally comes through, that destiny is a real thing and that eventually life moves on but the epic memories makes the whole thing worthwhile.

LOVE J

Bows and Applause to them.

ADITI

Reservation’s Role

I’m an Aspirant, doesn’t matter an aspirant of what. Nowadays there are so many fields of study one can follow but all of them have more or less the same kind of admission procedure in place. Appearing for a competitive exam is a must to get into any line of study in any college of your choice. But how is it relevant?

I’ve never dropped a year to prepare for such an exam or go to one of those coaching institutes before this. I used to hear my friends and colleagues and the worried parents of such kids always crib and complain about the system in place. I never could relate to what they said or feel their tension when they used to go on and on about the anomalies of the Reservation System in education (which was before) and jobs (too now!)

But now I know after several months of sleepless nights and nail biting sessions and worst-case scenario planning and of course our all-time personal favourite, praying to those gazillions of deities that we have - trying to bribe them into having our wishes fulfilled. The government argues that in a democracy it has to protect the minorities and provide them with equal opportunities, but how?

Surely not by threatening the opportunities of the rest, who are- going by the looks of the present scenario- unlucky enough to be a part of the majority. Recently during the form filling season while I was also on a form-filling spree, I couldn’t come across one college that admitted purely on the basis of merit! There were reservations left, right and centre- 20% for SC/STs, 10% for OBCs, 10% for Christians, 10% for Jains (as if it was a garment wholesale) and blah blah blah!! By the time the whole list ended there was a meagre 5% left for the so-called “superior well-to-dos” by God’s grace!

I do not have anything against any of these sects of people but if the government really wants to help them, shouldn’t reservation be on the basis of economic strength? I mean here we are slogging like maniacs since merit is our only way and even when we get a seat, that’s not all we end up paying through the nose. Stiff drill to go through for wanting to get educated!

Very soon a day will come when someone suggesting “Beta ajkal sirf graduation se kuch nhi hota hai, post-graduation kar lo Ph.D. kar lo then only your career will soar” will get an incredulous stare and a reply, “Neither do I have the means nor the mental strength to go through the whole trauma. Thanks but no thanks”

Latest: This year even Jats and Jains can enjoy reservation!! Way to go Indian Govt. !!

LOVEJ

#FacePalm and #WTF

ADITI

Kolkata - The City of Joy (Ya right!)

Very recently on a trip to the city of joy, I found all joy being sucked out of me. I generally am not the one to pick faults and be negative about anything at the drop of a hat but nonetheless I’m very observant. And here are my observations over the 3 days of my visit.

Picture this, I’m on a local bus beside a huge man and hardly have any space to seat myself on the already tiny seat of the bus. I’m waiting and waiting and waiting, along with me everyone else too but there’s no sign of the driver. After an hour or so he appears, betel chewing and looking like a slumdog hero right out of a hindi movie. So the journey begins. There are more stoppages on a half hour stretch than are overs in a T20 match! Super irritating, yeah but wait that’s not all. Passengers keep filling in. There’s no limit to the intake. People are hanging from everywhere. Some are hanging from the rails above and some are hanging on to the person beside them. Nobody knows where hundreds of pairs of feet are placed. For all they care some might be stamping on them while hanging, but of course they don’t care! I thank my lucky stars for having got a seat at least no matter how small. Everyone around me had a hollow expression about them! Most of them were daily passengers returning from their workplaces in different cities to their homes. I wondered how they did it every day of every year for the rest of their lives. While the driver kept driving like he was part of the NFS videogame, everyone clung to their dear lives and prayed that they should be alive by the end of it. After a 4-hour hanging between discomfort and likely-death, I reached my destination (which should have taken only 2 hours)

Next day picture this again I’m on a local train, with lots of office-goers around me. The person sitting in front of me has food stains and dust marks on his shirt. But it doesn’t matter I guess cause he’s just gonna shrug and say “local train” when his boss yells at him or maybe his boss too reaches office on a local bus or train. A man sitting by the window chews betel and spits out of the window. The man sitting in front him protests “ki holo apnar buddhi nei? Apnar pik ta gie oi dorjae darano lok gulor opore podbena? Jokhon janen felar jaega nei tahale khan keno?” (Translation: don’t you have brains? Can’t you see your spit will fly into those people standing at the train door? When you know there’s no way you can spit out here, then why do you chew betel in the first place!). The assailant didn’t say a word but didn’t seem like he would change his ways either.

