October and Me

I was born on the 23rd of October 1985 on the day of Dusshera. Of the very many stupid things I am proud of being born on Dusshera is at the top of my list even though I had nothing to do with it. Anyway, for me by birth month is always associated with a bit of gloom. Year after year after year, as I enter into the month of October I always find myself struggling to get my spirits up as I am faced with some problem or the other. This year is no different but unlike the things that killed my mood in previous years the questions I am struggling with this year will probably shape the rest of my life and if not that atleast affect me as a person in a substantial way.
The question I am struggling what to do with my job. My company pays me well, they treat me well, and I don't even have a lot of work to do, and on top of that they even feed me well. However, whenever, someone asks me, "how's the job?", I let loose a torrent of abuse about this company. Sometimes I used to ask myself why I do this but it used to be momentary but this month I cannot get this question out of my head. Why do I hate this company so much? Why do I want to leave it so badly?After thinking about this question for the better part of this month I still haven't been able to find a decisive answer. Maybe I hate it for the copy pasting work that they make me do, maybe it's because I have to stay away from my parents and all my loved ones to hold on to this job, or maybe I am used to complaining that I am not able to stop myself from doing. If things had only stayed at this level of trying to find out a reason for not liking my job maybe I would have been able to handle it but there is a twist to it. Apart from saying shit about my present job I found myself applying to Government of India jobs which apart from paying me extremely less money will also force me to become a part of a work culture which I, don't like. My heart is telling me over and over again that if I want to save myself I should try and get a government job but apart from what my father told me years back "Son join the government it will help you make a difference in the lives of people" I can't think of any other reason to join that institution.
So in this month of my birth I find myself irresistably attracted to an institution which I was indifferent to all my life while hating a company which apart from making me learn is giving me all the facilities that I would want. The lack of a decisive nature always put me at a disadvantage all my life and it's again coming back to bite me in the ass. I am struggling to define myself as a person, struggling to define my desires, my expectations from life, even at the ripe old age of 24.
My life which has been like a river ( if u reach an obstacle just move to the side instead of trying to conquer it) is faced with another question and like always I think I will not fight my own fight and come to a decision and instead just let the fates decide the course of my life. And once they have decided for me I will face another October mulling over another question about what I want from my life.

Cheater

Today an unheard of incident happened in our class. What was it well it was the fact that cheating material was found from the girls toilet. Cheating and girls somehow do not go together though every boy who is studying will tell you that girls are just as likely to cheat as boys. Even I know this but I never felt that girls will stoop to this level. Anyways the problem that we face is that the culprit will never be caught simply because the notes were never found in her possession. Even if the handwriting matches the person concerned can say that someone else was using her notes. This gets my goat, why you say? The reason is very simple that in the first semester exams a very dear friend of mine had a cheating case made against him because he was talking in class. Let me be the first to say that I am not going to make a distinction between these two cases both are unfair means afterall, whether you ask or use chits cheating is cheating. But the point being that the girl here, I think everyone in class knows who the culprit is but will not say it for lack of proof, will get away. This I feel is wrong, the teachers will never try hard to prosecute her simply because she is a girl. This is where the hypocrisy of the system comes in, arent girls and boys supposed to be equal shouldn't girls and boys be treated equally. Shouldn't this girl be prosecuted then and made to face the consequences of her actions?Why, you ask,am I vehemently against this girl because its almost a given thatI myself have cheated sometime in my life and if I talk of fairness then shouldn't I be praying to god to treat me like I want this girl to be treated, am I not being a hypocrite? The plain and simple answer to this question is YES, I am being one and the reason being that I do not like this person very much. This person is the sort of human being whom I blame for most of the ills of the world, selfish, hypocritical and what not. (I am proud to say that I consider myself only a hypocrite) This is why I am so angry that this person will not get caught. But I have faith in the big guy upstairs he works in mysterious ways. His ways may also mean that one day I'll get caught when I cheat ( hope not) but it might also mean that the person who cheated will be hanged.

Is ahimsa my parmo dharma?

Recently one of my friends sent me a link to a blog that his friend writes. The post that he wanted me to read was on the recent riots in Tibet. The blogger had said that ahimsa was the most important thing and that violence can never be justified. His comments were meant as much for the Chinese authorities as for the Tibetans. That set me thinking did I believe in his philosophy considering that I am from the land of Gandhi? The answer that came to my mind was 'NO'. I do not believe in the concept that Gandhi promoted. Yes, the shastras say that we should not commit acts of violence but they also say that when the situation becomes unbearable we should act with ruthlessness. Remember the Mahabharata, the Pandavas tried to avoid war at all costs saying that they will stop the war if Duryodhana gave them 5 villages. But when the evil one did not even accept this the only outcome was war. When Arjun was questioning himself that should he fight the war in which the other side was full of his loved ones, Lord Krishna told him that he should harden his heart and kill because that was the only way in which evil was going to be defeated. The same should apply to the situation in Tibet. The Chinese have taken away the independence of the Tibetan people and in my books their cannot be any crime worse than that. they have systematically tried to destroy the Tibetan culture, settling more Han Chinese in the occupied land so that the in time the Tibetans themselves may become a minority in their own country. And when these oppressed people resort to violence should they be condemned. NO they should not be because it is righteous anger. The Dalai Lama makes me sick to my stomach when he says that the Tibetans should not resort to violence. That he wants autonomy within the Chinese state. Dream on, the Communist Party will never accede to this demand. Can't he see what the Chinese are doing in Xinjiang, where they are oppressing the ethnic Uighurs because they also want independence.The Tibetans need a new political leader to take on the Chinese, a person who will not cringe when ruthlessness is required. Then and then only will the Tibetans get their motherland back. I'll end with a conversation from the movie Munich, its a paraphrase, Eric Bana asks a palestinian terrorist why he is against Israel and he says simply, the Jews have a homeland but when I go back I do not. No land to call home, no land to call it my country. This is the feeling when you are enslaved and to break the shackles any means are justified.

