In which we are a little sad

Like all good things, this too must  end.

And I have had enough, I want to go back to my comfort zone. Enough wandering.

On Marriage, and Baby Borrowers, and idiocy

Have you seen ‘Baby Borrowers’? Good if you didn’t. Pathetic.
There are some Reality TV realities one really does not want to see.

So here is the story.

Id is MTM’s best friend. Or not. Id is MTM’s second best friend, after Cil. I went out for sushi with Cil the other day, he stays right here in California. Cil and I, we get along fabulously well, and it was a super time, what with both of us enforced bachelors discussing life, marriage, and about business ideas that we have….

But this story is about Id. I have met Id and his wife during the marriage. Skinny, rather cute thing. And Id is a reasonably successful guy in his own merit. Unlike Cil, I haven’t got to know Id well enough yet, but have heard a lot about him. You would have met him too, Mword, during the marriage.

Now MTM had recently had mentioned that Id is having some marriage problems.
 And on discussion today, she was mentioning how things are not working out… so they are planning to go their own ways. MTM of course is very angry with Id for this hasty, almost pigheaded decision, and really, so am I. And that takes us back to ‘Baby Borrowers’.

Neither marriage, nor having a baby, are playthings. You cannot say ‘Okay, take it back, I don’t want it anymore’. People have this pathetic idea that marriage is a kind of a finality. And that ‘Okay, now I have settled down’. It isn’t. This isn’t a fucken Hindi movie with the last scene being marriage, and that they lived happily ever after. Marriage is only the start. To have a great marriage, to actually ‘live happily ever after’, one has to be able to commit to himself / herself to put in an effort to make it work.
 In fact, not just one, but both will have to make an effort to make it work.

And opting for a breakup just because you can is not solution. And opting for a breakup just because things are not perfect, is not a solution either. All you idiots planning to separate from your spouses after 6 months of marriage, ask yourself that question. Have you really made that effort? Have you really tried very, very hard to make marriage work?
 And, very importantly, have you looked at the option? How are you sure that the next time, things will be any different? Or that single life will be all that good?
I know, I really am in no place to give judgments, I myself have not been married for such a long time, but yes, MTM and I have made the pretext set very firmly. We know that we need to work at it, and we have pledged that we will put in the effort. We might fail of course, but that will definitely not be because of a lack of effort.

So like MTM, I too think it is very childish, this decision that Id is planning to take.

Because you cannot take the pollution…

You are lost, mind you. You haven’t lost, you haven’t lost it, you just are lost.

You were never gregarious. You were snappy. You were fun alright, and good ….

And we, all of us, had the need for people. Four years in a hostel make us needy. Make us needy for other people. For conversation, for banter, for the pulse of being. For the proximity to other beings.

And then you left the country. I am sure the Masters were fun.

And now you say you don’t like it here much. You say you have a circle of friends, but you don’t meet often.

And then you are sad that you don’t have a girlfriend. And you are sad that your parents come along only about once a year.

And now you refuse to go back to India. And I know why. You think that going back will be akin to accepting that you have lost. You haven’t, believe me. You have done well for yourself. You have the degrees and the credentials, and a nice job. You have secured your professional future.

Be strong. Do what you know is right. If you are too ashamed still, maybe Australia? Shanghai? Hong Kong? Singapore? Closer to home?

Just don’t ever say that you cannot go back to India because there is so much of pollution there…

My Deprived Childhood, and Terry Pratchett’s…

There are many reasons why one should adore Terry Pratchett. Here’s another, for me. He can speak for me. Like he did at 1985. Sample this.

I had a deprived childhood, you see. I had lots of other kids to play with and my parents bought me outdoor toys and refused to ill-treat me, so it never occurred to me to seek solitary consolation with a good book.

Rings a bell? Oh yeah it does. See, books were never my escape route. Football was. Cycling was. Cricket was. Books were the despite of…. Books were the stuff that I also did. Just like writing. I was a normal kid, even somewhat plebian, you might say … And here’s another question. What are the chances that a kid will grow up to be a regular reader, is he/she was reasonably good at sports when small?

And also, you should seriously read the transcript of (this talk) by Pratchett. There are wonderful things he discusses, like Merlin’s death, like literary the distinction (and even discrimination) between wizards and witches, and the brilliant Ursula Le Guin….

The place

had grey glazed flooring. Nothing fancy… no marble or anything, no tiles even. Three rooms: yellow walls, yellow walls and green walls. 10 feet by 10 feet each. a foot and a half of white colouring at the top and the bottom. Ceiling fans, one soundless, one gently whirring (that was grandma’s room), and another rotating with a severe, strict taack-taack-taack. Two bathrooms, one with an Indian style commode, and the other with an European style one. A 12 feet by 8 feet dining space. an inconsequencial balcony.

It used to get very cold in the winters. And very hot in the summers. We never had AC. We didn’t have a water heater either, but there was the gas oven, where Ma used to make hot water so that I could take a shower early on in the morning. I never wore an unwashed shirt in my life before I got to the hostel. Pushpo-mashi ensured that.

