Nostalgia

The phone bell rang. The voice of the receiver was warm and affectionate but the caller was busy shooting list of queries.” What amount of water to add, Mom? How many whistles will the rice take to cook properly .How much salt to add? “Mom smiled and answered every question proficiently garnished with an expert's advice like “the dish would taste excellent if you add “xyz” spice also and even better if you eat it along with curd and...” .The phone got disconnected.

The smell of the rice made each mouth water. Riya’s friends were going into raptures over her proficiency in cooking. She also took pride in all her admiration. But somewhere, deep inside her heart, she knew that the taste of the dish was lacking something. She kept experimenting her portion of food with various add-ons like lemon, ketchup, curd etc.But nothing seemed to satisfy her. The recipe was all over her mind and while she ate, she kept revising it to check what was missing. The flavor was not similar to what it tasted back home. What was it that was missing? She questioned herself again and again.

Not letting her mind wander away from the “rice mystery”, Riya went off to sleep. As she lingered deep into her siesta, she saw her mother making the same dish for her. It was a dream. Riya saw herself vigilantly noticing the quantity of every spice added. She realized that there was nothing wrong in any step of the recipe. But all her efforts went in vain and she finally raised her eyes to clarify her doubts from her mother. She was astonished to see the marvelous pleasure and smile on her mother’s face while preparing food for her beloved daughter. She kept gazing at her Mom while the latter cooked. Mom kept talking to her telling her about various instances that took place in some friend’s house, about somebody’s daughter getting married or some XYZ’s son getting a high profile job. But all these words were falling on Riya’s deaf ears. She could only notice the zeal in her mother’s voice while she talked. This voice was not the same as the one which filters through the telephone in to her ears each day when her mother calls her up. She wondered why the voice was sounding different to her despite the fact that she speaks daily to her mother on phone .She also discerned a different energy level with which her mother was speaking. She had a spring in her feet. She never had so many stories to tell on phone. They hardly talked for five minutes, with each call ending in a promise made by Riya to call her back when she would be free. But those promises remain unfulfilled and Mom calls her back again the next day almost at the same time.

The whistle of the cooker in the dream woke Riya up. She was startled. Her heavy head could recall nothing. She rummaged through her side table and stretched out her hands under the pillow to find her cell phone. The time read 6:15 a.m. It was time for her mother to get up. She immediately called her up. Tears rolled down by the side of her cheeks as she heard her mother’s worried voice. Riya consoled her by telling her that she was fine and had called her up only to thank her for the wonderful recipe. She also told her that her friends kept praising her in every bite they took .Thereafter, in a low voice she revealed that only she did not like it because it lacked her mother’s magical touch. She could hear her mother smiling. Deep inside their hearts, both of them knew the reason behind the call. There was silence over the phone for two minutes. Riya smartly changed the topic telling Mom that she would be coming home for Diwali and that all flight bookings had been done. It resulted into an hour long conversation in which Riya did most of the talking ,making various plans for her Diwali visit ,while her mother only listened with a smile on her face.

Miss Cleopatra

I would like you all to meet a person with the help of this small narration. There is nothing special about her. All of us must definitely have met one of her kind in our lives. So recall the name of a similar character in your life and give him/her a smile in memory.

The movie show was supposed to start at 2 p.m. in PVR cinemas, an hour away from my home. The afternoon show had been booked so that we could take a 12 hour long, weekend special slumber. But there are few people on this planet who do not consider this duration to be long enough and hence, very conveniently, extend it to another couple of hours. Most of
the time, they are the ones who are least interested in the movie but agree to come along considering it to be like just another outing for themselves. My roommate is one of those species.

So, where the stipulated wake-up time was 9 a.m. , the latter got up at 11 a.m. and that too after one hour of incessant pleadings and entreaties. Now we had three hours left to start. While the others were busy ironing clothes for the outing, she, suddenly, found out time, enough, to
settle down the house. This activity includes cleaning the shelves, changing bed sheets, wiping the tables with a mop unless they start shining enough like a mirror and last but not the least ,fixing a curtain on a window which did not have any cover all these years but suddenly required one. As a result, another one hour was conveniently killed.

