Corollaries – I

Sometimes, I get a thought or a learning or an observation pop into my head, the back-story of which is rather long-winded and difficult to convey in all its boring glory. But nevertheless, it behooves me to remember these for later. It also so happens that most of these are too long for twitter So, I’m starting a series of my random little pearls of wisdom that you can choose to ignore liberally, if you find them too vague, or tell me if it means something to you too. “Corollaries” is what I’m calling them. Here goes the first of many nothings to come:

 

It’s nice to be competitive. But it’s pathetic to wish for competition to get you moving on something you absolutely need to do.

Freedom of Expression: Served two ways

On countless occasions, when I have disagreed with an opinion or an article, I have come across at least one person who has jumped in to breathlessly exclaim how Freedom of Expression and Speech are rights, and you cannot tell someone what to feel.

Firstly, I am always amazed by the underlying assumption of novelty and originality in bringing forth this statement. The naïveté with which they tell you this breaks my heart when I have to say “I know” to them.

Secondly and most importantly, what is usually lost on this sub-species is that there can be a counter-opinion on any opinion and as long as that does not involve violence and threats and abuse, it is equally valid and as worthy a champion for Freedom of Expression. The idea of saying “I do not agree with you. In fact, what you are saying is complete nonsense.” is a brilliant idea. Disagreement fosters deeper discussion and that can do wonderful things if both parties decided to forego ego and rigidity and pettiness (haha! never happens.) This is a short list of things I compiled that should NOT matter in a case of disagreement:

• Popularity of the person holding the original opinion and/or the disagreement: How often do we see hordes of fanboys and fangirls telling you that you’re disagreeing with their Best Author EVAH, only because you’re either jealous or attention-seeking or plain simple fan of someone else. Can we please stop this juvenile behaviour where you take your own embarrassing herd mentality and wear it like a badge?
• Grammatical accuracy of both these persons (already said the thing about abuse not being acceptable): So long as the opinion brings something new to the table, one person’s typos or bad spelling should not automatically make the other person superior. I’m not sure but this sounds like taking a horrible below-the-belt cop-out by humiliating a person so that their opinion takes a backseat.
• Regional/ cultural/ religious stance taken by either person: Probably the most difficult one. Believe it or not, a religious person is actually as capable of holding forth a discussion on sports as you are and there should be nothing so astonishing about it. If I had a penny for every person claiming to be an atheist and thinking that makes them cooler on the internet in every which way, let’s just say, I’d have a gold vending machine for every commenter in the left bar of this blog Ditto for cultural high-handedness and regional superiority. Can I please say the regional one is the most surprising, specially since you did not discover that country/ state at all? To associate yourselves so deeply with a piece of land that you go around telling people to “fuck off, Punjabis/Madrasis” must be tough because you cannot carry it around in your pocket and yet the anger does absolutely nothing to move your land farther from the land of the subject of your hate speech.
• Gender/ Class based arguments: In the people I read or talk to, I see these as the most closely-held opinions. A non-feminist comment and all hell breaks loose. Point out an example of class-based hypocrisy, and guilt dresses up as outrage and comes out to play. (Example: If you have separate utensils for your house help and/or do not let them use your rest room even when they have no other options). I have thought it over for a long time and I think that some of these are evolving ideas. Again, as long as there is no abuse/ threat, why stuff your own ideology down someone’s throat? Yes, there are men on the internet who think that a woman’s place is in the kitchen making “sammiches” (and I can never tell which one is joking about this and which one means it), but ridiculing them serves no purpose at all. Then again, ridiculing them can be your form of counter-opinion, but if bringing change is the purpose of all this back-and-forth on the interwebz, I have a feeling it’s gonna be a while before a man whimpers and pleads mercy after being subjected to a monologue of nari shakti. Why not have an active dialogue where we try and change the other person’s mind by getting him/ her thinking? My experience: some of the tweets/posts that can be interpreted either way between horrifying and completely innocent, get responses and comments and rhetoric that can be considered borderline threatening to completely distasteful where groups of like-minded individuals troll the fuck out of the person while patting each other’s backs righteously. If you have no energy to spend on changing someone’s mind or if you believe they are incorrigible, at least do not tell them they cannot have that opinion. If you were brought up in a village where khap panchayats fed you bullshit every single waking second of your life, you wouldn’t know any different. Sometimes, their ignorant remarks are just pleas for reform, even if they don’t know it.

