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Nov 1st was a holiday and we were supposed to clean up the house. What we ended up doing was watching movies. Occasionally one gets to see a movie which will force you to think what if?
The movie I am talking about is Let’s Talk. It has an amazing performance by Boman Irani (Of the Munna Bhai fame). More important is the Ram Madhvani- Script writer / Director who has gone through the pains of writing about those different emotions. The movie is about what will be the different reactions a Husband will portray when his Partner/Wife/Girlfriend tells you she is pregnant and he is not the father!
The entire duration of the movie I was wondering what if I am posed a similar situation. The different emotions revealed were Depression, Anger, Violence, Revenge, Empathy, Irrationality, Denial, Forgiveness. I had to repeat some sections of the movie to understand why the wife cheated. And viola it was because of what I advocate ‘Communication’, there was a break in their communication and the wife cheats after 5 years from the time it broke. Now god knows why she took so long, according to me it happens much earlier in reality.
Communication is a very important aspect in a couple life, it is more important that sex. Any successful relationship rests on a clear and candid communication between the two. We men especially got to learn to listen for adjectives. Happily married and married is very different!
Communication
What is that makes me say ‘I am proud being an Indian’? The more I see other countries, read about them the less I feel the pride. These days I regret to accept it but there is no pride left, I am not saying I do not love India. Love and pride are two different facets of emotions.
I read somewhere that ‘National pride is to countries what self-respect is to individuals’. It is one of the primary conditions necessary to bring about improvement in the country.
A few weeks back I was in Thailand with my Gal on a vacation. I was expecting that country to be just like India. I was wrong in every goddamn measure of yardstick. The infrastructure is amazing, the roads wide and smooth, the train system in Bangkok provided for a strong mass transportation. This is in a country which is not stable politically! The bus we took to Bangkok was a VIP bus available to public run by the state. It was a Business class flight seat with the only difference that the vehicle was on road rather then air. We landed in Bangkok very early by road around 6:00 AM and man the roads were full, people are up and going to office. Those people really work hard I presume.
One more interesting aspect which according to me indicates the maturity of general public is how people treat women of their community. Ladies usually were dressed in western cloths there and most of them had mini skirts or some kind of dress which one can term skimpy. But not one Thai male would look at them lewdly or there was no instance where some groups of males were involved in eve teasing. Thailand came across as a country which treats its women in high regard. I understand some who read this might not agree with me saying that its a land of prostitutes. What I am saying is even those prostitutes are treated well there, that shows women are kept on a pedestal, which proves it all.
Towards the end of our trip we went on a bicycle trip in Bangkok. We met some Swiss/ Dutch and Britain people, when asked about my nationality for a second I was literally ashamed to say I was an Indian.
We may have an illustrious cultural past, great history strewn with amazing personalities, superb resources. The fact is everything we have is about our past what is in the present and what is in the future. Nothing much to talk there right! We are a nation whose people are engaged in procreating more than anything else. What else can explain the 1 billion plus population we have? Indians are like a Virus we have used up the resource in India so we have started to spread everywhere else like USA/ UK/ Australia. Wherever we go, we just start multiplying, just run your eyes around in any community outside India. There will be invariably some sizable number of ladies in some stage of pregnancy. Do I need to say more on this?
India would need a minimum of 10 years to setup a decent state of infrastructure and I have no idea how long it would take for our people to mature and move ahead in life.
Bottom line- with the current state of affairs for me there is no pride left in being an Indian.
Pride
I had been to Hyderabad last weekend. The trip and the shopping with my Gal made me think on this topic. 
It’s a known thing that it’s a man’s world. But my question is, is it really our world? What do you define your world as? I am not defining my world as just my work environment; it even involves my life outside work. When I got out for a movie, to a restaurant, go bowling, go to a beach, anywhere, everywhere and wherever out of my work place, it’s the same scenario. I have realized why do men want power and money? I am of the opinion that men do it to impress their women or the women/lady they crave for. It’s the basic fundamental animal instinct of having the biggest herd with the most females like in a lion’s pride.
Visit a shopping lane like the choodi bazaar, chandini chowk etc it is only for ladies and nothing for men. It’s so difficult to find a market which is exclusive to us men, and think about the same for ladies you can find a dozen in the every city.
Why is that most men have the perception that they run the world when its actually the women who do it, or the motivation to please women is what drives the world round. Come on let us accept the fact that Women are smart (more than 50% are definitely and the rest are the blonde category) without them there would have been no civilization.
There is a song James Brown - It’s A Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World depicting my point of view on the topic.
Man's World
I have lately realized that for anything in life, the first experience cannot be matched by any other experience. One of the bands I love has a song on this context. SADE – Never As Good As First Time. Recently when my thoughts were lingering on this topic this song was playing and I was able to relate to the lyrics.
After that I have been pondering over this for sometime now, and I am able to recollect a few first times etched into my memory. They are fresh on my mind and I feel they happened just sometime back, some of the memorable first times are 
My first personal failure
My first college fight
My first win in a sport
My first crush
My first date
My first Kiss
My first attempt at expressing my love
My first Day at work
My first Pay check
I can make a huge list of other smaller first times like being hit, sky diving, skiing, roller coasters etc etc.
Now coming to the basic question of why is that the first experiences over-shadows all the remaining instance of the same activity. Why is that we give so much importance to something when we are doing/performing for the first time? Why do first impressions contribute so much to our perception of things?
There are a lot of firsts in life. The reason that we remember these ‘firsts’ is because they are important to us. After the first time, we have crossed over into new territory. The second time won’t be like the first time it is no more the land of unknowns!