While the others had taken a bath and were getting ready, she was only preparing to enter the washroom to take a once in a year, Cleopatra bath. In the mean time, the rest were all ready to start but their feet had been chained by Miss Cleopatra and hence they had no choice than sit
and grumble. The knocking at the washroom door was falling on deaf ears and the sound of the shower sounded monotonous to all of us.

After three quarters of an hour, she came out .What a heavenly pleasure it was to see her. We sprang up to our feet and were heading towards the door when she stopped us saying that she had more to do. We frowned and decided to leave her. Thankfully ,this trick worked and she dumped her make-up kit in a friend’s bag without any hesitation. Consequently, the bag had become heavy for the poor girl to carry. But Queen Elizabeth of the house did not care much.

It was 1p.m when the local train arrived and we managed to board it despite much pushing.Now the time started running at a speed proportional to that of the train. While applying ten different kinds of blush-ons, Miss Celebrity made sure that it was because of her immense sacrifice that we would be able to reach on time and will not miss the movie.

We were all ears to her list of sacrifices made since morning.

1) She got up early and hence was feeling dizzy.
2) She could not apply her face pack which she thought would eat up another half an hour
so she gave up the idea.
3) She had to arrange the book shelf to find out a long lost book which she actually had to
return to the library but could not , due to lack of time.
4) She bathed for 15 minutes less to give due respect to our incessant knocking.
5) Last but not the least , she had to get ready in the train among the most awkward people staring at her with a fixed gaze.

The list infuriated each one of us but we did not intend to spoil the mood for the movie so we also made a small sacrifice-We did not throw her out of the train.Finally, we reached the theatre. After settling down in our seats, we thanked God for not missing the movie’s first scene, a usual norm which we follow on every movie trip. There was a difference in our prayer this time .In the “thank you” list, we also included my room-mate’s name who was still busy grumbling about the seats. We grinned at the thought and reclined in our seats as the lights dimmed down.

There aren't enough days in a weekend!!

Come Friday and along with it comes gaiety, mirth and happiness all over .The mere fact that the next two days will be workless fills one’s heart and soul with immense pleasure. A Friday evening is never irksome no matter what time we go back home from our respective workplace. We are routinely and miraculously blessed with electrifying energy every fifth day of the week.

The ambience of a workplace on Fridays are marked by happy-at-heart employees wearing clothes that they are comfortable in and foot wear which help them walk with a spring in their feet. Instead of files and folders, weekend plans are exchanged , via mails. The printer who gets bored taking out hard copies of official content which is actually gibberish to him gets to see variety of tickets, be it, a train, bus or a Saturday night movie pass. The entire day is spent planning out the Saturday night dinner or the Sunday breakfast. The eyes attempt an askance towards the clock at regular intervals but the latter appears to have come to a stop.

Somehow the longest working day of the weekends and here come the two most awaited days of the week. Plans start getting listed up in the mind itself. Some of them are the ones which could not be implemented last week while the others are the ones which have been in planning phase even before the last week.

Home comes and the master plan is put into action immediately. The office bag is thrown in one corner of the room, never to be looked again for another couple of days and the TV remote is grabbed immediately, never to go out of hands for the same next two days .The Friday evening is spent watching a Friday blockbuster and munching till the very last packet of the chips in the kitchen is emptied. The eyes which start hurting daily at 11 p.m. sharp feel immensely satisfied to see handsome men jumping from an x storey building instead of struggling with just another set of statistics or just another error in the code. After sometime the TV lulls the eyes to sleep and the night is spent on the sofa with sounds of TV pouring into the ears occasionally.
The next day starts at 12 pm and that too when the back develops cramps for spending the night on the couch. The hand reaches out for the remote control, which, overnight, has managed to hid behind the farthest leg of the sofa after getting an unscrupulous kick from my side. But the urge to watch TV makes me get up and request the poor fellow to help me open my eyes to the world. This cold war is followed by brunch. It includes the most mouth watering maggi ever made. The breakfast –cum-lunch proves to be a tranquilizer and the eyes shut down to sleep again. No prizes for guessing the mooring place.

