Category: Society & Culture

  • Next Level

    Its a bit like games.. once we get into a game, what keeps us going is the eagerness to master the level and reach the next level.. as we proceed, it gets more and more difficult as each level is designed to be tougher than the previous one… The stakes also get higher as it might be difficult to do it all over again, and all the gains amassed would be wasted…
    And thats why its a bit like games – life… Its always a play to master the current level and thereby reach the next level.. and the stakes get higher, because it is life, and not just a game… theres a standard of living, peer pressure and so many other things that make it a must to survive and move ahead.. the only difference being that unike the game, the progress in life cannot be made to stop.. or maybe we cant bring ourselves to make it stop… for its a race and like the cliche goes, you have to run to at least stay in the same place… and the things around will not slow down to accomodate you..
    we get used to what we can get from the money we earn – most important among them a lifestyle and its accessories, and once we master one level, we are eager to move on to the next level and find out what it has to offer.. and theres no end in sight… perhaps the biggest winner is one who can will himself to be satisfied at a particular level and not move to the next level, inspite of all the pressures from within and without.. for maybe it has been rightly said that when its a rat race, what matters in the end is that whoever wins,they all remain rats…
    infancy, school, college, the first job…sometimes, its true that the grass is green on the other side… only, i am just looking back, and speaking of the grass i had been on…
    until next time, theres no level playing field…

  • Having a Blast

    Thats definitely a sadistic approach to the entire thing, but thats unfortunately the way i feel about it… and since i am the only citizen journalist on this blog, i need to be the one to express it this way..
    From what i notice, the government and everyone else involved definitely have a machinery and a process in place for this kind of stuff.. exactly 2 minutes after the first incident, there will be a PR person somewhere busily setting the trend and in effect saying ‘Let the blames begin’… this will of course be followed by ’eminent’ personalities like Javed Akhtar and Shabana Azmi doing a song and dance about it… and then comes, as if on cue, the fitting rejoinders from the people affected… the media, all the while, is having a field day, because finally there is actual news to capture, from theories on who pressed the button to graphic visuals of the dead and injured to preventive action to astrologers who had predicted this… of course, towards the end, you will have tales of heroes… we will salute them and honour them, we will play the blame game and fix on a commonly acceptable target.. and we will do what irritates me most, Mumbai will bask in the glory of a city that can spring back to action irrespective of what happens to it… well, damn it, the reason is because Mumbai has so many people that even a few lakhs lost wouldnt make a dent onthe rest who have not been affected….
    and its not just for the blasts, its the same for the floods too.. in fact, the floods are an annual event now, like ganesh chaturthi or something.. i propose that mumbai should celebrate ganesh chaturthi when the flood happens, so they dont have to go the sea for immersion, it could be done in their houses.. so you dont waste time at all.. and someone like a makemytrip should arrange boat cruises, after all does mumbai ever let a moneymaking opportunity go by..
    why am i not happy on mumbai springing back? i would be much happier if it was declared a holiday and people were encouraged to help those affected by the tragedy.. that wouldnt be a money making proposition, but it will inculcate what used to be called compassion, and if that were around more, maybe we wouldnt have blasts, and the floods would become a bit more tolerable… no amount of money can bring back the dead, no, compassion cant either, but it definitely can help heal the wound faster…so, is the spirit of mumbai such a great thing? of course, because, the spirit is money, and the spirit costs a bomb!!

