Years later...the ramblings continue.....

Havent written and updated my blog in ages, suddenly realised I still have a few things to tell before I am silenced for good like the countless other people who are too caught up in thier daily routines to cease ther activities and give thier surroudings a thought.

So will try and make my thought count....will try and provide my views on things I see around me which I fail to understand and which stir in me the junoon that I might be down but I am still alive and kickling.

The mad man returns with his ramblings and I hope they will start to make sense.

PS : Open Economy - good read.

I am an Indian.

Never thought that I would ever feel so strongly about being an Indian.Never thought I would pen these thoughts and would give this feeling a new dimension.The sense of ones country is best described by the feeling of belongingness and this can never be felt more than when you are away from it.The feeling that your are defined by;the roots that bind you back and the memories which are both fond and abhorring.

The moment I tell soemone I am from India they are awestruck and they wonder if I could tell them more about the country.The next questions most likely are of the order How is the place? How beautiful it is ?How are the people? Does it really have so many languages? Why are your family values so strong?.Well it is difficult in words to explain what India or especially Mumbai, my city is .It is difficult to express, that the things are the way they are because the Indians throughly believe that whatever happens, always happens for the best.The longing to be back in my city and my country has never been more, now that I am away I know the true worth of something I always took for granted.

India,its not just a five letter word, its an identity.India is hot humid, corrupt, dirty, poor, filthy and a wreck.I love my country.I miss my country.I miss the little things like buying a vada pav from a road side stall or maybe grabbing a limbu sherbet when I was thirsty.I miss the filth, the dirt.I miss the disorganised government offices and the 20Rs bribes that I used to give the policemen to let me go when I broke the signal.I miss the flying dust, I miss the languages spoken around me, I miss speaking in Marathi, my second mothertongue.I miss the people, I cannot even start speaking of the people.I miss the stories, the funny ones and the terrible ones.I miss my streets where I could roam free, unaware of all the evil all around me.I accept the shortcomings and like every good Indian I will strive to work towards betterment and eventual perfection, but the shortcoming will not stop me from loving soemthing which is a part of me.

India is the culturally abundant, blessed by nature, diverse, warm and beautiful place that I call home.I am a city dweller and have never spent much time in villages.But whenever I remember the simplicity of an Indian village it touches my heart.I see the people with thier little smiles living in the most adverse conditions with no money and no facilities.The satisfaction of the farmer after a day's hard work is unrivalled.The complete utter trust in the Almighty that gives the Indian Dream wings is beyond compare.The family, the mother's care, the father's pride, the sister's love; the complete amalgamation of emotions and the sentiments of 120 crore people.That is what India is about.

India today maifests itself as one of the fastest growing economies,Indians conquering one citadel after another The pride today of being an Indian was always great, but today is even more manifested by the achievements of the countrymen and countrywomen.

I pray to God that we dont loose the real Indian in this mind boggling rat race.Let every Indian get a role to play in this ensuing mad battle to reign supreme.Let victory be ours.I hope we have the success of the whole world and at the same time I pray to God that, let the flame of the true spirit of my country never extinguish.Amen!!

Life.

Life is full of epithets and antithesis and pun,
Life can be fullfilling with moments of fun.

Life is complicated,troublesome and ugly,
Life can be a beautiful picture, joyful and lovely.

Life shows you your true worth everyday,
Life; the sun shines and gives you the chance to make hay.

Life is full of worries, tensions and haste,
Life is a gift which one should not waste.

Life the pleasures might just gives you a miss,
Life they say is the most eternal bliss.

Life someday might end with a gun.
Life to someone you are a prodigal son,

Life is a blacboard no future next day,
Life is the guide that shows you the way.

Life leaves you somedays as lonely and single,
Life what it is, but to sing as a jingle.

Life is suffering, torture and death,
Life is when someone leaves you a wreath.

Life the choice is pleasure or pain,
Life, dont ever make your choices in vain.

