Attention, Saviours of the World

There is still great hope for humanity in this world. People still believe change is possible and that perhaps, someday mankind will actually live in utopia. Well, that’s all fine, but at what point did we start believing this would be easy? When will the clichés end? If all we needed to save the world was love, wouldn’t it have been saved by now?!?Let us assume, just for the sake of argument, that life is black and white, and love, joy and other happy things can save the world. Surely if that was the case, some bright spark would have had found a way to institutionalize love by now. Wouldn’t some intellectual have proposed establishing a Ministry of Care & Affection which could ensure that love was equitably distributed across the general populace? And why hasn’t anyone made love and caring mandatory behaviour in schools yet? Or found a way to tax hate?So, OK, maybe life is a little bit grey. And maybe, we don’t have all the answers. Isn’t it time that we admitted this to ourselves and stopped pretending? Ever wonder what that kind of honesty would be like? Here is my suggested viewing for all future saviours of the world - Hugh Laurie, from “A Bit of Fry and Laurie” singing “All We Gotta Do Is…”

An Ode to a Little Black Book

Imagine your memory is an art gallery or a history museum - filled with exhibitions with different themes. "That's right, folks. Parisian Adventures through the right and if you turn left you will go straight into the Temples of Cambodia section."

Like every museum, even your memory needs a guide - leading you through the exhibition - pointing out interesting facts about each artefact and narrating funny anecdotes that one would never understand with just a picture. "And this picture was taken when the camera fell from her hands because a busker on the Champs Elysee frightened her."

So in this museum in my mind, who is the guide? I like to think my little black book, my little diary is my guide. It contains a blow-by-blow account of the trip and I can write exactly what I saw and did, who I met and talked to and of course, what I was thinking at that minute. After all, even though a picture is worth a thousand words, sometimes, even that isn't enough, is it?

But I have often asked myself - why bother? Why bother building the museum? Why bother trying to remember every minute? This doubt reaches its peak when instead of sleeping on the beach in the glorious sunshine, I am desperately trying to note down what happened yesterday. Is it worth ruining the now to remember the past? Well, obviously the past must have been fantastic enough for me to want to document it.

I guess its just me desperately trying to hold on to my memories, hold on to the good times a bit longer. To continue the museum train of thought, this is essentially the same rationale for the success of gift shops and souveneir shops. People like to have something that reminds them of what they learnt or saw. I am like that one child clutching tightly at the cheap souveneir toy even though I know I would probably have lost it or forgotten it by the evening. That may have sounded far more depressing than was intended. Forgetting would be depressing but I don't want to forget - hence, the diary, the little black book. Therefore, keeping a diary is a sign of hope, something that will always help you remember.

As you might have guessed by now, if you are still with me, this is an ode to my diary. The one that got lost. My little companion traveled with me all over the world and contains an entire wing of the museum in my mind. And I lost him. If I were still in the place where I lost him, I would put up LOST notices all over that would probably read something like this:

LBB and I in happier times - at 1:56 a.m. at the LCC Terminal of Kuala Lumpur Airport last year

MISSING: LITTLE BLACK BOOK

Value: Priceless

Description: Faithful; Nondescript; Leather-bound; Filled with yellowing pages with beetle-tracks like handwriting on it; Answers to the name of LBB(if it could hear).

Please return immediately to Ridhima. Contact at xxxxx

Hindi movies, kebabs and beer

Well, it finally happened. It was inevitable I guess. For the first time since my brother came to Denmark, (or so he claims)we went out together to do our own thing. And what did we do? We went to see a Hindi movie... In a theatre in Copenhagen... Ahh, the reason I love globalization.

Which movie? Jodhaa-Akbar, Ashutosh Gowariker's latest offering. The movie is alright, the acting good, the background score uninspiring but some of the songs are truly wonderful. The best part of the movie though is the dialogues. I love Urdu, the way it sounds, the way it rolls off your tongue, the sheer elegance and that is why the dialouges of this movie were so cool. Another awesome part was the sheer eye-candy provided by Hrithik Roshan. I am not really a fan of his. In fact, until recently I used to call him a "chusa-hua aam" (i.e. half sucked mango.. Man, that really doesn't sound good when you translate it) but in Jodhaa Akbar, he really looks regal, he looks like a Jahapanah character. Very majestic and his whole bearing and way of carrying himself is very noble too.Anyways, after that Bhaiya and I went for Kebabs and Beer, a meal that Bhaiya holds very close to his heart obviously because I got a monologue recorded on my phone about its benefits. And it was great fun. Sure, he talked about his girlfriend a lot. But still it was fun. We had kebabs, biryani and beer. Heaven..

