My two cents

I am going to be writing for a long time - that explains the bottle of juice and chips by my side. I have a lot to say and bring you up to speed on. And it is going to be in random order again and I shall digress often - because I have a lot of time on hand. :)

Now that the disclaimers and warnings are out of the way, I can tell you that it is Friday evening and I am tired to the bone. One of my friends is going back to India for a vacation tomorrow and two of us volunteered to help her pack and check-in tonight. Let me just say that her baggage exceeded the limit so remarkably that getting to the airport was a hilarious struggle. The suitcase decided our speed and direction of walking. Once at the counter, when we realised that it would not be accepted "as-is", we began the rigamarole of unpacking, removing stuff, packing, weighing. The iteration was repeated twice before the extremely nice and polite lady at the counter was satisfied, while I was dehydrated by the end of it. And before this, I had to run for the bus today. I decided to sell my car and it is now at the garage. So, my experience with the public transport began again. After work, as I was picking my way on the heavily frosted road to the bus stop, I squinted far ahead to see the bus on its way. I was about half a kilometre away from the stop and I took the decision to run for it. As an aside, I think people run fastest for the bus and the train. In fact, if someday I want to compete in a sprint, I am going to visualise a bus "just there" near the finishing line. Invariably, the bus reached the stop much before me. Thankfully the driver also must have squinted into the darkness to see a small compact mass of denser darkness moving swiftly towards the bus and must have correctly guessed it to be a passenger. And he waited... Bless his soul! And thus, I am really really tired...

I have been conspicuously silent on the Mumbai terror attacks, famously termed as the 26/11 by the media. (If they had to copy the logic of 9/11 completely, it should have been 11/26, but I digress again...) As mentioned before, I try to post only when I begin thinking objectively about the subject. The nature of this subject, however, was such that I could not really think objectively about it for a long long time. Enough has been written already on it - the audacity of the terrorists, the heroism of the common people who worked with what they had - their presence of mind being the most effective, the lop-sided sensationalisation of the media who kind of "forgot" to cover the story at VT where the poorer Indians travelling by trains lost their lives, the heavily under-armed Mumbai police trying to control the situation with fisticuffs (Yes, they captured the lone surviving terrorist at a checkpost after a raw physical fight). As with any crisis, the best and worst of human nature was showcased. Politicians appeared to be tripping over each other to commit gaffes, only showing how starkly disconnected they were from the public sentiment, while the saviours of the day got into the BEST buses to go back to their barracks, self-effacing and gracious - only saying things like "Hamesha, jab bhi zaroorat pade, kadam-kadam pe milte rahenge" ( Always, whenever needed, we'll be there ), "We just did our duty".

So, what now? Are all the other Indians doing their duty? After a million talk-shows and "this ought to be done"s, I really don't see anyone feeling any safer in India. Our wonderful government decided to go on a "diplomatic offensive" to try and garner international support against the "friendly" neighbour who seems to be heavily embroiled in this mess. The attacks sealed the fate of the home minister who had to step down dishonourably (I am not sure if that is an apt word for an Indian politician) to give way to someone who was a performer in quite another area. The old trick of stalling has worked again, while Indians slowly get busy with their daily life and demands for accountability grow far and in between. All said and done, the US, having lost 6 of its valuable citizens, seems a little more on the offensive than India who lost more than 150 of her children. Why? Are Indian lives cheaper? I don't understand this. Even today, the news of 3 Indians taken hostages by Somalian pirates was tucked away in a nondescript corner of a major Indian online news journal. Why? Why don't we value our lives enough to raise a hue and cry about such injustices being meted out to us? What is wrong with us?

!A deep breath later! Apparently, I still can not be emotionally detached on this topic. :) Maybe we don't appreciate each other enough. I mean, we don't even value labour equally. Try going to a restaurant in an international location and give an order without saying "Thank you" or "Please". You would be considered rude, not only by the people who wait on you, but also by the others around you. Then, why don't we do this in India? We give the order, sometimes even say "Thank you" - but would it hurt to look the waiter in the eye and smile while thanking him? I was in Bhopal last summer. There was a small kiraana shop (a shop around the corner) where I went to recharge the credit on my mobile. It was a hot afternoon, the old shopkeeper was in a foul mood. I paid for the credit and when I received the confirmation by sms, I smiled, thanked him and left the shop. That guy treated me as a special customer after that - getting his assistant to get me a chair to wait while he was busy with another customer, calling me "beti" (daughter) and things like that. And it was because I smiled and thanked him, always. Anyway, I digress again. My point is that we don't value each other equally. Once we change that, no one can hurt one of us and get away with it so easily.

I went home for Christmas. :) My niece, Nishttha, had started trying to crawl on her fours (Now, she's good at it and has started standing up by herself, holding on to something sturdy). One night, she was in the mood to play and stayed up with her aunt until 2 am. It was comical when she finally began feeling sleepy - she kept trying to remove a pattern from the bedspread for about 20 minutes, took a deep breath, looked around and after some unintelligible words to me, fell onto her side - asleep. :D The first week at home was bliss. If someone left me unattended for 10 minutes, I used to fall asleep (but not quite the same way as I just described Nishttha do). I met up with my friends from Satyam. One of them, Sudhi, was married already while another, Usman, got engaged right before I left. This leaves only 3 of us from the group who are still single - the three stooges :D Although, I am almost sure that the social status of the other two guys is going to change soon. I saw the movie - Ghajini. The movie itself was not so great, but I loved the experience of watching it on the big screen - with hoots and whistles whenever Aamir made an "appearance". Heheh. I so regret not being able to wolf-whistle. I met one of my college friends too - probably after 2 years. It was nice meeting him :) Then, I also managed to have coffee with some of the Bangalore-based future classmates of mine. The meet-up was alright but maybe I had had a long day and I was a little out of sorts - I did invite a "And why are you so quiet?" from them :D Well, they'll know just how much I talk over the next year...

Talking about ISB, we have already started the "networking" thing. The mails and then some more mails from the group keeps me quite busy. I am honing my skills of selective absorption. :D Apparently, ISB student culture has spam-mails as an integral part of life - the closer the end-term exams, the higher the mail exchange within a whole class of students. So, I am hoping that this new skill will be well-utilised. By the way, I must ask someone if "my two cents" has been adopted as the phrase of the year by my class. I seem to have missed the announcement and suspect that it is so because only this would justify the abuse of the phrase in our mails. ;) (I know you guys are reading this :D)

My post has finally come to an end and it is not because I am done saying what I wanted to, but because it is late and I want to sleep. I'll continue this post another time. Don't wait for it. :)

Song of the day: I'm yours by Jason Mraz