Evening is spent on the window pane with a hot coffee and a long-neglected book. Dinner with friends, makes the weekend splendid and life, a lot easier .The dinner ends late night without any worries for hangovers, the next day.

The eyes that had not been fortunate enough to see the Saturday morning remain unlucky by missing the Sunday morning as well. They took an extra hour off and opened at 1 p. m…..all thanks to the excruciating headache. No prizes again for guessing the reason behind the pain.

The mechanical brain, rehearsing for a Monday, revises the list of duties that needed to be accomplished over the weekend. But despite incessant knocking at the door of the mind; no pending work is reminded of.

The smile of satisfaction runs along the face and the dutiful mind goes off to sleep .The Sunday is spent shuffling TV channels , finishing another book and chatting away with distant friends and relatives.

As the Sunday evening approaches, the dutiful mind gets up and now the eyes suddenly envisage all the work that had to be completed in these two days .The clothes start overflowing from the laundry bag and the kitchen appears empty with no vegetables to cook next week .The friend who’s birthday is just next week calls up to give an invitation for a treat in a posh restaurant but the heart does not feel good as her call only reminds that her gift had not been bought.

The horrifying dream breaks with another dinner call. The invitation is accepted but the wardrobe finds no suitable apparel. They all appear to be adding glory to the waiting –to-be-emptied laundry bag. Finally, the cacophony of all these elements fall on a deaf ear. The dinner party is attended hale and hearty.

On the way back home, the long list starts appearing again and the heart wishes to add another day in the weekend.

Confessions of an idle mind

After having read all the mails in the inbox , the mind wanders in various directions as there is nothing much left to do .In the process, it tends to go back to the last mail read. The latter automatically leaves an indelible impression. Probably, the mind follows the rule of Last in First Out. So far everything seems normal.Nothing unusual. But it becomes bad if the mail contains a contemplative message. A vacant head is most vulnerable to such mails. It gets even worse if the mail contains mind boggling words like future, goal, aim etc. A sudden rush of adrenalin is experienced. A finger immediately pops out of the computer screen and points right at the center of the nose. The future seems black and mind becomes blank. The “on bench” period, which had come as a blessing after rigorous training sessions, starts haunting. The sudden realization of sitting idle and doing nothing keeps peeving incessantly. Then comes the time of action. Socks are pulled up and back is erected. The process of planning, hence, begins. A mental “to do” list gets built up instantly, as if the latter was sitting right there hiding in some corner of the cerebrum, yearning for attention but never had been paid heed to. This is followed by formation of a mental time table which gets created only after incessant introspection.

Introspection implies figuring out the possible fields of improvement. For instance, the various new habits which can be incorporated. A number of childhood desires, like, to learn to play guitar, keyboard etc. or to learn dance, find a convenient position in the “to do” list .But the future plan steals away all the limelight. The goal to improve upon the career graph is given the highest priority. The next tussle arises when one out of the two, higher studies or job , has to be chosen. Higher studies appear to be a more lucrative option and hence it wins. This decision does not end the mental turmoil. The poor little brain is required to research about the various higher studies options available. But this is postponed till the next day as part of plan of action.

The frivolous antics come to an end when the eyes fall upon a pop up on the computer screen. With a light ,persistent smile of satisfaction and a high spirited heart , lunch is attended. The mind does not pay attention to the claptrap being discussed at the lunch table .It is busy swimming in its own pool of plans. It comes back to the present world only when few familiar words like “future and “higher studies” hit the ears. The latter grasp the topic of discussion and the smile of satisfaction transforms into smile of snobbery , on realizing the fact that the rest are also worried about their “no work” situation but haven’t yet thought of any solutions. The hands rise up robotically to pat the back for being the first one to take the initiative. When asked for suggestions ,the heart prefers to speak the truth but the mind pulls it back saying “First implement the plan, the results will speak” .So the question is deliberately overlooked.