This one day adventure made me realize how Indian I am. OK. I know what you are thinking - it really isn't Indian to drink beer and eat kebabs. But after watching a Hindi movie on the big screen I realize how much I miss it. The past few days I have had a Bollywood fetish. I have been watching only Hindi movies, my iTunes is stuck on Hindi playlists and my head is constantly humming Jashn-e-Bahaara. Jashn-e-Bahaara is one of the songs from Jodhaa Akbar, it is in Urdu and it is so poetic that any listener just melts when one hears it. It makes me want to learn the language and become a poet.

The Holiday

I had the good fortune to catch a dreadful cold, flu, fever, cough (you name it, I caught it) after an awful two weeks of hard work, hard partying and emotional roller coasters. It is the best holiday ever. I suppose I consider it a holiday because it came at a time when I wanted it the most and so it is appreciated so much more. And this is all I am going to go into the whole sickness-is-the-body's-way-of-telling-you-to-relax routine. After all, I don't want my blog about the holiday to be boring.

I have been lying in bed all day with all my to-do lists surrounding me. Watching all those little post-its trying to be stern and remind me of all the tasks that I have not completed yet, I can't help but chuckle to myself. I have a feeling that in a little while I will no longer be able to control the giggles and it will blow out to full-sized maniacal laughter. Though now, the post-its are trying to talk some sense into me. They tell me that I should concerntrate on the tasks that are less cumbersome, tasks that I could accomplish while lying in bed. I wonder where they picked up the fine art of negotiation. But no matter, I can ignore them for a while longer.

Lying in bed all day, legitimately, without feeling guilty has its joys. For one, you discover and understand the nuances of your pillow and sheets much better. It came as a great surprose to me to find that the left side of my pillow is more comfortable to use as a teddy bear than the right side of my pillow which is the more firm, no-nonsense side. It positively reeks of army like discipline - the right side because if you sleep on it for the whole night you jump up early in the morning with a pain in the neck.

The other joy that I have discovered is cough lozenges. I think I may have a new addiction. I dread to count how many I must have popped in the last hour. A little later on I may indulge in a little arts and crafts and try and see what innovative things I can build with 50 lozenge wrappers.

The most fun though has been watching the sky change out of the window over my head. Glorious fun. I predicted that clouds would be rolling in from the west by mid-afternoon long before the TV weather man even got there. For now though I am listening to a song called Life, more specifically Life (High Quality) by a Eurotrance group called E-Type and enjoying the clouds. Very apt, isn't it?

The Saturday that stood out...

College started again. Thank God. I now have an excuse to avoid AIESEC work. Luckily in the past few days, due to pitifully tiny amounts of sleep, I have actually managed to get a lot of work done finishing up the things on my To-Do list. It was growing really really long. And I was getting overwhelmed. Unfortunately, my to-do list failed to include reading for classes. :( SO that I have to do now.

For once, I had a wonderful weekend. It was just me and Dad. Fed up of AIESEC work, I shut my comp and didnt open till late Sunday night to find loads of mails in the inbox. However, that is not the point of this story. The point is that it was a fantastic day.

We went to this Italian Bazaar thing they have going down at this place called GammelStrand (which in Danish means Old Beach). And it was magnificent. I felt like I was a tourist on holiday to Europe being enchanted by the sights and sounds of Mediterranean markets. We went around tasting wine, eating gelato, buying foccacia, buying olives and pasta and sun dried tomatoes, lemoncella. All food, pretty much but that was the fun part. Btw have you ever tried Lemoncella? It is this citrusy kinda liqueor they have in Italy and it is (no other word for it) 'magnifico'.

After that, we wandered around and over to Strøget (translated it means the streak). It is basically this touristy, up market pedestrian street right at the heart of Copenhagen. Lined with shops on both sides, this street is always packed on weekends. It is the place you come to when you are tired of the loneliness and silence of your house to reassure yourself that other people do live in this city as well.

So we walked up and down Strøget, window-shopping, trying to reach shops before they closed at 5. My Dad ended buying some candied fruit which, shockingly was too sweet even for my taste. And I bought a blueberry lollipop just for kicks because it had been ages since I had one and I must say, the charm is still there. It is the most fun thing. I wonder, though, what the inventor of the lollipop was thinking when he said to himself, "Why don't I put a candy on a stick? That will sell."

