aditya kumar's weblog

“MYSELF [name here]. I HAVE AN EXPERIANCE IN LECTURER”

“IM COOL GIRL BUT VERY SENSITIVE BY NATURE. I DONT LIKE THE SHORT TEMPERED PERSONS.”

These are actual matrimonial advertisements, quoted verbatim. With these coming my way, It would be a good ten or twenty years before I settle down in life. Of course, needless to say, I find myself in this situation since I have failed to find someone for myself but thats another story.

Then, this latest one:

“he should be smart… intelligent!! Looks don’t matter much but he should appreciate me”

A closer look at her profile — Hobbies- Will tell you later; Interests – Will tell you later; Favorite Reads – Will tell you later and also, we would be knowing “later” about her favorite music too. No other information whatsoever, in fact, I am surprised and thankful that she made it clear that she wants someone who appreciates her.

I shudder to think how casual one can be while looking out for the right person to get married to. If only one could get away from situations like these at will.

THE COOL GALS and EXPERIANCED IN LECTURERS, never mind the spelling, time to bring them on…

Today I came back to Delhi after 17 months. I had to. I think I owe this one to this place. No marriages to attend, no specific purpose per se; and yet I find myself in Delhi, spending a good half of my days off here.

Since I was born here and since I have spent most of my adolescence here in this city, I usually use Delhi’s name as a way out when someone asks me where I belong to. I have stayed more in Bombay than Delhi but yet I do not know for sure if I belong to this city more than any else. After spending my life in 6 cities, what place I really belong to is a question that shall always warrant a definite, and probably a more justified conclusion, something that I would never be able to arrive on.

I am yet to come to terms with air travel. Now, I have traveled by train for most of my life and I still do, but the idea that I was on the seashore till today morning and in the plains of Delhi at lunch still bewilders me.
It bewilders me because the transition is way too fast. A train travels at its own pace and you get to see the landscape changing with your own eyes. You hear the changes in dialect and your mind knows that a change is happening. You get away from the sea and the smell of the muddy swamps leaves you slowly. You start breathing more air in air. The short gushes of wet, cool air that come in intervals of the omnipresent breeze become less frequent. And you get time to soak in, sink in. The journey may take 36 hours but in a way you feel more fresh, more ready when you arrive at your destination.

I had more plans; I was to have my dinner at Amritsar tonight, the northwest frontier of India. If I didn’t have this upset stomach now, I would be in the holy city of Amritsar by night to stay there for a day. But in a way I am glad that it has stalled me here. I have traveled alone all the time and I have never had any problem with that but strangely, this time, Delhi leaves me with a feeling of voidness. I think the concept of traveling alone does not work for me anymore. It is good that I have understood this shortcoming, If one can call it that, now — precisely when it has happened.

There was a time, in this very house in Goa, I used to listen to my walkman when the power used to go off. The “power-going-off” apparently, happens rather usually here. And when its a dark and gloomy evening like what it is now, there was no question of electricity. So, in those days not so long back, I used to take out the tapes from my travel luggage that I used to carry along from Indore. In a way it was funny because I always thought that my walkman would not be of use while I’d be at home in Goa. We had an audio CD player at home and walkman was for students who used to travel in second class coaches in trains and spend their lives in a single room, studying for nights, while during college days.

So the U2s and the Robbie Williams used to come out and since there was no power, saving the power contained in those batteries added to the objective, even if it meant pushing the end of a Reynold’s 045 Fine Carbure pen into one of the tape’s reels and rotate it endlessly, one way or the other, depending on what you wanted to do — Rewind or Fast Forward.

6 years later, nothing much has changed. I don’t do that tape thing anymore. But I do open up my IBM Thinkpad, connect it to my nokia mobile phone, download my email, write on my blog and download a podcast. The power is still not there and its raining heavily outside. It never rains in Goa in November, let alone a day before Deepawali.

This could be the Monsoon’s swan song but it has reminded me of the many days that I have spent here, rewinding the tape with a Reynold’s pen.

I’d like to know the answer to this seemingly direct question:

What was the role, if any, of the Indian Communist Lobby during the 1962 Sino-India war?

Any responses/answers?

Comments/Email welcome.

For all i know, i have lived one third of my life already. And i am to spend the rest of my life with you. And yet, i do not have any idea whatsoever, of where you are. Not suprising though, that this thought hit me in the middle of a rainy night, while i lay alone, wishing that i could put things in perspective – one of them being my quest to find you. And find you i will.