Thirdly, the form of someone’s disagreement doesn’t matter. They can be straightforward or sarcastic, and they can either write in to you about it or write on their own blog/ twitter feed. As long as it’s not abuse/ threats, can we not look at the essence of each other’s opinion?

Much wanted to say this. Phew.

Also, have you seen this disagreement yet: http://www.sunday-guardian.com/technologic/wipe-your-rear-with-tweets

Feeling chatty

I figure that I have not had a single meaningful conversation in three days. And I do not know which of these sentences is the tragic part. “*I* have not had”? Because I am a professional, living in a metro city, married and active on various social media. “Meaningful”? Because isn’t meaning highly over-rated and isn’t life made up of small little inconsequential things building up under your feet into a mountain, so that after years have passed, you see that you cannot even see the old you down there. Or is it the part with “three days”? For three days isn’t that long. You could see faces shoving magazines in your face at the traffic signal, every single day, and even if it’s class-ist, I can imagine some of them not having had a real conversation ever. Not one they consciously thought was meaningful anyway. I think the most tragic part is that I come to the blog. This blog isn’t supposed to be a muddled web of my various existential crises. I always imagine that my great granddaughter will probably be a historian and aching to know more about her roots, one day she will brush the dust off an old forgotten journal printed out of a badly-designed webpage, in the midst of all the family photos, and she’d read about a long-dead me and think “hey! the old woman was okay.” Maybe she’d be appalled by my lack of ambition and put it down to “women of those times” or maybe she’ll be shocked by the colourful language she’s sure to find here, if they are not pansy archaic terms by then. Maybe she’ll find me funny in how we sometimes find the writing of women we know were struggling with corsets and other cruelties, despite those realities. In any case, I’m not sure she’ll want to read about how I wanted to talk about how rude the house help is getting these days and shouldn’t we be hiring someone else, or listen to me complain about the lack of time to fix up a rather important medical appointment.

But that’s the thing. My mountain of realities is building up. When living in this construction, we need to talk about plumbers and distances and weather in different cities and new shiny devices and apps and spicy gossip and food and vague fanciful future plans. It’s only when we’re recounting life, when we reach the peak, that we can talk about who we are and who we have been without needing all those crutches. Old people, you all are so under-rated. Does it sound age-ist? It’s not, because I know I already want to take some younger-than-me people by the shoulders and shake them and say “WHY DON’T YOU LISTEN TO ME? I *know* THIS SHIT.” It is getting worse every day, and I’m sure to be the kind of mother who says “Did you not hear Mama?” in a passive-aggressive tone with a slightly cocked head, deadpan expression to boot. So it is all the more amazing to me that in the face of our refusing-to-have-kids-just-yet, eating-bad, being-careless-with-our-health, sleeping-late, driving-drunk ways, our elders are only giving us little polite reminders that our hoo-has need to get more active soon or that we need to shed that lard. I would’ve been all “TONIGHT IS BABY-MAKING NIGHT, DAUGHTER. YOUR UTERUS ISN’T GONNA BE FOREVER YOUNG.”, shows my track record thus far. Anyway. That memory-erasing digression aside, I was saying that meaningless conversations really make up meaningful conversation. *Pause for applause* But it’s true. If I am to go by my own pattern, most often I don’t need to even talk about “so where is this going, honey?” or something to that effect. (Essentially, the honey had better know where this is going by now. I’m a bad navigator.) I get pissed off because why should it be me reminding myself 5 times this week that the curtains need to be dry-cleaned; why can’t it be more collaborative; why can’t you remind me once for chrissakes; and is this is the lot of us women for the rest of our motherfucking lives? These kind of sentences that get women the undeserved drama-queen reputation are what are often bubbling under my calm exterior (that’s a joke) . Just getting this out makes me feel rebellious. And then I go marching to the dry cleaners. Am I obligated or pressurized by the societal pressures that subtly underline the gender differences between men and women, and infiltrate the part of our brains that controls “Responsibilities” and fucks with it? Don’t re-read that sentence. I can tell you the answer – it’s not that. It’s just that some people care and some don’t about some things. My husband cares a LOT about the crashing sound of a phone falling on the ground. It wakes him up from deep sleep and ask “KYA TOD DIYA”. I routinely kick my laptop off the bed (it’s not large enough for the both of us) and sleepily say “oops! but now you’re in a better place. you can’t fall any lower. i’ll pick you up in the morning. k thx bye.” You may now reverse the positions in case of dirty curtains. Dirty curtains (and their other kith and kin – chipped furniture, leaking taps, younameit) bring up in me the complex and heady nausea comprising of my mother’s strong belief that when I run my own house I’ll only feed my family Maggi for 18 years straight and my intense desire to prove her wrong,  my personal macro-mode visualization of germs crawling everywhere, the thought bubble I imagine on my guests’ heads thinking about the curtains being Dust Caves, and the WORST, the pressure I feel to impress my house help. So I know I’ll do it (or “get it done”, the new mantra of our generation). All I demand is that someone listen to my smart once-a-year and on my awesome-lonesome thought idea of doing this noble deed. All I get is silence or “they are not thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat dirty”. Like I’m imagining things. Why is it that all this sounds vaguely liberal, vaguely oppressive and vaguely feminist? Because that’s how we have conditioned ourselves recently. We read so many gender-based atrocities that our antennae are up. I know I do it. The reality is sometimes very different. So I have begun checking myself and seeing things with a, let me call it Fifth Wave Feminism (TM), lens. It involves swapping the positions of the man and the woman and seeing whether what they are saying is acceptable otherwise. “You’re going for a walk tomorrow. Have you *seen* your paunch?” I cannot even imagine the hysteria if the man (and not the woman, as the case is) in the couple I’m thinking of, had said this. But today, when a woman says it, it’s a total reflection of the Saffola ad aunty who’s been staying up nights making detailed excel sheets on which vegetable oil is the most “aapke dil ka khayaal rakhne waala“. But you cannot tell her about this Saffolaness (T-fucken’-M) of hers, because she finds those ads appalling. So you just nod and say “I know, so sexist”. Fun!

