And the Question Is...

I learnt something new. I know I like to question things. Why they are the way they are. Sometimes that leads to doubt ....confusion. I am not talking about stars, moon, highways, food inflation or such. Most often it starts with a feeling... Mostly I don't care when I am happy but when I am sad and don't know why, I think.
I learnt everybody is not okay with that. Everybody doesn't like to think about things that seem to have no upfront answers.
We want our world to make sense and we want the truth to be convenient. The latter is very important to most people. When its not, we invent it. We lie to ourselves. We lie to others. Anything, but the truth or the confusion that surrounds it when we can't arrive at it.
We don't like it when someone wears their feelings on their sleeve. We don't want to know what ails the person next to us. We desire to hear good things. When we don't have answers to their questions, we tell them that they think too much. Alternatively, when we meet someone who "seems" to have their immediate world sorted out... we are very impressed. Impressed that they ask no stupid questions that baffle us and our logic.
I often ask myself, what do I want and what will make me happy. And mostly never think in days or weeks. Its just what will make me happy without any time lines. A grilled cheese sandwich with hot coffee would do for now but one year and throughout the year, what will work? Do I want a big car like so and so? Do I want a posh house like that other friend? Do I want a change in career. What will make me happy?

Mumbai Nights

I Peeped out of my plane window. Mumbai was enveloped by the night and dark water. The glow of the night lights. Every now and then there cut a diamond studded necklace of roads. The night made it sensual, beautiful, mysterious. God is a man. He looks down and sees a beautiful woman in her finest jewellery. Quiet .... waiting. For that one moment I was not in the plane. My mind was elsewhere, unaware of the immediate reality.

The Light Inside My New Home

I first spent three years complaining that my apartment doesn't have a view, that I don't see the sky from my window, that I can see other people's breakfast from my living room, that there were too many noisy kids around, that there was improper (read nil) ventilation and a lot more than just this. A new job got me into a new house (I am stubborn about such things, so its not home ... not yet). It has a view... At night I can see a beautiful curve in the road with a lone street light.... it can be very poetic at night, In daylight, I can see some hills, I can see lots of flora, I can see a fistful of sky and then some more, and a lot of fresh air. So technically, I have what I asked for. But I found out that when friends and family asked, how is the new place, do you like it? My response was a sullen - Bloody Expensive. I didn't say anything else. Nothing about how beautifully furnished the house is, how the locality is really cool, that there is a lovely park at two mins walking distance, that the shopping arcade is not too far, that it is double the size of my last apartment.
Jesus! Whats wrong with me!
I spent some time alone yesterday (a first in the new house) and realised my own pattern, how negative I was. Just noticed that the house has more to offer than what I choose to see. The light is really great. These are things that are important to me and they are all there. And then ofcourse there is the expensive bit.
So what made me think that I will have the most perfect house. Most times perfect things don't happen to people. Thats life!

The world from my key hole

So which surface should I write from. The surface that lives in this immediate world of contact. The one that answers questions, travels for work, deals with people and issues. Or should I write from that depth where I watch things, absorb them, respond to them without expression, where time is not bound by the watch and where feelings and thoughts have a Storm brewing between them.
I live in both layers at the same time. After all we are multi tasking operating systems and that is the default setting. We can do many things at the same time, assess different things simultaneously and respond to various things around us. I am no different.
There are days when I feel I am alone in a boat in the ocean and there is no help around. There are days when I am astonished, scared, anxious, dead all in one day.
Why does it take so long to simply write that life in big cities can be very lonely. You are always alone and unfortunately surrounded by people you will probably never meet again. All you see is strangers. Even the task of going to the mall for a movie is scary. The elevators and escalators are over crowded, you won't find a place to sit in the food court, going to the beach is also a community activity, the whole city is out of their homes on the weekend. The only solitude is in the loo.
How can I be so irritated over such a long period of time. I realise it doesn't take much for me to get angry and I mean reaction giving angry. Like this last weekend when I saw this poor girl with a tray of food walking all over the place and not finding a single table. I called out to her and invited her to sit with me as most chairs at my table were empty. Or this other time when I saw a man lying on the road and not a single vehicle stopped to call for help and that includes me. I didn't stop. I feel guilty.
I am not a big city person I think and I live in a very big urban center of India.
No point day dreaming. I am here and what can I do about it. You know how they say - If you don't like it, change it. If you can't, accept it.
I just tell myself that this too is part of the strange ceremony of being a grownup. Too bad. Deal with it.
Nothing is final and this too shall change. I just have to keep my head above the water for now. Just survive and when there is help and more strength, things ca be changed.

