The year that went by

Well, I am back in R, extremely bored and have yet another New Years Eve to look forward to with no plans whatsoever. So, left with a lot of empty hours, and swamped with a deluge of twitter trends like LastFridayOf2011, 2011In3Words, MyCrushOf2011 and the sorts, one can’t help but look back at the year that has been. So here’s a (hopefully) small rant about 2011 and what I thought of it.

2011 has been a good year. It came with its share of highs and lows, but all in all it’s been good. It’s been a year of many firsts (not all good), first debating tournament in college, first intern, my first ‘6’ in a course, first SG below 8, and of course, my first blog (and many more actually). I am not a person who is terribly excited about changes. To be honest I detest most of them. Even then, I don’t regret the many firsts that this year brought with it. Some have made for happy memories, some have taught lessons I’ll remember for a while. But more than anything, it’s taught me to hate changes lesser, to try new things, and that in life, more than the things one does, one always regrets the things one doesn’t. So, do whatever you want to, follow your heart, we all have only one life and it is now.

This year has introduced me to a lot of new music that I have now grown to really like. Fellow Dodo, Simon and Garfunkel is a real pleasure, I wish I’d heard it earlier, way earlier. Chest monster, I guess it should suffice to say that if I start listing every song you’ve suggested and I’ve liked, it will have to be a different post.

I’ll also remember this year for the books I read. Shantaram was an experience I’ll never forget. It’s one of the deepest books I’ve read, and looks at Bombay in a way no other book has.

I am a different person from that which I was at the end of 2010, and I am happy that’s how it is. Cheers to 2011 and everything it brought along!

A morning captured

I love words, actually I love them more than most people would have liked me to, but anyway, even then there are some things that can only be experienced. An early morning walk is one of those.  I happened to surprise myself by actually dragging myself out of my cosy blanket today morning and going on the clicking spree that I had been meaning to go for the entire semester. And though I find myself perfectly incapable of expressing the charm that lies in an early morning stroll I thought I’d share a few pictures.

Yeah fine.. I cant think of a name!

If there’s one thing I really don’t like its change, any kind- god, bad, atrocious, the ones people are generally indifferent towards. It doesn’t matter, if its change I don’t like it. I hate coming back to R after every vacation. It’s a task to drag myself to the airport from home and one that requires telling myself every other minute how this is an absolutely indispensable part of getting my degree (which I am supposed to want even though I might like to believe I’d be better off without it) I hate adapting once again to the change in weather, absolute lack of good food and general lack of other home comforts. I just can’t get myself to like the new FB. The lists, the ticker on the right, the new kind of newsfeed, I don’t like any of it.  But then I guess I eventually will. Just like I eventually get used to R every time and even miss it slightly when I am away I will eventually like the new FB, or so I hope because hate it or love it, there’s certain number of hours I just have to spend with dear FB every day and I’d rather spend them with someone I like.  

The honest woodcutter

“But the woodcutter was very very honest and refused to accept anything other than his own iron axe” continued Charu. She was in the middle of one of the most irritating activities of her day. She was trying to get little Aryan to have his lunch, who like most other 4 year olds hated eating and especially something as boring as dal and rice. He kept running away from Charu who was trying her usual trick of a story to distract him.  That day it was the woodcutter’s story. He listened on, as she regaled him with the tale of how the woodcutter’s axe fell in to the water, and then how a maiden came out of the lake to present him with a bronze axe, a sliver axe and a gold axe.

She went on with the story continuing to feed Aryan spoonfuls of rice at regular intervals “And the maiden asked him several times but he refused to accept anything else. Now the maiden was in fact the Goddess of the lake and was just testing the woodcutter trying to tempt him with gold and silver. But the woodcutter was an honest man who did not give in to his temptation. She was impressed with his honesty and rewarded him by letting him keep each of the bronze, silver and ”

Charu had to stop mid way to answer the phone. It was Priya, her younger sister. She had had an interview that day and Charu had been expecting her call. And from the tone of the greeting she heard, Charu knew this one hadn’t gone too well just like the three before this one and she also knew why. She would speak to Charu about this again she decided, but now she had to go. She had to finish feeding Aryan. “I’ll call you in a while, Priya” she said as she hung up but not before adding “I don’t know why you always have to tell them the exact reasons for leaving your last job. You don’t have to honest with everyone you know”

She couldn’t see Aryan around anymore. He must have wandered out. She walked into the drawing room calling out his name to find him fiddling with the television set. “So where were we? “She said getting back to feeding him and the story. “Yes, the goddess rewarded him by letting him keep each of the bronze, silver and gold axes”

“So, you see Aryan, honesty is always rewarded, and one must always be honest in life” she concluded satisfied, while Aryan who seemed engrossed had just finished eating the last spoonful of rice.