We reached the Town Hall Square only to realize that is Gay Pride Weekend and so there was a huge concert going on there. We were surrounded by people holding the rainbow flags of gay pride and generally, making merry. Loads of fun. We headed back, as we were kinda tired, and on our way home, we came across two drag-queens, dressed in very tacky ballerina outfits, the kind 5 year old girls enjoy wearing for days on end. They were in very high spirits and carry placards, with slogans on them such as "Free Gucci handbags - now". They ended up overtaking us and so the whole way home, we had front row seats to view their antics to scandalise other shoppers. They ever harassed the street artists they passed. It was hilarious.

And then we came home and watched a nice, old, black and white Hindi movie (most of which are really nice). Nice, old Dev Anand movie. sigh.

Good times, indeed.

Things aren't exactly ooh-jah-cum-spiff, old boy...

What ho! old bean...

Lately, I have found solace from my work in my wonderful old favourite novels of P.G. Wodehouse. And if that isn't enough childhood reminiscing, I have also had recent cravings for all the old British boarding school books we used to read as kids - Mallory Towers, St. Clare's and even Harry Potter. In fact, my whole childhood, I always wondered why my mother never got me any scones home for tea at 4, why we never played lacrosse, why I never got treacle pudding, and why I had to bathe in the mornings instead of before bed time.

But coming back to Wodehouse. Good old Jeeves and Wooster... I wish I had a Jeeves in my life - a gentleman's personal gentleman to clean up the mess of my life. Unfortunately, I am not a gentleman (though I might be as chivalrous as one sometimes). But Wooster and I do have a lot in common. For example, I, too, am a bumbling idiot. All this make the stories really come alive when I read them.

And of course, how can I forget darling Lord Emsworth, one of the most obtuse and lovable old literary characters ever created. I remember the first Wodehouse story I ever read was an Emsworth where he shoots his impossible, incorrigible secretary Rupert Baxter in the posterior with his grandson George's airgun. After reading something that hilarious, you would have to be inhuman to not be hooked. I feel bad for poor old George though. They tried to dump him with a tutor (that too, a tutor in the terrible devilish human form of Rupert Baxter) in the middle of the summer holidays.

Another situation I can relate to considering the fact that I am in it right now. I have summer holidays right now but it sure doesn't feel like it. I have been doing more work than in actual school days. This is not good. The sanctity of aimless mind wandering that occurs during the summer holidays will be lost. If this is not stopped, the future of the youth might be doomed. Oh no! And this is why things aren't exactly 'ooh-jah-cum-spiff', old boy...

Flow

Recently, (and those of you who know me can vouch for this) I have been caught in a maelstrom of activity due to the volley of family visits to Copenhagen. Thanks to these visits I got to visit the Danish Design Centre's exhibit call Flow. It is about consumer responsibility. For those of you have not visited it, I highly recommend it. It really is an eye-opener.

It is designed like a supermarket with products lined along the shelf. However, none of the products have any brand to distinguish them from any others. All products are equal, plain white with just a label with the name of the product. This is not a supermarket where they sell regular products but rather what society needs.

Milk cartons containing 'tolerance', cream cartons containing '1/4th pint of unconditional love', boxes containing 'commercial-free space', perfume bottles containing 'good vibes', cigarette packets containing 'addiction liberators', cans containing 'meaningfulness' and 'silence', medicine boxes containing 'stress killers' and 'time for each other', and disposable syringes with 'collective consciousness'.

I think that last one is really significant. I wish we could all inject our society with collective consciousness. In the exhibit, they quote Anne Lappe, "Everytime you spend money, you are casting a vote for the kind of world you want." I guess democracy is everywhere, huh?

The Road to Bliss

In my opinion, one of the most peaceful places in India (and trust me, it is not easy to find a peaceful place in a crowded country like India) is in the innermost sanctum of the Tirupathi temple, nestled in the hills of Tirumala, in Andhra Pradesh, in South India. I am not really a religious person and I generally hate all pilgrimage temples as they have a tendency to be dirty, touristy and disappointing. However, there is something about Tirupathi. One cannot ignore the devotion, the faith that devotees show. People journey from far and wide to pay their respects to the Lord of the Seven Hills and so would we.

When my family and I lived in Bangalore, we would undertake this journey quite often. It would take five hours to drive there with two pit stops on the way for breakfast and lunch. We would leave at some ungodly hour of the morning, or so it always seemed to me, before the sun had even risen.