My Identity

Around three weeks back I went to my village to attend my cousin sister's wedding. And what can I say it was an eye-opening experience for me. Since my childhood whenever anyone used to ask me, "son where are you from?" my standard reply used to be Garhwal, and after we got statehood it used to be Uttarakhand. This despite the fact that I was born and brought up here in Delhi and that I rarely visited that place. For me going to my village always I always used to be a hassle, I went only when I was forced to. I used to feel like a pseudo sometimes but mostly i was confused. My identity was torn between my roots and the metropolitan city that is Delhi. It was like the surreal world in which all hill people live, a world in which we can talk to our Gods through human instruments that live between us, a world where Gods roam between us. But this time when i went to my village I finally got the sense of belonging I was looking for. The traditions that were supposed to be a part of my life, I finally came face to face with them. Whether it be the Gods that entered my relatives when the groom arrived, or whether it be the funny spectacle of the village girls hurling abuses at the groom and his party all night for taking their friend away, or whether it be the doli in which my sister was taken away to the groom's village. All this and the love people gave me made me realize that I elong to this place and this place only. Magical realism is the word that best describes the existence of the people of the hills and going back there made me realize that, the things that Garcia marquez writes about in his books do happen, and that places like that do exisat and I belong to one of those magical places on the face of this earth. In the end I would say that when I heard a Garhwali song which talked about the doli of the gods dancing on its own I used to think 'it can't happen', now it is a phenomenon that is both logical and magical. And even though i have never spent much time with my cousin who got married I thank her because its her marriage that got me my Identity. My love for that place is her gift to me.

My lady in surf ki chamakti safedi waale clothes

I am 22 and single. If this wasn't embarrassing enough my skills, so to speak, with the fairer sex are well to put it as gently as I can, PATHETIC. Now considering the hot shot friends I have I always think that why haven't I picked up any of the smoothness from them, why is it that they are able to get dates so easily while I have been sitting on a duck.And have I been able to find out a solution to that query, well the answer is a big NO or maybe it is a big YES. I will let the audience decide. Anyways the facts that I was able to conjure after thinking long and hard about this thing i.e.10 min were that god has made me a brother to most of the women that are available. This I say simply because of my history because in class 5th and 6th more than 20 women each year tied a Rakhi around my hand. Some might say this happens to everyone when they are kids but does this happen to everyone when they are 16 and if I might say at the peak of their horniness(Ladies sorry for my crude language, maaf karna apne "bhai" ko). At the age of 16 a girl came and tied a Rakhi on my hand, the only person that year in school with this dubious distinction. I still fail to get 6 years after the incident what she was trying to do considering that with my physical prowess I wont be able to protect her from a 7th class child. Infact 99 out of 100 times she will have to come and save her dear bhaiya. But anyways moving away from the past and coming to the present, in college I encountered the same problem, though I would clearly like to state that this was more of a blessing considering the ladies who were single and ready to mingle. Anyways my MA english class was the only place where I felt that I had finally gotten rid of the bhaiya syndrome. But now in my present course it seems to have come back to haunt me. Now at the start of this post I mentioned that God has turned me into a bhaiya ji for women insted of Sri Krishna of the gopis,how ironic considering my name means Kamadeva, but recently persons belonging to the fairer sex and of the caveman gender have both told me that it isn't god but me who has turned myself into a bhaiya for girls and that I have "potential"(the ladies words, not mine) but I needed to get rid of my sharafat and turn into a bit of a "dangerous' fellow(the caveman's suggestion). Now I would love to be dangerous but the only problem is that I do not exactly know what dangerous is.( If anyone wants to help me out then please leave a comment). The female's suggestion was that I needed to be more confident and more attentive, now these are two of the things which I haven't been able to master and I doubt it if I ever will. So to end I would say that if the world wants to save me from the ignominy of dying single then it should send me a lady in surf ki chamakti safedi waale clothes to whisk me away. I hope the world is listening.

Workshop

As the person who looked like a quadruped talked we were bored out of our senses. His voice was like a sleep inducing drug, slowly but surely leading me into the arms of Morpheus. Me and my friend tried to pair up the young men and women of our class, deriving sadistic pleasure out of it, to keep ourselves awake and to get some juice into our drab lives. His lecture on "spreadsheets" was the most boring workshop topic ever. Here I was sitting in this workshop wasting my time while my mind thought "Oh my god! How will I ever clear my first semester exams." My life which you can't say encompasses a lot has come to a standstill and this workshop may be the tipping point that my mind id waiting for. I have always thought that I was always on the brink of losing my sanity and maybe by writing my monologue I might just have reached the point of no return.

Some of my thoughts during the workshop today.