    until next time, it isnt just an alternate train of thought…

  • Bangalored…

    That was a term that became famous in the US and Uk when outsourcing was an issue that was topmost in people’s minds… Now its sort of been relegated to some tshirts that float around…
    The man who makes our mind sing, the PM himself, was in town a few days back, to discuss some issues pertaining to civic infrastructure.. apparently the normally calm guy got a bit flustered after experiencing the traffic scenario…. so he made a few telling comments on how people should learn to how to handle themselves in traffic and stop being so horny all the time :D…
    but its something i notice all around these days in the people of my age group these days, no,not the horny bit, well that also, but more importantly the arrogance and the feeling that the world exists to serve him… i see it in hotels, offices, parking spaces, malls, the blatant disregard for the rest of humanity… its the language of money, of the money thats (also)being earned by the outsourcing of jobs that i started out the post with… the misbehaviourin traffic is just one of the manifestations…
    this crowd is the target audience for all the companies thats selling things from credit cards to designer clothes to designer houses to local flavors to low cal flavours and everything in between and all around.. a wonderful economy with people who have the money and people who want to make money… is that so bad? not at all, but while we do the accumulation of currency, is it so difficult to go about in a dignified way? is it one big bag which will either hold money or decency… i somehow dont think so… but then it does take a good soul to be decent even when you dont have to be…
    and to come full circle, after the Apple fiasco a few months back, its now the turn of Intel to shut down some of its developmental operations in India… is it time now for Bangalore to be Bangalored?

    until next time, whine and bear…

  • Times Now

    Absolutely nothing to do with the channel, but the title fitted in perfectly with the contents of the post, and so…a debate (which unfortunately i wasnt a part of) about the necessity of mobiles in our life, sparked off this post…
    Somewhere in the not too distant past, there was a phenomenon called time, which was allowed to be a consideration while we decided on things… but somewhere down the line, we decided to do battle with it… the necessity of Wi Fi connections and mobile phones is extremely arguable… we belong to a generation which grew up without the above, but are living with it now.. maybe the last of the generations to grow up that way, and so, to make it arguable…
    the ones after us are the ‘now’ generation, not just in context of the time they exist in, but in the consumption habits they have.. no, not they, we, because to survive i also have to be that way… and so i want news the time it happens – i may or may not care about the people who died or suffered in the news item… i want that pizza now, doesnt matter if the guy bringing it drives so crazily that he has a fifty percent of surviving the journey to my house… i want the work done by Monday, if you have to slog your back off during the weekend, hey, whose problem is that, or rather, is there a problem?.. amazingly i get away with all of this (hey, no hate comments, the usage of ‘I’ is only figurative) :)….
    i want it now, and there are slaves who will make sure i get it now… and that perhaps is why silly things like compassion and humanity are conceptual, not realistic… and joys and sorrows exist only fleetingly, for everything is only now and never later… some great man has said that there’s a time for everything, yup, only the time is always now…
    until next time, what now?

  • Singh.. when you’re happy

    The Bangalore University syndicate is about to pass a resolution which will prevent boys and girls from sitting next to each other in class.. about time, i say, after all, each gender needs to have its own space… hell, no one objects when they make separate loos for guys and girls.. 🙂
    but you cant blame these poor profs.. when guys start roaming around with long hair, and girls with short hair and all of them wear the same kind of clothes, the profs need to be able to have some sort of separation to distinguish among them… no one is thinking about the poor prof, there he is, walking around the class, lecturing and sharing a joke, he slaps a student on the back, it turns out to be a girl, and the next thing he knows, he is slapped with a sexual harassment lawsuit…
    okay, okay…thats enough of slapstick.. while i admit that its not exactly the greatest move by the university, a few years back, it was definitely an unwritten practice among students to sit separately in college classes.. yeah, maybe Kerala was a bit on the conversative side of things… a lot of kids come to colleges from all boys or all girls schools and therefore it is their first chance to learn to behave and mingle with the opposite sex… and creating an official barrier in the classroom may not be a good start at all… but hey, that still leaves the rest of the college.. and i bet the profs are thinking that while it would be a good idea to have sex education in classes, having both sex and education in classes may not be a great idea…
    But the problem that could arise is that pretty soon, the entire lot of students being churned out of BU will be of a very reserved type… and that should definitely make Arjun Singh happy, he loves the reserved types…
    until next time, boys and girls, whats your say on gender blenders!!