So yes, in my book of Sanity Preservation 101, it is fast becoming the best idea to stop thinking everything in terms of gender. That chaatwallah did NOT make me wait because I’m not as loud as the burly guy; it’s because I’m short and he couldn’t see me. That salesman did NOT ask “sir hain?” after ringing the doorbell because he thinks I don’t wear the pants in the household, it’s because I WAS wearing a gamchha on my shoulder. That mobile phone shopman is NOT only talking to my husband because he thinks women don’t understand technology, it’s because I asked him where the keyboard is in a touch-phone. Five times.

Khair, this wasn’t supposed to be this kind of a post. I just wanted to talk about the fact that I hate Fridays and love Saturdays. But, good talk.

Sometimes meaningless stuff makes the most meaningful conversation. Just not this time

The straight and narrow

Yesterday, reading her, I found an idea whose time has come. I’ve always believed that I work best doing one thing at a time, but somewhere along the line, I’ve forgotten it and at any given time, you’ll find me staring at a screen that has several open windows and tabs. I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t get in the way of my work at all. It’s a distraction, and one that has induced a ridiculous amount of guilt at various times, even if at other times, work has had me sadly close all 47 tabs unread at the end of the day

So yes, I’m also inflicting a “No Browser At Work” policy for myself, starting today. If there’s anything I need resolve to follow through with, this is it. Hence, the post. You know, for accountability and all that. Which means – any time you see a post on this page or a tweet from me before 9 in the night, you should leave a stern message.. like, right now But okay bye, this is my last sentence.. now last word.

*Sob*

Pigeon Poop and Death by Work

I’ll come to that .. ahem, imaginative.. title in a moment.

I’m back from my vacation in Bali. It was everything I needed at this point in time – sunshine, water and also, reading (which I have never managed on other vacations)! It was followed by many eventful days at home with weddings and birthdays and family visits. I didn’t forget my tiny little blog, and on my last night in Bali, typed out a long-ish post that was written on a sentimental travel high. Most ridiculously, since the business centre computers time out every 20 minutes, I lost that post. Wrote another one that went all over the place and got trashed by me. Anyhoo, here I am. Happy to be back at work where my email account is imploding, at home where pigeons have been having a field day on the ledges and windows, and on this blog where I love to blabber. This return to normalcy sure feels novel at this moment, and I’m more than looking forward to tackling work issues that I haven’t had the time to, till now.