On the other end of the aisle, there was a teacher checking exam papers while sitting on the window side with his earphones stuffed comfortably, maybe listening to Rabindra Sangeet. But I didn’t see a single tick on the poor chap’s paper which was being corrected. All I could see was big big circles and crosses and question marks and sentences underlined in a scary red. Soon I reached my stop and had to climb into another local bus to reach my destination. Didn’t get a seat this time and had to hang like most others. The driver again was in a death race. He was applying brakes like a total freak. Never did he stop his bus at 1 proper bus stop and was flying his machine even before passengers had mounted or departed the bus properly. Apparently he was running late and was behaving like a maniac to escape penalty! Wow!! My shoulder joints are sprained (I hope not permanently!) I admit I’m a short person and reaching for those rails overhead felt like reaching for the stars!! Shouldn’t short people have some kind of facility as well? Poor me!

Finally on the Third day I’m in a taxi. A yellow dilapidated ambassador- the king of roads in the ‘70s but now mere junk! The bihari driver is cribbing in his heavily accented tone, “kya korbo babu, police ar bus driver gulo jeena dubhar kore dieche! Kichu ho jaye bas lathi humko ar humare gadi ko pode!” (Translation: what to say sir, these police and bus drivers have made our living hell. Anything that happens in these roads, irrespective of whose fault it’s only me and my poor taxi that gets the cane!). True to his words I noticed all the buses were blocking the roads. All of them were driving on the right and not one of them let the taxis pass no matter how much they honked! To top all limits of dadagiri one of the bus drivers even stopped in the middle of the main road to pick passengers!!(It wasn’t even a bus stop!) And no police said a word in protest.

Once I reached the famous railway station in Howrah, I was kind of relieved to be getting away from the place when I encountered this: A man urinating on the station building wall and another man coming from the opposite direction interrupting him angrily, “ki babu eita motar jayga?” (Translation: “what sir is this place for urinating?”), the creep scampered away tucking away his pants!

Totally disgusted! It is not a city of joy; rather it is a city of mindless, careless zombies! It doesn’t matter whether you are rich or poor, whether you own a car or bike, because the roads are ruled by buses and no one can escape them. So, one is better of complying. I could only look into their eyes and see emptiness, tiredness and surrender. Kolkata is not for those with weak stomachs. It is for the brave, strong and outspoken.

Disclaimer: This was just an observation and I do not have anything against Kolkata or its people. They are the sweetest! \m/

LOVE J

Yummy Fish Fries and Delicious Mishti Doi

ADITI

HORN PLEASE!

Ever since the time I turned 18 (not a long while ago) people around me have time and again ridiculed me on not knowing how to ride a two-wheeler. Apparently the modern independent woman should know how to rule the roads too. Although to me it is trivial, yet I succumbed to the pressures and took driving lessons for both two and four-wheelers.

But all my worst nightmares came true the day I ventured into the roads! Oh My God!! It was like venturing into the Well-of-Death (one of those famous attractions of an Indian Circus a decade ago) literally with sure-shot recipes put in to make sure the motive is achieved. The space of wide roads are more than halved by street vendors and mindless civilians’ parked cars with no sense of any intelligent alignment of parking. You don’t have any clue where to squeeze into in case there is another vehicle demanding space.

Of course there is no footpath because that has been converted to a flea market, so pedestrians are walking on the roads and cars that apply their right to use them too are yelled at time and again! It is the best place to learn the choicest of expletives if you know what I mean ;)

There are buses and autos which would be going at 60-70 kmph and would suddenly come to a halt without any proper notice to pick up passengers even if it isn’t a proper stand or depot they are standing at. And the unfortunate train of vehicles behind these buses and autos are expected to read their minds and forecast their every halt and apply caution accordingly!!

Road rules are obsolete, nobody cares about them nowadays. The most  irritating of all is that often women are criticised and blamed of most accidents because apparently they are naïve and will never get how to properly drive but it is mostly men that I have observed acting like over-smart know-it-alls causing accidents!!! They should know better than to throw stones when they themselves live in glass houses.

Out of the thousand other anomalies and idiosyncrasies that only the Indian driver can pull, the most common and hilarious of all these is people trying to look like Pros blaring their horns and rendering everyone around deaf, while stuck in the middle of the roads. For instance there’s a mile long jam, you are stuck and nowhere to move, neither the one before you nor the one ahead of him yet you would stick your hand right on the horn (with full force that too) somehow thinking inside your weird mind the jam will vanish!

The logic behind the story of the Indian Road escapes me. Cows and dogs have made it their home, beggars have made it their office, kids have decided that that is their stadium, where the hell will vehicles go then? To top it all, people are so lazy that they do not even bother to turn their heads while backing a car or entering into a new road from a cut. They have decided to put traffic rules in the dumpster and the only thing that their miraculous brains have planned to process is ‘HORN PLEASE!’

My my my who wants to be a modern independent woman now, if this is what it takes? Not me for sure.

LOVE :)

Endless honking and Constant blaring!!

ADITI