Another Circle Around My Mind Space

There are a few words that are playing in my head like an endless infinite loop. They are from the very famous ad campaign from mastercard. There are some things money can't buy, for everything else there is mastercard.

Today I reflect that indeed there are some things money can never buy. But that's not the end of it. There are some feelings that words can't express, there are some thoughts that mind can't read. There is some beauty that can't be captured in any medium. There are so many things that we think and feel and know at a level that we ourselves take a while to welcome them into our conscious mind. Its true - what the mind can believe, it can achieve.

You know something, I can sit here and bullshit all I want but I know I am hiding behind this intelligent sounding advise which actually everybody knows without my saying it. So here goes (Help me god!).

Sometimes I sit really really far away from something that scares me. Hows that for courage. Usually I make such scary thoughts sit in a really dark spot in my head and I make sure the door is locked and I then go about avoiding mirrors or time alone lest they peep out somehow and stare at me. I don't know how they do that. They behave like friends that you have fought with. You know, always lurking in the background knowing they aren't welcome. I usually spend a lot of my time in such stupid running away activities. Sometimes a really big decision is scary as hell. You know those life altering decisions after which you tell others and yourself - Well, I have made my bed so now I have to sleep in it.

Truth is my mind is really trying to avoid what my heart has plastered on the wall. So naturally I am in trouble. Nothing new about that.

I am the beast that resists change and my life is changing so much right now that I don't know what else to do besides being really anxious. What do you do when you face the unpredictable future that comes with a new job or say a marriage? I have quit a six year old decently paying job. I was doing well but felt like a frog in a well so the desperate need for newer waters and challenges made me take a leap of faith. So here I am in a free fall and not knowing that the ground I shall break my fall on is not squishy and sad or green and firm.

Sometimes I am shocked when somebody tells me you know its good that you have taken control of your life. And I think - control! Me! HEEHAW My decisions are a lot of emotions and thankfully little practical sense. I don't think that's a good balance anyway.

I know that people who take great risks have a fifty percent chance of great rewards. I know all the gyan (knowledge) about how one has to get out there and make it happen if they want their dreams to come true. But heck! nobody told you its so bloody scary. Maybe I am a fattoo (In Mumbai that's what you call someone who gets scared easily).

I am at some level aware that there are signs for me to read. I have pondered over what meaning shall I bring to my life. There are some things that I know I must do. My projects that will have my commitment and my desire both. Its not about money. There are some people who know why they are here. I have vague notions of it but the time is not right and I know it and I will know when it is right. I also know its not about money and it never has been.

The signs are everywhere. The books that I pick up to read. The issues that bother me concerning the world around me near and far. The current affairs of my country that are shaping my mind and I seem to be an observer somehow instead of a participant. I know I am on a certain road and that there is some distance to cover before my work actually begins.

I read a wonderful book by Greg Mortenson - Three cups of Tea. I am moved. What it really takes is your belief and your hard work to bring about the change that you want to see. How do you want to leave the world you got lucky to be born in. What do you want to do with your life. I think that's a very important question. I also see it as sacred.

I picked up another book - Illusions by Richard Bach. I was thinking about magic and signs when a close friend said that I should pick up this book. I did. Profound is the word that comes to my mind. The happiest people are maybe those who are doing what makes them happy. There is a world inside and outside waiting to be explored. But are you too busy catching the next cab to a happening joint in town. Whatever be your trip. Find your happiness and know that you will want something else later.