Will see you all soon.

Woman on the Lose

.. I know, you think it should be “Loose”.. read the post first

Just read this: http://www.purba-ray.com/2012/03/ugly-side-of-gurgaon.html

Reminded of my own Indian police “encounter”. They say you learn things only through your own experiences. As a young-ish student at my MBA school in Bangalore, I lost my phone. It was one of the better phones I had ever owned till then, it was relatively new and freshly flicked off my brother and I had many precious messages on it, having just started dating the now-husband. Everyone was losing something or the other on the campus those days, I remember. Must have been either a freak staff member or an efficient kleptomaniac. We’ll never know. Anyway, I called Vodafone and told them to get me a duplicate SIM. My red-tape dance had started. I also remember being desperate to get a phone – any phone, in my case a borrowed handset – working, because we were to leave for Goa that night on a short trip and my parents had wanted that one thing – for me to be available on phone at all times. Damnit! I remember running from one end of the city to another because there are only “select” outlets of Vodafone where this “service” was available, being  kept waiting for eons before I was informed that an FIR was an absolute necessity, rushing to a police station where they almost threw me out of the premises for being in the wrong “area station” and then embarking on a rickety rickshaw ride to a godforsaken area police station which was literally in the middle of a jungle. All in a city where I didn’t speak the language. Resigned, I had the good sense to buy a new number from one of the Vodafone stores on my way, because I understood that the duplication certainly wasn’t getting done that day, or that week, or that lifetime. (What would you know? This service of Vodafone is not in just a few select stores! )

Why I’m on and on about this spiel of mine, is what I’m about to say next. The single thing I remember the most from that day is how I was treated in that police station. Leery, arrogant, ill-mannered – this is what just begins to describe our cops. Standing in that dusty little place where you passed a courtyard surrounded by lock-up area to get to the main desk, I was told that I would have to wait before I got the FIR, but not before all eyes in the room had given me the once-over. One of the cops, talking to somewhere a few inches below my face, asked me to sit. I told them I couldn’t come back. I was a student, I had classes. A ridiculous looking form carrying barely any English or Hindi, and torn at the edges, was shoved my way. The whole place buzzed with flies. Eyebrows shot up when my Permanent Address mentioned “Delhi”. I felt… unsafe. In a police station. A girl student, speaking in Hindi and English, wearing jeans, having no phone, and no means of transport back from a dilapidated corner of the city trying to get them to stamp and sign that fucking form. I must have been delusional is all I have to say for my 6-years-younger self. On some whim, I told them that my Institute Office will have to speak to them next then, if I didn’t get this FIR. I’m not sure why but that seemed to matter to them, but I was on my way in 10 minutes with a piece of paper that established only three things – That the phone was “missing”. That anybody hoping to ever get it back needed a quick hike to real life. That now Vodafone could get me my old number.

As I walked out of the police station, I heard a catcall from one of the cell inmates. And a chuckle that followed from the cop squatting outside. Good thing I don’t understand the language, and even nicer that people find love and friendship everywhere, even when they’re rotting behind the bars.

Walking back to the main road as fast as possible, having just learned a lesson in life and shaken from the surreal experience, I was thankful for the auto that agreed to take me back to the hostel (you can’t always say that for the autowallahs of Bangalore) and I had finally got why people so forcefully claim – “Police chowki koi shareef ladkiyon ke jaane ki jagah nahi hoti“. Indeed. If you’re a law-abiding citizen and have the audacity to lose something, please don’t be a woman. If you have the misfortune of being one, please don’t report it. If you are idiotic enough to want to do that, please beg someone to accompany you. And you’ll learn this lesson too.

This is what the now-husband told me – “What?! You went to a police station! Alone???? You know, you’re not as smart as you think.” Le sigh. I married him.

Go read that post above. What is your Indian cop story? Share it. That’s the only thing we can do.