There was a dairy, a khatal a little distance from the place. In the winters, there used to emanate a smell of fresh manure, blown in by the monsoon winds. It was mild, and not really offensive. Infact, this smell of manure, mixed together with the smell of wet earth, had a weirdly attractive-repulsive thing about it, something which words can never explain.

Joy-da had a small hole-in-the-wall paan-bidi shop, where we used to buy Big-Fun bubble gum for 50p. Next to it was Dr. Sarkar’s house. Dr. Sarkar was brilliant. We used to all want to grow up and become doctors. We used to all want to grow up and become Dr. Sarkar. Probably the only major diagnosis which he made a mistake in, killed my aunt.

Dad’s older brothers stayed in the two lower floors of the house. Grandma stayed with us. Since sister was born by then, i had to move to grandma’s room, and stay with her. my bookshelves came along as well. Grandma’s room was a half a foot longer than the other two rooms, it was planned that grandpa will stay there too, but he had died when I was 1. I was very comfortable there in that room, and grandma used to wake me up at 5 in the morning so I could go out to play in the neighborhood playground, football in the summers and cricket in the winters.

That place is a long way from here.

That place was home. No other place has been home, ever since.

211

Jamie is American, in his mid forties, and has been a manager in his company for the last few years. It’s a nice, high-paying job. He’s got three kids, got a nice house and a loving wife of more than 25 years. He speaks too much at times and has got a goofy sense of humor. He does not drink or smoke. I get along well with Jamie, and had gone for lunch with him a few times.

Jamie’s job is highly outsourceable, and back home in India there are enough who are capable of doing his job better than he does. And at a far lesser price.

By the end of this year, Jamie’s job will be outsourced to someone in India. it needs to, my calculations show.

Of course, Jamie is good enough to land another job soon enough, I know. And also, it is the law of nature in the highly globalized world of business, and I understand very well that outsourcing is a necessity and an inevitable in the modern global economy. It is a requisite for a behemoth like Jamie’s company to survive.

Shudder. That is the nature of my job.

Who would you want to be?

Guy X is from an affluent and cultured Tamilian family with successful parents. Has stayed in at least three Indian metro cities during school and college. Speaks pristine, exemplary English and is bad in the vernacular languages of his choice. Has gone to the best of schools and to a good engineering college. Is not the greatest of conversationalists. Is expected to have a cosmopolitan nature, and does so. Is polite to a fault, is argumentative but not garrulous.  Has few friends, but they are good, strong friends who care for him and he for them, or in other words, they are better than the orkut-scrappping variety. Does not ridicule people, and is objective. Is supremely talented and knowledgeable. Has been known to have very little EQ, but has now developed a much more well rounded persona. has been reputed for being stingy, but that is, as I have always maintained, an urban legend. he spends lavishly on people who are important to ihm, and none on the ones who don’t.
Has become a far more likable person now than he was in college.

Guy Y is from an affluent and cultured and affluent Bengali family with successful parents. Has stayed in at least three Indian metro cities during school and college. Speaks pristine, exemplary English and is bad in the vernacular languages of his choice. Has gone to the same schools and engineering college as X. Is expected to have a cosmopolitan nature, but does not really, his incessant smirking at the past that he has left behind as well as the present, are tough to bear. Garrulous, he has the irritating habit of passing a mocking personal comment whenever he seems to be losing a discussion. He was always part of a gang of sycophantic backslappers from the same region of India as his own, who looked down on anybody who they thought were beneath them, and were snide to all that were their peers and superiors. Is in touch with these apparent friends of his on orkut scraps now. Has never had a reputation of being stingy, but hell is he!
Has degenerated, post college.

And Y tells me, X might be sharp, but what a sad specimen, he has no life, he has no friends….

MW, you have hope. I don’t…

And what is the reverse of chick-lit? Dick-lit. Or the more PC lad-lit.

And how many dick-lit writers do you know? Yes. One. Nick Hornby.

Almost everyone agrees that the key is to crack the code mastered by the British author Nick Hornby, who in both ”About a Boy” and ”High Fidelity” managed to make male commitment anxiety quixotically appealing, both to men who identified with his characters, and to women who found them endearing. Both writers and publishers have rushed to share in Mr. Hornby’s popularity.

As the excerpt from NYT goes.

And how many dick-lit bloggers do you know? Nil. Nil.

So there. Bless your greenbacks, MW. Give me a party when you get there.

And in the meantime, we can blog. we can always blog.

Placeholdering.

¿Is there a placeholder for thoughts?

Guess am happy. Not ecstatic, no life redeemed, just happy

Fuck sounds

Trying to manage some sleep, while there are fuck sounds coming from the downstairs apartment. And this is a rather plush hotel/service apartment.

Do american women moan louder during copulation? I suppose as much.

Shaaaaaaaaadduuuuuuup! I’m trying to sleep here!