I sometimes think, and these ‘sometimes’ are quite often, I am probably in the wrong profession. Or perhaps, I take my profession only seriously to an extent where it just qualifies to be “serious” enough. Kind of, on the edge of it all. Honestly, I am not okay with the idea that I spend 16 hours everyday, 5 days a week thinking about whats going on at work and checking my office emails all to often. I know people who do that. These people, at the same time, always complain of how the work gets to them and how much they want to get away from it.

Truth is that, on the contrary, they themselves do not attempt to get away from the madness.

I once heard these lines somewhere and I believe in it so much that it motivates me to take my mind off the trivial things that sink me down everyday — When I am 75, lying on a bed (probably because thats all I’d be able to do), I would not think that, okay — I should have chosen .NET over Java. I would not think about a project that I once messed up. I would probably not think about the laurels I was applauded for. But yes, I’d probably think and wish that I had spent more time with my parents and my sister. I’d probably be wishing that I had traveled more than I had, when I could. I believe in this so much that once I start thinking on these lines, I start hating everything that stops me from treading the path that I so much want to. Not that I have been unsuccessful all the time, in fact I am one of the most traveled persons you will ever come to know of.

So the coming two months could be one of travel. Konkan, Goa, Bombay, Delhi and Calcutta are the places I’ll have to choose from. The only time I was in Calcutta was last year and since then I have carried a part of it with me. There is a world to be explored in the streets and corners of Calcutta and I intend to do it as and when I’d be able to.

Besides, this city is testing my endurance. I have been away from home for close to 9 years now and yet, at times I feel like my first day alone, on my own. The few friends I had could not stand the loneliness this city offered them — I mean, here is a city where you can’t even talk to another guy on the street because of the language barrier. So they left. I don’t blame them. The few that remained, got married. I don’t blame them too — they had to get married, however harsh the idea may seem (No, I am not opposed to the idea at all). They, however, had to get married because loneliness got the better of them. But seriously speaking, even a guy like me who needs his solitude more than the average guy does, finds time hard to go by on a sunday evening. I too, at times, contemplate on leaving Bangalore and going back to Pune — a city of my so many ‘firsts’, a city that once got my wrath for being so insensitive by making me walk on roads that reminded me of a better time, a city once I promised to never return for all the time to come. But then again, it would be foolish to think that Pune is the same and that it would offer me all that it once did. If I go to Pune, I would go with a clean slate, a clear conscience and a heart free of prejudice but also, at the same time, free of expectations.

I am surprised that I am thinking about going back to Pune, in the first place. Its strange, and perhaps funny, how time makes even the sternest of minds to bend.

Meanwhile, expect some travelogues.

Shoaib Malik’s comments, first words to the media in fact, after Pakistan lost to India in the T20 final, were on the lines of Islam. He said he wanted to thank the Muslims all over the world. Not everyone was amused. It could mean one of the following things:

1. He wanted to prove that he is as much a Muslim, than his colleagues in the team who have joined the Tableeghi Jamaat.

2. He indeed is on path treaded by the likes of Saeed Anwar, Inzamam-ul-haq and Shahid Afridi.

I do realize that Shoaib Malik does not have an enviable fluency of the English language (Apparently, the English tuitions that he had been taking, seems to be a failed attempt now. See here, under the heading “The language barrier. No more”). I wonder if fluency in the language would have helped matters though. I think he said what he wanted to say. Maybe he meant to thank all the Muslims in the world who wanted Pakistan to win. It was a bad attempt to do so. Like many in blogosphere and elsewhere, I too think that Pakistani Christians and Hindus are perfectly justified to feel offended. I feel for their coach who is an Australian and perhaps more importantly in the context of the discussion, not a Muslim. I even feel for the guy in their support staff who was praying with folded hands while Misbah was fighting it out in the middle, only a few yards away.

And if Shoaib indeed meant to thank All the Muslims in the world, he certainly got it all wrong. Why would, for example, the second and third generation Pakistani Muslims, who are slowly making their way to English county cricket and dream of playing for the England team, want Pakistan to win? Why would Indian Muslims, a population that clearly outnumbers their counterpart citizens in Pakistan, be assumed to be Pakistani supporters?

In more ways than one, this immature and irresponsible statement from the Pakistani skipper speaks volumes of the mentality that the Pakistan dressing room, if not Pakistan Cricket, must be soaked in.