The tragedy in the world today is that we are often expected to abandon the very values we were once taught to embrace.

The train, bus and auto diaries.

When you have lived in a city all your life, long commutes is the staple diet you grew up on, especially when that city is Mumbai. (Or Thane as some of you may be quick to point out! Really, it is one and the same thing!) Mumbai is a beautiful city, my favourite and the only place I would ever want to live in. The beaches, the food, and the people everything about Mumbai is just wonderful. Okay, now I could go on and on about ‘the-most-awesome-city-ever’, and besides it probably deserves a different post with uncompromised attention so more on that later. So, if there’s anything about this city that I am not totally in love with and even remotely dislike it is commuting. Mumbai is excruciatingly big or rather long for one and added to it has way more people and consequently vehicles than it can accommodate. So the routes to reach from one place to another may anyway be rather long and then add to it a dash of the notorious Mumbai traffic and you have the perfect recipe for a painfully long travel. Mumbai commutes are something you complain about a lot when you first face them, accept over time and may even talk about them with some affection given long enough.

Even then the daily commute to the HPCL refinery where I was interning this summer seemed like a daunting task, after all spending the last two years of your life in a campus, especially one in a place as remote as Roorkee come with its share of habits, some not so good. I was apprehensive about the commute and I wasn’t wrong to be so. For the time I spent travelling daily easily exceeds three hours and utilises three different modes of public transportation. The day starts with leaving home at 6:30 praying to dear lord, that one finds an auto close enough to get to the railway station. There one runs and scampers to get on to the first local possible and then hang on to it for dear life for the next thirty minutes. Getting to sit is a luxury. With this the self successfully completes the first two chapters of the three-part journey. (Yeah, it is long enough to be called a journey!) And then the final segment- taking the BEST bus to the refinery, which has been built at what, is possibly the most remote corner of the city. But that of course is only after the obvious wait for the bus at the bus stop and then rushing to get one at least partially inside the bus before the driver decides to take off. (His leaving is independent of whether people are still climbing in). Then follows a long bumpy bus ride that goes over numerous potholes and makes way through half a dozen development projects which were supposed to have been completed six months back. And if it’s raining, then dear lord bless you! And with this the long journey is finally completed.

There also is an obvious return journey that retraces the same path and is only longer (credits to higher traffic at that hour of the day) and consequently more painful. Of course, the return journey happens only after a hard days work at HPCL, but we’ll come to that later and anyway the most significant thing on my mind with regards to the intern right now is the commute.

So I am destined to travel along this painful route twice a day at least for the next five weeks. Let’s hope that, just as most Mumbaikars would, I get used to and maybe even miss it once I am back to R-land. 

Why?

Now there are some things that humans are just programmed to like, like chocolate, chicken ( Yeah, I am a very enthusiastic chicken lover who believes that absolutely everyone must like chicken and the ones who say they don’t have to be lying), the smell of fresh earth after it has rained and vacations, or so I thought. Well, apparently not.

Vacations are all about sleeping, waking up late, and too late to have breakfast but still having it, and then dividing the rest of the day proportionately between more eating, more sleeping and some other equally lovely activities like watching movies, old soaps, reading books, staring at walls, and so on.  Now there’s no reason why anyone in their right minds should not want a day like this. And it’s one thing to have your beliefs proven wrong and another to have them proven wrong by yourself. So you can imagine the shock and denial I went through when I found myself not liking vacations, the way they should be.

Now I am not going to rant about why I don’t like vacations. I would probably have liked to but I can’t figure that out myself. So more on that later.

So that is that and my first post should explain why I am here.  I don’t like vacations and the first thing on my ‘How to spoil a perfectly good vacation’ list is work, any kind. I couldn’t think of anything else so this. Bear with me.