Choice

We don't come to this world by our own choice. After that its the parents and relatives who choose for us. The diaper,the food,the milk, the cloths everything. We just enjoy whatever is being provided. We don't have a choice at that time. As we grow a bit we start using the choices available and sometimes the unavailable ones also. Still parents choose most of the things and we hardly have any choice, but to choose from the things available. When life keeps moving ahead our choices increase,ie we get more and more options, but still are constrained. We don't choose the school, but we get a chance to choose the pencil,eraser or notebook, the tiffin box, the bag etc etc.When we are kids we choose our friends. No one imposes them on us. Its mututal. With whom we play , share the lunch box, copy homework, read comix etc etc. Basically its not like relatives whom we can't choose. If we don't like Smita aunty then we don't have a choice.She is anyway going to come home and talk about you to mom and how his son Rahul came first in class. I give a damm about it ;-). We don't choose our school uniform, but sometimes we choose our colths, colors and styles. But mom never allows you to buy a torn jeans and roam around. You do that when you are in college. When you finish school you do have a choice of your career. But sometimes parents choose what they think is good for you. Sometimes you choose. You see here also though you have lots of choices you are constrained by many factors. By this time you start evaluating choices. Earlier it was like you didn't care about the price,quality or any parameter whatsoever, as a kid you wanted it and that's it. But now you think. So these restraints are actually the guiding force behind each of your smart choices. They make you think and let you choose the appropriate one and not exactly the correct one. You might not enjoy the correct one. Sometimes it happens. You may be good in biology and you might like it,but that doesn't mean you will like being a doctor. You might like to go to a forest and study a certain species of insect whose existence would not affect the world in anyway, but later on you might put a paper on how important is that species of insect to the eco system.Everyone loves macho bikes and to have one.But not everyone owns a Harley Davidson. You do have choices while buying a bike, but you don't buy a Harley Davidson. A 180 cc DTS-i Pulsar with five spoke alloy wheels, front disc brake is what makes your adrenaline rush. The specs are enough to make the 100 cc bikes look like toys. But you see even the 100 cc bikes sell a lot, ppl buy it because that's what fits their choice. The Splendours, Passions make the TVS XL super and other 60 cc bikes look like toys. So its the constraints which make you chose the appropriate thing for you. The Harley Davidson still might be the correct one for you. Don't dream about it, you are never gonna own one. So you see there are so many choices and so many options. You are the one to choose. But you don't just go there pickup one and come back home. You do a cost benefit evaluation, the quality,the color, the product life, the price, compare prices of similar models in different brands and shops etc etc and manymore things. Ahh one thing we are forgetting, your wife ie your life partner. Just a second, why is it called lifepartner,you spend half of your life without your wife and after you get married you say her life partner, in a society where marriages can break anytime. Whatever it is, its called lifepartner and I am no one to question it. I do have a personal choice not to call it lifepartner ;-) Now this can be really frustrating sometimes. Your parents choose some gal from a good family and you have to accept the proposal. It might be the second biggest blunder in your life, the first one being agreeing for an arranged marriage when you didn't want it. It might turn your life not upside down, but tilted, in a position where you can neither live nor die. Oh why scare you guys. Marriage is not that bad. I don't have any personal experience but sometimes when you see happy couples you kind of believe in the institution of marriage. Wait a sec, why is it called an institution????? Oh forget it. So you see you had enough choices to choose your girlfriend in school, in college , in office, in the park you jog, the swimming pool, the tennis court, the bar etc etc. But you choosed someone so unique that you feel she is the onlyone who is appropriate for you. And still it happens that sometimes even if you have found that perfect one, you get married to an unknown person, just because you didn't have any choice. Sometimes it happens that someone else's choice turns out to be appropriate for you. Most of the happy couples who have gone the arranged marriage way and are happy will vouch for this. Sometimes you choose wrong stuff , but that makes your assumptions clear next time. So its not that bad.Now you see how we choose and how our choices are so individual.Why the hell then do you think companies flood the market with so many varieties of undies in different colors when no one is going to see it except for a few souls including you.I prefer I mean choose white ones ;-) now don't ask me why, I choose not to say.

The Village

There was a time when I could not go to my village, just because of the hawa pani. I have some kind of an allergy with the environment of my village. Its not far from our quarter, just about 10 kms. And the environment doesn't change so drastically also. But its something which I have not been able to understand. Let me go back to my childhood.