There would be the usual last minute arguments that we always had in our family. My father would be ready first while my mother tried to wake up my brother and I, in a manner that allowed no arguments. While I would shower, my mother would hammer away at my bathroom door, trying to get me to hurry up. Once I was out, I would get the music we would need for our road trip ready. Soon all our efforts would be directed towards trying to get my brother out of the bathroom. Once he had emerged, all red and steaming from the hot shower, he would proceed to assess all my selections of music and promptly change most of it. This would enrage me and I would begin to squabble. Meanwhile, my parents would have begun loading up the car.

Finally, after my brother and I managed to reach a suitable compromise, he would proceed to wear his shoes. My brother wearing his shoes was something so fascinating to watch that it actually requires its own paragraph. The way he went about it, it seemed to be an arduous task, requiring utmost skill and concentration, something best left only to the professionals. He pull on his socks with such the inifinite patience of a practiced, veteran monk, who has been contemplating the meaning of life for the past 40 years under a tree in the forest. All the while, my parents would be multitasking - handling the last minute packing, making sure the maid finished her work and left, getting me out of my music library, reading the morning newspaper and finishing their cup of tea. By the time, my brother got to tying his shoelaces, our family would be almost 15 minutes late from the time we had originally planned to leave, and my father, the lone long-suffering punctual soul in our family, would have reahed the end of his patience (not that his patience was very long) and yell at my brother to hurry him up. This was, needless to say, a well-practiced tactic, that never worked. My brother would look up and then look back down with such a calm demeanour and in what seemed like a deliberately slower manner, tie up his laces with such concentration and at the same time, convey his disdain for the barbarians hurrying him up.

Finally, after all this drama, we would be ready to leave. Before anyone's journey we had this tradition of saying a quick prayer at our family altar and embracing the one leaving (in this case, hugging each other in an overly melodramatic manner). And in that one minute in which we said our silent prayers, all was forgotten, all was forgiven and everything was fine. Then we would pile into the car altogether. My brother and my father would have their ritual argument over who would get to sit in the front seat while our driver looked on in amusement. And then, we would be on our way.

At first, no one spoke, no one played any music. Everyone was just lost in their own thoughts. Then as we got out of the city and unto the highway, we would turn on the radio and listen to whatever was playing until we drove out of range. After that, it would be yet another squabble for the music.

Approximately, an hour and an half after leaving the house we would reach our first pit stop - a highway restaurant/motel called Woody's, a little outside Kolar. We already knew what we wanted to have - Masala Dosa. After this little break, we would continue on our way. Again, we would have a period of silence. Only this time, the silence would be broken not by music but by a game of 20 Questions. For those of you who don't know this game,the objective is simple. One person thinks of a famous personality and then the other players have to ask him/her 20 yes or no questions about this personality and they have three attempts to guess the personality. Of course, the advantage of playing with your family is that they know you so well that the questions tend to be very obscure like, "Does this person appear on that show that we watch on that channel that you hate?" or even something like, "Is this person that you are thinking about related to usand visited our home recently?"

Eventually, we would tire of the game and silence would fall on the car again. Then as I would protest the silence and plead for some music to be played. My brother and I would be on one side, begging for 'our' music to be played while my father and our driver would be the other team, demanding music from their era to be played. Of course, there would ba a lot of verbal assaults on their age during this argument by my brother and I, while the other team would question the integrity of our music and question its status as music and not noise. Our driver would enjoy this squabble. He would join, hesitantly at first, but eventually he would get his way and we would play the music that he liked.

Our mother, was delightful fun on all these roadtrips. She never joined our squabble over the music because she would usually be asleep during those parts of our journey. During her naps, we would cruise along the highways at speeds of 160 km/hr (which is pretty fast for Indian roads) until she awoke and took one look at the speedometer. With a sleepy utterance of "आस्थे, आस्थे ।" (Slow down, slow down), she would go right back to sleep. This was repeated once every twenty minutes and it had an effect which lasted 5 minutes in total each time.

Once we reached Tirupati town at the foot of the Tirumala hills, it would be time for lunch and our second pit stop. Again we had a regular restaurant we visited and a regular lunch that we ate. It was all like a ritual. After lunch, we would pile into the car again to begin our ascent into the hills. This would take around an hour. Our attempts to play some music would immediately be squashed by our mother who would in her usual worried tone, tell us to shut up and let our driver concentrate while he drove around the sharp hairpin bends in the ascent. And usually, we would obey, lapsing into our own thoughts yet again.