Lunch ends. The heart waits desperately in the cubicle to clock the last 9.15 hours as an idler and for tomorrow to come so that the master plan can enter into the implementation phase. The clock strikes 5:15.It is time to go back home. Excited for a new life and a new beginning ,the eyes close at night.

The “new morning” starts with the most exasperating thing on this planet-a monotonous alarm. The first thing in the morning, according to the time table schedule, was to practice yoga. The irony that happens in such a situation is that the two biggest enemies on the earth-the heart and the mind ,unite completely and yell out in unison-“Relax Dude !!this is not the last day of your life. There is always a tomorrow”. Eventually, the eyes and the mind shut up to the brutal world.

On reaching the office , with a heart heavy with guilt, the eyes scan through the mails again-A mandatory task for each working day. No sooner than it comes across another inspiring mail, does the mind start working on a new agenda. The only difference is that this time the number of vows increase by one. The list of oaths include the pledge to follow the time table religiously.

Personal v/s public

I feel downcast when I perceive various controversies springing up each day out of petty issues which can very well be solved behind the screens. But no! The in-thing today is to create an entire cover story out of it and then only shall it be resolved.
I am fed up of picking up a newspaper each day overflowing with news of political scams, corporate altercations among siblings, tussle between corporate majors and if nothing else then a religious upsurge. The personal issues igniting in one’s house be it on religious grounds or otherwise, becomes a nationwide issue to resolve. Views are taken and polls are created to see how many people are against Mr XYZ marrying Miss PQR and how many are with them. I might sound ignorant of the society rules but are such affairs liable to be called personal if they become this public? The word personal seems to be losing its identity to the mercy of the word public.
No one else but the Tharoor-Modi duo can understand this difference best, at the moment, after all the havoc that has got created as a result of “twittering” of their personal associations and the latter’s involvement in their public affairs. The aforementioned tussle makes me realize that even the developing team behind twitter might not have thought that their site would be instrumental in such drastic exposures. A website with the basic idea of following your loved ones wherever they go, has been converted into a battle ground where one discloses an individual’s secrets .But in the end, what one gets as comeuppance is right in front of us- A messy situation for both the parties.
I do no t say that there is anything wrong in making matters public. But my question here is that do all these issues actually deserve all the attention that they get currently .Making these tussles part of news is one thing and creating a complete havoc over it is another. The faction under spotlight take undue advantage of the hype created and will continue to do so as long as they get this undeserving footage. The media captures controversial stories to spread awareness. But is that all what common man needs to be aware of?
Should the latter not be told as to how can he be of help to control global warming or what can he do best at his level to minimize power cuts, or may be, how is it that the government is being unable to control the skyrocketing food prices? Are these matters not worthy enough to steal all the limelight?

Journalism:The 21st Century Way!!

There is a recent upsurge regarding amendment of the RTI Act. People are not very satisfied with the way the government is responding to their query. Also the latter wants a more analytical and descriptive reply to their inquisition. The beaurocrats claim that people are flooding their mailboxes with illegitimate demands and questions most of which are baseless. There can be a number of ways in which this problem can be viewed. The mails can be senseless and baseless on account of the fact that the masses are completely ignorant of certain details which they should be aware of. Secondly, the large number of mails may be due to common doubt among a huge group of people. But the question here is that how does the common man become aware and who should represent the common man so that there is a representative who can question the beaurocracy on their behalf. Well, if I am not mistaken, few years back both these responsibilities lied on the shoulders of media. The power of pen was the power of common man. The voice of a journalist behind a mike was that of a common man’s.