We celebrate N festivals through out the year. Some of them I don't even know. But the one connected to the village is the arrival of new crop and the celebration. We still have our khet, but now we don't do it by ourselves. Someone takes it in contract and gives the money. Since kheti was the primary source of income in the earlier days and my ancestors basically lived on it this festival is really important. We call it Nua Khai in sambalpuri , the local dialect. That means "eating it for the first time". This is one festival when all the family members gather at our village and we offer the new rice as prashad. After the puja, my dadi ma distributes this new rice to each and everyone. We kids just play around in the open angan eating amrut or tender coconut. We have six coconut trees, two guava trees and two mango trees in our angan. Through out the year a heap of paddy will be there in the angan which is used to grow mushroom. Apart from the fruits we grow gajar, muli, gobi, mirchi, bhindi, tamatar, corn, baingan, dhaniya and a few more varities of hari sagsabzi which I don't know by name. And there are banana trees also. More on them later, because they are one of the most used trees in the household. Ours is like the typical gaon with angan, bagicha, kheti. The little changes in life have taken place and the comfort levels have increased. There is a TV, Cooler, cable connection and usual stuff. There was a time when we had cattle also. But there was no one to take care of them. Now they are residing at the padosi's angan. I have seen the kheti pretty close. My kaka will instruct the laborers to do whatever they have to do and I used to go to the khets to see the progress. The ride on tractors are the best in a gaon. We do kheti in the traditional way, ie to reap the crop, use some of them as seed and rest use. Now with technology came the hybrid variety. But no one had tried it in our place. My kaka gave it a shot. He followed the instructions and asked the laborers to plant them far apart. We never do that in the traditional system. Just after a few days of planting them, the rice saplings didn't seem to come back to life. My kaka didn't go to khet for one week. Later we were surprised by the speed of growth. The whole of our khet was visible from a far distance, because the plants were big and bushy. The yield was so much that, the laborers were finding it heavy to carry it back to our angan. Ppl started asking if they can get seeds from the new fasal. Unfortunately we can't do that with this hybrid variety,we have to buy seeds. In the night the paddy will be spread in a round fashion and a tractor will roll over it to extract the rice grains. The tractor will go round and round to do this. We used to sit on the tractor and enjoy it. Oh I am carried away by the khet, let me get back to the festival. So when its lunch time, we eat on banana leaves. It has a altogether different feeling. Ma will make puri, kher and N stuff to eat. There will be some traditional sweet which are distributed to the padosis. Though I have been to my village so often, but in my childhood I could not spend much time there. Once one lady came and saw me and asked my mom, "Is that someone from your colony whom you have brought to show the gaon & the festival". There is something about the hawa pani as my dadima says. My skin gets itchy and it becomes red. Even if I don't step out of the house it happens. One doc said gradually when I grow up this will go. Now that I have grown up,I don't get that. My dadima was the most confused on this. Why the hell this happens with our own village, it doesn't happen even in the nearby village. Now she is happy that I have grown up :) Oh ya my dadima, she is a really nice sweet dadima. When we go to the village, she will ask someone to get a few coconuts, or guava or tad or bhutta depending on the season. And in summers we have plenty of mangoes. I remember while going to the village there used to be these mutter ke khets. We just used to get in and eat tender mutter straight from the khet. There is a bridge on the way which dries during summer and ppl grow kakdi, with just a bit of salt it tastes great. Summers we used to sleep in the angan with the open sky and cool breeze. That was amazing. You don't even need a cooler or fan there. Ahh so many happy memories. When ever I go home, I just take my bike and go to the village. It feels great, simply great...

East Coast Road

Laspal has got a new Avenger and it really feels like GOD. We decide to go on a bike trip on ECR to pondicherry. The ECR road is really nice and flat. With sea by the side and the cool breeze its feeling really great. Langur is also there. We three are having a nice time. Evening ride was never so heavenly. It got dark and we found a nice beach, with the fullmoon's reflection it was looking like silver sprinkled on the waves. We sat down, lit a fire. Tandori chicken with beer. It was amazing. We forgot about Pondicherry. Suddenly Laspal wakes me up and says "abe uth", I woke up and found myself in Langur's room,I realized it was a nice dream, I had around 4 mugs of beer that night on Langur's treat.

Someday we will make that trip, soon..........Very soon.

Now a Days I am Reading & Writing

I never developed the habit of reading novels or books. But sometimes I pick up a book here and there and try to read. And in this process I have finished Lovestory(ya ya I know its too mushy,that was my first),Alchemist, FivePointSomeone, King of Torts, Black White & Various Shades of Brown. That's all. Out of these Lovestory & Alchemist were the worst. Somehow I can't relate to these fiction and unrealistic stuff in a book or novel. However untrue it may be, I can relate much more to something which feels realistic, which is straight from life, which happens or can actually happen. And may be that's why now a days I am reading Intentblog, a few more blogs, and books which I feel are realistic. Let me tell you that I have no idea about the authors of novels which ppl swear by. So for me a Dan Brown is as alien as Agatha Christie. And one thing I have realized , though late, is, it helps to read. To understand ppl, stories, perspectives, and life in general. When I was a kid the only stuff I used to read were Comics and Chandamama. And I used to pick up the newspaper everyday and turn to the page where there were these cartoon characters Henry,Archie,Denis and the humorous Lockhorns.