First Time
This is an ode to my Jeans. I have reached a point where I will be forced to stop wearing my Jeans whenever I feel like it. I will be pressurized to take up formal clothing by my career needs. But Fri-Sun will always be Jeans days;>)
I love myself when I am in my blue jeans. I feel like the rebel I am, free spirited not bounded to anything. It does not matter how, where, when I use it. I can sit on anything anywhere, everywhere. I don’t feel constrained like in a formal pant. Jeans is not just a pant it is an entire character which one wears. For me it’s like the Mask (Jim Carey – MASK) the only difference, it’s on my legs! It’s like that shield on those super humans – Superman / He-Man etc.
Its makes me feel I am still ME – the non-conformist of the society. The only color I like in Jeans is the original Blue from Levi’s, to a certain extent even the stone black is good. All the remaining colors do not stand for Jeans; they actually dilute the essence of Jeans according to me.
I cannot believe that I was not wearing Jeans till I joined college. I was in my Engineering days when I started wearing one. The first one I bought was obviously an original Blue Jeans. I can still remember the day when I went shopping for it with my friend (late) Prakash. It was not that I was not audacious; it was just that after I got my first Jeans I started to flaunt I am an individualist.
For the uninformed lot, Jeans has its origin in India. The earliest known version of Jeans is the Dungaree – a thick cotton cloth from the 16th Century India. The current version of Jeans is basically from France and not from USA like most of us think.
Jeans
I would love to get the secure feeling of walking alone with my dog back when I was a child, or sleeping at night after listening to one of my Mom’s mix ‘n match stories. These days I cherish the feeling of playing some good music on and driving with my gal as the navigator. It is more or less like my life; I am driving with directions and help from my gal.
Security has always been a loaded word. Webster’s defines it as “freedom from fear, anxiety, danger, and doubt.” It is within Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs, and in my case it is achieved in a different order. So no matter how you slice it, security comes down to fundamental sense of well-being or safety.
Few days back my well wishers gave the same reason “Security” to dissuade me from resigning from the company I have been with for past 5+ years. The point I am not able to understand is how working in a big company gives security? Security is not the point of concern for me as of now. I need to focus on the aspects of self actualization. I want to have the peak experiences in my career like in everything I do. To do this I need to expose myself to newer opportunities-challenges. I hope the decision of shifting companies will open doors to the path I want to take rather than being just a window to the path!
Security
When do feelings of superiority arise to make us happy? When we are conscious of differences between what we believe is "ours" and what we believe is "theirs". But seriously I feel instead of the Nazis harboring the feeling of being superior it is we Indians who must have felt that. We are far more superior as a race intellectually and physically than any of our counterparts in the world. I clearly agree we are not the best when each point is taken individually but we are the best blend – concoctions that are available in nature. The recipe for success!
Now why am I talking of this. Few days back I was trying to correlate two things, worldwide lust to Hollywood actress Angelina Joile and Indian population attraction to the dusky actress Bipasha Basu. The only similarity both have is both have brown skin and not the fair complexion of the other popular kittens in the world.
The word Aryan which is used to describe the superior race is again an Indian word by origin. Its history starts with the ancient Indo-Iranians, Indo-European people who inhabited parts of what are now Iran, Afghanistan, and India. Their tribal self-designation was a word reconstructed as *arya– or *ārya–. It’s a Sanskrit derivation (For that matter it’s a well know fact that Sanskrit is the most superior language) *ārya which refers to the upper crust of ancient Indian society.
Now let me give my cent to the debate on superiority :-
Physically superiority: Indians have all the traits of the most superior physical traits. It’s a well know fact that it is always the superior trait – gene that gets percolated from our ancestors. We have black eyes, black hair, darker skin (used to be Black but that has evolved into brown over the ages – I am talking more about the Dravidian Indian).
Intellectual superiority: Indians have proved beyond doubt that we have the most brilliant people in all walks of life. I am not rejecting the fact that there are intellectually brighter populations like the Israeli, Russian. But given the fact that Indian population is huge it can eat up on any competition. The recent developments of Indians taking over the silicon valley, getting the best research jobs all over the world, taking over crucial and big companies (Mittal-Arcelor) is just a pre-cursor to things if we start digging on this topic.
It’s the basic Darwin theory -survival of the fittest. The inevitable outcome would be Indians or at least a variant becoming the largest population in the world (with the amount of Indians migrating all over the world). Knowing the great appetite of Indians to procreate it is not a very far sighted goal.
Aryan
Recently on New Year's eve, I had been to a club in New York on Times Square. It was a great time; I started of the year feeling great, in the after glow of getting a request for a dance from a pretty lady. A complete stranger on the dance floor asked me for a dance. I relented for a single dance and ended up dancing for two songs one with her and one with her and her friend. The dance and my thoughts during and after the dance forced me to think about loyalty and infidelity. When my friends got to know about it, the first response was we knew you couldn’t be committed and loyal. I was like wow wow hold on for a second, when did this become an incident of infidelity. Even my woman was like, it better have stopped at just a dance. What I did was not a pointer or precursor to anything. All I did was have a plain simple dance with two pretty women and suddenly it was a topic of my loyalty.
Commitment is a very strong word. It depicts the difference between humans and animals. Humans have the capacity to be committed to something/anything. I define commitment as a choice I make, a choice I made to love or do something among the options I have. The difficulty in being committed to anything is because I need to make the same choice every single time I encounter a situation to choose.
When the walls start closing in, the choices made is what decides whether I'm committed or not.
commitment
Nov 1st was a holiday and we were supposed to clean up the house. What we ended up doing was watching movies. Occasionally one gets to see a movie which will force you to think what if?