The Eternal Craving...

when 5 we crave for choclates and toys...
when 10 we crave for friends...
when 15 we crave for knowledge...
when 20 we crave for love...
when 25 we crave for a future...
when 30 we crave for succession...
when 35 we crave for stability ...
when 40 we crave for success...
when 45 we crave for health...
when 50 we crave for family....
when 55 we crave for bliss...
when 60 we crave for security...
when 65 we crave for peace....
when 70 we crave for life....
when 75 we crave for death...

will the craving end ???????????

Satisfaction...The unsolved mystery

I happened to be in an auto rickshaw today.The auto driver and me got into a conversation as the pitiful Mumbai roads were full of traffic and potholes and the going was really slow.

He started telling me of his family...how it was so difficult to make ends meet...how the children were sent to an english school and the fees of the school was really high.He spent almost a fifth of his earnings educating his chaildren.I appreciated this and started telling him my own experiences about how irrespective of whatever u earn it was getting really difficult to really make ends meet.How impossible it was to buy a house in Mumbai,how difficult it was to buy a good car and maintain it.He told me about the four children,thier classes fees was a burden.The autorickshaw he was driving was rented and how the owner snatched away almost half of his earnings every evening and would not take even a penny less than the stipulated rent irrespective of whether he has made the needed amount of money or no.The number of people who have come to Mumbai looking for a job and have ended up being rickshaw drivers when they could not find any.How intense the pressure was because of this and how difficult things were becoming.

I realised my situation was not very much unlike him.Though the priorities were different and we were two different people altogether, we were still bound by the fact that we were human beings,creatures of the same species.I tried to figure out what makes us sad even when we have means to earn,salaries to take home and more than enough to survive.I figured it is the need which possibly is making us more frustrated day by day.Why want the 3 BHK flat,why dont i manage with 2BHK; why want a luxury car why cannot I manage with a good economy vehicle.Why was the number of children 4 why couldnt it be two or maybe even one with all the benefits that are shared amongst four today.Is this the enigma surrounding the attainment of satisfaction...i wonder.

Afterthought or Forethought......

Debates raging...news channels making hay while the sun of controversy shines....the country is going to dogs...reservation are ruining the future of India.

Dont we forget in all this furore,that the voice of educated India may not necessarily be the voice of the nation...The people who are in cities like Mumbai, Bangalore or Chennai dont necessarily need to think like the people in the villages of Bihar, Tamil Nadu or the North East.How many polls and surveys are done in the villages of India without the internet and the mobile phones and soemtimes without electricity even....the country and the democracy is for all the citizens of this country and the constitution is framed keeping all the communities ,castes and creeds in mind. We dont trust our politicians anymore...but have we lost all trust in democracy as welll?

There has been an overwhelming change in our society in the past few years as more and more people have moved up the ladder to the more affluent categories..this shift can be attributed to the sole reason that the rich as well as the poor would want to educate their child,though they might have to forfeit thier daily bread...these instances are many in the country....if such people are provided with seats and reservations,I personally have no qualms.Statistics say less and less children go to school in villages and backward areas,this is a because thier parents cannot afford to send them to school...mind you, the reason;there will be one bread winner less and not the school fees(school is free,the government even provides food for the kids in someplaces).Are the debates really meaningful....why are we shying away to give something to another fellow Indian who is in desperate need.

The General Category of people should not crib about reservation...they consider think of this as a benevolent government's indigenous way of turning budding brains towards non-conventional areas like tourism, design or agriculture even and not just the same old run of the mill engineering, MBBS and MBA....we should understand that more the competition more evolved will be the Middle Class of the future....also going by the census figures(albeit decades old) we have to understand that the backward classes form a majority of our society and if we just play around with the numbers we can discover for ourselves that the reservations don't cause much harm to the general category seats at all....I for one dont bother about this age old question about reservations in the country anymore....what we should actually debate is not the reservations but how can we reduce child labour, how can we get more kids into schools, how can technology and IT be harnessed to reduce cost of education to the masses, what contribution is the educated India making to the country's future...how are we thinking of ways to improve the tomorrow and not crib more and more over what our politicos did 50 years back.As a person who was fortunate to acquire an education, how many have I tried to educate.Let us try to improve way of life....let us start first by improving the 'I'...for the betterment of all, let us try to simplify and not to complicate.