As far as writing is concerned, we hardly write now a days. Its such a pain to write with a pen and paper, you can't edit, the handwriting looks like some prescription. So whatever writing we are doing now a days is from the keyboard, where there is backspace to edit and Ctrl C & Ctrl V. It has made life a lot easier. I actually blogged my first blogs in 2001, but after three or four arbit posts I didn't continue. The writing bug had not bitten me. This blog is just a few months old. And now a days I am blogging with a decent frequency. And its not just blogging, there are a few more things taking shape, but let's keep them as surprises. And what an convenient medium blogging is. No rules, no boundaries, just myself. I hope I continue with this blog for ever.

Have Fun@COaDM

Saharanpur, Locker No 103

We were three ppl. One was just about my age.He was wearing a jeans and a white and blue T shirt. A very happy and nice guy. The other was a uncle types. We packed our bags and were ready to leave. I asked,"When is your train?". He said,"Ten". OK. We bid goodbye. I took two locks, cameout of the Apartment and walked towards the lockers behind the apartment which were attached to a wall and behind the wall was a big tree. I went near the locker 105 and realized that mine is 103 and went to 103. The locker has two compartments, a small one on the top and the bigger one at the bottom. Usually I keep a Ten buck note in the smaller compartment. I locked the bigger compartment and locked my bag. Then I checked the smaller compartment for the Ten rupee note, and surprisingly found a 100 rupee note. I was happy. I took out the train ticket and checked the time. It was written 7:30 and just below the top of the ticket the train name was written as Saharanpur. Immediately I checked my wrist watch and it was 7:40. Just then my cellphone rang. I could feel the ringtone and the vibration. I woke up and picked up the cell, Langur was calling.

I don't know this guy in blue and white T shirt. But I remember his face.
I remember the Apartment.
I remember the Locker and the wall and the big tree behind the wall.
I have never stayed in a room with number 103.
I have never been to Saharanpur or boarded a train with that name and have never missed a train like this.

Again one of those vague dreams like Dream Catcher and Relativity

The Midpoint

Ok the NewYear has passed and the celebrations are over, ppl are still getting the HNY greetings from near and dear ones. Its a good holiday actually. Now for me this 01/01 is not exactly the starting or what I say technically speaking this is not the beginning of the year. For me (and I am sure many will agree) that the Actual New Year starts with July. So the 01/01 becomes The Midpoint of this year. Many call it the Financial Year, Academic Year and any more terms which you can think of which suits you. It has more to do with the way academic calendars, tax filling dates, interest debited to a/c etc fall on dates. So now half of my Year is over and I hope the rest of the year passes smoothly.

HNY and All The Best 2 The Rest

2 B or not 2 B

ie To Blog or Not to Blog. There are many things which I want to pen down in this blog, but since it concerns ppl and friends around me, I kind of hesitate to write down stuff. Not that its something personal or some secret which I want to divulge, but its something else. Things which I see happening around me. Things with which I am moving ahead. And many more things. Most of the time before blogging anything about any person whatsoever it may be, I just give it a thought whether I should blog or not. But I think I can take a lil bit of liberty to write down stuff which I feel like writing. And its not like there are N ppl reading this blog. So may be it won't affect that much also. So lets give it a shot.

Girlfriend

I am chatting with someone on YM. Generally I don't hide this kind of stuff from my friends. The usual response is I am chatting with a gal whom I am trying to patao. I login in orkut, someone comes and checks, oh orkut is open, must be hitting on gals. I get a call, just move around talking, junta think I am talking to a gal whom I am trying to patao. I go to bangalore to meet a few friends, and junta think I went to visit a gal there.

With all due respect to all the gals who are my friends and who are in my friend list in orkut and whose numbers I have in my cellphone, dil pe maat lena. They are behaving like normal IITians do. Even the slightest sight of a gal coming closer whether by YM,Orkut,Phone or any other possible way, metamorphs into me trying to patao that gal. There must be some truth in whatever they say, but its not always that I am hitting on gals ;-)

Now everyone knows that I am in the "Single, Ready 2 Mingle" state, which most of the guys here do. So there is nothing strange in the way they think. As the saying goes, "Virginity is not dignity, but lack of opportunity". Ok that's a bit too much, but having a gf is something like that here, minus the sin of course. So if someone is spotted talking to a gal then the rest of the junta will say, "Sahi be bandi pata liya, aish kar". Its preity normal. I take it with a pinch of sugar ;-), I hope gals don't mind.