Dread

Right. So NOBODY responded to that last post of mine. Clearly, I have packed everything there is to take

This one’s going to be about the dread that procrastination breeds once it’s about 2 weeks old. You know, that document that was supposed to be in someone else’s inbox-custody last Thursday? Or the pile of clothes that are becoming impossible to sort everyday, because you didn’t fold them a week back or yesterday? The only thing that feels even worse now than when you were first supposed to wrap it up is that you just don’t know how to get back on track now. You sit on it wishing, begging, pleading for it to please get up, walk on its own two legs and be over. You avoid eye contact with it and go to other, more interesting or just less daunting things and come back to get another sucker-punch from the guilt that continues to brew. It’s now planted itself at the back of your head, and swats any little successes and joys you might manage by telling you how you’re not good enough. It is now the enemy. You meet it head on, by over-compensating in everything else you do. You ignore it and tell yourself, that “it” be damned, you’re doing great. You’re winning! One fine day, it gets back at you with a vengeance demanding that it be finished, or else there will be consequences. Today is that day for me.

And I’m going to annihilate this mofo.

Help me pack!

Swimsuits, sunglasses, sunblock, 3 books or Kindle loaded with the same (ambitious but 5 HOUR LAYOVER!), iPod with new mujik, flip-flops, shorts, wanderlust.

What else would you DEFINITELY carry for a beach vacation? Tell it. Tell now. Tell all.

Hurtling towards insanity

I’m having a bitch of a day. It is absolutely mad that of all days gone by recently, I should be blogging today. But when I’m next in that zen state and doing that thing of reading my old posts and cringing that I do, I want to remember what a crazy little day this was. With maids that didn’t show up to maids that showed up and vanished without having done their work, of ambling towards a refrigerator still wondering what to cook and figuring that everything in there is either on our household’s hate list or requires a day off work to be made consumable, of finding out that water, laundry and breads & eggs are literally the new roti, kapda, makaan, of being super late to work but knowing by that one look in the mirror that there’s no effing way I can go without washing my hair today, of gulping down breakfast (nutella sandwich and canned juice!! how the mighty have fallen!!) and sighing at the furniture that needs to be dusted, unfolded washed laundry, pesky little dishes that keep reproducing in the wash basin and much much more. Can you tell our Man Friday/ Lifeline/ Domestic Help Ninja has gone on leave?

With all this, I’m grappling with work that ranges from “needs to be finished today, or it will be no use at all tomorrow” to “should have been done yesterday, but today 5 pm will do”.

The flicker of hope is the slowly approaching weekend and the vacation in 2 weeks that seems too far away for now.

 

Flux

Today’s the day when I’m feeling a little bit restless and a little bit annoyed about the lack of plans. Plans. General plans.

This sort of a day happens to me once in two months or so, when I cannot decide whether I want the status quo to change or not. It’s a random feeling that grows till I get angry at the next hapless person or till I remain calm and sad and tell the next hapless person in vague terms why I am so sad and then they tell me “it’s nothing” and then I lose it. Usually it’s followed by me doing something stupid/ drastic/ just different that I will later regret/ laugh at.

If there’s one thing I’m a total bitch about, I realize it’s having certainty in my life. I like to know when, where, why, with who and what I am going to be doing. I’d think this is a basic human requirement. But marriage and other circumstances of life ensure that in classic style of Life and Universe, that’s the one thing I never seem to get. Of late, I constantly find myself in the middle of so much chaos that I have two options:

1. Drown in a sea of lists I make to give myself some semblance of being organized and IN CONTROL

2. Drop all the balls and decide to wing it

The second one always always always ends in disasters. There’s no such thing as winging it when you’re supposed to be packing for work AND non-work travel to three different cities in one week. You HAVE TO think, just so your only option is not showing up at a formal event in your track pants. And yet, there isn’t much you can plan either, because guess what? You never knew this was going to be hurled your way till two days back. Both of which were working days when nothing gets done. Aaaaargh. Maybe I’m just being too whiny, but this has happened one too many times for my limited zen.

Maybe this is life’s way of teaching me how to not put a stop to other things in life when I do have plans in place and get super obsessed with tiny details in the run-up to them. Or maybe, this constant state of flux will take me to an early grave.

Re-reading this post will most likely make me feel like a domestic aunty caught up in a web of imaginary anxieties and non-existent problems, so I will just hit publish before I hit delete