Eventually we would reach the top - Tirumala town itself. Tirumala is a noisy, dirty, touristy little town that always seems to be bursting at the seams. People used to queue for miles along the city, actually in cages to get into the temple and inner sanctum, to walk past the 7 gates of Vaikuntam. And for what - a two second glimpse at an bejewelled idol and then a hard shove in the back to get people to move on in the line. Within these two seconds, people would cover a whole palete of emotions, from joy at finally reaching their long journey's end, to exultation at having finally been granted a vision of their beloved Govinda, to ecstacy, chagrin when the pushers push them on, deviousness when they try to con the pushers into letting them stay on for a second longer, anger when this tactic fails to work, resignation as they move on, and hope as they turn around to catch a glimpse of the Lord for the last time. All this happens in a timespan of just one minute. Now, of course, there are no more long queues and cages. Technology has made them redundant. Instead now the Lord's devotees are given a wristband stating the time of their 'darshan' and they are required to show up at the temple's gates at the said time. But the pushers still remain and so does the emotional rollercoaster.

I have had the good fortune to have been blessed with a viewing of one of the many other services. The one that I enjoy the most is the Abhishekam, that is the service wherein the Lord is bathed with buckets and buckets of milk and then massaged with sandalwood. It takes place early in the morning at around 2 or 3 a.m. but no one complains about this. It is well worth it if one gets to sit in the Lord's presence for almost an hour.

The inner sanctum is so peaceful and His presence is overwhelming. I had always planned a list of things that I wanted to say to the Lord when I saw him, but once you reach there, once you reach that inner sanctum, all words are lost. One loses track of one's thoughts amidst the chants of Om and Govinda. It is almost like a trance state with no thought.

On my last trip to the temple, I undertook an experiment. I was resolved to say my prayer in front of the Lord when I got there and finally, I realize why that is not possible. When you pray, you tend to close your eyes to concerntrate your thoughts on what you want to say, ask and thank for. But in Tirupathi, after having fought just to view the Lord, to get a split-second glimpse of him, you just can't close your eyes when you get there. For in the time when you might pray, the next time you open your eyes he may not be visible anymore. I appreciate my father's explanation for this phenomenon. According to him, the Lord knows what you need better than you do and therefore when you are in His presence, words and thoughts are no longer necessary. All you need is that calm overpowering reassurance which is what you get indeed.

People say that you only journey to Tirumala if the Lord has called you. You can plan all you want but if he hasn't called you, you will never reach him. He must call. When you reach the inner sanctum, a wonderful feeling of calm that envelops you (even despite the pushing crowds). A feeling that you have reached your journey's end and He will take care of things now. A feeling of such security and comfort that one can only feel when one is truly at home, like the feeling on gets in one's mother & father's embrace. And that's when you truly realize, or atleast I did, that through this whole journey together with my family, through all our squabbles, through all the masala dosas we ate to get here, to get this 30 second glimpse, none of those things mattered. Eventually, what mattered was that we were here together and of course, that emotion is too powerful to express so like most other emotions, it is lost in silence and never said.

And just for that small realization, that 30 second insight into your life, that tiny taste of true inner peace, it is well worth the trip. It is bliss.

The World

Lately, I have been toying with the idea of making my blog like a travelogue atleast until it hit me that I haven't really been anywhere for me to write my impressions of. I suppose I have been far enough to write some stuff but enough to make a whole blog on it - I am not so sure. But now I feel that maybe it doesnt have to be that I have been there. It could be that I have heard something about it or something like that.

We were talking about going on exchange the other day and one of my classmates, Alona was suddenly very taken with the idea of going on GLOBE. In the GLOBE program one gets to go to Hong Kong for a few months and then to North Carolina for another couple of months, hence the name. And I was discussing my options. Lately, I feel as if the world has opened up for me. I want to go everywhere and see everything. Even on those non-luxury holidays which is definitely a first for me. Trekking through Patagonia, or climbing some mountain somewhere is as good as lying on beach getting a massage.

I wish I had a job that involved travelling to different countries like the hosts on Globetrekker. They seem to have a good enough time I suppose. Visiting the whole world. Its not really that big a place and I have realized it doesnt have to be big to be different. Even a small country like Denmark can have diversity, albeit very little diversity but diversity nonetheless. I want to see this small/big world.

An introduction of sorts

It is truly fantastic - this transition from child to adult.I guess one doesn't realize it when one is firmly on one or the other side. But this intervening period when one is able to understand both perspectives - that is truly fantastic. It gives ones thoughts an amazing duality, which is both confusing as well as refreshingly, clear. And the best past is that it occurs in almost every thoughts.

This is what I hope to record in this cyber logbook of sorts. Life, from the nursery side to the real world side. Hopefully, this will include lots of observations and picturesque descriptions about seemingly mundane things which come alive when described in these perspectives.

Hopefully...