And then I picked up Arundhati Roy's book of essays - Listening to grass hoppers. Detailed methodical harsh funny sarcastic and very needed in the times of today. Covers topics that concern those who are interested in India's political and economic landscape that is changing before our eyes and after reading her I realise, you should not believe everything that the papers and news channels speak. Its a disturbing book because it presents a very grim reality. The reality which a collective conscience of Indian society would much rather avoid than acknowledge. She has courage to confront and drag you to the mirror with her. Buy it only if you have jigra (balls, courage).

I am in a turmoil. Should children be allowed to work as domestic help as is common practice in Indian households? My own family has a few cases where children are hired for washing utensils or clothes or sweeping and mopping. Its a very difficult thing to fight a norm which is acceptable to everyone because "that's the way it works".

I live in Maharashtra and that too I live in the commercial hub of India - Mumbai. Life is different here than the places where child trafficking is on the rise. Children from poor states are sold through an intricate network of dalals or pimps. Often it is the parents themselves who force the child to work as they have no means to feed themselves. Poverty in the third world is a wretched ugly cousin that follows you everywhere. Of course its easier to "discuss" these issues "intellectually" rather than face them. Unlike the west, where the lifestyle of individuals reduces dependence on others for domestic work, In countries like India the cheapest thing available is labor. I wonder if China also faces the same issues but I somehow think that China is culturally more strong in their values than us Indians.

There are government programs that go unimplemented in most states. The funds are siphoned off before they reach the people they were intended for. The midday meal scheme that operates probably only in Mumbai is often reported in papers where children have fallen ill after consuming the food. Why? Well because food grain quality, safe and hygienic storage are compromised. I doubt if any authorised body audits the quality of government work.

So the poor children in Mumbai are a tad better off or maybe a whole lot better off than the poor children in Uttarpradesh or Bihar or Jharkhand or Orissa or West Bengal. Of course working in households is the way out of poverty or at least keeps them from going hungry. Middle class India has a huge demand for domestic labour and like every gap, this one too is filled. If the government had the safety net for these people or enough NGO's with sufficient funds were able to help, hundreds of thousands children would be going to school to learn how to not get ripped off rather than working for years in peoples homes.

As usual, the government is still working on the bill for right to education for children. Hopefully one day we will not be allowed to hire children as domestic labor. And the same would attract a criminal charge. But the government will have to find ways to fill the gap for money that these children were earning. If they do not find a solution for this, the problem would remain half solved which is no good.

While I write, I realise that I will have to find my own solution when I stand on the spot. Its a very disturbing spot is all I can say now. It just does not go down well that I am hiring the services of a child that should ideally be in school.

Maybe I don't understand how "the world actually works". I hope there would be some solution at hand when I get to this sticky spot. I also hope that in my own way I would be able to change the world I operate in.

Tips For Healthy Living

These are my thoughts. Please accept or reject based on your own judgement.

• Reading current affairs of Indian Governance System can cause depression
• A book reading, poem writing soul is not at peace in the corporate world of grey ghosts in executive suits and spectacles
• Earning money is very important to survive
• How much money will make you feel safe is a very personal decision
• You can't hide from yourself
• That which pricks most is called a conscience
• Cancer of the soul is commonly dressed as Guilt
• It okay sometimes to not know where you are headed
• Trust your gut and leap
• Find out what you want
• You may discover that your wants change with time
• Explore what does success mean to you
• Ask yourself - what will make me happy now
• DO NOT misread Love to be a passing emotion/ infatuation
• DO NOT misread a passing emotion/ infatuation to be Love
• When you get a hate email, try to curb the urge to respond instantly - the best answers will come to you when your mind is at peace
• Sometimes not giving everybody an answer is an answer
• Self confidence works inside out
• Judgement works outside in
• There is no enemy like fear