On the contrary, today when we recite the very word, Journalism, the only picture that comes to our mind is that of innumerable television news channels telecasting a village boy coming out of a kilometer deep pit after staying there for x number of hours or probably a celebrity’s wife trying to defend him even when stooped low enough to molest his house maid. Is this all what media means to us today. Journalism, as a whole, has indeed come a long way from the times when bulletin appeared on tv only thrice a day. Today, on the contrary, the report gets updated every minute. Thanks to the technology and the people behind this revolution, we are blessed with the 24 hour concept of news channels because of which we cannot imagine to overlook a single piece of information in case we missed the newscast when it appeared on TV.

But there is one more thing where in media has portrayed immense transformation. It is in the area of quality of news which is televised these days. The common man may not be aware how the latest budget is going to affect their expenses but he will be extremely sure of the minutest details of a family dispute going on in a celebrity’s house. All kudos to our well equipped and hard working journalists who stand hours in front of a cricketer’s house to get a word from his father about the former’s second consecutive century in a test match.

A regular update of cricket match scores and temperatures of different cities across the world are also accompanied by a string of advertisements which only serve as an obstruction to an ongoing important discussion.

A full page cover story on nation’s budget has been replaced by a detailed analysis of a young girl’s murder mystery.

A pen or a mike gives power, but that power is of no use if it can’t be regulated in the right direction. If this ongoing malfunctioning of the entire system of media continues, then journalism which has turned only yellow from white , so far, is soon going to turn black and vanish eventually. In that era, probably media person will also need a representative to speak on their behalf .Will the common man do the honours?

Wake Up Sid!!

Last week , I happened to lay my hands upon this movie called Wake Up Sid. The title of the movie had always struck a chord in me somewhere but only due to lack of time I had never been able to watch it before.

The movie revolved around this college going guy played by Ranbir Kapoor who seems to have no worries in his life be it his exams or daily expenditure. This aimless guy relied completely on his credit card for making any kind of payment and life was a bed of roses for him .It was only when all these luxuries were confiscated by his father did he realize his responsibilities and finally managed to convert his passion of photography into his profession.

OK, I am not here to give a critical analysis or a review of the aforementioned movie but one thing that has remained in my mind ever since I watched this Karan Johar flick was the idea behind it. According to me , the concept was to “wake up” the youth of the country and to cajole them to prove themselves. But my question here is that is the youth of India actually fast asleep and cannot decide what they want to do in life?

Well, because, if that’s the case then why have board exams been removed from the CBSE curriculum. I thought it was done to reduce the immense competition among school going teenagers who give up their lives to a red mark in their report cards. The same idea, in my opinion, goes behind introducing the grade system instead of marks.
If I am not wrong, jobs in this country are less as compared to the number of applicants. It’s hard to understand that how can sleepy and lousy people get a CV of their own made and also gather courage enough to face an interview of a prestigious organization.

Education, for these “ young guns of India”, is no more a necessity to earn them bread. They have n number of options available. Leave aside the mundane 9-5 jobs ,I see the youth of today opting for professions like jockeying which are more fun and have something new each day to try. To grab easiest of opportunities these lively bones stand in endless lines only to be part of a reality show and snatch their share of fame to make their presence felt. In this avid search for money and independence ,they have even started working at school level as pizza delivery boys or as salesman.

These materialistic youngsters may be ravenous for fame and money but the fact remains that they never step back when it comes to social responsibilities. The Youngistan is vigilant and gallant enough to help spread awareness about various social issues. For instance consider the “Jaago re” campaign. Am not too good in statistics but the immense response to the “Teach India” campaign had majority of its volunteers in the age group of 21-30.

Thus, as a matter of fact, the young blood today has the vigor to revolutionize any field that he/she enters .It is only their get-up-and-go attitude that gives them courage enough to follow their heart and opt for a profession of their own choice despite the remuneration associated with it . As long as they have a sense of satisfaction, you will always find them glued to it till the end.

Are the seniors listening?
Well if yes then go give them a stroke of appreciation so that this enthusiasm never wanes.
And those who haven’t got a pat as yet, can feel happy about what they are doing and give themselves a pat on their back. Reading time is over now. Get back to work Youngistan….there’s loads of it to be done.